Meanwhile: TV as Usual

Crazy TV: the nutcase killer is lionized in puffed up police punditry as "wanting to weaken the United State" i.e. this was an international event involving a terrorist organization (Mr. ISIS pops up, out of cold storage, right here on CBS).

This isn't another brain dead victim of our zombie media, not a completely out of his depth gun nut with a case of the Columbines. No, this is international warfare, as this veteran (so many of them veterans) was on the brink of joining ISIS, or no, he'd joined already, no wait... the details won't matter, now that the link has been made (for us, by the media mogul caliphate).

Another worn out husk of an NPC (non-playable dead end scenario, no more good cards) of the type we used to see in a medical facility (called an asylum or sanitarium) and not necessarily in a jail. Cuckoos' Nest if you wanna be unkind.

Then compassionate America decided to give them all shopping carts and to push them out on the streets. Vets get shown the same door. "Go enjoy vulture capitalism, they need to feed."  "Go be in some Breaking Bad episode."  "Have a midlife opioid crisis."

We made a distinction back then, in the old country (the one before this one), between a mental case and an enemy soldier, also between a mental case and an international terrorist.

Now we live in Crazy TV Time, wherein every mutant monster, every victim of some hideous epigenetic meme virus disease (some go back centuries), is really who they think they are, in their dying rants and manifestos.

We get to be in their world. Lucky us.

Now the crazies get to help dictate, be a central part of, some epic inter religious violent melodrama, starring heroic fighters who will keep us safe, praise Allah.

Storyboarding New TV Show

The gamer community is always needing to create new ad hoc cities with detailed buildings, in multiple styles. Any help with generative algorithms could be a big hit.

I'm likewise seeking to blend Burning Man type "tribal centers" (experimental prototypes) into networked Country Faire vistas, suitable for year around camping in some cases. Lots of food trucks / carts / pods ala Portland, mix of tents big and small (fractal), also domes big and small (a kind of tent, or yurt).

Creating these vistas on computer, for fly through, gives the script more traction with would-be producers.

I've been talking with John Driscoll an architecture student about the building and city generation algorithms used for games and potentially reality planning. 

I'm thinking Refugee Science will prove an imaginative theme park motif actually adds to camp prosperity, cuts down on crime. This might be in the vicinity of some truck stop such that supplies and transportation are in golf cart distance (light rail?), but the village itself is mostly geared for pedestrians, Disneyland style.

Plain Text Philosophy

One of the dumber arguments some philosophers make, is that one should refrain from using words with well-established meanings, when inventing new language games. "Don't recycle pawn as that's spoken for. How about fawn?" They presume to steer one away from the high inertia high value words. That's like saying to a little kid: "don't use gold in your funny money game, as that's a real adult word, and you're just a little kid. Until you have real gold someday, you should say shmold".

That's all preamble to explaining how I see our subcultures, our dialects, our namespaces, as only partially overlapping, because we do, in fact, ignore these obstreperous philosophers, and use the words we want, including gold, energy, vector, gravity, radiation and whatever else we might get our paws on and hold on to (I'm not saying it's easy to hold on, given precession and all that).

We all want to build for the ages, and we know that using words like fawn or shmold (i.e. off-beat, never-heard-of) is going to put us at a disadvantage.

Fuller gets a lot of notoriety for coining a couple words, such as tensegrity and in-stairs versus out-stairs (he doesn't even take full credit for dymaxion) but really what he did most is take some high value high inertia "physics words" (as if any one discipline owns them) and bend them into his own basket-weaving language of Synergetics.

Tension is "that which holds together" (over very long distances sometimes) whereas islands of compression (shorter range) keep stuff apart or keep separate. Synergetics inspires lots of mental cartoons, mental imagery, along with tactile experiences, to show us what gravity and radiation mean in that namespace.

Three rods of a tripod press down and want to splay apart (radiational) on the slippery ice, but a triangular tension band around the base (gravitational) keeps them from so doing. Nothing moves, yet we appreciate the dynamism in this equilibrium.

