Sunday, July 2

It’s alive!

Well, barely. Hey – it’s 2023. Did ya ever think? I never dared, or wanted, or thought beyond 2001, maybe 2010. Some science fiction date that would never really arrive.

Now it’s here and and everything’s all Escape From New York and The Manchurian Candidate and The Dead Zone. Without the happy endings.

Russia turned out to be a huge turd masquerading as a formidable military power. Why the world keeps taking them seriously is a mystery. Have they ever been half as competent in practice as they pretend to be in choreographed drills and fiery rhetoric? No. They were pathetic on a per capita basis under the Romanovs, including in Crimea. They were rubbish in the First World War, their Civil Wars were chaos of the lowest common denominator, everyone reduced to thugs at the end. The Second World War was a “victory” by mass attrition. And I do mean mass — to the tune of 25 million dead. The U.S. hasn’t had that many casualties in all of its conflicts in 247 years combined. We’ve lost 1,304,700 troops total, and and least 650,000 of those were from the American Civil War, which was obviously us killing ourselves. That tends to run up the total quickly.

My point is, Tsarist Russia, the USSR, and the Russian Federation have all suffered from the same problem: They are governed by corrupt oligarchs or dictators at the top, who care more for their own survival and lifestyle than they do for their people or their country. They are fine with ordering human waves against heavy defensive installations, for no rational reason. They will assassinate or exile generals who show too much initiative and become too popular amongst the troops. They are in many ways more afraid of their own advisers, military leaders, and spy chiefs than they are the actual enemy. They have always been a terrible fighting force. They have designed some good vehicles and equipment, though it tends to perform better at shows in peacetime than under the duress of combat. They exaggerated the capabilities of everything, where “Western” (NATO) countries generally do just the opposite. If a Rus fanboy online tells you the Su-57 can cruise at Mach 1.5 and surpass Mach 2 with afterburners (nearly 2.5!), you can assume with a fair degree of confidence that one in the wild will actually cruise around Mach 1 and boost close to Mach 2 while losing its stealth characteristics, such as they are. I’ve seen posts and even online “military analysis magazine” website articles that claim the Su-57 (or PAK-FA as the export to India is designated) is the new top dog of the skies and can best the American F-35, and even the mighty F-22 Raptor. This is obviously good for a deep belly laugh, and could possibly help one recover from some afternoon malaise or light depression. I’ll never be able to prove it with numbers the way these desk jockeys had Russia’s military 2nd best in the world, and Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and North Korea all in the top ten. People like that are people who have been using the entire suite of Microsoft products since the early 1990s and now use an ugly Android flip phone or a Pixel because “If you do an actual comparison of the specs vs the cost, you’d be surprised…”

Let’s just say I’d bet all the money I have that the following would make short work of an Su-57 or a Chinese J-20 in a dogfight, given pilots considered well trained by their respective services:

F-15, F-15 EX, F-18, F/A-18, F-35, F/A-35, F-22

I’d go so far as to put even money on an F-16 or an F-14 taken out of mothballs and cleaned up.

In a squad vs. squad scenario I’d go even further. Give me 5 F-35s with satlinks, or 3 F-22s with a Growler in the rear but with near-horizon coverage. You can send up to 50 of any Russian or Chinese made planes at me starting from 150 miles out, with any percentage of those planes being support aircraft. I will shoot down all 50 of your planes without taking a loss. Rest, reload, redo the experiment the next day, and the result will be the same. If the U.S. is able to network several of its modular, systems-aware craft and/or have over-the-horizon starting conditions, no combination of Rus/Chin aircraft are going to get anywhere near enough for a dogfight. The only constraint is going to be the number of missiles my planes are carrying, the rounds of ammo in their cannons, and the goodies I can call upon from my support craft (jamming, EM pulse, mini-drone strikes, etc). Soon that might even include directed energy weapons, in which case I might be up there awhile. Maybe til I get so hungry I need another aviator to come replace me for awhile.

