In 1984, "O'Brien" was an Inner Party member who seemed to befriend the protagonist, and explained the mechanisms and purpose of the Party.
At the end of the book (spoiler alert), Winston was sent for re-education. His tormentor?O'Brien.
I see Trump as an "O'Brien". He's one of THEM. He may seem friendly, but his allegiance isn't to you.
In-person performances have always been the biggest moneymaker for the creators themselves. Media companies aren't robbing artists as much as they did in the 20th century, but streaming, even if done on one's own, can provide only so much. "Don't Let The Record Label Take You Out To Lunch" is a great song by Jeffrey Lewis and it remains relevant even today.
Of course, once holograms catch up to online deep fake technology, "in-person" will be irrelevant too. Entertainers will eventually become a commodity and once we're all looking for food and water, entertainers will return to the days of the troubadour, busking for change from those who are producing tangible goods. :)
Bitcoin is introducing a "2 bitcoin" coin, like the looney? :)
I remember when they told us that computers would revolutionize society, with work being done so much more quickly that humanity would have so much more leisure time to enjoy the fruits of the labor being done by transistors rather than humans,
They probably said that about the internet too. And they'll say it about AI. It's amazing that productivity continues to improve almost exponentially, but we still don't have all that leisure time that we were promised again and again. It's almost like something or someone(s) is sucking up all that improvement into a black hole of wealth for itself.
Almost..
Years ago, my landlord kindly replaced my refrigerator that was a 1950's (I think) model with no brand name (the kind that you had to "defrost" the freezer periodically. This coincided with "mop the kitchen floor day" for reasons that you may probably imagine). More importantly, it was the kind with a door that covered both the freezer on top and the refrigerator on the bottom, and the freezer door was lost to history, so setting the temperature was quite a balancing act.
Anyway, when the brand new thing arrived, I had the delivery people help me take the old one to the curb (we can still do that in New Orleans, or at least we could then). Literally before it hit the sidewalk, some dude pulled up and asked "does that work?" I told him that it did, kinda, and he told us to hold on while he got his truck and took it away.
I like to think that the old refrigerator is still pumping away, maybe 70+ years old, keeping someone's meat frozen or someone's beer cold (but not likely both at the same time). Recycling didn't start in the 21st century after all..:)
"Why should I pay for a blood test?" or "There he goes again with his crazy talk"
Today I received an e-mail from Quest Diagnostics which headline read "20% off certain tests" and that got me thinking...
Why do we pay facilities for testing? Any testing, really, but especially very common testing like blood tests?
Hold on kids - I haven't had too many Bud Lights and turned communist or whatever lousy beer does to our bodies and minds. I'm a dedicated anarcho-capitalist/voluntaryist or whatever name is being used now.
I'm not peititioning for free testing. Testing costs money. There's the semi-skilled tester/collector, delivery of bio fluids to some lab and then the testing done at same, and then the result must be delivered to whomever.
But the most important value of testing is....DATA. Sure, you found out that your cholesterol is a little high, but the testing company has valuable data. Not just your test results, but YOU. Name, age, weight, last time tested, lifetime results, all your medical history. Combine this with say, WalMart or CVS and someone can probably figure out your cholesterol level without even testing. In any regard, data that can be combined and mined is probably the most valuable item on Earth right now.
"B-but your data isn't sold or divulged to anyone.."
Really? Ever read all those forms that you blindly sign? Just about the only thing that isn't shared is your name and your exact address. The "anonymized" data is compiled and packaged and then sold to lots of people, few of whom are likely to be your personal confidants.
Data compiling and mining is a huge industry and the players are the most well-heeled of all "players". At the very least, providing your data should earn you compensation, not the other way around. Those same "players" who crave information may gladly provide both free testing and a small commssion to those being tested.
So, Quest, keep your tests. I call you when I am having a 20% off sale of my own.
#gfy #grownostr
Well, I haven’t done an #introduction since joining Nostr, and nostr:npub1r0rs5q2gk0e3dk3nlc7gnu378ec6cnlenqp8a3cjhyzu6f8k5sgs4sq9ac said it was like confession, which tickled my Catholic heart, so here it is.
I’m a software engineer/jack-of-all-trades who specializes in industrial controls and automation software. 3D visualizations, motion control, network and IPC communication, serializing large datasets, stuff like that. It’s incredibly boring work that does really cool things.
I started coding when I was 12, and was working full time by age 14. Interesting story there for another time. I was provoked to learn how to code when my friends all got Tamogatchi’s (those digital demons) and my parents could not afford to get me one. Determined to not be left out, I endeavored to write one for myself. I started on MS-DOS 6.22, with QBasic. About two months later, I had an ASCII art creature that I could feed, and it shit all over my screen. Close enough.
