Business Experiences

I’ve prolly told this story before, about how I worked in the back office of a swank women’s clothing store on Princeton Square, thanks to my being friends with the owner’s son. I was a willing learner and looking back I see that I picked up on a lotta patterns familiar to retailers. We were allowed to run credit checks when someone new wanted store credit. 

The owner, a WW2 vet, was really interested in computers, which I had acquired some knowledge of at Princeton, and since, in other work. So we could talk the same (or an overlapping) shoptalk. 

I’m pretty sure that’s around the time I wrote something about the Centers Network to send around on my own dime. Nothing scandalous. Fun stuff. I still have a copy around here somewhere.

Centers Network? I’m referring to the network of Area Centers that emerged in various metro areas with the purpose of delivering the Standard est Training along with Seminars. I didn’t get to see many Area Centers, just the one in New York City, which was a pretty nice one in terms of floorspace. 

The trainings were mostly done there (Port Authority East Side Bus Terminal), whereas most of the seminars were conducted at hotels around town (like across from Madison Square Garden), and that was my bailiwick: logistics, eventually logistics supervisor.

You might wanna query a gossip bot, rattle the rain stick, to get more strands of predictable (stochastically generated) prose on all this. Or go to more primary sources? 

Conjuring up the most predictable gossip from a vector database is not always the most useful natural language process to engage in, when digging into shared records. But then it’s not either/or. I’ll run a few queries then dive in, the LLM helping me “get oriented” (think OODA loop). 

Learn to raise the landing gear and take off at some point, when canned models are no longer enough.

For example, as someone who was there, a participant in Centers Network activities, I’m not inclined to let others (least of all a bot) tell me what it was I experienced. I have my own memories thank you. Ditto a lotta things I personally witnessed. I was there. Let me tell you.

We all have some rights over our own first person narratives, by consensus. That’s what having a first person tense entails, a right then extended by some ethnicities to supra-humans, such as to corporations (they get to be people too, in some language games, kinda like zombies (twilight zone)).

Did I also write my Invisible Landscapes series around then? Yes, I believe maybe just before that. That series shows some Asian influence as it references both Bruce Lee (a well known actor in martial arts movies) and Clifford Geertz (less well known), the later having done some work in Southeast Asia studying cockfighting and other practices. I learned about him in my Psychological Anthropology class with Dr. Fernandez.

Mixed into the Bruce Lee passage was my description of New York City as a tough noir-like Gotham, an urban jungle. I’d been living in Queens around then, or was it Brooklyn? Both? What I remember most clearly is commuting to work, with my friend Ray Simon (who I met through shared interests). 

We both worked at McGraw-Hill, then on Avenue of the Americas, Rockefeller Center (right near Radio City Music Hall and all that). Nola was our boss.

Gresham Loop

This album stems from an initial trial planned in conjunction with a Gresham resident and Wanderer, and using Google Earth and TriMet Trip Planner. I had some leeway, per usual when Wandering capital-W, but did fix the Blue Line train I wanted to catch, at 9:53 AM.

I started out from Blue House around 9 AM, heading through Laurelhurst Park to the Hollywood neighborhood, appropriately named given Movie Madness is going in, across from its legendary parent theater (The Hollywood). 

I took pictures of the MM construction site, having ridden over the ped-pedal bridge, crossing I-84 and the Max tracks from Senate Street. After buying ride snacks (dried mangos and bananas) at Trader Joe's, I retraced my path to mid-bridge, carrying my bike down the stairs (there's an elevator option) to the Max platform. I made the intended connection.

On my way to the rendezvous at Gresham TC, I admired the new Gresham Public Library, resolving to visit it on some future trip. Indeed, by the time I was back in Hollywood, by Green Line train from Lents (SE Foster), I'd added quite a few "must circle back tos" to my "bucket list" of future places to visit. My fellow Wanderer offered many welcome suggestions.

What I especially appreciated about this ride was how so much of it, pretty much whole the Gresham to I-205 part, was gently downhill if not flat. The Springwater Corridor was once a rail line's right-of-way so gentle grades are the norm. My usual Sellwood Loop is likewise not overtaxing, with such gentle grades.

