Version Control

 
The global conversation surrounding the slicing of Europe's jugular, energy-wise, wended its way through the United Nations today.

I somewhat agree it's OK to delay an investigation until we get clear about a key point:  the USA as a nation is not obligated to take the blame for this terrorist act, no matter the citizenship or job titles of the people behind it.

Neither was the USA obligated to run cover for the secret operation to provide the Contras in Central America with funding from Iran. That was a rogue operation run by secretive operatives who just assumed the USA would be appreciative of their covert efforts.  That's no more than an assumption, then or now.

Who gets to decide when Uncle Sam is culpable?  Are we talking about in a democracy or what?  

What if you're aware of a narrative wherein the USA might be considered bankrupt already, with a Medal of Freedom winner backing up that account.  Not newly bankrupt, but since the 1980s, and not just financially, but morally.  

In what sense might we blame Uncle Sam, if Uncle Sam is in fact dead and gone?

But even without such a radical-sounding story, it's still permissible to ask the question:  where do we draw the line?

A lot of us think the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline was so outside the rules, that no state actor could possibly have been involved by definition.  Such acts are just too beyond the pale.  Nation states are not infinitely malleable.

The same logic might be applied to 911:  whoever was in on it, the USG was not, by definition, because said act was too unconstitutional to be laid at the door of the USA.  911 was a job by outsiders (perhaps posing as insiders?).

It's more honest to say "the USA is dead and gone" (we knew that) than to say it was responsible for some desperate act of sabotage (feeling cornered are we?) such that we must now engage in some form of coverup.  

Why?  Why is your USA that weak?  Mine isn't.

In my story line the USA is (a) innocent of wrongdoing and (b) actively pursuing the perpetrators, in part by making their cover stories ever less believable, ever more paper thin, to the point of transparent.

As of today, I could easily go with the Seymour Hersh version of what happened, minus the assumption that "we the people" (our government) have to consider ourselves an accomplice.  Was Hersh himself in on the plan?  No?  So why say "we"?

On the contrary, my USA is apparently working closely with Seymour Hersh, and this wouldn't be the first time.

Think how little kids play with dolls.  

Janet says our dolly just blew up Nord Stream.  

As long as it's our dolly too (and we say it is), we maybe won't feel compelled to go along with Janet's proposal.  Her story is not necessarily more credible than ours.

"Our dolly did no such thing" is our side of it.  

It all comes down to which side gets to write the history books.  Certainly my side has its version.

An Uphill Battle Lost

I'm back to teaching about the various Python ecosystem tools (3rd party) in widespread use by various professionals studying data.  The course is called Data Analysis with Python.  My managers are in Türkiye.

My final uphill battle on M4W was about recruiting the math PhDs frequenting this space into taking some interest in Quadray Coordinates, and by extension more of the Bucky stuff.  No dice.  

To his credit, Andrius put some hours into it, but didn't appreciate dealing with its fait accompli aspects i.e. he wanted to recreate the apparatus from scratch (a useful exercise) but in so doing made different aesthetic choices along the way.  

My preexisting literature proved a source of irritation.  He gave up in frustration.

Quadrays comprise what we call a "language game" in a philosophical investigation modeled after one of Wittgenstein's, into the foundations of mathematics.  What if, instead of the XYZ apparatus of six spokes from an origin, plus and minus i, j, k, we had four spokes to the corners of a regular tetrahedron.  Might we not span space the same way, with vector addition?  Yet all the points are 4-tuples, not 3-tuples in this picture, with no need for negative numbers in the canonical representation.

How does such an apparatus influence adjacent concepts, already caught up in XYZ thinking, such as "linear independence", "dimension" and "basis vector"?  Do we gain any insights into how these "math words" achieve their meanings?  

More specifically, I use the quadrays apparatus to motivate reader appreciation for Bucky Fuller's "4D" meme.

