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A bright and shiny hell

(Apologies for blogging so infrequently this month. I'm currently up to my elbows in The Labyrinth Index, with a tight deadline to hit if the book's going to be published next July. Blogging will continue to be infrequent, but hopefully as provocative as usual.)

Remember Orwell's 1984 and his description of the world ahead—"if you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever"?

This is the 21st century, and we can do better.

George got the telescreens and cameras and the stench of omnipresent surveillance right, but he was writing in the age of microfilm and 3x5 index cards. Data storage was prodigiously expensive and mass communication networks were centralized and costly to run — it wasn't practical for amateurs to set up a decentralized, end-to-end encrypted shadow network tunnelling over the public phone system, or to run private anonymous blogs in the classified columns of newspapers. He was also writing in the age of mass-mobilization of labour and intercontinental warfare. Limned in the backdrop to 1984 is a world where atom bombs have been used in warfare and are no longer used by the great powers, by tacit agreement. Instead, we see soldiers and machine-guns and refugees and the presentation of inevitable border wars and genocides between the three giant power blocs.

Been there, done that.

What we have today is a vision of 1984 disrupted by a torrent of data storage. Circa 1972-73, total US manufacturing volume of online computer storage — hard drives and RAM and core memory, but not tape — amounted to some 100Gb/year. Today, my cellphone has about double that capacity. I'm guessing that my desk probably supports the entire planetary installed digital media volume of 1980. (I'm looking at about 10Tb of disks ...) There's a good chance that anything that happens in front of a camera, and anything that transits the internet, will be preserved digitally into the indefinite future, for however long some major state or corporate institution considers it of interest. And when I'm taking about large-scale data retention, just to clue you in, Amazon AWS already offers a commercial data transfer and storage service using AWS Snowmobile, whereby a gigantic trailer full of storage will drive up to the loading bay of your data center and download everything. It's currently good for up to 100PB per Snowmobile load. (1PB is a million gigabytes; 1EB is a billion gigabytes; ten snowmobile loads is 1EB, or about 10,000,000 1973's worth of global hard drive manufacturing capacity). Folks, Amazon wouldn't be offering this product if there wasn't a market for it.

These heaps and drifts of retained data (and metadata) can be subjected to analytical processes not yet invented — historic data is still useful. And some of the potential applications of neural network driven deep learning and machine vision are really hair-raising. We've all seen video of mass demonstrations over the past year. A paper to be presented at the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision Workshops (ICCVW) introduces a deep-learning algorithm that can identify an individual even when part of their face is obscured. The system was able to correctly identify a person concealed by a scarf 67 percent of the time against a "complex" background. Police already routinely record demonstrations: now they'll be able to apply offline analytics to work out who was there and track protestors' activities in the long term ... and coordinate with public CCTV and face recognition networks to arrest them long afterwards, if they're so inclined.

It turns out that facial recognition neural networks can be trained to accurately recognize pain! The researchers were doubtless thinking of clinical medical applications — doctors are bad at objectively evaluating patients' expressions of pain and patients often don't self-evaluate effectively — but just think how much use this technology might be to a regime bent of using torture as a tool of social repression (like, oh, Egypt or Syria today). They also appear to be better than human beings at evaluating sexual orientation of a subject, which might be of interest in President Pence's Republic of Gilead, or Chechnya, or Iran. (There's still a terrible false positive rate, but hey, you can't build an algorithmic dictatorship without breaking heads.)

(Footnote: it also turns out that neural networks and data mining in general are really good at reinforcing the prejudices of their programmers, and embedding them in hardware. Here's a racist hand dryer — it's proximity sensor simply doesn't work on dark skin! Engineers with untested assumptions about the human subjects of their machines can wreak havoc.)

All of this is pretty horrific — so far, so 2017 — but I'd like to throw two more web pages in your face. Firstly, the Gerasimov Doctrine which appears to shape Russian infowar practices against the west. We've seen glaring evidence of Russian tampering in the recent US presidential election, including bulk buying of micro-targeted facebook ads, not focussing on particular candidates but on party-affiliated hot-button issues such as race, gay rights, gun control, and immigration. (I'm not touching the allegations about bribery and Trump with a barge pole — that way lies the gibbering spectre of Louise Mensch — but the evidence for the use of borderline-illegal advertising to energize voters and prod them in a particular direction looks overwhelming.) Here's a translation of Gerasimov's paper, titled e Value of Science Is in the Foresight: New Challenges Demand Rethinking the Forms and Methods of Carrying out Combat Operations. As he's the Russian army Chief of General Staff, what he says can be taken as gospel, and he's saying things like, "the focus of applied methods of conflict has altered in the direction of the broad use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian, and other nonmilitary [my emphasis] measures — applied in coordination with the protest potential of the population". This isn't your grandpa's ministry of propaganda. Our social media have inadvertently created a swamp of "false news" in which superficially attractive memes outcompete the truth because humans are lousy at distinguishing between lies which reinforce their existing prejudices and an objective assessment of the situation. And this has created a battlefield where indirect stealth attacks on elections have become routine to the point where savvy campaigns pre-emptively place bait for hackers.

There are a couple of rays of hope, however. The United Nations Development Program recently released a report, Journey to extremism in Africa: drivers, incentives and the tipping point for recruitment that pointed out the deficiencies in the Emperor's wardrobe with respect to security services. Religion and ideology are post-hoc excuses for recruitment into extremist groups: the truth is somewhat different. "The research specifically set out to discover what pushed a handful of individuals to join violent extremist groups, when many others facing similar sets of circumstances did not. This specific moment or factor is referred to as the 'tipping point'. The idea of a transformative trigger that pushes individuals decisively from the 'at-risk' category to actually taking the step of joining is substantiated by the Journey to Extremism data. A striking 71 percent pointed to 'government action', including 'killing of a family member or friend' or 'arrest of a family member or friend', as the incident that prompted them to join. These findings throw into stark relief the question of how counter-terrorism and wider security functions of governments in at-risk environments conduct themselves with regard to human rights and due process. State security-actor conduct is revealed as a prominent accelerator of recruitment, rather than the reverse." In fact, the best defenses against generating recruits for extremist organizations seemed to be things like reduced social and eonomic exclusion (poverty), improved education, having a family background (peer pressure), and not being on the receiving end of violent repression. Because violence breeds more violence — who knew? (Not the CIA and USAF with their typical "oops" response whenever a drone blows up a wedding party they've mistaken for Al Qaida Central.)

So, let me put some stuff together.

We're living in a period where everything we do in public can be observed, recorded, and will in future provide the grist for deductive mills deployed by the authorities. (Hideous tools of data-driven repression are emerging almost daily without much notice, whether through malice or because they have socially useful applications and the developers are blind to the potential for abuse.) Foreign state-level actors and non-state groupings (such as the new fascist international and its hive of internet-connected insurgents) are now able to use data mining techniques to target individuals with opinions likely to appeal to their prejudices and inflame them into activism. Democracy is directly threatened by these techniques and may not survive in its current form, although there are suggestions that what technology broke, technology might help fix (TLDR: blockchain-enabled e-voting, from the European Parliament Think Tank). And there are some signs that our existing transnational frameworks are beginning to recognize that repressive policing is one of the worst possible shields against terrorism.

Social solidarity. Tolerance. Openness. Transparency that runs up as well as down the personal-institutional scale. And, possibly, better tools for authenticating public statements such as votes, tweets, and blog essays like this one. These are what we need to cleave to if we're not going to live out our lives in a shiny algorithmic big data hellscape.

1058 Comments

1:

To what extent are the ways forward you envisage compatible with national boundaries?

2:

What do national boundaries even mean these days?

3:

A striking 71 percent pointed to 'government action', including 'killing of a family member or friend' or 'arrest of a family member or friend', as the incident that prompted them to join. The Tsarist state condemned Lenin's brother to death & Alexander III refused the prerogative of mercy .......

possibly, better tools for authenticating public statements such as votes,... Unless, of course, you are in the Southern USA & WANT to rig your voting or electoral register [ a lot of other places, too, of course ]

Are Farage & his friends indirectky or directly in Moscow/Putin's pay, then,as part of the new Fascist International? After F's antics recently, I wouldn't be surprised

Social solidarity. Tolerance. Openness. Transparency Values despised & rejected ( yes, that phrase was deliberate ) by religious leaders & followers everywhere, of course

4:

A reason to leave the EU, it appears.

5:

Often when the Language changes & more importantly, the law changes - the line-on-the-ground may be invisible, but the laws making things legal/illegal are there - particulalry noticeable inside the USA of course (!)

Also, Charlie that's an amzingly Eurocentric (As in "Western") statement - try the border between Burma & Bangla-Desh for a good example, right now ... or the long-running & ridiculous sore between Algeria & Morocco, or ask a Finn ..... or a "Moldovan"

6:

Or maybe not. Us Remoaners appear to be getting our act together, at last

7:

Perhaps I should try to clarify. One of the ways forward from here would be an increase in mobility, so that states competed directly as being good places to live/work/exist; which was always one of the claimed USPs of the USA, for instance. One of my views of the world is that the Americas constituted an escape/pressure valve for the Old World system, as did colonialism more generally, and much of the 20th century was underpinned by that; and that much of the narrative of the 21st century, so far, has been about the idea that there is no frontier any more. (See also, space exploration and all of that.) Much of the growth in tools and techniques we're talking about here is driven by the desire to influence foreign actors. So the definition of "foreign" becomes important.

8:

Are Farage & his friends indirectky or directly in Moscow/Putin's pay, then,as part of the new Fascist International? After F's antics recently, I wouldn't be surprised

I'd like to discourage unsubstantiated speculation along those lines in the comments here.

If you can point to reports in reputable news media that provide substantiation for allegations along those lines, that's okay, but remember the moderation policy wrt. libel law before you begin speculating. (Frame it as a question, as above, is okay, as long as it's not a statement of fact masquerading as a rhetorical question, which might be actionable.)

