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.

Codesters with a Class

House of Tomorrow

Wanderers 2019.5.28

I'm filing this under Wanderers, however the weekly meeting at Linus Pauling House was short, as only three people showed, and quickly dispersed. I had intended to be on time, 7 PM sharp, but got caught up catching up on Brexit videos.  This Memorial Day weekend was simultaneously a big election time across Europe.

I joined two of the remaining Wanderers at a different location, where I learned about alloy-making and lathes, especially when used to make screws, or, more accurately, threads.  Barry is an accomplished machinist and blisses out using tools every day.  I should visit his maker space again sometime.

I've been taking in EU videos (a genre), thanks to Youtube.  Ted Turner's original vision for CNN included playing news shows from around the world.  In the era of broadcast and cable, you had expert editors connecting the dots for you.  What we have nowadays is video on demand, but it's not like we only get the raw intelligence.  Editors make Youtubes too, and help us weight whatever else we're watching.

Presumably, if we're responsive to feedback, some sort of gradient descent will occur.  I just slipped into machine learning language, but lets remember those "perceptrons" were designed to emulate us. Chelsea Manning would understand.

In contrast to Barry, whose dad was also a machinist, my experience with large metal-working machines is mostly janitorial.

One summer, I did cleanup around the various gigantic tools used to build a Tokamak fusion reactor prototype.  This was at the James Forrestal Campus off Route 1, near Princeton, where I lived at the time.  I mostly used compressed air, to blast metalic residue from hard-to-sweep places, and a squeeze bottle of soap and paper towels, to make the machines shiny.

What I notice from the EU videos is how so-called supranationals show up in debates as virtual nations. They may not have contiguous land masses, but they do have private control of many buildings and campuses, warehouses, docks, ships.

The psycho-sovereignties in question (mental complexes, outwardly expressed) feel they're getting locked into a larger military-industrial system. Locals feel they're either helpless victims (of more global forces) or are at least fighting, by organizing, to regain some control over the local situation.

Teaching Python with Codesters

I started my day doing a longer version of the above, but then realized I'd referred to the Peters Projection as a Phillips Projection throughout.

I didn't feel like patching it and started over, after doing my afternoon stint as a middle school teacher.

The content covered in that stint is what most of this video is about.

Anti BDS

Let's do CarrotMob instead!

Peace Program Meetup

By "Peace Program" I'm not referring to AFSC's, which closed shop in Portland awhile ago.  That particular 501(c)(3) has had to morph over the years.  I used to serve as one of those flown to Philadelphia every year, for the annual meeting.  In my case, the Yearly Meeting footed the bill, but in other cases, the Quaker delegates get reimbursed.

I'm referring, informally, to the Linus Pauling Center for Science, Peace and Health, on Hawthorne Boulevard, and the talks that it sometimes hosts.  Yes, ISEPP is another 501(c)(3) I've served with, my wife the bookkeeper before that.  A well-known and much beloved lecture series, organized and staged by Terry Bristol, funded by generous donors, kept Portlanders way more in the loop than one might presume, for an "out west" town.

Dr. Peter Bechtold is outside both those circuits (Quakers and ISEPP) yet he appears at the Linus Pauling House rather regularly to update us on what's going on in the world.  Oregon / Cascadia, in joining the Union, surrendered its foreign relations (one might call them) to those writing the official narrative of the country in the District of Columbia.

Peter knows officialdom quite well and is highly traveled.  He was showing a map of Libya when I walked in, then Sudan, then Iran.  He's been studying these places for decades, has briefed diplomats and two star generals.  He's been a fixture around the State Department, and later Portland State.

My closest connection to Portland State was through Dr. Charles Bolton, still active duty when I moved back to Portland in the 1980s, and lived in his basement.  He later became an emeritus and loved to overlook the Columbia Gorge from his two story "cabin" (small house), across from Hood River.

That was one of the best view properties to which I've ever had frequent access.  The deck of Don Wardwell's Meliptus scores highly as well, at the other extreme (right on the Columbia, versus high above looking down).

