thomasjkenney
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AuthorPosts
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thomasjkenney
ParticipantThis rambles a bit, sorry. Much editing.
@zerosum re: ‘1. There is no “secret movement” that cannot be seen and destroyed because of “eyes in the sky”’Heh! Silly Sunday tangent: garden steganography and crop circles.
I’ll also try to be pertinent and say that much of what I’ve read online about censorship lately has been about…online censorship. This is itself a kind of gaslighting, no? “ZOMG, YOU’RE BEING CENSORED (online) !!!! online…online…”
The Coughing Code
The Upside-Down Flag/Cross/Menorah
Steganography
Tree Blazes
Currency Defacement
Boob/Weenie Flashings
Colored Hats/Shoes/Capes
Secret Hand Signals
Encrypted Morse Code Via Mirror/Smoke/Drum Circle
Hand-Written Encrypted Letters Delivered Via Courier
Song/Music
Warrant Canary
A Chat Over Coffee In The Kitchen/On The Back Porch
Pick A Book And Become It (There’s a book about this!)—————————————————————-
If it smells like movie plot, zoom out a bit. For instance, the current ‘AI’ won’t become SkyNet overnight. It might kill millions if something like ChatGPT is put in charge of rail switching. It need not, but why would They pass up the chance? (Echoing Dr D a bit there, sorry!)
It’s the banal start, though, of delegating extremely important decisions about human/biological life to machines that cannot help but be flawed simply because we have a very limited view of this universe. They also not only lack our motivations, they really don’t (yet?) have motivations of their own. They have to be given a flawed human’s flawed interpretations of what it’s flawed perception tells it about human motivations. GIGO is understatement.
Would you trust ChatGPT to decide when to plant wheat for the year? How about weather forecast in general? Trust it to decide if/when a life-saving operation is to be performed? Trust it on if/when to dispatch an ambulance? Trust it to not botch FDA beef inspections and send all cows in Montana to the furnace for a Brucellosis scare?
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Final thought that is not entirely unrelated: the Shoshone, Miwuk, Piute, Chumash, others used to travel to Hockett Meadow between two forks of the Kern River for a big yearly trading bash. For tribes from the east, this was often preceded by a spring rabbit hunt. Long weirs were built in the brush, 100-200m long, gradually converging pair of low fences, with a corral at the apex. Tribe makes a long picket line at the open end of the triangle, and makes a ruckus while walking inward. Many, many rabbits captured; little energy expended; social ritual performed.
thomasjkenney
Participant@kultosummer re: “And, yet, the Bitcoin is the lifeline and the way of the future?”
Pro tip – you can perform bitcoin transactions with an abacus or a pile of pinto beans. It just takes a little longer. You can also write the contents of your wallet onto a piece of paper and keep it in your pocket.
thomasjkenney
Participant@EoinW re: “They can’t run anything properly so they surely won’t be able to build anything from scratch.”
I’d say that’s spot on. However, they will position to be able to steal anything that is ‘built back’ by real humans. I posit we should not build anything worth stealing until the infestation has abated.
thomasjkenney
ParticipantOK…I’m a paranoid phuq…
Get everybody stirred up in a lynch mob of boycotts (Bud, Target are early tests, or the beginning?), then release a fake ad and take out something structurally important, like, say, Tyson Chicken? Whirlpool Appliances? Kaiser Permanente? Charmin ass wipe? I’m having a hard time picking the real target (ahem) since I’m not evil. The ‘suicide by customer’ story is kinda weird, though. The TNF thing, another in a slow roll, you’d think they would at least pause for consideration.
thomasjkenney
Participant@John Day re: Thanks Christine. Yes, the Gamma Radiation can be from DU, because the breakdown products of uranium fission break down further, emitting gamma rays.
