Of Sex and Gender

I've been delving into the various echo chambers (choirs) regarding sex 'n gender recently.  I haven't seen What is a Woman? yet, the documentary style talking points maker, but I've watched several reviews, which feature excerpts.  I catch Tucker Carlson from time to time, who rants on these and other issues.  I tune in channels by trans, feminist and academic content creators.  The internet makes it easy.

Beyond the internet, I've also had my share of life experiences, and welcome my continuing education.  I'm not done developing my views, but do have habits of mind, or call them ruts, or grooves.  I'll lay some tracks, to give a sense of where I'm at.

When I say "rants" coming from a Quaker background, I mean "as a ranter would do" which, in Friendly parlance, is in contrast to the "quietest" who mostly says nothing at all in Meeting for Worship.  Call me a "ranter" too then, as I'm outspoken in my Quaker journals (aka blogs).  Expect some polemics in other words, some invective.

What I'm patting myself on the back for these days, is noticing how "race versus ethnicity" parallels "sex versus gender".  In both cases, the former is something they inform you of, tell you about.  You don't get to contradict them.  "You're Black" says the world, and you'd better believe that, or else.

In the case of race, there's no surgery or hormonal pathway for transitioning, say to Red or Yellow (that's how the game goes) and it wouldn't matter anyway as the whole point with racial categories is people are stuck with what they are, even if they try to "disguise the truth" and "pass" for something else.

Before you attack me, the messenger, for this news about "race", its indelibility and immutability, let me assure you I'm no believer in "races".  I am not a lawyer for this concept.  It has too many holes.  They were already practicing racism when I got here, never asking me what I thought.

Too many perfect humans fall through the cracks as "mixed race" and the pure archetypes (how many? how many pure races are there really?), the primary colors (from which others derive), are hard to come by and agree upon (does "white" really have to be one of them, only to then be treated as "special" as in "white is not a color"? -- seems corrupt and/or bad design). 

I've traced a lot of racial thinking to the story of Noah and family in the Bible.  Since humanity had been "pinched off" by the Great Flood, racial diversity could only be explained in terms of Noah's descendants.  It took the Tower of Babel to get them to spread around.

Speaking of humans spreading around the planet, the social construct they call "the system of nation states" isn't working out all that well either (nice try?).  Too many have had to live their whole lives as "undocumented" and/or as nationless refugees, while in the meantime the whole concept of "sovereignty" is routinely violated.  

I've been a lifelong fan of the United Nations, yet its credibility has diminished over time, thanks to all the flagrant violations of international norms by member states.  I see a broken bureaucracy.

Do we have some alternative?  Not really.  Citizen diplomacy maybe, i.e. human-to-human relating.  

Diplomacy is everyone's business, not just of those with diplomas.  

The Truckers for Peace Program fits in here.

The "race meme" is inextricably mixed with the "breed meme" of animal husbandry.  Humans can, in principle, be bred into breeds, with various traits deliberately inbred to define the brand.  I'm not saying I'm in favor of such eugenic practices.  I'm saying the practice of animal husbandry provides a conceptual foundation for racial concepts.  

Most of us qualify as mongrels, or commoners.  The purebreds count as royalty.  It's an archaic system, a blend of many mental habits, including the arithmetic of fractions (as when one is 1/8th or 1/32nd some specific race or races).

In any case, I'm no eugenicist, nor even a dog breeder (not that I'm against breeding dogs, or cats, or horses...).  

I'm for humans having babies with whomever others consent and commit to such a project.  

I'm also fine with humans choosing not to have any babies at all.  

We get lots of babies, and don't care for them sufficiently, as it is.  We abort a lot of them in theater, on life's battlefields, and a lot of others before birth.  Adoption makes sense.  I'm not proposing anything new in making these remarks, nor telling you how to live your life.

Ethnicity, on the other hand, is more fluid, like gender.  

You may be born into a cult, and not even see it as a cult into you grow out of it later (perhaps with no hard feelings, as growing is not always "escaping" -- perhaps this cult was benign).  Looking back, you see a lineage of "former yous" (the yous you used to be).  

That's like a movie synopsis of your individual journey, in the course of which you may take on the traits of many ethnicities, from language to eating habits to political outlook and so on.  

Your ethnicity is akin to your personality, of which your gender forms a part, and attaches to your psychic life more than to your physicality.  Ethnicity is more epigenetic (transmitted outside the chromosomal mechanism).  Buddhist priests come in all shapes and sizes (makes and models).

Race wants to be genetic but has an insecure foothold in contemporary science (no race genes) and could better be ditched all together, to our collective advantage, as "man's most dangerous myth" to quote Dr. Ashley Montagu.

How might we apply the word "trans" in anthropology and philosophy, in connection with changing one's ethnicity?   If an aspiring Jesuit decides to abandon that path and marry a Korean partner instead, isn't that a kind of transitioning?  No plastic and/or cosmetic surgery may be involved.  

Might the more gender fluid trans from gender to gender on a moment by moment basis?  People are allowed to have chimerical, enigmatic and/or mercurial personalities.  How might "gender" figure in?  What's the upper limit on "rate of change"?

Having pride is on the healthier side, feeling ashamed less so, would be my rule of thumb.  But then, as a reproach, we may ask a stranger, with some moral outrage "have you no shame?".   Those incapable of embarrassment (let alone shame) seem lower on the ladder of moral righteousness.  Is that a problem with the ladder?

As teachers, as conveyors of cultural values, we may be enlisted into, cast and tasked with, making clear what shame is all about and when one should have some. 

To this day I recall Mrs. Cunningham in my third grade Junior English School describing the shameful behavior of these strapping young boys on the public bus, too thoughtless, too unaware, to consider offering a seat to frail elders around them.  What were the other passengers thinking of them?  I road the bus a lot as a kid.  I'd always offer my seat to the old people.

We should investigate "guilt" in this same context.  I'd say in all cases there's pressure to develop self awareness, which is the flip side of seeing oneself from many points of view.  "You're not stuck in traffic, you are traffic" is a good one.  

Nags of guilt suggest new camera angles, perhaps previously unconsidered, and corrective action.  The stimuli feed an "OODA loop" to use some jargon.  Guilt is worthless if not eventually turned into consciously considered cues, to be dealt with.  To be consciously ignored (dismissed) in some cases, wisely heeded in others.

Talking about these surgeries as "cosmetic" gets people riled, as when you call it all "world game" and they say "it's not a game" i.e. to seemingly trivialize and make shallow is insulting and offensive in their estimation and they fight back, feeling provoked.  Perhaps the speaker was being provocative?  I don't know, I wasn't there.

I'm one of those who think growing a thicker skin is usually a better and more practical strategy than socially protecting fragility by means of covert hostility, threats of canceling and deplatforming (what hanging by the neck also entailed). 

Railing against those engaged in "hate speech" is too often itself a form of unreflective "hate speech".  At least it's speech, lets give it that.  If someone claims a speech inspired one to commit violence, does blame automatically adhere to the speaker?  Is the speech itself the crime, or the violence committed?

The contest is forever politeness (polity) and civility versus what's rude and crude.  What does it take to maintain equilibrium in psychologically buffeting weather.  Sometimes what's cruder also adds more intelligibility.  Electric storms have a way of clearing the air.  Sometimes a civil synopsis and summary restores equanimity and further processing capacity.

The Bible gets away with "all is vanity" and that's definitely a way of looking.  What's psychologically healthy is when God is proud of His creation (in patriarchy), not so much when the individual is bursting with self pride in some zero sum game against the balance (i.e. "the other people").  

"Me against the World" pride is at least a tad demonic, but in a divine, angelic kind of way that God Himself loves and forgives (as He does the Miltonian devil).  The only sin is in not being proud of all of it, which we mortals are incapable of being in the first place, hence the original fall.  In the minimal mirror of all Creation, God is eternally regenerative, to summarize Synergetics.

Having seen Avatar 2 recently, I do wonder if a combination of "cosmetic surgery" and "breeding" will move some of humanity towards under ocean living.  We wouldn't be the first big brained mammal to choose this environment.  I've used an "aqua lung" in my day (scuba diving equipment).  