9:

I'm of the opinion that Putin has a strong motive for backing Brexit. Brexit weakens the UK diplomatically and economically and the UK is historically Not Russia's Friend (at least going back a century). Brexit also may weaken the EU, which is potentially to Russia's advantage in trade negotiations. Also, the EU maps into a subset of NATO, so there's that angle as well (it drives a wedge into a hostile military alliance).

Putin is also an authoritarian nationalist, and the whole hard-right international alliance gives him a bunch of useful allies to push that agenda. (The EU as a transnational free trade oriented structure of neoliberal policy is obviously anathema to such.)

10:

What I meant, Greg, is that the entire planet today has shrunk to the dimensions of the English home counties two centuries ago (in terms of the personal cost and duration of traversing them — back then, a month's wages and two days in a stage coach would get you a hundred miles in some discomfort; today, a month's wages and two days on airliners will get you from London to Australia and back, in some discomfort).

So we have supply chains that cross borders, many large scale migrations not driven by starvation or war (along, obviously, with those that are), and other consequences unimaginable even a century ago.

11:

Completely agree with that. It also leaves France as the only EU nuclear-armed state.

Who are you seeing as actors on our side of the problem, if anyone?

12:

"Because violence breeds more violence — who knew? (Not the CIA and USAF with their typical 'oops' response whenever a drone blows up a wedding party they've mistaken for Al Qaida Central.)"

<sarcasm> Yeah, because no member of the senior staff at the CIA has ever seen The Godfather and understood the wedding scene. (There's at least one senior USAF staff member who has.) Or the irony of any parallel with a crime family led by immigrants and its methods of and rationales for enforcing compliance with the personal preferences of its unelected leaders. </sarcasm>

Which is not a defense of targetting wedding parties, even though in the Southwest and South Asian world they're just as much a mixed bag of inherently overlapping purposes and uses as are Western cathedrals. This is an extension of the age-old principle that if the only item in your toolbox is a hammer, damned near everything looks like some variety of a nail. In this instance, it's not that the hammer is the only tool in the box; it's that we're pretty sure nobody else has such a bright and shiny hammer and there's this testosterone-fuelled impulse to show it off at every opportunity...

13:

Please note that "The Godfather" is a work of fiction. Letting fiction, as opposed to fact, drive your military operations is a really bad idea.

Yes, it's entirely possible that some wedding parties are venues where malefactors from different families exchange business cards. It's still really dumb to nuke the entire wedding party if what you're really trying to do is convince Uncle Abdul to lay off the IEDs. (Less bad: you send a sniper team after Uncle Abdul and nobody else. Even less bad: you mail him a bullet, a photograph of his bedroom window, and a pointed hint — the racehorse's head at the end of the bed.)

The testosterone-fuelled showing-off is partly a side-effect of entertainment media that make violence seem like a happy fun recreational activity (desensitization ahoy!) and partly a side-effect of inappropriate incentives baked into the promotion chain in the State Department (you get ahead for being seen to be doing military stuff rather than making military stuff unnecessary).

Oh, and did I mention the contribution of lead in gasoline in the Middle East? We know that dropping lead additives from gasoline in the USA and Europe was followed 15-20 years later by a massive drop in violent crime; it turns out that tetraethyl lead was only phased out of gas in much of the middle east this century, and leaded petrol may be fueling violence and terrorism throughout the middle east.

14:

A recent development in metadata. I checked some photos of mine in Google Photos and found that lots of pictures I took in Canada during 2003 and 2010 using a primitive digital camera with no GPS have been tagged with latitude and longitude, presumably from recognition of the landscape. Indoor scenes are mostly still not tagged. However a photo in a bar in Calgary is tagged with the presence of my brother in law who has never been in Canada. Inspection of the photo revealed someone who could be his double. In have an app to remove the data from photos posted online but it looks as if this is now useless.

15:

On a slightly positive note, this may not be evenly distributed globally; compare the US attitude to data protection and privacy versus the EU attitude as codified by the GDPR, which contains nuggets like section 22, which introduces a new legal right:

"The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her."

It's not absolute - what right is? - but it can't be overruled by member states' national laws.

Honestly, that whole thing about the lawyers being the first against the wall when the revolution comes may not be the best idea ever...

16:

I have been reading "The New Analects - Confucius Reconstructed", and see it as a new Humanism, which will replace the "Communist" ideology in China.

The 19th century ended with Nietzsche screaming "God is dead", producing Nazism and the genocide of the Jews, the 20th century ended with Ayn Rand screaming "Humanism is dead", with Rand Paul's and the mini-Roarke's genocide of the poor.

The West is intellectually and morally bankrupt, with the leaders Trump, only interested in making money and getting his schvance pulled, Putin interested in World Domination and getting his schvance pulled, and Teresa May trying to bring back hanging and getting others' necks pulled.

The future will be built by China.

17:

I hesitate to blame the Nazis on Nietzsche, although they indisputably misappropriated his writing for their own ends. (He was more of an iconoclast than anything else. And believed in a "steady state" universe, with eternal cyclic return, as an explicit rejection of Christian teleology. Incompatible with modern cosmology but understandable if you view his work as a rejection of Biblical creation.)

The West isn't intellectually and morally bankrupt as a whole. What's bankrupt is the self-serving capitalist ideology of neoliberalism. I think we're overlooking the quiet emergence of a new green/left framework that is gaining traction globally in places we might not expect to see it — consider the Paris accords, or the host of countries moving to phase out internal combustion powered vehicles in favor of electric ones, or the spread of marriage equality.

18:

Greg asks: "Are Farage & his friends indirectky or directly in Moscow/Putin's pay, then,as part of the new Fascist International? After F's antics recently, I wouldn't be surprised"

Bearing in mind Charlie's imprecation here's what's known.

Source 1: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/02/arron-banks-interview-brexit-ukip-far-right-trump-putin-russia

Quote (Banks): “We had no Russian money into Brexit,” he says. “I’ve had two very nice lunches with the Russian ambassador, where Andy [Wigmore] and I got completely pissed."

A number of other -- umm -- "insights" too. Make of it what you will.

19:

On the other hand, it seems likely that the good guys could use some of the same technologies. Any of us could mount a 10 TB database without doing much more than spending some vacation money, and programming it isn't ridiculously hard - at worst maybe someone doesn't understand table joins and wastes a couple terabytes of storage - but the contraption could still work.

So how about a database of known racists/nazis? It would have to be carefully curated and very-much-more fact based than the current databases owned by nation-states, but doing it is not impossible if you can deal with the legal challenges... then sell access cheaply enough to keep the idiots away, along with free access to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Or a databased-backed boycott with an easily installed app (that scans bar codes?) Jesse Jackson once noted that every transaction involved the use of currency, which means that dollars can be recast as "discipline dollars" aimed straight at major corporations. So don't just boycott the obvious Koch brothers gasoline, also boycott their toilet paper!

There's a lot of room for improvement in my (not caffeinated yet) ideas, but I think the surveillance system can be used both ways - it's not too late to implement Brin's transparent society.

20:

Our Gracious Host at 13:

No argument from me on "fiction driving the military," that's one of the reasons that reference is inside of <sarcasm> tags. Which is not, of course, to say that fiction never does drive military actions or doctrine or anything else... although I'd also argue that the USAF involvement in drone strikes against non-uniformed-military targets without a declaration of war is somewhat legally dubious in itself... Neither will you get any controversy from me about the relationship between lead exposure and violence, although sarcastically one must wonder whether the amount of spent lead ammo laying around and leaching into the water supply might be contributing to the cycle of violence in American cities (admittedly, that's pretty far off point).

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough with the rest of the remark. Given both the common-in-contemporary-culture "wedding" reference and the historical-fact "cathedral" reference, there should have been strong consideration given to "mixed purpose" gatherings... and due if only to the religious intertwining, "mixed purpose" gatherings should have been ruled out as legitimate targets, even if one believed that most or virtually all of the people there are conducting Bad Discussions. (There's this little problem called "collateral damage.") If you want to hit the known leader on the way to or from the gathering, at least 500m away with little or no chance for collateral damage, that's different... but much harder, and you'd better be certain that Daddy Terrorist doesn't have Lovely Bride-to-Be Non-Terrorist in the armored Land Rover with him, because she's not a legitimate target.

22:

The problem with blockchains for voting is that we've yet to see a cipher survive a voting lifespan since general hardware computers came into being. So if the blockchain itself ever leaks (which is basically a certainty), you now have a highly-verified record of how everyone voted n years ago waiting to be cracked.

It's probably not going to be fast enough for your landlord to dictate how you should vote, but if we get unlucky and a set gets cracked within the duration of the government in question - well, we have blind ballots for a reason.

Hell, as it is I need some of my own family members to have enough plausible deniability to just not bring up whether they might've voted Tory in the last five years on account of needing to be able to look them in the face without disowning them five seconds later. "What happens after everyone's learned too much about each other too fast?" crops up as a story about human nature once in a while for good reason.

23:

Borderline illegal? No. Quite definitely illegal. It is illegal within the US to accept Foreign Money to influence a US election. It's probably also illegal to pay the money, but the payee probably wasn't within the US.

I'm no lawyer, so I don't have the language right, but the actions were definitely illegal. Whether the law will be enforced, however, is a different question. It might put Facebook out of business.

24:

You can bet your ass they didn't just buy on Facebook.

25:
back then, a month's wages and two days in a stage coach would get you a hundred miles in some discomfort; today, a month's wages and two days on airliners will get you from London to Australia and back, in some discomfort

Hm, that's still rather Eurocentric. A typical Tanzanian peasant's month's wages (something on the order of 15-30 £) and two days in a coach will get him to the other end of Tanzania (which is admittedly multiple hundred miles away) in some discomfort. But it won't get him anyway near the other side of the world. And I believe this is still rather the default for a huge chunk of the population of Planet Earth outside of Europe. I'd be willing to bet that it would hold true for the majority of Earth's population, considering that the income of peasants in India or China and many other countries are also closer to a dollar a day than they are to yours or mine.