Also, though I may be off my rocker, not a physicist, etc etc… You’ve got five metric shite-tonnes of DU stored in close proximity, getting warmer and warmer. Along comes HE warhead and does what the ignition charge inside a real nuclear warhead does, that is, compresses the fissionable material quickly with great force. Did the missile strike cause a/some criticality?
thomasjkenney
Participant@Dr D re: the lantern
Here in Sinkist-Ville (SoCal) they used ‘smudge pots’ – a short length of pipe, usually concrete or clay, installed end-up in the middle of an orchard. If frost is forecast, the smudge pot gets a fire, and the smoke blankets the orchard. Slight rise in temp, but also more moisture precipitates onto the ground, rather than blanketing the oranges and freezing.
It’s been outlawed for a while, 30 years?
thomasjkenney
Participant@anticlimactic re: kinzhal warhead
It is my belief that gold is the optimum material for a warhead, 100kg. It’s effective, mostly non-poisonous (lead, uranium, tungsten, many other metals are problematic), and would send a multi-faceted message.
thomasjkenney
ParticipantThe fact that no one has done hypersonic before makes me think it’s solution has a pinch of ‘Star Trekyness’ in it.
Well, they did say something about “We are developing weapons based on newly discovered physical properties…”
F#(<ing ominous.
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“50x more hackers”
You cannot have 50x more highly-functioning programmers on a project. The limit is 3 programmers. Past that, your team becomes a bureaucracy. If the 50x are all analysts/minions, then something is wrong with the automation. You still have only 3 smart guys doing the programming, and a bunch of minions. As the automation improves, the minion count should go down even if the ‘scope’ (number of surveilled) keeps increasing.
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Book rec:
The City and the Stars – Arthur C Clarke
I wish I had read this before I read Ringworld.
thomasjkenney
ParticipantIf not for Bill Gates’ “espousal” of commodity hardware, we would probably still have a chip fab industry in this country. DEC was among his early victims.
thomasjkenney
ParticipantLED beams have a frequency. I happened to find myself riding my bicycle down a mountain in the middle of a fierce blizzard. The LED beam of my headlamp caused the snowflakes to strobe…very disorienting!
Non-cheap incandescents last for decades. They take a while to warm up, like a good tube amplifier.
The LED mode of failure I’ve observed is indeed due to heat, but attacks the components somewhere pre- or post-LED. I’ve had several develop hairline cracks in the white base, and they just stop working.
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thomasjkenney
ParticipantRE: the Cali acorn
It’s a 3-way. The woodpecker does this in an attempt to keep them out of reach of squirrels, from whom they sometimes steal the acorns. The stellars jay will steal from both, and is an unwanted pest. The woodpecker hangs out in large, raucous gangs, and will chase jays out of a ‘good neighborhood.’ The squirrel does the same as the woodpecker, running a quantity game to ensure some food safety.
thomasjkenney
ParticipantQuickie thought experiment:
You own a smartphone factory. You use AI to control most of the automation. Your AI gets a recipe slightly wrong and uses 3% too much hardener in the epoxy that holds the phone together. After nine months in the field, the phones start to crack open. There are 400,000 devices in the field that now must be immediately replaced. That is no small disruption, eh? 400k people now have to put some portion of their lives on hold while they acquire, activate, and set up their new device.
Also note the similarity of what I’m writing to the recent posts re: Lenin and money debasement. The ‘nudge’ was also the steering technique espoused by some Brit MI finger, eh?
Germ warfare, same. All you have to do is give 5% of the opposing force a good case of the shitz for about a week. You don’t have to kill or maim anybody, and it doesn’t even have to be obvious. Just…more and more shitz.
Stuxnet, same. All that was done was to slightly slow some of the centrifuges. It clogs them.
thomasjkenney
Participant@Dr D re: “…They have broken the veil that says we can arrest politicians…”
That’s not all they’ve broken. The concept of a ‘nondisclosure agreement’ is now a flattened cow patty on the ranch driveway. A new form of covenant must now be devised to secure ‘trade secrets’ and such.
thomasjkenney
Participant@Oroboros re: Desolation Row
…and that is the best Desloation Row…period.
