Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate

[cody dooderson]

Some would argue that the rail network has not only been neglected but
sabotaged in favor of automobiles. For instance, the Los Angeles trolly
system was bought by car companies and basically dismantled.


The system was sold in 1944 by Huntington's estate to American City Lines,
> Inc., of Chicago, a subsidiary of National City Lines
> , a holding company
> that was purchasing transit systems across the country.[22]
>  The sale
> was announced December 5, 1944, but the purchase price was not disclosed.
> [23]  National
> City Lines, along with its investors that included Firestone Tire
> , Standard Oil of California
>  (now Chevron
> Corporation) and General Motors
> , were later
> convicted of conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related
> products to local transit companies controlled by National City Lines and
> other companies[n 1]
> 
>  in
> what became known as the General Motors streetcar conspiracy
> .
> National City Lines purchased Key System
> , which operated the streetcar
> system in Oakland, California, the following year.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Railway

_ Cody Smith _
c...@simtable.com


On Tue, Jan 30, 2024 at 2:54 PM Jochen Fromm  wrote:

> Yes, a good high speed railway network would be able to reduce air
> traffic. France for instance has banned short-haul domestic flights in
> favor of train travel
>
> https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/12/02/is-france-banning-private-jets-everything-we-know-from-a-week-of-green-transport-proposals
>
> If this railway map is accurate, then the railway network in the US is
> much more sparse than in the EU or in China. Has it been neglected in favor
> of automobiles and airplanes?
> https://flowingdata.com/2024/01/30/world-railway-map/
>
> -J.
>
>
>  Original message 
> From: Marcus Daniels 
> Date: 1/30/24 4:34 PM (GMT+01:00)
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate
>
> The U.S. could develop high speed rail to avoid use of aircraft.
> Aircraft could be based on H2.   Because of the low specific gravity of H2,
> that would mean devoting more space to storage of H2.  That would increase
> the price, which itself is a fine way to moderate use of air travel and
> gratuitous transportation.
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2024 7:15 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate
>
> Yeah, I'm not so sure that's the right tack. I mean, airlines (and
> airplane mfgs) aren't the most earth friendly enterprises, at their core.
> Even if we could magically swap out a zero emissions fuel (which we can't:
> https://www.wri.org/insights/us-sustainable-aviation-fuel-emissions-impacts),
> we will still see door plugs popping out because we can't be bothered to
> check every little nook and cranny just to save a few measly human lives.
> (Why do we freak out so much when an airplane goes down? So many more
> people die horribly in other circumstances.)
>
> This entitled fetish we have for synchronous meatspace interactions makes
> for a more efficient target. Powering your internet bandwidth with more
> sustainable electricity is way more likely to reduce emissions than biofuel
> ever will.
>
>
> On 1/29/24 19:20, Leigh Fanning wrote:
> > At some point we'll have SAF at scale.
> >
> > https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/sustainable-aviation-fuels
> >
>
> --
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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[FRIAM] 0 years ago today - Our Owen Densmore as a leading star on stage with Jobs unveiling the first Macintosh

[Stephen Guerin]

The 1984 Macintosh Ad

shown during the Jan 22 Superbowl teased the Jan 26, 1984 introduction of
the Mac at the  Apple Shareholders meeting (I don't have the video).  Jobs
did a demo and then a panel discussion with 8 members of the software and
hardware team  The whole presentation including the developer panel was
repeated 4 days later at a Boston Computer Society meeting. Our Owen
Densmore is one of those 8 as the software engineer lured from Xerox to
work on WYSIWIG printing and embedding a software rendering engine in the
printer itself. here's the time codes of these discussions

   - https://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?feature=shared=1336 – Jobs explaining
   the printer
   - https://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?feature=shared=1741 - Owen introduction
   - https://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?feature=shared=2379 - Randy Wigginton
   nods to Owen’s printer work
   - https://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?feature=shared=2683 - Printing question
   answered by Jobs and Owen
   - https://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?feature=shared=3352 - Owen gets up to
   get a floppy disk :]
   - https://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?feature=shared=3744 - Owen comments on
   the Mac’s multi-tasking abilities

Owen left Apple to join Sun in the last half of the 80s and worked on NeWS
- postscipt-based windowing system.
NeXT would later adopt instead of QuickDraw for its windowing system.

When Jobs was at NeXT, he gave this talk at MIT Sloan School

~8
years later. In the talk, I find his observations interesting esp wrt to
how important printing and desktop publishing would be for the Mac and they
didn't predict it.

