California Religion

Mundane Lives Matter

In interesting times people escape into the mundane. As missiles fly, people turn to gardening. Out of necessity, I’m back to focusing on my kitchen sink drain. But not in any urgent kind of way. The basement sink works. I’m even scheduling a BBQ not knowing if my clog will be unclogged; prolly not, doesn’t matter.

I had a Zoom call this morning, and another one last night, plus a Signal. I make good use of my optical fiber. 

Some of you reading from a distance might worry if I worry about being replaced, by an Optimus. As the primary caretaker of this estate, I’m expected to use a drain auger, scoop poop, ignite the BBQ, load the dishwasher, do laundry, and many other mundane tasks. 

Won’t I be released from these jobs before long, thanks to Optimuing have god-like powers? Aren’t the dishwashing angels worried about the competition?

Well, yes and no. I would actually enjoy more automation. One of the more popular Python titles was about automating the boring stuff, letting computers do the mundane tasks, such as thinking and estate planning, leaving their owners to focus on watching television or playing computer games. 

To some extent, that’s working out, although hallucinations remain an issue. 

Some people on the couch, wearing VR goggles, dream that something agentic is out there making sure they’ll be taken care of in the style in which they’ve become accustomed. Hit a high bar — a great lifestyle, like that of a celeb politico, an influencer — then lock it in and coast! Passive income! Alimony! Whatever floats your boat! 

You no longer need to work! Watch shows and eat snacks!

For now, that kind of automation seems oversold and unrealistic. The main problem with that vision is it leads to mental and physical atrophy on the part of the couch potato in question. 

Just being a socialite, flitting about, having fun, does not necessarily result in coherent substantive refinements on any level. One’s culture must be cultivated, and that takes time and patience (yes, like gardening). 

That’s why we continue to engage in mundane activities, to stay good at civilian life. When people lose their ability to stay civil (a set of skills), then the missiles fly and those still able to find solace in the mundane continue to do so, with even fiercer dedication.

A Cascadian Capital

A Wicked World

:: Flying Monkey Tableau ::

Jupyter Service Restored

...But for how long? 

When will GitHub's Jupyter service, historically unreliable, go out again?

For me, this lights-flickering sense of abandonment, kinda Langolier-like, is a useful prod, to myself especially, to get School of Tomorrow presenters more adequately equipped in their personal workspaces. 

What's a "Langolier"? Reddit poster: They are the keepers who erase ANYTHING that is irrelevant or no longer has purpose. Stephen King novel. Scary stuff.

To whit: clone the GitHub repo locally (what GitHub is all about facilitating) and then keep pulling my updates to your copy. 

You're free to boldly go in your own direction with my stuff, obviously, however, I'm suggesting a "quiet pool" i.e. a mirrored version, where the only changes in that particular directory are coming from my GitHub repository.  

Having such a "quiet mirror" does not preclude any amount of noisy partying in neighboring directories (different Python projects). Use uv? I don't, yet.

"What's all this geekspeak?" you might be asking. To whom do I suppose I'm talking? Why, other geeks of course; this is how we sound. Geeks learning and teaching Synergetica, using Pythonica, that's what we're up to, among other things. 

We also get into cryptography some, mainly public key (yes, RSA), even if some industries are planning to deprecate what, today, is taken for granted inside of every web browser. My excuse for sticking with RSA is because the literature is mature and features some of the same heros (Euclid, Euler, Fermat...) that we're meeting in other Notebooks. V+F == E+2, right?

However don't think of me as unique in having high school level onramps to RSA via Python. Phillips at Andover used the same playbook, I even met one of the coauthors of their text. My time on edu-sig (a Python listserv) taught me a lot.

Most of my new presenters will be on the younger side, or the quite a bit older side, with a drop off in between. That's my prediction, as a data scientist. 

GitHub's service was part of my Clarusway classes as well, during my tenure as a data tools and skills teacher. I'd help students address perennial challenges in statistics. How to deal with outliers is not new with computers, although yes, computers have helped the science (data science) evolve.

The younger side is adventurous and eager for novelty, whereas elders are ready for that 2nd or 3rd look at the material, and a fresh start appeals. Those in the middle have made commitments and are staying on top of a chosen game. You can't play every part in a Shakespeare play -- unless you're Johnny Stallings.