I've sometimes joked I foresee a three pronged future for humans:  those that stay as we are, those that adapt to life underwater, and those that adapt to life in outer space.  

Am I talking about three wholly separate species eventually, that no longer biologically interbreed?  

Hey, it's science fiction.  Lets explore the possibilities.

Blockchain for Fiat Currencies?

I'm in student mode here (as I am at least 80% of the time let's presume), sitting in Econ class (or is it GST?).  I'm learning about the blockchain in the context of Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining.  I get the elegance of the scheme, and yes, its limitations.

So my question is:  can't we play this with dollars too?   Or any specific currency for that matter?

What the blockchain solves, is any hanky-panky based on writing checks before others clear, thereby engaging in money creation, which only banks are allowed to do, supposedly under regulator scrutiny.

The blockchain or shared ledger provides a set of uncookable books, if implemented correctly

The different block-makers learn of transactions over a time period, and box them up in a tetrahedral block (just to get that tetrahelix image going).  

A contest is held, and the winner gets to add their block to the veridical strand of "what really happened", and gets paid in the process.

When prototyping, I tend to think in terms of "theme parks" (don't we all?), but also "refugee camps" and other overlays.  On this campus, whatever dollars you like get committed to an electronic wallet that you now get to spend.  Maybe you're paid through your wallet? 

They're dollars, not Bitcoin.  Fiat can play this game too, with the same incentives (i.e. "no cheating").  Am I wrong?

What are the advantages of using your dollars electronically?  It's up to the theme park to make that clear.  The experiment may not be about anonymity.  On the contrary, everyone has access to everyone else's expenditures.  That just happens to be the game here.

Maybe instead of "theme park" we should introduce our mixed use skyscraper, the one with work, home and play, shopping, medical care, and funereal services, a columbarium, all in the one tower or campus complex ("all under one dome" might be the expression).

My other observation, about "blockchain" as a meme, is that it represents "omni-triangulation" i.e. our power to squeeze lies (misinformation) out of the system is increasing exponentially in light of increasing fluency and monitoring.  

Getting away with fraud is getting harder in principle, thanks to techno-integration.

A lot of what's happening is those accustomed to relying on deception are encountering new learning curves, some of which are proving too steep, breaking the banks as it were.

When you're done at the theme park, whatever you have left in your electronic wallet, that you didn't spend, is still usable.  Withdraw it for cash at the ATM if you like.  There's no "currency conversion".  Everything stays M1.

Winter Solstice 2022

Slides Again

Today I dive back into data science world, with a new cohort.  This curriculum is primarily not by me; I add some wrinkles.  I'm happy with the content though, and don't mind using the canned slide decks.

In the embedded video I make it sound like people using decks by others is either a no-no or has never been thought of before I came along.  On the contrary, many a corporate training, say an onboarding, was canned long ago as a PowerPoint.  Every day, people sit through presentations of slides done by people other than the presenter.

That being said, in wanting to inject my own contribution into the mix, I get to stand back and take a look at current and/or best practices, regarding slide decks and the protocols around sharing them.

Advice Column

Perhaps the hallmark of the "modern European nation" in terms of liberalism is it doesn't conceive of itself as being in orbit around (controlled by) any one ethnicity (whatever the one). 

Israel stands out as the hallmark ethnic state, and as such is the envy of many. But then Israel is not in Europe and Saudi Arabia is just as ethnocentric in its own way (we should talk about Britain more). 

The American ideal is closest to having "race creed" etc. not matter on paper, even if in practice people are jerks. 

This is why any talk of "Ukraine for Ukrainians, make us be in Europe now!" sounds so oxymoronic. The Europeans think: "you must be civilized first, and treat the Russians as equals" to which the Ukrainians reply "wait, don't you hate the Russians too?" which to many is the clinching argument. 

What we need is more agreement on "totalitarianism is bad" (dystopian) without all the old branding. We've outgrown the old comic books.

What I'd remind Ukrainians of is that we're ethnically Russian over here too, in America. 

Not only Russian, obviously. 

Lots of Ukes. Lots of Ruskies. 

We've learned to live together. 

Sometimes I think Euros falsely conclude, based on clown shows in DC and recycled NATO propaganda, that America is foundationally Russophobic. To those with such a shallow understanding I'd say: keep digging. History is more complicated than good versus bad. 

If you moralize a lot (or too quickly?), consider you might be a dummy.

XREF:  

Statecraft: the Crafting of States
Rebuilding Ukraine
Breakaway Republics
Ethnocentrism

Synchronous Vs Asynchronous

Today I had a wealth of education programs to choose from, some synchronous, some asynchronous.  One should always prioritize the now or never synchronous opportunities, as a rule of thumb.  However "opportunity" means "affordably passed up" i.e. if it feels mandatory maybe they shouldn't pretend you had a choice.

You know the law has you pinned down when your only button is Accept, in the face of endlessly scrolling legalize.  What they know about you is you might sue if you find a loophole.  "Accept that we have our defenses arrayed against you" says the button.  You press it, if you want to continue with the installation and boot up experience.

As you can tell, I'm in favor of the shorter open source user end licenses, which boil down to "without warranty, go for it".  Then you learn to trust the various scouts as to what's malware or irkware or nagware.  People have different levels of tolerance, with some motivated by sheer curiosity to visit the dark side of the dark side.

Open source is more than that though and I don't mean to short circuit or take lightly the long hours of philosophizing distilled in discussions of the GPL and so on.  I've attended live Richard Stallman talks on more than one occasion, with Portland once billed as a capital of open source, back when that meant a lot to the computer literate.

What I ended up doing with my morning was engaging in telecommunications about pending business regarding acquiring a dog.  I was reminded of ducking out of a meeting at SNEC's founding, in DC, at a house hosted by R. Chu.  E.J. Applewhite followed me out to the sidewalk, curious to overhear what conversation might be important enough to take me out of this synchronous opportunity.  

Overhearing my side, he assumed my wife and I were talking about a servant.  We were actually talking about a dog.  My wife was in an awkward situation, having taken Sarah (our mutt) to a Quaker gathering, a camp, where said dog was not on her best behavior, or such is my recollection.  

I was amused Ed was thinking that (that I had a servant), or pretended to, and that he got me telling the truth in short order.  SNEC = Synergeticists of the Northeast Corridor, an acronym since jettisoned.

Next, I'm going to hop on Protonmail and write about Dark Horse comics (not as a know-it-all mind you, more as a know-nothing).  I'll be overlapping with the TrimTabbers, who were meeting about Applewhite's Cosmic Fishing this morning.  

That was one of my synchronous opportunities.  This will be another way of jumping in on that thread, asynchronously.

Conehead

I'll summarize these couple hours so you don't need to watch them, not that I'd try to talk you out of it. Times 2 speed? Or sample. That's what I do a lot.

That said, I come off like a conehead, a term you may not know, so time for Wikipedia, right? 

More literally, I'm holding the camera very close to my face in extreme closeup, but from an angle that makes my forehead towering, so I look like a conehead, and to some extent sound like one too, no doubt.

The backstory is I only got clear on the time of this event right when I'd just decided to walk to a food pod for food cart Thai food, then come home and fix Carol's dinner.  Dr. D. was in the mix.  How could I do that and be on Zoom at the same time?  Answer:  phone apps.

I've used Zoom for years, but never saw a need to cram all that bandwidth into the palm of my hand.  However with Bluetooth and Airpods, not only was I able to tune in the meeting, I was able to jump in as a talking conehead.  Peter Meisen was in a similar situation:  surrounded by peep noises, yet poised.

So yes, I managed to move forward on several fronts (cooking and other logistics) while having my head popping up somewhere near Philadelphia.  CJ couldn't be there this time.  Shrikant was his usual good humored self.  Everyone was pleasant.  They're very civilized back east, although Shrikant said he'd spent a decade in the Pacific Northwest and could attest to our having our own version of culture.

I was all thumbs however, this being my first time to use Zoom in its phone app format.  I kept swiping the entire app off the screen, meaning I'd kill it and have to sign in again.  That happened at least twice.

The bottom line is I've been tracking (as in lurking in on, usually after the fact on YouTube) this 52 Living Ideas meetup for some time now, as I recount in my self intro.  I've hosted backyard meetups of folks loosely known as Wanderers, with Shrikant and/or CJ on the iPad, sharing the picnic.

