One of the drivers of how scary everything feels is that we’re in an era of catastrophic innovation.
And I know as I type this that half of you are going to go “but from covered wagon to airplanes! Wasn’t that faster?”
Yes, in a way, but we’re talking about different areas of change. (As well as the fact that change builds on change.)
First let’s establish the rate of change humans are good for. It’s very slow, and measured in the pace of a human life. The new generation might expand the hunting grounds, or whatever, but by our middle years (which some scientists claim is around 25) we are set in our ways and pretty much just want our routine. We can shake it up in minor ways, but the major patterns are set.
Humans like their patterns “safe to eat” and “good grazing land” and “friendlies vs. enemies.” We want tomorrow to be more or less like today but a little better. And we want to raise fat babies who have fat babies. For that to happen, we have to know that tomorrow will be more or less like today but a little better.
This is our minds. Our bodies are even slower to adapt. See the rate at which lactose tolerance is disseminating in the population. Evolution is a slooooooow process. You see, it’s a hit or miss thing, and it’s based mostly on “Does it allow you to reproduce more, and produce more viable descendants.” Sure, being petite with violet eyes might make a gal super attractive, but unless it also allows her to have triplets for every birth and have 26 kids who each have 26 kids in her life time, the fact that gentlemen like anime girls is not going to give us all anime girls in two generations or fifty. Keep that in mind, because it’s important.
Second, sure, the late nineteenth to mid twentieth century saw an amazing rate of technological change. There was probably a non-insignificant percentage of people who made it out to the American West in covered wagons who were alive to see the moon landing. Looking back, this seems dizzying to us.
Was it?
Well, yes and no. Like a lot of the changes through the industrial revolution, it was astounding and mind-breaking and…. things that happen to other people either far away or in a much further up social strata.
Look, I was born in the early sixties in a small European country. When I was six we moved from one house to another using an… ox cart. I took my first flight at 17 when I came to the US as an exchange student. I was only the second person in my family to fly anywhere. This included immigrants to other continents who had taken the “vapor.” By which they meant boats. Not sure if they were steamboats, as the name implies.
The rhythm of life was still very much what it had been in the 19th century. Sure cloth manufacturing and clothes manufacturing was easier, cheaper and faster. But that meant some more mill jobs for local youth, and people dressed better.
Again, even when television became common in the seventies, the rhythm of life didn’t change much. The housewives now watched soap operas, as opposed to merely listening to them on the radio.
The difference in our current rate of change is that — mostly because government blocked the big changes that Heinlein expected — at the very personal, every-day life level.
When I moved to the states now almost forty years ago, contact with my family was cumbersome and expensive. It was a major line item on our budget to have calls to mom. Now it’s not only free, but I routinely get pics of grandnephew in my texts when I wake up. I can communicate to friends around the world. In fact, most of my friends, while in the US might as well live in Narnia. I never see them, we just talk every day.
But the … changes hit at every single level that involves information/learning/media. Which means they hit at every level for anyone who works or plays in those realms. Which in the US is almost every single person.
For me, at the professional level the change is particularly dizzying. I mentioned before that we’re just now about to run out of a set of stamps we bought in the early two thousands, expecting them to last a month. But submissions went online that month, and well, after that so went bill paying and most correspondence. We probably won’t use the six month supply of envelopes large and small for the rest of our natural lives. If you get a letter from me, it will have tape on the closures, because the glue is SO old.
Also, I went from trying to always have more than one publisher to publishing myself, and if you think that denotes a demotion, or that it must mean I’m making less, or– Well, oh, you sweet summer child.
And the whole thing is accelerating crazily. For people like me, the ability to produce entertainment that reaches the masses and/or to learn whatever I very well please, at this point is bounded only by my time and energy. (And the demands of this blog, which is– well. Its own time sink.)
Sure, but that’s entertainment. Even supposing that — bet you that — in two to five years I can produce animated movies of stories that rival what Hollywood can do, with minimal learning investment (I can do it now, if I am willing to spend three years to cludge together semi-functional tools, integrate them and LEARN them well enough to use off-label. My problem being I’m not willing to lose three years of not writing at all, and not blogging either.) what is that going to change?
Well, not much, but that’s the nature of my profession. I have friends in other professions, though, and … well…. it gets complicated.
If I’d stayed in my original path as a multilingual scientific translator, my lunch would be currently being eaten by automated translation tools, which, sure, still need human editors, but far less. (If I’d stayed on that path, I suspect right now the mathematician and I would be starting a retirement project of creating better automated translators.)
And I have friends doing work on better 3-d printing. And better machining, the kind you can do at home and used to require a factory. And I have friends working really hard to break all sorts of barriers in distance medicine, and diagnostic, and engineering, and–
As I said, it’s accelerating. Part of the reason it seems like governments have gone to war with their own people is that the “blue model” of centralized governance views the 1930s as its ideal time to be. Because mass everything was obvious and controllable, from communication to manufacturing.
Currently they’re running around screaming misinformation and trying to grow more fingers to plug the leaks in their information dam. And not succeeding. And that doesn’t count the myriad new manufacturing/robotics opportunities over the horizon just waiting for the boot to lift a little, not even be removed, to come into being.
To an extent, the “progressives” — never was a movement more strangely named — are suffering from shock and panic over fast change because of how wedded they are to “systems” that “explain everything.” People with that kind of mindset are not prepared to quickly change how they think, or to take new factors into account.
So even though all of us feel like everything is slip sliding away because of fast change to our everyday life, the left feels even more so.
To an extent their “invented” change, to the numbers of genders, or whatever, are ways to cope with their own cognitive dissonance, in the same way cutting yourself is a way to cope with change you can’t control. Also a way to accuse us of what they’re doing. “You only say that because you’re afraid of change!” etc. because they project like an Imax.
Also, tying in to that evolution thing, their attempts at keeping the new generations ignorant and incompetent, yeah, are going to hurt, but not in the long run. In the long run, humans are as creative and adaptive as they’ve always been, and the kids are finding ways to learn and innovate. The learned neuroticism only paralyzes them for a few years. That means they’re slower to get started, but not permanently crippled.
No matter what the left does, it only seems to feed the acceleration of change that escapes their control.
Which drives them crazier and leads them to do crazier things in an effort to control us.
Which in turn leads to us escaping them faster and in more creative ways.
Have I mentioned: Hold on to the sides of the boat. The seas will get choppier.
And also, remember RAH and keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.
According To Hoyt 
I’ve always thought that one of the prerequisites for accepting radical, overnight change (especially regarding technological change) is that we have to think about it for a good long time first, before it actually becomes reality. People speculated about heavier-than-air flight for at least a century (or more) before it was done. We have to get used to the notion first … and then it’s easier to cope when it becomes a solid reality.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Which means FUNCTIONAL science fiction is needed. Functional meaning fun and actually extrapolative, including of crazy situations. Not the social-commentary crap crammed down our throats by trad pub.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Such as for heaver-than-air flight. People saw all of the crazy cartoons for years, of the “future skies of New York or Paris” – and the reality was not at all crazy when it finally came to pass.
(Now, those cartoons might still be predictive, in a way – but they’re going to be drones cluttering the airspace.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Icarus
LikeLike
Exactly – functional science fiction is the arena for getting all that ‘thought-work’ done: how it might work, what it might change, how it might change us … so when it all becomes possible, we’re ready to roll.
LikeLiked by 2 people
And such “functional science fiction” has been around a *long* time, as many of the Usual Suspects here well know already.
Started in the “golden age” 1930s?? Not even close. Look at Kipling’s “With the Night Mail” and “As Easy as ABC” on air travel. The science is now ultra-“quaint” (Fleury’s Ray!), but the deluxe publication of the 2nd (IIRC) story came with fake air-age ads and everything.
Look at Jules Verne’s long-ignored “Paris in the 21st Century” or whatever the title really was. And, actually, most of his stuff.
“Functional” SF (and speculation too, “A Step Farther Out”) is the headlight with which we (collectively) begin to see our future. We’ve been using it a long time, and it’s important to keep the lights on.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Edgar Allan Poe had some as well. I’m currently listening to his stories.