Between the windows
Of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flowDirtbag Hippie can survive anywhere. There’s a reason Phinneas resembled a cockroach.
thomasjkenney
Participant@Oro re: blocking content
I use Firefox. The 3 key extensions I use are uMatrix, uBlock Origin, and Element Blocker. The former are like the old AdBlock extensions. The latter is a fine-grained filter so you can remove/block specific HTML elements from loading in a page. Right-click on a picture and select ‘Block element’ and it’s gone. Sites will get tricky to avoid this, so it can take a bit of tral-and-error get some things blocked, but it works very well.
thomasjkenney
Participant@John Day re:
…and furthermore: So the internet is saving us?
I’m open to that. I hope it works better than telephony and radio did.
(Keep talking and listening to God, but don’t let people see you.)It is the seed of knowledge, that there can be this kind of network, that is the key. This iteration, the InterTubes, is pretty well phuqed. It has basically become ‘corporate heroin’ that cannot be turned off or all will collapse, but cannot be left to fester or folks will become enlightened.
thomasjkenney
Participant@Dr. D again re: the revelations stuff
Yes, brilliant! I don’t believe in sky fairies, but I can get behind this kind of thinking.
thomasjkenney
Participantre: Dr. D
Okay, that’s over Eight THOUSAND feet elevation. I guess! Wonder why it doesn’t blizzard a lot more often. But now that we have snow in Saudi Arabia, L.A. is clearly fair game.
We get snow at low elevs about once in 30 years, has happened 3-4x in my lifetime. I’m at 300m elev one valley in from the coast. It was snowing down to about 400m, hitting all the ‘ticky tacky’ that clings to the hills on the edge of the valley. We had graupel (tiny snowballs) where I’m at, but it did not stick. Many of the major highways have low-elev segments closed, including US-395, CA-58, US-101.
From my perspective, life-long resident of this same valley, this is pretty much ‘back to normal’ in terms of this type of storm. In this cycle, we should see similar storms into mid April, with snow down to 800m elevation.
thomasjkenney
Participant@Dr D:
But does that explain why WE have to be animals, live in huts and walk everywhere while the Very Important People fly private jets to private islands, with private yachts? Food imported from Japan while you scratch the earth with your fingernails for maggots, you filthy animal? Because THEY are the ones with the “Secret Knowledge.” They are the “Enlightened Ones” who “Know”.
Heisenberg was quite the asshole, eh?
The surveillance, analysis, actuation require greater energy and control. As this curve ramps up, what is being surveilled warps. “It’ll do whatever you want, and cost whatever you got!” To know everything when that knowledge matters most, you must expend all your energy. Where does that leave analysis, actuation?
They are too chicken to turn off the Internet. That would ‘disempower’ many. But to them, it would be the equivalent of plunging an ice pick into one’s own ear.
thomasjkenney
ParticipantI suspect AnandTech is using AI for some of it’s ‘sponsored’ content. Articles pop up with a new product, or a sale item, and the text reads like a car salesperson who doesn’t quite understand the internal combustion engine. Some of the text is technically accurate and unquestionable, but sometimes it’s an obvious gaffe. I used to work with a salesperson in the computer biz 30+ years ago. She was the best! But she didn’t get the tech, and sometimes ate a shoe or two. “Yes, we can send you a BPI tape!” was stated many times, she being blissfully ignorant of the fact ‘BPI’ is ‘bits per inch’ – the rated density of the tape. It’s the conversational equivalent of the ‘uncanny valley.’
I don’t think the machines will pass a Turing Test yet, but can they Kobayashi Maru such a test?
thomasjkenney
ParticipantKnow your tools. A good tool will last half a lifetime or more. I still have Mac tools I bought in 1988.
Misuse of a tool (Ardern) often leads to breakage of the tool or the object-in-repair.