To summarize, Bechtold is frustrated by how our Lower48ers just don't have much sense of history, or geography (they go together) and that leaves them naively vulnerable to others' agendas.  I'd agree, but also point out that Lower48ers have abdicated responsibility (one could put it that way) by giving moneyed interests a simple API (as we geeks say) in the form of the USG control panel.

If you know how to pay to play, you'll get the USG to do some awesome things on your behalf.  Most Lower48ers wouldn't know where to begin in that regard.  It's not their game.  They get to watch on TV as spectators.

Case in point:  some "bitch boats" (paraphrasing candidate Gabbard), pimped out by the prez, are currently heading towards Persia for the express purpose of stirring up trouble.  The civilian bozos have war on their minds and hope to pin the Pentagon in some wrestling position, where lighting a fuse is the only way to save face.

Public opinion has to be properly prepped first.  Which takes us back to Dr. Bechtold's thesis:  that we're a nation ever willing to be hoodwinked.  Been then, we're completely out of the loop anyway.  Portlanders haven't favored any of the District's great adventures since and including the Vietnam experience.  This wasn't Nixon country.  We boasted moderate Republicans, perhaps a vanished species I don't know.

Of course I'm oversimplifying.  Oregon's rural areas have a different take on world affairs.  They don't get to go to ISEPP lectures, or talks like the one tonight, which is too bad.

We always thought radio and television would do a better job of turning the airwaves into more of a public university, but the licenses mostly went elsewhere.  Universities got a few low powered stations is all.  But of course now we have the internet, and new forms of curriculum sharing.

Recent Studies

Leela is crashed on the couch, napping, here on a visit.  She used to live here, with a different name.  The new name is part of her business persona, as a kind of yoga teacher.  I refer to as a religious studies major, which she is, in this recent story on Medium.

I'm hitting the limits of an older version of OS X, wondering if I really need the latest Homebrew in order to get the latest MySQL.

What will the newer version do that I need?  I'm just a code school type teacher these days.  For the kind of stuff I'm doing, the older version should be sufficient, if I need it at all.

Seeking relief from my upgrade woes, I went back into perusing Youtube.

I've got a Jerry Kroth video playing in the background, introducing his new book, about crop circles. 
Dr. Kroth,  Associate Professor Emeritus (UCSC) is not afraid to venture beyond the fringes of accepted and/or settled science.

He's into spinning some theories, asserting some of these patterns need to be decoded, as they allude the specialized science.  One of these patterns, he claims, is a diagram of Vitamin A.

Are the aliens trying to be helpful, drawing attention to Vitamin A deficiency around the world?

He just put the new Youtube up today, and the Youtube recommender flagged it, given I've watched his stuff before. 

This morning, as I fixed breakfast for Carol (recently turned 90), I took in a PBS documentary on Andrew Carnegie.  The movie explores his relationship with labor unions and workers more generally.  Lots of details, talking heads.

Connecting these dots a little more, Kroth is one of those in academia who looks into UFOs as well. He goes in the same Venn Diagram circle as Daniel Sheehan in that sense.  Dr. Sheehan has his "octave of world views" wherein we progress to encounters with alien intelligence.

That same Venn Diagram circle might encompass the Thrive subculture, led by Foster Gamble.

Camp Crypto

We respect "jobs" and "work" enough to pay people to do them, but think "study" -- as in "work-study" -- is not work and therefore it's no one's job to get educated. Make studying paid work, and you've solved a lot of problems.

From current studies:

My small campus tests should teach us a lot. We could have a cash-like crypto and credits in the more academic sense, which nevertheless have currency-like attributes. 

Could be that when you join the camp (which is not a prison camp) you put your usual wallet (with any outside currency), charge cards and phone in a secure locker. The camp cellphone will come pre-equipped with your wallet and apps. 

When you leave the camp in about three weeks (average stay for this facility) you'll get your stuff back while returning the camp gear (you probably get to keep some samples though i.e. a "swag bag" -- product placement is part of the business model).

Black Mirror Episode?