LikeLike
Jules Verne got so many things correct that to me his stuff now reads like he regularly hung out where time travelers had lunch and wrote his stuff based on their offhand comments.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In one of Simon Hawke’s “Time War” series, Verne got captured by a Rogue Time Traveler who had stole a Russian nuclear submarine to cause problems in Verne’s time.
Oh, when the Good Guy Time Travelers solved the case, some of them had Verne sign their copies of his books. [Very Big Grin]
LikeLike
There is in the USS Nautilus (SSN-571) an early copy of 20000 Leagues Under the Sea that was gifted to the first captain and is now displayed in a case on a wall in the Nautilus. I believe it went under the North Pole on Nautilus during Operation Sunshine.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Answer to “why don’t you read Jules Verne?”
“I don’t read dated science fiction. Not even those that were predictive.”
LikeLike
Very good, Sister Sarah!
LikeLike
I last bought stamps at least ten years ago – and those for Christmas cards. Was smart enough to pay a little bit extra for the forever stamps, so I believe I have around a 50% discount over trying to buy stamps for them each year.
I’m getting Scroogier every season, too, it seems – so I probably do have a remaining lifetime supply.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nods. A look at the (digital) check register shows 45 checks in the past 12 months. Will be putting more on autopay, though there are some vendors where there’s an incentive for a check. Not many, but a few. Most of the incentives favor electronic or autopay.
LikeLiked by 2 people
There’s one or two cases where we’d rather the vendor not have ready access to the checking account…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Definitely 100%.
LikeLike
Said bank was quite suspicious when my checking account got drained (at a location 450 miles from home) and the branch manager was outraged that I had the nerve to tell the police. They made good on the money, but I pulled the non-credit card accounts in favor of the HP credit union. (Never seemed to have caught anybody. Can you say inside job?)
OTOH, I’ve had no problems with them as a credit card outfit, for about 50 years. Go figure.
LikeLike
Worse we had, and this was ’85, so wasn’t sure they could fix it. They did. But oh, wow. We had a 30 CUFT upright freezer we didn’t want to move or leave at the house (we couldn’t sell), so we sold it. Couple that bought it had an account at the same credit union. I deposit the check, get the statement. Get cash that weekend, balance is $300 off. Wait? What? Down there Monday early, before open, but as management, etc., showing up. “Know I am early, but …” Wasn’t easy but they did find the error. Deposited AND withdrew from our account. Fixed it. Back then the statement would have shown what happened, but the check would not have been in the pile (back then we did go through them to balance). $300 was a lot of money back then. Otherwise, knock on wood, we’ve been lucky.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Reason I love online banking – one of my “dailies” is reconciling our accounts to the bank. Don’t have to pester $SPOUSE$ for receipts, only have to tell her when the “unbudgeted” budget is close to exhaustion for the month.
LikeLike
What I do too. Both checking and credit cards. At this point neither of us get receipts unless they print them anyway, or might want to return something. Then too I have CC text any charges (setting is > $0), after what sister went through with nephew and his phone being stolen. They kept ahead of the thieves by a thread, since they had alerts set on their phones too. Even after canceling and replacing phone and all the account cards. (He’s 23, but still a college student, so they are still emergency setup on his accounts. Based on industry standards not entirely legal, as I have learned, even with his permission and knowledge. What TPTB don’t know won’t hurt TPTB and the account holder has to complain. I technically run into this with our accounts and mom’s stuff. Technically I’m suppose to have my own login and use that. I don’t. Rarely get into mom’s stuff unless she is sitting, or on the phone, with me. But I’m the one monitoring our revolving accounts.)
LikeLike
Online banking through the credit union was available back when I was strictly dialup, and it didn’t quite make sense with limited bandwidth and sharing a phone line for voice. For various reasons (coughMask Mandatescough), $SPOUSE refused to go to town on market days unless vitally important (like Kat-the-dog needed a lap and pets when going to see the vet), so the receipts are on me. It might take a few days for me to get the round tuit to enter, but entered they are.
Hughesnet is decidedly not broadband, though when it works, it’s fast enough for most needs. OTOH, it can crap out at the damndest times, so until I’m on an internet with more redundancy (ie, Starlink), I’ll stay dead-tree.
One investment account’s statements were borked by USPS, so we went paperless for that. I have to deal with more than one credit union (for reasons, sigh), and there’s one that I really don’t want to consider online. Rather not deal with it altogether, but it’s marginally better than the banks… I’m not impressed by banks going under and getting sold. Wells Fargo, US Bank and maybe Wash-Fed are the steady ones; the others went pearshaped in the mid-to-late Aughts. (Wamu earlier than most–was not happy with Chase.)
LikeLike
Neither were we.
LikeLike
Our bank account has a feature that they’ll print and mail a check for no fee.
I use that for the electric company – they have a gouging processor up in Prescott that wants to charge me almost $5 to do a debit/credit card.
(I know quite well that the bank is not actually doing anything paper – interbank transfer at most.)
LikeLike
Our Texas bank has a feature that allows us to deposit checks through our cellphones. Fill out the amount, which account it goes to, take a picture of the front and back … and, hey presto! Funds deposited!
This was really handy when it came to people and orgs who still deal in paper checks (for bookkeeping purposes, mostly), and we don’t want to wait and go to the bank branch itself.
LikeLike
I’ve never used that feature, although I do have it (nobody sends me checks, and I’m at the ATM for cash in pocket reasonably frequently).
Son did have some serious problems with it, though, when he got his first paycheck for a new job – they were still “paper for first check, then direct deposit.” Fortunately, his landlord and landlady were quite understanding…
LikeLike
We’ve got that feature too. Never used it.
LikeLike
Having run into trouble with that sort of thing – the kind that we had to go to court over – all of my banking is in-person. Fortunately our bank still offers a “no electronic or phone access” option.
LikeLike
The propane/unusual fuel depot offers 3% discount* for cash or check. I try to combine small propane fills with offroad diesel and/or non-oxy gasoline, so that 3% is a nice bit of change, but I don’t want to pay out cash. Same when they do the big deliveries (propane for the house 1X per year, usually, kerosene every other year–heater to keep the shop/barn from freezing. Serious winter work means wood.)
((*)) Discount/surcharge. Tomato, tomahto.
LikeLike
Our Credit Union does the same. Right now utilities, both natural gas, water/power/sewer, do not charge extra for credit card payments, and they are auto pay. The minute they go back to 3% or other charge for credit card, they lose auto pay privilege, and I’ll trigger a payment manually once I know the amount. Which may or may not mean the bank cutting a free check, and mailing it free. Depends on who is getting the payment. Most (credit cards, loans, etc.) are direct fund transfers.
Learned that business, even non-profit, do not get the above advantage. Oh the checks and mailing is free. But the privilege has a monthly charge. No. Worked out to $36/year to send out 2 to 5 checks a year for the historical 501(c) graveyard. No. No. No. 500 check box will last forever at this rate.
LikeLike
Yeah, my gas and power company charges extra for online payment too. And they make their payment portal a pain to navigate.
So they get a check.
LikeLike
Pacific Power lets you pay via credit card at a fixed surcharge, but EFTs are processed at no charge. USPS was getting cute and the bills were showing up late, so I had to go that route. It’s a Berkshire Hathaway company, but I think I might be willing to do an autopay with them. It’s a bit complicated already; the shop/barn is a business account, separate from the house power. I write one check and stick both payslips in the envelope, but Murphy has too many chances to play games… He hasn’t yet (I said YET!, Murphy!), but it’ll happen sooner or later.
LikeLike
We ran into that with EWEB and postal service. Luckily I have EWEB setup for auto create balloon charge (not pay) in Quicken. Realized hadn’t put in a reasonable amount and it was close to being due. Created the online account to get the statement. Got it paid. But what the heck? Wasn’t the only one.
