DOGE Thyself

Speaking of Superman, the Tai-Chi based MuscleMan app I purchased, I thought for a one time fee, was actually purchased on subscription. 

That's what everyone wants these days, for you to keep buying the same thing over and over, be it a workout app or Windows, or something on top of Windows (like a workout app -- mine was for iOS however).

In a way I got my money's worth in getting sucker punched for not reading the fineprint. By the time PayPal and taken a monthly rental check, it was too late to realize my mistake. Score one for Muscleman. 

That got me poking around in my PayPal account bowels, where I found some other questionable autopay  subscriptions, although I think most were simply leftovers. But they were marked "active" nonetheless. 

Time to "doge myself" and counter my own bad habits, time to clean up the autopay mess.

Now in another sense, it is only I who have this view, that I was somehow being deceived. 

I'm sure MuscleMan has an army of coaches, AI and for real, along with a huge catalog of how to keep oneself fit. I was paying for access to this valuable library. The O'Reilly School I taught at had a similar model: when you're ready for coaching, we're here (and we're not bots).

Silly me for imagining anything so simple as one time fee was our agreement. 

That's what I mean by "learning my lesson". 

Maybe those with eyes wide open going in, already fully committed to becoming proficient in Tai Chi, shedding pounds, restoring fitness, are willing to pay a gym-level monthly fee just for a smartphone app and whatever trainers it connects them with. 

That's discretionary spending I'd rather spend another way, like on a memory stick, or a tank of gas. Even a real gym membership might be the way to go -- I've had many already. I'm really not at all sickly or weak. I'm nursing a back muscle I strained, and hauling a heavy body around, but I have the muscles for it.

Doge Thyself!  You'll be glad you did.

Superman (movie review)

I was on the fence about seeing this one, as I’ve got my Bayesian bias against superhero movies, somewhat newly acquired maybe, thanks to over saturation by DC and Marvel. 

That’s just my own personal bias mind you, as I have nothing against others loving superhero movies and pigging out on them as a central part of their movie-intake diet. 

I have a similar stance towards alcohol: me, I’m not into it these days, but I have some in the kitchen for guests and have no problem people enjoying alcoholic drinks. I’m not into feeling morally superior. It’s more like “I’ve had my share” and it’s not a punishment to refrain, just another life chapter.

Anyway, back to the movie, I enjoyed it a lot. It reminded me that cartoon extremes of action, of violence, such as superhero films feature, are also meant to be extended to the plot. We have all the basics of the Superman universe, sharply rendered, but then we permute it a bit, rotate it, move it in some dimensions. Like Louis is well aware of who Superman is in real life, I mean at work.

This movie has the inter=dimensional wormholes, the evil genius, tortured by jealousy, the well-acted Lex Luthor… but then we have a whole caste of superhumans, of which Superman is but one. The Earthlings have become acclimated to comic book levels of disaster as their city is routinely visited by various monsters, against which Superman must defend.

The biggest envelope push is not Louis knowing the ET’s secret, but the ET’s midlife crisis vs-a-vs how his real ET parents actually envisioned a career for him, a future. He had only ever heard the first part of their message and had been shaped by his human foster parents into a good and noble type of character. That’s who he was. He had chosen that identity. Finding out his ET heritage was not in alignment with his personal values was a coming of age story for an older guy. The lesson: we may go through “coming of age” transitions at any age. We morph into a next chapter.

So back to the top, if I was on the fence, what tipped the scales and got me to go see it? My friend on Telegram, whom I don’t get to see in person anymore due to distance, said it was worth seeing. That was enough. Bagdad is close by. Why not?

Eurasian Affairs

I don’t know how it is in your coffee clutch or coven, but out here in mine, it seems like using Ukraine as a staging ground for long range missiles into Russia is retroactively the justification for why, from Russia’s point of view, Ukraine must be demilitarized, i.e. purged of NATO assets. 

If NATO wanted to stick to its narrative that Ukraine would not be used for such aggressive purposes, then this hardly seems a way to inspire confidence. 

But come to think of it, NATO never made such promises. On the contrary, the whole point of the 2014 coup, enabled by the celebrated Azov group, pumped up by Nuland, Bidens et al, was to teach Russia a lesson in humility. 

Now that the USSR had fallen, the time had come for a global reckoning, or so some deluded neocons (including “McCaine democrats”) imagined.

Now we’re hearing that Germany is keen to enter the battle against Russia on the side of Azov. If Ukraine is to host more NATO missiles, then let them be of German origin, or at least design. 

Apparently there’s a demographic in Germany that feels encouraged by these moves.

I think all factions with empathy for the Ukrainians are eager to stop the air war and bring an end to armed drones wreaking havoc across the land. However there’s a lot of inertia to any war of this scale. The option to simply stop is not there. 

Trains can’t stop on a dime either, which is why some train wrecks that may have looked preventable to casual observers, really weren’t after a certain point.

I’m thinking the eastern Ukrainians have voted with their feet, hearts and minds, and for the most part do not regret their decision to rejoin the Russian federation. The UK does not acknowledge that Donbassers have the right or even the jurisdiction to make such a choice.

