Places to Vent

It is hard not to be angry.  I really try for weary resignation, as that seems the most appropriate, but I keep getting angry.

I am trying to understand the world and that does nothing but set me up for failure.  Because when you spend time trying to understand the world, it seems to be putting all of its efforts in the task of being beyond my comprehension.  This is unfortunate to say the least, ashere I sit on the down-slope to being a septuagenarian, with all the attendant physical and mental challenges therein, and the world just seems intent on fucking with me.

This one here is going to be be one for the record books.  Democratic party has been built around the simple idea that screwing the bottom eighty-percent of the country is "good for the economy".  What they don't add to their core value statement is the necessary statement "of the 20% of the population that matter".  You might hate Trump, but these folks came out of the abortion that was the Clinton Administration.  Biden was the Clinton's water carrier in the 90's.  Folks, look at the core pieces of legislation that got us exactly where we are now.  I ain't gonna spend time enumerating, but his record is there and he is one of those whose decisions in the past landed us exactly where we are now.

Not only do we have a President who is, shall we be charitable, of questionable competence, his platform and his base simple idea that the Now, I can't for a minute say that fuckwad's policies are good for more than the top 40%, but in relative terms, I think that he is a smidge better to the "non-elite".  He hasn't started any wars and the body count being racked up by his erstwhile "administration" is the lowest in decades.  It is kinda like Falstaff became president.  Bluster and reality are a strange mix and he sure doesn't inspire any kind of confidence.  I don't think that he has broken anything that wasn't broken anyway, the poor dumbass just wants to be in charge and will preside over the fall.  Not an enviable position, but from where it looks from here, the situation isn't salvageable anyway.

Shit.  I am not part of this.  I'm taking some days off and not going to bother thinking about this.  Maybe I'll see you Wednesday

Laundry and lazy

Not going to write today.  Started something...gave up.

Gonna do laundry and clean the place instead.  Maybe do some reading.

Putting a cider in the fridge for later.

Re: Candide's Garden #16

Maybe I woke up cranky this AM.  It is within the realm of possibilities.

Been reading the string of late and I tend to think that it is going to a strange place.  The place where opinions are formed regarding how other people should act.  I really can't think of a more frequently visited moral locale or a more dangerous one. 

Folks like us, out here on the fringes, tend to intellectualize the the actions of a society.  If it goes the way we agree with, that is a "good" society.  If it goes the way we don't like, it is a "bad" society.  We sit in our bubble of our own making and try to pretend that folks should follow the "norms" that we hold in our brains as to the proper social rituals and mores appropriate to the enlightened.  But those little trends aren't really that important.  They might be important to us and make us feel that we live within a proto-paradise of good and virtue.  But the world is a nasty place, full of plebians who don't agree with our cultured enlightenment.

In a sense, intellectuals such as ourselves don't live in the dirty world of the left side of the IQ bell curve or dead-end jobs.  In the US, these seem to occupy more than their fair share of the population.  I am fairly certain that our counterparts outside of London or Wellington hold differing values.  What city slickers like us think as "courtesy" and "correct behavior" a great deal of time simply boils down to proper deference to our ideological majesty.  But I can't for the life of me remember who appointed the elites, or the Christians, or the scientists, or even us as the arbiters of correct behavior.

Behaviors and beliefs are internal to the individual.  Judgement upon the correctness of those beliefs is a function of the overall society.  You might be among those who feel that no one should be able to judge you, but that little idea is so obviously false as to be laughable.  You are judged every moment of the day. 

Tradition says that Moses did not set the Tabernacle up straight away, but delayed for three months, despite the fact that the people wanted to dedicate it at once. In this is repeated a lesson of patience concerning matters of the spirit. For instead of accepting their Teacher's word, which conveyed the will of God, the Israelites sought to impose their own will over what they had made ... This phenomenon is not unknown among those who cannot wait, which is a vital part of esoteric training. Unfortunately, it has to be demonstrated over and over again that the timing of a spiritual event is contingent upon a cosmic schedule, and not the will of the individual.
Z.B.S. Halevi -- Kabbalah and Exodus

Got up, Got outta Bed

A week away.

I am as happy to see an election over as I have on any on the twelve that I have participated in to date.  Hell, Nixon and Dukakis are starting to look pretty damn good right about now. 

No win in sight anywhere.  We lose.  I can't even say that we are looking at the lesser of two evils (my normal voting approach).  Even the third party candidates are asshats.

Now, if you even consider for a moment commenting and informing me that I am wrong and that there is either a.) a lesser evil or b.)a better choice, I will publish your comment without additional comment, after all you have a right to an opinion.  But Sweet Jesus, I want access to whatever it is you have been smoking.

This weekend is going to be a get out of town weekend.  I was planning on being somewhere else for the night of the election, but that didn't quite pan out and I can maintain information hygiene at my apartment as long as I don't turn on the computer. 

Re: Candide's Garden #16

(Confucius) tried his best, but the issue he left to Ming. Ming is often translated as Fate, Destiny or Decree. To Confucius, it meant the Decree of Heaven or Will of Heaven ... Thus to know Ming means to acknowledge the inevitability of the world as it exists, and so to disregard one's external success or failure. If we can act in this way, we can, in a sense, never fail. For if we do our duty that duty through our very act is morally done, regardless of the external success or failure of our action.
Fung Yu-Lan -- A Short History of Chinese Philosophy

I suppose that I can think of worse things than quoting TED Talk Andrew Yang.  But one has to be super careful here.  Andrew is a near-classic example of the subtle corruption of the soul that comprises Western thought at the current moment.  Andrew is a fucking billionaire.  Worse yet, he became a billionaire working in the dot-com boom, healthcare, and educational whoring.  In other words, corruption.