Got mom setup with an account too. She wasn’t getting a bill period and was having problems figuring out why. A huge bug in the new system. A bill was NOT being created because she was paying her even pay (estimated monthly payment stays same every month, with a year-end makeup charge if needed – summer over pay, winter underpaying) before bills generated. Problem was no amount due, no bill. You’d think, um, okay … But no way to track her actual charges against what she’d paid. Then she’d be surprised at her “outstanding balance owed”. She thought her early payments weren’t getting credited to her account. Not true. But you argue with your 89 year old mother without proof. Had to get the spreadsheet direct from the utility. Also forced utility to recognize they had a problem. Switched her to actual due. Showed her how to budget monthly for higher than worse month. Working better.
Don’t know if bug ever got fixed. They had to report the bug and wait for a release to get the fix. Not doing their own programming. Almost told them they should go with the company I retired from. They have a Public Works Utility program that includes billing (for counties that took over water and power districts, some multiple in CA). Haves the same information, but doesn’t have the fancy graphing. But report the bug, they’d have a release the next day, or two (horribly understaffed, but bugs get top priority).
LikeLike
I considered doing that for electric – and decided it was too much of a hassle to get that into our budgeting.
I just run a twelve month rolling average for electric and water, which is slightly low in the hot season, slightly high in the less-hot season (southern AZ…). Used to do that for internet, but that’s been a fixed amount since $SPOUSE$ had to do on-line teaching in 2020, and I switched it to unlimited. (Didn’t change back after the free period they gave us, still have a gamer and a streamer at home.)
Groceries/household I do with a 52 week rolling average – which is usually wildly off on any one week, but pretty good with four or five weeks. Subscriptions the same, as billing cycles don’t ever match to calendar months, or even weeks.
LikeLike
Have power/water/sewer set at $400. Right now summer (less than efficient A/C + outside watering), highest still just over $300*. Natural gas sits at $200 (winter heat), highest been under that (summer is $0, after big rebate, to current < $10). Bill comes, enter actual amount breaking down pieces (trying to see actual costs over time for water and power. Bill gives current usage, usage over months, and prior year billing, but not charges.) If ever go over max, then up max.
(* Yes, those of you in CA, I know that is “cheap”. I’ve done testing on utility billing for some CA water/power districts that counties took over. Results so high I thought I’d changed something I hadn’t intended. Nope. Really that high. Ouch. No don’t remember which counties now. It has been 8 1/2 years since worked, and longer than that when discovered.)
LikeLike
With the latest price hikes from Pac Power (and the loss of hydropower), the historical rate of $0.11 per kWh rose to $0.14 last year, and is now $0.16. That’s strictly electric. Propane is a once a year thing (cooking and backup heat), and the well is offgrid except on really cold & snowy days. I can switch to mains power, or if really necessary, I can bring down a generator to recharge the batteries. Haven’t needed such yet in 5 years.
The wall heater for the pumphouse went sideways, so I’m using two milkhouse heaters set on minimum. One is powered by the PV system, and the other has mains power. If I get the round tuit, I’ll take another stab at getting the propane to work. I’m afraid I had a wasp nest in the air intake and the likely bottleneck is accessible without cutting the heater shell. Sigh.
LikeLike
“don’t remember which counties now.”
I’ll make it easy: Any that have PG&E. We have SMUD for electric and it is a huge discount from the small amount of gas we use for the heater, even though it’s electric for the AC.
LikeLike
IDK what provided the utilities with power or water. Utility districts distributed within their districts. Just know that it was expensive.
EWEB and EPUD get water out of the McKenzie River system. Power comes from dams also on the same river system and tributaries. Some power from partnership in solar and wind farms, and there is always Bonneville Power (Trojan Nuclear partnership is long gone). Water costs went up because of needing to update and repair infrastructure. The Holiday Fire, 2020, was essentially the McKenzie River system, which did not help.
LikeLike
When we moved here, part of the power was from Bonneville. However, Some Judge (like Sumdood, but in robes) said that nobody in Flyover County deserved to be on the Bonneville system, so a lot of cheap power went away. OTOH, that only amounted to 1-2 cents per kilowatt-hour. Losing the dams on the Klamath cost a lot more.
Then Cali-f’n-ornia and downstream tribes convinced TPTB that the dams on the Klamath were the cause of everything from poor fhish yields to the heartbreak of dandruff, and Pac Power didn’t want to build several fish ladders (4 dams, 100MWe, so they figured wasn’t worth it), so we lost that. Now we’re supposed to be happy that we’re paying for the damn removal, though we get a minuscule discount because we are no longer on B-ville.
We also have ranches that have more solar panels than cattle. Whee.
FWIW, in San Jose, gas & electric was one bill, garbage another, and water a third. Santa Clara uses the water and power from Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy, which is considerably cheaper than PG&E. Never lived in Santa Clara, so don’t know how the utilities were set up. Commuted through there, and one week in April was “any trash you can put in front of your house is free (for values of)”. Didn’t do any non-dumpster diving, but there was some furniture that looked attractive to somebody who needed such.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Can you blame them? Raising cattle costs with no guaranty that the cattle will make it market let alone they’ll get paid enough for raising the ones sold. Solar panels? Or wind towers? Ranches get paid for having them on their property whether producing, or not, and someone else pays to maintain the site (fire prevention, etc.) Meanwhile they can still raise cattle, or whatever.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not when the bankers want you to eat zee bugs….
https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/americas-looming-cattle-crisis-5697192
LikeLike
We have been spared from the eagle-choppers in the county, though there might be wind enough. After the Bonneville decision, doing groundmount installations for ranches was a gold mine. I think that the residential outfits either scaled down or sneaked out of town. (Neighbors considered one, with terms slightly worse than Heads I Win, Tails You Lose. I think that outfit disappeared. No shock.(
LikeLike
It depends – I use mine for various bills, and while they switch it over to bank-to-bank transfer if they are able, they still have to generate a physical check for some vendors where for some arcane banky reason the “to” bank does not shake hands properly with my credit union.
LikeLiked by 1 person
One of those entities is Medicare. I set up the electronic transfer under ‘Bill Pay’ but the bank shows ‘mail a check’. I’d rather do it myself, so I mail a dead-tree check every 3 months. The government can’t get their shit together even to take our money efficiently.
LikeLike
Last I knew (which was many years ago) – the vendor had to have their business account set up to accept the transfers – whether in-bank or inter-bank. Some still don’t, as it has been a security issue in years past.
LikeLike
One of mine is the annual contribution to Sarah (I don’t do pay pal or other “give us an account to use to pay” options).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oooh, thank you! I need to plug that into the sheet for next month, and you’ve reminded me just before I do the daily reconciliation.
LikeLike
I’m looking at either September or October. Depends on how this month goes. When fund raising came up we’d just spent $36k between roof, house painting, and new countertops, over the last few months. Pocket book and IRA draws were burning a bit. This month it is annual insurance payout time (house, and 1/2 year vehicle).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ouch! We only had about $7K on the roof. (Son did quite a bit of free labor.)
We have painting and cabinetry (not just countertops) on the list for late winter – but fortunately that is just materials, as I’ll be doing it myself.
LikeLike
We talked about cabinets, but I like my ’90s oak finish ones. Except where the puppy chewed the corner, and would like something other than the turn table in the corner, but not at the cost of replacing them.
Like to say “good news” big charges are “done”. But no. Need to paint and refloor upstairs family room. “Seven year” carpet is 24 years old. 20’x30′ room is not going to be inexpensive to pull carpet, any linoleum (small part of room), and lay down luxury vinyl plank. Which we are not doing (I’ll paint). Being on hands and knees hurts, and good luck getting up off the floor. Bedrooms need redoing too (same carpet) but the thought of moving stuff out? Hard nope.
But that is next winter’s job.
LikeLike
I’m deep into the endgame of the “Slingshot generation.”
A tail-end Boomer, I was young enough to watch men walk on the Moon for the first time (black and white TV), was one of the first teens in the US to get to lay hands on an actual computer in high school (incredibly primitive by modern standards – less RAM than the keyboard buffer on the machine I’m typing on), and ended up on the internet at a time when no more than ten thousand people in the world had access.
Almost 60 years of actively advancing in tech, and I’m still struggling to keep up. I’m afraid to turn on the nascent AI computer in the other room, for fear it’s just going to make fun of me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Meanwhile, here at work, some “feature” in Microsoft Word 365 “recognized” a Spanish phrase and automatically switched my dictionary & grammar checker language to Spanish. I can’t even see English dictionaries in the Editing Options menu now. Could be wrong, but I’m blaming AI. They’ve got that crap in *everything* now.