(And I have deliberately chosen as my example a stable and peaceful country from where there's no emigration to speak of. I'm not even talking about the money and time it costs a migrant from the global South to get into Europe. A month's wages and two days in discomfort don't even begin to describe it.)

26:

Mike, that is amazing. I should not be surprised, but I did not know that they were doing that. I've been a photographer for 40 years, I wonder how long before non-digital photographs start getting tagged with location and name data?

I was telling fiends about Facebook and LinkedIn creating ghost profiles in the hopes of getting people to sign up. Brave new world indeed.

27:

If you think of propaganda as a virus of the mind, or any other biological metaphor you care to choose, you need to consider the environment in which it can thrive. I think propaganda of the kind Russia uses latches on the very human trait of wanting simple solutions or explanations, clear enemies. It fights with the greatest vigour nuance. And it only succeeds because there are political groups who sincerely think that radical change is needed AND a general acceptance that Something Needs To Change.

But what needs to change? certainly most things can be improved. Some things need to be improved as a matter of common decency (I think about how we go about treating people who dare want to live out of their birthplace, notably). But this is not change, is not seen as change, is thought about by the left (radical subtype) as 'capitalism delaying the inevitable revolution', and by the right (fascist cultivar) as 'proof of our moral decay'.

I will even gladly agree that the speed at which change occurs can be a huge injustice in itself -- why, you ask, if something is obviously wrong should we wait a generation before it is fixed? Because almost all that is wrong stems from the attitude of people and their education. Whilst people who hold some prejudice are alive and vote, no matter how strenuous your efforts, the prejudice lives on. It can only disappear at the speed of generational changes. It's not that you don't fight it with all you can, it's that it's wrong and idiotic to think it can go away instantly if we pushed hard enough. Thinking it's a moral failure not to have instant change IS a moral failure.

I think, indeed, each time you are not looking to understand -- not excuse, understand -- what is going on, what can be done, and how long the fight, you are opening a breach through which chaos can enter. And from chaos, nothing good comes, ever. Long Live the Beige.

28:

If you want to comprehensively boycott the Kochs, then you need to boycott Mad Max: Fury Road, Wonder Woman, Ready Player One, It, Dunkirk, and a lot of other movies: they invested almost half a million dollars in RatPac/Dune Entertainment.

http://www.imdb.com/company/co0449458?ref_=ttco_co_6

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/08/koch-brothers-wonder-woman

Boycotts are hard.

29:

I know. I'm suggesting that modern "surveillance" technology such as databases can make boycotts much easier.

30:

Teaching people the difference between transparency and privacy would be a good start too. Although in almost all cases, I'd be pretty confident that the folk saying "if you're so keen on transparency, tell us all your bank details" are trolling, but it's the sort of thing that then becomes the established baseline.

31:

And a/the/a possible reply is in your adjacent post: Putin is also an authoritarian nationalist HE KNOWS what the borders of coutries are - & how to violate them for fun & profit ....

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Reverting to your original thoughts: Social solidarity. Tolerance. Openness. Transparency that runs up as well as down the personal-institutional scale Again: "Peelian" Policing? The attitude that "It's doing no harm, leave it"? Which certainly seems to permeate most of W & NW Europe, but NOT the USA. And intolerance seems to be spreading ( Hi=ungary, Poland )

The exact opposite of say, Burma or "Pakistan" ( & lots of other places too .. ) where heteronomus/othoganal views will get you killed - & what's worse the "government" encourages or actively tolerates such abuses

32:

Teresa May trying to bring back hanging GOT ANY EVIDENCE for that, really? I know politicians don't usually sue for libel, but ......

Also, your "the West is fucked & corrupt" line is suspiciously like that of certain people in Germany after 1933 & also Da'Esh right now. NOT buying it, then or now.

33:

Recognising protesters from video footage, even when their faces are masked...

Yes, I've been expecting this.

Gait recognition is probably there already.

The delay has been in algorithms capable of doing this, and in the need for sufficient training data, and in the need for lots of metadata so that individuals can be profiled and tracked - not merely identified.

Putting a name to a face in a specific location isn't scary.

Knowing that they disagree with the regime, and knowing everywhere they've been, everyone they know, and everything they've said - or, if not 'everything', 'enough to put them away', or enough to get them blacklisted, redundant, deported or denied access to housing, foodbanks anf medical care - that's scary.

That's 'the other shoe dropped', to use a phrase that's fallen out of fashion: it's not just advances in technology, it's uses for technology that change the world.

So it's never just knowing your name, and knowing where you were when there was a protest march: it's knowing enough to damage you, or engineer you into being harmless, and your social graph, too.

It's about using social media data - Big Data - to identify the individuals who will respond to individually-tailored propaganda. And, indeed, to algorithmically compose the propaganda for them.

Or to just selectively filter their social media feed so that they become increasingly disengaged and depressed and politically inactive.

That last shoe was dropped in an extremely unethical experiment by Facebook two years ago. I don't believe that they are selling that as a service, yet: it's more the sort of thing that state-owned social media sites would want to do.

And that's the beautiful shining future that we're getting: lots and lots of shoes, free and perfectly fitted for every individual.

34:

Ever higher video resolution makes new forms of surveillance possible.

It's not just facial recognition and gross motor movements. Four years ago, researchers were detecting pulse rates from head movements (http://people.csail.mit.edu/balakg/pulsefromheadmotion.html) and skin colour changes from one person. Breathing rate and skin temperature are also trivial.

There's nothing stopping higher resolution cameras from doing this on every person in an entire crowd. Point this system at a football stadium and you can tell the medical state and something about the emotional state of everyone there.

The justification for doing this will be for spotting the person in that crowd who is about to have a heart attack and getting a medical team to that person faster, possibly even before they keel over. One that's in place, it's trivial to extend it to spot the suicide bomber. And hey, once it's in place, you might was well used it for mass testing of how people in that crowd respond to advertisements.

Also, responding to Charlie @9 "the UK is historically Not Russia's Friend" - that's a tactful way of saying we invaded them in 1918-1919, as did a few Australians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_contribution_to_the_Allied_Intervention_in_Russia_1918%E2%80%9319).

35:

Come on, now - muich further back than that! Even against Boney, Russia was very much an "ally of convenience"

36:

You'd think the Russians would be more concerned with our recent penetrations of their airspace with nuclear bombers (http://www.spyflight.co.uk/robin.htm) or maybe that our nuclear deterrent is explicitly designed to destroy Moscow.

Let's face it, if countries are going to be annoyed that the UK has invaded them, then the UK's only remaining friendly nations are Andorra, Chad, and maybe twenty other out of the way places.

37:

Places with NO COASTLINE, basically ..... Including San Marino & (Unfortunately) Vatican City .......

38:

I checked some photos of mine in Google Photos and found that lots of pictures I took in Canada during 2003 and 2010 using a primitive digital camera with no GPS have been tagged with latitude and longitude, presumably from recognition of the landscape.

Andrew Sullivan's gone and missed blog The Dish used to run a contest called "The View From Your Window" in which a view from some arbitrary window on the planet would be posted and the readership challenged to identify where it was. The crowdsourced google-enhanced wetware usually nailed it, so I'm not surprised that deep learning software can do something similar. Just how far it can go with random scenes of forest or desert is an interesting question.

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/vfyw-contest/

39:

Re: Lead

Apart from causing cognitive and emotional problems, there's also plenty of research saying that lead causes low sperm count and/or poor sperm quality. Both sperm-related conditions have been in the news for a few years now.

Lead poisoning info ... http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/lead-poisoning/symptoms-causes/dxc-20275054

http://www.npr.org/2017/07/31/539517210/sperm-counts-plummet-in-western-men-study-finds

Excerpt:

'The analysis found an overall 52.4 percent decline in sperm concentration and a 59.3 percent decline in the total sperm count over the 39-year period. (Sperm concentration is the measure of the concentration of sperm in a man's sample — how many millions of sperm are in a milliliter of semen. Total sperm count is the number doctors get when they multiply that by the volume of the sample.)'

What I'd like to know is what protects the surviving sperm. Would also like to know whether this is somehow 'preferential' as in: lead kills off/does not allow only specific types of gene variants to survive and thereby be around to potentially fuse with an ovum. Can only think of one way to find this out: do sperm tests on human males never been exposed to leaded fuels. Hard if not impossible to do. (Heteromeles: Can lead be measured in flora - trees specifically? If yes, this could provide a benchmark for measuring exposure among a population within a specific geographic area.)

Re: 'Violence breeds violence'

Yes it does and has been demonstrated in many lab studies from mice, rats, monkeys, etc. Violence (suffering) - whether emotional, psychological or physical - leaves a lasting mark on the subject of the violence. Even scarier, violence markers/effects are now known to be transmissible (cause genetic changes) and last to at least the third generation. Effects of violence can be eased if not erased through reconditioning. But, any breakdown or screw-up in the reconditioning process can cause an even greater rebound effect plus a wider generalization of fear reactions/stress. Moral of this story: Don't cause harm in the first place!

This adage is literally true!

40:

That brings us to the problem of the tyranny of the do-gooder, as expressed by C.S. Lewis:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals”

Now, I know that the bulk of C.S. Lewis's writing will mot go down well with readers of this blog, but I think that this passage stands alone, and encapsulates Jez's point above. Imagine: "FatBigot, we notice from your gait that you have put on 1kg this month. We will restrict you sugar ration until that weight has been lost."

A different kind of surveillance hell to that described by OGH, but possibly more likely because who will vote against something that is for your own good and will save the NHS money in the short term?

