My comment on YouTube:
The extent to which conversion is possible, to a more mixed use pattern, is indeed a hot topic. Floor space for "day camp" (a kind of school) doesn't necessarily require cookie cutter apartments. Think City Museum of St. Louis. Flexibility (convertibility) is key. Sharing restrooms is common in college dorms and even some remodeled higher end hotels featuring retro-futuristic lifestyles.
I've continued following with Marianne Williamson campaign, which for me is about nailing nails into the coffin of legacy media, run by moguls too afraid to rock the boat to be worth attending to anymore. I'm hoping to put her people in touch with some from the Andrew Yang gang, as UBI is far from dead as a meme.
I've chosen the title for an obvious reason: TikTok. Marianne is doing well with the younger demographic that frequents TikTok. This group is developing a fair amount of animosity towards the geriatrics who can't stand the idea that they're not role models. No one wants to grow up to be like them. Their solution: ban TikTok. See what I mean? As Trump put it: these guys (mostly guys) are losers.
Does this mean I think she has a chance to be president? Of course she does, it's in the US constitution. However, the DNC, no respecter of the constitution, is hoping to shield the Bidens from any inconvenient requirements, having secured the nomination with behind the scenes machinations during covid. The DNC, an enemy of democracy, hopes "behind the scenes" will work again, and is calling for "no debates" as of April, 2023. Neither Biden nor Harris are known for their rhetorical skills at this point.
Disputing election results the way Sydney Powell and Rudy Guliani tried to (with help from MyPillow guy) was an obvious non-starter. The vote counting infrastructure (ala Dominion voting machines) was not a major front in 2020, given how much of the supposed cyber-meddling by foreign agents was pure science fiction in the first place. Corrupt players have long engaged in vote rigging shenanigans, with no help from the politburo. Greg Palast and his ilk have already shown us the soft money underbelly, and it isn't pretty.
I'm not myself against electronic voting, although I do admit it comes with dangers. Per my position papers going back, if we don't invest in high school level civics, including crypto savvy, we're going to reap what we sow: nincompoops when it comes to infrastructure. The DC player tends to outsource a lot of its internet savvy these days, which is the more likely ingress for foreign meddling. Campaigns depend on algorithms they poorly understand. An experienced candidate with a well-developed sense of the nation's demographics is likely to do better than any AI-based approach at this point, despite the hype.
Given the choice to short the high schools, the next generation is hopping mad. The code schools had to jump in to provide remedial ed. If you have no computer literacy, you have no business pretending to have the right stuff when it comes to running for high office. But then the high offices do not require voters or elections, except in the shareholder / stakeholder sense, and even there, the process is often highly informal, or according to different rules (say if Quakers become involved).
Am I contracting out as a political adviser these days? Hardly. I'm more the guy who keeps pointing back to the high schools, suggesting that institution reinvent itself to serve adults as well as teenagers. We need the equivalent of a high school refresher every ten to fifteen years, if we want to stay effectively informed about the basics, including such skills as driving and telecommuting. The way to improve the quality of high school is to make it a resume-relevant credential regardless of age. "When was the last time you went through high school?"
A lot of people in congress and the military get their updates informally, without jumping through hoops. They get on the job training. However, the curriculum has fallen into disrepair in many cases, leading to lots of obsolete practices and dubious strategies, when it comes to command and control, and to bottom-up styles of governance. Without a well trained and informed citizenry, we're not equipped, as a nation, to make a positive contribution to the world scene. That so many in DC adopt an aggressive and bellicose line, proves that "lazy sleazy" is still the norm. That's why DC is no longer much of a world capital, as negotiations proceed outside the beltway.
One of my better decisions, in retrospect, and assuming this is something for which I might take credit (should I chalk everything up to fate?), was to get involved with the network of people friendly to Bucky Fuller's enterprise, including with Bucky himself (we exchanged communications).
I wouldn't stop there though.
Getting mixed up with the Pythonistas was also a positive move, and so was mixing it up with the Centers Network (est), which gave me a boost, not financially so much as psychologically. Going to Princeton and studying philosophy there: also a good move.
However it's up to me to turn all these developments into assets i.e. it's my own powers of transformation that turn shit into gold and gold into shit, both of which substances should be taken as metaphoric in this rendering of deeper alchemy.