With child like enthusiasm, and with an old computer, I decided to jump straight from that to programming my own version of Windows in QBasic. I’m sure I don’t need to explain why that didn’t work, but I did succeed in making a multi-modal user interface toolkit for terminals (yep, still ASCII… I learned about Turbo Vision much later). A family friend introduced me to the VP of Research and Development at a small controls company, and he hired me on the spot. My first commercial project drew 2D visualizations of data in Borland BGI - I made $500.
I was a Star Trek kid, and believed in creating technology that changed people’s lives. I’m a firm believer in the “Oooh” effect - the feeling that one gets when they hold technology in their hands and instinctively know its right and will change their lives. My first “Oooh” moment was holding an iPhone for the first time. I wanted to be a part of bringing those moments to life.
About that age I also got heavily involved in politics and church. I ran live audio for a major church in my area throughout my teens and interned in a studio owned by one of the adult volunteers. He mentored me through some rough times as I began showing signs of bipolar syndrome, which would end up shaping some of my later years. I also took classical piano through these years, which helped a great deal with depression.
Politically, I met two senators through the years and wrote a great deal of letters. I was an activist during the net neutrality era (“STOP SOPA!”) and engaged in other black-and-white thinking like nearly every young person. I was a rabid conservative youth and had a good (ill informed) argument for any adult I came across who looked like a good victim.
In adulthood, I continued my career in tech, and also interned in a photography studio for a while. I can’t say I learned a whole lot there, but I learned to love photography and to recognize good work. I enjoy pointing cameras at exasperated family members to this day.
I went through a brief but very passionate .NET and data aggregation phase, where I worked in education. We built everything ourselves due to minimal budget. The most fun was designing a scan-tron system from scratch to use a cannon copier/scanner to grade jpgs of the bubble sheets, and log scores for students in a searchable database. There were libraries out there, but we chose to do it from the ground up to learn how it worked. The entire GUI was in WPF - a gui toolkit that I still think was before its time and underrated.
Politically I’ve changed into something of a cynical constitutionalist who’s on the border of black pilled. I still work in automation, and still work in C++ (and I still miss C#). I was on the edge of giving up on social media when Edward Snowden mentioned Nostr right about the time I was planning to delete my Twitter account.
Nostr is the first time I’ve been involved in something that made me go “Oooh” in a long time. I have high hopes of contributing in some meaningful way to it’s growth. It feels right, in a sort of unquantifiable way that excites me. I’ve learned a lot of new things (server admin, stuff like that) and met some people who have challenged my comfort after 20 something years in tech - and provoked me to improve again. It’s fun and it feels like coming to life again.
Well this is long enough. There is a little about me. I hope to get to know you all more over time. Thanks for being here, and for being authentically you.
#introductions
cool! we were close up to the point where you accepted .NET (that's whne I started searching linux) and I hope that we have arrived at the same inevitable conclusion: we can do this better. :)
lol totally missed the obvious. feliz cumple, senor! At my advanced age, those milestones go by too quickly to notice. But I'm depending onf you guys to pull humanity's fat out of the fire.
lol! I actually had a physical encounter with a US census taker in 2020. She demanded that I provide her with an "ancestry" response. My first response was "American". I explained that both I and my parents were born in the USA, so I am "American". But she pressed forward. So I asked, "well, as of which year in history are we to measure?" and then proffered, having learned from the opening ceremonies of the World Cup 2010, that all life began in Africa, so I said "i guess I'm African". Well, that wasn't the right answer either. I didn't realize that we were to be quizzed as a part of the census. So I asked her, "well, as of which arbitrary year that you decide for yourself shall I tell you where my family was likely located at that exact instant?" She declined to offer a specific year. Then my alarm went off on my laundry and I left her so that I could fold my clothes properly. I ope that I didn't cost her a commission.
"I got no means to show identification
I got no papers show you what I am
You'll have to take me just the way that you find me
What's gone is gone and I do not give a damn"
This was Peter Gabriel 1980. Wonder if he still feels this way.
#oldies #onyourkneesson
Try to choke it down anyway,...:)
My issue is with the media-friendly name. It's not "intelligence" - at least not from what I've seen. The current bots simply compile information very quickly in a pleasant format. That's not any more intelligent than a child reciting his "baltimore catechism" in the 1960's. Regurgitating what's already been said isn't intelligence.