41:

The biggest danger seems to me to be that the great majority of people are simply oblivious, and are determined to remain so. Things like Arsebook marking people's photos with the names of the people in them, which horrify me, just make most people go "hey, cool". They view it in the same light as the tricks of a conjurer, for party entertainment. They don't consider, except to scornfully dismiss, scenarios analogous to the skills of a conjurer numbering among the accomplishments of, say, a police officer who gets to search suspects. Worse, this seems to include an awful lot of the people who actually make this shit, who should know better, and not just the general public.

People take the piss out of me for assiduously blocking and disabling internet advertising and tracking stuff. They think the only threat is from spook agencies and see advertising only in terms of something that provides regular tea-making breaks in TV programmes, not as a pernicious threat. They see "smart meters" not as a spy in the house, but merely as a means to cheaper electricity bills, even though the spy functionality is intrinsic whereas the cheaper bills are a purely artificial and external matter that is created to get them to sign up.

Of course, there is another whole layer of advertising intended to keep people thinking this way. Like all the silly rubbish from Google about encrypting all websites, not only bank-type sites but all the way down to sites for cock-and-balls-graffiti level trivia, to keep people focused on transport security when the real problem is the endpoints. Or the attempts to vilify producers of ad-blocking software as "destroying the internet", an accusation more fittingly levelled at the advertising itself than at its blockers.

Indeed, in some instances it may actually be government that is on the "good" side - here follows another reason to decry leaving the EU... It doesn't seem to have made much of a splash, but I came across a news story recently the gist of which was that the EU had realised that the idiotic "cookie banners" they have mandated on websites - which, incidentally, you can't bloody get rid of without coding unless you allow cookies - are entirely useless and serve only to annoy people, and were looking at introducing an actual legal ban on storing client-side state (apparently including not just cookies, but LSOs and the various frigs and hacks websites use to try and store state in defiance of the features designed for that purpose having been explicitly disabled by the user). The interesting part of the article was the quotes from business organisations whining and moaning about how not being able to store client-side state would cripple all the evil shit they seem to think they have a right to do. What the current status of this is I don't know, but it's certainly a proposal to be applauded.

By coincidence, another such proposal came to my attention via twitter earlier this evening - one which I have long advocated myself - to force manufacturers to release the data needed to make their stuff repairable. The main thrust of the article was the disadvantages of it not being, but it has significant relevance to this thread in that it also draws attention to the importance of shiny rubbish and internet-of-shit devices as a spyware vector. http://theconversation.com/why-cant-we-fix-our-own-electronic-devices-77601

42:

There's this little problem called "collateral damage."

Historically, that doesn't seem to have been considered a problem by the US. Leaving aside the Indian Wars, within living memory we have things like loads of leftover munitions from the bombing campaign in Laos (a country not at war with the US):

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/laos-vietnam-war-us-bombing-uxo/

Set against a planeload of bombs every eight minutes for nine years (and the classifying both bombing tapes and decommissioning information for over a generation afterwards), a few weddings blown up is lost in the noise.

43:

Re lead in petrol, the possibility occurs to me that the important correlation with the drop in crime may not be with lead, but with zombification by iphone, which I would hazard a guess is more of a problem in the most technologically-focused countries.

44:

"crowdsourced google-enhanced wetware"

Do not implement "recaptcha", and instead of trying to fill one in go to a different site that doesn't use it. We may not be able to stop it but we can at least make some contribution, however minor, by refusing to help them train it. This is another thing that people take the piss out of me about because they won't see the problem.

45:

Violence (suffering) - whether emotional, psychological or physical - leaves a lasting mark on the subject of the violence. Even scarier, violence markers/effects are now known to be transmissible (cause genetic changes) and last to at least the third generation.

A colleague from Pakistan told me that in large parts of the country you can always hear a drone. I wonder what the effects of growing up knowing that someone on the other side of the world might blow you up might be?(During the Cold War, at least we knew that whoever pushed the button would also suffer, but there are no comebacks against Predator pilots.

46:

Re: 'Thinking it's a moral failure not to have instant change IS a moral failure.'

I don't expect instant change, I do however expect instant protection from those who because they are unable to change their beliefs will continue to threaten me and mine and everyone else that they disagree with.

Protection is doable and enforceable.

Immorality is doing nothing thereby allowing harm to continue to be done.

Also think you're confusing allowing for a 'wider spectrum' of opinion with 'chaos'. There are millions of different species of living things on this planet and the fact that there are so many different species actually provides greater stability and health for all.

47:

I just checked through some more photos on Google. A lot of them seeem to be correlated with Streetview images. Most of the photos I took in Quebec City are now tagged but many of the street scenes in Toronto are not.. The camera did have date and time details (however they are wrong because I never bothered to set it) but the AI doesn't seem to correlate date/time information since some views close together are tagged and some aren't. Niagara falls from Niagara Town are tagged but a close view from the entrance to the view behind the falls is not tagged. However it's impressive and I'm sure it won't be long before everything is tagged.

48:

I think OGH's question in #2 is the crux of the matter: What is the meaning of a border ?

Benedict Anderssons classic "Imagined Communities" offers one answer: A border circumscribes a shared mental model.

Given the means and costs of communication and transportation at the time nation-states were formed, the tended to be graphically simple and optimized for centroid travel distance.

Today the shared mental models are not about which "unknown soldiers grave" you pay your respect or which flag you salute, because few people from the Post-Yahoo generation does either.

The relevant question therefore is where new borders are being put down, and what they mean.

The Great Firewall of China is a new border, but largely coincident with Chinas geographical borders. Either China is way smarter or hopelessly behind other nation states there. Various National Internet Censorship proposals strike the same bell.

A new border is indisputably being put down by Fox News and their ilk, it circumscribes people who have looked at reality and want none of it, and in return for a bubble, they vote for the Right Lizard.

There is arguably also a new border being put down around FaceBook, but at least superficially it is driven less by ideology than the one around Fox News. (That will change, one way or another, when Zuck declares his plans to become POTUS.)

Google ? Amazon ? Apple ? Microsoft ? Sony ? ... All of them are trying to wall in captive populations with more or less success.

The interesting thing about these borders, is that they are graphically simple onlyin cyberspace, and they doesn't respect geography at all. (The current drive for encryption with pinned certificates, from these big players, is directly aimed at making nation states impotent.)

Some of these economical monsters now have a size where they can cripple any country, not by declaring war, but by leaving: Few governments would survive "Due to recent events, Google will withdraw all service from Elbonia starting at 00Z tonight."

49:

Note that if you have your phone on you, Google can track your location from your phone's GPS and tag photos you take with other cameras based on that (it's possible to turn this off).

2003-2010 would be too early for that data, of course. But if you have location tracking turned on, Google will also happily send you monthly updates with a little interactive map showing everywhere you went every moment of every day.

Apple got caught tracking people in this way even when the feature was turned off, and of course your phone company does this regardless with cell tower logs. I'm sure in many circles not having these logs is now considered suspicious.

50:

Replying to comment from Pigeon (41):

Pretty much, and I've found this problem as well -- most people don't seem to have a clue as to what is going on and it is being made worse by almost everyone deciding that for some reason they "have to live through their mobile phone". And while I do have a mobile phone (but I most certianly do not live through it!) I've managed to change the OS on mine so I can keep down the spying and advertising and tracking down to the lowest amount possible. I dread to think what other people "have" on their phone. Considering the amount of junk I must throw back from the internet with blocking stuff I wonder what truly is on other peoples' phones.

It is depressing though because other people out there have been telling us about all the advertising/spying/tracking for several years now. But almost nobody seemed to take any notice. Instead most people simply seemed to carry on then as now - namely shouting at other people on twitter/facebook and watching stupid cat videos.

People take the piss out of me for assiduously blocking and disabling internet advertising

I too block ads and tracking too. Nobody takes the piss out of me on that one, instead I usually get a blank response. I might as well be talking in double-dutch should I mention it. Maybe this is that old "bread and circuses" thing all over again? It is a worry that seemingly nobody seems to give two-hoots about it.

And it isn't just adverts, spying and tracking. There's another one to add to that list at least in my mind - the "cloud". What a nice harmless, fluffy term "cloud". Remember though it is just a collection of corporate servers. Dosen't sound so harmless and fluffy then does it!

I don't use corporate clouds. I don't "use facebook as my backup system" or "upload everything to google" nor anything else like that. I don't just go by their message "Trust us, we are safe". Uploading to (for example) google's corporate cloud is a danger because although some other company might not be able to see into it, google still can. It isn't safe from google.

I hope I'm not messing up or spamming here but I have a nightmare with regards to the "cloud" with regards to phones (incidentally I'd much rather see the sun again and have the cloud(s) blow away). But for better or for worse, here goes.

Since so many people seem to be so keen on using their phone (rather than say, a PC) or even a tablet and so many still use facebook/twitter my suspicion is the next move will be to not just collect the data, not just collect the metadata but to actually try to own the data.

How do you do that? Well to start off with you just use simple stuff -- make your phone favor uploading that picture you just took in your back garden to the cloud and make the saving of that picture onto that device artifically hard (e.g. you have to put it in a special place, give it a name, etc).

Since most people don't ever change settings and will just upload to corporate clouds "since it's the default and it sort of works (and nobody ever checks in any case)" more and more stuff gets uploaded into these clouds. Throw in some sort of image recognition system (primarily to detect copyrighted works) and do this for long enough and once enough do it at some point someone says "Well....nobody saves their stuff (on their phone) any more, they 'put it in the cloud'. So why can't we change the copyright laws so we can try to own this data?".

And then the copyright laws do get changed (preumably enough $$$ on a politicians' desk will do that plus "oh well everyone does it") -- but still let's give it a name; random idea, the "first landing" law. So if you upload something to a corporate cloud and it isn't already under some sort of copyright aleady the owner of that cloud - the first one that data 'touches' - automatically gets to own it (think photo of your back garden). You don't own it any more since the copyright laws changed.

But it dosen't stop there. The next step then after owning the metadata, collecting the data and then owning the data is to offer to run your OS for you. "Oh you must want an even thinner phone","You'll get better battery life","It'll be even faster","More convenient". Maybe that is the next move - so your phone eventually gets rendered back to nothing more than a data collection device and a VNC terminal.