*When we did the Macintosh, we never anticipated desktop publishing
when we created the Mac. Sounds funny, because that turned out to be
the Mac's compelling advantage, right? The thing that it did not one
and a
half or two times better than everything else, but four or five times
better than anything else, where you had to have one. We never
anticipated it. We anticipated bitmap displays and laser printers, but
we never thought about pagemaker, that whole industry really coming
down to the desktop. Maybe we weren't smart enough.*

*But we were smart enough to see it start to happen nine to 12 months
later. And we changed our entire marketing and business strategy to
focus on desktop publishing, and it became the Trojan horse that
eventually got the Mac into corporate America, where it could show its
owners all the other wonderful things it could do.*

Apple has Owen to thank for that!

Redfish, btw, was an Apple VAR in the early 90s helping commercial printers
to prepress - digital scanning, digital halftoning, color separation,
digital imaging (early photoshop), plate-ready film printing, and page
layout (QuarkXpress and PageMaker). Of course, I didn't know Owen yet - I
would first meet him at the 2000 Complex Systems Summer School where we
were both students from the BusNet. I was from BiosGroup and Owen from Sun
R Labs.

Mad respect for your changing the world, Owen! And you ain't done yet. :-)

-Stephen
_
stephen.gue...@simtable.com
stephengue...@fas.harvard.edu
Harvard Visualization Research and Teaching Lab

mobile: (505)577-5828
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Re: [FRIAM] 0 years ago today - Our Owen Densmore as a leading star on stage with Jobs unveiling the first Macintosh

[Jochen Fromm]

Wow, the young Steve Jobs and Owen on the same stage, together with Andrew 
Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson. I didn't know he knew all of them. Has he got 
Apple shares as compensation back then? Apple shares from 1984 must be worth a 
fortune now.-J.
 Original message From: Stephen Guerin 
 Date: 1/30/24  9:55 PM  (GMT+01:00) To: The 
Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group , 
"Wedtech@Redfish. Com"  Subject: [FRIAM] 0 years ago today 
- Our Owen Densmore as a leading star on stage with Jobs unveiling the first 
Macintosh The 1984 Macintosh Ad shown during the Jan 22 Superbowl teased the 
Jan 26, 1984 introduction of the Mac at the  Apple Shareholders meeting (I 
don't have the video). 

Jobs did a demo and then a panel discussion with 8 members of the software and 
hardware team  The whole presentation including the developer panel was 
repeated 4 days later at a Boston Computer Society meeting. Our Owen Densmore 
is one of those 8 as the software engineer lured from Xerox to work on WYSIWIG 
printing and embedding a software rendering engine in the printer itself. 
here's the time codes of these 
discussionshttps://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?feature=shared=1336 – Jobs explaining 
the printerhttps://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?feature=shared=1741 - Owen 
introductionhttps://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?feature=shared=2379 - Randy 
Wigginton nods to Owen’s printer 
workhttps://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?feature=shared=2683 - Printing question 
answered by Jobs and Owenhttps://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?feature=shared=3352 - 
Owen gets up to get a floppy disk 
:]https://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?feature=shared=3744 - Owen comments on the 
Mac’s multi-tasking abilitiesOwen left Apple to join Sun in the last half of 
the 80s and worked on NeWS - postscipt-based windowing system.  NeXT would 
later adopt instead of QuickDraw for its windowing system.When Jobs was at 
NeXT, he gave this talk at MIT Sloan School ~8 years later. In the talk, I find 
his observations interesting esp wrt to how important printing and desktop 
publishing would be for the Mac and they didn't predict it. When we did the 
Macintosh, we never anticipated desktop publishing when we created the Mac. 
Sounds funny, because that turned out to be the Mac's compelling advantage, 
right? The thing that it did not one and a half or two times better than 
everything else, but four or five times better than anything else, where you 
had to have one. We never anticipated it. We anticipated bitmap displays and 
laser printers, but we never thought about pagemaker, that whole industry 
really coming down to the desktop. Maybe we weren't smart enough.But we were 
smart enough to see it start to happen nine to 12 months later. And we changed 
our entire marketing and business strategy to focus on desktop publishing, and 
it became the Trojan horse that eventually got the Mac into corporate America, 
where it could show its owners all the other wonderful things it could do.Apple 
has Owen to thank for that!Redfish, btw, was an Apple VAR in the early 90s 
helping commercial printers to prepress - digital scanning, digital halftoning, 
color separation, digital imaging (early photoshop), plate-ready film printing, 
and page layout (QuarkXpress and PageMaker). Of course, I didn't know Owen yet 
- I would first meet him at the 2000 Complex Systems Summer School where we 
were both students from the BusNet. I was from BiosGroup and Owen from Sun R 
Labs.Mad respect for your changing the world, Owen! And you ain't done yet. 
:-)-stephen_stephen.gue...@simtable.com
 stephenguerin@fas.harvard.eduHarvard Visualization Research and Teaching 
Labmobile: (505)577-5828
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Re: [FRIAM] 0 years ago today - Our Owen Densmore as a leading star on stage with Jobs unveiling the first Macintosh

