Algorithms

Most people look at the Egyptian pyramids and see massive stone monuments, ancient wonders of the world.

I see an algorithm. An algorithm run on the platform of a human machine. A human machine composed of people, each completing subroutines as tasks broken down into logical components. Some of the components involve teams, others specific individuals. 

The pyramid constuction itself is not the objective function, or not the primary one. The objective function is the creation and maintenance of the human machine itself, that in turn can make pyramids or whatever else you want. How the pyramid is built within this larger system can range from a lean mean harsh system of slavery to an almost playful state of volunteerism.

This large system is obviously a network. The component of the network can be people or ants or microbes or even photons. 

There is no complexity of scale, but there is complexity of components, and so complexity of connections in total. Our cellular machinery is far more complex than the most amibtious projects of the human animal, and not just through sheer numbers. When neural nets were first being played with on paper with pencil, it was quickly recognized that the sophistication of the net involved not only number of layers, but also the nodes. The simpler the nodes were in deciding to fire like a neuron, the faster the processsing speed of the net, but the cruder the results. Even more important was recognizing new connections and dropping unused ones based upon decisions of the nodes. Many of these new connections on paper were called back propagation, connections to earlier layers, into the "past". It becomes an all purpose tool, iterating itself.

Is this going to be about AI? Thankfully, no.

When I was 12, I read a book called The World of Star Trek, by David Gerrold, who wrote the "Trouble with Tribbles" episode. One of the chapters involved  world building, and Gerrold used the example of what world could create the starship Enterprise, by substitutiing what the modern world needs to do to make a 747? 

There are the materials and skills required to build the plane, but also the expanding network that supplied those materials and skills, until before you know it, everybody and everything in the world is involved. How do you cost that out? (The answer is when the signal of cost is swamped by all the other costs, thats' your cost, which is typcially about 18 months back).

This opened my pre-pubescent mind to the world of supply chains 50 years before I heard the phrase.

Supply chains? Supply webs! Once you start sourcing out what it takes to build, not just the airplane, but everything you need to build the airplane, all the way down to feeding little bitty babies, you realize its a gestalt. A whole greater than the sum of its parts.

It blew my tiny little mind. Material conduits as algrorithms involved in a big bang of creation called the 20th century, modern times, the monkey singularity. All from the network of funny little ape-shaped bugs.

I should have stuck with pursuing logistics, but I didn't, and here I am now, in a shitbox apartment typing on a 30-year-old computer piggybacked onto my smart phone hot spot. All of which, a mere 50 years ago, would have made little 12-year-old Johnny squeal with delight at how cool the future is. What was the point I was writing about? I forgot.

Algorithms. Is that how CEOs see people? Does Elon Musk coldly eye you for your capability, and capacity for punishment? As components, cogs within a machine, bees in a super organism? I think the psychopaths do, and as I can turn off most of my humanity when I need to, I get where they're coming from.

But we do recognize collective good and collective effort and collective care all as vastly superior to an optimal objective function.

Xenophilia

Considering the amount of guns in the USA, and the number of companies ruining lives for money, you'd think a lot more CEOs would be murdered. Common aversion to violence, not to mention the more mature motive of not getting caught, prevents a lot of these murders. Lack of knowledge and forward consequential thinking also hamper a lot of attempts.

It's not like these business types don't deserve it. After the killing of the CEO, social media exploded with horror stories of denied health care, and also inside stories as to the callous behavior of employees. Not to mention all the fraud and cheating. Kid Murder is right, they are parasites, middle men doing nothing but adding a percentage, which can oftentimes be obscene 11,000+% percentages.

A war of all against all, which is neoliberalism. The shareholder is the only real individual which the free market magically transposes into a corporate wave/particle. And since Citizens United, given all the privileges of personhood without the responsibilities. Well, Mangione has supplied a radical solution for Citizens United, a FAFO personal responsibility of one final conclusion. If you are part of a superorganism, you are complicit, and open to fiduciary and legal consequences. 

People will object that the murdered CEO was murdered! Forget solving any underlying problems. True, but look at the response and tell me mice can't scare elephants.

Also, I finished the bronze, pics included of Xenophilia, the piece title but also the name a series of bronzes I did back 10 years ago? Exploring the relationship between people and aliens/robots/AI. 

Not pets, but not tame. So a relationship "distinctly ambiguous and rather disturbing".

Short Pour and Other Defects

Two Mondays ago the bronze class poured my piece called by many "What the Hell is that?" Part trilobite, tortoise shell and plant roots, the waxes looked like this.