LikeLike
Mr. Paperclip is here to help you, even if you don’t want it to.
LikeLike
STTNG should have used Mr. Paperclip on screen when the Borg were talking, so everyone would know how evil they really were.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Midrange boomer. First school computer was the NCR Century 200 mainframe that (was supposed to) handle the school admin. Lots of teething issues; since the school was the first adopter in the big metro area. We programmed in an advanced assembler on 80 column Hollerith cards.
College classes were on big IBM iron and an ancient GE machine that spoke Fortran II. Some of my classmates were doing BASIC on terminals on campus.
Work computing went from small DEC processors to various Unix boxen. Microsoft and I have been divorced for several years. To nobody’s surprise, I use an old-school flavor of Linux. (Slackware 15.)
LikeLike
I was one of the ones “writing” Basic on a “terminal” Teletype (keyboard and paper, for those too young to know). Winter term ’76. Missed paper tape and index cards by “this much” (advanced classes were using them not us lowly non-engineering intro classes). Hated that class. Cannot emphasize enough how much I despised that class. Then irony of ironies, I spent 30+ years (’83 – ’16) programming. That class still colored my perceptions of mainframes. Servers get a pass, more or less, because not “mainframes”.
LikeLike
I took a course in FORTRAN in college. We’d set up our program, get the cards punched and take them to the computer center once a week for someone to run.
I made an “A” by the grace of God and male programming friends. <grin>.
LikeLike
I pulled a C. Don’t ask me how. Because I had no clue how programming worked (other than rote) and flowcharts were a total mystery. Not now. But then? OMG!
LikeLike
Using Fedora, ParrotOS (Debian based), and OpenBSD here.
Also a SteamDeck for games.
LikeLike
Meanwhile, some of our stuff at work just got moved over to Windows NT from Windows 3.1.
LikeLike
[Grin]
LikeLike
First computer I used had a blue screen and a total memory of 56k. Quite a change.
LikeLike
First computer I owned (Heath H8). The NCR came with something like 64k of 9 bit RAM, though it had a 6′ high rack with another 64 or 96k in it. 5MB disk drive packs, and it was bog slow, even by 1970 standards.
LikeLike
I always wanted the H11 that used the PDP 11/03. If I remember right the H8 used a similar LSI PDP-8 solution? Or was the H8 a 8080 CPM S100 bus beast? I had an H19 terminal I assembled, used it for years. Ultimately I got a PDP 11 of my own as a loaner A PDT-150 because I was doing stuff with RT-11 and that let me get familiar with the OS and its vagaries. It also had an excellent Star Trek Game :-).
LikeLike
The H8 was Odd. 8080 processor, but Heath decided that the S-100 bus wasn’t what they wanted, so they came up with a 50 pin buss. There were a few aftermarket board suppliers, but the buss died with the H8. Used an H19 terminal, then when HP came out with an almost-IBM-compatible, I sold the system at the Foothill college fleamarket. (Nobody wanted the dot matrix printer, so that went to a charity. I went inkjet and liked it, so stayed that way for years.)
LikeLike
Right behind you as the leading edge of Gen-X.
Went from 8 bit home computers to mainframe/minis, workstations/home computers, corporate networks/clouds and now run Linux/BSD at home.
I can keep up with tech. Hardware and networking gets faster and better. There’s more choice in software, but Windows and many of the applications just get enshittified and buried under layers of abstractions.
Hardware has allowed LLMs and their ilk become useful, but most of the training models suffer from GIGO and other limitations. Plus the training of the large models eats just as much power as other stupid tech like EVs and Bitcoin.
Just waiting for the prices of enterprise SSD drives to come down to the consumer level so my spouse can build the next generation Plex server without spinny disks.
LikeLike
Disruptive tech? Cell phone cameras are a biggie. You simply can’t get away with anything now but what it’s caught in high definition video from six embarrassing angles that all contradict your official narrative. And some of the miserable peasants stream it off to the cloud live so you can’t even seize their phone and delete it.
LikeLiked by 2 people
As Great Britain is finding out.
LikeLiked by 2 people
And their whole “threaten to prosecute foreigners who Mean Tweet” thing seems to be caught, just about now, somewhere right between FA and FO. (It seems they’ve already blocked American IP addresses from their little gov-dot-uk snitchline; but VPNs, and…)
TwiXter can be so *illuminating* these days, even in read-only mode.
LikeLiked by 2 people
In the place where Great Britain used to be the Labour upper class twits are talking about pursuing extradition.
Failing that, what, Soetoro-style drone strikes?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Something about the threat of trying to arrest and extradite Elon Musk is triggering my schadenboner. Talk about FAFO!
LikeLiked by 1 person
What might not be apparent is that Elon Musk has his own space-to-ground weapons system.
He could drop a Falcon 9 down anywhere on the planet, with a targeting accuracy about a foot. and that’s just the “big firey rocket” part, not counting any payload.
LikeLike
Remember Jerry Pournelle’s “Rods from God”?
LikeLike
I kinda hope they try, just once even. I’ve got a good supply of popcorn and a couple of middle fingers.
LikeLike
It shouldn’t get very far if they try. I heard earlier today that the extradition treaty between the US and the UK requires that the crime in question be a crime in both countries.
LikeLike
Between the Garland DOJ and the DC Circuit, it can definitely get to the “process is the punishment” stage.
In possibly related news, apparently the Met Police have figured out how VPNs work, and are blocking their IP address ranges.
LikeLike
The stupidity of these people continues to astound me. They’re f-ing with a guy who owns a whole social media company AND Starlink AND a friggin’ space ship factory. Not just a space ship, a whole freaking factory that makes them and launches them weekly.
Do they not understand how easy it would be for him to drop a tungsten telephone pole into their back garden from orbit? He could really and truly do that.
THOR is not science fiction anymore. It’s something that a private company could build and deploy on its own, and it wouldn’t even be that hard for them.
LikeLike
The “April” series was ahead of reality, but I’m beginning to wonder by how much…🤔
LikeLiked by 1 person
And, sadly, NEEDS to.
LikeLike
When I was hired at the photography studio in 2005, dance photos were a major thing. As in 250 couples at a formal dance, three seasons a year. (Homecoming, Winter Ball, and Prom.)
Cell phone cameras came in 2008, and by 2010 the dance photo sessions were either moribund, candids only, or “photo booth” style photos. Formal posed dance photos died quickly with that tech.
Mind you, I am currently working from home for that studio, on my computer and simultaneously on a computer at the studio forty miles away, all of it going through a server on the other coast. So “disruptive” can also have its good side. :)
LikeLike
Senor and family photos. We stopped going to studios ages ago. Sister found a professional photographer to come in on Christmas Day for family photos in 2005 (include grandparents who died that next spring). Used the same photographer for senor pictures. She took the pictures with a digital camera, took them to her home photo system, touched up pictures, and for the cost of shoot, we got 4 DVD’s of all the pictures taken. Senor pictures we got one DVD. Did something similar Christmas Eve ’89 (first 3 grandchildren), but old style (get proofs, pick pictures and sizes wanted and pay). (Photographers had spouses who worked Christmas, police/fire/etc., so they did Christmas on spouses day off.)
Hubby is a amateur photographer. He touches up his landscape and wildlife pictures, sends them off to Shuttlebug (now, was Costco) and has them printed. We have 4 gorgeous pictures of Tetons in Spring the morning after snowfall, bight blue sky and wisp of clouds, in the background, printed on metal. He’s got some Bear pictures that he needs to get done.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Honestly, business is good right now for the studio. One of the options is to buy yourself a digital copy and make your own prints, and that’s very popular. Make it easy for people to be legal and they tend to do it. (Also, my job for most of the school year is to work on team photos. Both “real” and composited. It’s oddly fun.)
LikeLike
Back in the 1970’s Allan Toffler authored “Future Shock” and went on to publish other books and writings on the future and the speed of change. I remember reading “Future Shock” when it came out and thinking it was really faster and more far reaching even then.
