It's 9/11

     Politicians and media will be pulling out out their hair shirts and weeping hankies, and look, it was  a terrible day, an unexpected blow, a mass murder of innocents, a nasty piece of asymmetrical warfare.

     So was Pearl Harbor, and we still mark the day.  But December 7, 1966 was not a day-long commemoration.  My Dad didn't blink when I bought a Toyota in 1977.

     Remember -- by all means, remember.  But don't be consumed by it.  Understand the changes it, and our reaction, wrought in our country. 

He's A Biter

      Holden still can't grasp that his adoptive mommies are relatively fragile.  He sits on the typewriter shelf of my desk, and if he thinks he's not getting enough attention, he'll bite me.

     Flinching doesn't help.  Scolding doesn't help register with him.  So I've started crying, as soon as I feel the little cat teeth.  I pull away before he can get a good nip. put my head down and sob, in as heartfelt a way as I can.

     And that works.  He'll either start smoothing on me or go into clown mode, rolling and grabbing at small items on the desk, very much, "I'm playing!  See?  See how amusing I am?  Please stop crying!"

     I just started a few days ago.  We'll see if the lesson sticks.

It's A Kind Of Genius

     Oh, it's crude.  And it's not possible, not to mention illegal.  But it's absolutely an example of how the man works: the President of the United States has promised to pay each and every American* a middling-large sum of money if his party retains control of Congress.  He's made similar payoff promises before, which somehow never materialize.

     It's the same appeal as a one-armed bandit, only with far less chance of a payoff: pull lever, get money.  And there's a group of voters, ranging from low-information to so deep in the fantasy they'll take it on faith, who will be moved by it.  Is the size of that group decisively large?  Is greed a stronger motivation than high prices for everything and stagnant wages?  Stronger than the reaction to an increasingly authoritarian Federal government whose masked secret-police thugs act with impunity?

     I don't know.

     The truth is, the money's not his to spend; it's Congress's.  And Congress doesn't have it; the payout would run to more than 1.3 trillion dollars and they're already deeply in the red funding his don't-call-it-a-war with Iran, the same one that's driving up the price of oil, fuel, and everything that relies on oil-derived stuff to be made or grown and transported.  I suppose they could just have the Mint print it -- that's what the Left calls "Modern Monetary Theory" and the Right mocks (so does the center); it's inherently inflationary, meaning by the time you get your money, it'll buy fast-food dinner for two and a daily newspaper as long as it's not the Sunday edition.  And it's illegal in the U.S. to pay people for votes, not that illegality is much of a deterrent.  (And it's the actual paying for votes part that is illegal -- candidates and everyone else can talk about it all they like.)

     It's money no American will ever receive, no matter who they vote for.

     Politicians have been selling pie in the sky for years; Mencken called elections a kind of advance auction of stolen goods, but the modern, jet-propelled GOP version auctions off the stolen goods -- and then keeps them.

     I beg people to choose a better class of crook.  I have no faith left that they will.

     Update: The "dividend" headlined every TV and radio newscast I saw or heard today.  It'll never be paid -- but using it as a lure is indeed a kind of genius.  Flim-flam genius we should be ashamed of falling for, and yet....
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* Citizens, presumably, given his party's positions, not resident non-citizens.

It's Junk Food

     It's junk science, too: "A.I.," which is certainly artificial but has yet to demonstrate actual intelligence, is going to kill us all, warn the....people working frantically to build ever larger versions of it.

     While it is true that the inhuman, hyperscaled fuzzy-logic might indeed do immense harm, all of it will require human actions -- being fool enough to connect it to critical systems, applying it to cybercrime (it's really, really well suited to that, which reveals quite a lot about the people promoting it) and treating its advice as if it was coming from another soft, vulnerable human being instead of generated by a big, clever next-likely-sequence-of-words machine.  Most of your fellow humans already don't give a flip about you, but a majority would still cringe if you suffered grievous bodily harm in front of them and started to bleed and scream.  A.I. would react to it in the precise same way as lump of mud: not at all.  There is no there there.|

     And of all the junk-food junk science, "Roko's Basilisk" is among the worst.  It's nonsense.  It's brainrot.  It assumes there's a ghost in the machine.  Might some future "A.I." punish anyone* who knew it could be brought into existence and didn't help (or fought against it)?  ...First, it presupposes that there's something to do the knowing; second, it absolves the humans who built and trained the thing, directly or indirectly, of blame.  This is "The lawnmower ran over the rabbit nest" levels of passive voice guilt-dodging: no, stupid, you ran over the baby bunnies with the lawnmower you were wielding, which is why there's blood all over your shoes.