[Gillian Densmore]

Jobs and Dad (Owen) had some differences (being polite). Was one of the
reasons he went to SUN, IIRC it also had a infamously unhealthy work/life
balance. The mac team also was cutting it very close to get a working(ish)
computer for steve jobs to show off. The mac team had some 'unexpected
features' (bugs) at least on the software level, and IIRC hardware side as
well before it could be shipped. I always thought it sounded a little like
steve hawkings.

On Tue, Jan 30, 2024 at 1:54 PM Stephen Guerin 
wrote:

> The 1984 Macintosh Ad
> 
> shown during the Jan 22 Superbowl teased the Jan 26, 1984 introduction of
> the Mac at the  Apple Shareholders meeting (I don't have the video).  Jobs
> did a demo and then a panel discussion with 8 members of the software and
> hardware team  The whole presentation including the developer panel was
> repeated 4 days later at a Boston Computer Society meeting. Our Owen
> Densmore is one of those 8 as the software engineer lured from Xerox to
> work on WYSIWIG printing and embedding a software rendering engine in the
> printer itself. here's the time codes of these discussions
>
>- https://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?feature=shared=1336 – Jobs explaining
>the printer
>- https://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?feature=shared=1741 - Owen
>introduction
>- https://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?feature=shared=2379 - Randy Wigginton
>nods to Owen’s printer work
>- https://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?feature=shared=2683 - Printing
>question answered by Jobs and Owen
>- https://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?feature=shared=3352 - Owen gets up to
>get a floppy disk :]
>- https://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?feature=shared=3744 - Owen comments
>on the Mac’s multi-tasking abilities
>
> Owen left Apple to join Sun in the last half of the 80s and worked on NeWS
> - postscipt-based windowing system.
> NeXT would later adopt instead of QuickDraw for its windowing system.
>
> When Jobs was at NeXT, he gave this talk at MIT Sloan School
> 
>  ~8
> years later. In the talk, I find his observations interesting esp wrt to
> how important printing and desktop publishing would be for the Mac and they
> didn't predict it.
>
> *When we did the Macintosh, we never anticipated desktop publishing when we 
> created the Mac. Sounds funny, because that turned out to be the Mac's 
> compelling advantage, right? The thing that it did not one and a
> half or two times better than everything else, but four or five times better 
> than anything else, where you had to have one. We never anticipated it. We 
> anticipated bitmap displays and laser printers, but we never thought about 
> pagemaker, that whole industry really coming down to the desktop. Maybe we 
> weren't smart enough.*
>
>
> *But we were smart enough to see it start to happen nine to 12 months later. 
> And we changed our entire marketing and business strategy to focus on desktop 
> publishing, and it became the Trojan horse that eventually got the Mac into 
> corporate America, where it could show its owners all the other wonderful 
> things it could do.*
>
> Apple has Owen to thank for that!
>
> Redfish, btw, was an Apple VAR in the early 90s helping commercial
> printers to prepress - digital scanning, digital halftoning, color
> separation, digital imaging (early photoshop), plate-ready film printing,
> and page layout (QuarkXpress and PageMaker). Of course, I didn't know Owen
> yet - I would first meet him at the 2000 Complex Systems Summer School
> where we were both students from the BusNet. I was from BiosGroup and Owen
> from Sun R Labs.
>
> Mad respect for your changing the world, Owen! And you ain't done yet. :-)
>
> -Stephen
>
> _
> stephen.gue...@simtable.com
> stephengue...@fas.harvard.edu
> Harvard Visualization Research and Teaching Lab
> 
> mobile: (505)577-5828
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Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate

[Marcus Daniels]

The U.S. could develop high speed rail to avoid use of aircraft.   Aircraft 
could be based on H2.   Because of the low specific gravity of H2, that would 
mean devoting more space to storage of H2.  That would increase the price, 
which itself is a fine way to moderate use of air travel and gratuitous 
transportation. 

-Original Message-
From: Friam  On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2024 7:15 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate

Yeah, I'm not so sure that's the right tack. I mean, airlines (and airplane 
mfgs) aren't the most earth friendly enterprises, at their core. Even if we 
could magically swap out a zero emissions fuel (which we can't: 
https://www.wri.org/insights/us-sustainable-aviation-fuel-emissions-impacts), 
we will still see door plugs popping out because we can't be bothered to check 
every little nook and cranny just to save a few measly human lives. (Why do we 
freak out so much when an airplane goes down? So many more people die horribly 
in other circumstances.)