Did he need Newton's permission to invent this new gravity & precession suite? Einstein was bending space-time in new ways. Isn't "bending space" just what we do, as science minded? We make bubbles, we subtract 720 degrees, we systematize.

Hadron collision accounting (CERN stuff) and Synergetics are not "at odds" so much as they co-develop as different language games (or sets thereof); different tools, different engines. Synergetics has a section on its vocabulary's remoteness, which is intentional, and designed not to interfere with others pursuing their own disciplines. But, per my preamble, he's not about to deny himself access to the gravity well of high value words, when inking his own thinking.

This idea that language boils down to names, and names point at the thing they mean (which is how they mean) is not an idea I hold on to. I let go of that way of thinking long ago.

My universe therefore has room for many partially overlapping discourses that flow downhill, like mountain streams, without needing to "point" to anything.

To take another example: I cast General Systems Theory as *versus* Economics, i.e. have GST on your resume and you're more likely to play an intelligent role in my company. Economics is too superstitious. But from another angle, we're talking about two ways of thinking that cover a lot of the same bread and butter topics, regarding ecosystem management and so on.

Spaceship maintenance. Janitorial services, Global U.

Regarding 2D, 1D and so on: if you see a circle (flat) or rectangle (tennis court) in your head, where is your viewpoint? Every line could be a pencil, every plane a sheet of paper. Have you ever experienced "infinitely thin"? Philosophers claim to picture it on private TV somewhere. Chalkboards don't help.

Besides, I always have an angle on any 2D shape. Even an infinite plane has a position relative to mine. I cannot myself be a 2D being, Abbott's Flatland notwithstanding, not even mentally. I occupy volume. Volume is enclosed by four walls, a tetrahedron. My Kantian idea of space, even res cogitans, not just res extensa, is 4D. Four walls. Four windows.

But ya'll steeped in Cartesianism and its 3-axis octahedron of six vectors, three basis, three not, are stuck in the a specific 3D talk. I empathize about the stuckness part, but readily admit to the utility of the apparatus. I use it too, all the time.

But when I'm wanting to communicate Synergetics, I'm all about the four windows and how anything you see on brain-TV is in a 4D studio. I can hold up pieces of paper and pencils and talk about all these shapes, but I have no need of either infinite extension nor infinite thinness. It's easier to just see everything topological as a morphed tetrahedron, rolled flat, rolled thin, made into a ball, whatever. It's 4D all the way down.

Truck Stop Based Futurism

[ originally a social media conversation with architect John Driscoll ]

Interesting how Cybernetics (like Synergetics) became more twilight zone after these authors (Alan Turing, John von Neuman, Ross Ashby, Norbert Weiner, and Herbert Simon, Stephen Wolfram). 

Like who champions this discipline today, or General Systems Theory for that matter, ala Kenneth Boulding et al? 

Did computer science get sidetracked somehow, in failing to come together with architecture? In addition to individual buildings, are the plans for camps, colonies, communities (bases, villages, forts) i.e. multi-structure agglomerations that might or might not be planned. 

If planned, by what algorithms? Fractal dimensions come in again.

In my science fiction development banking, truck stops play a big role, as hubs in a campus system, where citizen diplomats have opportunities for R&R, including for religious services and classes, eat, sleep, games, multi-functional. 

We have our standard image of what a truck stop looks like.

A lot of people are expecting all that trucking to become automated, however I see a rapidly growing freeway system from deep inside China to the Indian Ocean and Europe.

Africa is planning more freeways. We need more tourism as a lifestyle, including by working tours of duty, involving truck driving around the world. That would kill two [virtual] birds, as they say.

It's another way to see the world, while working, which we could consciously shape and design versus ignore as beneath our calling.

Why not have Cybernetics and General Systems Theory both come alive with global trucking and inter-modal transportation a central theme, unifying maritime architecture with land-lubber architecture?

