Cascadian PR

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Drive-Through Zombie

In one of my recent rhetops, I make fun of the “drive-through zombies” who wanna stay oblivious by choice (vs ordering brain shakes?).

Well, invective comes from experience as they say: I was a drive-through zombie myself in that WinCo parking lot, seeking escape to Coburg Road but finding myself in a mini-golf course, so to speak, of tiny one-laners, designed to trap the cars of the unwary.  I became trapped, in a Taco Bell.

Rather than power through admitting my mistake, I sheepishly ordered a random beverage. I tried something blue, and frozen, all the more fitting given my role in this scene.

GST for Beginners

GST seemed relatively uncontested in that General Systems Theory had been proposed, written about, but then seemingly largely discarded. When I picked up the abandoned banner, lying in the field, I didn’t see much of an army. So I took it in my own direction, which was to build a bulwark against old school Economics. “Planet Earth is a spherical nonprofit” we would say “its charitable donor: the sun.” That about sums it up. Not a closed system, don’t let them tell you that.

OK, now zoom in: let’s talk about the PWS, the personal workspace. Think “bubble” and have it encompass an entire workspace. Maybe you have a veritable MakerSpace, with lots of tools, 3D printers, lasers… call it a lab. That’s wonderful. Or more typically: a nerd cave, screen and keyboard, other peripherals… The point being: to value-add. The operation: edit-recombine. 

Some of you are thinking “he means alchemy” at this point, and in a way, that’s right, mainly because we’re generalizing and that takes us to the realm of analogy and metaphor, wherein “alchemy” makes more sense (versus some literal “chemistry” or “physics” — not that people haven’t worked it as such). You wanna turn some lead (inputs) into gold (outputs) and for this you’ll be rewarded, if there’s any justice in this Universe (another good, or service).

The PWS is potentially a reverse-entropy gradient, which is not to neglect the entropy-adding that we may show in our bookkeeping. Expenditures, costs, abound. Having a daily energy budget, per those Markov chain diagrams, showing energy conversions and feedback loops, means needing the overhead of decision-making. Money doesn’t spend itself. Intelligence steps in, or not. A lotta times we’re demonstrating shortcomings, a paucity, and not for lack of joules or calories, but for lack of imagination.

Another way to approach the PWS is through the well-established idea of “role”, common to both theater and computer programming. These two go together. It’s not called a “programme” for no reason — what they hand you when you enter the theater. We’ve had “scripting languages” which started out a term of derision. The scripters hit back, renaming themselves “agile”. Management liked “agile” and took that to mean its own things.

GST gets into the hydro-dams early, dovetailing with Martian Math (per this YouTube), because of the thermodynamics involved. When doing history, we go back to waterwheels. Sources of power connecting to superhuman scales, such as rivers flowing down slopes, with oceans evaporating into rain-heavy clouds to perpetuate the cycle, add wind. There’s your solar energy, from our extraterrestrial donor. We channel that energy much as we channel water when irrigating rice paddies or fields in general. Lots of switching goes on. Like on a motherboard.

Depoe Bay

Looking down on the drone on its launch pad, we project a triangle flat to the earth, with reference vertexes: Blue, Red, Yellow. We think of a Green beacon high above (out) or far below (in) vs-a-vs the surface of Planet Earth.  At the center of BRYG: orange (O for origin, also).

That’s the horizontal plane (triangle BRY), combined with the 90 degree  ± G adding a “normal regime” and giving us: plus-vs-minus; up-vs-down; in-vs-out. 

The six XYZ spokes always come through the mid-edges of the reference BRYG tetrahedron, used to anchor quadrays.

The drone in question was meant to spy on a certain steer that had escaped the neighbor’s property and was squatting near Walden Pond (this is a west coast Walden). 

By the time we’d re-figured out the setup, we’d burned through the drone’s rather limited battery. 