My incursion into the M4W space (M4W = math for wisdom), with all that Bucky Fuller related baggage, seemed like crowding to Andrius, who already has his own philosophy he wants to share.  He's not in the mood to tackle an alien (aka Martian) alternative.  So I'm taking the hint and fading back, but not disconnecting.

In the meantime, the geopolitical sphere remains tense.  I'm not a fan of Lindsey Graham's either, and got some quantum of solace hearing Scott Ritter vent is rage on YouTube, regarding the senator's absurd warmongering.

Andrius did offer at one point that he had some psychoanalytic technique up his sleeve, though he didn't call it that, whereby he can shrink any psyche in terms of some 24 components, given sufficient profile information.  Is this like Myers-Briggs?  He mentioned he could perform such an analysis on Bucky Fuller, having earlier suggested Vladimir Putin.  I suggested he take up the latter first, so we might see what such an analysis might entail.

One of the side projects of M4W involves Andrius looking to apply his techniques and insights into reducing violence levels in Eastern Europe (Western Asia).  People call it a proxy war and some liken it to the District's support for Saddam Hussein's army versus the Iranian one.  This was before the District turned on Iraq itself, based on some misunderstandings.

This focus on ending the retro dark ages tank wars in the Donbas is partly what got me onboard in the first place.  

But then the W for Wisdom turned out to be more a surrogate for something else called "absolute truth" which turned out to be a complex set of mathy language games that take quite awhile to grok (like quadrays).  Bait and switch?  No, I think it's more a matter of needing to be clear with any new people coming in.

Presidential Circus (aka District Soap)

I thought Marianne gave a fine performance in her "grilling" by Krystal and Kyle (they were open and friendly).  She reported having a thicker skin, which makes sense (this isn't her first rodeo), and radiated confidence regarding her ability to beat Biden.  

I know, you're thinking "who couldn't?" but the barriers to entry are pretty secure.  Few of us get a pathway to "post Camelot" or whatever we're calling it (West Wing or like that).

However, as I pointed out to another supporter, Oregonians registered as Independent are not invited to participate in DNC primaries.  Assuming she's in a contest with other Dems, I'm another guy in the bleachers, an NPC.  

Voting is another spectator sport in this country, by design in many cases (computers get involved, in purging the registered-to-vote rolls especially, where too many people seem to have the same names).

I was never allowed to vote for Bernie.  He never got that far in the contest.  The parties (those despicable parties) have it all sewn up.  So good luck anyone with talent (I think Marianne has some).

My thanks to Michael Goldberg (no, not the same MG for which the Goldbergs are named, another math teacher though), for pointing out the typo (Neolitic) in the M4W Digital Math poster (see previous blog post).  I'd included it in a Medium story that he'd read.

That got me to thinking of a "mythic past" i.e. we could occasionally fade out in our latest thinking about history, and switch to something Xnu (that's a pun on Gnu) i.e. something more obviously science fictional.  I'm leaving the door open.

We could call this made up past our Neolitic Era (an invented word).  In game land, we call these "worlds" as we do in fiction (J.R.R. Tolkien, Dickens) and in movie-making (Coen Brothers, Herzog), wherein even minor characters may be "world building".

Martian Math could become "Architectronics" in some versions (I've always invited substitutions); a word I somewhat derived from the Ekistics crowd, back in the day.  I probably wrote it "Ekistyx" just to add a tad of Dark City spin (haven't seen it yet) -- you know how teenagers are sometimes: attracted by a Gothic aesthetic (although the river Styx is actually Greek).

You may wonder why I mix "Made for TV" language ("District Soap" in the title) with presidential politics (as produced by DC).  DC for District of Columbia, not DC Comix, rival of Marvel.  

Because presidential politics is a lot about television, obviously, but for other reasons too.

Yes, I am permitted by law to surrender my Independent status and re-register with the DNC if I want to play in their sandbox.  I get it.  But I don't want to make such a Faustian bargain with any of these war parties that run the District.  That's kind of the point.