Collusion

Cambridge Analytica, a UK-based psyops firm, with state of the art algorithms, tricks Facebook into divulging the data of millions (for which it now faces fines). Bannon is vice president, working closely with Trump. Cambridge Analytica has meddled in the foreign affairs of other countries as well. It's one of these new technology PR = covert ops manipulation companies.

The dupe Americans, though told this story (free press!) are Pavlovian creatures, trained to snarl and show fangs when Russians are mentioned, but flip over and show their cute tummies if ever a Brit needs a pet. So even though Trump overtly colluded with a foreign power, the FBI carefully said nothing about it. The story was 100% redacted from the Mueller report.

Congratulations Americans! You've fooled yourselves again. Lincoln was right about you (before the Brits had him snuffed).

Healing Meditation

I took my eye off the ball today, when Carol went to purchase a ballpoint pen.  Rather than shuffle along behind her, I decided to hit the Cork & Tap on the first floor, for a single pint.  We reunited and headed over to Powell's, on foot, but there she didn't seem to have her wallet.  Uh oh.  She must have lost it when my back was turned (figuratively).

The punch line is she did have her wallet but just didn't reach for it enough.  The walker has a pouch that hangs in front.  I'd been home and to several cashier stations, making inquiries.  The day had turned bleak, as I realized we'd need to cancel her bank card or whatever.  A pleasant outing had turned gray.  These turns don't usually get to me but...

There's a big ugly world out their churning too, and so I did indulge in some despair.  But fortunately I didn't bottle it up, and found ways to release the pressure.  I still consider myself sloppy though, as I could have easily found the wallet had I really looked.  Second guessing in the rear view mirror.

Yeah, I'm worried about all the craziness, from Julian Assange, to Flint (new movie coming), to Venezuela, to the Refugee Science we may need to invent.  What have our universities been planning all this time?  They don't actually plan, they teach planners.  The planners go to work for city, county and state governments.  Does Oregon State have any thoughts about refugees?  I know there's a tight legal meaning wrapped around that word, that wouldn't cover homeless on the streets of Portland.  But then there's also English.

We're acting like the humanitarian crisis we need to solve is somewhere far away.  I'm seeing a need to up the level of conversation, meaning sharing more intelligent data.  I realize it's up to me to look for sources.  I can't expect everything to just fall in my lap.  But then I don't have a real job description when it comes to Refugee Science, other than I've been working on GST as a counter to the more oblivious forms of Economics.

The Quakers seem to be coming around to my "military socialism" characterization, which I admit works pretty well for some families.  Some of those housing units on Okinawa look pretty spiffy, and those aren't even the high ranking officer accommodations.  I'm just finding so little willingness to bend away from rigid adherence to yesteryear's ways of talking.  People get stuck in a rut.  Me too.

New Schools?

We're bracing for a next attack, a round of sanctions maybe.  Like Canada, we're out from under, a Free State.

However saying they'll flood our cities with refugees (trial balloon) is less of a threat than they think.

We've had influxes before and know that higher ed has a role.  The difference between "camp" and "campus" is minute.  Yes, we enjoyed a friendlier Feds back then.

I worked with CUE, which started out under Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon.  For awhile, we were free flying, until refugees were no longer a priority.

This was in the aftermath of Nixon-Kissinger.

I taped a Youtube about our role, with some mention of past AFSC work.

Hypernormalization (movie review)

I'm on an unplanned Adam Curtis kick, a marathon, starting with The Century of the Self, and moving on to Hypernormalization, but remembering The Power of Nightmares from earlier blog posts.

Watching a lot of the same style in one go is to become aware of the thematic backdrops, impressive skyscraper vistas, which scream two messages:  planned and unplanned.  The narrator holds to a dialectic between chaos, and politics losing all ability to shape events, versus some renewed sense of hope in a new managerial philosophy, which then inevitably falls by the wayside.  The crashing of waves on a beach comes to mind.

The style is one of reverie, with the narrator sometimes leaving us to interpret for ourselves the blizzard of images, or maybe just a few.  The music and other soundtrack, as distinct from the narrator track, is also impressive.