One of the hardest things to realize is that in our striving for the status of "high-intelligence" and the status signalling accoutrements of success, the actual achievement of these external signs really has no connection with anything useful.  Mike and I have been banging about the idea of consciousness and perception in an long-standing email string and while not having achieved a consensus, have at least kept the neurons firing in our brains.  Maybe that is the whole point rather that placing an arbitrary score on that seemingly random firing of neurons, calling it intelligence, and then pasting the results onto Monsieur Decartes' new system of annotation.

At the risk of sounding like a goddamn hippie, we as a culture have completely missed the boat in what constitutes status.  As a culture, we have degenerated into warring camps of status and virtue signalling.  People like Yang make their billions selling snake oil to the believers of these false myths.  Joe six-pack and the guy that takes his lunch to work every day are where it is at.  I can't imagine that most of them aren't content.

What I was trying to say is that mediocrity (in the true sense of the word, not the pejorative common usage) is a elitist sneering.   What in the world is wrong with being ordinary?  Posturing about your intelligence/money/virtue is a sure trap.  A way to convince yourself that what you have/do/believe gives you a privilege denied others of lesser values on the curve.

One of the things about intelligence is that it is a transient thing.  Anybody my age who claims that they are "just as sharp" as they were in their twenties or a current denizen of their twenties is either 1.) delusional or 2.) wasn't all that sharp in their twenties.

I suppose I probably reside smack-dab in the middle of the mediocre.  Looks to me to be a pretty nice place.  I hope to be here for a while.

Per Wiktionary

Adjective

mediocre (comparative more mediocre, superlative most mediocre)

1. Having no peculiar or outstanding features; not extraordinary, special, exceptional, or great; of medium quality, almost always with a negative connotation^[1]. quotations ▼

   I'm pretty good at tennis but only mediocre at racquetball.

   Synonyms: common, commonplace, ordinary

On 10/24/20 8:03 AM, Keith Huddleston wrote:

Portland John recently wrote about mediocrity: 

The center of the normal curve is anathema to most folks . . .It is like a slap in the face to be told one is mediocre.  But that is where most of us lie.  We are all told now that we are special.  Few of H. Sapiens are.

I am getting the impression more and more that the big change coming at us is the unpleasant realization by most that their skills aren't that valuable and their opinions not that valid.

Andrew Yang talks about the war on normal people.  And in that war, well, my money isn't on us.  

I don't want to speak for the rest of you guys, but I feel that it's been a less than ideal fate to be a "high normal." In my adult life, intelligence has been almost no help at all.  I've been in the bitter spot -- as opposed to a sweet spot -- where I don't fit in, but I'm not able to cash anything I know out.  Speaking both from life experience and statistics, I'd have been much better off being 7 inches taller.  

And while, yes, I keep a lot more of what I earn than people in my income bracket, it's hard for me to untangle how much of that is values and how much is me using understanding -- but I lean heavily towards it being values.  1) I've run into a lot of intelligent people who are terrible with money 2) nothing about "doing without" is rocket science. 

Hmm. . . . I essay-ing myself into not being sure, though.  On the one hand, in this culture learning how to spend less first requires an openness to new experience, which correlates heavily with intelligence.  Also, keeping the eye on the prize, so to speak, means toggling between abstractions and concrete operations in a way that I have noticed most people wear out much more quickly on -- and really a lot of people cannot in point of fact do hardly at all. 

So, in an evil culture like ours -- one that uses mass produced symbols as dark magic to trick people who cannot wade through the ways abstractions map to realities -- THEN some level of intelligence is a necessary condition. . . but not a sufficient one to frugality.  I happen to have the necessary intelligence and have paired it with values, and those values give me the stubbornness to hold on (to holding out).  

I am at a local optimum, and to break out would require far more effort and risk than it is worth.  The risk is the more important part. Someone with a mental engine like mine would have to move to a prestige city and treat his life and career as a lottery ticket.  Instead, the new world order is being built by people much, much smarter than me, and even if I was able to contribute it would only be to train my replacement -- and, again, whether or not I get to cash out part would be a matter of pure luck.  

And so I do as well as I can at my local optimum. By being at the head of a class I have somewhere that I fit in five days a week in a normal week, and then frequent breaks.  As an added bonus I am paid far more than I spend. I have my hobbies for deep engrossment and fulfillment-- this very writing, and what I call my "junk punk" work in the garage. All in all, I'd have to have a net worth of say two million to even consider changing my lifestyle.  I am very comfortably mediocre.  But, alas, I know that the centre probably cannot hold.  Things fall apart, anarchy loosened, etc, etc.  

But I don't see a reason to not enjoy this phase of life while it lasts.

TG

Managed to get through the week.  One of those probably too frequent times where everyone around me at the workplace is so involved with their personal self-pity that they seem to have somehow forgotten that the whole purpose was to help the patients.  I think that they will come out of it and get back on track and stop bitching, but it is going to take a while.

Looking forward to pottering about the house.  Place is the non-target of some impressive benign neglect this week. 

Rambling

Getting up at at 'em seems easier when I take transit to work.  When I slug too much and don't get my steps in, I get stiff and cranky and feel old.  Waling every day, even the 7,000 steps that I set myself as a minimum, makes me feel better.  I refuse to become an exercise nazi where things revolve around exercise and the rituals thereof, but I do have to get out and walk every day a decent amount.

I have been pretty good at not paying attention to the election.  I feel that my mind is better for this lack.  

I am still curious about the Amy Coney Barrett nomination.  I am certain that she is a nice lady.  I am certain that she is as smart as a whip. She is probably going to be a reasonably good Supreme Court Justice.  OK.

But she does appear to be an advocate for corporate and she is an Originalist.  I have a problem with the corporate thing and a giggle at the Originalist thing.