This entitled fetish we have for synchronous meatspace interactions makes for a 
more efficient target. Powering your internet bandwidth with more sustainable 
electricity is way more likely to reduce emissions than biofuel ever will.


On 1/29/24 19:20, Leigh Fanning wrote:
> At some point we'll have SAF at scale.
> 
> https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/sustainable-aviation-fuels
> 

-- 
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ

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[FRIAM] Policy Modeling

[glen]

I'm confident many of y'all have seen this. But each of the snippets below, from 
Roger & Merle's nihilistic takes to Leigh and Cody's optimistic takes, bounce 
around policy modeling. What can one estimate in the face of overwhelming 
uncertainty? And given one's high uncertainty estimates, what is there to *do* 
about it at an institutional scale?

cf the theme of the Humans, Societies and Artificial Agents at 
ANNSIM this year:

Taylor Anderson, George Mason University, USA and Petra Ahrweiler, Johannes 
Gutenberg University, Germany

Agent-based models (ABMs), cellular automata, and microsimulations model 
systems through the lens of complex systems theory. More specifically, such 
approaches simulate populations of possibly heterogeneous individuals as they 
utilize either simple behavioral rules or learning models to govern their 
interactions with each other and their environment, and from which system-level 
properties emerge. Such modeling and simulation approaches have supported a 
wide range of applications related to human societies (e.g., traffic and urban 
planning, economics, natural hazards, national security, epidemiology) and 
research tasks (e.g., exploring what-if scenarios, predictive models, data 
generation, hypothesis testing, policy formation and generation).
Despite the multitude of advancements in the last few decades, there remain 
longstanding challenges that limit the usefulness of such models in the policy 
cycle. Such challenges include but are not limited to: capturing realistic 
individual and collective social behaviors; basic issues in model development 
(calibration, scalability, model reusability, difficulties in generalizing 
findings); and making transparent the strengths and limitations of models. This 
track focuses generally on advancements in modeling and simulation approaches 
in application to human societies that seek to overcome these challenges, with 
a special interest in policy modeling and the inclusion of models in the policy 
cycle.



On 10/23/11 10:10, Roger Critchlow wrote:

No one knows where the slime mold will choose to extend its  pseudopodia, or 
which of the pseudopodia will thrive or wither, or what the novel beneficial or 
lamentable consequences will be.  Some of us worry about the suffering caused 
by the gold-goo-excrement, others worry about not killing the beast that makes 
the gold-goo, many just fight for the largest share they can get, and most of 
us could care less until the bucket of gold-goo-excrement lands in our 
neighborhood or the gold-goo pseudopod feeding our investments dries up.


On 1/28/24 16:55, Frank Wimberly wrote:

One of my father-in-law's best friends was a man named Eli Shapiro who was the Alfred P 
Sloan Professor of Economics at MIT.  My FIL asked him some question about stock 
investing.  Shapiro said, "Chuck, nobody knows anything."


On 1/29/24 08:29, Steve Smith wrote:

I think this is one of the reasons that an open-ended "growth economy" is so popular, it 
make everyone willing to take on the mantle, a /_"tide whisperer"_/, pretending their 
shamanic actions/words are lifting those boats?


On 1/29/24 19:20, Leigh Fanning wrote:

At some point we'll have SAF at scale.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/sustainable-aviation-fuels


On 1/29/24 19:35, Michael Orshan wrote:

so removing fossil fuels from power plants is the key. [snip] Still there are 
many political and resource bottlenecks.


On 1/29/24 22:36, Merle Lefkoff wrote:

Sorry, Jochen, just about everything you recommend will make things worse.  I 
also wrote about the failure of the climate models almost ten years ago.  You 
nailed one of the biggest problems, though: even really smart guys don't know 
shit about global warming.


On 1/30/24 00:59, Jochen Fromm wrote:

The basic facts seem to be simple. 8 billion people burning fossil fuels are 
causing global warming. Is there a point I have overlooked? What can we do to 
stop global warming?


--
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Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate

[glen]

Yeah, I'm not so sure that's the right tack. I mean, airlines (and airplane 
mfgs) aren't the most earth friendly enterprises, at their core. Even if we 
could magically swap out a zero emissions fuel (which we can't: 
https://www.wri.org/insights/us-sustainable-aviation-fuel-emissions-impacts), 
we will still see door plugs popping out because we can't be bothered to check 
every little nook and cranny just to save a few measly human lives. (Why do we 
freak out so much when an airplane goes down? So many more people die horribly 
in other circumstances.)

