I was thinking more like judges and prosecutors than about celebrities.
They seem to be the ones who look back at the snarling dog and say I
deal with mobsters every day. Get out of my way; I have a job to do.
E
touche'
.... says a lot that I jumped to the conclusion that you might be
implying that it would be a "head of state" who might be responsible
for holding that line. Partly all the talk about the implications
to democracy of a Biden/Trump choice for that role.
I don't know if high-profile prosecutors and lifetime appointees to
the highest courts are more celebrity or functionary, but I do
believe that a wide variety of functionaries at many levels have
been holding a line that the usual suspect heavy hitters (elected
representatives of all ilk) have been letting slip.
The current anti-T rhetoric seems to be focused on how much more
sophisticated his strategy (or more to the point that of the abscess
that is (re)forming/growing around him) is likely to be at cleaning
out the immune system that held the line last time/so-far.
Probably lots of excess meaning in the immune system metaphor, but
we do seem to be severely compromised... and by we I think I mean
western culture nearly across the board?
I don't let much of this imagery in, but the few snippets of Bannon
and MTG and their ilk holding rallys/events is very disturbing. I
don't see the likes of Steven Miller and Roger Stone showing up on
*my* radar, but I'm guessing they are out there not far below the
surface if at all.
Which reminds me of the Kate McKinnon depiction of Kellyanne.
Without husband George jostling her elbow daily she might raise her
game a bit more?
Kellywise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlt3rA-oDao
We've been watching/reading quite a bit of 20th century political
history of late (Truman's Biography, Crown TV series, Ukraine/Stalin in
the 30's- holodomor, etc) and one of the things that strikes me most is
how extreme of alternatively disruptive and coherency-focused behaviour
people of influence have mustered (not restricted to c20, just my
current focus/interest) and how divergent the ensemble of possible world
historical arcs has
Interesting times...
- Steve
PS. I have romantic/nostalgic ideas about lighthouses myself, but i'm
not sure that shuttering the last one has any significant practical
implications, while the shuttering of our various democratic
institutions still seems pretty significant to me... like shuttering
said lighthouses before sonar/radar/radio.
On Dec 27, 2023, at 6:28 PM, Steve Smith <sasm...@swcp.com> wrote:
Rambling Ode to (mostly) Trucks:
On 12/27/23 10:59 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
What I saw on my trip were hundreds of late model giant pickup
trucks jacked way up off the ground driving around 90mph with the
usual markings.
How do the proles afford them? Not yet post-scarcity. Hmm.
Re: LMGPTJOtG - Last time I drove the corridor you describe I
remember having my doors blown off by one of those "cowboy
cadillacs" with bumper stickers reading/_Trump 2016_/and_/If it
ain't King James, it ain't Bible/_. I'm sure there is a Trump 2020
and 2024 sticker on there (or overlayed) now.
Re: Bible tangent - I recently bought a used Bible off the interwebs
for reasons I'm sure you don't want me to elaborate here, and learned
a bit too much about the myriad *modern* translations/editions and
versions, with KJ influencing them all significantly. I chose a
1951 version the Catholic Church produced to try to align with
Protestant versions without letting go of any of their own
principles/tenants. A sort of peace offering? I was raised
agnostic-unto athiest but surrounded by Protestants and Impinged with
Catholics until I started choosing escaped/reformed/recovering
Catholics as partners as an adult.
Re: Can't wait for the machines to take over- When we invented gods
in our own image we did a bad job, I'm not sure we are doing any
better with the AI? Please gods, not in Elon's image! But hope
springs infernal.
Re: REC Banks/Culture - glad to hear someone else is as voracious as
I am with Science and Fiction... my library still holds a dozen or so
books from REC's library when he left SFE (10 years ago?)... but I
don't remember any SciFi, just SciFact?
Re: Eric's cryptic comment about "last keeper of Democracy being a
Black Woman - " Michele, Oprah, and Kamala seem like the likely
candidates in exponentially decreasing order of likelihood? I see
an adjacent-possible path fitting Biden's and the DNC's handling of
2024 strategy? When does Biden step down/out? After Trump implodes
entirely? After election? Some acute aging-related event? If Haley
squeeks the primary away from DJT? While she might qualify as "woman
of color", not Black and not particularly a "keeper of Democracy"
unless of course, we measure such by small handfulls of shred? I'd
want Kamala to beat her, but not sure where all those
Trumpster-Dumpsters would come down? Some probably couldn't vote
for *any* woman?
Re: Big Trucks and post Scarcity - On our last road trip, Mary's
favorite cousin (our age) arrived (Northern NE) to meet us for dinner
one of those cowboy cadillacs... looked like it had been in a
bar-fight. Golfball and bigger hail the week before he said.
He had just come from the insurance adjuster who offered him a $50k
check for the repairs (spangled windshield, ball-peened hood/roof,
and some minor pings in every panel and toolbox)... which he was
upset about since replacement was $70k. Not a single functional
issue outside of windshield visibility. I'd have had a $500
windshield put in, paid off the loan (which I would never have taken
out, myself) and worn the beating like a sabre scar, but he was dead
set on getting it repaired whilst grumbling at the downtime when he'd
have to drive one of the (equally big/expensive) company trucks (he
owns a tree trimming service, so it would host a bucket and chipper,
slows him down on the straightaways?).
I didn't check for bumper stickers but am pretty sure they would say
Trump/Pence with Pence struck through with a Sharpie (maybe a noose
drawn on?). He might have missed the small Biden/Harris one on the
back of Mary's ($5k new to us) 15 year old Prius (215k miles and no
hail damage)... I just smiled when he railed about the cost of fuel
(a lot of "I did that" Biden stickers on the gas pumps there)
thinking about the 50mpg I was getting unless I drafted behind a
truck like his (then 60)...