     The basilisk isn't a thought experiment, it's a threat, from the same kind of irresponsible teen-aged thinker that shouldn't be allowed to use dangerous machinery around the powerless and vulnerable.  We've already run that experiment at scale, when DOGE dismantled USAID, and it has resulted in at least hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths so far, with some sources projecting tens of millions dead by 2030.  There's your creature, and it's humans pushing the button, same as always.

     Maybe we should stop them -- or at least stop pretending their imaginary playmate is real.
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* Or, in some versions of the fable, their simulacrum, which is brainrotted brainrot: a copy of you simulated in the machine will not be you, and the illusion of continuity of consciousness does not run in reverse: your copy may "remember" your joys and sorrows, but whatever simulation of suffering it might endure will never affect you.  Fretting this one is like laying awake at night worrying someone will tear up a photograph of you, and I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but your ex already did.

Wow

     It's harder and harder to jump back in the hopper of the daily grind.  I'm not sure if I'm more hopeful or more worried about November's elections and whatever follows.  I suppose if all that happens is an economic crash, we'll be getting out easy, but man, do I loathe interesting times.

It's Labor Day

     Anymore, I'm not all that sure what we mean by "labor," and to what extent a Federal holiday to celebrate it means anything.  Sure, sure, both big political parties will tell you they're the party of the working man (and, occasionally, woman) and the other guys are the party of the "elites," moneyed and/or intellectual.  Socialists and Communists and Labor -- and far-Right -- parties overseas will make similar claims (usually around May first in most countries, and you can ask the Communists to explain that one).

     But as a species, we don't actually like work all that much, and given a chance in literature or art to side with a sweat-of-his-brow farmer or the barbarian who shows up to steal from him or worse, a lot of people prefer Conan to the plodder behind the plow -- and we admire Tom Sawyer, half-covertly, and think the peers he gulls into doing his fence-painting are saps.  We keep coming up with ways to dodge even intellectual work; Socrates was none too sure about literacy and writing things down, fearing it would weaken memory and devalue being present in the moment, and we've kept on cheating -- log tables, printing presses with moveable type, typewriters, word processors, abacuses, slide rules, calculators, photography, computers, and now A.I.: forget tractors, why do the heavy gray-matter lifting when you can build a machine to do it for you?

     And yet -- we do still have gardeners, farmers, stonemasons, poets, singers, miners, men and women toiling in the kitchen or on the assembly line.  One of them might be able to do the work of ten of Socrates' students (or their wives or servants), but work they do.  (Alas, genius still resists force-multipliers; we don't get ten Greek philosophers of the price of one).

     Labor still matters.  It shouldn't be disparaged, not scrubbing floors or unpacking the mysteries of subatomic physics.  We must, still, work, and it's probably built right into our genes, long-haul hunter-gathers who stumbled out of Africa, ganging up to harvest tasty megafauna and sweet, sweet berries, singing before they went and telling each other stories about it afterward.

The Man Who Mugged Analogy

     Tam and I watch the Sunday political talk shows.  I wouldn't say we like watching them, but it's not a hate-watch either.  The programs are the lowest common denominator of American political discourse, available to the widest cross-section of the gen. pop., and because the big networks do have to keep their advertisers, viewers, the FCC and a smattering of basement lunatics* reasonably happy, they're as close to a big-picture look at the current scene as can be had.

     Today's snapshot comes from NBC.  Kristen Welker was interviewing Republican Senator John N. Kennedy of Louisiana, a politician who could out-awshucks Foghorn Leghorn or his inspiration even spotting them three "Ma'ams," one "I say," and a wilted magnolia.  Asked about the economy and specifically inflation, he had this to say:
     "I’m labor. I’m not management. I don’t run the show."

     He -- a U. S. Senator -- would have us believe he just works there.  To continue the parallel with business, that is as if a member of the Board of Directors pretended to have no more influence over how a company is run than some hourly person on the assembly line.  This is not the position of a member of the United States Congress, it's a neat summary of a Senator's job in Imperial Rome.  He's asking us to believe he's just a-watching the whole train run off the trestle, caboose over boiler, as he sweeps the floor in the railroad station waiting room, powerless, thinking if only: "...[W]e’d be on this issue like a hobo on a ham sandwich. We would be all over inflation passing bills."

     If he was my Senator, I'd be asking for my nickle back.