As for the corporate thing, only time will tell.  Supreme Court Judges tend to do what they damn well please when they finally get full tenure and it appears that a lot of them try to go a little out of the way to prove that they aren't in the pocket of the President/Party that got them there.  Only time will tell.

The originalist thing has always been fascinating to me.  I am not a fan of the folks who constantly rail about a "living document" when referring to law.  To me that translates roughly as expedience coupled with "the law is what I say it is" mentality.  Not a fan, thank you.

Originalist seem to take a Ouija board approach to the problem.  I can see them in a dark room, lighting candles, and approaching the mental temple of the ancestors to define what was meant by the law when it was written.

I would not want to be a Supreme Court Justice.  Looks to me as though they have to split Solomon's baby way too often for my taste.  Mediating between perceived privilege and perceived oppression would be a thankless job.

View from a Bar

I am reconsidering masks.    I am not certain of their efficacy in stopping a epidemiological outbreak.  But truth be told, they can't hurt so I play along.  No harm. No Foul.  Now I can live with the arguments presented by the anti-mask crowd.  I even tend to agree for the most part.  But one must fully examine the pros and cons of any benefit in a valid cost/benefit analysis.

But at work yesterday, I started realizing that they have some social advantages that most folks might want to at least consider. 

1. The Harrison Bergeron Effect:  Now anyone who has ever worked in a large organization have seen the pretty boy/girls use their looks and their flirting to get access to goods and services within the organization that is not actually due them.  Pretty boys/girls are ruthless that way.  Masks cut back on that ability.  By pulling physical attraction and desire to please the pretty people out of the loop, even in a limited degree, allows a more fair workplace.
2. Decrease in subordinate faux-pas:  With the advent of (and potentially overreaction to) the Rona, organizations have become quite desperate in their always-present proclivities to "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks".  This has caused quite a few awkward situations where smirks and stifled laughter (not to mention stunned disbelief) are easily discernible on the aforementioned subordinate's face.  This usually doesn't end well for the subordinate.  Masks allow a limited amelioration of this effect.  Perhaps enough for the subordinate to exit the room gracefully before breaking into giggling and/or tears.
   
3. Hiding boredom/Slacking:  Now, Rona has actually increased for many people the amount of time not being productive.  Especially in Government positions like that of your humble correspondent.  I would argue that people in my pay grade and environs are actually doing <50% of their old workload (I sometimes wish that I was in that demographic, Sigh).  Masks do disguise the inevitable facial cues accompanying boredom.
4. Anti Close-talker: OK admit it, every group has one.  Truth the told, they usually end up being folks that you like, and you don't want to hurt their feelings, but close talkers are out there in every large organization.  Social distancing is somewhat alien to them.  They were good for a while, but I have noticed that they are now reverting to form.  Masks do minimize the side effect of flecks of spittle and halitosis.
5. Negotiation Aid:   Work in a large organization has always been an ongoing negotiation.  I have a fairly accomplished poker face and can usually hold my own when added work is being dumped on me while the whiners get less because they whine.  Now, when the boss dumps work, she doesn't have to put up with the whipped puppy looks that she seems to fall for every time.

I am certain that there are other effects that I haven't cataloged here.  But that is a start.  Maybe I am rationalizing because I can't see a sudden turn-about until spring, but I am not looking at masks as a total nuisance anymore

Mediocrity

Survived the first day of the new regime.  Fun and games abound.  Surly nurses, clueless administrators, confused managers, the full meal deal of government ineptitude on display.  Almost worth paying to watch.  Getting paid to watch and put out a little bit of work just seems like kind of a sweet deal.  But the truth of the matter is that it is like getting paid to go to a bad dinner theater. 

I will use the analogy of a now (thankfully) defunct dinner theater here in Portlandia.  Sylvia's Dinner Time Theater was where I went to please my ex-father in law.  He truly loved the place.  So I went there because he sprung for the check every time and I still was paying the "sleeping with your daughter" tax.  I can't say that Sylvia's was ever bad.  Nope.  It was never bad.  But it never quite rose to good.  Food was marginal, talent was barely adequate, acoustics were sort of OK.  Actually the concept of dinner theater is mediocre in itself.  One of my most treasured and awkward and painful memories was watching "A Salute to Sondheim" while consuming what appeared to be Costco Lasagne with bagged salad and overcooked broccoli.  Dessert was Cheesecake.  I am fairly certain the wine came out of a box.  The singers were perfectly balanced with the meal.

One of the hardest things to admit here in this mortal coil is that most things are mediocre.  The center of the normal curve is anathema to most folks.  In the old days of grading on the curve, being at the mean meant passing.  Now that the grading structure has been changed and the curve taken out of the equation so the students have a better chance of a positive self image, they now have a chance of not really being good at something they have purportedly learned and worse yet, not realizing it.

It is like a slap in the face to be told one is mediocre.  But that is where most of us lie.  We are all told now that we are special.  Few of H. Sapiens are. 

I am getting the impression more and more that the big change coming at us is the unpleasant realization by most that their skills aren't that valuable and their opinions not that valid.

I wish to take the time to thank those who do stop by.  It ain't Steinbeck, but it is who I am.

Blood Oath

Contemporary Realism / Jamie Wyeth/ The Mainland

One of the travails of an old man is waking up too damn soon every morning.  A day of sleeping-in is a quarterly celebration at best.  More and more, my "go to sleep" sleep habits are attuned to the setting of the sun. 

The rising habits remain kind of constant.  Waking up at before five every morning and not getting back to sleep isn't that big of a burden and it is the quietest time of the day to just be.