But then English has not been an imperial language for a couple hundred years at this point. The Americans have always spoken in many languages. I’d say the Donbass has time on its side as it continues with writing its own history, with elections, with redevelopment projects.

The idea that Germany would step up to the plate as a chief belligerent suggests its people are reconciled to living with wartime rhetoric 24/7. 

So far, the Americans are fighting back, demonstrating a sharp unwillingness to be manipulated by the usual suspects. But then Germany is a much smaller place with a relatively tiny inner circle.

The A-Team Code

:: Ant vs Bee ::

:: high roaders ::

Perambulating

One root meaning of Wanderer is "flaneur", let’s say the random idle gentleman, perhaps a lady in disguise, out with a sketch pad and an eye for what’s happening. Recreational curating. Tourism. 

That’s one reading, and for me, it well fits. 

I wander with my trusty camera, and today also an iPad, around town. In my youth, middle school era, my parents allowed me to roam about Rome. I’d spend some days exploring, hopping one bus, then another. No phone.

Nowadays I’m with phone, although I’m not really using its camera. I have a separate device, somewhat bulky, but it’s my habit. I’ve gone through a series of such cameras, the kind you can just point and shoot, letting it take care of most variables except framing. That’s a typical tool of the flaneur.

Today’s route retraced last week’s trek at the start, so I could pick up where I’d left off on the theme of Rust as a motif. From there I explored the Lloyd Center, with one skater, with another doing floor exercises. They had a coach as I recall.

I roamed over to the Lloyd Center Max station, heading west, to the last stop on the east side, at Moda Center, the swoopy enclosed stadium that replaced the old Memorial Coliseum as a primary venue, although the latter still stands and does service, such as by hosting high school graduation ceremonies. 

I used the Memorial Coliseum as a skating rink, in an earlier chapter, having taken to inline skates as a curious hobby, encouraged by Tom Connolly. I’d circle on smooth concrete, wearing helmet and knee pads, Wrist pads maybe? Memory fades. I remember falling a few times but not getting hurt.

From Moda Center I made my way along well-marked walkways to the East Side Esplanade, a well-thought-out lane for pedestrians and bicyclists mainly. Runners. I think I saw one mono-board or whatever those are called. The bicycles may be mechanically enhanced i.e. battery power assisted.

My walk took me south from the Steel Bridge, east entrance in view, to the Hawthorne Bridge, along a path that’s partly floating and includes bridges. I’ve gone through these same paths as a cyclist many times, but today was about being a ped, and using TriMet, more like my middle school days when I’d roam in Rome.

I mistook a bus 6 for a 14, so ended up adding another walking segment from the eastern shoreline of the Willamette, to Asylum central, meaning the food court by that name, named for the Oregon State mental hospital that had a large property here, a campus with running streams, not some dreary urban structure you might have been imagining. 

This side of the river was all very bucolic back then. I’m drawing from well researched accounts, not sharing personal experience, as I was as yet unborn in this chapter.

The 14 got me back to The Bagdad from which its a short and familiar jaunt home. I had my shoulder bag leather briefcase in which I stored the iPad, camera, brush, kombucha bottle, a random reading from my shelves.

Silicon Forest (not Valley)

Yesterday I went dog walking with a peer engineer, as in software engineer, a loosely used term as there were so many routes to get here, me through applications development for nonprofits and data science types, him through psychometrics and government lab work (Sandia I think it was). We'd both been on the same code school's faculty. He helped me find my way to Clarusway, a source of recent teaching gigs.

Anyway, we were chatting about the difference between NaN and None in Python, walking Sydney and Quinn, enjoying the perfect weather, when I realized various new things, meaning I had some insights, sparked by what we were talking about, a free ranging conversation.

Towards evening, I tackled the task of rounding out my online profile a little more, as the requests or queries need their data to hit against. Lots about me out there, but maybe not always as helpfully cross-indexed as it could be, and I'm in a catalytic position when it comes to connecting loose ends.

For example, I cross-posted my reddit account to DobbsTown, a Mastodon server. I also wired my right side main access panel, on the right margin of World Game (Grain of Sand), to include said reddit and tiktok connections. The content dates back but the links are brand new.

Speaking of branding, it's hardly lost on the market researchers and PR types, that Silicon Forest and Silicon Valley have remained quite distinct in Geek Lore. The former is gravitating into Cascadia, the bioregion (not really a political entity) whereas Valley boys and girls are seeing dollar signs in more military contracting. Washington State gets a lot of that, whereas Oregon's role is more subtle (think field testing), to the point where Oregon actually advertises as a "peace state" in some circles (hint: WILPF). We also have better land use planning than you'll find in many states (another source of pride).

The story goes like this: the Oregon Trail, coming west from the Great East (lots of peeps seeking a better life, refugees from Euro-think), came to a fork somewhere in Montana or one of those. Keep going along a northern latitude, and reach Oregon, with its lush and secure agricultural lifestyle, or turn south and wager your future against the likelihood of striking it rich, laying your claim to fame and fortune. The former sounds relatively prosaic and vaguely communist, whereas the latter is Ayn Rand, bold, heroic, venture capitalist.