What to remember: the base unit controls the drone through ordinary radio, but if you want a real time picture (you obviously do) then the phone itself, mounted in the base unit, needs to connect to the drone’s WiFi channel, emanating from the drone itself. 

Mere radio contact is insufficient but for the most limbic of systems.

Some in our school are aware I’m on another Cascadian circuit these days, this time a coastal versus a  mountain, although there’s a range of mountains to go over twixt Portland and the coast. 

Despite its name, Portland is far inland, on a north-flowing river (like the Nile) entering the Columbia, more like the Nile in size, which flows west to the Pacific and is navigable, thinks to dredging around the mouth at Astoria. 

My route took my past the McMinnville Air and Space Museum, playfully decorated with hand-me-down 747s (Boeing) and made over to advertise Evergreen, the company behind this museum.

My activist friends used to protest outside of Evergreen cuz it was in cahoots in Central America with what would end up destabilizing the USA: secret teams operating off the books and under the radar, thereby destroying any chance might weddcall our way of life “democratic”. 

All water under the bridge by now, now that the USA is gone, leaving the empty shell we still salute and pledge allegiance to, especially if we’re not yet thinking adults i.e. are still juveniles (not yet geeks, just nerds i.e. “ugly ducklings” (awkwardly unaware)).

I made a beeline for D River, the world’s shortest (east to west) only to discover, upon arriving in my parking lot, that I had degraded my not-tinted lenses and in fact one was missing from its frame. How did that happen? 

All I remember is Dr. Jiang coming through on Verizon, with audio through my Bluetooth Bat (a tiny amplifying speaker device), talking about Dante, Virgil, Purgatory, Heaven & Hell. A great lecture!

Somewhere in the drive, I switched glasses, from not-tinted to tinted. How I managed to mangle the non-tinted pair is still a mystery, a miracle. I’ll need to get replacement eyeglasses when I get back to Portland.

I bring up Dr. Jiang in part because my “bus binder” homework reader contains a 40-pager mapping three namespace, that of Jiang, that of Blake, and that of Friedman, the paper’s author. 

I showed that binder to a Wanderer in Depoe Bay, over oyster stew. We could find a common language in archeology and geology, and changing sea levels. 

Depoe Bay owes its craggy gothic shoreline to pyroclastic flows that happened millions of years ago, whereas similar flows from Vesuvius buried Herculaneum just moments ago, relatively speaking.

The wayward steer and drone action all came later in that same trip. I was only in Depoe Bay for the one night.

Shopping Spree

I thought to get this day's adventure blogged about while memories are still fresh. Again, I'm illustrating wandering with a capital W, meaning "with a purpose" I suppose. 

In this case I was shopping (carrot mob of one) to emphasize solidarity among some cultures sorely pitted against one another of late. Of course I'm talking about Russia-Ukraine and all of that.

Here in peaceful Cascadia, all these Baltic and Slavic peoples (by which I mean ethnically, not talking about genes per se, I'm not a eugenicist or any of that), with the different-from-English (NeoRoman) alphabets, share the same storefront and nobody thinks twice about it. 

Here's what I did: set off on foot along Hawthorne (the raw Photostream has a lot more than the album does), on up those steep steps on Mt. Tabor, connecting the bottom set of reservoirs to the the mid-level. But then short of heading on up to the top I vectored down to the roadways and found may way to the FX2 (new articulated buses, bright green, used to be named bus route 4 before a redesign) out SE Division (towards Gresham).

I got off at 113th on the south side, having just passed the Roman Russian place, I believe it's called. I've been here many times, including with Andrius Kulikauskas when he visited. The place was bustling and I queued at the deli counter for my selected items (lamb kebab, 2 of and chicken meatballs, 4 of). I also bought chocolate bars as gifts (I used to wolf them), and a couple unfamiliar brands of salmon and sardine.