Almost watched a full football game for the first time this year yesterday.  Can't really say that I was impressed.  Watching the Packers implode and fall apart was kind of interesting.  There really wasn't that big a difference in the quality of the players, but  watching the Buc's suddenly smell blood in the water and then proceed to dismember the Pack was kind of af fascinating.  I didn't stay around to witness the kill.  When I left to drive home late in the fourth quarter, the die was cast and the only thing pending was the final gun.

One of the things that it interesting about American football is that it is the closest thing that this pampered culture allows to a hunting pack or a war band.  It allows us a glimpse of a long-gone past and the future simultaneously.  That is why it is soooooo unpopular with the "elite" boogies and the wimmen.  It does tend to display a more primal nature and lets one glimpse the bonding needed to do difficult and dangerous tasks.  That is why yesterday's game was so pleasant.  Watching a team come together for the kill and watching a team fall apart with a little adversity was an object lesson as to why participation trophies are so meaningless.

I am kind of wondering if this sudden turnaround and the nature of the sport isn't why the sport itself is strugging a little this year? It is one thing to when one is fat, dumb and happy and all the bills are paid and nature is safely behind triple-pane windows and the paychecks are regular to indulge in a bit of fantasy through the miracle of marketing and play acting.  It is quite another when reality intrudes in the form of a virus, a serious economic downturn, and a dysfunctional and corrupt political system.  Watching play-acting simulacra of a violent and unpredictable past just doesn't appear to be what the masses want to see.

Cookies

Surrealism / Joan Ponc/ Suite Reacció

Sunday Morning: 

Just polished off a bacon-maple bar from Voodoo Donuts and slugged down my once-per-year pumpkin spice latte.  I feel that life suits me just fine right now. 

Got my ballot yesterday.  I feel pretty positive about having finished it.  I believe that my choices are the least-corrupt and least damaging candidates.  They still suck huge bags, but my votes went to the folks who would do the least damage.  An afternoon well spent.  Today I will wander down to city hall, dump it in the ballot box and reward my virtuous behavior with a beer at the Milwaukie Beer Store.

Baking cookies today:  Seems to be that time of year. 

Ponder

Just going to hang out a little this weekend.  Not going to do anything particularly useful. 

Trying to shake off the Autumn blahs, as usual, it is difficult. I think that I will spend more time pottering about the house than loafing and reading.  I have been a slug of late once I get home from the drama-house that I call work. 

I figure that I am going to be here in the studio for a minimum of two more years.  So I am pondering how to make some cosmetic and functional changes to my "home" environment that will allow me a better enjoyment of the place.  I really do think that the space that I currently inhabit (±525 sq/ft or 50 sg/M) is absolutely right-sized for a single like your humble correspondent.  I am thinking that some furniture needs will be addressed (probably not resolved as this requires $$).   Got to call the landlady and figure out carpet cleaning details.

As anticipated, the election is turning ugly, with both sides pointing out that the other side is corrupt and venal as hell.  Both sides are accurate in their assessment.  As I stated yesterday, I can't say as I care or that my vote matters.  Living here in true-blue Oregon takes a lot of strain out of the process.  I am thinking about just skipping my vote for President altogether.  That way I can have a shred of moral dignity and abstain from the lose-lose decision facing the country.

Other than that, nothing in particular to report.  Just another day in the decline.

Ruby

My political mantra (at least since 2016) has always been: "I am not worried about Trump, I am worried about what comes next".  I have witnesses.

I still stand by that.

Fuckwad really has never been the disease, fuckwad has always been the symptom.  The rot in our society is deep, fuckwad just lets it shine forth for the world to see.

2nd Witch:
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes. [Knocking]
Open locks,
Whoever knocks!
[Enter Macbeth]

Macbeth:
How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!
What is't you do?

Macbeth Act 4, scene 1, 44–49

It really doesn't matter which card-carrying member of the gerontology wins in three weeks, the die is cast.  Rubicon isn't just a model of Jeep. 

Werkin'

Wow:  Things are just getting weird everywhere.  I thought that things couldn't get weirder, but boy I was wrong. My being wrong happens quite frequently, but I am still not used to the idea and I am still surprised each time.

Getting into work everyday is a mixed bag.  Part of me just wants to stay home and do something truly productive, you know, like adding to my belly button lint collection.  But such doesn't pay the bills.  So I go into work where changes have been made and tantrums are being thrown.  Being stuck in the lower end of the status spectrum, kicks have been aimed my way due to the fact that I have had shit dumped on me due to the changes and the higher status prima donna's feel that the additional shit dumped on me was their shit and that particular shit kept people from noticing that they didn't do very fucking much.

Sigh. 

I have been dwelling on my upcoming retirement and enforced seclusion.  Some days this seems like Nirvana, other days it looks a lot like Limbo.  I guess I won't know until I get there. 

No real thinking lately.  My little world is turning into Autumn pretty fast and I am mentally adjusting.  Lots of vitamin D, Lots of happy lamp in the AM.  Sometimes I think about moving South for the dotage, but truthfully, that idea doesn't appear to make much sense.  It appears that South is moving toward me.

Re: Gradiations

I think these are conversations, and, yes they are slow ones, but I find that to be a virtue.  Most importantly, I think it lessens group think by allowing any of us to spin off in our own direction as much as we would like -- yes, the ability to interrupt, even if to amplify, is necessary for an experience to be fully social, but that social regulation also leads to more norms (and taboos) than your average cranky free-thinking individual wants to accept (well, at least this cranky free-thinking individual). 

Secondly, this format allows for selective responding.  This feature can be played all sorts of ways depending on the way the person wants to play it.  It could make for higher accuracy in response, it could make for meaningful responses (particularly since it allows for atemporality -- someone might have a life experience or read something and come to address a point another made a while back, and by them being written there is an index and other features of searchibilty). Also, this allows the ability to address at the level gestalt or a flow of thinking, rather than point-by-point.  I don't always respond, and sometimes I only have the energy to respond by giving a short quote, but I am always reading, and that lets me pick up on your personalities, interests, etc.  I like to get many perspectives, and that is a good in-itself to me.  (Which ties back to my group-think point).

