We Shouldn't Be Here

More and better evidence suggests the Moon's origin was a collision event. The scenario is the proto-Earth was struck by a Mars-sized planetoid called Theia. I don't why proto-Earth doesn't have a name.

Large chunks of an alien material are found within the Earth. Rock samples with an entirely differeent chemistry, proto-Earth rocks, have been found. Not surprising the way the early solar system (or any system) has stuff flying everywhere. So, what about proto-Earth?

Find the mass of proto-Earth. Mass of  Proto-Earth + Theia = Earth + Moon. The Moon is 1/6 Earth's mass. Theia was theorized to be Mars sized and so 1/2 of Earth Mass. So, X +.5 = 1.666, subtract from both sides and the mass of Proto-Earth was 1.16, slightly heavier than Earth, heavier still due to a lot of debris escaped. Collisions models suggest not just one strike but multiples from debris before things settled down into what we got now.

If there had been no collision, what would be here? Well, let's talk about the snow line. Infant stars lighting up a baby solar system produce heat and light that keeps volatile chemical compounds and molecules from condensing, volatile things like water. Planets formed within the snow line have only chemically bound water. Planets formed outside the snow line have lots of water.

So a heavy metal planet like Mercury or Venus, a bigger sister to Venus, is what our old girl looks like. 

No life.

If I were an alien, I would not be expecting Earth to be there. Oh sure, it is not an abomination or anomaly, but still quite rare and easy to dismiss or overlook. We shouldn't be here at all.

Other things. I finally mounted a bronze piece I did about two or three years ago. My face sitting at the bottom of my locker. What I mean by that is I did a plaster cast of my face as a class demo, and then used it a few times in slip cast clay and wax-to-bronze before it fell apart. It didn't produce a very good likeness for a rushed demo so I had fun with the casts instead. 

Our Founder. 2025 Bronze. 

For reference, here I am currently.

The Gusto

Yesterday I go to the grocery store. I walk in the cart vestibule and I glance to my left to find a little old lady. She was trapped behind the electric scooters, no doubt tried to navigate in to get one and she trapped herself. 

"You need help. Here" I said and dragged a scooter forward so she could get out.

"I want to use one", she said. I unplugged and pushed out the scooter she wanted. Once she was in, she just stared at the scooter and then at me. I showed her where the power switch was, turned it on, and then showed her how to use the grip handles to steer. 

"Bless you!" she said.

"Off you go!"  I replied.

I didn't have the heart to tell her I am a heathen.

Here's a map of Pascal's dilemna but not really.

I am squarely in the Gusto. Life observation, deep reading, and taking hundreds of hits of acid have put me in the position of No God/ No Soul, the Gusto. Go for the gusto.

I am an atheist and aspiritus. There is no God and I have no soul. Nevertheless I hold in simultaneous knowledge that the univserse is alive. And though I may not have a personality beyond death, others might. So I do have holy and sacred things, things that I myself have chosen. And strangely enough my choices align with the universe. And that is why I call myself a heathen. 

The Big Squeeze continued: Vibe Decline

My brother mentioned to me he had been listening to old Neil Young records and it depressed him. I said, well, Neil did write some depressing stuff but you should recall the time when he wrote and recorded them. The 1970s. 

I've been reading about the British Raj in a book called The Anarchy. Dalrymple, the auhor, spoke about the sense of dread in England in 1780. The East India Company seemed on the verge of collapse in India, and the Crown had just lost the thirteen colonies. Parliament felt it was the decline of the British Empire, but it turned out to be vibe decline. The Empire still had a good 120 years left in it.

Back to the 1970s. Many thought it the end of American hegemony. The Long Boom was over. The Oil Embargo and Energy Crisis. Soviets surpassing us in space accomplishments. Manufacturing threats from rebuilt countries like Japan and Germany. Our own infrastructure mostly from the 19th century, despite the build out of WWII. Corruption and crisis in both big business and government. Stagflation. Sure looked depressing, but it was a vibe decline.The US empire probably has got another 20 years just on inertia alone.

The question is, is the US currently going through a vibe decline or a real decline?

