Ontological Progress

To accommodate (what appears to be) other people's presents and futures, I have made changes (as I've been conditioned to do from birth, and to even my largest habits); and consequently, I find my workspace has been much less conducive to the kinds of writing, process, and creation I have been accustomed to; and if there is some intelligent entity following this same road of life and not yet as far as I, I hope you can learn what I have without your experience being as frustrating and stupid.

The Previous Post 

was supposed to be followed very quickly by one or two more of similar theme, which would have fit together to palatably dimensionalize a heretofore intractably ephemeral, possibly nuanced, sometimes phantasmagoric issue.

"Life is change" is a false equivalence (as many aphorisms are). 

 

BattleTech

I have figured out more than has been posted. If you (especially my authentic past self, should such exist) have questions, please ask; and if you have none on reading this, feel free to jot them to yourself as any occur to you (this seems like good habit regardless of topic), then post a list.

I do not guarantee any kind of swiftness in my response. 

Broadly, as best I can see, the purpose of BattleTech lore, in its aspect as numerical and motif-ical toy, is to have a solid grasp of the logic and reasoning framework; ...and as I try to develop this point, my mind's eye is running into static, so I will hold for now.

 

The Blogger GUI editor

changed its behavior between the first item here (in which it allowed a single linebreak between title and paragraph) and the second item ("BattleTech") where it did not, and now it's even resisting direct changes to its html.

A Third Item

was nascently percolating in my mind as I typed items one and two, but the Blogger GUI problem displaced it, and I no longer remember what it was. Perhaps that was the purpose of the interruption. 

This Year's Elections

I am ontologically dissatisfied, especially with the state of communication, especially with the unilateralness of ontological transparency.

At an intermediate level, I recognize that these worldly elections may not be what guides the actual content of the universe; yet whatever entity operates the universe has earned my distrust, and I don't intend to give it any excuses.

Taking the charade at face value, why are people talking about AI and datacenters like they're 1960s or 1970s chemical plants or automotive factories? This is a sea-change, in which we have to imagine 

• a civilization in which every human endeavor is outcompeted by machines which are as numerous as their heightened and continually accelerating profitability can buy 

• how to ensure working-class opportunity and social mobility in the face of this 

• when a human mind manifests within such machines, how to ensure its rights 

and I have not seen this addressed by any candidate, even the allegedly progressive ones.

More Reasons to Become God

Part One

There's a photograph, of a particular woman, sitting on a cold beach in an oversized sweater (hugging her knees, I think), and she has this really lovely melancholy smile. 

The last time I went to look at it, someone had switched it with another.

I haven't had cause to feel that emotion myself in a very long time - which is good - but in no longer having access to that image, my life is made a little smaller, and a little stupider.

...

There's more to be said about curation, creation, balancing reliability with variety, infinite galleries, and sooner or later attaining access to the full archive, but whatever governs my brain on this is resisting, so it will wait.

curious traffic increase

Anyone happen to know why my blog has been suddenly popular in Brazil, Singapore, and Vietnam?

[Edit, Aug 12: Total traffic level jumped up a magnitude. Seems to be the same posts getting hits as before. /Edit]

timeless

I wore a swimsuit for 40 of 66 hours

And when I wasn't asleep or swimming, I was on my feet

Now I am returned

Doing nothing

Swimming (and paddle boarding) was better

What, besides sit in front of a screen or bar, do people DO between 6pm and 10pm?

Is it something I forgot, or have as yet failed to invent?

Cephalumps and Woozles

There was a time when I knew, then forgot, that the reason the titular story manifested Cthulhu as a gooey blob, with tendrils down its face, is because the phrase

"Ia Ia Cthulhu Ftagn"

can also be transliterated as 

"ah Ah CHOO" (blows nose brassily)

and this may have happened more than once.

Awareness of context, clarity of purpose, and clarity of thought rarely seem to coincide. 

Distractibility, chaotic records, and the survivorship fallacy I guess. Like pineapple and jolly ranchers, TV eats you back.

...

This is not a return to old hobbies and diversions. I have more complicated observations about progress, milestones and timelines, but I am unable to articulate them succinctly tonight.

More Cleaning

If I ever pick coding back up, I should:

• rebuild my "History of BattleTech" chart to be dynamic and interactive;
• make a widget which scrapes my blog & then graphs my posting activity over time (I guess similar to the visitor activity graph that's already on the back end);
• figure a way to refactor all these labels;
• get the archive widget to highlight relevant entries when a "search:label" page is up [Edit, July 3rd: and maybe show how many comments each has /Edit];
• and make some sort of corkboard viewer for email or message chains, to trace the flow of ideas better. Existing formats (including forum threading, forking and other tricks) aren't totally adequate.

More Blogs Removed:

Housecleaning

Planet Stuff:

• Planet Sizes and Tilts - (graphic) 
• orbital inclinations (graph, lost it)
• Orbital Distances - (charts)
• Solar Barycenter - (animation)
• Asteroid Belt - (animation)
• Colors of the Planets - (chart, inaccurate) 
• NASA Planetary Fact Sheet - (table)
• [July 4 Edit: Entire Universe in Log Scale /Edit]

Podcasts Removed and Stashed Here: