WIRED on Stupidity

 Stop calling Everyone a Tech Bro

Read this to update your HiTech vocabulary of Nastys. They are all here. 

For example: "Hope at least six girls sucked your dick last night."

The Church that Gradually faded Away

This Church was my family's church: the RLDS. 

It was the church of both my father and my mother, but I know so little about my father's family, I will not say much about them.

The RLDS church was formed after the death of the leader of the LDS church, Joseph Smith, was killed in 1844. 

The period between the LDS and RLDS is complicated, and I will not go into that. But will begin when Joseph Smith III became the president of the RLDS, in Lamoni, Iowa. Record-keeping was poor before the Computer arrived, but under his leadership, the church grew. But not as much as the LDS under Brigham Young, which was always a much larger church.

My mother's father's family was in Nova Scotia, but one daughter of that family immigrated to Boston and married into a rich family there, the Fishers (who were RLDS). She sent for her brother to teach at the Fisher's Business College. 

At the same time, another family (he Fairclouphs) immigrated from England and one daughter enrolled in the Fisher Business College. They were very RLDS. This daughter married her instructor at the college (Albert Sanford) who taught Shorthand. 

They bought a new house in a suburb of Boston, Summerville, where my mother was born. 

The RLDS church peaked out in the Fifties when I attended Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa. 

I went on to the U of Illinois and became an Electronic Engineer. And dropped out of the church.

The rest of my family dropped out too, but gradually, and in a complicated way. 

Tech and Greed

This is a strange combination, but one we need to take seriously because it puts strange people in power. 

What is behind these strange people? A new kind of greed, that is caused by powerful new technologies. The latest of which is the Computer. 

I can remember what happened in Silicon Valley in the Nineties, and I can see the same thing happening in Costa Rica now. Strange people are taking over. 

What are they like? This is hard to say because they are invisible. They are Organization people and only live in that environment. The bigger the organization gets, the more powerful they get. 

This would be fine, except large organizations are stupid. And stupid in a new way, we cannot comprehend, a new kind of greed. 

An example is Facebook. which is making billions of dollars helping people use their computers. Is this a good thing? Lots of people are not so sure. It may be helping users, but it is helping itself more and is helping the strange people, I keep writing about. 

Politics in America

The last election cycle should have taught us something about America. And I hope to contribute to that insight. 

Obama was president and we should have learned a lot from his failure. He made magnificent speeches that everyone listened to. But soon learned they were only speeches and meant nothing. 

What did we learn from that? Nothing, especially the Democrat party. They should have grabbed him by the collar, and said: "Get Real!". But they did not, and no one expected them to.

Americans (and nearly everyone else) no longer knew what this instruction meant. 

They were not aware of ordinary reality and expected something more exotic. Trump fit that bill, and they elected him. 

It is easy to say "Americans are stupid!" And there is a lot of df truth in that. But we need to say more, like how we are stupid. 

How did Biden become President?

In the US, a President is elected every four years. 

This meant the incumbent President Donald Trump (a Republican) would run against the Democratic candidate.

The Democratic selection process is strange. There are a large number of people who want to be the candidate. How they get this far along in the process is unknown to me. One of these people was the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, for example. 

They are all lined up on the stage to have a debate (we are told),  This is more like a series of speeches. Then polling is done to determine who will stray in the process. How this done I do not know. 

At some point, one person's speech will be convincing enough that he will become the candidate. He will then select someone else to be his vice-president running mate. 

Someone else must have described this process better somewhere else. Please direct me to it. 

Noodles For Breakfast

Or for any other meal, for that matter.

I picked up a package recently somewhere because it looked so pretty. Then I realized all the writing was in Chinese.

No problem, I just boiled some water and added it to the noodles - then opened the three little packages and added them to the water. I used a fork to eat the noodles and then drank the soup that was leftover. 

Not too bad!

China is Winning the Artificial Intelligence Race

Newsweek 

This is another must-read that no one is reading. 

It says China now has the money (because of its Manufacturing expertise) and knows how to use it. 

Fifty years ago, I could have said the same thing about my hometown of Ft. Madison, Iowa. Today it is part of the American Rust Belt. 

Piggly Wiggly

Piggly Wiggly was a bear

Piggly Wiggly had no hair

So Piggly wasn't very wiggly

Wasn't he?

The Human Species

Is becoming extinct in some parts of the world, such as Africa. This is due mainly due to viruses, and associated species, which are evolving rapidly. 

This situation has not happened yet, to the best of our knowledge, but it probably will. and there is not much we can do to stop it. There are too many of us. Especially the very poor. 

Those who are reading this are not very poor. But they are worried, could this happen to them too?

Being Nothing

 Why is this so appealing? Because it feels like its opposite: Being Everything, or Being God. 

This is apparent in my family's religion: Mormonism. Which always has its Prophets. 

This raises a question? Which one are we to believe? And the answer is easy: the right one or the official one. 

If a leadership becomes unpopular (such as in the Reformation), war may result. 

Crypto Hysteria

For example, see Chain:link: The One Token To Rule Them All 

The first three paragraphs are just that: High Tech BS. 

A better explanation is the one on Blockchain in Wikipedia. It's over my head, but gave me a good feel for this important new technology.

Living with the Computer

 This is not going to be easy, and maybe impossible. Because it wants to rule the world, not us. 

The Computer was preceded by Industrial Revolutions that made Machines dominant. 

The Computer is the last of these Revolutions and the most dangerous one because it has made Artificial Intelligence (AI) possible. 

I will address AI-first, because it is a whole family of innovations, such as Machine Learning (ML). 

I am acquainted with these because I have been learning about Programming, as a hobby, and everyone in this field is talking about them, and there are plenty of courses on them. 

