Truck Stop of Tomorrow

The indigenous Cascadian response to the need for new campus facilities (Global U / GST), including for asylum-seekers (e.g. homeless vets), is connected to the citizen diplomat pipeline, the arterial system.

In another recent video I suggest the Madras, Oregon area as a place to test "outdoor school" equipment, which I'm suggesting we may consider already furnished taking into account the shipping containers of Good Will type stuff.

We're able to get whole families outfitted with kitchen stuff without going begging to the "everything brand new" crowd for a slice of their shrink-wrapped just-off-the-shelf newer thing.

No, the whole point is we're showcasing what a less wasteful lifestyle might mean. We work, but not to endlessly duplicate the same stuff. Our "prop inventory" lets us change costume, and yurt internals, without necessarily needing a monetary transaction.

A new aesthetic develops: the nomadic monad. You have everything you need on your person, and the luxury of not needing to own all these yurts you'll be visiting. The campus has plenty of props in inventory, when you need those cups and saucers.

Welcome New Recruits

"Where's the beef?" 

"Here's the beef." 

"More beef."

Citizen Diplomacy

We've been yakking on social media about Hindu truckers in North America, and the variety this brings to truck stops sometimes.

FB friend: there was an article in the economist about the disproportionate number of Hindu truckers in North America.

Me:  That's an editorial decision, to say "disproportionate" but they're Brits, disproportionately in North America from the beginning.

FB friend:  I think it's great to find Indian food at truck stops. Curry is better than burgers.

Me:  That's my vision of future truck stops: way more cosmopolitan in some hubs. They take over the malls, which are of dwindling interest to Amazon shoppers.

The idea of a truck stop as more like a food court, with multi-ethnic cuisine, might be catching on in some areas where the shopping malls are feeling the pinch of Amazon.  The truck stop of tomorrow might be more a mall than a gas station.

Silicon Valley is all about making trucks driverless, whereas the startups I'm looking at are taking up the real challenges that go with navigating the world's roads.  The driver exchange program I'm writing about on Medium, and elsewhere, gives a sense of the new possibilities.

Me:

Just don't make truckers queue for hours or days, as if cargo inspection and substance control is your concern you can do that in other ways, away from any border, like the airlines do (screening is at port of call, final destination, say Cincinnati). You have plenty of tracking devices on your average rig, it's not going to just disappear on you (the owners are watching). Maybe the driver is with a global company and its citizenship may be indeterminate as companies are not responsible for authenticating citizenship documents. Open border states aren't surrendering the right to monitor carriers. Let governments play border games while transportation flows smoothly. That's probably more how it'll shape up in Asia. Lower48 has enjoyed open borders internally but doesn't play well with neighbors sometimes. The world is covered in sore spots, with or without open borders.

Opting Out in Cascadia

I get around to talking about the BDS campaign versus Iran, eventually.

I'm not some official ambassador from Cascadia. I'm merely voicing my view that the population sample I'm in touch with is not at all on board with any kind of war against Persia.

On the contrary, Portland and Shiraz have been looking at becoming sister cities.  That conversation continues, as far as I know.

We have some real history with Iran, in terms of personnel. I'm thinking of Peace House in particular.

Somehow the "BDS" meme got hijacked to where some people think it has to mean something relating to Israel. I don't deny that some activists, based on perceived success in South Africa, in moving us beyond Apartheid, tried a similar strategy with regard to some Israeli companies.

Although I worked for AFSC in some chapters, I never stopped buying from Hewlett-Packard (big into biometrics used for border policing). That's because I don't have time to do the research, and I'm just the one guy. No one cares what I do. Even I don't that much.

However, the practice of BDS against Iran, Venezuela, Russia, is pretty virulent, and hypocritically sustained, even while Israel loudly proclaims it's somehow a primary victim. That's not believable.

Sanctions against Iran, with the threat of pre-emptive attack based on some flimsy shim-sham reasoning (cite the attack on Iraq, or Gulf of Tonkin), vastly outstrip, in scale, the tiny boycotts here and there, of miscellaneous goods from the squatter settlements.

My angle on Gaza is let's evacuate the place.  Rich people want the beach front property and don't care how many die to free up the real estate.

Remember that ghetto in Panama the Apache helicopters went after?  I presume that was likewise all about land values, clearing out the slums in a demonstration of lethality.