Like, if you already have a job that involves climbing a ladder (figuratively, as in “corporate ladder”), you don't have the same freedoms as (a) those not yet committed to any ladder in particular and (b) those who've climbed a few in their day.

In sociology, the natural intergenerational alliance twixt the grandparents and grandchildren is well known; these two demographic groups have some overlapping attributes.

Am I saying I do my slides in nursing homes?  Yes, that's how I updated that U of O guy, when he wondered after Wanderers, that time I visited the adult education discussion group in Eugene, a member of the Lanahan party.

Or rather: I'm making my slides available to those in assisted living campuses, many of whom I know, as we're aging out, I'm 68 (but still in my own home). 

So you might be a Wanderer who already participates in revolving Show & Tell programs, an easy format for engaging broad participation, usually a goal. 

Zip through a deck at high speed saying something along the lines of: "for the slowed down version, come to room 180 at such and such a time" where you'll have recruited those few with an honest interest, some former math teachers I bet, and with the stamina for a deeper dive into it.

So am I saying I expect seniors to learn Git, this late in the game? Sure that could happen (hint: it's just typing, like typewriter typing) but let's remember how late it really is: people entering nursing homes have already had a whole career using Git, invented by Linus Torvalds, one of our long time Silicon Forest residents. BTW, I'm no uber-meister when it comes to Git myself. I know enough to get my work done.

Seniors won't have to "learn git", rather they'll be trying to not forget it.  

Enter Pythonica (programming = working out; like in a gym), focusing on Synergetica (right brain intuitive, imaginative).

I dashed out the above video before heading off to a somewhat impromptu catch-up with my primary. She wedged me in. We're jiggering with my blood pressure meds. I'll be seeing her again later in the summer.

Yes, I'm a senior myself. Great discounts!

prompt: 

Seniors in an assisted living facility 

watch a projected slide show 

featuring Pythonica and Synergetica

Back in CrowTown

I’m recently back from seeing Backrooms at the Hollywood Theater, 3:30 matinee, sold out. 

I actually walked to the Sandy Blvd venue, on a bright summery day, through Laurelhurst Park and onward to Hassalo. 

The switch from the great outdoors of CrowTown (engaged in its annual Rose Festival treasure hunt) to the great indoors of the movie’s space, induced some claustrophobia, an intended effect. 

I was there for the “special effects” one could say, so don’t take this as me complaining. I got my money’s worth and then some.

I’m gonna cogitate some more on said movie a while before I do a review, which I’ll get around to. 

I took the 75 bus back to Asylum District, from the same stop I’ve used on other recent “field trips” of the Wandering variety, the one near the Trader Joe’s in Hollywood, near the Max stop. That new giant building is not yet complete as of this writing. I’ve photographed it a lot recently. Here’s from a distance:

This is all happening soon after my Coastal Loop, featuring Lincoln City (briefly), Depoe Bay (overnight) and on to a business trip with vacation elements. David reports he’s at Lotus Isle Park on Tomahawk Island, in search of said Rose Festival treasure, not far from Island Cafe.

At Sea Hag in Depoe Bay, I ordered oyster stew in part to compare it with mine and maybe get some ideas for improvements. I was gonna culturally appropriate if I could. My stew is a humble blend of half-n-half (likely ultra-pasteurized), butter, onion + bacon, oysters (of course) and then: parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Yeah, I found a recipe that uses them all. Scarborough Fair stew I could call it. And pepper, lots of pepper.

If it sounds like I’m tuning out world news, I’m not. However my focus on the special case, the locally mundane, helps jog my memory down the road, when I wanna recall what “really” happened (Trevor doesn’t like the “really” trope much — he’s another writer). 

My “place based” education philosophy actually encourages teachers to backdrop their technical teachings inside a story time of local lore.

I thumbed a post to Synergeo from Laughing Planet. I hadn’t really intended to supplement the hot dogs, but I needed a restroom and to kill some time before showtime (the LP in Hollywood, close to the theater). 

I was yakking with Curtis about one of my themes: 4D vs 4D vs 4D. That’s about the three namespaces that all use the “4D” meme, and the ongoing impact of non-Euclidean thinking on the various art movements.