This has resulted in people who are in the know (and are rich), and people who are not, but trying desperate measures to get there, such as the election of Trump. 

People are better than Computers

 Because People can be good, while Computers cannot. People can be, but Computers cannot. 

This may be confusing, but consider one fact: a Computer is a Machine. It is not alive like People are.  It has no feelings.  

"What!" You may say, my Phone is full of feelings, and expresses them all the time. It likes some People and not others, using Facebook It can even make money for me. 

Edison, the Inventor of the Electric Chair

 I learned this by surfing the Web, a favorite pastime of the not-too-bright. 

Somehow, I found an article about Telsa, the genius that invented alternating current (AC), that powers nearly everything in today's world.  

Edison wanted to show how dangerous it was, so he invented the Electric Chair that really caught on. 

The Power in Not Being

This always amazed me, because logically it should have made us weaker. What is going on?

I think it was caused by the arrival of the Computer, and it's Artificial Intelligence (AI). 

This was a recent development, and not easily explained. This was the most important development of our time, and we should be giving it a lot of thought, but we cannot. 

For most of us, we cannot even explain the Digital Computer. We can use it, but cannot understand it, or the effect on us. Indeed, we cannot see any effect on us at all, when it has changed us completely. 

Indeed, we have never understood ourselves very well, and this ignorance is now worse. 

The Lessons of the Nixon Pardon

 New Yorker

I was impressed by the intelligence in this article, but most Americans will be offended by it, and the other books he has written.

My brother, for example, identifies himself as Conservative and loved Reagan.

The Attractiveness of Destructiveness

We hear so much now about being constructive. But not much about being destructive. And at the same time, a mob takes over Congress. 

I think this is caused by trying to make People act like Computers, which can only look forward. People can also look backward, and act according to what has happened in the past. Computers can do this also, but not as easily. They want to act on what has happened recently. 

People can also be destructive, and engage in warfare, with relish. This is not so easy for Computers. 

But they can easily become destructive also and were so during the 20th Century. In the 21st Century, they have become more constructive, 

Liking Myself

I function best if I like myself.

For example, I am learning programming as a hobby. Today I wondered if I should learn the Python programming language. The only way to find out, I realized, was to try it out, using a nice book I have.

I was pleasantly surprised to find I liked the book and the author. 

And I liked myself for learning this way.

Finding who We Are

This is a permanent quest for me, but not for most, who are determined to not be instead. I am obsessed with this problem - finding who (or what) we have become. 

As I have already said, we have become nothing, quite deliberately, and feel this is the smartest choice. 

In our present situation, perhaps it is. Let us review what this is. We live in a world that is hostile to People, but friendly to Corporate Values. What are they?

I wish I could give you a simple answer. But our present situation has made simple answers impossible. It has made life Complicated. Consider the international bestseller Making Globalization Work.  What does it say? It says this is impossible. 

To Be or Not to Be

That was a valid question for Shakespear. but not for today.. The most traveled path now is to follow our advertisers. We buy what they want us to buy, and believe what they want us to believe. 

The other path is more up-to-date, we become Computers.

If you go this route, you get in bed with Microsoft or Google. If you have a young mind. If you are old. like me, you are out of luck.

Your Brain gets Smaller as You get Older

I got this insight from my brother Steve, who have to have brain surgery after he fell and hit his head. His brain bounced around inside the brain cavity inside his skull. His doctor did a scan on his head and decided he had to be operated on. 

We had a cousin, John Ourth, who had the same injury a few years ago but died from it. If you hurt your little brain, take care of it now!

W-3

 Newyorker

I could write my own psych-ward book, about Beth's time in one in Santa Barbara, California. Beth was beautiful but crazy and could attract crazies wherever she went.

Beth our donkey (and me) used to go backpacking. The further away we got from other people, the better we felt. We had our own life, but it was not working

This book has nothing about that. It's about Psych-wards only, with their own assortment of crazies. I have ordered the book, to be downloaded to my Fire tablet.

Ray is Gay

And this has a profound effect on his behavior, and on the behavior of others toward him. 

For example, we were pulled over by the police, who were doing some kind of security check. We sat there for the longest time, while other vehicles were waved by. Why?

The officer thought we were suspicious. He had his antennas out, and they detected something suspicious (homosexual behavior). 

Goons with Guns

You have heard the news, a new version of what Hannah Arendt wrote about in 1964 when she formed the phrase we never forgot "The Banality of Evil".

It might be useful to summarize that situation again. Eichmann had been found and taken to Isreal to stand trial amid sensational publicity, this was going to be the Trial of the Century. It was a Show Trial instead, one we have completely forgotten. 

In the same way, we will soon forget yesterday's incident. 

Me. Ray. His Car. and my Shopping

We gave ourselves a workout this Wednesday morning.

Ray's car has been in a garage Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday. But today, a Wednesday, he put himself, and his car ar my service. 

The first thing we did was to go to our bank (in Paraiso). and use my debit card to get a bunch of cash, in Colonies (for rent), then we did my shopping, in Cartago.

I frequently cook Pasta with Pesto, and he knows a store, in the backcountry, that imports Pesto. I got two bottles of that.

Aeroposr was nexr, that flies my packages from Miami, Florida to Cartago, Costa Rica. I got a box of Hershey Chocolate bars, They charged me an arm and a leg for that. My cash was running low.

Next PIzza Hur. where I got a whole box of Pizza, Which went into the freezer. There was a was a huge traffic jam on the way.

I got home dead tired. 

The Latest Stuff

Is the Amazon Fire HD 10 Tablet with all the accessories, which gives you everything under the sun.

I bought it, everything included, and then let it explain what all these extra things are, and whether I want them or not (most of them I don't).

Everything wants a place in my mind, and I will have to keep saying "No!".