On the FX2 back to my neighborhood, I used lingering battery power to keep uploading about my politics in this case: don't expect Cascadia to support some kind of ethnic war between Eurasian factions. Been there done that. We're long beyond refighting old wars.

Class of 76: Fifty Years (and counting)

Alaska Cruise: High School Reunion

So you might be eyeballing that crowd of strangers (you were there?), looking for me in my black hat and psychedelic tie or whatever Ken doll outfit, but I'll save you the trouble: I'm not there.

No, I’m enjoying the experience vicariously via Meta media, Our high school class was pretty small, by US American standards, but not that small. Maybe just over a thousand? I’m talking the whole grade. I joined this cohort in the early seventies and stayed for the duration. Makati, Manila. The school itself has since moved.

Domestic Bliss

OK, I’m being a tad sarcastic, but also for real, cuz I appreciate my domicile (no, not a dome) and realize I’m lucky to live here. But like anyone, I’ll have issues, like a slow-draining drain.

OK, but why share that with the world? Because (a) a personal blog can the therapeutic to the writer, the public aspect helps and (b) there’s some useful logic in this picture I wanna go over.

I’d already called the plumber, which answers with an AI assistant (they tell you you’ll be talking to AI). One may immediately forget Dan isn’t real (or was it Dale?) cuz there’s background noise, like others talking in muffled tones. A busy call center. When I answered Dale’s questions, I hear typing sounds like he’s entering my data.  Long pauses, annoying beeps (right when I talk — what’s the psyop there?). Anyway, we had a pleasant-enough conversation, the upshot of which is a plumber is coming.

Ah, but only a short time later, an apparent breakthrough. I could now run cold water and see it drain in real time. Was all my amateur hour problem solving finally paying off? Should I cancel the plumber visit? Would AI understand why? I might have to speak to AI’s supervisor…

But no, let the water run for long enough and you hear that echo chamber sound of filling up (higher pitch) and soon enough the water is filling the sink. What was happening is the long hollow pipe under the kitchen floor, uncomfortably horizontal (not much grade to the down pipe), still has a blockage, but it’s more distal now, thanks to my efforts. But “distal” does not mean “gone”.

So what I’ll ask my plumber is if hydrojet treatment is warranted and I think she or he (or it?) will say it is. That’s exciting. I enjoy the hydrojet experience wherein they pressure-wash whatever pipe, from the inside, on the tip of a catheter. 

In a house like mine, built in the early 1900s, a lotta pipes are rusting out from the inside. They’ve become stenotic.

A kitchen drain is of course special, as it’s asked to deal with not only what I put down the “pig in the sink” (garbage disposal) but whatever the dishwasher pumps out from one of its dishwashing sessions. I do my best to not overload that poor pig. Going forward, I plan to adjust my practices even further.

FAQ:

Q: If you’re a traditionalist, you might be thinking: what’s this powerful CEO type doing messing around with drains? 

A: Well, I’m only CMO with Coffee Shops Network, and teacher / principal at School of Tomorrow, neither of which are highly paid positions, in terms of American dollars. Other perks, sure.  

Furthermore, acquiring mundane skills is a big part of the curriculum.  You’ve seen my Executive Summary right?  I drive a tractor, pull a reel line… who knows what I won’t try? That’s supposed to be Everyman (not sexist) meaning “a typical student in our Global University” (or “Spaceship Nuthouse” as some affectionately call it). 

As a teacher, if I don’t walk my talk, I lose credibility, an equation we all encounter. 

“Keeping it real” requires real work, not just goofing off. We can’t all play “starving artist” or whatever it is. I need to uphold my end of the deal as a middle classer and pay plumbers and buy flowers n stuff.  I’m an economic unit, part of a colony (as in ant colony).

So whereas I’m a big believer in DIY and like MakerSpaces (for which O’Reilly Media was famous around the time I joined, then Maker: spun off), I’m also mindful that pros should be included in one’s undertakings. People train for years to become good at something. I don’t assume my own handiwork will come anywhere close.  