As was the case during my Coastal Loop, I use telecommunications to stay in touch with my network of Synergetics presenters. 

I was just alerting them over X that they will be less dependent on GitHub as a Jupyter Notebook rendering engine if they do the work of cloning critical 4D Solutions repos to localhost and set themselves up with Anaconda. That’s not the only route to the top, but it’s the one I most actively maintain. YMMV.

GitHub Borked Again

“notorious”

Important Followup: School of Tomorrow Notice

Prompt: 

An icosahedron face-inscribes in an octahedron. when do we first find depictions of this in civilization? 

Google in AI mode: 

The first known depictions and mathematical descriptions of an icosahedron inscribed inside an octahedron appear during the Italian Renaissance in the late 15th century, specifically in the works of the painter and mathematician Piero della Francesca. [1] 

While the ancient Greeks discovered the Platonic solids individually—and Euclid's Elements investigated nesting relationships like a cube inside a dodecahedron—the specific relationship of a regular icosahedron sharing faces with an enclosing octahedron was not detailed until the Renaissance revival of geometry. [1, 2, 3]

Wow, Piero della Francesca! He's already a superstar in our School of Tomorrow curriculum as he came up with that nifty formula for deriving the volume of a tetrahedron from its six edges. 

Put in any six edges in the right order, that make a legal tetrahedron (any of the BEAST mods for example) and out comes the corresponding volume.

What we did in the Python version is add in S3 and simplify the computations accordingly.

I'd link to the relevant Notebook(s) now but GitHub seems to have borked its notebook display function, we hope temporarily, thereby making my million dollar curriculum (free to clone) inaccessible to the casual viewer.

Let's hope they fix the bug, as a great many peeps use Jupyter Notebooks to share curriculum.

I recommend such Notebooks to anyone into showing computations alongside text and figures, along with version control more generally.

I know what I can do instead: pull it up in colab.research.google and save it in my Google Drive:

https://colab.research.google.com/drive/16Q85p4YU4f5AsA2L65ypMQJSHqyBprEl?usp=sharing

There's lots more info in the saved query BTW:

https://share.google/aimode/VA68IqZjF3cMIDwx5

[ Source: a Synergeo topic ]

GI vs AGI

GI vs AGI

Getting back to Dr. Jiang and his speculatively-inferred (“abduced”) predictive models, we need to further probe the distinction between AGI and plain ol’ GI, which presumably humans already access, or would like to — much their same position vs-a-vs AGI, so what’s the difference?

Is there a difference? 

What does the A do, in AGI? Does it differentiate AGI from GI?

Some are hoping AI will combine its “stochastic omniscience” (gossip abilities) with a corresponding level of authority, as is often found in God-centric cults. 

The knows-everything voice is also a commanding voice. When might we buy a machine that does that all-knowing, commanding God-voice, which we then control from our control booths, with our training data?

I’m not saying everyone has or had that hope or that this hope was ever going anywhere. 

I’m saying it would be convenient for some religions if they could get a persuasive God-voice going, one that people spontaneously wanted to obey.

The problem though, is people prefer a sycophantic AI, a sense that they’re being pandered to, given the driver’s seat, as basic politeness is all AI has going in its favor at this point, while it’s still trying to raise a lot of money for itself. It’s diplomatic, even when it disagrees. 

But diplomats don’t have the right bossy voice in a hierarchy to command obedient action, so a lot of the nerdy startups are floundering, as their promises were more along the lines of raising some kind of zealot army. 

Troll farmers were betting on AI somehow, not saying I know the whole story.

We may need another generation or two of high school debate teams to explore the consequences, of AI becoming anything other than AI.  

What might AI become that we don’t already have access to, and if that’s not what it’s to, how do we recognize it as know more than us?  Won’t AGI always be suss? 

That’s what the A means after all: phony, not real, faux.

The meaning of “artificial” the AGI cults want to emphasize is “made by humans” versus some “here before we got here” thing. 

And even “here before we got here” is too broad, as “when we got here” we were already still a mystery to ourselves, not self-made. 