It'll be just as in those old films from the '60s where people have a "terminal" they rent and have no actual computing power (let alone an OS) at all. From what I can gather that is what happened in the 60s with regards to computing - if you wanted it in your home - you rented your box (terminal) and had to do something called "paying the CPU" (so your 'computing' was done on a distant machine). Your "terminal" was just a dumb I/O box.

And if things go wrong that's where things end up - we get the nightmare of 1960s computing where you have nothing and rent forever. And at a guess I'd expect to see the end of things like terabyte hard drives and large SD/micro SD cards too; "Why do you want those? Nobody uses them any more".....(or at the very least, they're super expensive).

Maybe it is already starting. Note how most phones don't let you change the battery, or they take away useful things (such as a headphone socket) while adding features you don't want. And wasn't there talk a while back of android not supporting microsd any more? (not sure).

I hope that all made sense. And I hope I didn't go too off-topic. Random thought: Whatever happened to topics? (as in the chocolate bar) :-) .

ljones

51:

Robert Prior at 42:

The implicit logic of citing to past atrocities in response to an objection to present conduct is that it's impossible to escape the past. By that logic, all Catholics are inherently and irredemably antisemitic (Torquemada, y'know). In short, that's not a productive line of argument except if someone is arguing for pure-as-the-driven-snow status. We can't necessarily escape our pasts. We have an obligation to try.

At present, the CIA's ideological core and, more generally, political appointees aren't just not trying — they've been actively undermining doing better than the past for quite a long time. But neither that nor Laos demonstrates that we're doomed and so we might as well exterminate all {insert inappropriate and derogatory slang for chosen opponent here}.

52:

I have to say that there's very little in your final wish list that causes me any concern on libertarian grounds. I'm a little cautious about "social solidarity," but mainly because it's often used as a shiny wrapper for statist thought control; the real thing could enable increased voluntary cooperation, which would be a good thing. What you're talking about seems to be orthogonal to the question of economic organization; perhaps it could even enable something closer to genuinely free and competitive markets as opposed to the unhealthy symbiosis of large corporations and state regulators that our economy currently suffers from.

I'd add one thing to your comments on Nietzsche: He also deserves recognition as one of the earliest proponents of cultural relativism, stated poetically in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and more analytically in On the Genealogy of Morals. I don't think cultural relativism is a satisfactory intellectual position, but it was an important one historically and also was a corrective to Western self-praise.

53:

For a comparatively light rendition of your thesis about global mobility, see Bride and Prejudice, which retells Jane Austen's story very closely with air travel between India and London taking the place of coach travel between the shires and London.

54:

The present is shaped by the past. And institutional memory (for better or worse) lasts a long time.

The logic isn't that all Catholics are antisemitic because of the Inquisition, but that the Inquisition as an institution seems to have been until it was abolished.

My gut says that institutions (such as the military or civil service) have proceduralized decision-making and priorities, and that their structures and internal rewards stay more constant than explicit policies do, so the American system will still tend to discount collateral damage. My head says I don't have enough evidence to know one way or the other — what I do have it lots of stories, but the plural of anecdote isn't data etc.

So in the American case, minimizing collateral damage doesn't seem to have been an institutional priority a generation ago. I wouldn't be surprised if it is still not high on the list today*. (Although you have to admit that blowing up a few wedding parties is a lot better than what happened to Laos.)

Tying this back to Charlie's original post, from the outside a large organization appears much like one of those big data systems, gathering information and making decisions using rules that outsiders aren't privy to. Even insiders may not understand them, or be aware of the implications, or be in a position to do anything about them.

And more specifically, putting algorithms into the decision loop for fire-no fire decisions is something I'd be really worried about, seeing as how the human system (that would buy/train these algorithms) keeps repeatedly screwing up in the same way.

*Back during the Gulf War I subscribed to Guardian Weekly. It was interesting reading battle reports from the three papers. The American paper would report no casualties, the British paper would report no American casualties but five allied soldiers killed by friendly fire, and the French paper would report no American, five allied, and 300 Iraqi casualties.

55:

Yeah we are kinda screwed on this one for sure , turned out to be a lot easier to hack the minds of the average Joe then I thought it was going to be. At the time no one in data had any idea it would work this well, that's honestly true

Me and the other geeks have done stuff to answer for here

At this point I don't see any chance of rolling it back, the best hope is to get it all regulated out the ying yang. It's s really good mind control system but it isn't under government control which has to be making the government boys pretty uncomfortable

56:

Re: 'It turns out that facial recognition neural networks can be trained to accurately recognize pain!'

Could be of great social benefit beyond the medical.

Imagine if this could be made into a smartphone app. No more excuses for bullies and/or those who choose to remain oblivious to others' pain or even being the cause of their pain.

Also very useful in stereotypical ambulance chasing scenarios where the 'victim' tries to get or fails to get compensation for extraordinary pain.

Could also work for the neighborhood, workplace and home, i.e., the bullying/sociopathic cop, boss, spouse or parent.

Looking forward to the first time this gets to court.

57:

I'm pleased to learn OGH is working on the next Laundry Files Novel. I hope it goes well. Regarding Facebook and its business practices, you may be interested in this Fortune article, http://fortune.com/2017/09/06/facebooks-ad-metrics-census-pivotal/ which explains how Facebook claimed to have far more users in various demographics in the US, UK and Canada, than actually exist, according to the latest censuses.

58:

Re: '... best hope is to get it all regulated out the ying yang.'

Regulated by whom? My personal preference is an impartial expert third-party. The EU has done far more to protect consumers from prying tech than any other jurisdiction. And they impose stiff fines for breaches. My understanding is that Brits will no longer be covered by these regulations thanks to BrExit and there's no home-grown British equivalent available.

Any harm-reduction legislation if not understood by the user/genpop gets ignored, e.g., seat belts, drunk/high driving, etc. especially if commercial parties against such legislation start saying how inconvenient or costly this legislation would be for the user/consumer. Awareness/education campaigns to show the why and how plus consequences would be needed.

59:

Re: EU and online privacy protection

Below are the proposed new regs slated to come into effect in 2018.

http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/

Excerpt:

'The objective of this new set of rules is to give citizens back control over of their personal data, and to simplify the regulatory environment for business. The data protection reform is a key enabler of the Digital Single Market which the Commission has prioritised. The reform will allow European citizens and businesses to fully benefit from the digital economy.'

And here's the mid-term review of its Digital Single Market strategy announcement:

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-1232_en.htm

Being a non-techie, I've no idea where this legislation needs strengthening. Do expect quite a bit of push-pull between consumer/genpop vs. corporate rights although so far the EU has sided with consumers/genpop.

This body allows public input and publishes results of consultations.

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/consultations

60:

Jaws@51: The implicit logic of citing to past atrocities in response to an objection to present conduct is that it's impossible to escape the past.

Knowledge of past atrocities should be a reason to stop committing atrocities, rather than saying "that's history" and continuing to commit new ones.

In Australia we have the history wars, between the black armband and white blindfold views of Australia's past. Loosely speaking, the black armband view is that current Australians are affected by what has happened in the past, both good and bad. Some are affected more than others. The white blindfold, on the other hand, says "that's history, forget it/get over it" whenever someone complains about past atrocities. That includes history that's very much living memory for today's teenagers.

John Howard notoriously refused in 1999 to apologise for his actions as recently as five years previously, then went on to stage "The Intervention" in 2007, when he sent the army in to enforce new laws created to destroy Aboriginal communities. "History" continues to happen.

Right now in NSW we making another stolen generation - black kids taken from their families by force and traumatised by the state. The claimed reason is that even the acknowledged problems with state care are better than what's happening in the Aboriginal communities... claims which can't be measured until later, against harm that is definitely being done now. It would be more humane, as well as a lot cheaper, to help those communities become better places to raise children. But that would mean empowering those communities to make their own decisions, and stopping the criminalisation of blackness. Neither are acceptable to either major political party in Australia, or to the overwhelming majority of voters (viz, people keep voting for politicians who promise to keep doing this).

61:

The above is a response to the "the worst tyrant is one who does it for your own good" as much as the OP fears of tyranny.

On the OP note, Australia is also bringing in a "cashless welfare card".

That card is explicitly designed to track its users and allow their spending to be linked to everything else the government knows about the target. It was also originally only used on blacks, but after an initial outcry was expanded very slightly to include a few poor whites. To describe it as controversial would be to massively understate the reaction of those condemned to it, and those concerned for human rights or privacy etc.

That tracking is necessary because people in remote communities can't easily be tracked by cellphones (or at least, not with good spatial resolution) and most of them decline to give the data willingly (via a loyalty card or similar). Which shows how it's easy for the government to make it difficult or impossible to avoid tracking, even in data-poor remote areas. Eliminating cash altogether is the next obvious step...

62:

"Imagine if this could be made into a smartphone app. No more excuses for bullies and/or those who choose to remain oblivious to others' pain or even being the cause of their pain."

Wut?

"You are hurting me, look, my phone says so" ???

Do "bullies and..." even want excuses anyway?

No, it sounds to me very much like one of those technologies which are very useful inside a hospital and very dangerous outside one. With the additional problem that it is utterly impossible to keep it there.

63:

"Apple got caught tracking people in this way even when the feature was turned off"

I had a need to get at something which while it was provided over HTTP there was no means provided to actually point a browser at it, so I installed Android on an emulator and ran it through a decrypting proxy so I could sniff the HTTP traffic and remedy the deficiency.

As soon as it has booted enough to establish a network connection, it tells Google where you are. It also sends frequent messages about lots of other things you do. Turning all the privacy settings up to max stops some of these but by no means all; the bootup message is one of the ones that it does not stop.

The Amazon app that I then installed to actually get whatever it was I was after was even worse, sending stuff all the time; also it was unaffected by any of the privacy settings.