SnapOn – Nice, the real deal, but the ‘BMW’ of pro tools
Matco – Substandard, the ‘Nissan’ of pro tools
Mac – Serious business. All the Harley mechanics I knew back then used Mac. They have the tolerances and durability of SnapOn without the frivolity of decorationthomasjkenney
ParticipantPIP is the government’s main disability payment …
Geez, if that ain’t a scary signal. Pip was also the poor sod cabin boy who fell off the Pequod and spent long ours in the world’s biggest shark tank, gone utterly mad before Ahab returned to rescue him.
thomasjkenney
Participantre: free speech
My mentor in all things computer once described to me what using a ‘DNA computer’ meant. It’s a talus field method of finding many viable complex answers very quickly. One technique: you assign certain ‘steps’ to syllables in the DNA, these steps being parts of chemical processes, mathematical operations, software design, etc.
One goal was to do optimization. You had to do a certain chain of steps to produce a chemical you want. Certain of these steps can be done out-of-order, by-products can be precursors, etc. To find out which processes could be parallelized, or what level of parallel, is a part of this optimization. It is a brutal task (one I’ve only done for software opt).
To do this with a DNA computer, you mix up some goo that has a high rate of forced mutations. You dump the goo into a ‘sluice’ that is looking for certain steps that cannot be parallelized. This gives you a reduction in results to only those that can actually function. Now the sluice gets finer, ordering for shortest chain of processes, most parallel, least wasteful of time/ingredients/energy.
The solutions you want literally fall into place. It is a very limited tech, but applicable to realms beyond optimization of process and other mundane things.
This is how I view freedom of speech. It is the basis of science, no? Without it, the charnel house cannot function.
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re: child labor
Yes…but…
Given our energy levels as children, and our pliable minds, it is often best to set up as an apprentice of some kind. I was constantly searching for something to which I could apply algebra/geometry, language skills, etc. I’d have killed to learn how to run a lathe, build fine furniture, set type (thanks, Benji). Forcing kids into factory labor is shitty, no argument. But I was very glad to have bicycles and well-behaved computers in my childhood. I think that any apprenticeship like this has a great deal of art involved, which is extremely important for the development of new ideas (see re: free speech).
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Thanks, all! These have been very rich threads these past few weeks.
thomasjkenney
ParticipantMidwest Doctor’s first paragraph:
One of the challenges I find with most forms of media is that the creators of it are continually seeking to manipulate you into adopting their position. For this reason, I greatly prefer written content as opposed to audio or visual content as it is much easier for me to rapidly filter out the manipulative rhetoric built into what I am reading. Similarly, this is why, to the best of my ability, I try to avoid inserting manipulative language into my writing (as best as I can I try to follow the Golden Rule and not to do things to other people I don’t like having done to me).
I have stated exactlythis on this very forum at least once in the past. It is refreshing, and a bit vindicating, to see others organically arrive at this point of view. My wife can’t unsee it, now that I’ve clued her in, and she’s suddenly reading more books than ever!
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@V Arnold re: machinist
In a healthy society, you’d be treated like royalty. Instead, you get your legs broke and get chained to your workstation. I have had a very good boss for 20+ years. However, even he has to ‘screw me over’ sometimes or he can’t stay in business. I’ve never been very connected to The System. I’m edging closer to cutting those last ties.
Some hope – I’m seeing smart kids everywhere. They are grasping for knowledge, quite frustrated with the systemic blunting to which they’ve (we’ve all) been subjected. I think some things have been unleashed that don’t bode well for totalitarianism. It feels like a Fahrenheit 451 moment.
thomasjkenney
ParticipantRE: batteries and rare minerals for said
We have some nice low-tech battery designs that haven’t been pressed very far at all. I suspect if the US Patent Office wasn’t a dysfunctional troll headquarters, we might have the freedom to investigate some of these other avenues.
Courtright-Wishon water system is a battery.
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RE: protonOne of the fundamental ‘particles’ observable around us, and knowledge of which is required to perform some basic chemistry, is still a mystery box object. <sarc>Sure…I fully trust Bill Gates to rewrite my DNA, which has been bequeathed to me by a direct line of natural replication since the dawn of organic molecules on this planet.</sarc>
thomasjkenney
ParticipantA thought occurred: a brazen, reckless attempt to force a fire sale of EU assets
If you’re a German industrialist, facing the axe, and finally realize that the war is on you, a strategic retreat is in order. But keep this in mind. In a military retreat, do you leave your gang of howitzers and stock of shells behind intact? Do you leave them behind, intact? Do you leave to your enemy all of that functional materiel for them to use against you immediately?