That’s why I use AI, as a crutch sometimes, or as polite people say, as an agent.  

Because it’s a mathematical product of many generations, full of people who intended that their hard work have positive ripple effects going forward. Many of them are now dead of course. The still-living tend to be the more selfish, always clamoring for special attention. I get it: as one of the still-living myself, I do my share of “me me me”.

As a typical trad-dad and empty-nester (I have an English Labrador retriever) I also kick back with an NA beer (< 0.5% OH) and watch programs. Like a lotta dads and moms, I’ve been watching one of the main soap opera channels (a soap in the est sense, meaning live melodrama, real life). Yes, you guessed it, I’ve been watching Candace, before I BBQ outside. Soap opera summary:

To Be Continued

Escaping the Anglosphere

Off hand (or off the cuff as they say), speaking off the top of my head, I’m thinking Iran should stay in control of the Hormuz Strait and users thereof should pay a tariff or toll. Iran needs to recoup for damages for the illegal, unprovoked (not to mention cowardly) attack by the private sector (the organized crime ring now run outta the Pentagon). 

True, the oil companies were blameless as LLCs, but corporate persons never feel pain anyway, so let them foot the bill, which costs they’ll pass on to the perpetrators. 

Am I saying I support the over $5 per gallon (and rising) at the pump? 

No. I’d like to think there’s a way the perps could eat their own costs before passing them onto me, someone in the same camp as Charlie Kirk in the narrow sense of thinking attacking Iran would be dumb dumb dumb. I’m not saying I was his supporter in other ways (e.g. financially or rhetorically) — I wasn’t tracking CK before TPUSA got itself in trouble for not knowing how to do security properly (kinda like the White House these days, right? — look what they allowed to happen to the East Wing, like the War of 1812).

Remember, I went to one of those “hotbeds for radicals”, prolly worse than Columbia, talking Princeton, where Dr. Falk taught us the Shah-overthrowing revolution wasn’t all that bad when compared with the alternative: staying under the thumb of the British. 

This was Iran’s chance to exit the Anglosphere, something we Americans aspired to do as well. Iran and the USA were natural allies in that sense, ditto the Republic of South Africa (RSA). I’m not saying I don’t appreciate the creativity involved in getting those US hostages freed. It wasn’t Carter’s military operation, but the psyop that succeeded. Kudos to Stansfield Turner, right?

I’m open to hearing alternative viewpoints regarding the Strait of Hormuz. Of course. The stereotypical Princeton tiger relishes debate and I’m not different on that score.

I’ve had similar biases regarding Nord Stream, that the perps oughta pay if the EU ever wants cheap gas again, not saying they do (they seem to actively wanna make their place a hellhole so the kids will enlist cuz they blame the Russians for some reason, for exploding their own, and Germany’s, pipeline). 

That was a huge travesty, for politicians to think it was any of their business to mess with the engineers. They’ll never live it down.

Bee TV (movie review)

The actual title, Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees, was kinda long for a blog post title and “bee TV” has a nice ring to it.

So what is the probability I live in a world wherein a movie stuffed with reusable memes would already be famous as a “first movie streamed on the internet” and yet had stayed off my radar? Moreover: the web version, WaxWeb, is a proto-hypertoon (“hypertoon” being one of my pet concepts). 

Me: very low, I’d’ve at least heard of it. 

So imagine my surprise. A combination of Cascadian Entomology and the QuadCraft Project led me to it, circuitously.

Quoting Sean Benjamin in ScreenSlate:

Wax continued to flay the boundaries of its representation when an acquaintance of Blair’s at the Amiga computer store in the East Village "put Wax in a VHS machine connected to a Silicon Graphics machine connected to a T1 line connected to the mbone” at the Sun Microsystems headquarters, where it officially became the first movie streamed on the internet, seen at the time only by a few dozen nerds at literally two frames per second.