If our social diet was only the garden, then yes I think that would be a poor substitute for live social contact. But I see social contact as a dosage that I need. It often helps if that contact is frivolous. But for the cultivation of higher thoughts and feelings, I find the garden to be a good way to go. 

On Fri, Oct 9, 2020 at 9:40 AM John Ennis <johnmennis@gmail.com> wrote:

Spent a little time over at 1000Plays reading this morning.  It is derivative of another conversation over at Keith's, but that is neither here nor there (there:  Attribution:  Now get over it). 

It got me thinking about the way we communicate and the atomization of conversation.  What really got me thinking is this statement:

In 2014, a group of junior and senior college women talk about the rigors of a phone call. One describes it as "the absolute worst...I instantly become this awkward person. On the phone - I have to have little scripts in front of me." For a second woman, a call is stressful because it needs "a reason...so I have to plan what I'm going to say so it doesn't sound awkward." A third also needs to prepare with notes: "It all goes too fast on the phone. I can't imagine the person's face. I can't keep up. You have to be listening and responding in real time...You have to be listening to the emotion in a person's voice." This is exhausting and, whenever possible, something to avoid.

I am thinking that this is the end point of the changes to communication over the past 40 years.  Now, I am by no means positing that communication was excellent before then, but it was more natural and less defined.  There were still huge gaps in understanding, there were still faux pas and awkwardness, but it was on a level where two way communication could be accomplished.

I think that modern communication has become stilted. Especially in the conversations such as this one, held in what was quaintly known as cyberspace.  I am not certain that this can be called a "conversation".  Even in the most generous terms it barely meets the simple requirements of that much misused description.  I don't suppose for a minute that what I do here is a conversation.  It is simply a monologue.  I have some folks who send their own monologues back and we ssllllooowwwllllyyy come to a change in our thinking (maybe).  Real conversations aren't like that.  The speed that the young woman complained about when talking on the phone is only a part of it.

I want to agree with he in some sense.  The phone is a second best place to have real discussions.  Real discussions take place in bars and kitchens and living rooms.  They sure as fuck don't take place in boardrooms.  They probably don't take place in classrooms.

I think what the young lady making the quote is beginning to understand is that what is attempted by anything less than a face to face, beer in hand conversation is a concerted effort to proselytize ones worldview and plan.  I am guilty of this, I am certain that anyone else is the same. Consider for a moment the phrase in red above.  This is simply defending a set of preconceptions, how that person thinks things should go.  I think that her little notes to herself are her legal briefs to convince others and herself.

One of the most difficult thing that a human can do is to communicate freely and in a bi-directional manner.  What we tend to do here, if one wants to call it a conversation is it is a very slow one.  The speed of the conversation itself is a bar to real communication as it allows us time to have our ideas congeal and to convince ourselves that we are capable of having everything thought though and to harden the defenses of an imperfect thought.

Gradiations

Spent a little time over at 1000Plays reading this morning.  It is derivative of another conversation over at Keith's, but that is neither here nor there (there:  Attribution:  Now get over it). 

It got me thinking about the way we communicate and the atomization of conversation.  What really got me thinking is this statement:

In 2014, a group of junior and senior college women talk about the rigors of a phone call. One describes it as "the absolute worst...I instantly become this awkward person. On the phone - I have to have little scripts in front of me." For a second woman, a call is stressful because it needs "a reason...so I have to plan what I'm going to say so it doesn't sound awkward." A third also needs to prepare with notes: "It all goes too fast on the phone. I can't imagine the person's face. I can't keep up. You have to be listening and responding in real time...You have to be listening to the emotion in a person's voice." This is exhausting and, whenever possible, something to avoid.

I am thinking that this is the end point of the changes to communication over the past 40 years.  Now, I am by no means positing that communication was excellent before then, but it was more natural and less defined.  There were still huge gaps in understanding, there were still faux pas and awkwardness, but it was on a level where two way communication could be accomplished.

I think that modern communication has become stilted. Especially in the conversations such as this one, held in what was quaintly known as cyberspace.  I am not certain that this can be called a "conversation".  Even in the most generous terms it barely meets the simple requirements of that much misused description.  I don't suppose for a minute that what I do here is a conversation.  It is simply a monologue.  I have some folks who send their own monologues back and we ssllllooowwwllllyyy come to a change in our thinking (maybe).  Real conversations aren't like that.  The speed that the young woman complained about when talking on the phone is only a part of it.

I want to agree with he in some sense.  The phone is a second best place to have real discussions.  Real discussions take place in bars and kitchens and living rooms.  They sure as fuck don't take place in boardrooms.  They probably don't take place in classrooms.

I think what the young lady making the quote is beginning to understand is that what is attempted by anything less than a face to face, beer in hand conversation is a concerted effort to proselytize ones worldview and plan.  I am guilty of this, I am certain that anyone else is the same. Consider for a moment the phrase in red above.  This is simply defending a set of preconceptions, how that person thinks things should go.  I think that her little notes to herself are her legal briefs to convince others and herself.

One of the most difficult thing that a human can do is to communicate freely and in a bi-directional manner.  What we tend to do here, if one wants to call it a conversation is it is a very slow one.  The speed of the conversation itself is a bar to real communication as it allows us time to have our ideas congeal and to convince ourselves that we are capable of having everything thought though and to harden the defenses of an imperfect thought.

Gotta Support the Endangered

I think that it is funny how the Rona has done what needed to be done to the airline industry and how every comfortable boojie is screaming bloody murder about it.