     The interview is a marvel of a man with money, power, influence and authority claiming he's just a little fellow caught up in the gears, a-doing whatever he can, which is nothing at all.  If that was true, why d'ya suppose he even bothered to appear on TV, or the TV people bothered to invite him?  You can find the whole thing here.  Don't eat first..
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* I'd like to be able to tell you that one "side" or the other, out at the fringes of our two-party system, has a definitive lead over the other when it comes to political violence.  But even though it's often more one than the other at any given time, metaphorical meteorologists blowing up Federal buildings or supposed law'n'order fetishists bushwhacking a talk-show host (or vice-versa), the truth is they're usually so far off the Left/Right horseshoe that their political "philosophies" are largely horseshit, and viewed as a whole over history, they're as likely to have gone galloping off from one end of the horseshoe as the other.

The Spider

     It's not a metaphor.  A large Orb Weaver has set up shop in our side yard, between one wall of Roseholme Cottage and a skinny wooden post for the temporary fence around the tree-smashed house south of us.

     I noticed her weeks ago, initially with a medium-large web between one of the pillars holding up the roof of our porch and the front wall of the house.  A gold-kneed Orb Weaver!  She'd weave a new web every evening, seine the air all night and take it down each morning.  A few days later, I blundered into an anchor strand in broad daylight between our house and the wreck of our neighbors, and didn't give it much thought.

     Thursday, Tam and I were taking the trash can to the curb.  The usual division of labor is that she wheels the bin and I stand watch;* it's large and heavy.  Even though it has wheels, it's an awkward thing and there are plenty of places to take a fall between the back yard and the curb out front.

     Tamara was in the lead, puffing with effort, and came to an abrupt stop.  "Uh-oh!"

     "What is it?  Are you okay?"  Our normal route follows the narrow sidewalk to the south of the house.  After the tree fell and was rapidly cleared up by a team of a half-dozen men, the usual bumps and little hollows were supplemented by more of the same, and they're big enough to catch a wheel.

     She paused before saying, "There's a huge spiderweb!"

     I walked around her, flashlight on.  There was indeed a huge spiderweb, at least a yard across and about five feet high, supported by a very heavy diagonal of silk from our gutter to a foot above the base of one of the neighbor's fence posts.  It was neatly signed with a white squiggle, and at the very center, a large, light-brown spider with pale knees, half again as big as last seen.  The fishing must be good.

     Tam was unhappy.  She's uncomfortable with spiders, especially big ones.  You know how some people who are nervous around cats or dogs seem to attract them?  She's like that for spiders.  If a spider's going to screw up rappelling, she's who it will fall on, panicked.  "We can't go this way."

     I like spiders.  They catch and eat noxious bugs, and often perform fancy dances (ever watch a zebra spider hunt?  They leap and spin like a cartoon ninja!) or weave elaborate nets in the process.  "I'll take the trash around the other side of the house," I said, "if you'll open the gate on that side."  I took the bin from her, backed it up and got it turned around, and horsed the heavy thing through the long detour.

     Once we'd got the bin to the curb, I went around to the south to see the spider and her web from the other side.  Her abdomen is marked with a pattern like snake scales, with a paler + right in the center.  She didn't seem to mind the attention -- an annoyed Orb Weaver will start to bob up and down while holding on to the web until the whole thing is rippling; they'll let you know when you're in the way.  I didn't want to spoil her fishing by getting too close.  The web is one of the largest I've seen in years, truly impressive work.

     When Tamara and I returned from our morning walk right before sunrise today, I had another look.  The anchor strand is still there, a good sign she still considers that spot her patch -- but she'd taken the web down.  There's plenty of room to walk under the anchor at the high end.

     I guess we've got a new helper!  Around here, the Orb Weavers usually fish a spot for a few weeks and then move on, folding their nets and slipping away.
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* While this may seem unfair, on Trash Day I clean out the fridge and change two of the three litterboxes, and usually buy the pizza as well.  It evens out.

Worse Than Crooks

     Lying and cheating is kind of expected of politicians -- but they're not supposed to embezzle millions; they're supposed to keep their lies small and personal, and stop at merely shading the truth about big things.  They're supposed to have some respect for the government of which they are a part, or at least to fake it in a convincing manner.