Today we have a huge infrastructure supporting all sorts of things and the Genie is truly out of the bottle. Information is no longer really controlled – it may be guided some and propaganda is an issue – but for those willing to dig a little much can be found and reveal the true state of things. As said above, the human animal isn’t good at ‘change’ and has to work at adapting to daily life on an ongoing basis. Heck, I’m in my 70’s and just set up my new desktop computer with all the associated razmataz. We, humans, can adapt but it takes a lot of ongoing work.
The big issue will come if electronics ever go “poof” due to an EMP, sun flare or whatever and then the sorting will be brutal. I put a fancy red-dot on a rifle but still have the iron sights too. I’ve got all sorts of GPS do-dads but still keep actual maps and paper documentation. It’s likely best to hedge your bets and embrace technology carefully and don’t loose track of ‘older’ ways and methods. Just something to think about.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Neither EMP nor solar flares work QUITE that way. But there might be something that does, yeah.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Chi Com sabotage or Microsoft Update, take your pick. But I doubt everything everywhere all at the same time will ever happen. But paper maps are a good thing, so long as one remembers to get new ones regularly. Speaking of things changing.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Looks at AAA map that used to be for Flyover County, now includes several others in the flyover category. “Progress”. #rollseyes
LikeLike
I turned wifi off of my NST because B&N broke functionality every time they updated something.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Old Trainer
about 16 years ago i started with this whole waking up biz and being prepared, etc.
went nuts for a bit, now its more a watching and not going overboard.
Been putting money into my shop and upgrading tools getting newer stuff and better because thats what i really like and want to do, so living for today,
but in the back o my mind i always think about what if, it could definitely happen, but i remember back in the clinton days, was going to be a disaster, then y2k, then O8 the bust,
stuff happens, its going to happen, bad stuff may happen. Now its WWIII and the election etc etc.
who really knows,
point is, its wayyyy too easy to get all wrapped up in this stuff, still gotta live,
just be ready to adapt quickly is my new plan, watch everything with a wary eye, but live. What good is it if we fret over everything restricting ourselves then nothing ever happens!
who knows, it might be awful, awful for a buncha people may be good for others,
LikeLike
Prepping! It’s not just for conspiracy nuts anymore!
Really, it’s good for natural disasters, which come along much more frequently than major wars in our area. And if there is a societal collapse, you’ve got a head start.
LikeLike
Dealing with 2020, etc. and “prepping” I have put it that I hope NOT to be a ‘hero’ but a ‘kook’ who “did all that for nothing.” I figure, if nothing else, I should be ready to stay in a few days if there’s a Truly Bad Winter storm.
LikeLiked by 1 person
at some point, it will just make more sense to walk away from the hubbub.
Who is John Galt!
LikeLike
Maybe. I tend to ignore new tech for so long that I can skip the first three iterations, and sometimes, like cable, never. But sometimes you walk back, when they’ve made it easy.
LikeLiked by 3 people
This is a real point, most especially the last.
My ultimate touchstone is, does it really help? Can I use it in a way that actually improves my life? Or is it merely faddish?
So sometimes I’m an “early adopter” and sometimes late or never.
Got my first (“Nook”) e-reader just to read PDFs without a laptop.
Waited on a cell phone till decently-cheap “prepaid plans” (finally) came out. Leaped at DSL, then hung onto it till Starlink ran well and was truly available (and no cable, ever).
If it works, it works; it it don’t, then… wave bye-bye.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I had a monthly plan until the provider got bought. Did not want their plan, and circumstances said that prepaid Tracfone was going to work out well. I prefer a dumb phone, and It Just Works. (Have a smart phone for another purpose. Turn it on monthly to check the battery, beyond that only when absolutely needed.
OTOH, I’m about ready to upgrade the 10 year old Kindle Fire*. I’m hoping the new one will fit in the Tandy sleeve, but if not, I can deal.
((*)) Being able to use “collections” seems a plus. I’ll pay extra for ad-free.
LikeLike
The only thing you avoid with the ad-free is one when you power up. I decided that I could do fifty or so up swipes a month to avoid paying for it. (Occasionally, I wish I didn’t have it down to muscle memory – I’ll realize after the ad is gone, never to be seen again, that it was for something I might be interested in.)
BTW – Tracfone is what I have had for years – but they’re part of Verizon, now. I got in on a promotion way back when, and am grandfathered now – $9.99 plus tax for 90 days. I don’t even push the limits on the texts, much less the voice minutes.
LikeLike
I go yearly on the three phones. Have so many minutes saved on the flip phones it’s crazy. If I ever get the round tuit, I’ll see if I can shift those credits to the smart phone.
Had Unicel(?) until they got bought by Verizon. At which point, V’s plans sucked badly. Think I’ve been on TF since 2009 or so. We have spotty coverage (a large hogback ridge is between us and the regional cell tower 10 miles away, and it’s damned good at blocking signals). Landline works, so we keep it.
Cell is for market days and road trips, mostly. If the landline goes out, it’s backup. (maybe every couple of years…)
LikeLike
Years back Verizon broadcast their quality and quality of thought by suing to get the domain verizonsucks.(.com?) instead of, well, simply not sucking.
LikeLike
Verizon, Comcast, Sprint, Wells Fargo, and Spectrum regularly trade off on the “worst customer service in the US” top slot, with United Airlines and AT&T sometimes making the list.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I was wondering why BofA wasn’t on the list – then realized that all they have is a Customer Disservice Department.
LikeLike
I cheat. I go into the local location. Sure the onsite staff have to call support too, but at least they have essentially a backdoor to higher tier support. At least get past “is it plugged in” questions, and “put on the IT expert” remarks. Which I have actually gotten. Grumbling “I get to do this because I am the freaking expert, I don’t want to be here doing this either ….”, does not help.
Funny thing just happened today. Mom’s insurance wants her to have a Ting Fire device, that will detect voltage issues at the house. Fine. Insurance is paying (for now, at least). Helped her install it today. Easy steps: 1 – download Ting App. 2 – setup account & password. 3 – plug in device and connect bluetooth to phone. 4 – connect to house wifi. Done. Got stuck on step 3. Would not connect to phone bluetooth, sat there saying “connecting …. Please wait.” Grrrrr. (iPhone, which we do not have for additional frustration). Bonus – No phone number to call …. Grrrrr Grrrr Yes, “fixed it”. Unplug. Close and delete App. Start over, except already has an account, so just sign-in. This time went smoothly. Yes, I do know what I think caused it to hang. Not repeating the experience to verify. If have a chance will make suggestion on what NOT to do when setting up.
LikeLike
I resisted eReaders for awhile, then when my wife insisted that I would be better off with one (now my preferred way to read fiction) I did some research and picked the Nook Simple Touch that had just come out. Now I primarily use a Kindle Paperwhite, but I still like the NST best because of the side buttons and expandable memory.
My very first cell phone I won in a radio contest in 2001. After that we had Verizon for awhile, then Tracfone. My wife bought me a new phone under her parents’ plan for Christmas, but the Tracfone was still a better deal for me.
And yeah, I’m generally not an early adopter. There’s usually too many issues. Though there have been a few times that the first iteration of a product is best.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I started out with a Nook Simple Touch, gave that to mom to be able to read my library (with purchase requiring password, but she could download anything I had. I got and used a Samsung 8″ with the nook app added (not the B&N Nook version. When that died, at the same time as my current laptop around ’18 I cost everything out and got my Surface (Costco with 16 GB RAM, keyboard and stylus, but only 256 GB drive) instead. I use the Surface for reading (screen size about right for lap), Nook or Kindle, or my phone, if need smaller format. Those with Calibre and ePubor (even if Kindle decrypt is a PIA) keep my ebooks safe. With Calibre I don’t keep much more than what I’ve bought and haven’t read yet, on either device.