Essentially, when the games stop and the fuh’rilla pops off, almost any U.S. fighter (air dominance or hybrid) is going to overwhelm any Sukhoi, Chengdu, or any other pile of scrap that an adversary has in the sky. The difference is tremendous. You’ll never see this online from keyboard jockeys crunching stats in between mining bitcoin, who are a whizz at uploading YouTube videos and have a presence in every major social platform, but have never served, fought, and generally never really lived. Lived outside, observed what happens in real life, and why you can’t model complex situations involving hundreds of variables, many of which involve human reactions, decisions, motivation, perseverance, training, and more. And the stats you have access to as a civilian are inaccurate. One “stealth” fighter is not necessarily nearly as invisible as another. A “5th Gen” fighter is only stated as being such. It may really be a 4.5 or a 4+. While another “5th Gen” might really be a solid 5.5, bordering on a 6 with a recent avionics upgrade. There’s just all sorts of nuances that aren’t made public, at least not readily, and YouTubers on average are not renowned for their deep investigative work. They need to pump out videos fairly quickly, so they consult sources like Wikipedia, or even worse, partisan fly-boy sites that always exaggerate the qualities of their favorite armed forces. Just go to any Indian military website… When they aren’t pimping their own rides, they’re relentlessly touting the science fiction-like abilities that new Russian or Chinese gear is going to bring to the table, which will have The Americans shocked and confused, scrambling for answers. Of course it’s always some model of aircraft or ship or tank that hasn’t actually been developed yet, but is heavily in development and expected at any time. Ever heard of vaporware? Or hype for something that exceeds what the engineers can actually deliver?

Apple, Inc faces this challenge every year, or every quarter. People expect something game changing from them in a way they don’t from other companies. Apple can deliver solid upgrades and evolutionarily improvement year after year, which would earn them plaudits from the pundits were they almost anyone else, but being Apple, they will inevitably start hearing those voices of discontent: “Apple has forgotten how to innovate! Tim Cook needs to go!” And when they do develop something radical like the Vision Pro, the same nabobs that rubbished the iPod, iPhone, and iPad take to their CNET columns and confidently tell their readers what a mistake this was from Apple, that it’s too expensive, there aren’t any killer apps, there’s not an audience for it, and all the same tired cliches they uttered after every innovative product Apple announced in the past. My god some (most) of these so-called experts are short sighted and wrong about so much. I could do their job much better. The same with many of the TV/free website level (think CNBC or Yahoo Finance) stock market “experts” that tell you what’s a hot buy and what’s fools gold. Their reasoning is so terrible! Some of their assessments are correct, but there’s always low hanging fruit, like buying NVIDIA as AI starts to become a thing (like, a year ago). I knew they would blow up because they dominate the GPU market and GPUs do all the crunchy math stuff in a massively parallel way, which is perfect for generative processing, which is what current AI like OpenAI’s ChatGPT do, once they are fed a crap load of real world data. Sifting data and doing comparisons and ranking them and all of those iterative, hierarchical algorithms are tailor made for a GPU. So NVIDIA, which designs the most advanced GPUs, and TSMC, which physically manufactures them, are probably going to be good investments if generative AI takes off (which it has). It’s not rocket science. It’s computer science, but more about being in the know than being able to code like Dennis Ritchie.

I think I’m way off topic…


Sunday, February 12

New content coming in 2017

Sorry for the yuuuge delay!

Wednesday, June 27

a new metaplane

completely redesigned for a post apoplectic world

see you there

Sunday, June 24

a new beginning

Saturday, June 23

a new topology

Friday, June 22

a new medium

Thursday, June 21

a new movement

Wednesday, June 20

coming in winter...

Wednesday, November 16

The best date format. And more.


Numerical date formats vary around the globe. Let’s just consider the Gregorian calendrical system, which is what most of us use every day.

The American version is the worst. Month (med), then Day (small), then Year (large). Huh? Not good for sorting, and makes little sense to the human mind unless you're inculcated with it from birth, kinda like Fahrenheit temperatures. It's arbitrary.

Example: 9/11/2001 (September 11th, 2001)

The version most of the rest of the world uses (not counting religious or other ‘traditional’ calendars), is better. Day (small), then Month (medium), then Year (large). It’s in ascending order at least...

Example: 25.12.1972 (Christmas Day, 1972)

However, it still fails when it comes to standard computer sorts, because we need descending order for that. They got it right, except that it's backwards! Well, unless you write in a right-to-left language, I suppose. Tower of Babel indeed.