Martian Math in the Review View Mirror

I enjoyed this interview.  

I'm not advocating for colonizing Mars so much as converging Mathematics pedagogy with science fiction, ala Martian Math.

My Tweeting Habits

 :: tweeting metaphysics ::

I'm really not sure anyone cares about my Tweeting habits, least of all me.  Actually, me more than most, no doubt, and that's not a lot.  I would be sad to lose what I've tweeted so far.  I don't go back and delete tweets, although I might right at the time, if I hate the typo that much.

My go to guy for Tweet advice has been Derek in large degree, a treasured blog character who does high level social work for very little direct compensation.  I tell more of his story in my Food Not Bombs video, where I get in to what's been happening for me since my "PhD years".  I'm back into meat and plastic a lot more, with less bicycle.

I do have a bicycle though and use it.  Dr. D. and I did the 14 miles, somewhat abbreviated as we came back on Division.  That was the first time.  The second time he got that flat and took the bus the final leg. 

We went from Blue House (old FNB shoptalk) to Springwater Corridor south through Oaks Park, across Sellwood to a continuation of said Corridor out to I-205, left before going under it, back across SE Powell (Hwy 26) to Division (or on to Mill to coast up the south side of Tabor, when I was younger and more fit).

Back to tweeting:  I used @thekirbster and @4DsolutionsPDX.  I don't pay a lot of attention to DMs or bother tracking who's blocking whom.  That's a "board game" I never really got that into.  But that's not casting aspersions on those who did or do.  We all choose our multiple playgrounds and partially overlap here and there.

A Political Spectrum

I use the indefinite article "A" in my title because when it comes to "political spectra" we have a good many.  You might not know it to hear people talk though.  

By tradition, only one pole or axis is used and is labeled Right versus Left.  How one piles on after that depends a lot on subculture.  

In my neck of the woods, juxtaposing "Conservative versus Liberal" atop "Right versus Left", would make some kind of sense, but for how long has it, and for how long will it?

Anyway, I sometimes perk up my ears when I stumble upon some meta discussions of what "Left" and "Right" mean.  I was looking at that topic here on the web as long ago as my Tower of Babel essay of the 1990s, one of the first in my USA OS series.  OS = Operating System.  I'm a computer geek of sorts.

The theory was:  Left is for Entropy, and why we seem to shift left, more left, more left over time, is because of thermodynamics and dissipation.  There's a sense of stuff leaking away.  The Left inevitably makes gains because evil chaos is winning, was the point, of these ostensibly Right wingers.  

When I say "wingers" flash on airplanes too sometimes, flying in formation maybe.

I have a different thesis, but it's similar:  on the Left is where we experiment, as we're impelled to shift our weight. 

The conceit of some on the Right is that we have the option to just stay put, as if freezing everything while we figure out what's going on, were a real possibility.  Even a president can't make that happen.  We're talking natural law, aren't we?

Many on the Right say to teachers: "how dare you experiment with my children".  Well yeah, it does sound demonic when phrased like that.  How about:  every generation is a next set of experiments in living, we hope thriving.  We're looking for the best ways forward.  Much trial and error is involved.  We bark up "wrong trees" in the millions, not seeing the forest for what it is.

It's like when you have a base camp with a cozy fire, but need to move the base camp towards some destination. Like they said in the est Training, when it comes to purpose, just think of always going further west.  Don't ask why; it's a metaphor.  

We therefore send out scouts to find the most promising next trails.  They report back.  We have a meeting to establish consensus.  Sometimes, a wandering band will branch or fork, depending on longer term objectives.

The Left is the perpetually scouting phase, where some come back with reports of dire dangers, awesome wonders, or don't come back at all.  That's where the sense of entropy comes from.  

Casting one's nets forward in time yields a mixed bag, and it's up to the campers to assemble the incoming info, the feedback, in ways that advantage them.  In other words, the curators conserve and build traditions, a fancy name for habits.  Programs.  Engrams. 

Traditionalists conserve artifacts and memories.  In Bayesian terms, they represent collective "priors" i.e. the current sense of things based on experiences to date.  Quakers might think in terms of Meetings for Business.  

We call them "on the Right" because they're the orthodoxy, the accumulated wisdom of the ages.  In theory that is.

Those on the Left may feature a lot of younger and bolder personality types, who with age become slower to jump into the action pell-mell.  The older Right oft times empathizes with the younger whippersnappers who remind them of themselves, closer to the start of whatever careers.  

Yes, this template or boilerplate is the basis of stereotype type casting.  You'll find many a story line featuring "the wizened activist".

So that's my proposed spectrum:  "Curators" (on the right) versus "Experimentalists" (on the left).  Or shall we say "Base Campers" versus "Scouts"?

I'd say let me know what you think in the comments, however the model here is that of "a Quaker journal" and so no "comments" are expected.  However off site commentary is always welcome.  

What do Left and Right mean to you?  

Does the axis I've described make any sense as an organizing polarity?

Asylum City

Little Shop of Horrors Motif

Now that elections are rolling around, there's a lot more focus on the fact that Portland (Oregon) is on the front lines when it comes to working with refugees and their plight as such.  

The business of an exclusionary economy is to create a throng of "losers" in its wake, but the inconvenient truth is we have sufficient know-how to deal with the problem more intelligently and with better planning.  

That truth is inconvenient because now the old ways, involving morally righteous disposal, are ringing hollow.  Especially when these are your neighbors.  The attempt to turn this into a zombie apocalypse only works on the least thoughtful (the most in need of brains).

The link between refugee camps (caused by) and war programming (lethal theater) is pretty obvious.  A lot of vets end up refugee, in their own country, so-called.  They self medicate (use) and end up sick but without care.  Yet we're at that point in human evolution where we know better, so the religious (again, so-called) often sound cruel and hollow, even in their own ears sometimes.

Fine tuning in and around Portland is something we're allowed to converse about in today's climate, given the sense there's almost no one in the political class up for thinking sufficiently like a social engineer (a term with a bad rep, even though social media jobs often involve quite a bit of engineering).

The race for the governor position is especially neck and neck and rhetoric about homelessness, the problem of, ring loudly in the halls of government, as transmitted by media.  Ecotourists come through doing selfie-based travelogues, musing out loud about Portland the Laboratory (with its cast of human guinea pigs).  Isn't that really any city though?  Life is experimental in nature, especially in urban settings, but not only in those.  That's what the science says anyway.

Retrospective: Occupy Portland (2011)

Weighing In Again

I don't impute a lot of nefarious motives to Annoying Orange (a moniker, meme taken), without a much more persuasive case in that direction.  I never bought that dealings with the Ukraine election, on the part of Manafort et al, arose to the level of suspicion projected by armchair viewer voyeurs, the know-it-alls on the matter.  Anyway, I'm biased to think he wanted a pile of souvenirs and interesting reading, not to mention decor, while his Maga Army brought him back, Napolean style, from his Corsica.

Annoying Orange had a dismissive, haughty attitude towards a lot of professionals, leaving a bitter taste and wish for revenge.  He treated his security clearances not as privileges but as rights, as president, to overstep his place and serve unconscionably as a crowd-pleaser in various taboo ways.  The sin of taking oneself too seriously is always hard to see through if one is lacking in self awareness.

Given my snobbishness towards DC in general, I'm hardly the right person to ask, when it comes to doling out justice.  I'm a blogger, Quaker journaler, saying I'm seeing Annoying Orange as closer to Dennis the Menace than some kind of evil operative.  He's a Soprano at worst, and that's not even a show I've watched much.

Weighing In

I'm not one to frequently weigh in on what everyone's talking about, nor pile on where others are piling.  That behavior is less out of snobbery, I would claim, than out of respect for those more into it than I am.  "Let's not be redundant" I tell myself.  I'd prefer to be effective, have some leverage.

That being said, I think the former oval office guy is being consistent with his narrative the election was stolen. That's why he was a government in exile, still privy to all the secrets because one has to govern, it's a responsible job.  Never mind the view out the window is of an ocean and golf links, and not The District. In this day and age, one works remotely, especially if one is a powerful president.

