regpertom

Not alone, thanks for the nice post. Recently my area was very flooded, all govt resources were diverted to the larger population areas including our local volunteer firefighters etc. to an extent that they even locked their doors and were uncontactable. People remember that it was the same “last time” as well. The bigger the problem the more we’re on our own. Food, logistics, shelter, welfare checks, clean up was all handled by people stepping up. No power or phone or internet for 5 days. We’re putting together plans for all that you say but also for ad hoc radio coverage. It’s worth mentioning that there’s a nontrivial amount of 5g causes vaccine people or whatever other ‘evil’ group and other social outcasts as you should expect from being in the middle of nowhere but it didn’t matter except that some welfare checks were done at the front gate haha

It was interesting in that people wanted to help but didn’t know how but once centralised organisation stepped up, say, someone with 10 lasagnes could drop them off and have them distributed. Or say a restaurant 70kms away can just rock up with 100 meals.

It feels good to be able to apply job skills on the fly in a real way to help real people, excuse me for thinking that though.

I was recently reading about North Africa campaigns in ww2. One thing to note was that decisive aggressive actions that tanks allowed cause a lot more POWs because their positions could be overrun so quickly and effectively that desperate last stands weren’t feasible. Mud and hedgerows in France were a problem back then too. I also remember in desert storm 2 hearing that although many Abrams tanks were taken out of action, none of them were penetrated, it was all maintenance issues. Rommel and Patton seemed to both think of tank warfare as it’s own thing that was hard. In the Patton movie they talk of troops thinking tanks were death traps back then too. It’s touched on in the article, Ukrainian tank kill videos I’ve seen seem to be close range ambushes in urban areas. It’s my opinion that the US would have already bombed those areas to pieces and were much less willing to take risks with potential civilian combatants. But as the article says there is a lot of fog about what’s really happening and my view of the US is flavoured by the ‘atrocity’ videos that were popular ala Manning etc. Super heavy tanks like Abrams and tigers seem really cool Edit because didn’t finish: but that’s not the only way to go with tank design

When I was in a lot of debt, banks outsourced collections agency called many times on a private number and wanted me to verify myself before they would verify themselves. No. Bank denied they would do that but that was lies. They couldn’t even admit to trying to get in contact with me. Collections agency couldn’t even play the theoretically game of maybe there’s a certain someone out there, who knows who, who hasn’t paid off a credit card, maybe this certain someone would want to consider going into his bank and having a chat but that’s not for me to say ah capishe? I’ve got a rock you’ve got a sword how are we gonna play this out? Good times haha

It might be much like a dentist lecturing you on brushing your teeth. You’re in there because you don’t. The dentist might resent this, stuck with disgusting idiot after disgusting idiot in their mind. Alan watts says the dentist should make peace with it. Maybe you know you’re meant to brush your teeth but you don’t remember to, or a tooth fell out after brushing once and you thought it caused it etc. Some people avoid the dentist completely because of being ashamed of that lecture/disappointment. Then there’s the seeming popular “victim blaming is a hate crime” angle of doing anything more than prescribing something. Anecdotally, the super rare, in tales: old man doctor, who calls you a dumbass and tells you how it is straight is a treasured item. Various comedians have bits as such. Much like a professor who sees right through your self deceptions and justifications. They want their delusions shattered. To other people though the insolence and condescension that they perceive from that same person is seen as trash, doctors and professors should of course empathise with me instead of putting me down kind of thing. They don’t want their delusions handled too roughly. Trash or treasure. It’s not an even field though because if you did the “wrong” thing, the former doesn’t get the most useful help to them but the latter may try and bring down professional consequences upon thee. Which is probably why the mystical “no heck’s given” doctor is always old/bitter in the stories.

Taking this away from computers and to systems, I’ve always had a terrible time with interacting with government. So much so I go very far out of my way to avoid it. Talking specifically about Australian Centrelink which is social support type things including unemployment payments. I think this applies to all large bureaucracy. It always seemed impenetrable to me, but in the waiting areas are people there are plenty of people who are experts at navigating this system because they’ve done it for a long time, to stereotype: bogans or redneck type people it’s easy to call stupid, they know all the tricks and all the scams. The govt is then designing and updating their system to foil these people, locked in a perpetual arms race in which someone like me is completely lost in the meta, spun around, chewed up and tossed aside. Powerless to an opaque system designed be experts to prevent experts taking advantage of it but in effect requiring everyone to become scamming experts or be eaten alive. I haven’t even tried in 10 years. Hugely detrimental because this learnt irrationality includes the tax department who I don’t even know what to do about any more, compounding problem.