The steepest segment came when I came back over the Hollywood ped bridge and needed to ascend back through the Laurelhurst neighborhood, past the school I used to teach at (after school coding), this time to the east of Cesar Chavez (north-south), then crossing over the latter at the Joan of Arc statue (and traffic circle) to re-enter Laurelhurst Park (there's a steep hill in there too, right after the duck pond).

Shortly after my Gresham friend and I parted company at the beaver dam, in the nature preserve (he was heading home to Gresham, me onward back to Portland), I encountered that substation I took pictures of, and subsequently blogged about. 

Experiments with Algernon

As someone who still enjoys a relatively high level of acumen (I’d say “mental acumen” but that’s redundant), I found myself wondering about a claim by an NYT bestseller guy that Creatine might boost said acumen even further. A harmless enough powder used by bodybuilders. Why not give it a try, not as a bodybuilding substance so much as an acuity builder?

Some say the body is a temple, others say treat it as a lab. I don’t find these incompatible: temple-lab. What’s the word? Anyway, just this morning I read on my Creatine powder container that since it’s “metallica” (or something) it might expose me to lead. Says so right on the label. So I’m aiming to brain-boost with lead? Now we’re getting into oxymoron territory.

However I’d already decided to pause my 10mg/day dissolved in hot coffee or tea, cuz for another reason: water retention. The gossip bot confirms that indeed is a side effect. It’s a different kind of retention than you get from poor circulation but it still means your legs get noticeably more hydrated. I’m gonna drain myself out and figure Algernon has had enough. The acumen level is fine without the new NYT bestseller regimen. 

Everybody is a different special case with a divergent metabolism (divergent from bell curve average, where data scientists will tell you exists precisely no one) so if you’re having a blast being lead-poisoned, don’t let me stop ya. Just kidding. Let me if you wanna.

Seriously, back to the topic of “AI psychosis” (a theme), I’m reminded of a time I wanted to test an LLM’s ability to push back against junk science. I shared a thesis like: if the Romans, unwittingly drinking lead, had been left alone to evolve, their metabolism might’ve adapted to where lead not only became harmless, but a required part of their daily diet. “Pshaw!” said Perplexity in brief, giving me more hope that AI had a future.

I realize acumen has a lot to do with physical activity and interaction with one’s environment. I have an outing planned for today along those lines. When I get back, I’ll have some new pix, one of which I’ll embed above. 

Best wishes to Glo and her WILPF workshop about countering Russophobia, which’ll be happening around the same time. We’ve been comparing notes. Here’s from what I posted to the listserv this morning:

I consider this an important line of work and a logical extension of WILPF's campaigns, starting with Jane Addams herself. 

HG Wells also took up the issue of Russophobia (maybe not by that name) in his journalism between the world wars (1 and 2). My hero Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose work I studied at Princeton, was also up for moving to Russia, although his application was denied (so he wound up back in the UK as the one-time protege of Bertrand Russell).

I have a long-scheduled multi-mile bicycle ride today at the time of the workshop, however I've been promoting the workshop on listservs I frequent, both public and private.[1] Just the idea that such workshops are happening will bring gladness to many hearts. Here in Oregon, Russian is the 4th most spoken language and there's no enmity towards them, even by Ukrainians. We plan to keep it that way. 

I think raising awareness of Russophobia, a mind-virus endemic to North America (as bad or worse than Judeophobia if not Islamophobia) is extremely timely these days, as people awaken to the many media campaigns around them that would drive them towards fear and/or hatred (almost the same) of any ethnicity whatsoever. Hatred of ethnicities goes against our melting pot values. Diversity is our strength.

As FDR put it (and I paraphrase): it's fear itself we should hate; learn to fear hate itself (it saps your power).

Kirby

[1] Publicly archived listserv example:  https://tinyurl.com/nhbjh5w4 <-- shortened URL that scans Synergeo (a group) using search term "Russophobia". Feel free to search on other terms such as "WILPF" (you don't need to sign up or become a member to use this feature, which is why I use a public listserv for my school -- search on "Meet Your Teacher" if you want more about "Kirby Urner" (lots about my AFSC background)).

Church Merger?

The story behind this one is Dr. D, past Humanists (of Great Portland) prez, has been floating new logo ideas and getting feedback from other humanists. Currently their bias is to keep the old one, but perhaps they're swayed by its professionalism? The newer candidates are relatively unpolished, still in the rough.