Magnitsky died in a Russian prison being held on charges relating to working for this UK oligarch who was originally Putin's fan but later claims to be his greatest enemy. We all heard a lot about Magnitsky when that famous Trump Tower meeting with the Russian lobbyist occurred. She was not there to talk dirt on Hillary and everyone got super bored, as oligarch squabbles over big money and reputation backstabbing are too ordinary in those circles, where syndicates demonize one another incessantly (Hollywood is more friendly? Maybe all that Scientology is working for some?).

Browder says his lawyer was clubbed to death while chained to his death bed in prison, by the very people Magnitsky was accusing of financial fraud, as Browder's legal representative, or lawyer. But then there's a counter-narrative which is what makes this a rabbit hole, somewhat by definition (a vortex of contesting stories converging towards the same truths).

We heard about Browder again when Putin and Trump met in privacy in Helsinki and Putin offered to help out with the Mueller indictment of the GRU guys, in exchange for some interviews with Browder. No one would be in custody or under immediate threat of extradition. Maybe I'm wrong about the details of Putin's statesman-like offer (there's a treaty about nations giving each other mutual support in criminal investigations), as I was not privy to the meeting and back then had not yet connected the dots between Browder and Magnitsky. Trump comes out of the meeting saying this could work, probably knowing less about Browder (or Magnitsky) than I do at this point. Too boring. But he's soon told that Browder is Putin's number one foe and it all clicks into place. Who knows.

Anyway, fascinating stuff. The Magnitsky Act sails through Congress on the basis of this compelling testimony from Browder, and becomes the convenient hammer, the justification needed, to turn the screws everywhere on the Axis of Evil, always shifting (remember BRIC?), based on whatever the public will believe. The public is infinitely gullible and has rarely applied the brakes. Now that more of the public is being coerced into homelessness and unforgiving debt, the political model is to drop them from the unemployment roles and make counting their votes harder, as your tent on the sidewalk is not a registered voter address, by definition. Problem solved re that democracy business, a pipe dream. Back to the oligarch infighting channel, the one we most love to sponsor.

Facebook Rant

When a Medal of Freedom winner publishes a book saying "the USA we have known is now bankrupt and extinct" and that doesn't make headlines, we know right away that journalism lacks integrity. Walter Kaufmann (Princeton University) warned us about journalism. I sent "headlines we'd like to see" to WaPo at the time. "Medal of Freedom Winner Declares USA Bankrupt!" I was living in DC back then, making trouble with my typewriter.

WIRED and such have little choice but to fall into the trap of calling him a crackpot (as he hoped they would, Brer Rabbit style ("please don't throw me into the briar patch")). When you call someone with that many patents, awards, degrees, published works a "crackpot" you pay a price, as what does that make the rest of us by comparison? Setting the bar a little high are we? Idiocracy ensues, with WIRED paving the way.

So now we're in the situation where a thinker advertised to the world for his positive futurism (officially) is not read in schools because too much of a threat for speaking truth to power.

Like how could one possibly claim to know or teach American History and/or Literature and not include that bit about a top celebrity turning a top subversive? How can we claim to have any "public schools" whatsoever when the geometry for which Bucky was explicitly given an award is not shared? If you don't read Grunch of Giants in high school, let alone college, you must not have had real teachers. Phony baloney is what you got. Oh, and now they want you to pay back those loans? For what again? For the heritage you never got?

Instead of indulging in outrage, I can just sit back and laugh, knowing privatization is complete, the public schools are all dead, and Bucky was entirely correct in his prophesy and proclamation (as close to a declaration as we'll ever need).

The corporate media need very much to prop up their tawdry version of Uncle Sam (an imperialist psychopath), lest we see through it all and make Exxon pay for its own team of goons, rather than tapping into a privatized mercenary force funded by unrepresented Americans who's heritage was denied them in their schooling. 

They don't even share Bucky with the military do they? Grunch of Giants at West Point? Probably only the CIA reads it (required) as it's mentioned so often.

After two generations of not teaching easy simple streamlining tetravolume stuff to 4th or 8th  or 12th graders (already certified useful by highest authorities), I think it's more than obvious we don't have a free press or a real public education system.