Humans are in the way. Nothing to do with nations or religions.  Everything to do with having fat bank accounts and a nice place in which to retire.  Caracas and Panama both look appealing, in addition to the Gaza strip.  More Miamis.

The "Dr. Who" Look

My test audience said things like "vintage Kirby" i.e. I make some broad points but then veer off into some world of my own, different planet maybe.

Did he just say "Planet of the Apes"? Why again?

Anyway, today was Gay Pride day (parade, waterfront festival) in Portland, a ritual and smoothly pulled off. My mood took me into a rather alien mindset but not in such a way that I couldn't share a sense of celebration. I wasn't being a party pooper.  I was adding to the diversity.

Thanks again to Patrick, Leela, Quinn (the dog) for their company today. And of course Carol, who sat on the porch through a lot of today.

As Seen on Facebook (restyled)

Me: Impending war with Iran is what's most important to this voter (me). As long as America is bombing a lot of countries, I can't think of health care as a priority -- at least not for Americans.
 
She: You obviously are a man and/or have health care and/or you're too young and arrogant to know better and/or you have zero responsibility for any other human beings or all of the above. Iran is important, it's not a matter of life and death for most of us. Healthcare is.


Me: I see it as a choice between squandering resources murdering around the world, or acting with compassion towards people everywhere. I'm reasonably certain a country as sick as America is wholly incapable of truly caring for those in need. If we don't cure the mental illness (leading to wars) we won't get anywhere with the basics of self preservation.

Sampling Facebook

[verbatim, posted as Public ]

My current position on political theater (a main gossip station):

I think I'm OK agreeing that the RT America crowd, at least, was impressed with Hawaiian presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, as various stories alleged.

She's anti regime change wars, pro legalized weed (anti Prohibition), pro bitcoin, free Assange and Manning, twice deployed, still active duty with the Hawaiian national guard. Serves in Congress. All good.

I agree with RT America: there's no one better. Ergo she has no chance in a "mediocrecy" (where media is mediocre).

On the theory that RT America narratives stay consistent with those of the Kremlin for the most part, I'll speculate that Putin and his cronies likewise admire Tulsi for her principles, despite her relative youth and inexperience.

I see nothing wrong with the Kremlin having and expressing a preference through their state-sponsored media channel on Youtube. I'd say it's pretty obvious that's what's happening, judging from what I've seen so far.

With all eyes watching social media for cyber-manipulation, the best policy is just to state one's views plainly. But then clearly Putin doesn't get to vote, the American people do, and Americans are the ones who are pushing Tulsi off stage at the moment, because she's a peacenik and for other reasons.

Americans are also the ones who elected Trump. I don't buy for a minute that a few clever memes on FB or even Podesta emails on Wikileaks, could have countered the complacency of the "she's a sure thing shoo-in" crowd. I expect less complacency in 2020.

If we can agree the Russian government would prefer Tulsi, then we can immunize ourselves against the still virulent "Russians prefer Trump" meme, which is a kind of cop out surrender on the part of Lower48ers who watch too much fictional Netflix about the spy world.

The Trumps were bored at that meeting in Trump Tower, about the Magnitsky Act. The Russians wanted adult conversation, but the campaigners wanted gossip. Most Americans know next to nothing about the Magnitsky Act. That's one of those adults only topics, not a good fit for the current White House.

American Literature 101

One of the core subcultures emerging in California was that of retired Theosophists and other fellow travelers.  Some of them gravitated to Ojai, to be closer to Krishnamurti.  Esalen was not directly connected, having strong ties to Stanford University, however there's no getting away from the many Aquarian conspiracies that riddle Cascadia more generally.

Physics World (the "new physics"), saved by hippies, made a big influence in literature through science fiction at first, and then by providing more direct commentary on "consciousness".  Sir Roger Penrose was one of those leading the pack, in picturing the Mind as a quantum device, making use of the quantum effects of Universe to transcend more deterministic forms of logic.

Bucky Fuller, connecting to American Transcendentalism by virtue of his ancestral roots on Bear Island, in addition to his Aquarian credentials, preserved a Brain versus Mind distinction, in case we wished to differentiate on the basis of function, between a storage/retrieval reflex machine, and the Zeitgeist, a shared phenomenon.

Remember that Spiritualism achieved a relative apex around the time of Thomas Edison, contemporaneous with the investigation and industrial exploitation of electricity.  That extrasensory abilities, strongly believed in by many Theosophists, might have a physical basis in energetic phenomena is what made "ESP" seem scientific, to the Esalen people as well.