This entitled fetish we have for synchronous meatspace interactions makes for a 
more efficient target. Powering your internet bandwidth with more sustainable 
electricity is way more likely to reduce emissions than biofuel ever will.


On 1/29/24 19:20, Leigh Fanning wrote:

At some point we'll have SAF at scale.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/sustainable-aviation-fuels



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Re: [FRIAM] Policy Modeling

[Steve Smith]

glen -

Excellent and concise summary of this thread following your main point 
about policy modeling... I'm sure an LLM couldn't begin to be as 
on-point and succinct!   I feel remiss in not analyzing existing threads 
as carefully as you must have before I stick my fat foot in my fat mouth:


All -

As many here are at least part-time modelers or familiar with the terms 
of art, and some make their living as simulators (simulants?) as you 
(glen) do, I think upon reflection we all know that models (and 
therefore simulations) are much more useful for identifying and refining 
"the question" than "giving answers"... yet I think many of us (and the 
unwashed public moreso) forget that and look to models and the 
simulations built upon them to give us actionable answers without being 
willing to refine the questions carefully.




   My latest colloquial working definition of "consciousness" has been
   something like "the structures and processes which have evolved to
   elaborate possibility spaces wherefore to facilitate the exploration
   of probability spaces".   Our actions and decisions seem to live in
   probability spaces, but we ideate in possibility space.   We take
   actions which we believe will yield certain consequences,
   understanding there is a probabilistic element to that cause-effect,
   but to the extent we have implicit and explicit models of the
   various relations, we are doing so with some modicum of
   rationality.   Our scientific theories and engineering principles
   (including economic, political policies) exist to outline the
   probability estimates within possibility spaces: /If you want A in
   the context of Zed then you must/should/could do Wye in the context
   of Beta and Gamma which will yield results with a mean of eM and a
   Standard Deviation of sD. /or somesuch.

   My 8 year stint at LANL with the "Decision Support" division of
   several hundred people building models and tools (mostly for the US
   Gov) left me disillusioned as virtually all our clients "just wanted
   simple answers" and most of my peers at least pretended they were
   providing such.  A good reason to leave when I did (2008).

   I suppose I should grant that I'm talking about "scientific" models
   more than "engineering" ones where the established practices help to
   constrain the questions to "answerable" ones for the most part. 
   Though it is those very "established practices" which codify the
   "lesser evils" (or more to the point, "as yet unrecognized evils")
   in a way that supports action and progress.

   I am really fascinated by the progress made in the intervening 15
   years (of which many here are likely much more in touch with) on
   applying M to Policy.

   The magnitude of risk around existential threats (e.g. climate)
   might suggest applying a strong bias to avoid global cataclysm, yet
   the direct implications of that bias against "current practice" and
   "economic/policy momentum" has us applying an equally strong bias
   the other direction. /Burn baby burn, drill baby drill, war baby
   war, produce (and waste) and produce/! is the theme of our
   collective mantra (western industrial Kapital) as we check the value
   of our 401k plans or the GDP of our nation or that of our "friends".

   My sympathies are with Merle's pessimism in the sense of unintended
   consequences.

   The myriad first-order responses *by* the technophilic,
   Kapital-driven powers-that-be are naturally going to superficially
   (seem to) respond to the most urgent symptoms while (likely)
   exploiting yet another level of (slightly obscured) bit of commons
   only to become "next year's/decade's/generation's" problem.   The
   internal combustion engine resolved the overwhelming horse-manure
   problem in big cities, only to yield a serious urban smog and acid
   rain problem.   Lead pipes and lead paint and leaded gasoline
   brought myriad benefits to society and individuals only to yield
   yet-another-more subtle problem that we are still struggling with.

   Musk's (now famous) 2020 quote in a (now deleted) tweet: "We will
   coup whoever we want! Deal with it!"  referencing US involvement in
   the Bolivian coup related to Lithium mining is an excellent example
   of how our rush to sweep fossil fuel exploitation/abuse further out
   of our view in favor of simply *not noticing* the abuses and
   exploitations our "solution" to the problem represents.

   

 I love me some good Solar/Wind/Hydro/Tidal/Geo power on the
   principal that all but Tidal/Geo are "just" exploitation of the
   1000W/m^2 of power the giant fusion reactor in the sky streams
   down on us (while tidal interference slows the moon faster and
   geo cools the earth core faster).  We stick our PV panels in one
   flux or water wheel or a windmill blade in another flux and
   viola!  human/animal/fossil-fuel power no longer is needed to 
   empty our polders, power our