I scan headlines for the news of the day.  Apparently the boojie queen Pelosi is scrambling to save the airline's need to:

1.   Waste petroleum
2.   pollute the upper atmosphere with half-burnt petroleum product (where it can do the most harm)
3.   transport the boojie to their unearned vacation spots where they can look down on the locals

I have written about this before.Look, airline travel has always been too damn much.  The skies have been blue lately, lot fewer cars, lot fewer planes.  I don't see a problem here.  What I see is the beginnings of a solution.  But the boojies don't see it that way.  Their right to go and look down on other people is being impinged upon.  Worse yet, their trips to the shrines of boojie-ness are being limited.  Oh my, how ever will we bore our friends with our vacation monologues and selfies.

Globalization was always a mistake.  We didn't realize it at the time, but there you go.  It was always a scam of the rich to become richer by stealing from the lower.  It was always a means of screwing people elsewhere to screw people here so that the people at the top could take more. 

I hope that we continue the path we have started.  Everyone has always known that it couldn't last. 

Initial Overestimates, Resilience, and the one-percent rule.

Since I walked away from Blogger, I forgot all that I had written there over the years.  Probably healthy, but since I started cross-posting over there as an emergency backup to my main squeeze Dreamwidth, I have been peeking at the past and trying to get insight into that man who wore this body years ago. 

Gloomy fucker.

I am trying to figure out the way that people and society and the world all fit together and the path that they are taking.  I still tend to be pessimistic, lets face it, slope (M) is still negative.  But it is obvious that the value that I have been attaching to the slope value has been too high.  I suppose that if I were hanging out with my ex-boeing buddies, I would have to admit that I appear to have underestimated the thrust of the engines in this glide path.  Now, while this causes me a certain amount of chagrin, I am quite happy that things are holding together better than my initial estimates.  But it is best to plan for the worst case and to be pleased when it doesn't occur, so my chagrin is worn lightly and is dismissed with a laugh.

SO I am now toying around with what I will refer to as the 1% rule.  Pretty simple rule.  Late stage industrial capitalism is a cancer.  Cancers don't kill you quick.  Cancers eat away at you slow and take their sweet time. 

The culture that we live in and the industrial/scientific worldview is going to kill off a bunch of folks in the next 100 years.  I am going to say this will be around an average population loss of 1% per year.  That means when our descendants look up from their labors in 2120 they will find around three billion folks cohabiting the planet with them.  That might well be manageable.

The other half of the rule is the possibility of a catastrophic event occurring in any given year.  By a catastrophic even I mean something that wipes out >5% of the world population at a stroke (COVID need not apply right now it had a 0.013%)  I have to come up with a baseline percentage of where we are now, but if I use a value of 6% (which is quite high) that means in 2120, the aforementioned descendant will be looking at Russian roulette odds. 

Nope, I am certain that this kind of talk will offend the obligatory positivism so required among today's boojie culture.  But their view of the world and their desire for a Star Trek future doesn't appear to be in the cards.

How Should we Live? (Redux)

Each of us is equipped with a psychic disposition that limits our freedom in high degree and makes it practically illusory. Not only is "freedom of the will" an incalculable problem philosophically, it is also a misnomer in the practical sense, for we seldom find anybody who is not influenced and indeed dominated by desires, habits, impulses, prejudices, resentments, and by every conceivable kind of complex. All these natural facts function exactly like an Olympus full of deities who want to be propitiated, served, feared and worshipped, not only by the individual owner of this assorted pantheon, but by everybody in his vicinity.
                                                                                                                              Jung -- Psychology and Religion

The original of this article article was a while ago. Back before I switched over to Dreamwidth.  Back in the benighted days before the brave new world of COVID and the sociological madness of an election in the time of cholera. 

Nothing really that much has changed.

"Of all the changes that the twentieth century has brought, none goes deeper than the disappearance of that unquestioning faith in the future and the absolute value of our civilization which was the dominant note of the nineteenth century
                                                                                               Dawson, Christopher (1956). The Dynamics of World History, Sheed and Ward, New York

In a sense, this post came out of a perusal of the comments over at John Michael Greer's latest article at his new site (If you need to track it down, here is the link).

The upshot of this is it seems that my polytheistic-leaning guru of tree-and-twig (It isn't healthy to be all that respectful toward a spiritual guide) has moved to nice little apartment in Providence.

Now, in my mind, there is nothing wrong with this, truth be told, it is a smart choice. But I find it an interesting choice for a writer whose past works center on the decline and breakdown of industrial society (I concur!).  You see, most folks who subscribe to this train of thought this eventuality usually go off in the other direction.  The usual response is one I refer to as the demi-hippie where land is purchased as far away from the mōbile as one can afford and then try to create a simulacrum of what they left behind.

When your standard "end of industrial civilization" type heads out to the wilderness to live away from the industrial civilization, they spend a whole bunch of their time and money making certain that the retreat is well upholstered with all the accouterments of industrial civilization.

So, John Michael and I appear to agree, if everything that you do when you move away to escape drags all the crap of what you are trying to escape along, why not just figure out how to live within the society while not partaking of what is poisoning the system.

The system we inhabit, this artificial ecology of man, has always been fragile.  it has been hiccuping along for millennia now, usually not doing all that well, marked by high fevers and the not-all-that infrequent local collapse.  But the bulk of the people usually get through it, skinnier and tougher than what they started with.

So why not stay put?

Look, what one needs to live can be found in some pretty damn bad places.  Joy and fulfillment and self-worth can be had in a system in decline as easy as in a rising system if one has a certain frame of mind regarding what constitutes happiness and fulfillment.  So when in a decline from a excessive and frivolous "top", it is important to figure out the relationship between "less" and happiness (I'll give you a hint here, it is approximately the same as the relationship between "more" and happiness).