Mr Check Valve…meet Mr Hydraulic Press. Anything that can be punched, munched, or scrunched should NOT be left in a useful state. Before you sign any paperwork, make sure you’ve driven to Texas and back on 1 qt of oil.
thomasjkenney
Participant@bosco
First, thanks for the links, and digesting a snippet of my personal cosmology. 🙂 ‘God’ is the sum of all as-yet/maybe-always unexplained forces and tides in the universe. There’s a lot of time we can’t examine directly. Also, many forces we take for granted. I once argued with someone that it might be possible for the rules of physics to be slightly different in another part of the universe. Or different energy states leading to elemental misbehavior: carbon only has 3 slots, not 4, or more likely a generally unrecognizable periodic table. Wouldn’t that be fun?
RE: paradox
As an apprentice programmer, I learned that many proper solutions to problems are obviously, glaringly, tauntingly elegant. The math is clean; fewer lines of code, with no ‘gee-whiz’ optimization to cause brittleness; grokkable by successors. But to seek the elegant solution is a siren song. Most of us ‘averages’ will only stumble upon the elegant fix.
thomasjkenney
Participantre: the Shatner, it’s a beautiful piece, expresses himself well. But he’s recoiling. I might react the same way, never been to space. Maybe he needs to digest the experience for a while. All that beauty and more is certainly out there. It’s just unattainable in that way humans desperately crave – the cruel trick.
He’s being a bit disingenuous re: the ‘Ellie Arroway’ quote. She’d been gifted a front row seat on a tour of random spectacle. If John Glenn’s or Yuri Gagarin’s mission had been to go to Europa (a comparative dull trinket), how would that have affected pop culture? What if those first travelers had returned with tales of Cibola?
@bosco: entropy, time, heat death – Think of every particle you can name as simply another eddy in space/time. It’s all just spin, slowly unwinding. There are no solid particles, just warpage and the attendant force. Entropy drives all, yet is simply the phenomenon of the unwinding. All seeks a level of ‘unenergized’ (from the Big Bang? before?). The particles with the highest energy fall like talus and expend that energy. Things that expedite entropy are ‘selected as agents’ – species use/waste more and more energy, elements congregate and ignite into stars (heaviest first!). Thus we are absolved from being rapacious gits. Not our fault!
Now consider that our ‘universe’ is simply quantum representation of distinct ‘atoms’ from as many different ‘universes’ simply participating in our own on their off time. And if this might be so, is it possible that all the ‘universes’ taken at once are simply a solid? All ‘particles’ roiling within their own, but when all instances fill all possible positions of the spin, they’re whole?
Though I’m growing to hate him and his ilk, I still think Benford was right. Biologics are precursors to machines. That’s why we don’t have E.T. in an embassy somewhere.
thomasjkenney
Participantthe phenomenon that produces heat – collisions of molecules
Yeah, sure.
Electrons manifest the retained energy in spin. When a spinning electron collides with another electron, the ‘victim’ gets more energy while the ‘perp’ loses some. Molecules don’t get warmer via collisions. Molecules get warmer because radiation comes along and smacks some electrons and makes them go faster.
The guy has a good point, but, geez, can we at least start with HS-level chemistry?
thomasjkenney
ParticipantNon sequitur:
I read an article 10+ yrs ago about carbon composite ‘dog hair’ structures 3m tall that were piezo generators. They were installed in an open area with high winds. The flex in the material would stress the structure and generate the differential. Some 10 years before that, I’d read something (by L. Niven, IIRC) about huge piezo cables that could be strung axially in orbit of a planet or a sun, and the tide would stretch them and generate differential.