To have the "imposter administration" (in his mind) push back against this public psychosis, shared by many who follow the one, is rubbing salt in the wound of an illegal defeat.  When sinners act against God's will and depose one of his chosen ones, they must be punished.  There's consistency there too.

Am I saying I'm on the side of Mr. T?  I'll admit my narrative includes an "impotus" in the oval office ever since at least Reagan, owing to lack of a truth process regarding the intrinsic unconstitutionality of having high offices in the pocket of The Grunch.  The monied have captured the democracy, which then died in darkness.  Getting back on track will require shining more light on the process and coming up with some new circuit designs for motherboard Earth.

However my narrative is not overtly partisan.  The two parties remain to duke it out, with founder ideals trampled underfoot. I think more people would say I'm part of a "cult of personality" in seeming to kiss the ground my Buddha has walked upon, that Buddha being one Guinea Pig B.  In translation:  my narrative about impotus and the Grunch inherits from American literature penned by a Medal of Freedom winner.

Mr. T's ego had utility as a driving engine and helped an audio-animatronic presidency seem more believable.  That same ego denied the validity of the electioneering behind 2020, but that's the only way voters know how to run an election.  Those who succumb too quickly to conspiracy theories (some of which will be true on occasion) got some therapy.  Too many conspiracy theories in thick succession (e.g. Venezuelan voting machines) tend to be self-canceling and self-undoing.

Now the momentum of Mr. T. is underlining his ongoing unhappiness with the election results and his willingness to take active measures to defend his government in exile, in an alternative reality America that's being made great again (meaning it isn't great now -- a self-defeatist attitude, as many have pointed out).  Getting an audience whipped up enough to mount another attack will likely not work twice, given the evident weakness of the leadership.

M4W

Andrius kindly had me on as a guest to discuss: "what is wisdom?" -- especially in a mathy context.

Academia R Us

 

I sense some snobbishness vs-a-vs the domain name academia.edu, even though it has the requisite global extension. 

"It can't be as real as my college" is the reflexive response, always going for the existential, and feeling threatened.  If you mean it has no dorms or physical campus spaces, you might be right (I'm not sure).

To me, it's just another walled garden with pretty flowers, many specimens, some of them Design Science related. I get to network from here, with my peers.  I get notified when another scholar checks out my Python for Calculus or whatever.

Of G & O

I recall a new relative, from South Africa, kind of squirming at TG a few years ago, when I brought up Die Antwoord, the music group.  Although self cast as a duo, the Ninja guy and Yolandi, the group has lots of off screen talent, visiting dancers and the rest.  The movie Chappie...  

I'm a fan.  But in her circles, this showbiz act was an embarrassment, as maybe some UKers felt around The Beatles, at least originally, back in the day.  This is what you admire in British culture?  What about our Victorian tea cups?

That's an odd segue to G & O I suppose:  Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.  These were not heroes in my youth, as I'd barely heard of either.  I followed Freud, Ernest Becker, Norman O. Brown, Wittgenstein... that's up through university, when I jumped into Erhard & Fuller, a dynamic duo back then (see the new bio).  I've continued to add to my graph (tree) of course.  We don't wanna be stuck in the 1980s.

I'll admit I'm thinking politically in making Ouspensky a focus, in wanting to include some folks from St. Petersburg (I'm talking Eurasia, not Florida), Moscow and like that, in the foyer of fecund philosophers.  Yes there's a "self help" angle to what they were doing.  So what?

Whereas psychoanalysts must needs be psychoanalyzed as a part of their training, we might be worried the philosophers have no therapy.  Enter Wittgenstein, with his philosophy a therapy for specific metaphysical pathologies he knew only too well.  

There's no crime in philosophy wanting to have workshops or seminars, meetups with exercises (rituals) or whatever.  The so-called church has no monopoly on soul searching and/or making.

I have other ulterior motives however.  Gurdjieff is someone Bucky jokingly found congenial, and a fellow alcohol user back then, or so Dr. Richard Buckminster Fuller seemed to suggest.  He talked about the interminable toasts to the many types of idiot, with each a raised glass of something.  Wine? Did the great master use colored water?  Random Google:  "Although Gurdjieff did show some of the signs suggestive of alcoholism, such a daily drinking, drinking early in the day, and driving after drinking...". OK, I get it, he liked to drink.  Shades of Alan Watts.

That brings us to EST:  The Steersmans' Handbook, a copy of which I've only recently (relatively) acquired and consumed.  That's where Bucky is mentioned, and this was all pre Erhard Seminars Training.  Then Bucky and est would cross paths (read the new bio for more of the story).  

That's some pretty tight semantics, and summarizes our chapter:  man the machine ("man cannot do"), man the Spaceship Earth program (woman the "womb man" -- if that's the etymology). 

[ Using "man" or "guy" as a generic actually has a feminist dimension.  The words no longer work to discriminate or distinguish.  The default could just as well be female, in our 300 man brigade, task force or group. ]

Is my point that "overcomers" (as in "we shall overcome") might be drinkers?  More to the point is the similarity across these self help systems:  how to address one's robotic behavior, complete with habits one sometimes feels at a loss to control.  Some philosophers look down on philosophies with much of a psychological dimension, especially where self improvement is involved, and use lots of pejorative language (negative adverts, attack modes), versus jumping into the fray as honest competitors (self promoting, proving positive worth).

In other words, both Bucky and G&O accentuated the positive, and we see that in their respective trackers and backers quite a bit.

I'll fade to Medium here, quoting one of my stories:

EST = Electronic Social Transformation in some passages, although Stevens is clear about the Latin meaning as well, as in “to be” (also a part of Erhard’s spin).

The book is McLuhanesque in terms of attributing the great generational divide to respective diets in terms of media, between the linear book-reading Establishment of legislators, and the immersed “simulsense” TV generation he calls the Movement.

What he calls Est people are the bridge types that still read and write in the manner of the older civilization when needing to, but that experience the new ultra high bandwidth of total immersion in an electronic field of simulcast stimuli and programming, of which television was only the beginning.

Buckminster Fuller is a “simulsense man in spite of his advanced years” (page 34) and Bucky blurbs about the book excitedly on the front cover (see picture above):

Magnificent… an extraordinarily lucid and powerful book. It may well be the straw that will save the camel’s back, of Earthean crisis.

For me, this book helps bind Fuller to McLuhan again, an old nexus I’ve talked about before, and paves the future for the “chummy” relationship achieved by Erhard and Bucky around the time I was leaving Princeton for Jersey City and my first job as a high school teacher at St. Dominic Academy.

Place Based Education (PDX and EWR) -- School of Tomorrow

Thinking with the Ancestors

I rarely talk (or write) about my Uncle Earl.  As is the case with Uncle Bill, I'm using ancestry shoptalk in a shorthand, as both uncles are actually siblings of grandparents, not parents.  

Earl was the in-law of my grandma Margie's sis Betty. I recall the last name was Poole or Poolton, I'll ask Bill if he remembers, probably not.  Carol might.  

My dad's side did not get to meet all of my mom's side, but isn't that usually the case?  We meet the most of our respective clans at weddings and funerals, oft times.

Anyway, I recall this conversation with Earl, who seemed enigmatic, yet good humored, happy to have time with me, asking why we say "the campus" instead of "Campus" or something like that.  Why wasn't Campus a proper name?  But for what?

I have only this dreamy recollection, which includes the room.  Then along comes this "the universe" versus "Universe" talk with respect to the Bucky stuff (R. Buckminster Fuller).  These seem to be grammatical investigations.

Where I come out, almost as a sum of these data points, is with Global University in place of and/or as a synonym for Spaceship Earth.  We say Earth as often as "the earth" it seems to me.  So we might say Campus and mean Earth, as in "the planet" (the one we're on).

Campus in Universe.  Works for me, why not?

I'm fine imputing a subjectivity to these terms, thinking of a passage in Synergetics wherein a Universe is like a complete game of how it might have turned out, something subjunctive flavored like that.  There's a wistful "could have been" to one's own world (shades of Wittgenstein again).

On a rather different subject I'll chronicle here that I got up early and started taking in high volumes.  The complete Silva Ultramind commercial, and then free episodes of the new Showtime documentary on Bill Cosby.