I turned superstitious and in these terms tried to get lower and lower level. I had a bag with every piece of paperwork ever and carried it with me every time that just got bigger and bigger for no reason. Horde everything you don’t know what you’ll need. Trial and error different phrases like they had magical powers. In a way funny at the time and still funny now not counting the stress and anxiety.

When people proverbially flip a table in frustration with technology I relate it to that experience and I think it fits pretty well. To me it’s bureaucracy to them it’s tech. I’ve had good success teaching people to use tech and in tech support and in event coordination by keeping this in mind.

Here’s another: a job I had changed to a certain digital system for job orders. Don’t worry they said, what you need will be printed by your manager. I said don’t you mean to say “should” be? What are we to do if they aren’t? If printed in advance can we be assured they’re not out of date? That won’t happen they say. It did happen. Failed after a week. Leaving us to nut it out, which we did. The old system had us doing that work so in the end nothing changed but it just got more complicated because new boss wanted some fancy thing to help him with 10 employees and the few things a day we did, it wasn’t Microsoft scale or something. Technology and damn computers copped the blame from the old fellas but it wasn’t really technology was it?

Edit: sorry I’ll add one more thing, the success I mentioned was mostly about being patient and going through what happens when something goes off plan. To the person saying they ask all the time left click or right click, show them both. I did mean left click but here’s what happens when you right click. See? It doesn’t explode, a menu just pops up. So it’s no big deal if you forget. Also: here’s the steps. Repeat those steps for me. Ok now I’m going to start you from a random area of the website, you have to get back to the starting place and then do the steps. Ok now a different place. So if that little print icon isn’t where you think it’s meant to be you’re just in a different area. It goes from being a rote series of steps to a basic understanding when you demystify and strip away consequence, including the shame of being of being an international level expert at something who can’t do something society expects as basic.

Ottomh, George Takei and Neil DGT have both lectured me on what a stain on American history the internment of Japanese Americans during ww2 is. Part of that included harassment of Japanese appearing businesses and people. The stain still remains to this day so I don’t say was. I think they were using it for antiTrump stuff but I took it as a general lesson.

And then bamm the whole world is in total war with Russia and your either with us or against us. Freedom fries were a deranged pro Iraq war conservative thing, no enlightened person would allow themselves to fall to such petty hate ho ho ho. People would laugh as a relic of the past stories about how my grand mother didn’t listen to German composers or buy Japanese goods and as she got older, buried anything precious to her in the backyard.

James Webb telescope say for example had/has lots of international assistance, who would want to throw those decades away to spit on Russia?

Regardless of justification, if you‘re pouring shots too big too often the bar will have to install automatic shot pourers and everyone suffers. Maybe it’s a relic of the past also but isn’t there an idealised heart at the core to open source? Hope for a better world built on trust and responsibility? We know there’s no one to sue but trust us and use libreoffice it’ll be fine.

Another anecdote: mercenaries in South Africa and Sudan on different sides drank at the same bars at night. I heard a story of a pilot on one side and a ships AA gunner on another sharing their stories with each other for many nights before they realised they’d spent days trying to kill each other. They didn’t go home afterwards either it just was what it was. Australia tells as legend how the Anzacs and Turks could play cricket over a ceasefire. After all there’s no reason we can’t be civil bites pretentious fruit

My Ukrainian, russian-language teacher has changed his online names to basically John Smith. Seems he feels a danger in being mistaken for russian.

These are things I’m contemplating and are not meant to overrule whatever you might be contemplating or advocating dear reader. I want to say obiter dictum. I follow the sentiment of the article.

Hello, please excuse me for another post but I’ve been thinking about it since and I have more things that I’d like to add, I have updated by bot programming haha let me know if this is better formatting :)

Consider, if you will, a perspective of the book Lord of the Flies, in which a group of school children who are stranded on an island descend into chaos and violence. At the end, the children are saved by a passing ship and it’s crew.

Presumably, had the ship captain been there from the start things would have turned out very differently.