Note to Germany (and warning to the rest of us):
If you still have water pressure, and some useless car batteries and alternators and fuel tanks, you can have some electricity. I’d recommend using it to run a small freezer. Let’s hope Schwab’s buddies aren’t working on bobbles.
thomasjkenney
ParticipantRE: 404 – Nearly universal slang for Ukraine in non-Western circles, a non-existent ‘country’, cannot be found, any attempt to communicate results in error, etc etc etc
I was being derisive using it. The t-shirt actually says ‘Ukraine’…and f#(< them for doing it. My guess is the ‘sugar daddy’ who fixed their reputation is pushing this. Starts with ‘B’ and ends with ‘k’ and rhymes with ‘cock’ maybe?
thomasjkenney
ParticipantWife informs me:
Gibson Guitars just Insta’d their new “We stand with 404!” t-shirt. Comments were brutal. The kindest were “Well…I guess I’m a Fender guy now.” They just spent decades repairing their brand, and now opt for the cyanide.
thomasjkenney
ParticipantThe Saker is down ATM, and Martyanov reports fireworks are staring in earnest.
thomasjkenney
Participant…and a little more, sorry.
RE: bitcoin – It is sufficient to remind that bitcoin is a transaction vehicle, not an investment vehicle. The ‘workflow’ is: convert your local dosh to btc, anonymously and securely buy <heroin|ferrarri|iron ore|whatever>, and the seller converts to his/her/its local dosh.
The froth over it’s value is misdirection. It’s not supposed to have any intrinsic value, just like a paper check is worthless.
thomasjkenney
ParticipantRE: releasing carbon hungry plants – Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle – I’m sure there will be no unintended consequences. Also, there’s a Niven story (don’t recall which of his hundreds) that describes nanobots that convert raw carbon into diamonds…with interesting collateral damage.
RE: the Picasso – really direct, almost an icon. If you know what a mammal looks like, and what water and land look like when adjacent, you instantly get it.
thomasjkenney
ParticipantSeeing reports from all over that young people cannot regulate their lives. At all. Barely functional, unable to plan, execute plans, etc. Whatever this is, bad education, screen time, whatever, they are not viable human animals in that condition. Which is why they do whatever they are told to do, however illogical or counterproductive. Generations are large and generalizations are difficult, but I see the trend.
– Dr D – today
“This is not the first time you’ve seen eyes like that,” she said to her son in German, “not the first man you’ve seen who could not move unless someone told him where to move, who longed for someone to tell him what to do next, who would do anything anyone told him to do next. You saw thousands of them at Auschwitz.”
“I don’t remember,” said Epstein tautly.
Mother Night – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr – 1962
thomasjkenney
Participant@Mr House re:
Question: Has anyone noticed differences in gas prices? When i was growing up gas was always, always more expensive in the city. Nothing huge but it was always five to ten cents cheaper in the rural areas but in the last few years i’ve noticed the opposite. Anybody have any ideas as to why the change?
From a strictly California perspective, I’ve seen it as a ‘where you can’ spectrum of wallet rape. In places where serious work gets done using hydrocarbons, it’s usually the cheapest. Truckers’ towns like Mojave (CA-14/CA-58) or Visalia (CA-99/CA-198) are cheap-to-mid $ for low-to-hi pop density. Mojave is raw desert, so only shipping/tourist. Visalia is agriculture-heavy, more trucks, variety of other diesel machines. I haven’t been in a few years, but I’m sure in places like San Rafael, Petaluma, it’s probably $6.50+, less than 30km from the Chevron refineries in Richmond.
Low-mid class suburbs is the average (I’m in Northridge, currently ~$5.50/gal of 89). Tourist towns/traps (Fish Camp, south gate of Yosemite, ~$7.00), upscale urban areas (Beverly Hills, ~$6.75) are highest. Between my area and ‘fancy town’ (Beverly/WeHo) there has been, historically, a $1.00 gap. Likewise, a $1.00 gap the other way when compared to Palmdale/Lancaster (possible ‘mil warp’ of price from nearby AFB). These gaps are shrinking or are gone in many places, but Bev/WeHo is the center of a money vortex, so they can afford to ‘compete at the pump’ also.