Fuller's role as a steersman (cybernetician, trimtabber) involved getting people into networking. Grunch of Giants is all about networks and networking, nowadays more structured thanks to social media, but still not in the mold of the LAWCAP corporation (LAWCAP being Fuller's coin, for "lawyer-capitalism").
Today I got to meet in person with another trimtabber, a member of the TrimTab Book Club no less, as I am. Richard Ramsay was in Portland for an annual conference he's been attending for decades. This time, he got an award from the chair for lifetime achievement, like an Academy Award in that discipline, of suicidology.
Richard was already an admirer of Bucky's, having heard him speak, and early on started phasing in some design science at the meme level e.g. by introducing the tetrahedron as a conceptual diagram. He's well known in his social circles, and appreciated by many, for being quirky and innovative in this way.
When Richard later found out how Fuller himself had been suicidal, and continued weaving that theme into his own autobiographical storytelling, the puzzle pieces fell into place.
I've been apprenticing in the field myself (informally, as someone with a longstanding interest in sociology and anthropology, and without seeking certification or credentials), since getting to know Richard and realizing its up to me to make the most of this opportunity.
Social mores (customs) around suicide vary by ethnicity and continue to morph. Richard has worked for decades with LivingWorks to help shape a consistent and constructive institutional response, at the global level, to this dire need for a social service.
In the fifty states the 988 help line has been inaugurated. Canada hopes to someday follow suit. The idea of a lifeline, a way to restart, is archetypal, embedded in lore, but how does it all work in practice?
We met in the hotel lobby and went out for pizza downtown. Richard had kindly assembled some conference materials (program, decals, even a pen) on my request, so that I might continue to study this emergent subculture. I learned a lot over our couple hours together.
Setting the area under said curve at one, and talking about probability distributions, along with pseudo-random number generation, is a part of it.
Something like:
For a more complete rendering, click here.
Let's start our GST analysis with the economics of an individual.
Are babies born into property? I'm thinking they'd have to reach their majority before their inheritance kicked in. Some call it law, others call it anthropology (me more in the latter camp). Some babies show up inside wealthy families and are slated to own the farm, if lucky enough live that long.
OK, but to what extent does a civilization provide high living standards to its hobos and vagabonds? The question is designed to give one pause, as, given stereotypes, the nomad has a hard life, that of a drifter. Nomadic tribes, such as gypsies, show up in fairy tales as shunned. Rock bands, with their roadies, like traveling circuses and carnivals, are sometimes romanticized, but just as often derided by the genres.
What I'm suggesting, however, is that the lifestyle of the wandering pilgrim could be a new normal. Not owning much property could become a satisfactory option for many.
The issue now though is that, if you drift, you'll probably have no mailing address for snail mail and probably can't interest a local bank in your business, or subscribe to healthcare programs. A smartphone and/or a laptop are not enough, to plug in to most infrastructure. Even if you have a room at the Hilton.
You'll be on a tourist visa or maybe a student visa. Somewhere, there needs to be a home where you're rooted. That's the expectation. But need it be? Snail mail could be delivered to your box through hotel services.
There's no reason in principle that an individual would have to own a lot of stuff, in order to get around, staying groomed and clean, well dressed and well fed, attending meetings, classes, sometimes teaching or instructing, other times learning or taking instruction.
Life in a global university need not entail amassing a garage full of stuff, shelves full of books, knickknacks and souvenirs. Or even if such cubby holes do exist, filled with items of personal value, their contents are appropriately storable and/or recyclable.
A fallacy associated with such speculations is the knee-jerk fear that a proposal is being floated that "everyone would have to live this way". The alarm goes out, warning that "private property" has been targeted for abolition.
Clearly, some lifestyles are all about serving in custodial capacities, vs-a-vs specific buildings, ships, other infrastructure. That's one kind of ownership, connected with stewardship. Mostly though, "owning" implies "an ability to sell". Yet many properties have value-adding capabilities unrelated to their salability or transferability.
In suggesting a life without title to real estate, need not be a life bereft of entitlements, we're simply stating the obvious: that having one's health and freedom, along with the means to stay out of harm's way, is in principle sufficiently satisfying to many people.
Consider those in religious orders who feel welcome to partake of the order's shared assets and facilities.
Are such people living in poverty necessarily?
Of course not, although their wealth might be more institutional than personal, one might say.