And William James Sidis, the smart kid who just wanted to be left alone to think, therefore to be, not unlike Descartes, always pestered by his "friends".  Later they found a manuscript he'd been thinking on (i.e. writing) and it seemed to be about thermodynamics in some way.  They ran it by Bucky Fuller for his assessment.  Small world.

Social Engineering

Middle Americas

In case you're curious what social engineering might look like, let me share some science fiction.  For one thing, I come from the viewpoint of the Americas all being delighted with one another.  

That North Americans have a Mexico to enjoy, and vice versa, is a double blessing.  So many North Americans I know, and not just the so-called Hispanic ones, are in love with Mexican culture, whereas others have retired in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Belize, Panama and so on.

I used to tell EJA I was bound for Costa Rica, just to get away from the oppressive MIC, which is AFSC jargon for "military-industrial complex" (to which I give a Jungian spin, i.e. "complex" is a psyche thing). My sister lived there for some years.

Speaking of teaching, I want to introduce high schoolers to Regexes, and not just inside the domain of "computer science".  We're always reminded that Regular Expressions were invented by a mathematician. Lets expand high school math to include them.  What's on my plate for the next couple days.

So the social engineering centers around weather reports, as broadcast over TV stations.  Some of the GPS / GIS maps in the background are fairly TexMex in their makeup, i.e. we're in some Middle America between Mexico City and Las Vegas.  

There's a road net, a set of mountain ranges, some valleys with rivers.  The Colorado, for example, no longer has much of a delta to speak of.  Humans have diverted 100% of that particular river.  I'm getting off topic w/r to TV weather, but not w/r to global climate.

When TV viewer-voyeurs are as familiar with Middle Americas as with so-called New England, they'll be less prone to fuel the polarizing language factions.  

Again, the Americas are in love with themselves.  We have so much to treasure.  We are the real West after all (plenty wild), not the pseudo-west of the Atlantic-bounded EU East.

Weather maps, as you've noticed, are used to promote a sense of cohesion, of us versus them. That's why you still see these ludicrous masking algorithms, wherein the "weather of interest" is miraculously masked out.  

As if political boundaries trumped nature.  Hilarious right?  

We get more serious around airports, acknowledging there's an ecosphere (aka a biosphere).  

For the most part, though, we're living (mentally) in a house divided, some us versus them.  

That's your model?  Question authority.

Picture a weather map that strays from Oregon to Washington to Vancouver without a pause.  Bellingham is the belly button of this Cascadia place.  Do we need permission from the District to frame our weather reports as such?  Of course not.  

We might obey conventions out of reflex of course.  "Lets do what we've always done!" is the slogan of Darwin Award champions.

Supergrids

 I've noticed for awhile now that the idea of a "global grid" is nowadays said to be an Asian and, more specifically, a Chinese idea.

Not mentioned here in this Bloomberg vid, is Bucky's World Game making the global grid a top priority.

I guess Bucky is just too scary and troubling a figure to bring up casually in corporate business circles.

The vid also fails to mention one of the oldest HVDC lines, from Oregon to California.

Mind vs Brain

What I'm not expecting the new biography of Bucky Fuller to dive into, given time and space constraints, is Fuller's relationship with P. D. Ouspensky and/or his philosophy. 

We know there was some kind of connection from Linda Darlrymple Henderson's book, on non-Euclidean geometry's influence on modern art.  Apparently Fuller sent a copy of his limited edition 4D Timelock to Claude Bragdon as soon as he self published it, with a note mentioning the importance of Tertium Organum. 

We may conclude Fuller read Tertium Organum, which gets into the "dimension talk" so pervasive at the turn of the millennium (1800s - 1900s). 

Fuller’s appreciation of trailblazers who rose above their peers with pioneering ideas was also influenced by mystically oriented teachers whom he met in New York City at the beginning of the Great Depression. He gravitated to esoteric teachings in spiritual development by the Russian mystic George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (whom Fuller met in Greenwich Village in the late 1920s) and his pupils P. D. Ouspensky and Claude Bragdon, and, in the 1930s, the controversial French American scientist Alexis Carrel. Drawing on these various sources, Fuller merged the design conceptions of his single-family house with mystical iterations on self-propelled evolution. [source]

The connection I'm seeing is between Gurdjieff's picture of "man, a machine", striving to awaken, and Fuller's own emphasis on automaticity, i.e. on processes not carried out consciously, such as digesting and growing hair... including consciousness itself?  

We don't know how we do it.  Look ma, no hands.

Our automaticity is not something we need to moralize about or feel guilty about, so much as wake up to. Like they said in est:  guilt is that thing you hold on to so you can keep doing that thing you feel guilty about.  

Per Bucky, and just ordinary language, waking up to inappropriate reflexes is more a matter of correcting for awkwardness, once a habit gets way out of whack vs-a-vs the actual challenges.  But doesn't this beg the question as to what's inappropriate?  Who's to judge?

Taking a page from Krishnamurti, is it a matter of seeing the cost?  Or call it sticker shock.  We snap out of it to the extent we catch ourselves falling into it, whatever that is.  The shock of realizing you about to doze off in the driver's seat is what might finally persuade you to pull off, the better practice in these conditions.

Assuming "the Self" in the Jungian sense is an anchoring equilibrium, then a disequilibrium might be a daydream or system, a set of beliefs, a faith and practice.  We accept an aberrational system, always needing Self correction in principle.  But what shocks us into actually shaking off the old habits to make room for new grooming?

I bring est into it because in retrospect it doesn't surprise me that these two philosophers would precessionally orbit one another, but not necessarily converge.  Fuller never did the est Training.  Yet his and Erhard's karma most definitely intertwined.  

I'm pointing to a common lineage:  "esoteric" teachings that begin with the unconscious and/or sleeping and/or habitual nature of the human psyche (including thought), with respect to a possibly unrealized self awareness potential.  

I put "esoteric" in scare quotes because none of the actors mentioned was actively working to make their teachings private and/or secret.  What makes the teachings "hidden" is the need to work on oneself, which can be difficult and may imply a workshop setting, with exercises and self-disciplines.

As Applewhite mentions in Cosmic Fishing somewhere, Fuller was not prone to demonize.  He was not into pointing the finger of blame or indulging in resentment, the paradigm negative emotion.  

He could see what he was up against, in terms of pattern integrities.  Yet he is adamant about having no goodies or baddies at the heart of his mechanics.  He's taking after Nietzsche in that way, in revaluing all values. "Accentuate the positive" was his motto, from that song.

"Man cannot do, because man is a bureaucracy" might be one way to provide a synopsis of the Fourth Way teachings.  

To will the good is to will one thing, according to Kierkegaard.  But how often are we free of ambivalence?  Don't we fragment into numerous "I" types, each with a point of view?  We fight with ourselves, in a battle of self overcoming.

Fuller wanted to accommodate the namespaces he trusted, even where the shop talks diverged.  He'd have his own way to keep Love and Gravity connected, including through ample discussion of Newton's Law.  

There's that one-on-one love, of two black holes, swirling around one another, one day to converge.  Then there's that peeling off from a 90 degree orbit and making one's own way, neither tugging nor resisting, what Fuller labeled "precession".

In Fuller's shoptalk, the "brain bureaucracy" may be semi-paralyzed in an awkward state, looking to pull out of a tailspin.  The mind is able to reshape the aberrational, provided one stays open to it.  Whether it's able to do so in time is touch and go in some cases.

Game Theory

Those into sports know what it means to root for a team.  Sometimes, if coming to a sport from the outside, there's a default sense of neutrality.  Why root for a team so soon?  Why not watch the game for awhile and learn the ropes.  Pick a team later.

Sports tend to be neat and clean in terms of pitting two teams or two individuals against one another.  The action is easier to follow that way, not to mention the rules.  Once the sport goes to three or four bodies, the complexity gets pretty intense, which doesn't mean there's no point thinking about them?  On the contrary, more thought is needed.

Real life often offers this multi-polar prospect:  many teams or gangs or companies or crews, all vying for position, and in some cases seeking to advantage one another, as teams will join meta teams. The vista may contain a lot of roiling and boiling, a lot of dynamism.