I feel free to endlessly mock the true believers and their pathetic substitute for real learning.

*  *  *

It's not like I'm saying that just because MF winner publishes yadda yadda, that we must all agree it's true, i.e. "yes of course the US is bankrupt and extinct, the great Bucky hath spoken." 

Not at all. No one has that kind of power. The book jacket calls it satire.

It's just a once-adulated, much-awarded, icon of positive futurism, did in fact write that, and gave his reasoning and context, and then was awarded the MF (not tossed in jail). 

It's the historical facts of the matter I'm underlining, not that we have to treat Fuller's writing as edicts.

These facts are what're so amazing and crazy-interesting, especially when you factor in there's a newfangled kind of geometry, and geodesic domes and... wow. Why not in schools?  Are we really that afraid of our own past?

Lets just share the facts. Then be skeptical and critical, say why he's wrong and so on.

But to just claim he's a crackpot, so we're justified in our silence, no that doesn't fly it all. 

Too double standard. 

If Bucky's a crackpot, after so many faculty positions, awards, patents, inventions, then what are we, who think that way about him?

The Redacted Investigation

I keep going back to this story. Why not pursue?

It'd be like that Skripal case, where the accused GRU agents, posing as tourists to Salisbury (as if there were anything there) smuggled nerve agent in a sealed perfume bottle, latter discovered by hapless dumpster divers. 

Brits saw through their cover story immediately, having grown up on John le Carré spy novels and knowing a "likely story" when they see one. 

Put all these GRU guys, who supposedly jumped to their feet when Trump said "get those emails" (Hillary's missing), on CNN (like they did for Osama). 

They'd have to send a team to Russia and true, you're not in jail in America where the cowards threaten you even before trial. I don't want sleaze balls getting involved.

The reaction when Putin made this offer was "no fair, the president trusts Putin more than us". In light of what the president considered a "witch hunt" this was in no way surprising.

Still, it seems the Mueller investigation had nothing to lose by at least gathering more evidence. The GRU guys would be confronted with the same forensic evidence that convinced the grand jury. 

We could all learn a ton about the technology used to leave or remove fingerprints, as when trying to conceal one's own moves and/or frame others.

The public has proved that it has an appetite for this kind of stuff. Trump saw a way forward with potentially high TV ratings. Is it really too late?

I guess the FBI (special prosecutor) closed the investigation without ever caring to actually interview the indicted foreign nationals. They wanted to extradite first, get the alleged criminals into custody, where they could be put in solitary and otherwise mistreated (ala Chelsea Manning).

Obviously the Russians were not about to turn over their own military officers to a foreign power on flimsy charges, before ever seeing a shred of forensic evidence. 

Dismissing Putin's offer out of hand, after the US president said he thought it worth pursuing, proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the president has very limited power. 

Meme Spotting

The internet is abuzz with rumors, that Yang Gang is hoping to "steal" the mascot of the Trumpians, Pepe the Frog. The rumor is sketchy for a host of reasons, starting with Gamers who've adopted Pepe were not, to a player, loyal to that one camp to begin with.

Pepe grew up alongside Annoying Orange, after Evil Bert got too scary (mixed up with Al Qaeda, another story).  He needs to live on beyond the Trump Era, and so if he takes on some Yang vibe, is that really a radical transectomy, or more a re-shade and new slant?

A typical scenario for a Gamer is I'm doing well in a cool basement, holding down some part time work, underemployed but addicted to gaming anyway, and that's a lot of work in itself.  Youtubes show what a lot of work it is.

Then some foreign policy wonks from Groupthink Inc. come along, and whisper in the ear of some all-gullible Columbia (the name of a District, and a mythical figure), that she needs to yank our boys away from their computer games and deploy them in Middle Eastern deserts, to right some wrong that's being done. "Go shock and awe someone son" says the latest "brought to you by..." Uncle Sam.

Many troops witnessed first hand that "doing good" and "spreading democracy" had a lot more to do with spreading terror, and that families back home were paying the price.