Cell phones are S22 (upgraded from S8’s only because screen broke on one). We were with Verizon forever (started with I-forget through Costco, who eventually got bought out by Verizon). Went with Xfinity for a few years (was fine until it’s cost rivaled the T-Mobile/Verizon 55+ plans, but no Canada options). Then tried T-Mobile for 3 months. (OMG, no! Full disclosure, sister and her family, including mom, are grandfathered in a 10 phone plan through T-Mobile and they don’t have problems, here at home or when they travel overseas. We had problem after problem. Sister lives a mile north, mom is a mile south, so same area. Not the same results.) From T-Mobile, went back to Verizon. I use the Verizon Visa for groceries and fuel for the 4% (VS 1% on the other card) kickback to offset the Verizon bill. (Duh! I work the system.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
I bought a box of envelopes from Sam’s Club before I got married, so around 2000 or 2001, that I’m not quite half way through yet. In the 90s I used to write a couple of letters a month to each of my: parents, grandmothers, family/friends that I was close to. Now it’s all email, or increasingly texts. The last paper letters I sent were to my grandmothers who’ve since passed away, and had to tape them shut.
If there’s one place I really think should step back from electronics, it’s in education. Seeing what the kids are doing on their iPads doesn’t give me great reason for hope. It’s way too easy for them to waste time rather than do any learning, and at too young of an age. I think it needs to be more targeted.
Otherwise, I love most of the technological changes I see, even though I find them much to open to corporate abuse and government tyranny. Bringing the means of producing individual items in the privacy of your own has me very excited.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I still have two or three boxes of catalog envelopes that I inherited when my then-employer passed away suddenly and his family had no use for the office supplies and told me to take what I could use
2006, or 2007, I think. Still have labels for the Dymo printer – which isn’t supported any longer by the manufacturer.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Writing activates different parts of your brain than typing does, or so I’m told, so doing everything on ipads… just isn’t training their brains and bodies to retain information.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In my local area, “medical provider” offices are moving from “phone portal” to not accepting phone calls. After two weeks or daily attempts to get hold of one office, I finally printed a letter, stuck it in an envelope, and mailed it. It has been close to two weeks on *that*.
It seems that anything medical related has become a customer service cesspool now.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ve seen that in the DFW area occasionally. DFW has enough providers that it hasn’t caught on. They encourage you to use the web portal, but you can call them and get a response.
LikeLike
We have an online portal. But generally can get through to a person. They are strongly encouraging the online portal. I told them good freaking luck. Mom can’t. Hubby won’t. Which is better than pointing out “some can’t or won’t”. I have actual examples.
LikeLike
The retirees on Tricare are encouraged now to sign up for an on-line patient portal. I’ve tried, several times. Wouldn’t recognize me or my social, first time around, wouldn’t recognize my home address, and then balked at — IIRC, my debit card number, which I think was used for verification … and then it locked me out entirely for too many attempts!
It’s a hideous system. I’m fairly acquainted with computers, and working with on-line membership portals, but this one is insanely unwieldly and user-hostile. I can’t see that anyone ten or fifteen years older than I am can even begin to cope. (And aren’t, according to my last conversation with my patient-care providing entity. Guess they are expecting them to all to die of old age and frustration.)
Bet you anything, the contract to set it up was let to an enterprise helmed by someone connected.
LikeLike
Oh, don’t I know it. All of the above. Unfortunately for the systems in question, should they force usage of the system, they have me, not mom to contend with. Mom does not have a computer. She has her iPhone 13 Mini, which works for what she is willing to use a computer for. Anything that needs printing (i.e. she wants it printed) she forwards it to me, or has me signin, and I print it for her.
(*) In the past once the one she has dies, she gets one from one of us because we need to upgrade. No one (all us techs are retired, and no one else in the family needs that kind of power) needs to upgrade these days before what we are using critically fails. Even if she had one, I’d be over showing her how to print again, or how to get navigate sites she rarely gets into. Because, sure as whatever your favorite saying is, the site navigation will have changed. Conclusion: No it is not worth it to spring for a new computer at the cost they are these days, not even a larger format Samsung, which I have considered when they are on sale. I am not IT, dang it, even if I have to act like it. I do not find it fun.
LikeLike
Yet Another triumph of 0bamacare. :-(
LikeLike
It’s not so much scary fast (but there is that), is that a lot of the new technology is more hidden than anything else.
A steam engine, a printing press, a train…these are all things that are visible. You can touch them, feel them, occasionally have carnal relationships with them (if you’re that kind of trainspotter). But the things that are changing our lives? Outside of the engineering things-3D printing, new fabrication technologies and such-most of them are relatively esoteric. “AI” (aka Large Language Model systems), social network applications, the integration of chat technologies into business communications (i.e. Slack and several other apps), video conferencing as an easy-to-use tool for everything…you can’t really see them. They exist in a vague, nebulous ether that confuses everyone outside of a few acolytes.
And the Crow Flu provided some interesting accelerations of these circumstances. I had to actually think about the last time we went to our local large mall, and I don’t think I have in the last six months this year. Used to be that I went every other month (mostly for shopping-there was a Big and Tall place in there that had pants at a reasonable cost for my size), now…assuming that there was anything I wanted there, I could probably get it both more quickly and cheaply on Amazon. Or how the hotel industry has been having issues because with Zoom and Microsoft Teams, there’s even less reasons for you to travel somewhere for a big business meeting or conference or such. And that has been eating into a lot of other things (I know that the few times I traveled for business, I did plan on doing some other things in the area along with my job).
In a lot of ways, this is bad, because it’s really easy to tribalize these days(I can’t deal with most people around here because they assume that only the inbred rednecks who f(YAY!)k sheep and cows in flyover country while being ass-stroked by their AR-15’s would vote for Trump…and insist that I join them in their Two Minute Hate). A lot of the masks have fallen off and while I prefer knowing exactly what’s under them…I’d like to pretend more often than not that we have some points of commonality.
And we’re all a little PTSDed by the Crow Flu, the fact that we’ve had a turnip in the White House the last four years, the proposed replacement for the turnip is worse, and the other candidate is being made out to be Worse Than Hitler.
LikeLike
I think room and ride sharing apps like Airbnb and Uber have had as much of an affect on the hotel and taxi industries as Zoom or Teams have.
The absolute biggest changer, IMHO, is information transfer. There’s quite a bit of bad info out there, but if you learn to sort through it you can find an absolute gargantuan trove of good info. And best of all, most of it isn’t curated by people that hate you and want to keep it from you. Even with all the problems of tube of yous, it’s still a go-to place to find basic how-to information on just about everything. I fixed my oven by myself earlier this summer by watching a tube of yous video. It still cost me $250, but that’s a far cry from the $2,500 a new one would cost, and less than half what I would have had to pay to have someone else come in and fix it for me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
ESPECIALLY Uber. I had a friend that was trying to build an easy-to-use taxi app for the big taxi companies that would basically be a form of Uber. Nobody thought it would work.
Boy, did they guess wrong…
And YouTube has been very useful for information transfers as well, and I know Dad and I have done a lot of things after looking at the YouTube videos on how to do it safely.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Those are precisely the fields which people notice the least: the materials science which you can play wit at the hobbyist is *wild*. And the frontier is always being expanded little by little.
Heh; “little”. Go look at pictures and capabilities of 3d printers 5 years ago vs now. The level of jankyness even a few years ago is astounding. Modern machines eat carbon fiber or glass fiber nylon for breakfast. And in my spare time (lol) I’m working on trying to pave the way for the next great expansion in material capabilities that the hobbyist can reach.
And the hobbyist with a side hustle can outcompete the largest of corporations, because he has no overhead. The only thing which can stop him is to make it illegal.
The future is so bright you have to wear radiation armor.
(I was the one ranting this morning where Sarah could hear in case it wasn’t obvious)
LikeLiked by 2 people
Have you seen Elon’s new rocket motors? They have 90% less bullschlitz bolted to the outsides of them. I think they might be mostly 3D printed.
Then there’s the guys printing the -entire- spacecraft. Body, tanks and all. One piece.
LikeLike
Maternal grandparents, and paternal grandmother, and their siblings, went from horse and buggy travel, to seeing manned space flight and man walking on the moon. They didn’t come west in a covered wagon, but their grandparents did (as children). Grandma and Grandpa didn’t get to Yellowstone until late ’60s, and they were raised in Montana. Grandma was raised in Red Lodge < 100 miles from Yellowstone.