It turns out the perfect date format would be [year].[month].[day], which is in descending order of magnitude, and thus lends itself perfectly to computer sorting.

Example: 2011.11.16 (today – year: 2011, month: November, day: 16th)

The delimiter (slash, dot, etc.) could be anything, really. Neither of those are probably ideal because forward slashes are used in Web URLs, and dots are used as periods (full stops). Maybe the ‘>’ sign would make sense because the big end is always opening toward the larger concept. Year > Month > Day. Simple. It could even be extended to delve right down into hours, minutes, seconds… the problem with that symbol is that half the people get it confused with its sibling, ‘<’ – ah well, we could find something I’m sure, if we put our collective minds to it. Or rather if our mechanical successors do.

However, two forces remains an obstacle. Inertia (people don’t like to change) and lack of widespread reasoning skills (people seldom do what makes the most sense).

The fact that the proposed system does makes the most sense is the reason it’s probably never caught on anywhere. Still, I’ll bet its moment will come, whether it takes 20 years or 50 years, to achieve some kind of worldwide ISO status, simply because it’s the best ‘sortable’ format and the world’s information, including dates, is being converted to computer data at a rate that has been growing astronomically for some decades now, and that train isn’t about to slow down.

---

I’ve already changed the way I label music, for example, so that it sorts correctly for me: [Artist] - [(Year)] [Album]. Inside of that folder would be the song file itself: [TrackNumber]. [Title]. Note that the “.” after the track number is part of the file’s name construction and that “TrackNumber” is a 2-digit number (XX) so that even that sorts properly. Thus, if I want to listen to the Dan Fogelberg song “Illinois” I would open my music folder and find it in the “D” section (I don’t like using LastName, FirstName mixed with ordinary band names; it’s too confusing and involves commas)…

(list continues above)
Dan Fogelberg - (1972) Home Free
Dan Fogelberg - (1974) Souvenirs
Dan Fogelberg - (1975) Captured Angel
(list continues below)

Aha, there’s the correct album in the middle!

Now before we go on, you’ll notice that the big downside of this is that you have to know which album the song is on, or use Ctrl+F/Cmd+F to find it, which defeats the purpose a bit. This system is for neatness and sorbability, not for finding things most easily. That’s why multi-sort databases like iTunes, using an information tag system such as ID3, will always be superior to a hierarchical folder-and-file system. But I still name and store them this way: It gives me the best of both worlds. I can use iTunes, sure, but if I want to share a few albums from a particular artist with a friend, for example (so they can evaluate them and then buy them themselves, of course), I can do so very easily and the friend will be delighted to see how organized it is even outside of a database.

So, to get back to our example, I open up the Souvenirs album folder with a double-click and see that the song I want is the second track…

01. Part Of The Plan
02. Illinois
03. Changing Horses
(continues)

Some people don’t like the leading zeros in single-digit track numbers, but they are essential if you want to assure accurate sorting on all systems in all situations. I’ve grown used to them and quite like them now! It keeps the names lined up rather well.

That’s just one more example (in addition to the date formatting example above) as to how we’re going to have to pay attention to sort-orders in this increasingly digital world. When an average person may have hundreds or even thousands of files ranging from text and presentations to music and video, it’s vital to have a system to organize it all somehow, just so you can find things. And cleaning your naming system up might even make you enjoy browsing your files again. Sure it’s practical, but I think you’ll find it’s aesthetically nice as well once you’ve done all the hard work of renaming everything.

For example, even my user-content folders (as opposed to System stuff, which I leave alone) are organized similarly. Something like this…

00 Meta-information
01 Downloads
02 Text Documents
03 Music
04 Movies
05 Documentaries
(etc.)

Again, those would be folders inside a main “Justin” or “Documents” folder - the ultimate outside folder tends to be determined by your operative system. I prefer to put them on the root of my boot drive (C: drive for Windows people), but some people may not like doing this, and each new version of all major OS’s seem to keep further encouraging us to use a “(My) Documents” folder, which is usually buried in a user account folder, which is buried… Well, maybe you can see why I like to put everything at the root level so that I can get to it easily even from a command-line interface. When your multimedia/content folder is buried five layers deep, it may not be a nuisance when using the GUI, but it will be if from a command line when you have to try to remember where that sucker is!