The Tulsi Gabbard followers include an overlapping constituency, many stuck overseas to this day, and deprived of much representation.  No wonder there's a Yang-Tulsi meme going.

Having siblings overseas in harm's way is no way to encourage concentration in school.

These wars needed to have been necessary, in retrospect, to justify the continued allegiance of the eligible classes of male and now also female resident, whether citizens or in line for said status.  Keeping that narrative intact has proved difficult among the English speakers (the UK has gone through some similar soul searching).

When Yang Gang comes along with new Silicon Valley think, and a kind of economics relating more to the thermodynamics of Planet Earth than we're used to, and fully conversant with automation, then Wall Street gets nervous.  The financial capitals have their own economics which they understand, and which is less like electrical engineering (with a solar power socket).

Pepe might be safely symbolic in the traditional financial sector, which has gained control of governments on many levels, but Silicon Valley has its own metaphysics, inheriting as much from Asia as the European families.  The Empire State is more comfortable with a mindset it well understands, even if it poses as despising same.  At least Trump's main focus is the Middle East.

Yang is happy to discuss his race, and what it's like to be bullied, but how that gives him no right to say he knows what it's like to be black, and stigmatized for it.  That part of his banter is nicely worked out, and then race becomes more of a non-issue.

Sure we're allowed to notice people's "race" (whatever that means to us), and talk about it (somewhat differently).  He's not at war with the many vernaculars.  He's comfortable with colloquialisms.

In that regard, Yang is media-fluent in a way Trump surprisingly is as well (for someone that old -- but groomed by TV to be ratings-worthy).

I don't see myself as the answer man, when it comes to how Pepe will tip.  I'm purposely not reading a lot of opinions on this topic, as I'd prefer to think it through independently.  I'll be watching.

I do know that a lot of draft age youths would prefer $1000 a month to play computer games, some of which could be educational and rewarding in other ways.  Ditto their parents and siblings.

As a Coffee Shops Network avatar, with gaming for charity blueprints, I'm obviously not trying to fight the Gamer community.  Quakers Play Quake is one of my imaginary bumper stickers.

Yang and I share an appreciation for truckers and trucking (the industry).  He doesn't know about Truckers for Peace (citizen diplomats, getting academic credit, with truck stops the new embassies in some ways -- including for the so-called "virtual" or "diaspora" nations).

On a First Day

The downstairs office doubles as a guest room for Carol, who is more than a guest (she's my mom), whereas the back room with all the telecommunications doubles as a guest room.  That leave's the daughters' bedroom upstairs, vacated by both, to serve as a full time office (there's no bed).  I feature it in my taxes, if that still matters.  It used to.

Said Carol wants to meet and greet an old friend moving to Portland, however her sleep schedule is such that making it to Multnomah Friends is far from easy.  At the moment, the jury is still out.  We've missed the main worship, which starts in four minutes, but then there's still social hour.  This is Meeting for Business day, meaning they'll be having a potluck.

My long term guest Lindsey, since departed and part time in Nepal, pioneered using the half finished basement as digs.  The telecomm office was leaking back then (literally), as you'll find out if you explore my Flickr album.  We both had our relationships with other people.  Having a floor between us worked well.  Later Jen moved into Carol's office.  She lives in LA.

Both Jen and Lindsey, and later Melody, were my housemates when Occupy rolled around.  I'd lived with several housemates in college, and afterwards. That Harrison Street resembled my previous lifestyle (e.g. 2 Dickinson Street, Princeton University) is perhaps not all that surprising.

Our kitchen had long been a hub for Food Not Bombs, more for auxiliary storage than front lines prep (church kitchens are much bigger).  During Occupy, Melody and Lindsey help FNB establish a serving site, which later moved when all those paper plate and disposable utensil people showed up.  I never moved to a tent, and instead maintained my logistical role as a food deliverer.

If you've curious about the Occupy chapter, it's documented in detail from my unique perspective in these blogs.  As for the global phenomenon, I don't know that there was one.  Attempts to connect Arab Spring to what was happening on Wall Street, in Portland, in Syria... I wasn't one to see those as tightly connected.  I had my OPDX point of view.