So, living small in a city will always be an option.  Farm products will always find their way to population centers.  Police aren't always just looking to oppress.  Help and medical care are there.  Access to limited common resources are there.

Most importantly, people are there.

I have come to the conclusion, that for the most part, the folks who move off to the hinterlands are the "my cake and eat it too" crowd.  The society that they grew up is changing and is beginning the painful task of downsizing, so they are picking up their shit and getting out, leaving everyone else to suck it.

But all the shit that they take with them is an umbilical to that which they are trying so desperately to escape.  Want all the stuff: just join Amazon Prime and have the world shipped to your door.   High speed internet beamed to your house so you can watch the revolution on television.

The folks out there will have less, just like the folks in town will have less.  But what they won't have is the respect of the folks that they left behind.  Because ultimately the move to the country without leaving behind the complexities and luxuries of the city is a lame attempt to become the landed aristocracy of the latifundia.

But the erstwhile aristocrats currently parasite from the complexity and the structure of the current system, I genuinely think that once the system no longer can provide the routes for linkage to the city that the modern latifundia so cherish.  They will probably die there on the vine, their fragile links to humanity taken away one by one being taken from them.  Imagine the sorrow and the gnashing of teeth that will be engendered when the FEDEX truck starts asking for the actual cost of delivery.

I will abide here with all of the mess.  I am going to try to try to flatten the curve and slow things down.

Hatin'

More than anything, us 'murcans are becoming damn good haters.  We have always tended that direction, but lately it has just been getting out of hand. 

I have heard more than one person who clearly states "I hope he dies".  I really can't imagine being more fucked up in the head than anyone who would make such a statement.  It is especially galling when it is a healthcare worker. 

Jesus folks, step away from the pipe.  Calm the fuck down. 

Too Damn Early

Woke up early today.  Couldn't get back to sleep.  It's my own damn fault.  I crashed too early yesterday (you have all heard too much whining from me about Thursdays) and now it is 04:17 and I am pecking away and sipping some java.  I took some time to work on the pictures that I take while wandering about Stumptown so I have a little bit of a backlog for the top of future posts.  So I got that going for me. 

Screed:

I do check in over at the Chef's.  It is on my reading list and we agree on many things.  Not all, but many.  A couple of days ago one of the things that routinely get my goat surfaced over there so I am going to rant on it a bit.  Sorry Chef, still love you, but since I am writing and you showed the poor time management skills needed to let me wander about your musings, a couple of your commenters get taken to task.

What irks me is that in American politics lately, all we have had to choose from is douchebag A versus douchebag B.   That is bad enough.  It does give me cover for my poorly disguised drinking problem, but that is the way it goes in late stage 'Murca.  So every election some folks start talking about "leaving" and going to another country that is better.  I'm going to Canada.  I'm going to Belize.  I'm going to Thailand.  I'm going to XXXX because XXXX is better than here. 

OK folks.  Get over it.  Those places aren't "better" than here.  They have the same people as we have here.  The same racisms.  The same wealth disparities.  The same pot.  The same just about anything.  The governments there have the same record of locking up inconvenient people and repressing a major portion of their societies.  You aren't going anywhere because y'all bought into the shit when times were good and you were fat and sassy, now you are telling me that that now, because you feel some off-flavor of political douchebag has permanently spoiled your view you are going to pull up roots and move to someplace where they don't want you anyway.

America is a fucking train wreck right now.  Yep.  But don't think for a minute that your actions and your whining aren't part of the fucking problem.  Shut up.  Buckle down.  Start bailing the boat.

Another Thursday

Getting up on Thusdays is a problem of mine.  For some reason, this is where I kinda collapse.

Family is doing well.  Youngest is adjusting to the end of a long-term relationship.  He will be fine.  This kind of thing is never great. 

No change from in the bile being spewed about due to the elections.  Country is still divided.  Both sides are vying for power at any cost. 

Sigh

Working through

Don't really have anything for today.  Shifting shifts usually leaves me
kind of fuddled for a couple of days.  Getting up today was later than
five, so that is a win.

I am willfully ignoring the debates tonight.  Fuck those two old men.

That's all I got.

Confessions of a Leg-Breaker

Chef just informed me that my pictures haven't been coming through.  I think that it is a google thing so let's see if they will reappear if I use the pictures stored on Dreamwidth rather than the ones over at the dark princes realm.  So here is an old picture that I just uploaded on the Dreamwidth site.  Lets see if this one shows up.

First day back to the 7:30 start.  AN extra hour in the morning makes a difference.  I still woke up before five.  It will take a bit to retrain, but I think that I am up to the task. 

Weird font issues.  I think that I will need to play around with this to get it working out the way that I want.

Screed

I read an interesting piece yesterday.  Can't say as there was one single thing that I disagreed with.  I was especially taken with this tidbit.  Which hit the nail on the head.

"Donald Trump, on the other hand, is not your normal president. He is, according to his own relatives, a "sociopath," "clown," "narcissist," "habitual liar," "inept," and a cheater even when it comes to taking a SAT exam. According to his former aids, he is an "idiot," a "dope," a "moron," "unhinged," with understanding of "a fifth- or sixth-grader." To this list one can add many other attributes, such as a white supremacist, an accused sex offender, a semi-literate, etc. He has destroyed the aura of the presidency. He has shown that the US president has no clothes (a very ugly image!). He has shown that nearly 40% of Americans love him and love what he stands for. He has been laughed at by other "world leaders." He has, as stated earlier, only been able to obtain the support of the puny Dominican Republic at the UNSC when it comes to sanctioning Iran. In short, he has almost destroyed the image of the US empire. If elected again, he could complete the job."