EDIT: Adding…diesel was always ~15% cheaper everywhere.
thomasjkenney
ParticipantPlease stop re-broadcasting the Dr. Fungus Hour. Lead by example.
thomasjkenney
ParticipantDisclaimer
I am not a luddite. I’ve spent 35+ years of my life telling various kinds of robots what to do or say, and listening to what they tell me. I really like robots. I prefer the company of robots over that of most humans. Some humans have created rude, orc-like robots, and should be punished. Asimov is spinning in his grave!
Annecdote
Wife and I go to the market. We enter the right of two entrances, past the express lane and do our shopping counter-clock, finish and head to the middle for ice cream and the regular check-out. Short lines for each lane, but a dude beckons to the side that has all the self-check robots. We grumble about this, and he makes vague ‘no no i have a ckecker’ noises. Herds another guy to the checker and ushers us to the robot.
Robot may have vague instructions printed on it’s faceplate, but I’m old and not wearing my glasses. I plug the green box on the screen, and we proceed to ‘bucket brigade’ the items across the scanner. There’s not enough room to bag what we have in the designated bagging area, perhaps just under 1m^2, and apparently loaded with a sophisticated sensor array.
I put a bag in the cart and start bagging in there as I go, so I can sort the squishy stuff and not get it squished. The robot complains. It does it’s “HELP! STOP! THEIF!” routine, and the human minder approaches. I surreptitiously place myself between the minder and the robot. The minder divines that I’m on the level…this time…and heads back to his podium.
And I keep on plugging. At this point, I’m fully John Henry’ing the fuck out of that scanner. The sub-assembly responsible for speech output is aghast, flabbergasted, nonplussed! The minder makes several more attempts to come to the aid of the floundering device, but it’s no use…we’re done. The robot takes a final breath, reads the tally, and requests some dough. I show it my chip, there’s a vague slurping sound in the back, and it’s over.
I say a hearty “Fuck you, robot!” and walk proudly out the exit.
Rant
1) A checker in this same market accosted my wife about not wearing a mask not 2 months prior. Said my wife had to go use the robot. Now there are 3 TIMES AS MANY robots in that market. Stupid human! You go push broom!
2) I really, really enjoy yakking with people in the checkout. The checker in particular, if you repeat, becomes a ‘low-level friend’ with whom you exchange dopamine shots when you compliment eachother’s appearance. The robot sucks. The robot speaks to you in a rude, condescending Amy Schumer voice.
3) From an efficiency standpoint, they should be putting these in the express lanes only, since the high volume customers almost always have strange things like fruit with cryptic SKUs and cookies that aren’t in the inventory.
4) I strongly resent the flip in the basic dynamics of this transaction. When I go into a market, I rather like the buyer/seller transaction. It’s almost always on friendly terms, both get something we want, and the support ripples outward through the community. That disappears with the robot and the minder. It’s now a guard/prisoner transaction: get in line, do as the robot says, the minder’s watching, so no shenanigans!
Yeah… Fuck you, Robot!
thomasjkenney
ParticipantRE: trucks
If the kettle brigades show up, everybody should just run away. The tow trucks have already refused. They’ll have to call the military, and trust that the CO they contact can make his/her folks carry out the orders in a timely fashion. Meanwhile, regroup. Use that war chest to pay some other faction to slow down or strike. If money is what’s corrupting folks that should be on our side, give them the money and corrupt them in a useful direction. We don’t have to be friends with them, just use them as they seem to desire.
With that kinda dosh, buy up stock in a noxious media company and try to change it.
Important here is the off-balance adversary. Don’t wait for a recovery. Use KV-2 tactics: retreat and reappear from a fresh angle…KABOOM!!!!
RE: kettle with no cell service
Again, war chest. Buy satellite phones and send ‘photo snipers’ in, some inside, some following the kettle brigades, from a discrete distance.
I’m already seeing some hopeful things in this. Mainly, the decentralization is brilliant. The trogs can’t decapitate a headless movement. Their futile attempt to paste a ‘head’ on the rider is driving Streisand Effect writ large.
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