Is an aristocratic education analogous to hiring a sea captain?

In that vein, is sea captain an even better fit than educator?

To put some flavour back into the story from before, viewed as a group, as the group got older, the trials and tribulations of the world were exasperated by the inexperience or lack of wisdom of the group. And so had the sea captain been there, they would have acted as guidance, direction, wisdom type roles. For roughly all of life’s things.

The tutor would go on the grand tour and would live with them. They would often have multiple for different areas of interest, …

Ok so flip it around and now we’ve got a single child instead of a group and a group of sea captains instead of 1.

A group of sea captains of different specialities would approach total cultural transfer as the group got larger. For a definition of cultural that would be analogous to tesuji or clever reactions to the things that happen.

Therefore it goes beyond “teacher” in a modern school way.

So is it also therefore that the failure to produce geniuses is the difference between school in our context and life. Their context was closer or the difference smaller.

I’m going far field into blindly assuming that book learning, what we might call academic knowledge mostly remains, some might argue watered down or perverted but they at least still exist, where as non academic things, like you’d discover on the grand tour with Jeremy Clarkson have completely vanished.

If it could be shown that a focus on that version of academics has increased over time it might even be possible to say that more academia produces less geniuses, reword that into makes people dumber, smudge it a bit and: academics makes people dumber. Which would be quite funny.

End.

Ps. There would maybe be interesting things to find by looking specifically as the types of tutors and their life curriculum. Marcus Aurelius lists maaaaaaany things iirc. “and to Epiclitus I owe…” parts.

Ps. People argue about, paraphrased by me, life skills lacking in home schooling being problem with this but maybe I’ve shown that’s not necessity correct.

Ps. Similar themes to my preceding comment but I feel like it’s better. More of a statement than the beginning of a dialogue. More focussed and fleshed out even if relying on shorthand for some of it. Otoh I’ve introduced more of my own things and dropped threads for the sake of that focus. Still, I’ll think I’ll mark it positive progress. Good bot.

I think you’re calling me a bot. That’s a shame. I’ll reply literally: Feeding a comment thread, through regular reply box, with what I consider hopefully within the realm of suitability. And personally: I think I have trouble conveying complicated thoughts (to me) without spending lots of words on background and hedging information. I hope to get better with practice. I hope that at least I don’t get in the way too much so I posted as it’s own comment not a reply to someone.

Is this what you mean?

Feynman talks on names of birds being irrelevant. Also that there’s a hidden side to science not talked about and just assumed the student will pick up, that your weaknesses should be exposed. Also cargo culting.

Bart Simpsons karate teacher says first we fill your head with knowledge then we break bricks with it.

The article says tutors went on the grand tour. We’re full time live in always available.

The Huxley quote in this comment section. —————————

I wonder with SEO popularity marketing contests and polarised viscous populations, have people just learnt eyegouges? So now no one has eyes. How can a “naive academic” be produced in a trap filled landscape of litigious deconstruction?

Example, Feynman has a go at the reporter about asking why magnets work. Russels soft speaking. Could “we” allow these things?

Hello, I wonder, concerning unemployment stats, people are saying u-3 or u-6 etc. is there something like “full utilisation”? What would that look like? Say, assume drones/advanced future cyborgs are free and everyone works and likes it. It’s not going to be infinite growth since it would have to be locked to a pop and region. Simplify for example: it works out to be a Mac Donald’s every second street corner. How many jobs and res?

I also heard of a thing called money velocity. ~how much a particular dollar moves around. I heard it’s worth considering when understanding inflation stuff. I heard it said that recent stimulus has been like adding gas to a cold system (low velocity) where last time it was a hot system. The worry is we are going to explode if the temp goes up. Have a nice day everyone.

Hello, all replies at this point I think are ~cultural. Caspianreport (others to probs but that’s where I heard it) iirc says a lot of China water comes from Tibet region. Many big Chinese rivers start there. This is first comment ever, god knows how long I’ve lurked, please take it easy on me. Confirmation bias link and quote: https://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/geo/proper.htm “ Two great rivers run through China Proper: the Yellow River in the north, and the Yangtze (or Yangzi ) River to the south. In fact, most of China Proper belongs to the drainage-basins of these two rivers. Both originate to the far west in the Tibetan Plateau.”