     The Trump administration's egregious nonsense about voting, and especially voting by mail, is far outside even these lax norms.  Their proposed "fix" for the non-existent problem appears to be designed to create chaos and disenfranchise the greatest number of legitimate mail-in voters.  It imposes a "zero error" requirement on outgoing ballots, in which a single mistake on one envelope would result in the rejection of an entire batch of thousands of them.  At least 24 states have pushed back, including some controlled by Republicans -- and even though pending court cases only blocked mandatory compliance with the proposed USPS mail voting requirements, not a single state has chosen to voluntarily comply and many report that they simply cannot.  Nevertheless, the administration has gone to the U. S. Supreme Court to ask for a ruling that will allow the scheme to proceed, even as the first states prepare to send out ballots within days.

     It's a huge, dirty Federal thumb on the scales of a balance the individual states are supposed to be looking after -- and they have done so from the first days of our republic.  No entity has ever produced evidence of statistically significant vote-by-mail fraud, despite a great deal of very diligent searching for it.  At this point, even a nursing-home worker helping the frailest of the people in their care fill out ballots must surely be aware that the slightest fudging will come under the microscope.

     Stealing from campaign funds for nice dinners and limo service, sending Federal business to your son-in-law's uncle's firm, ignoring constituent complaints while swapping votes with colleagues -- sure, we voters don't like it, but it's not unexpected.  Election interference largely aimed at the most helpless or isolated voters is far worse than ordinary crookedness.  It's a slow-motion, low-key coup attempt, an autogolpe under the thinnest veneer of pretended concern.

     You can help stop 'em.  No, I doubt the Supremes listen to anything but the ringing in their own ears these days, and the only thing the Trump administration listens to are its own worst members and the whims of the man at the top, but you can get out there and vote in November, in person if possible, and vote hard against the undermining of American democracy.  You might end up with a few farther-out Democrats than you'd prefer, but the Dems have demonstrated a willingness to accept being voted out, and voters can always remove the most egregious in the next cycle.  Mr. Trump's Republicans, especially the man himself, have repeatedly refused to accept defeat in fair and honest elections: vote 'em in one time too many and you may be stuck forever.  Consider the stakes.  It's not a safe gamble.

Geeking Out

     Here's a whole series of pages with old General Radio publications!  Great stuff if you like that kind of thing; GR built a lot of parts and lab equipment from the very early days on.  Eventually, they were divvied up and parted out.

Nightmare Logic

     Watching national and world events is like having a front-row seat to someone else's nightmare: not only does it not make sense, even the emotional resonances are off.  Jarring.  Or perhaps it's like a badly edited movie,* in which the storyline never quite gels and the various elements undercut one another.

     International affairs are askew at best; domestic politics seem to be headed for something wretched as the November elections approach.  Will there be fireworks or a damp squib?  Troops at the polling places or just the usual confusion of overworked volunteers?†  Will the outcome be rout or a coup?  Something muddled, leaving the House and Senate on an even closer balance?  (A divided legislature is often a silent legislature -- and silence, as Plato observed and Robert's Rules of Order reminds us, is consent.)  All I know for sure is that anyone who says they do know is talking through their hat.

     It's all sliding downhill and right towards us, like an avalanche viewed from the valley floor, and while it might seem slow or even graceful, it's moving a lot faster than appears and it's carrying chaos with it.
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* We've been watching Ride Or Die, a generally delightful series that can't quite make up its mind whether it's a spy spoof or a serious tale of friendship and international intrigue; but the acting, sets and photography are first-rate, and the editing is often brilliant -- especially the frequent and varied "match cuts" when going from one location to another.
 
† A reminder that almost everyone you interact with when you vote is either a volunteer or a low-paid temporary worker.  Whatever is going on, whatever party is in power in your precinct, whatever thuggish nitwittery is afoot on election day, Left, Right or lunacy, they didn't create it and they likely wish even more than you that it would just go away.  Please be courteous to the voter-facing poll workers, no matter your political affiliation or what you suspect to be theirs.  They're not nefarious villains.

About That Eye Infection

     I was diagnosed with an eye infection in my non-dominant eye some time back, and prescribed steroid-antibiotic eye drops to treat it.  My eye got better at first and then it started getting worse, so I kept using them and called my eye doctor.

     By the time of the appointment, I was over a week past when I ought to have stopped using the drops.  Turns out I should have.  They're pretty harsh.  They ended the infection, all right, then started attacking my cornea, producing much the same symptoms as the original infection.

     So now I'm on some other drops, steroid only, and they're helping, but I might not get everything back.  Could be that one's always going to be a little less sharp.  Plain eyedrops help.

     Being one of those little old ladies who always bugs the doctors was not among my ambitions, but I've got to stop figuring everything will work out.  Sometimes it doesn't.