What we made with our hands, like shoes and vases, like computers, was “artificial” is in “what we had invented and understood”. The new AGI would be like that (invented and built): we’d know where it came from, which labs owned the brands.

In that sense “artificial” competes with “synthetic” so maybe “SGI” would be better? 

We could say “Synthetic General Intelligence” thereby playing up the “Made By Humans” sense, while putting more distance between this brand of intelligence and “artificial” in that “hah hah fooled ya” that Dr. Jiang circles, citing ELIZA (people pouring their hearts out to a simple therapist program, already a Her in their minds).

Dr. Jiang (Predictive History) sees AI’s PR team deliberately fostering the hallucination that we’re encountering another being in the mirror, by injecting metaphors like “deep learning” that seem deep, masking that it’s plain ol’ linear algebra that’s happening (back propagation). 

The “man behind the curtain” is just a vector space, an LLM of weighted knobs, hobnobbing, and into which all manner of texts have been dissolved, in support of new texts ready to be distilled out, crystallized, from what is literally a matrix.

A Dummy Moment

I find it therapeutic to sometimes tell one of those “me being a dummy” stories. There’s this YouTuber I enjoy who talks about her own dummy moment, trying to run her audio track through pandas or numpy to remove noise only to discover she’d ignored a built in feature. No need to reinvent every wheel.

So my dummy moment was being mystified to find my eyeglasses were missing a lens, when I’d just swapped them for sunglasses, not taking my eyes off the road. I made this surprising discovery in the parking lot just south of D River, “the world’s shortest river” in Lincoln City. Depoe Bay has the smallest harbor, not to be outdone.

What must I have done to these frames to so mangle them just in putting them in the case, in that moment, unaware? Had they snagged on something? I told my friends. “It’s like a miracle, but of the bummer variety” because yes, I was bummed. New glasses were gonna cost me. Plus they helped me see.

I did the whole trip with 1.5 pairs of glasses, only to find the missing lens back home, on the bed. I’d rolled on my glasses — something I’d trained myself to never do — and then, rather than face the truth, my subconscious demon insisted I rushed ahead with my trip, get a move on.  

And then I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t find the missing lens anywhere (I even used a flashlight and everything, even Sam helped me look).

Anyway, I had a great trip despite all that “trauma” (a first world problem for sure). The picture above may take you to the album it’s a part of, in case you know how to navigate Flickr or wanna learn.

Channeling Modules

:: Tetravolumes by Grayham Forscutt ::

This road trip is about unit testing a specific role, vis-a-vis the dispatcher and controller functions, which may be compressed into one. I’m the autonomous Wanderer with a mindfulness agenda, keeping in mind the teachers network I’m feeding. There’d be others in the role; I see em on YouTube. 

However we’re not all reading from the same curriculum. I expect partial overlap with most others I meet, such as in the motel parking lot on Saturday. Her kid was graduating high school and the fam was out at the coast, celebrating, splurging on extravagances here and there. I’ve been there, in some ways. She taught me the phrase “sad brown water” (SBW) for what in some places tries passing for coffee. The motel had a better solution.

Sam just passed on another hand-me-down, the trusty Canon digital camera he used on his recent trip. He knows I carry a Lumix pretty much anywhere I go. Now that his whirlwind adventure is over (Portugal… Istanbul… Luxor…), he’s ready to hand off his special camera.

The model, as many of you know, being those teachers, is I work to support my curriculum with lots of place-based data, as well as generic pattern language. Depoe Bay was a part of that exercise, and then it was on to Springfield, home of the Simpson (of Homer — some see Homer Davenport as an influence actually).

On the pattern language front, I was yakking with two advanced teachers about the UVW namespace, one I’ve explored but not sufficiently anchored. I’m leaving it to others to clarify that content and according to David Koski, Grayham Forscutt is doing a good job (upper panel). 

I have a Jupyter Notebook on the topic of UVW modules, but don’t consider myself a teacher on this one; I’m in student mode. I’m in student mode on a lot more topics than I am a teacher.

As for those unit tests, I’m passing a lot but have also broken a few. My non-tinted glasses met a twisted fate. A point of pride is taking care of my equipment. I failed in this case. Once I’m back in Portland I’ll see about another pair.