Some things seem like they were fast. Not everywhere. I remember party lines for telephone into the ’70s for grandparents. Remember being told of one series of tiny towns just getting phone lines in late ’70s. Sometime in the early 2000s there was a case that forced phone companies to provide cell phones at landline home costs if no landlines were available. A huge savings. (Not that it necessarily helped. Even today I know of rural areas with non-existent coverage.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
My father-in-law in Tennessee had a party line – it was all that was available – until he passed away in… 1990, I think.
Even today, here in Arkansas, cellular service is spotty. Pretty good in towns and major highways, no signal for the rest. The “coverage maps” are lies; they may be where they have FCC permission to provide coverage, but they’re mostly “no signal.”
LikeLike
Trump’s plane diverted to Billings, MT after “mechanical issues.”
Meanwhile, in Brazil, a passenger plane fell put of thr sky. Not a good day for aviation…
LikeLiked by 1 person
— Richard F. Mitchell, Less Than Words Can Say, 1979
Pretty soon, we’ll be told that correctness and precision are extremist, right wing, and fascist.
LikeLike
A sign of white supremacy.
LikeLiked by 2 people
They already say that.
LikeLike
Right? Math is racist. If Lefties actually knew what mechanical precision is, they’d say its super duper racist because of the sheer effort involved in getting things right.
Precision doesn’t care about your quiltbag, or your feelings. If the fitting isn’t within tolerance, it will not fit. Currently two people await rescue on the ISS because Boeing went for the quiltbag feelz instead of sticking to precision.
LikeLike
Obviously, we need to make them understand that cellphones, computers and modern transportation devices (plus several more) are all high-precision. If we can get them to recoil in horror from all of them we’ll be lightyears ahead in the “info wars”. :twisted:
LikeLiked by 1 person
That is what the left is indoctrinating those who attend schools in already. Academia publishes plenty of this nonsense already.
LikeLike
Which means it’s perfectly all right to hire people because they check certain boxes, rather than because they can actually, you know, DO THE FUCKING JOB!!
Exhibit A: The Biden* Regime. They have managed to assemble an entire administration composed of feckless incompetent buffoons floundering at jobs they’re not remotely capable of handling — but they demand Respect For Their Diversiteh! It can’t have been easy to avoid including even one single competent individual, just by accident.
LikeLike
Sounds easy to me. Simply hire only from the pool of those who fully bought into the nonsense; that’s the definitive test for competence, specifically for the ability to think rationally. And if there happen to be any “moles” included, they have to simulate incompetence (by screwing up everything they touch, but in the “approved” way) or be torn apart by the real monkeys.😜😜😜
LikeLike
The Brazil footage is really astounding/shocking. For all the world it looks like a 2 engine puddle jumper in a flat spin. How the hell you GET in a flat spin with that class of plane other than perhaps getting radically different prop settings causing differential thrust I have no idea. I suspect we’ll be seeing that one on Smithsonian Channels Air Disasters in a couple years. 62 souls on board all assumed lost, not sure if anyone on the ground was involved.
LikeLike
The latest version I’ve seen is that there was an icing alert on their flight path between 12k and 20k feet; they were flying at 17k.
LikeLike
Some pilots have mentioned that this particular plane tends to stall when subjected to wing icing – and conditions there were “icing at 10,000 feet.”
Ice, turn, stall, flat spin, boom.
LikeLike
Ok Bingo icing is a classic issue in that class of plane (two engine turboprop) most have heaters or boots to kick ice off, but if they’re not on and you fly into ice things go bad quickly. Usually, it nags you at landing where you’re near stall speed and the ice reduces lift causing you to you stall unexpectedly and you just fall out of the sky. With 17K of altitude, you normally would nose down to get above stall speed and then recover. Definitely this will be on Air Disasters in a couple of years once they complete the investigation.
LikeLike
Many years ago my beloved was waiting for his flight home from deployment. He was sitting in Bangkok AP, looking out at the runway, when a Thai AF A7 took off…and exploded just as it was drawing level with his window. He knew he’d just seen two people die.
Which helps explain why he drank his way halfway around the world on the flight(s) back.
LikeLike
Hit the edge of a retired couple’s house that has burned, partly (I think). By reports couple not harmed, either by not being home or in the far side of the house, as reported by one of the witnessing neighbors. No one on ground hurt by current reports.
LikeLike
While this sort of morale boost is necessary (and also true), it’s not enough. The centralizers, stasists, statists, sociopaths and Karens (isn’t it interesting that decades after “Mrs. Grundy” stopped being a cultural thing, the busybody buttinsky woman arose from the ashes to force the rest of us to re-invent the term?) have the infrastructure and legal framework to target each and every one of us for personal destruction on a whim. (Don’t believe me? It’s illegal to legally transfer more than ten thousand dollars out of your bank at a time. It’s called “structuring”, and ostensively is to go after drug lords, but in practice is used to put independent grocery stores and other business out of business. That is merely one example out of thousands. Probably millions.)
So we need to work, each of us, on routing around.
Stop using centralized social media, and go back to the blogosphere model, or the fediverse.
Start using, or at least buying and holding, cryptocurrency. (You, yes you, the one about to say “But it’s based on nothing!!!!!” Kindly tell me on what the US Dollar is based. Same thing, only less trustworthy.) Once you get into it, look at actually-anonymous forms like Monero, PirateCoin, and Dash. Because the USGov can (and is) tracking Bitcoin transactions. They hates it, precious, which should bloody well tell you something. Yes, precious metals are a good thing to sock away, too. Assuming you can defend them.
Stop using proprietary software. Proprietary has evolved into the companies that sell it thinking they own you. Go as open source as you feasibly can.
The left is organized, coordinated sociopathy. They will not let go without a fight. They’ve been pushing for a hundred years or more, and will fight for every inch taken back that they consider “theirs”. And they will try to destroy lives. If they can’t get the high visibility targets, they’ll target those who can ill afford to be targeted, to Send A Message to everybody else. Look at the working class in England right now.
Become ungovernable.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Money does not have value from any base; that is just an easy shortcut to make in a primitive economy.
LikeLiked by 2 people
More technically, in Austrian theory, the first money had value as money because it had value to some number of individuals and was recognized to have that value by a similar, if smaller, number of individuals.
The more recent idea of tying money to a valuable commodity like gold, was in effect a check on government getting us into the situation we’re in now, where it can just create “money” out of nothing, and ignore the necessary rampant inflation that must follow. Satoshi Nakomoto, whoever he is or was, knew what the fuck he was doing by limiting Bitcoin to 23 million coins, ever, for eternity. Which is another reason government hates Bitcoin, and Crypto in general.
LikeLike
Satoshi Nakomoto is probably the NSA, according to some pundits.
If so, it brings up some interesting possibilities…
LikeLike
Guy interviewed by Tucker Carlson had a very specific candidate in mind who is a criminal, and has been in prison for several years on entirely unrelated charges.
The “Bitcoin is a government plot” doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, considering it’s entirely open source. Meaning there can’t be anything hidden in it. If it’s a psyop, it’s an antigovernment one which… okay, that makes so little sense, I don’t even know what to do with it. Not impossible, because government is stupid, but still.
LikeLike
The US Dollar has exactly one absolute piece of value. It must be accepted by the US government when used to pay your taxes (as specifically stated in the US Constitution).
Otherwise, yes, your statement is correct.
LikeLike
The Internal Revenue Service does not accept cash.
Heinlein pointed that out in the 1950s; it was still true when I checked a few years back.
LikeLiked by 1 person
IMO for good reasons.
There are plenty of people who’d pay a hundred dollars tax bill with one hundred dollars’ worth of pennies. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
LikeLike
And mail it “postage due.” Evil kitty grin
LikeLiked by 1 person
There are legal limits to the size of bills you can pay with coins.
LikeLike
Well, limits on how much payees have to accept. If they don’t complain, the sky’s the limit. If somebody will take a million dollars in nickels, no problemo.