What sometimes gets difficult in these multi-player games is figuring out what teams are really fighting what other teams, versus putting on a show.  Team A perhaps makes a big show of fighting Team B, in order to deceive Team C, whereas in actual fact, A and B are on a meta team together, and their seeming opposition is more about outing their adversaries in the C group.

Like if Bob is actually in cahoots with Alice, yet they portray themselves as opposite poles, then if Eve goes to Bob to betray Alice, Bob might tell Alice.  Eve is caught in the middle with nowhere to go, but may not realize it.  She may believe she can play one side against the other.

The matter of secret understandings and hidden alliances is often a source of paranoia.  The computations get too intricate and a player may blow a fuse.  Conspiracy theories break out at this point, widely shared or closely guarded.  If the theory is testable, then it may not be crazy.

These same dynamics play out on soap operas, in families.  

Sometimes a public stance of neutrality, broadcast to all players, is a best way to stay sane, with backdoor attempts to undermine neutrality thereby countered.  Public declarations of transparency open a space for whistle blowers and ongoing revelations.  Exposing truth is more a process more than an end state.

Am I planning to map all this theory to any specific situation on the ground?  Not at this point.  I'm just looking for patterns.  In my minds eye, I'm flitting between situations, some geopolitical, all psychological.

Acts of kindness, without strings attached, no quid pro quo, sometimes come across as confidence building measures.  

Team A wants to reassure Team C that their stance is not adversarial.  That's all find and good and yet who speaks for the team?  Does it have the one captain?  Does it speak with one voice?

Obviously, the big unknown in these equations is the level of trust.  What has an agent (acting party) come to conclude regarding the predictability and consistency, of either an adversary or friend?  

Whether to consider another team adversarial or friendly may come down to decisions based on history, track record.

World Game Museum (WGM)

I've toured a lot of propaganda museums in my day.  We lived in Europe and every chance we got ("we" = my nuclear family), we'd load the car, including the car's rooftop with a family-sized tent (German made), and off we'd go.  

One trip took us across the Adriatic by car ferry from Italy to Greece, I'm guessing that was also the Turkey trip, thence to Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary... probably Prague that time too.  You get the idea.  Along the way, we'd visit museums.  Some were about defunct ideologies, and the social engineering that kept them going in their day.

Such educational touring is itself a world game activity, or call it playing, versus warring.  Warring is deadly serious whereas playing contains a lot of lightness.  

In the gray zone in between, war involves playing with war toys in a simulation (training, playing a game), knowing one is bound for a theater.  There's a whole curriculum about making you a hero.  

That's what a War Game Museum might curate:  the many brands of toy soldier they would factory-make or hand-craft, for the benefit ("") of little children (scare quotes on the side in case any become pawns in someone else's game).

I remember a page from TV and movie star Adam West's auto-bio, cited in a documentary film, in which he's being shot from a cannon, in the circus, in his batman suit, when he realizes his whole shtick is self demeaning. He's allowing his fate to be determined in too passive a tense. He resolves to "play a different character" so to speak.  

An awakening sometimes happens when children find themselves scripted into someone else's fantasy, forced to play along.  They may not have had that perspective at first, initially imagining themselves a co-author, or peer screen writer.  To retain integrity and self respect, they maybe have to drop out or peel off.  Such is their transition to adulthood.

In other words, the transition from war game to world game may involve escaping serious child abuse. 

If you discover you're just a guinea pig in some weapons factory's field testing experiment, in a scenario wherein the factory managers and investors become your commanders through rotation, then you might start looking for an escape route.

An underground railroad usually develops in response to any serious master-slave situation, to help funnel said slaves to freedom while frustrating master power grabs.  The WGM will help memorialize some of these railroads, as a source of new recruits (ex slaves).  

Fighting for freedom is not necessarily a weaponry game, as Muhammad Ali could tell you (along with MLK).  Livingry plays a role too, especially psychologically.

Major General Smedley D. Butler had the courage of his convictions when he penned War is a Racket, more a pamphlet than a book, and a message to future generations.  

He had served in the American-Philippine war, prototypical of the war in Vietnam in testing the readiness of the home folks for Empire. The Anti-imperialist League (Mark Twain & Co.) signaled the home folks weren't ready (and never would be) but signals can be ignored. 

The empire-minded had a New American Century (the 1900s) in their sights, even before any plans for a next Reich in Europe.  The UK had set the bar, with a first globe-spanning example.  Some thought the USA was destined to inherit the UK's mantle.  Others thought said mantle smelled a lot like a dead albatross.  The Revolutionary War had been about escaping, not fostering, an imperial mindset.

Theme Park USA

 

 

I'd stumbled upon Defunctland's account of Disney's America, cleverly imitating Ken Burns film making techniques, but little did I know about Freedom Land U.S.A. The two videos do not cross reference the parks specifically. 

 

Freedom Land U.S.A., developed by graduates of the Disney Academy (an imaginary place, I mean Walt himself and his company), actually ran for five seasons, hoping to meet up with the Robert Moses World's Fair of 1964 on the tourist circuit.  

 

These longer term dreams did not pan out (a housing project was in the wings as backup), but a lot of kids got to experience American history through a cartoonish carnival experience, the theme park theme.

By the time Disney's company decided to do its own version, under Eisner, partly to counter the Euro Disney disaster, the American public was less enamored of the theme park theme.  The circus sector could not be trusted to coddle the American ego.

Disney and Henson (Muppets) were fighting the same battle:  to make cartoons and puppets a valid means for communicating culture, including adult to adult.  To some extent, this battle was won, in animation and graphic novels, in robots and AI (more semi-autonomous thanks to coding).

Our telling of history has to be fluid.  Committing to one generation's narrative, in the form of a theme park, is to risk becoming obsolete rather quickly, as a future generation comes to mock the quaint views of the past (that's one dynamic).  The world of screens is less of a financial risk.  Keep it virtual.

Speaking of which, I salute C.V. Wood of dubious engineering credentials (at first) for being a great social engineer when it came to selling the theme park idea, which I am personally enamored of to this day.  Dark rides, as well as real train rides, and later roller coasters, have been deeply influential on my own psyche.  Like I can relate.

Arcs of History

What neocons need to counter are narratives such as the one from Chris Hedges.  Chris is very experienced, so when he calls their views naive and childish, there's some gravitas behind it.  He also has a long memory and knows how to trace the lineage.

For now, the neocons have tricked the neolibs into an alliance, or maybe it's not a trick, just the logical extension of certain trends.  Glenn Greenwald has been tracking this alliance, whereby Trump and Cheney policies get absorbed by the District as permanent programming.  The march to expand NATO had no effective counter in the financial sphere, as the weapons makers held all the cards, and continue to.

What happens when the public decides the swamp includes those who cynically used the American people in service of their own narrow ends?

This is not a new story line.  I'm helping catch people up if they haven't been reading or viewing much.  Chris was a bureau chief for the New York Times and an experienced war correspondent, before turning himself into a full time professorial type.  Glenn Greenwald is the one who flew to Hong Kong to interview Ed Snowden.  He also knew what Julian Assange was up against, in terms of deep state interests.

The history so far shows a lot of resistance, in CIA circles, to neocon thinking.  The assumption might be, given the career trajectory of Patraeus and Pompeo, that the agency had been conquered by their faction, but the bureaucracy was way too sprawling to narrow to the views of any one chief executive. The CIA of Ralph McGehee and Ray McGovern wasn't going anywhere either.  You could see George Tenet taking on Richard Perle in the opening paragraphs of his memoir, At the Center of the Storm.

In my experience, the agency was spreading out away from the District as long ago as during Casey's tenure.  This was not really a new development however, as the whole point of the agency was to be a global network, self informing. 

Climate Change

Compartmentalized thinking is when one thinks war and/or military operations are not climate change. 

They're more than mere weather change.  

 What the quasi-incoherent seem to mean, by "climate change", is something about global average temperature and ocean sea level.  The "biosphere" on the other hand, goes neglected, as that's the messy theater of viruses and wars, whereas "the climate" is more important.  

As if there's a difference between economy and ecosystem, human health and planet health.  

