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.