Over at Economics From the Top Down, Blair Fix has an essay entitled The Half Life of  Empire that suggests, yes the US is in decline, and peaked in 1945. China overtook us in 2009, and soon India will join China in supremacy. According to Blair, the halcyon days are over, never to return.

Ironic, considering that in 1780, at the tipping point of the Industrial Revolution, China and India were two of the richest nations on Earth, manufacturing perhaps 40% of global product, most importantly textiles. Mass produced in parallel process cottage industries, and also textiles of the finest quality. Consider also that the bulk of the British Royal Navy's sailing ships were built (quite well!) in India.

The build out of satanic mills and power looms and spinning machines in England (funded by the spoils of India), soon wiped the Asian industries out; at least for the low end stuff.

And now China and India are again the workshops of the world. Does this bode a possible future for the US?

Pobably not. Given we may be in the Spike.

The Big Squeeze

Searching for title phrase in the old memory hut called this blog, I thought I had entitled an essay, but the earliest use of the term is from a January 4th 2013 entry: More 2013 Prognostications: A Lot of Negativity

I've expressed humanity's dismal chances before and this essay considers The Big Squeeze in terms of latitude loss of habitat in a warming world. We are heading for Hothouse Earth or are already in it. Hothouse weather sucks, Icehouse weather sucks, Interglacial Just Right. Well, we are out of the natural interglacial cycle now and the squeeze is coming from every direction.

Consider in Hothouse North America, we lose arable land to the north and south. Southern creeping desertification, and miasmic swamps with toxic metal streams and rivers to the north. Farming moves north but only so far.  Certainly not the scraped clean Canadian shield to plant crops, and the fertile valleys in the Canadian west are already at 100% use. So, a big squeeze.

It is fitting that Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The Gulf of Mexico was incredibly lush, vibrant and a great well of life. Sadly, most of the USA's fertile soils lie at the bottom of this gulf, agricultural runoff feuling dead zones of greater and greater size. Toxic industrial waste and every form of offal and filth has turned the lively and lovely Gulf of Mexico into the grisly dead Gulf of America.

Bug Apocalypse already in progress. Only our vermin survive nicely. Soylent Green overbudget and behind schedule. Another squeeze.

Fresh water, more specically fresh aquifer water is dangerously low throughout the Continental west and central plains. The best example of land subsidence is California's Central Valley with area drops of up to 40 feet. Meaning subsurface rock is getting squeezed like a sponge. The problem is the water is not replenished, and in fact goes to waste into a rising ocean. Many aquifers will be gone in five years

How many more squeezes? Science itself is creating more and more affluent people, with larger and larger appetites, so much so that just the past 10 years has used up more shit than the past 100, and the last 20 years equals the same amount of planetary devastation as the last ten thousand. And the next 20 years a million times faster still.

Can't really put the blame on Boomers for this one, huh kids? You complain about the state of the world we left you and yet you eat it in front of us. Cake of the world on petulant frowns, munching away

Soviet Texas

I had a dream last night I was at the White House and met Trump. Even though I hate the fucker I'm still civil. I don't call him Sir or Mr. President. I just say hey how you doing, and he's all smiling. Invites into his office, not the Oval office but a private one. It's covered in junk his toys everywhere.

Something I say makes him stop and turn and looked at me and said "You're a very positive person aren't you? " I was like "sure why not?" He liked that and we sat down at a table.

Things took a dark turn when Don Junior shows up and sits next to me. The old teeth grinder throws naked photos of me on the table, obviously my home is bugged. Trump tears little squares of paper off a sheet and tosses them on the table. They contain quotes of me saying bad things about Trump. Mostly off of my phone.

So then I woke up. Drinking  alcohol suppresses needed REM sleep.

Absence of alcohol let's the brain make up for lost fun. So yeah I've been having wild dreams and the wildest are the pee frustration dreams, which have become elaborate architectural tours of place and interiors of elaborate patterns and... just a love of material that I get from this built world. From primitive to future sterile and all parts between.

How is this tiny brain of mine able to reproduce this universe and the answer is it does this when awake as well honeybunch.