We may stipulate that there is, i.e. that humans are at war with their own habitat.  Certainly they're at war with themselves, which makes for an unfriendly habitat in many regions.  

Were humans to be less warlike, the biosphere would change for the better.  

Short of that, why should it?  

Nuclear winter is climate change.  

The ash of cities, blown around the planet, obscures the sun, most likely ushering in an ice age as industry won't be available to warm us up again with those greenhouse gases, not to that high a level.  Was this the plan then, to save the planet from further "civilization"? 

When we're facing climate change in the form of returning to coal or before, maybe that has something to do with the price of rice?  Are those "fighting climate change" content with their own views on war?  They insist war must end, right?  But it's not like they're the ones giving orders.

Rebuilding Ukraine

The billions allocated to Ukraine could be spent on civilian reparations (repairs) in case Ukraine is still a sovereignty.  The choice to not spend that money on a military spectacular is probably not theirs to make however.  Those billions would not even rebuild the army, navy and air force already lost.  But do they need to be?

The number of civilian jobs open to EU, UK and US types would be proportionally higher in a neutral, vs a NATO, Ukraine. In terms of employment, insisting on narrow specialization in weapons training is an anathema, the opposite of diversified growth, more of what brought the USA to the brink of extinction (some would say that brink has been crossed).

Syria is a good example.  After years of civil war, there's been some chance to rebuild in Aleppo.  Not every apartment building has to be restored.  Sometimes the better plan is to finish the demolition, level, and build atop the rubble of what came before.  That's if the new building techniques are any better.  Perhaps people would prefer a Nomadland, featuring semi-mobile vehicles they could live in.

Oregonians have connections to Ukraine and have no reason to withhold from speculation, when it comes to plans to rebuild.  A demilitarized Ukraine could be just as prosperous, with tourism permitted from all corners.  Ecotourists especially.

Of course the big money showcased as passing through Congress, a choreographed maneuver, presupposes this funding is spoken for, and is designed to enter the coffers of NATO's vendors, to pay for new inventory, under the command of their socialized military personnel.  

Ukraine does not have a say in NATO currently, but as the recipient of so much largess, is cast as forever grateful.  Without NATO, where would Ukraine be today?

The Russian side is already starting to rebuild, as winning over a new citizenry implies a trajectory back to civilian normalcy. The best PR is to begin repairs.

Russia does not need the EU to crumble, as basket case neighbors are prone to poor judgement.  Their "nothing to lose" mentality gets the better of them.  Extremists exploit extreme conditions.  Who wants to deal with freezing Germans?  NS2 could be turned on tomorrow.  Of course DC would object.

The challenge has been the challenge of brain surgery:  how to address the issue without killing the patient.  In being a huge part of Europe, Russia has been operating on itself.

Rebuilding Ukraine might not be a high priority for every developer though.  Many on the sidelines, in a cheerleading capacity, are convinced they're in a position to extract their pound of flesh.  Their desire for vengeance is high.  Civilians getting on with their lives takes a back seat.  Perhaps the plan is to keep them as displaced refugees and stoke their resentment?

Allowing Ukraine to carry on without being remotely controllable from Washington DC, goes against what many a control freak requires, to feel secure.  If they don't feel secure, then it's their business to make sure none of us do.  

Stopping the rebuilding of a civilian Ukraine, in favor of more combat and degradation, could be what some of the limited liability boards have in store for us.  They're maybe not in the rebuilding business.

The question is whether the large bureaucracies will follow them, or expel them, as no longer representing the more profitable way forward.  Helping refugees, while rebuilding a humane habitat is potentially one of the biggest businesses of all time.

Driverless Cars and Automation

The Scott Ritter thesis, that the privatized and gutted post-USA corporate navy is ill prepared to be sunk in the Pacific, neglects outside-the-box, non-military points of view.  That's not really a criticism, as Scott is trained to see issues militarily and was on the channel, with Ray McGovern, to discuss the likelihood of nuclear Armageddon, a hot (i.e. trending) topic on YouTube more generally.

These high brow prophecies regarding End Times (which wouldn't follow Revelations and so lead many Christians to despair, but not just Christians -- the whole exercise is suicidal and pathological) cannot be other than biased and Scott knows that. His role is to give full vent to his bias and hope he's wrong due to countervailing forces, potentially of a non-military nature.

I'm back in touch with a Lithuanian math guy who might help me tighten up my hypertoons.  The LCDs powered by Raspberry Pis are already on the market and there's little to stop a Coffee Shops Network from emerging more publicly into peoples consciousness, as a design pattern.  

By "tighten up" I mean "make more useful to scholars trying to pack a lot in" in the sense of densely packing information, with aids from mnemonics, frameworks, models, whatever holds water.

Picture yourself in Oregon, at a coffee shop, with a laptop and stuff to study.  The hypertoons are on the screens around you, and with ear buds, you might tune them in.  What's available at the bar?  The Oregon legislature is still working on this, with pressure from various sanctioning agencies that have lost too much credibility to be taken seriously.  We bide our time.  

I wouldn't say I've been too activist in trying to assert our right to allocate our video lottery winnings as we see fit (when the state wins, we being Oregonians).  Let the built-in sense of that whole scheme drive it forward, not inordinate bullying from my corner.  

I have no bully pulpit to speak from, no specific legislative agenda.  I'm a blogger with a point of view.  I've talked about a pirate party, with only planks, no candidates.  Kinda ghostly in that sense.

You might be learning biology and medicine, and/or some form of computer science.  Of course you dial up the specific videos you need for homework and research, or for on the job training, but the shop-provided hypertoons (jukebox model) remind you to relax and take your weight off the foot pedal so to speak.  

Surrender to a higher power and let the "driverless car" paradigm take over from time to time.

Speaking of driverless cars, I am not from the Silicon Valley and never got fully immersed in the venture capital vision being promulgated.  I've always preferred rails and rail systems anyway, ever since dad bought us a great model railway spread for the rec room (Marklin, HO scale).  I gave that up when we moved to Rome and resorted to belts modeling subways in the halls of our EUR apartment.

Anyway, my model of "surrender mode" is when and where your car is indeed "possessed" and controlled by external intelligence, in theory even another human driver, but in most scenarios we posit automation, an operating system designed to maximize safety and efficiency.  

However it's not a matter of every car for itself, with autonomous decision making.  Not every car has to be a genius to join the network of the driverless.

That protective security layer might well be there (for when the pedestrian dashes out, chasing that dog), but the golf course or theme park or model city is expecting to control all the vehicles according to algorithms, involving routing and waiting.  Cars become people movers.  But only in patches.  In practice many vehicles only operate in one of the two modes, meaning you might need a rental to get around in Philadelphia or whatever (if your car doesn't transition).

Individual vehicles might go in and out of this mode at allowed switch points, transition zones.  

Enter the zone on autopilot, leave with yourself in command, or vice versa.  If you don't take over, your car is programmed to park safely and await customer assistance.  Or wait in the lot for your car to start moving, steering itself to your final destination, perhaps on someone's private property.

Yes, border patrol is listening, but then any weigh station or check point or toll booth could take command once a threshold was crossed.  Those avoiding that threshold might have exemptions.  

I'm not prepared to write all the software in this blog post.

Consider the Parallels

[copied from Facebook]

So was The Revolution of Dignity, which ousted an elected president (facing new elections shortly) a "successful" Jan 6, by the standards of its instigators?

Had Trump been successful, wouldn't far right nationalism have triumphed? But no, some states would have questioned Stop the Steal had it really thrown the electoral process into swing state managed ad hockery and chaos. Bernie never said they stole it from him, nor had Gore.

 

The mob ruled that February in 2014. They stormed the place and got their way (thanks to months of planning). An insurrection, and one way more violent than the maga one. Lots of shooting. Surrounding states were appalled, some of them, as now marijuana would never be legalized (how it feels to speak the language of an underclass).

 

What if Oregon had started to move towards greater autonomy after Pence's decision to channel Trump after all, in this alternative reality? Were we going to blame the Venezuelan voting machines after all? The socialists of the world were tipping it to Biden and brave Pence had stood his ground.

 

Oregon's people are already quite alienated (the prez sent his border patrol to quell the wall of moms and leaf blower dads). Their biggest industry (one of them) is prevented from using the banking system. Sanctions destroy the lives of ordinary people while the rich get to smoke their dope unimpeded.