Mary is excellent about not talking politics with family... most of
her generation of relatives (and all of their survining parents) are
died-in-wool conservative and about half of the next generation are
too. One tween grand-niece sported a "I'll be Baaack
Trump-Terminator" T-shirt when we met up with them... I'm pretty sure
it was for our benefit. I wanted to send her a Dark-Brandon one to
round out the closet, but Mary thought she might/not recognize the
snark in it and either way it would be futile.
Love of Pickup Trucks - I grew up with pickup-trucks as the best
value-versatility vehicle, usually the first/only for any family with
3 little kids squeezed between mom and pop on the wide bench seat and
grandparents and older kids in the back in the slipstream of the cab
sharing a blanket. Camper shells/toppers didn't come into vogue
until a few years later, that made the back a little more
hospitable. None came with power steering, brakes, windows, AC,
automatic transmissions that I knew of, and an (AM) radio was a
luxury... but no preset stations and a single speaker under holes
drilled in the (metal) dashboard.
None of my own half-dozen pickup trucks have ever been "luxury" by
contemporary standards but as time progressed, all those
power/automatic features became *standard*, hard to avoid and the
MSRP's went up and past that of any compact and many sedans.
Increasingly newer (none of mine were newish much less new) and more
capable (starting with AM/FM stereo and 4x4 and extended (not double)
cabs) with my latest being a 2002 diesel 4x4 (250k miles) once
converted to veggie oil. fryer oil became scarce for a while but
then at some point all the old hippies hoarding the stuff started
trying to give it away by the 55 gallon drum a few years ago. If
they had sat in the sunlight too long they probably had algae
growth. Not good for injectors. It is hard to keep the pumps,
injectors, seals in good shape with veggie instead of dino oil
with/without alge... even if Rudolf Diesel (1858) did design the
first ones to run on peanut oil. I sure wish I'd not help Reagan
oust Jimmy in 1980!
I'm not sure when pickups became self-indulgent luxury toys. I
love/owned motorcycles too. Same/Same.
My 49 2.5 ton farm dump truck (mostly lawn ornament now but often
used a decade ago (by me) for woodchips, manure, firewood) is on it's
way to becoming (fingers crossed) Double Axle II, a second in the
fleet ofAxle Art
<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.axleart.com%2f&c=E,1,FS7F1Uu_GNNCY8AuxjLHKCb8jyhRJTVcG8P5-8sd5bsdYZpcgBW6Nw28H-9qocZgDA6z3eGAgv7k-RS0r6t5iantmmN5kQbSvmApyj0vfpLYW6WjJaQowg,,&typo=1>projects.
Current Treatment of Axle Contemporary Van
<DALL·E 2023-11-18 19.33.38 - A modified version of the previously
described scene, featuring the Ford F-6 model farm grain bed truck
from the 1950s with a yellow cab and red bed. .png>
DALL-E has a strange sense of humor about a lot of things, including
which direction a dump-bed dumps!... my proposed performance
art-project is called "sequestering carbon, two cords of books at a
time".
Color scheme and body style are accurate, specific Patina and
stenciling entirely made up by DALL-E... many renderings offered.
The only other obvious inauthentic element is the bolt pattern on
the rims... 5 giant self-centering lug nuts were the standard for
this class of truck well into the 50s.
These rims are known as widowmakers... for good reason, surprisingly
Garcia Tire still maintains a cage with mounting equipment inside to
work on them with. I'm looking for modern replacements. But they
will still have a 5 bolt pattern.
I've been waiting for larger affordable "hub motors" to come out so I
could quit tuning a 75 year old petrol burner and drop in the good
sections of my 16kWh Chevy Volt battery I replaced when I bought
it. Used (but still functional) solar panels are cheaper than
plywood and a whole lot more water-proof. I could cover or clad the
bed with those and collect enough photons for the 2-6 mile moves
every week or two the art-platform concept suggests? The
split-drive-shaft and two-speed rear-end with PTO setup is also a
reasonable place to inline an EV-class motor for low-speed, short
distances. Who knows?<Poetruck with color copy.jpeg>
Locals should look for this pressed into some form of transient
public art installation in Santa Fe by this summer.
'nuff of this careening ramble,
- Sieve
*From:*Friam<friam-boun...@redfish.com>*On Behalf Of*Roger Critchlow
*Sent:*Wednesday, December 27, 2023 9:28 AM
*To:*The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
Group<friam@redfish.com>
*Subject:*Re: [FRIAM] The last Lighthouse Keeper in America
On Tue, Dec 26, 2023 at 8:51 PM Marcus Daniels
<mar...@snoutfarm.com> wrote:
[...]
Really hoping the machines can take over soon.
I just yesterday finished rereading all the Iain M Banks "Culture"
novels in the Boston Public Library e-collection, seven between
Halloween and Christmas. The "Culture" is a space-going far future
civilization of organic life - humanoid and other - and of
artificially sentient beings. The machine "Minds" pretty much
run the infrastructure and economy while the organic beings party,
study, travel, pursue dangerous hobbies, whatever. It's all
post-scarcity, so everyone can pretty much have what they want.
It sounds like the Culture "Minds" pretty much solved the
dictatorship of the proletariat in the Culture's history. You raise
dumb matter to sentience and let it sort everything out. The energy
and matter of the tools that the proletarians used are even more
prole than the proles.
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