This is your brain mirroring the universe all the result of evolution.

Late July I got a butterfly fairy woman tattoo and it blew out like no one has ever seen.

My artist was mortified but I was sure it was just bruising. Nope. Frail old sun damged skin. Not her fault. 

So I'm like, this isn't setback. This is an opportunity. We will make weird fairy clouds around her, and I said yes. But we hold off on that until the tan goes away.

I got another tattoo this past Tuesday and she was a little leery, some PTSD. Everything was fine and I got a wonderful coffee branch with flowers and berries. 

No New Bronze until December-

-or at least no new bronze with existing conditions at the college. There are infrastructure projects going on in the foundry area that involve replacing current air systems for the wood shop spray booth, replacing the defunct air compressor pump and dehumidifier, and getting a new foundry furnace to replace the dead one. 

I'm slightly pissed about the air compressor. That thing was a POS back when I was lab tech and told them for a decade it needed to be replaced. The dehumidifier was worthless, water in the lines even in winter, and it turned out that was supposed to be replaced every five years. 

So we had one last bronze pour and this time I made sure we had a cookout. Bought a charcoal grill and we had burgers. I also brought my cocktail mixer and made some hand-dipped shakes*. You cannot have community without food. 

Funny thing little light bulb moment for me was finally equating cooking and art, or rather my cooking and my art making. It is empirical exploration. I had always made a face when I hear artists talk about exploration but that's what I do with cooking. I may follow a recipe but taste is the final arbiter. And so with visual art. I spend way more time looking than I do making and I suppose it is like tasting. This may seem a trivial revelation but it seems to have removed biases and prejudices about art.

I still will often experience imposter syndrome, that I'm not a real artist. But I can cook, so I'm making art, and so I am indeed an artist.

At any rate, no molten bronze unless I break out my mini furnace or help a buddy set one up. I'm inclined to work in clay and grill. Here's some picks from the bronze  pour.

*I have determined from 30 years of foundry work that the best hydrator is milk. If you want to make it fun, chocolate milk. And if chcolate milk is good, chocolate shake is better. The best.

50th High School Reunion

My brother texted me a grade school friend of mine I hadn't seen in 25 years asking for my contract information. He was going to the Valparaiso High School Reunion. Did bro want to send him contact info? No, I replied. Maybe. Let me think.

Courtesy wise I should give him my phone number. Attending the reunion?  I will not attend.

For memories? I remember high school as being an experience I couldn't wait to get out of, only to find it was high school all the way down out in society. And 50 years of adulterated street drugs have definitely taken their toll. I looked at elementary scchool pictures (which is a big part of the reunion) ansd couldn't name half of them. And the ones I remembered were dead.

I know this event will remind me of how stupid and shallow I was. A callow youth, I was. How I was autistic and didn't know it, in the Honors classes with the smart alphas and popular kids. I was a beta in their world. I felt like a delta. I was ok at sports but did not get a varsity jacket. I was on the varisty teams but dropped sports to work. (The arrangement being my parents would pay half of college costs). I worked a year after graduation. I felt I needed to be held back a year, because I felt behind my cohort. (Too funny, later we found out Kurmans were thought to maybe the smartest in town). 

Thank god for pot. speed, and acid. This was the highlight of my high school experience. I dropped acid my junior year Steptember 1974, and I honestly don't think I've come down from it. 

The drug and alcohol abuse didnt do a lick to my autism one way or the other. They talk about a spectrum, but to me it is more like tribes. Geeks, nerds, dorks, dweebs, weirdos. And awkwards. I always thought I was a weirdo, but it turns out I'm an awkward.

My awkward abilities always manifest at the most inopportune time. I look like a clumsy made clownish via overcorrection  YES, EMBARASSING. But occasionally a serendipitous  awkwardness produces fucking magic, so I got no problem being an awkward.

But it did make junior high and high school unpleasant for me. Still another reason not to go.

I do applaud the Valparaiso Community School System and the teachers I had. Some of the best in the state. As my dad once said, if it wasn't for the university, we'd be just another Hoosier shithole.