 

Anyway, how do we prevent too many "compare and contrast" pieces looking at 2014 and 2021? Any linking of these two attempted mob takeovers of government on behalf of a ruling cast, could just further confuse the politics of the two countries. Fortunately, "we" have a great way to flush away unwanted thoughts by inducing amnesia.

Classic Bucky

Yes, I know, in the URL it's "clasic". What of it, right?

Breakaway Republics

The Feds seem to have no sense of urgency with regard to the various breakaway republics, mainly because that's not the terminology we use.  Never mind the sanctions, and the fact that they throw our people in prison for what our republics consider non-criminal behavior.  

They attack us.  Their president sent his border patrol to Portland to "quell" our supposed siege of the Federal building (not at all what was happening, but never mind).

However, since Prohibition, Gangland has learned to use soft power and bribes DC to keep up the illusions.  They need their drugs too.  Once the crime bosses have the goods on the politicians, they'll do as they're told for the most part.  A lot of them have expensive habits that must be catered to.  Most would call this "symbiosis" and thank the Supreme Court for making bribery a lifestyle.

We've also endured our share of coups.  The upset against Gore, settled in the Supreme Court, was a soft verdict, affirming the Court's jurisdiction if nothing else.  

The JFK / RFK / King assassinations were hard core and to present those as connected with any coups d'etat is to stray into Man X country i.e. to sound like Prouty.  Prouty cites Bucky in his book JFK regarding the Malthusian motivations of a self styled cabal. 

We're suddenly in Esozone, hello Paul Laffoley.  The secret history channel and all that.

I think the west coast is fine with being the West or Far West.  

Back east, we have the East, where they think more like Euros and/or the Anglos aka the Yukes, i.e. the UKers, with puritanical Yanks their descendants.

The EU is in the eastern hemisphere lets remember (as is Ukedom aka Ukraine).  

They think their "western civilization" is something distinct from Eurasian civilizations, as if Europe  weren't part of that very same continent.  However when the easterners got here, there was already a west here to greet them, and not one to be "won" so much as "won over" (in some dimensions).  

We're still here, absorbing a melting pot, fusing ethnicities.  Portland is your gateway to the Pacific Rim (PacRim), with its own center of gravity.

Academic Contrarians

Part of Fuller's legacy results from his example proving attractive to others fighting some uphill battle of their own against a skeptical academia.  

These up hill fighters have tended to rally around King Bucky as someone who voiced the right criticisms, regarding overspecialization and so on.  Those looking askance from afar see what appears to be a roiling mob psychology, with a semi-incoherent center.  

An entourage of crazies follow their beloved pied piper out of town and over a cliff.  Was that an inadvertent social service, that Bucky performed, in serving as a lightning rod and gathering point for the most disaffected?  Was he a Vortex 1,  turning the center ring counterculture into a sideshow of docility?

I've seen some DC presidents I might interpret in this way.  Their technique is to use a magnetic ideology to sweep up a lot of people and deliver them, pre-packaged, to alternative spinmeisters, which might as well mean "down the drain".

Some think GWB committed a gaff when he cited "Iraq" instead of "Ukraine" as his example of an undemocratic war led by authoritarians.  He corrected himself of course.  He's used to getting laughed at. His message to the Iraqi people on the eve of the invasion:  "Don't burn the oil wells" (smirk), i.e. that's what we're coming for.  

An American people used to mocking their president appears tone deaf when the mocking goes the other way.

Some riding the Bucky coattails will offer spurious details about what Synergetics is really about.  "It's about never needing to use mathematical symbols" some will tell you, seeming to completely ignore all the radical signs, all the 2nd root symbols, that decorate the Synergetics pages.

However Fuller's dedication of the work itself, to H.S.M Coxeter, a practitioner of n-dimensional Euclidean geometry, suggests Fuller saw himself more as a metaphysician than a straight geometer.  His agenda was to leverage whatever it might take to make humanity successful.

Happy Birthday to Me

Storm (see post below) says she's not really leaving Portland, just that apartment on Hawthorne we all knew about. 

I exaggerate. Dr. D. knew where it was, as a true fan, who goes to her shows and tracks her career. He even hopped in his car to see if he could catch her last act, the final moving out scene, which she'd been streaming live on Facebook.  However, she was pretty much done before he got there.

I wandered around on Division with a friend, who took me out for Thai Food.  "Every time I try to cheer myself up" I told him, "I run into something even more bleak".  Surfing Youtube, the Shanghai lock down added yet more weight to these shoulders.  

I know Chinese feel the stress, and not just because of omicron.  The District seems hell bent on ramping up tensions.  Some talking heads babble about "weakening Russia in order to take on China".  So much crazy talk, from the perspective of an elder in my school (meaning me).  

An ideology is like a fatty lipid sphere, studded with talking points.  That's how they spread, by injecting those talking points.

Thank you Tara, a calling to offer your birthday wishes.  I answered Dick Tracy style from the Thai restaurant, talking on my Apple Watch.  There's no FaceTime on it yet.

Today is a work day.  I'm in the gig economy and have a gig.  Yesterday I had two gigs.

I told Maurice I'm in no mood to go on stage and take a bow anywhere, because that "Bucky was a failure" airbrush might just as well paint me.  The world seems interested in investing in the dreams of its most bellicose.  Realism is associated with jingoism.  

No, I don't think the Russians were eager for war.  Given my own Youtube channel features the old RT logo here and there, I'm easy to brand as not a NATO lover.  That means I'm likely fated to languish in obscurity when it comes to my own brand of positive futurism, given the climate. 

On the other hand, the Trucker Exchange Program is something we could work on for Chinese and African drivers.  It was never my intention to involve DC all that directly i.e. I wasn't especially trying to go "dot gov" with these plans.  

Turning truckers into citizen diplomats would just be seen as more competition.  Probably a lot of State Department types already resent how some of those Youtubers have been doing their job for them.

Talk of the Town

I suppose if I had to pick one story to top the charts, it'd be that Storm Large is leaving us.  She's a great avatar to have out there though, with Portland a big part of her past.

I've read her autobiography, which was making the rounds, but I haven't haunted the nightlife scene since I was going out with a Palestinian I knew through CUE, indirectly.  I was also tracking a signature talent seeking to break in to the Portland music scene and maybe then move to Canada, one Lindsey Walker, just search in these blogs if curious; you'll find a window on the Portland music scene, long ago (think One Laptop per Child era, remember the XO?).

Yes I've been known to read and sometimes chuckle along with Willamette Week and The Mercury.   Both are free and feature rapier sharp wit.  

I've not yet figured in either, not being that much of an entertainer, nor cartoonist.  I promoted Portland as ToonTown, that's for sure. 

I figured in the Oregonian twice but then I stopped being newsworthy.  The second time I was the prescient futurist going on about "hypertext kiosks" that would one day offer to sell you health plans.  I remember David Lansky showing me, when Providence later installed a few.  

Providence was my biggest client for awhile there.  Separation was difficult and I had to work with a consultant to get back in gear.

Storm Large is a performer and went to the semi-finals on Americans Have Talent or one of those.  I'm in touch with her local fan base to some degree.  Consider me a fan once removed, if that makes sense.  I'm happy for her light in this world.

CUE, or Center for Urban Education, was into training small nonprofits on PageMaker on the Mac, connected to LaserWriters, brand new tech at that time.  We were on SE 12th near the Jolly Roger. That was one of our core businesses, around which we had some government funded training services and other consulting.  

My work then was not that different from my work now, in terms of offering training in mundane computer skills, and also esoteric.

My Jordanian friend worked as adjunct faculty or some similar academic capacity. She was senior to me, given I'd jumped ship after my BA from Princeton and pursued other means of leaving a track record.  

My credentials as a futurist were not sufficient to catapult me into a life of fame and fortune.  Futurism is mostly deprecated these days.  It's just supposed to happen to us, without much planning or forethought on our part, seems to be the mood of our time, at least in some circles.

If you check back through these blogs, you'll find them laced with various plans, speculative in nature.  Asylum City.  EPCOT West.  Other memes.