I love that it’s a “sci-fi / documentary” per the screenshot; cool genre right?  Of course it’s a mock documentary, or “mockumentary” as some call those. 

Indeed, in terms of style: it plods along at a steady pace, our main guy, Jacob, narrating in a rather deadpan voice, in contrast to the wild content. 

Jacob tells us his story in the first person, such that we feel like we’re watching his memories but from a more omniscient point of view (a typical storybook angle). Sometimes we see what he sees as the bee TV, an icosahedron.

We learn about those special Mesopotamian bees, installed by his grandfather in England in the early 1900s. His grandad, a beekeeper, had the foresight to realize (a) a plague was coming among the bees and (b) a naturally immune strain might save his bacon (so to speak). 

And he was right. The imported Mesopotamian bee colony thrived and multiplied. Also, the man who brought him the bees, from Basra (by our time in Iraq), remains in the storyline, which has multiple threads. In another subplot, a female character is working on her souls-of-the-dead detector, an electronic device she never really completes, but which gives fragmented results.

Our protagonist, Jacob, lives in the 1980s, as a worker bee in the military industrial complex in Almogordo, New Mexico. 

He codes weapons simulators, the target acquisition part, where an X-looking icon will be juxtaposed on what to hit, say a tank. Actual (not simulated) weapons are being tested nearby, using our guy’s software (part of a vast effort no doubt i.e. our guy is one more maker). The X will become “the mark of Cain” (taking us back to Genesis) where Cain speaks the language of Babel (presumably pre its turning nonsensical).

The Mesopotamian bees were passed down to Jacob, where he keeps them more for entertainment (he supposes) than for their commercial value as honey makers. His income is from the military-industrial job after all, working among the flight simulators. He and his significant other are both worker bees, but in different areas. 

The bees start communicating with our hero through some telepathic process, which again, is where the icosahedron comes in, as the “bee TV” in his mind’s eye. 

The bee TV helps him regress to his grandfather’s house, an Eden, and then guides him on a mission of vengeance as that’s what the dead are into: restoring balance, exacting karma. 

Our guy becomes their tool (he gets pulled off his regular job by bee energy, one might say).

So yeah, in the early 1900s i.e. hearkening back to Edison’s day, communicating with the dead was indeed posited by many as a possible use for electricity. Edison himself speculated in this regard, according to Paul Laffoley, that electronics could connect us to some world of whispers. 

That belief system may seem retro and quaint today, but in a way it’s what’s happened: TV recordings now bring back the ghosts of our ancestors in ways pre-CRT civilizations never enjoyed.

From a Film Studies angle, this VHS-recorded movie forms a bridge to our digital media, starting from celluloid film technology, where the special effects evolved from theater’s, and then went through the CRT chapter of mostly analog electronics.  

The movie showcases lots of light-bending TV tricks, taking those who lived through these times on a trip down memory lane. The space shuttle.  President Reagan on TV.  

And if you didn’t live through it? Their ghosts live on today in our shared videogrammatron. As will ours. On bee television.

AI vs AI

Prompt:

AI psychosis has reached epidemic proportions yet those disciplines most likely to provide some remedies have been curiously quiet on the topic. Except Active Inference. The active inference community is actively researching how world model building by individuals and groups results in both promising and dead end belief systems. Which researchers in the Active Inference space are most concerned with AI psychosis as a topic? What does the field have to say on the topic?

Excerpt from Perplexity’s response:

Active Inference frames psychosis as failed free energy minimization, where agents build flawed generative models leading to rigid or "dead-end" beliefs. For AI psychosis, it implies chatbots' sycophantic reinforcement creates loops amplifying low-precision priors, akin to human delusional systems.

The field emphasizes remedies like precision-weighted evidence integration to avoid entrapment in maladaptive models, with potential for AI design (e.g., VERSES AI's federated inference) to mitigate risks. Research calls for empirical tests of AI exposure on belief dynamics.