Of all the philosophers, Bucky Fuller probably did the most to restore "metaphysical" to our vocabulary as a synonym for "intellectual property" (so-called).  If we subtract the "who owns it" bit and focus on the commons, we see humanity gaining competence over physical phenomena as evidenced by a "more bang for the buck" over time.  The military was especially impressed by the "bang" it was getting, in the form of weapons of mass suicide.

However "metaphysical" is more a literary term that goes with the territory in post-911 Cascadia.  We teach Bucky Fuller in the context of American literature, not as physics.  Both literature and physics have permission to discuss "consciousness" or the lack thereof.  We're free to bridge to STEM, but we don't come from there, when adding Synergetics to the syllabus.

I mentioned Edison above:

It was 1884, the year the people of France presented the United States with the Statue of Liberty. Tesla had with him twenty-five cents and a letter of recommendation addressed to the American inventor Thomas Alva Edison (1847−1931). When the inevitable rift occurred between these two Promethean inventors, Tesla began to frequent the fabulous Palm Room at the Waldorf. It was here he would mingle with the giants of American industry in hope of finding the venture capital he needed to launch an independent career. Eventually, he did.  As soon as his personal situation improved, he took up residence at the Waldorf. Of all the strange twists and turns and turns his long career took, Tesla admitted at the end of his life that there were only two things that gave him the hope he needed to fulfill his dreams, his American citizenship and the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

That's from Paul Laffoley's website.

Codesters

sprites = [ ]

def select(sel):
    for s in sprites:
        s.selected = False
       
    for s in sprites:
        if s.sprite is sel:
            s.selected = True


class Triangle:
   
    def __init__(self, x=0,y=0, color='blue'):
        self.color = color
        self.x = x
        self.y = y
        self.selected = False
        sprites.append(self)
   
    def draw_me(self):
        # sprite = codesters.Triangle(x, y, size, "color")
        self.sprite = codesters.Triangle(self.x, self.y, 100, self.color)
        self.sprite.event_click(select)

    def move_me(self):
        self.sprite.glide_to(x, y)
   
tri_one = Triangle()
tri_one.draw_me()

tri_two = Triangle(-100,100,'red')
tri_two.draw_me()

tri_three = Triangle(-50, 50, 'yellow')
tri_three.draw_me()

tri_four = Triangle(100, -100, "orange")
tri_four.draw_me()

def move_it():
    global x, y
    x = stage.click_x()
    y = stage.click_y()
    for s in sprites:
        if s.selected:
            s.move_me()

stage.event_click(move_it)

X Man's Burden

If you know your Rudyard Kipling, you may be thinking X = White, but we're not so clear what that means anymore, ever since the Noah hypothesis was deprecated in favor of the dinosaur one.

We may still imagine some sub-species of overlord, tasked with taking on the great burdens, but lets not pretend to go by melanin content in the epidermis.  Are they reptilian?

Taking everything literally is the fastest way to close doors on most possibilities.

Remember hallway monitors?  If you went to a large school, you might have had experience with the role.  The hallways of academia, like many hallways, have their monitors.

Do they look for inappropriate cartoons posted on doorways.

Professors often showcase humor at the entrances to their sanctums.

Some people profess about philosophy, having "doctor of philosophy" degrees.

However the PhD degree has come to signify proficiency in high degree, minus any stipulation that philosophy is involved.

One could say the PhD degree is fiat currency, in becoming divorced from the "gold standard" of what it originally stood for (proficiency in philosophy).  That's pure speculation on my part.

Today was a religious holiday of sorts in my pandas DataFrame of special datetimes.

A "datetime" is a type of Python object.

The religion in question:  Church of the Subgenius.

That's the church of Bob Dobbs, who only appears to look normal (what with that pipe and all).  Is he really an X Man?  The church of slack is not about glorifying toil.

Does "America" want to finally become a country?  With the border situation that open, with Canada, chances are slim, according to some criteria.  But all talk of fences aside, doesn't becoming a first world nation imply some degree of caring for one's citizens?

The Cowardly Capitalist crowd is hoping to get Uncle Sam to protect them, both from competition abroad, and from citizens agitating for social services.  The burden the C3s imagine assuming, should they be required to demonstrate social responsibility, just seems too unAmerican to them.