Now, that shows me why I might just vote for fuckwad again.  It isn't because he will be a good President who will lead us Americans to our place in the shining new world of the future, It will be because he won't try to return us to the past that failed.  I have stated over and over again that the money people who run this country loathe him because his massive incompetence threatens their privilege (and I use the term in its original Latin roots "Private Law") and their ill-gotten gains.  Their money and their privilege requires the continuation of the wealth-pump that is Empire.

Trump is all about ill-gotten gains.  He is a con-man of the first order.  I have always been impressed with his flaunting of the social norms that govern the money people.  They dress themselves in a similacrum of virtue, but their wealth is theft and is really no different from the wealth that fuckwad has amassed.  It is just that fuckwad has not conformed to the charade of how the nobility should act.

Look, the empire is ending.  We have done just about everything wrong for the past forty years.  All of our presidents have been bag men for the money that truly runs the country.  The money people have systems in place that strip-mine everything that they can get their claws into and the presidency is part of that machine. 

Biden is part of that machine.  Hell, Biden, in his decrepitude and senescence might well be the poster child for that machine. 

It truly is a choice of the lesser of two evils. 

I am thinking that the loss of empire and the marginalization of the American "dream" might be the lesser.

Tea and Sympathy

A waste of good pixels

I finally got off the morning shift.  04:00 wakeup every morning was getting lame.  Good news is that tomorrow is my 12 year anniversary on the hill and is the official start of the two-year countdown to the genteel poverty of retirement in a failing state.  Sounds fun, huh?

Nothing that I can do about it.  So truthfully, I am oddly content.  I am completely aware that the game is changing around me, and this little plan might just go up in smoke, but since there is nothing that I can do about the antecedent conditions, might as well run with the plan and make adjustments as I go.  Folks always seem to forget that retreat or withdrawal is a plan too. 

Screed

I am wondering how things will work with my writing habit when access to the internet starts becoming increasingly limited.  I am guessing that this will take a couple of years yet, but as it stands right now, the current structure of the internet is not conducive to profit in a declining economy (actually, nothing is, but that point seems obvious:  Does this count as a tautology?) As the internet becomes more "pay as you go" and more folks won't be able to handle the "pay" part, the internet will start fading away over time. 

Now, there are those out there who will scream and launch into spittle-flecked tirades about just how the "Internet is the Future" or "we can't run the country without the internet".  Now, both of these sentiments are true and false.  Let's start with the most audacious:  The internet is the future.  That is true.  But not in the way that folks think.  The internet is a means of communication.  It is remarkably fluid and can pass information faster than anything.  But truthfully, it has a bad case of giantism.  The current structure that has been spackled together over the past twenty years is just to unstable and fraught with fast-buck schemes to be economically viable.  The world changed recently and all the efforts being made to allow the internet serve as everything to everyone will come to naught.  I really see the internet reverting to something akin to 1995-2000.  Much smaller, much more focused, more text based, more useful, less frivolous.  This will happen on the server end first.  Google's massive server farms are the Argentinosaurus of the pre-asteroid internet that we now hold so dear.  Things are going to have to return to a couple of steps up from the Darpanet that this monstrosity evolved from.   I will still be useful, it will still be fast, it will still be a lot faster than any other system, it just won't be as effing fatuous.

The next part will be the network end.  My guess is that the patched together network will be just as well maintained as our roads and our power grid.  I really don't think that I need to say more than that. 

The final part will be the client.  Truth be told, this will be the most interesting to watch.  Moores law might be weakened, but it ain't dead.  But more important will be the blowback from the first two issues when confronted by the this aspect.  Right now, the business model is that someone sells you an expensive piece of silicon, which you hook up to an expensive network connection that will connect you to websites that sell you things, let you snoop on your neighbors, and raise your blood pressure.  I really can't see how this kind of thing has a place in a declining economy.  Now, perhaps this has become so ingrained that it has become a shibboleth that folks won't give up, but I don't see that happening.  Folks will respond that work from home will allow the internet to survive, but my strong belief is that if you can do your job from home, the chances are that your job is what is known as a "Bullshit Job" and will go away in the upcoming compression. 

Who knows what will happen.  The chances are that I won't see the final moves of the endgame we are entering.  I am just looking at the pieces that we moved into place over the past forty years and trying to figure out how long until I have to lay down my king.

Saturdays

Sitting in the dark in the kitchen waiting for the tea to brew.  Eldest is snoring and youngest will be over from his new digs to pick up the TV that I never use. 

Looks to be an interesting day in Stumptown today.  The rednecks are coming to town to confront the city-boy cool kids.  It is unfortunate that Hegel was always so bloody wrong, because watching the synthesis being achieved from this particular thesis/antithesis dichotomy would be interesting.  But sadly, neither of these parties is anything but pieces of shit being used by ideologues.  So all it is going to be is a shitshow.  I will stay well away from it, because absolutley zero positive will come of this.  I am figuring on some serious rumbles today.  The clowns that run Oregon might be doing some feasting tonight on their banquet of consequences.

Nationally the place is a fucking mess and getting worse.  Everyone is worried, they tend to think that their ennui is because of Fuckwad or SenileJoe, but the realization is now coming around to many that we are just in a very, very bad place.  Who the President is that is going to be presiding on the right side of the Seneca curve is taking people attention away from the right side of the Seneca curve.  No matter who wins, it is downhill from here.  As quoted from a bumper sticker in the long ago "where are we going and why am I in this handbasket".

Really, we are just biding time right now.  For me, it has been a curious time.  I have sufficient time to explore what I consider to be important stuff (Thanks Everyone!!) and just keep my cool and make all the little arrangements and develop all the little habits that I hope will let me navigate the weirdness ahead of me.  Nothing especially complicated, just making provisions.