Unfortunately, there wasn't enough metal to fill my piece (last in the heat). I let out a Fuck, and then a FUCK that could be heard other side of campus. My fault really. Even though I was not directing the pour, I could see there wasn't enough metal in the crucible. I didn't intervene, and it came up short.

No problem, Over the Thanksgiving holdiay I crafted a wax part of the missing metal, got it all invested and burned out and ready for the Monday pour.

While this mold was being seated in the box, one student poured some sand into my mold. FUCK I said and grabbed the mold to shake the sand out. Problem is cold moist sand sticks to the interior of a hot ceramic mold. When I devested the piece, the edge that was to be welded had sand and gas porosity pinholes in it.

So after fixing that, I TIG welded the pieces together and now am in the process of grinding and sanding.

This isn't the first sculpture I've rehabilitated. Some I've completely reanimated. 

Rejuvenation Pills

No one likes getting old. Everyone would like to be immorbid. Let's be careful here. Immortal doesnt include youth or return to youth. Immorbid means you stay hale and hearty.

I've convinced that we humans have pupal, larval, and adult insect stages, seeing as we are ape-shaped bugs, really. Funny little bugs, floating on a ball of lava, at the bottom of a razor thin ocean of air. There's no molting or cocoons, no overt dramatic stages,  but there are stages. Puberty obviously, but research have shown body changes at age 40 and 60. One more late stage adult change, I suspect, happens around 80, where you turn into a tough old bird, or a fragile and more gracile one (both are useful adaptations).

I'm laying the ground work for the rejuvenation pulls discussion. Recognizing biology, we eliminate pills that can turn you into babies, or with lack of access, turn you into a corpse in front of our eyes. Much as I like that stuff, it's unrealistic bullshit.

So, rejuvenation pills might take you back to a prior stage. If you are 60+, you go back to 40. If in you're in your 40s, welcome to 25. Anyone taking the pill before age 25 has no known effects. Let's not rule out compounding, so that someone aged 80+ could over time go back to 25. 

If you hated Boomers, just wait.

Rich people want this kind of immortality, and given the statistics on generational wealth being solid, it's a good bet. You risk the occasional chaos, but you assume if things take a shit you can't get the pills anyway. In which case you age normally, or if things have really taken a shit, die.

But let's say things take a minor shit, a bottleneck, and the rejuvenation pills either have a lasting effect, or are available, many of these bunker billionaires find themselves slaves to the Furious Host. The Great Unwashed Undead Survivors. Immortal Barbarism? Nah. Like it or not we are a superorganism. But the irony of Elon Mush or Donnie some war lord's butt, is funny

All Is Lost

I broke up a fight in my class. Well, not a fight but a pushing and shouting match. I did the drill instructor number on the two of these voting age adults. One of them actually said "He started it!"

And you wonder why Trump won. 

In the age of bullshit, improvise.

The world of 500 years ago, even 100 years ago would to our eyes be an ostentatious abundance, a startling abundance of life. 

We live in a poverty world, caused by our own selfish tastes, not learning; therefore doomed. No amount of prepper prepping or billionaire bunkering is going to help out. The bottleneck is coming, but it can be postponed. Is it worth it? 

It's not too late. All we have to do is stop killing everything. Nature knows how to bounce back after four billion years of knockdowns. Take the sharks as an example, once as numerous as passenger pigeons or buffalo, many are now classified Critically Endangered. Their populations have been decimated by 95% since the 1980s. Pelagic sharks, ocean going sharks have suffered the worst due to industrial fishing.

We are closer than we think to fisheries collapse. The industry response is to fish down the food chain, and currently krill is now on the menu. If we aint heading towards Soylent Green, I don't know what.

Zooming in to the USA, does the choice of a Trump or Harris, Republican or Democratic regime make any difference? The answer is mostly no, but ah there's that mostly.

Biden's Big Fucking Deal that is building 5 trillion in infrastructure is what Trump should have done in 2017. Period. Hard to cancel since it beneifts so many red districts. Biden was old, not stupid.

But the Trump regime had blow jobs and hand jobs to get out of the way, to satisfy the donor class or else. And Putin*

Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, with mediocre GDP growth but boy did the rich get richer? And Infrastructure Week was a tired joke. So, this is a problem again. It's amazing how all these consumers just throw their money at these frauds. I mean, when I hear the word entrepreneur, I reach for my revolver. And check for my wallet. 

The biggest worry is that our economy shows no sign of slowing, and after we get over the AI bubble, there is every indication of another roaring twenties. That would accelerate the killing, putting collapse as early as 2032. Biology and medicine are making stunning progress and I wouldn't be surprised if things along the lines of rejuvenation pills or something within the decade.