Until I see a bot actually derive an idea on its own, "AI" is simply an elegant compiler, like a fancy TI handheld calculator for words, except far more dangerous in that the TI manufacturers had to produce a chipset that hewed to a very strict set of rules, while those who feed "AI" may choose to feed it whatever claptrap they feel is "important", and worse, may eschew that information that isn't considered to be "helpful to the advancement of humankind", ie. subjective.
I see "AI" as a ruse, much like early days "religion" (see the the Bible's Book of Leviticus, if you need help sleeping at night) whereby someone decides to invoke a "higher authority" to impose rules on the "simpletons" "for their own good". Since the state-controlled media has completely lost it's cache, those intent on keeping the "simpletons" at bay need a new form of "messiah" to keep the proletariat in order.
hence: "well, the "AI" said to do this and the "AI' knows everything, so....on your knees, proles!"
plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
So, I know that you've all been wondering where I've been...
that's a joke, son, I have like 7 followers. B ut I've been away from anything tech for a couple of months while tending to a dire family issue.
Anyway, after another broken set of wired earbuds on the way home from said situation, I bought me a pair of those cool wireless earbuds!
I got the box, I couldn't read the tiny print on the instructions (except for the boldface), but I managed to charge them up and even got connected to my linux desktop (fail - it recognised the earbuds as a "device" but failed to redirect audio to them) and to my phone, which worked perfectly.
So, after listening to a podcast for an hour or so, I went to take a dump.
You can imagine the rest.
After fishing out "L" from the bowl, the earbuds would charge but of course are now useless. So, I guess I'll try those clunky but fashionable pastel colored headphones all the kids are wearing next.
Never let us olds use tech.
#oldbastard #fucktech #lol
Among my acquaintances, I am considered to be the enemy of the absolutists. I passed many a standardized test by simply reading the statement and finding an absolute, then challenging it.
A particularity humorous exchange happened when we were in our younger days and a compatriot arrived with a case of beer in cans. A friend of mine remarked "there is nothing I hate more than canned beer". Then he turned toward me and I was just staring at him. He knew then, and tells the story to this day, that I was contemplating the millions of things that he would hate more than canned beer, and that I would clearly be foisting all of them upon him during that weekend.
Never say never. Never say always. Never say anything in the absolute. The world has many ways to humble us.
i'm old enough to have seen it's debut on "movie of the week". truly groundbreaking.
https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_02831692c8 5e064a5c83bae6184f9f86450a3eaacf0885507e9a20c7e1a3c581.jpg
The whole idea that "sure, what the public wants is transparency, but those that work in government have a duty to keep those secrets" simply underscores that there is an inherent conflict between those governing and those being governed. The government, therefore, does not work FOR the governed, but instead works TO THWART the will of the governed, so that the governed may remain under the rule of those governing.
It has always been this way, in every country, in every place where there is a ruling class separate from those being ruled. We, the governed, are constantly at war - not with a scary foreign enemy, but with our own governments, regardless of by which government one is being thwarted.
It is absurd that the governments, who war with one another, at the cost of the labor and lives of the governed, as well as with their own governed individuals, seek to portray those wars between governments as wars between those being governed. The governed have a single enemy: the government which openly thwarts its will at every chance, using a flimsy "but, it's for your safety" cliche that fools swallow whole.
To me, it's the portability. Try carrying large amounts of cash across a border, or even through airports within a country. No more expensive and complicated wire transfer requests, no more trying to hide cash in your baggage and praying that some TSA agent will steal it while your baggage is out of your sight (even as carry ons). I'm surprised that cash businesses (think casinos, especially) don't have some kind of BTC->Fiat "ATM" right in the casino. At least until they just take BTC for wagering, which may or may not be popular as most large gamblers prefer to remain as anonymous as possible.
New feature:
"What would nostr do?"
Awkward situation. I'm on an airplane, seated next to a younger woman, and we have ignored each other over the entire flight time, as we do nowadays.
Meals are served. I get mine, but then the attendant apologizes to the woman next to me and tells her that "her meal was not boarded onto the plane". The attendant attempted to mollify the woman with another offer, but the woman, who felt as awkward as the attendant did, just said "no, no, it's OK" "that's alright" et cetera.
So? WHAT WOULD NOSTR DO?
Would you continue to ignore the entire situation and feel ridiculously awkward for no reason of my own, as I did?
Would you have offered the dessert or other easily movable items to the woman, as 30 years ago me would have done (of course, 30 years ago we would not have been ignoring each other up to this point anyway)?
#whatwouldnostrdo
respond, "re-note" (or whatever we call it on nostr) and feel free to use the hashtag to post your own horribly awkward dilemmas!
#grownostr #whatwouldnostrdo #awkward