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.