Apple must have been doing something incredibly unsubtle to "get caught" if you can get away with being that blatant. And who's to say they're not still doing it but in a (slightly) more subtle manner?

(I don't have a phone. Originally this was simply because anything without a full size screen and keyboard is junk as far as I'm concerned, but since the above experiment, there is the even weightier discouragement of knowing it would mean having to more or less vet the entire OS source code myself and reverse-engineer every piece of third party software in order to make sure there isn't anything that will misbehave.)

64:

Apart from the bits about copyright law (on whose likelihood I am entirely unequipped to comment), nearly all of that gives me a strange feeling that you are posting from an alternate universe where things haven't got that far yet...

65:

So far,I have had four ranting (with me doing the ranting) phone calls with aresholes trying to "persuade" me to get a externally controlled spyware/hardware "Smart meter" installed. I usually end with remarks about distant sex activities, becuause I just lose my cool entirely with this shit. Not just repair of electronic devives, either ... I had to go through hoops to get maintenance data on a small (Honda) motor-mower for Ghu's sake (!) .. "Oh you'r not a "properly qulified mechanic, you might hurt yourself" - GRRR .. "I'm an Engineering MSc & I maintain my own Land-Rover & your problem was?"

See also piece on CS Lewis quote - of course, what Lewis failed to spot, as a good christian, was that the earnest, smug do-gooders in charge of a "looking after you" dictatorships were most likely to be ... religious believers. [ Even whilst murdering & torturing people, both J Calvin & the Holy Office & D'Esh believed they were "doing good" ]

66:

most phones don't let you change the battery Really? Is this true, or only for [ SPIT ] "Apple"?

67:

Yes You can not apologise for other people's actions, especially if they are dead, but you can & should apologose for your own actions. Which makes J Howard an even bigger shit than I already thought.

68:

Just because everyone does it sometimes, I'm going to comment without reading more than 25% of the post or any of the comments. Snowmobile is a full blown commercial realisation of the statement: Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.

69:

>> most phones don't let you change the battery > Really?

They generally don't have removable back covers any more. You can change the battery, but you need to pry open glued-together bits of the case to get at it, which will void your warranty.

It's also quite difficult to source batteries and other components like chargers these days that aren't junk-quality counterfeits complete with fake manufacturer marks on them -- so you run the risk of your phone catching fire and so forth if you use parts sourced from online stores.

70:

It's unfortunately the case that essentially every computer component these days has layer upon layer of un-auditable firmware, microcontrollers, and the like. Usually these devices won't even accept software updates from the user any more (they're locked with the manufacturer's private key) and they do things like run you wireless radio.

For a particularly egregious example, see the Intel AMT fiasco that was revealed somewhat recently... But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The Broadcom wifi chip security flaws Google found (in their devices and many others, including Apple) are more telling.

You basically can't get a computer to boot these days, and certainly not talk over a network, without exposing yourself to any number of privacy and security catastrophes in the making. Being able to audit this stuff? Impossible.

71:

When did this happen? I'm using an approx 3-year old mid/low range Samsung & it opens up ... surely you must be able to get in to be able to change the SIM card, if nothing else?

72:

David Brin saw much of this coming.

In hindsight, his 1998 book "The Transparent Society" is highly prophetic.

In particular the notion that privacy, as we have known it, is a transient social attribute.

From 6000 to 600 years ago 99% of humans spent their entire life in a very small community where everyone knew pretty much everything about everyone else. Commonly sleeping 6 to a bed, or 12 to a room dossed down where it was warm, with people who've known you and your family all your life. Privacy existed - for some, and in some ways. But privacy as we have know it hardly existed for the vast majority of people. And it seems likely that privacy as we have known it will come to an end.

Nor is this all bad. "Black Lives Matter" is a thing because of omnipresent cellphone cameras raising the issue (over and over) in a way that's can't be written off as "the cop's word against the word of some random guy who looks shifty". Police body-cams really are becoming a thing. And having some rapist bastard caught by the police because they find him on camera in downtown London does not make me sad.

But like it or not, it's coming.

What Brin had not expected, among the masses of data that will invade our privacy, was the masses of misinformation. Sock puppets, astro-turf organisations, identity theft, etc.

73:

Set against a planeload of bombs every eight minutes for nine years (and the classifying both bombing tapes and decommissioning information for over a generation afterwards), a few weddings blown up is lost in the noise.

Laos: population in 1970: 2.96 million. Density today is only 26 people per km^2; land area is 238,000 km^2, mostly thickly forested mountains (bear in mind a good chunk of the population live in the capital city, Vientiane).

Pakistan: population today 207 million, 244 people/km^2, around 880,000km^2 total.

Also note that the bombing in Laos basically consisted of dumping B-52 loads of free fall bombs onto mountainsides concealed by trees with poor accuracy and poor targeting information, while the drone strikes in the Tribal Provinces use precision-guided weapons against actual visible people.

Upshot: most of the bombs dropped on Laos were wasted, and the pool of people available to be pissed off at the USA for murdering their relatives was two orders of magnitude smaller.

We do know that Operation Menu's effects on neighbouring Cambodia were one of the factors in the rise of the Khmer Rouge.

So, no blowback there, eh?

74:

Well, the SIM card behind the battery is just a design decision. I've had multiple phones where there is just a SIM card slot on the side of the phone, no need to open up the whole phone just to change a card.

75:

the important correlation with the drop in crime may not be with lead, but with zombification by iphone,

Wrong.

Tetraethyl lead was phased out of gasoline in the USA gradually, between 1973 and 1991. The drop in violent crime began in the mid-to-late 1980s and tracked the curve quite accurately.

Smartphones: while my sister first acquired a Nokia Communicator around 2000, and I got onto Palm Treos in 2003, the iphone didn't come along until 2007, at which point smartphones accounted for way less than 1% of the mobile phone user base. "Smartphone zombies" are almost entirely a phenomenon of the current decade.

76:

... anyway, to get a bit back on topic, the current situation is one where even organizing a peaceful resistance against a fascist regime is going to be essentially impossible. You can't meaningfully operate a resistance when every single interaction between people is easily tracked, bugged, and analyzed, while your opponents in official positions have the luxury of operating in secrecy.

I mean, consider some of the more basic implications: someone like Pigeon or Greg who avoids using mobile phones is quickly becoming the sort of anachronistic gadfly that automatically attracts suspicion. But there's no reasonable way to use phones and be secure. About the best you could do is turn them off (which may or may not work: the power button is controlled by firmware, which the secret police can hack).

You could, of course, leave your phone at home. That just makes you more suspicious, though -- and public surveillance will still track you. But this is missing the point: having easy and effective communications is critical to any sort of political or social organization, and as soon as you have to give up communications, you're done.

This is the pattern, now: state and fascist power is afforded absolute secrecy, while designated enemies or just political opponents are subject to invasive and biased surveillance and paranoid invasion of their communications.

This has been brewing for years. The Clinton/DNC email hacking is an obvious example, but also look at the way email records have been used to hound climate scientists, how easy it is to fabricate scandals about Planned Parenthood health clinics, and so forth. It's going to get much, much worse.

77:

surely you must be able to get in to be able to change the SIM card, if nothing else?

The sim card slides in via a little tray that pops out of the side of the phone using a special tool resembling an extra-thin paperclip.

This started happening on higher-end phones a number of years ago, as it's been standard on Apple phones (and laptops now!). The basic reason is that gluing the phone together lets you use more of the battery and component surfaces as structural support, so the phone can be thinner/lighter. It would also be difficult to waterproof the back cover.

This is somewhat less of an issue than you'd think, since you can still have the battery swapped at a shop. For people who need longer life, the standard is just to carry an portable power bank now.

78:

Apple must have been doing something incredibly unsubtle to "get caught" if you can get away with being that blatant. And who's to say they're not still doing it but in a (slightly) more subtle manner?

The original iPhone didn't have GPS. To work out where you were and show you a map, it therefore scanned the local wifi networks and cellphone towers, established their signal strength, and triangulated on your location. Obviously this only works if you have accurate maps of both geography and wifi hotspots — Apple spent a lot of money building these with their version of the Google Street View camera cars (you may have spotted them). Because wifi hotspots pop up and go down and change, they try and keep their database up to date by having phones report the networks they can see.

This is in addition to GPS (which iPhones now support) because GPS is kinda crap in many locations; the phone is powerful enough to merge multiple location mechanisms. But it means iPhones got a rep for reporting all sorts of wifi connection data to the mothership that people didn't expect them to be reporting, and Apple got their knuckles rapped.

As a current iOS user who has also had a poke a recent (1yo) Android versions, I have to say that iOS shows a lot more respect for customer privacy preferences — although they could do better. After all, Google pushes Android because it's a tool to sell advertising; Apple pushes iOS mostly because it's a tool to sell expensive, shiny hardware (although I'm worried by the extent to which their cloud businesses are undermining this). As a hardware vendor they could be reasonably trusted to be on the repeat-customer's side in any argument because they wanted to sell more hardware. But as they move more towards services like iCloud and Apple Music, and provide their own advertising platform, the boundary line is blurring ...

79:

An interesting theme of Brin's book on privacy back in 1998 was how US privacy laws (and debates) were about stopping the govt from collecting an sharing information about you inappropriately.

In the rest of the world, privacy laws were also about stopping corporations and other private actors from doing the same.

US Libertarians push a very limited idea of "privacy" - analogous to the limited American view of what right one has to "Free Speech" (as demonstrated upon Colin Kaepernick).

It will be interesting to see where Brexit goes on such privacy issues. Will Britain side with the EU's legal assault on the (largely US based) tech companies?

80:

Is this true, or only for [ SPIT ] "Apple"?

Calm down, Greg. Have you noticed the USB-connected rechargable batteries all the shops are selling? Sealed phones and external booster batteries are probably safer than letting J. Random Idiot try and hack a counterfeit LiION cell into their phone — or at least less likely to set the rest of us on fire.