If you hate Boomers now, just wait. 

All Is Not Lost

Welp, get ready for four years with the Blowjob Queen of Mar-a-lago*. Besides the fat old slut of an orange bedbug, we have his veep, the Bearded Lady, the spastic ketamine fueled prancer Elon Musk to take tongs and sledgehammer to the executive branch, and a shaky fart voiced RFKjr, who is determined to give us all smallpox.

The plan is to deport everyone, shut down immigration, throw up tariffs, make the Justice Department an American Gestapo, and hold military tribunals against perceived enemies. What fun!

The first administration back in 2017 was an inept, incompetent, do-nothing farrago. The only notable accomplsihment was the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act which helped add 8 trillion dollars to the debt, and the permanent disappearance of trillions into the pockets of the donor class. Oh, right, and one million dead Americans from mishandling a plague.

Unfortunately, Trump stooges now know where all the levers and switches of power are located, so we can expect a slightly more competent handling of our beast of a government. 

The good news is our ship of state cannot turn on a dime. Our government, a globe-spanning kaiju - no strike that, a Lovecraftian horror, is as unwieldy as it is big. Policies put in place years or decades ago are not only still in place, but often, only now being implemented. So, any action from the Trump regime, damaging as it may be to citizens, will take some time. Inertia, and all that. Not to mention the policy of "comply but do not obey" the deep state often uses irregardless of transient personalities.

So the juggernaut of state may not completely or immediately roll over It's citizenry.

There are also policies in place that were Trump-proofed during legislation. The biggest suite of policies are those put in place by Biden which I call The Big Fucking Deal.

Biden managed to get through a massive amount of domestic programs that rival the scope of Roosevelt's New Deal, or Johnson's Great Society. Five trillion dollars of spending for a wide variety of purposes, spread out over every corner of the country, red or blue, but mainly red. Biden has launched large programs to:

"move the country to clean energy sources, to create from scratch or bring back onshore a number of industries, to strengthen organized labor, to build thousands of infrastructure projects, embed racial-equity goals in government programs, and break up concentrations of economic power."

Biden and his advisors did their level best to end the neoiliberal curse that has inflicted this nation since Reagan. (Clinton sure didn't help either).

This isn't just a series of accomplishments, this is a system of the world type of reforms that cannot be quelled for at least a decade - much longer than a tyrant's infantile reign of pouty poopiness.

Trump can try his best to short dick American reality, but the massive Biden wang just  cock blocks his small soft penis. (Sorry for the weird dick metaphor).

So buck up. Things will suck badly for awhile, and the stupidity and short-sightedness of the American people will continue to prevail, but there is hope.

Our Goldilocks Zone

At the middle of Greenland, atop two miles of ice, a drill site callled Eismitte got ice core samples down to the bedrock. This is some 100 thousand years of data treasure. Much has been gleened from the ice cores; past temperatures and air composition, and still more treasures of the past to follow. There is an article in the New Yorker (sorry, behind paywall) that puts the situation nicely.

Analysis of the cores showed, in extraordinary detail, how temperatures in central Greenland had varied during the last ice age, which in the U.S. is called the Wisconsin. As would be expected, there was a steep drop in temperatures at the start of the Wisconsin around a hundred thousand years ago, and a steep rise toward the end of it. But the analysis revealed something disconserting. In addition to the long-erm oscillations, the ice recorded dozens of shorter, wilder swings. During the Wisconsin, Greenland was often unimaginably cold, with temperatures nearing thirty degrees lower than they are now. Then temperatures would shoot up, in some instances by as much as twenty degrees in a couple of decades, only to drop again, somehwat more gradually. Finally, about twelve thousand years ago, the roller coaster came to a halt. ... Richard Alley, a glaciologist at Penn State and the author of a book about the ice-coring project, summed up the findings as follows: "For most of the last 100,000 years, a crazily jumping climate has been the rule, not the exception"

So, the ice age was not only cold, it was stormy, with wild capricious weather and megaweather (for lack of a term between climate and weather). Very unstable, with titanic forces battling in the sea and sky. Our interglacial weather is stable and mild by comparison.

The data is harder to find, but a hotter earth also seems to be just as unstable as a colder earth. Hot stormy and shitty.

So, how much time before we fuck everything up beyond repair? Hard to say. Pumping CO2 ironically may have staved off the next ice age (it is inevitable). Perhaps the 1970s scientists were correc tand we were slipping into an ice age, but our own poopy stupidity saved us. But now it seems we've overcompensated.

Other things. I've made some more art.