But is the mere existence of such a lifestyle option a threat to those enjoying home ownership? The implication oft seems to be those of high net worth, as conventionally accounted, are inevitably subsidizing those "of no means" (again, as conventionally assessed).
But we're saying a global student-teacher nomad could have work-study access privileges vs-a-vs luxurious apartments and/or rustic situations without any specific ownership relationship to these programs and/or accommodations.
How might we crew a business mobile, an exploratory vehicle for the Trucker Exchange (T4P), without having extravagant wealth?
The vehicle is an institutional property, one in a fleet, and is enjoyed and operated by its crew without being owned by it.
Some crew members might be holders of properties, here and there in the world. Others might not be engaged in those language games, and yet they still have access to healthcare.
Substack is letting me access the Seymour Hersh archive from two separate devices. As it should. I'm not cheating. I paid my yearly subscription just now. I'm also paying my $4 a month or whatever it is to the New York Times, which still runs articles I care about.
I'm reading Sy's The Nord Stream Ghost Ship published less than 24 hours ago. The concluding paragraph reads:
The expert had one final thought: “In the world of professional analysts and operators everyone will universally and correctly conclude from your story that the devilish CIA concocted a counter-op that is on its face so ridiculous and childish that the real purpose was to reinforce the truth.”
Exactly. As a trained scuba diver, NAUI certified (no doubt an expired credential), I was exposed to a lot of the lore. Gill Gilleland, my exMarine diving instructor, told us about the special gas mixtures some professional divers would use, to avoid getting the bends while bypassing lengthy stays in hyperbaric chambers.
I thought the more common protocol is to hang tanks on the line, such that ascending divers can stay at various depths, waiting for the pressurized nitrogen to slowly bleed out (boring). But why use nitrogen in the first place? From Sy's earlier article:
The pipelines ran more than a mile apart along a seafloor that was only 260 feet deep. That would be well within the range of the divers, who, operating from a Norwegian Alta class mine hunter, would dive with a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and helium streaming from their tanks, and plant shaped C4 charges on the four pipelines with concrete protective covers.
Actually, adding helium in place of some of the nitrogen may increase rather than decrease the need for decompression. The narcotic effects of nitrogen under pressure is what to avoid. I've been reading the Wikipedia article.
As a sports diver, I was familiar with the navy dive tables and kept to relatively shallow waters. That was easy in the Philippines, with great coral reefs beginning just beneath the surface.
That last paragraph though, jibes with my own analysis:
In my story line the USA is (a) innocent of wrongdoing and (b) actively pursuing the perpetrators, in part by making their cover stories ever less believable, ever more paper thin, to the point of transparent.
Sometimes when doing medical research, you use colored or even radioactive dyes to trace a system or condition.
Analogously, it's sometimes interesting to see which media outlets will repeat an obviously phony cover story, one deliberately designed to have gaping holes, if one has an operating hole detector. These media outlets are catering to an audience that doesn't necessarily want the truth. They -- the owners, editors, readers and so on -- want to be remembered for their loyalties, their obedience to specific powers. They're placing bets on which factions will still have the upper hand at the end of the day.
This needle in a haystack blog is itself a media outlet, one could say. Knowing something about the difficulties in diving to over 200 feet, for long enough periods to pack explosives around a pipeline, I'm not like your average clueless German journalist. Nor am I an obsequious American, eager to show off my loyalty to the King or Emperor.
I'm closer to Garland Nixon in thinking the conspirators behind the pipeline sabotage have no inherent right to represent themselves as avatars of a constitutional democracy. They're closer to British imperialists.
From my own email outbox:
My own bias, when wearing a nationalist pro-USA hat (not necessarily red), is to finger the Brits as our primary adversary. The Revolutionary War was fought against Brits. The Brits attempted to destroy the USA in 1812 as well. There's some evidence the assassination of Lincoln was the result of a plot by British intel. British Petroleum (BP) did damage to the Gulf of Mexico that's still beyond the scope of settled science to fully assess.
If I were asked to rank "enemies of the USA" from high to low, I'd definitely rank the Brits higher than the Russians or certainly the Chinese. A great fear the Brits seem to have is better relations between the USA and Russia.
Totally quirky, I realize. That's why I tend to save it for my blogs. I should add here that it's British reflex-conditioning I'm up against, i.e. bots (like soulless corporations, e.g. Pearson), and not thinking people. I'd like to save a next generation of British school kids from succumbing to inferior brainwashing.