The conversation, in my backyard over BBQ, led me to prompt up something that'd feature some of the logo ideas he'd been batting around, Leonardo's Vitruvian Man in particular, but with more Portlandish iconography. Gemini did a good job I think.

Although I did share this meme on a church Mastodon server, I'm confidant the spoofy nature of the content will be immediately recognized by other Subs, and if not... we have a saying.

There's an undercurrent of researching fairy tales more (a used Annotated Mother Goose newly acquired), not only the various canons (e.g Marvel's, DC's...), but the boundary of the genre itself, which many have taken up as a topic. A bevy of us are comparing notes on the various Robins, Batman sidekicks, with assistance from the gossip bots.

I'm thinking about the Naga Story in particular, the "cosmic fairy tale" we inherit from TetraScroll, which feeds into the speculative prehistory cosmography we find in Critical Path.

Meditating Scholar

Photos by Kirby 

Sculpture by Julian

Americana

For further reading:

Graph Theory on Synergeo
 

Independence Day

You know the joke about “why do we have Fathers’ Day and Mothers’ Day, but no Children’s Day?: right? Because “every day is children’s day”. One could say the same about Independence Day as in: when would we not celebrate our freedom to individuate? Or as our ancestors put it: “pursue happiness”.

I decided to get my bicycle ride over with early in the day, when it was still pleasantly cool, in the low sixties in terms of Fahrenheit, wherein water’s freezing to boiling is 32 to 212. That’s many more units per the same gradient Centigrade measures, which is why Fahrenheit has always felt more precise, but then in Celsius one just uses decimal digits more often, so my intuition is specious.

Also, given the ideal conditions and a hankering to relive the old days, I extended the loop back to my training circuit for when I was prepping for Seattle to Portland (S2P). I was riding with the best cyclers from our Meeting back then, such as Lansky and Ferguson (Larry). 

So as to not make a fool of myself, I’d get in condition by doing Springwater Corridor from OMSI to Sellwood, out Johnson Creek way, past Precision Cast Parts, to I-205, then back north on the west side of that freeway, crossing Foster, Holgate, Powell, and turning left on SE Division for the stretch back home. I stopped along that stretch to chat with Don and Susan and take a couple selfies with them.

I’m not saying I’m back to that peak level of being in shape. Far from it. This is over a decade later after all, and I’m almost 70 (which many S2P riders are, so that’s no excuse). My usual practice these days is to go as far as Sellwood and then transition to public transportation, taking my bicycle right into the train and bus per their designed use.

Memorializing OPDX

Avogadro’s Drones

In a recent thread on Synergeo, kicked off by one of the members, someone I’ve collaborated with on a specific color coding, in itself a kind of social engineering if one expects a standard to gain agreement. Tech standards such as USB depend on agreement on specs.

I talked about the drone swarms we might use in formation to create an n-frequency tetrahedron, meaning the drones would follow the CCP pattern known to the crystallographers. Check the thread for more details.

The Maritime Subculture of Naga: A Quest

Time flies, but must we think “in a straight line”? Some people are obsessed with “straight” as a virtue, whereas our literature is packed with lines that deliberately aren’t.

Along those lines, we went a Wandering again, me and another guy who’d never been to St. Johns before, whereas I could pose as a kind of tour guide, although that illusion quickly faded when (a) I was surprised to find the new sculpture where I’d not expected it and (b) everyone local knows about the water towers, but we simply stumbled upon them randomly. A revelation.

The new sculpture to which I refer has to do with a certain cosmic fairytale our teachers use to introduce the wavilinear horizon that circles a ship at sea.

As the ocean surface curves out of sight, circumscribing a roughly horizontal patch of some square miles, one imagines a sea dragon , its humps both above and below the ocean surface around this circular perimeter. We call her Naga.

Naga was present at the Festival of Lights as well.

The sea dragon sculpture has deliberately rusty scales thereby fitting into the Portland palette, its rust motif.

So did I pray to the sea dragon and ask for toothache relief for example? No, this cult is more about converging back to that ship at sea, and navigating, at which point the stars become helpful. They feature in our cosmic fairytale as well.

And don’t think by “fairytale” I mean to be dismissive. I have the Annotated Mother Goose on the way, as I wanna pick up on that whole aesthetic again. Lets get back to those fantasy manga novels, like those Tintin comics, or like Little Prince.