I wish OS’s would stop trying to force us to organize things their way, or would at least give us a choice – say, to simplify the directory (folder) structure for single-user systems. If I’m the only one who ever uses my computer, I shouldn’t need a “Justin” account. I would rather see the root of the boot (C: or Main or whatever) hard drive look something like this:

00. Meta-information
01. System Files
02. Drivers
03. Applications
04. Programming
05. Downloads
06. Music
07. Photos
(etc.)

Notice how I changed the formatting slightly in this example from the previous one. This is just to show that there are still stylistic choices to be made. The important thing is to be consistent.

This seems to me not only to sort correctly (or at least according to taste), but to be much, much cleaner than the current paradigms in use. It makes intuitive sense to me and I could navigate it from a command line if I needed to with little effort. Of course, the “System Files” folder may still be a big spaghetti-like hierarchical monster inside, but as users we needn’t really venture in there anyway; that’s where the OS lives and does its thing. The main point is that getting the user’s multimedia data - loosely defined as ‘the stuff you want to back up’ - out of some mess like that and putting it on par with everything else would make things easy to find them where they really reside without having this dated, tangled desktop metaphor in which both files and shortcuts (aka aliases) can be present, but in which the whole “desktop” itself lives in a folder insider the user’s account, yet can reference items outside that account… even the desktop itself. Please don’t think about that last statement too much, or you might grasp how Gödelian it all is and mentally explode or something. And I don’t want that on my conscience, not to mention my monitor.

j.sias 2011.11.16

Saturday, October 22

Hairshirt

I am not the type of dog
That could keep you waiting
For no good reason
Run a carbon black test on my jaw
And you will find
It’s all been said before
I can swing my megaphone
And long arm the rest
It's easier and better
To just beat it from the chest
Of desire
I could walk into this room
And the waves of conversation
Are enough to knock you down
In the undertow
I’m so alone
So alone in my life
Feed me banks of light
And hang your hairshirt
On the lowest rung
It's a beautiful life
And I can hang my hairshirt
Away up high in the attic
Of the wrong dog's life chest
Or bury it at sea
All my life
I've searched for this
Here I am
Here I am in your life
It's a beautiful life
My life
It's a beautiful life
Your life.


(m. stipe)

Monday, October 10

Los Picos

Part of the Picos de Europa, a mountain range that runs through Cantabria and Asturias in Northern Spain.


Click for full-size. Pretty amazing mountains, eh? What Asturias lacks in sheer elevation is makes up for in dramatic peaks and sudden elevation changes, lush valleys snaking through snowy shards of stone poking out of the earth at all angles. Lots of nice granite, shale, and even limestone... a geologist's dream!

Sunday, October 9

In the wake

of adversity lies an opportunity,
a rebirth
the story is old, but it metamorphosed
when I told it

a sun rises, it knows nothing
but the people believe in something that
is grander than themselves
feelings are everything

ask Galileo on a moonlit night
or Kepler
if his elliptic tides are right, are precise;
ask Newton,

ask Feynman if your math's all right
Penrose, Einstein
the point is the lesson
that they are only brilliantly guessing

Seneferu, Khafre
Imhotep did the same thing
Sargon and the Maccabees
could see clearly the fog ahead of them

so please,
put away your mindset
and open up to another set of minds
and if you follow the Duat

and remember the names,
and your training
you may make immortality yet
not that you would want it.

It gets cold.



All waves view old, warm shores
Father returning.
Adventure is a sunny captain
Adventure is a lively ship.

Rise calmly like a hungry gull.
Seashells sail!

You keep waiting
The temperature is dropping.

Why does the sun travel?
Faith, love, and life.
Where is the sunny beach we dreamt of?
Winds endure like rough sailors.
Where is the dead captain I use to salute?

I’m afraid it gets cold
Down here where we think
More than we were ordered.
More than we should have mutinied – even us.

In a cylinder of steel who couldn’t
After many months,
Spare a few thoughts
To the existential plight of
Being or not-being, seeing or being blind?

Mu! Moo!
All attempts fail
I realized it all in my dreams and
The waves lap happily forever
Compared to human lifetimes.