(I have a collection of such batteries ranging from a "fat back" for my iPhone — a case that doubles as an emergency top-up charge — up to a small brick that has jump leads and can turn over a diesel engine, because that's what it's for, and has USB outlets as an afterthought (it can probably run an iPad for a week).)

81:

US Libertarians push a very limited idea of "privacy" - analogous to the limited American view of what right one has to "Free Speech" (as demonstrated upon Colin Kaepernick).

Libertarians also seem to worship "the market". I think that's wrong: the correct priority should be "human well-being", and many market-optimal activities are actually inimical to that (look at the advertising industry practice of inducing psychological insecurity to push products, for example).

82:

A colleague from Pakistan told me that in large parts of the country you can always hear a drone.

While your colleague might believe that, I strongly suspect that it's an exaggeration. Firstly, the point of having a drone around is to have it unobtrusive, so that it doesn't get noticed - if you don't care about overt observation, you use an aerostat (much cheaper) or an observation tower. Secondly, why is engine noise "a drone" and not a cheap motorcycle, or an electrical generator?

I wonder what the effects of growing up knowing that someone on the other side of the world might blow you up might be?

BTDT - for a while, our school had bomb drills as well as fire drills; and my father had a personal protection weapon (Northern Ireland). Much less than you would suspect - certainly IMHO no more than living in a US neighbourhood where armed robbery is a possibility.

83:

User-replaceable batteries are a design hangover from the days when devices had much higher power consumption and disposable batteries needed to be replaced frequently. Remote controls for TVs/DVD players etc still have that annoying little flap of plastic with the fiddly latch where you have to insert the two AAA batteries that came in the pack with the remote. In my experience one then never changes them for the entire life of the gadget they control (4 or 5 years). The only case for replaceable rechargeable batteries in devices like phones and tablets is (a) to immediately swap a flat battery for a charged one (b) to replace a battery that is worn out from too many charge/discharge cycles. Case (a) is unworkable because even in the phones and tablets that do have easily swapped batteries the batteries are all proprietary in shape and charging requirements and would need a special proprietary charger which doesn't even exist as an item you can buy. The only type of gadget such a charger makes sense for is cameras which do indeed come with external chargers to fit the proprietary battery packs. Which cost £50 each or more. Case (b) doesn't make any sense either because the battery has a useful life of years so the battery will probably be replaced at most once in the life of the device. Making a clumsy opening with losable bits that makes the device larger and heavier and leakier for something that will be required at most once is just dumb. Most people expect to take a watch to a shop for a new battery for the same reasons.

84:

t'll be just as in those old films from the '60s where people have a "terminal" they rent and have no actual computing power (let alone an OS) at all. From what I can gather that is what happened in the 60s with regards to computing

It's down to the comparative costs and speeds of communication links alongside remote processing power, memory, and storage; compared to local processing power, memory, and storage.

If your broadband link has insanely low latency and high bandwidth, and a salesman can offer you a strong guarantee of remote processing power and storage, then it might be more attractive than an expensive and fast-depreciating / quickly-out-of-date local solution.

If your broadband link is patchy or low-bandwidth, and processors / memory / storage is cheap, then a local solution makes sense.

The computer I used in my first job after graduation (late 1980s) was the half-way house of a local terminal into a VAX cluster down the corridor... Then we got some Sun SPARCstations, and then some SPARCStation ELCs (effectively, a terminal with nice graphics).

85:

Channeling my inner 10-year-old.

"Squirrel shit!"

86:

...and not being on the receiving end of violent repression. Because violence breeds more violence — who knew?

Well, the British Army learned the hard way in the early 1970s, and spent twenty years struggling with the aftermath. There may even have been some good books written on the subject.

Travelling forwards, the US Army realised it (at the top levels, certainly) which led to the whole "courageous restraint" thing. The film "Eye in the Sky" tried to explore some of the issues.

So; well-known and well-understood by militaries - but unfortunately sometimes forgotten, inadequately stressed during pre-deployment training. In some cases, "what pre-deployment training".

87:

There's also the possibility that Uncle Abdul isn't a terrorist; but his neighbour wants to settle a score / wants to gain personal advantage - and has made accusations of terrorism as a means to an end.

It's still really dumb to nuke the entire wedding party if what you're really trying to do is convince Uncle Abdul to lay off the IEDs. (Less bad: you send a sniper team after Uncle Abdul and nobody else.

Oh, agreed. Less bad it may be, but it still means that you need to get two people within 3-500m of Uncle Abdul (and a protection party within 1000m), undetected, with a line of sight into his house / front door / back garden, for long enough to positively identify him; get him to stand still for five seconds or so; and to extract them safely afterwards.

This may well be impossible...

Even less bad: you mail him a bullet, a photograph of his bedroom window, and a pointed hint — the racehorse's head at the end of the bed.)

Assuming that there's a working postal service (although an Amazon-style drone could drop it off, I suppose).

Some people don't react well to threats; so without knowing Abdul, it's hard to tell whether it will work, or whether he just puts more effort into avoiding the likelihood of said sniper team (screens around the house, varying clothes, shielding faces on entry/exit, clearing likely firing points on a daily basis, placing obstacles on probable approach routes).

88:

Have you noticed the USB-connected rechargable batteries all the shops are selling? Well, I've noticed people I know using them ... And I've gone "wtf?" since I doubt I'd be long-enough away from a source of mains power long-enough to need such a thing - I always carry my plug-in charger/transformer when away from home anyway, so why do I need extra shit ... I didn't realise that was a deiberate attempt to get you to be forced to buy more stuff .... Or am I coming at this from the wrong end?

WTG @ 83 I replace my own watch batteries, too! And car battery, but that's just a little more massive (!)

89:

A lot of these sorts of statistics regarding human sperm counts are, to my mind as a biological scientist, of somewhat dubious nature.

If we start with what we do know of vertebrate sexual behaviour and work over to humans slowly, then you'll see what I mean. All land vertebrates with the exception of a very few lizards capable of parthenogenesis have to mate to breed, and this always consists of a male putting sperm inside the female in some manner. Most birds use a very simple "Line up the holes and squirt" system, most other animals use a penis of some description.

At this point, there are two conflicting sets of interest going on. The female usually only needs to mate a few times, so wants the best possible genes from a mating. The male has much less expensive mating requirements as he produces only sperm as an investment, and thus wants to mate as much as possible, and to prevent other males' sperm from fertilising the female. It is how the latter is achieved that varies so much.

Gorillas do this by mate guarding. There's only one fertile male per troop, so he has no competition and thus is equipped with the bare minimum needed to do the job. "Hung like a gorilla" is a killing insult in Central Africa where everyone knows how small a gorilla's penis and testes are (and a compliment everywhere else in the world).

Chimps indulge in both hierarchies and in sperm competition; their testes are huge compared compared to a gorilla's, and big compared to human testes; chimps compete by producing huge numbers of sperm to try to overwhelm the competition.

Now, the problem here comes when you start talking about how human sperm competition works. We know it happens, because our testes are about 2.5 times the minimum size necessary, and it is also surmised that something else is going on since people mate far more often than they need to do.

The problem is that the only paper on the subject had problems recruiting and keeping volunteers in the study, so all the conclusions largely come from just one pair of people and thus aren't really all that statistically valid. Hence, there is an assumption that humans have quite a bit of spare capacity in the sperm production department, but we don't quite know how much, nor what the competition mechanisms actually are.

90:

Yes, you're coming from the wrong end.

The bigger total battery capacity buys you not having to think much about when to charge: if you're on the move a lot, having to find a socket on arrival and unplug when you leave can be a lot of overhead compared to knowing you've got enough battery in total in your pocket and can fully charge it overnight. Potentially, that you aren't going to lose access (and to be clear about this: I've been in enough safety-critical situations where a smartphone was the best comms access available) just because you forgot to charge overnight.

I listen to music a lot when I travel, which needs to come from the phone because so do the notification sounds. I noticed the battery life improvement when the radio hardware got a die shrink, and the "idle" improvements as screen size and thus battery size went up.

My backup battery collection's smaller than Charlie's and sees less use now my current phone has a 4.6" screen (small by current standards) and a 3Ah battery. But if I'm going to be far away enough from home for a while, I pack both the 3Ah and 9Ah backups simply because shit happens.

91:

It's possible with a modicum of conscious effort or plain practice to tell whether a sound's coming from approximately level or significantly above you.

And the level of obtrusiveness a drone's measured against is frequently that of a significant number of boots on the ground. You may well not want a drone (armed or not) to be unnoticed: letting the population know you've got hellfires on overwatch may well be the point of the exercise, it leaves a far more lasting impression than "shock and awe". And it's not like the US are above causing immense psychological damage to entire countries.

It's important to remember drones are cheaper to run than most of the alternatives. The aerostat's not as flexible, and if people take to shooting them down you're going to have to escalate to drones anyway.

Now if only we could get them to consider snipers as the right comparator for hitting only the right targets...

92:

I didn't realise that was a deiberate attempt to get you to be forced to buy more stuff .... Or am I coming at this from the wrong end?

Wrong end.

Modern smartphones are general purpose computers of some considerable power, with nice bright screens. Their batteries are capacious enough that the phone can last for 3-7 days on standby (screen dark, listening for phone calls) on a 3G or LTE network that is optimized for high bandwidth over low power consumption. (If you can find a modern 2G/GSM phone these days, some of them are explicitly designed as emergency glove-box devices with a 6 month standby time.)

The problem is that the apps folks run on them are a wee bit addictive, by design — think Facebook or Twitter and their modern successors. And if you try to run a powerful computer for 6-8 hours on battery while using wireless data as well, the battery will run down. Surprise!

The manufacturers did away with swappable batteries for reasons described up-thread; they sacrificed a little flexibility for thin'n'light design, robustness, and waterproofing (not a minor concern when people use their phones out in the rain).