Feeding my story (above) is an example: a true life story featuring a young, dashing CEO, looking to base a startup here in Portland, but finding the venture capital culture close to non-existent relative to what he was used to in strike-it-rich California. His idea was to use AI to provide a look ahead feature in any browser that could steer junior away from pornography, a see-no-evil genre product. 

The only problem: he was twenty years ahead of his time (this all happened a long time ago). 

VCs tend to live in the future. Portlanders, given all the rain, and Powell's Books, tend to be bookworms, as likely to live in the past as anywhere. Getting Portlanders to march towards the future is difficult when so many of them still believe they're in Nirvana already (even in the wake of the Joker Riots). 

When PDXers do get around to futurism, it looks like socialism, given half of them are latent Swedes and Finns and see society more as a design problem begging for elegant solutions, than as a source of melodrama and outrage and Protestant moralizing about who deserves what they get.

Memories & History

The Google Earth close up view is not the same as Street View. The structures look a bit cartoony given a computer doing its best to data structure the surfaces. I’m not the expert (never had a job with Google Earth). This is a classic Portland food pod, named Asylum in honor of the facility run by Dr. Hawthorne when this whole area was still more park like, all green with running streams. Oregon State contracted to have its first state mental hospital between SE 12th & Hawthorne and the river. We tend to call the whole area Asylum District, commercially if not officially.

 

Now I’ve switched to actual Street View to capture this facade further north a few blocks from the Asylum food pod. I used to work in the basement of this building when its top floor served as CUE headquarters, CUE being Center for Urban Education. We had a Mac lab in the basement, with LaserWriters, state of the art at the time and a grant from Apple to the nonprofit community in Portland. We shared the tech with a wide variety of NGOs and provided training in its use. That was Steve Johnson’s responsibility more than mine. My job was to train still-working or job-seeking seniors in office-relevant computer skills. We mostly used PCs (IBMs or clones thereof) and left the desktop publishing skills to the others. I’d use the Mac publishing equipment myself for various fun projects e.g. Project Renaissance.

 

Further north along the same street: Revolution Hall, formerly Washington High School (where the young Linus Pauling was enrolled, if oft absent from) and in my own writings HQS (Ministry of Education) for OPDX (Occupy Portland) during a time when said building as spooky-ghostly-abandoned. That served my purposes just fine, as I was simply including it in my curriculum writing to help anchor it geographically.

    

This Google Earth view marks all three locations: Asylum food pod, CUE building, Revolution Hall, with blue balloons, against the backdrop of much of Portland, Willamette River running south to north (bottom to top).

28 Years Later (movie review)

The title had been on the Bagdad marquee for a while, but I hadn’t bothered to search it up. When I finally did some homework, I realized it was in the ballpark of horror sci-fi. That genre interests me, notwithstanding so much slop (nothing new with AI), so I headed out for the matinee. On a hot summer day.

I’ll say up front that I watched it with English subtitles. Not that I need subtitles (English is my first and pretty much only language, unless we say American is something else) but on the first Tuesday of every month or something like that, Bagdad screens the film with captions on. Hearing impaired and/or non-English speakers wanting to learn English, might come to such shows. As it is, I probably picked up on a few lines I might’ve missed, given the accents and everything.

The movie is set in a future England where the virus has ravaged the population and the mainland (Europe and Scandinavia) have quarantined the place. However, a tiny island off the big one, connected only by a tenuous land bridge, has allowed a small English-speaking tribe to keep themselves uninfected. At low tide, the land bridge appears and in principle one of the infected could come storming in their direction. They have defensive fortifications, and bows and arrows. No guns in this universe. No wait, the Swedish have them (we meet up with a Swedish patrol on the mainland, Erik et al).

As I remarked to a friend over iced green tea this morning, having taken the bus, I see movies “guided mediations” in a lot of ways (I used the word "tantric"), and in the hands of a skilled writer and director, the process may serve a given viewer’s mental healing, even if the content is highly traumatic, as it tends to be in this genre (“alas poor Erik” says the doctor at one point). 

In this case, I’d say that was the case: the writing was conscious and well informed by the human condition. Theater students will immediately appreciate the Oedipal triangle, a three body problem we always only explore, never really get to the bottom of, except in a love and death sense.

The protagonist is a twelve year old boy and it’s a coming of age story, the kind my late wife treasured, but probably would not have in this case, as not everyone is in a mood for movie therapy. I’m reminded of Poor Thing. 

I’m also reminded a new Wes Anderson movie was slated to come out this summer, have I missed it already?

Upon arrival at The Bagdad I queried the ticket seller whether this was part of a series and he replied very intelligibly about there being previous movies in this same universe but I wouldn’t need to see them all in order. I pass that on to those wondering the same thing. And yes, the way the film ended left said universe wide open to another rendering, not unlike the worlds of Mad Max or Planet of the Apes.