Although hauling them would take a large truck. :-)
LikeLike
Also, and for the record, a fact that Ben Yalow likes to point out:
Jack Williamson, longtime SF author, moved as a child with his family to New Mexico in a covered wagon. He not only got to see the moon landing, he got to see the new millenium, only passing away in 2006 (a year after publishing his final novel, The Stonehenge Gate).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Daniel 12: 4
LikeLiked by 1 person
I read something interesting and amusing earlier today about the protests in England.
Apparently the police have now started getting tips about “far-right” protests that are set to take place at a certain time and place. So the police will show up in force to arrest them.
When they arrive, they find a mob of armed Muslim “counter-protestors”, who were also tipped off about the impending “far-right” protest. Meanwhile, the English natives stay far away from the location.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Please tell me the Allen Akbars at least have the good manners to clash with the police when that happens!
(As I remarked more than once to a lefty friend, there seems to be a lot of people going for the Redenbacher ticket this year.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
You win an Aloha Snackbar.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Uhhh, you’re talking about Britain. What are they armed with? Brooms and cricket bats? The Upper-Class Twits are trying to ban knives.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Uh. Missing a critical point. Legally they are armed with brooms and cricket bats. Granted might be harder to get illegal firearms, but they aren’t unobtainable.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Machetes. It’s on video. The most ironic such video is one of a female Sky News reporter who goes off in search of a “far-right” mob, and is completely oblivious as a group of Muslims armed with machetes comes up behind her..
There’s an armed Muslim group called the Muslim Defense League, or MDL, that’s been showing up – apparently all over the country – to attack the anti-immigration demonstrators.
LikeLiked by 1 person
To attack white people. Sometimes for wearing a Union Jack t-shirt.
LikeLike
That’s standard procedure for Moslems when they’re taking over a country by infiltration rather than military invasion. Random violence against citizens until nobody dares to oppose them. They attack, and then fade back into the ‘peaceful’ Moslem community. They drive the natives out, neighborhood by neighborhood. It’s why the French army patrols Paris in squads of 4 with battle armor and submachine guns.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Baseball bats, often. Theodore Dalrymple observed that the sale of baseball bats in the UK is completely out of proportion to the amount of baseball played.
Remember that throwing rocks is so dangerous it can be used as a means of execution. Modern weapons are more dangerous only so long as you maintain operational awareness.
LikeLiked by 1 person
All anyone really needs to do is show video of the cops colluding with the “counter protesters” and letting them do whatever they want. Keep showing that, day after day, and the government program will come off the rails.
Shouldn’t be hard. They’re doing it in broad daylight.
LikeLiked by 1 person
So why didn’t that work here after “St. George de Fentanyl” committed suicide? There were certainly enough videos of cops standing around idle while watching the riots.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I think the bobbies’d have to actually be rioting before the Crown would take notice.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And then the cops show up at your home and arrest you for posting harmful and inciting material on social media. That is literally what’s going on in the UK right now. People have been arrested for posting videos of the protest clearly taken from some distance away – i.e. by someone who’s obviously observing from a safe distance, and not actively involved. In Ireland, people have been sentenced for literally just being near a protest.
Oh, and if you posted somewhere other than X, you might also lose your social media account.
There is no freedom of speech in the UK, and the authorities are not about to let something as minor as the truth upset their applecart.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Post it to Gab. You may be the Crown’s Own Subject, but Torba’s not. And if it’s a Free Speech issue (and this very much is), you might as well be banking in Geneva.
LikeLike
Where it can be blocked at the national ISP firewall, along with the rest of Gab’s IP addresses. No one inside the UK will ever see it.
Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure the Garland DOJ can be counted on to honor extradition requests as well as filing “supporting terrorism” charges of it’s own. And yes, that will include Torba.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A) That’s where we yankees et al get involved and share them to X and Facebook and such, out of the actual reach of the Caliphate of Charlie 3, and keep our UK sources anonymous.
B) Whether the Border Tzarina bint is installed as HOTUS or not, Garland et m. may go snog a consumptive warthog but there’s a constitutional protection in this stretch of N. America against unlawful extradition: something about “keep and bear arms,” iirc.
LikeLiked by 1 person
They’ll censor it.
They aren’t letting anyone out of the country see the Metro Police tweets.
LikeLiked by 2 people
In other news: The international ‘health’ organizations are still blowing the monkeypox horn, and making noises about a ‘Global Health Emergency!!’ because there are some 15,000 cases in Congo and a few surrounding African countries.
They go on to say that monkeypox is primarily sexually transmitted, although it also spreads by other methods that are more-or-less unique to Africa — incessant petty wars, widespread malnutrition, inadequate health care, poorly equipped medical workers and crowded, squalid refugee camps. Nonetheless, it’s A Global Health Emergency!! and they Must Take Action Now!! Look for more lockdowns and useless paper mask mandates. For our own good, of course.
A disease becomes known as ‘sexually transmitted’ because it’s so un-contagious it’s difficult to catch any other way. Such is the case with monkeypox. Even so, they’re trying to raise a panic about it. “It’s the Next COVID!! Submit to the hysteria!”
As it turned out, COVID19 was the common f*king cold. The government killed a hundred times more people than the virus — which they created in the first place.
LikeLike
And not just “primarily transmits through sexual contact”, but apparently “primarily transmits through one specific non-traditional form of sexual contact”.
I had a co-worker get upset with me when I brought that up, despite the fact that said “specific non-traditional form of sexual contact” is not limited to any specific group (though it is performed pretty much exclusively by one).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Although this one specific group got really embrassed when dogs and children in some of their groups households came down with the pox.
LikeLike
They stopped wanting to talk about monkypox when dogs and children started showing up with it. They didn’t want any public discussion about HOW.
LikeLike
So, on that topic, in the midst of this very lengthy but interesting article, I discovered something that has never once, in my entire existence, been pointed out before:
The “deadlier second wave of the 1919 Spanish Flu” had nothing to do with the flu itself. And this is documented.
See, what happened in between the first wave and the second wave was the production of a brand new Wonder Drug called aspirin, a miracle drug that could reduce fever and inflammation, and it was touted widely and pushed heavily. Which in itself wouldn’t be a horrible thing, except… the recommended doses were in grams.
Today, with a century’s worth of experience, aspirin doses are measured in micrograms, with a maximum daily dose of 4 grams (and at that point, you’re supposed to be under a doctor’s care anyway.) The doses they recommended were anything from 8 to 32 grams.
And while aspirin toxicity is based on weight, generally anything above 20 grams is considered “dead man walking” territory.
The 1919 flu did not somehow become deadlier. Our medical establishment killed them through ignorance, and then spent a century researching the flu without noticing. And—the information is there. People have tracked the correlations, graphed the use of aspirin, but because the Narrative is so firmly set, nobody has connected the two things in the public consciousness.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A standard-sized aspirin pill is 325 milligrams. Take two for a headache. Wait 4 hours before taking any more. I buy them in bottles of 500 which last years.
The doses they used back in 1920 were from 24.6 pills to almost 100. Ouch!
LikeLiked by 1 person
At one point, aspirin wad the only thing that reduced the inflammation of my arthritis. Even 4 grams, sustained, can screw you up. For example, hearing loss.
Fortunately, Doc finally found a more modern product that worked, and my berzerk immune system didn’t become inmune to it.
LikeLiked by 2 people
In some places (Austria-Hungary, others in Europe), a secondary severe respiratory infection hit while people were still weakened from the influenza. Chronic malnutrition was probably a contributing factor, given the rationing and terrible harvests in 1917-1918.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Kind of like respirators this round.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The left is in the quicksand of control, the more they struggle the deeper they are sucked into the smothering depths. Trapped with no one to thrown them a line they are finding their saviors are nowhere to be found and their cell-phone just got sucked into the depths out of their reach. They tried calling 911 but while the operator asked them what their gender preference was and did they need a socialist not a policeman nasty things that they are their battery on their cheap Chinese Phone was dying. Low battery disconnected the call, Tick Tok however streamed their drowning in all it’s splendid glory. The person who streamed it, couldn’t get involved, it was the governments job to save people, she was just their in her pink Tutu and full beard to chronicle the world to her two million followers, Her name was Rex and He/She looked awesome in his/her pink Tutu standing their with his/her boyfriend Elliot, who was born Ellen.
Sarcasm, not much really…
LikeLike