Tuesday, October 4

Autumn


Procession

There is no end to this
I have seen your face
But I don't recognize all these things
You must have left behind

It's a problem, you know
That's been there all your life
I try to make you see the world without you
That's just so black and white.

At night it gets cold and
I'd dearly like to turn away
An escape that fills
That makes you want to turn on heel

Alone, alone, alone, alone.

There is no end to this
I can't turn away
Another picture but the scene
It's still the same

There is no room to move
Or try to look away
Remember life is strange
And life keeps getting stranger every day.

I try so hard but this attitude's
A type that won't subside
No matter what they say, remember
Your heart beats you day and night

Your heart beats you day and night.

(B. Sumner)

Sunday, June 26

I can't sail rhymes
And tell the tales of mighty kings
Keeping the letters afloat
With no broken rings at all

All I can do is call
I hope that the mighty shall
Hear the meek
In my own simple way

I loved all that was unique.

I can't change for you
I can't even change for me
We're high in the Picos now
What we've brought is what we'll need

If we stumble and die,
No one knows us, few shall care
But if we get to that peak
If we bother, if we dare-

Maybe we'll find meaning there.

There are no accidents
How we shall live is how we choose
So I chose you
Of seven billion lights to lose.

The courage to give it back
Trust in destiny, faith or muse...
We're all alone inside, but we can share what dreams may come
Lightning rends the night, all I know is what I've done.

Just maybe I will be the one.

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

It’s all over
You’ve had your day out in the park
You better come inside
Before it gets too dark.

We’ve all had a great time
Playing with our private worlds
Event horizon
Here on planet Earth.

It’s all over
It’s the final curtain call
For too many life forms
There’s just no time left at all.

Whatcha gonna do when the rain comes
Are you going to sail on the rising seas like Noah?
Whatcha gonna feed your little orphans
When there’s no more fish in the sea?
Forever...

No more Sundays
And no more religion for you
No more pie in the sky
And no man in the moon.

Whatcha gonna do when the rain comes
Are you going to live on your holy desert island?
Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea
As our world slowly stops turning
Forever...


(B. Perry)

Winter in Hallstadt


(click for original size)
Wintersun

Can’t stop the hurt
Can’t stop the bleeding
I am invisible
Can’t stop the thought
Nor the feeling
I don’t exist at all

But when you call my name
Do you feel the same way
That we’re trapped in time
We’re both living a lie

I live in a tower
Of my own creation
I’m indivisible
From the thoughts that make up
All my memories

Transcendental

But when you call my name
Do you feel the same way
That we’re trapped in time
We’re both living a lie?

Many days have come and gone
Since the day I was born
Now the autumn of life has finally come
With the promise of winter thaw.



(B. Perry)

Wednesday, June 15



ECLIPSE

All that you touch
And all that you see
All that you taste
All you feel
And all that you love
And all that you hate
All you distrust
All you save
And all that you give
And all that you deal
And all that you buy
Beg, borrow or steal
And all you create
And all you destroy
And all that you do
And all that you say
And all that you eat
And everyone you meet
And all that you slight
And everyone you fight
And all that is now
And all that is gone
And all that's to come
And everything under the sun is in tune
But the sun is eclipsed by the moon 



Tuesday, June 7

Damaged People.

We're damaged people
Drawn together
By subtleties that we are not aware of
Disturbed souls
Playing out forever
These games that we once thought we would be scared of

When you're in my arms
The world makes sense
There is no pretense in crying
When you're by my side
There is no defence
I forget to sense I'm dying...

We're damaged people
Praying for something
That doesn't come from somewhere deep inside us
Depraved souls
Trusting in the one thing
The one thing that this life has not denied us

When I feel the warmth
Of your very soul
I forget I'm cold and crying
When your lips touch mine
And I lose control
I forget I'm old and dying.