These movies tell stories, I think effectively, and so take their place as potentially reality-shaping.

As I mention in my earlier blog posts of today and yesterday, although I was caught up in Occupy Portland,  I don't have a strong sense of how it connected to any events in the Middle East.  I'm not saying there weren't connections, only that I wasn't doing anything to influence events there, nor aware of people around me doing so.

Where Hypernomalization is into connecting dots, I'm sometimes not making the same connections.  However I do like connections-making narratives, so if we focus on different dots, that's not a criticism on my part.  I learn from some stuff I've been missing.  Like I'd forgotten, if I ever knew, Qaddafi got to stay in a tent on a Trump property that time.  Both were into getting publicity.

The angle on Nine Eleven (911) is to focus on the sense of foreboding and literal foreshadowing leading up to those events in 2001.  Syria is a core focus.  The arc is vengeance for Kissinger's betrayal, in terms of never planning a real future for national boundaries.  I'm not saying the movie blames Syria-Iran, having argued effectively that reality is plastic.

When we get around to the Russians, it's as if they've invented "reality shaping" all over again. We've had the Vienna Circle, through the Freuds (including Anna) telling us to tame the id through conformity, or, through the human potential movements (e.g. est) channel it to overturn and reinvent a stultifying earlier reality.

Either way (whether for controlling or unleashing), politics is projected for (and by?) a collective unconscious, an irrational side.  I'm venturing into Self episodes, having seen those last night.  But then we're supposed to believe the Russians suddenly came to similar conclusions only after the USSR had faded?  Or does every generation discover these same truths?

In the sight of God, no nations may exist, except in the minds of little humans, post Babel (I'm getting Biblical).  But that's where it (existence) most matters (in peoples' beliefs).  One doesn't dismiss something as not existing by saying that thing is widely believed in.  That's not a recognized logic or rhetorical device.

The youth of cyber-America don't have any real solutions once technology gets them to show up in large numbers.  They stand around going duh.  Lets be practical though:  OPDX in downtown Portland was not sustainable.  We had an experiment in self management.

The people threw a big party, coming in from Beaverton and all around, a kind of victory celebration, very nonviolent, after which the leadership was happy to call it a day.  Now of course "the leadership" is oxymoronic in anarchic situations, and I'd be one of the first to admit that.

At the end of the day, I'm prone to marvel at the same tenuous picture of a creature with free will, somehow left adrift to figure a way forward in ways crows and cattle don't have to worry about.  We've been given this gift of a big intellect, and we're still not sure what it's for, after all this time.

Clearly, our big intellect suggests we're here on Planet Earth to tackle some big problems, and before we start sounding hopeless lets at least take note of some abilities, some track record.  Yes, we've done a lot to disappoint Freud and lead people of conscience and insight to despair for the human animal.  I've already admitted to a streak of misanthropy.

These films keep circling around that same conundrum, of in what sense is humanity free and is there a constructive, intelligent way to exercise this freedom, insofar as it exists?  The question seems apropos, but points to an unsettled science, or to philosophy in other words.

How to Not Make Money

 If you don't wanna hype outward war, or legal drugs either, what good are you, as a blogger, or as a participant in our economic give and take?

Drug dealers have a bottom line, like everyone else.

"If you're reaching a significant number of eyeballs, you should take our message to the public.  We're not asking you to push our press releases, just let us buy commercials on your show.  Be a good capitalist already, and let us push our products."

Meanwhile, it's the news that's insane.

Revisiting a Demon

The second video references the first, with both shot on April 1, two years apart.

The first, entitled Bucky's Subconscious Demon, is based on a quote from Synergetics that arises amidst Fuller's recounting the story of his Volume Five.

The second video, which dances around the same subjects, shows how Python, the computer language, fits in to the puzzle.  Concentric Hierarchy Generator shows off a generator that spits back the familiar volumes table Americans all learn by heart in school (not).

I'm clearly struggling with springtime allergies in the second one, but don't let those stop me.