(M. Gore 2005)

Saturday, May 21

Lifescream

The world is pain
Cut feet on cut glass
I sit and read and try to think
Watch and learn
Learn how everything works
Work on watching even harder
So I can somehow make sense of it all
But it never gets any easier

I'll overanalyze myself all my life
Existing only to look in I wonder
Why I was put inside my skin
To flail and flounder on the shores
Of a world where action is king
And understanding without conviction
Expressed by the movement of muscles
Is nothing

Just ask the YMCA
Where I played soccer and swam
Ask all the teachers I've ever had
Who have seen the look in my eyes
Peer into my dreams for just a night
Assuming I am sleeping
The world is full of pain
And I'm silently screaming

Wednesday, May 18

Unreal

Craziness has come over me. I've gone mad. I'm not the same person from day to day. I don't recognize myself in emails I've written, don't remember people I've talked to at long lengths, things I've done and said and promised. I never go out, and time passes somehow, but I have no way to measure it and I can't tell if it's going slow or really fast. I'm in a body and life I don't recognize. I have a new computer, I've been talking to new people. Or are they the same people? People who were once familiar are dying off, slowly. That must mean life is rushing very fast. But I don't feel it. Is it the effexor? Is it the klonopin? Am I bipolar? Depersonalized? Insane without realizing it? Just what exactly is going on here? The Lakers lost? How long ago was that, and why are baseball games on the radio? When I have some yardstick, some mirror from the past to peer into, I feel completely different from one time period to the next (days? weeks? mere hours?)... but from within me, in the moment, I can't tell that anything is changing. Like a person who is in an airplane, moving fast, but hardly aware. But when I look back and see emails, notes, here people tell me things I said, remind me who they are, and cannot for the life of me make any connection, it's scary as hell. I'm so disconnected to reality right now. Disconnected to being a human being at all, more like some ambient presence always haunting these rooms, watching 'me' go through the motions of life. But it's not real. It doesn't seem real. And it's not a life I like or that's even worth living, yet I guess in each moment I find something to do and go on. I even see that I've been really giddy or talkative or profound or serious or flirtatious. But they all feel like different skins; different suits I've slipped into and slid out of. None of them feel like this person right now, ME. Or is this me? I need help.

Tuesday, May 10

A Lucid Moment

Grabbed a peek
Felt back inside
Came out of hiding
And it's all I seek
It's what I need
To see the sun before it
Goes behind the clouds again
Before the noise gets
Too goddamn loud again
Just need this peace

Grab me a seat
I want to get out of it
And run around doing
All that I haven't been doing
For my years have grown bleak
Like a film without a
Happy ending
But I'm bending the rules
For a day or two
Maybe more.

Friday, May 6

torch blown out

in the everlasting darkness
that always blankets me now I walk
about in circles looking for a way out
but these walls were built around me
there's nowhere else I can go
it seems I've got no will of my own
and I can't seem to find my way home

sleeping forever
dreaming forever
a forever sleep
is what you get
when you sink too deep

ça va sans dire
ça va sans dire
ça va sans dire

Friday, February 25

A little questionnaire for YOUR pleasure.

You can answer these how you want, since after all this time I know you will anyway.

1. Do you have a middle name? What's the first letter?
2. How many continents have you set foot on? Which ones?
3. Are you interested in history before the 20th Century? Where and when?
4. Are you interested in science? How much? Which sciences interest you the most?
5. If you could meet five people from history (in their time), who would it be?
6. Are you better at math or at cooking?

That's it! Painless, huh.

Thank you. I look forward to seeing your answers.

Thursday, February 24

An odd couple...

One of rock's biggest rebels and a legend of the underground scene in his home Australia and around the world, paired with one of the world's most successful pop artists, also from Oz, who's made a living on the charts spinning out dance tunes. But apparently they are good friends, being Aussies and all (heh), and this duet (there have been a couple others) comes from Nick's LP Murder Ballads.



If Kylie would make more music like this, she'd get more respect. If Nick made more music like this, he'd be more mainstream. Thanks God people are what they are and don't change! Still it's nice to see people out of their element, don't you think.

Saturday, February 19

Dawn.

Be courageous, not hesitating
Give me an honest surprise
Don't tell beautiful lies
Stop waiting
Life is not a rehearsal
For another life to come
Whatever people are saying

Do what it is you're thinking
Stop sleeping in, stop crying
Stop wistfully sighing
Start speaking
To people you know again
Only then will your mind relax
And your body start healing.

Lyra and Iorek.


Thanks to Raelha for this!

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