So then the aftermarket evolved, to sell batteries with some simple charger circuitry. Aided by USB taking off as a low power/low current DC power standard for all sorts of devices (pocket drones, fans, novelty toys). The phone manufacturers seldom sell such gizmos — it's an after-market thing — but they're all over the place.

About the ultimate whacky inversion of the norm is my travel shaver. It's designed to run on a pair of AA cells, but I got bored with changing them and fixed it permanently. The new solution is a pair of USB-rechargable AA cells; if they run down I can just plug them into my regular phone/tablet power adapter or a booster battery instead of having to go shopping for alkaline batteries. So we've gone from using boxes full of AA cells to charge USB devices like PDAs, to using USB to charge AA cells, in about ten years.

93:

Regrettably becoming more and more true for Androids as well. You can still find some with removable batteries, but they are a fading minority of devices.

94:

Reply to : Pidgeon (64)

Apart from the bits about copyright law (on whose likelihood I am entirely unequipped to comment), nearly all of that gives me a strange feeling that you are posting from an alternate universe where things haven't got that far yet...

Nope not quite though I do sometimes wonder if we have all entered into some sort of strange universe where this has all started. Though hopefully there is still a chance to make a change and not go in this direction. Though with every day that passes it seems that chance is getting further and further away....

Random thought: Isn't it worrying that people almost seemingly want to rent these days as opposed to own? IHMO if that was how our general computing ended up that would be a very bad thing indeed. Might possibly be able to argue as an example that music is going down that route, i.e. along the lines of renting -- look at how many people rent their music (via streaming; you can pay twice btw -- once to the music service, then again to your ISP) rather than own some sort of copy even if it is just a ".mp3"? Is that the future? Eternal pay and/or no copy of your own?

It's intresting -- when I first started using computers back in the 80s it was the exception rather than the rule that you'd either have a computer (or something would have one in). That's almost completely reversed and in the future it'll be the exception that something won't have a computer in; the rule being there is a computer in a device. What a time to live through.

ljones

95:

Could be worse: were I in that position I'd be charging the shaver from my phone/tablet via USB OTG!

96:

Re: ' "You are hurting me, look, my phone says so" ??? .... Do "bullies and..." even want excuses anyway?'

Put yourself in the position of someone not able to defend or even speak for themselves ... yes, such devices/apps could help a lot.

And, please do not add insult (i.e., emotional injury) to (physical) injury by denying that there are folk like this who need help. These folk are not stupid, subhuman or to be pitied - they're in a bad place and could use some of the breaks that so far only the 'winners' have been able to access. If it comes in the form of tech, so be it.

Having incontrovertible evidence that is being stored where it cannot be altered would help identify and maybe even get rid of the bullies who are in positions to victimize and not be found out at this time. (Bullies/sociopaths often seek out such positions, but too few orgs bother to pre-screen for this.)

So,yes - I think this can work to humanity's benefit. And yes, any device/tech can be used against folk. It's always been about choice.

97:

It's interesting that the Russians think of non-violent action as "combat," which should be a heads-up for everyone.

Then again, about a century ago they had a lot of experience with running with a well-funded, but functionally obsolete, military. It didn't end well for the Tsars (I'm having fun reading China Mieville's October right now, thanks to whoever recommended it). Among others. Presumably they're hoping to share that wonderful experience with the rest of the world.

Looking at this, I wonder when people will simply break the internet to stop the majority of such attacks. After all, so much of what we use the internet for is waste. If breaking it seems more positive than negative, then why not?

Of course, I've thought this about the petroleum industry for decades, and they're still in power. That's probably the real problem, that it empowers a few, well-placed people at the expense of the many. What we seem to be getting into is a more polarized space where we have people rabidly defending the existing system, whether or not they benefit from it (I think they were called things like Black Shirts and Pharaohs back in 1917 Russia), and then there's the people getting ground down by the system who just want to break it to get some relief (the workers and enlisted soldiers, for example). I wonder if history will repeat itself, and if so, who the next generation of Stalins and Maos are? They're probably out there even now.

98:

Re: '... rent ... as opposed to own'

My understanding is that TVs (and many 'white goods') were almost always rented in the UK, so Brits may have a better understanding of the pros and cons.*

I prefer to own but when smartphones start hitting the $1,000 mark, renting starts looking good.

  • At the same time, back then, most pre-Thatcher era Brits rented their homes, so maybe the idea of renting their furnishings made more sense. My understanding is that once financing became easier to access in the UK, there was a huge home-buying spree. Not sure, but maybe these things are connected: the younger population cannot afford to buy homes therefore becomes accustomed to the idea of having to rent major goods/services for the rest of their lives. Because younger folk are more likely to want to upgrade their comms/entertainment devices, they end up driving the market which eventually decides that this is the way things should work for everyone - renting not buying.
99:

Re: 'The problem is that the only paper on the subject had problems recruiting and keeping volunteers in the study, so all the conclusions largely come from just one pair of people and thus aren't really all that statistically valid.'

Thanks for this! Wasn't aware of the study issues, and hope that someone will attempt to replicate the study and maybe even expand it to look at how sperm count/quality varies with stress levels and/or use of various substances. Freshmen are the study subjects of choice for so much soc-psych research, maybe it's time they were offered a fun study.

100:

At least one manufacturer makes a vibrator designed specifically to be recharged from a USB.

101:

I don't disagree - I'm challenging the assertions "large parts of a (large) country" and "always hear a drone". It sounds to me like hyperbole.

Would this be silent countryside, or near villages (with engines, generators, etc)? Hearing a small engine at 15,000 feet or higher (the armed ones are medium-altitude vehicles), over wind noise, at a range of several kilometres? Whose drones would these be - kids' toys, professional photographers, or is the USAF / CIA operating in strength within Pakistani borders? Or have the Pakistan Armed Forces developed a strong UAV force?

I mean, I've told visitors to Scotland about how free-range or wild Haggis tastes better than battery-farmed Haggis...

102:

Take "always" in its milder hyperbolic form (compare and contrast with "everyday") and normalise for population density so you're talking about people rather than landmass covered: does it still seem that implausible?

I'd be entirely unsurprised if major cities get audibly buzzed by a US drone on a several-times-weekly basis, for example - even if it's generally recon rather than anything armed.

103:

In Iraq there's also depleted Uranium and other wonderful things.

Anyhow, there's a new Horseman in town: micro-plastics in water and salts (Guardian has been running pieces on it, but here's two other sources)

The presence of microplastics in commercial salts from different countries Scientific Reports, 6th April, 2017 - full text, no PDF

Invisibles: The plastic inside us Orb Media, large media site, lots going on, pictures, video etc - not phone friendly

94% Of US Tap Water Has Micro Plastic Fibers In It, Study Finds (Oh, & That Sea Salt, Beer, Flour, & Honey That You Buy … It Does As Well) Clean Technica 10th Sept 2017 - write up and site based on finding solutions.

A positive 21st Century is going to have to be predicated on a massive scale detox of the H.S.S biome / genome (you know, without the eugenics / genocide) if you want to retain a breeding population.

~

Drones?

PSYOP 101. (Used to be F15s etc). You fly X missions covert and Y mission loud n proud - the entire point is making sure the local populace know that even if you can't see them, they're always present. Israel pioneered the use of drones (instead of more expensive jets) in Lebanon back a few years. If it's not been memory holed' you can find CNN footage etc discussing the tactic used constantly at night, for instance.

The Drone Survival Guide Ruben Pater has a really nice graphic of the currently known ones.

The large stuff you can't see with the naked eye (too high), but others are used to 'buzz' the population.

~

On topic, no-where near comprehensive enough. DAS / Ring of Steel (London, NY, Chicago) etc. NY spent ~$400 mil on their new system, each major Bank gets a desk on the premises[1].

Ring of Steel MAS Context 22 - very nice blog.

See you after 300.

A picture of a Cat in a Forest with Mushrooms Imgur, safe.

[1] Now there's a link that got memory holed. Or did it?

104:

Oh, and:

Parliamentary vote on the EU withdrawal bill, second reading: AYES: 326 NOES: 290

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill 2017-19 UK Gov, Parliament UK, 11 Sept 2017

UK Politicians have chosen to shackle their minds, ban all psychedelics and kill off their future for some paltry sums of hard cash and The Children of Men future of their limited minds.

Burn After Reading ending YT: film 2:53.

(And after we saved $100 bil on the last little finesse. Rude.).

105:

Nope, still don't see it. A dumb or unbelieving bully would take the piss out of the concept and/or grab the phone and stamp on it, while a smart one would use it as a feedback mechanism to help them bully more effectively. Your suggestion only works if the person inflicting the pain genuinely doesn't want to and is somehow unaware that they are, but you have framed it as somehow efficacious against people who you explicitly state to have the opposite attitude.

106:

The reason people used to rent TVs a lot in the UK is quite simply that they were flaming bloody expensive. A colour TV was an extravagance even 10 years after colour broadcasts started. For a lot of people renting was the only way they could get to have a TV at all.

In earlier times, it was common to rent radios for the same reason. What changed there was the development of the transistor causing the prices of radios to hit the deck. With TVs, it was more a case of prices staying about the same but people gradually coming to have more money coming in; same result, but different cause. (Valve TVs remained common long after valve radios because of the difference between an OC71 and a BU208, and even after transistorisation it remained the heavyweight components that mainly determined the cost.)

The sort of renting we see these days is by contrast of things that people can easily buy for themselves - or indeed in many cases get for free - but for some bizarre reason don't, and instead pay repeatedly. The factors behind this are many, complex, tend to make my blood boil at the sheer depths of multi-layered stupidity involved, and probably fall outside the scope of this discussion.

It has been true all along that people don't rent major things by preference, but if the thing is major enough they may not have the option. TVs used to fall into that category, but they don't any more. Houses never haven't; only the very rich have ever been able to avoid having to pay a hideous sum at regular intervals on pain of bridge. The difference is that some people have been able to call it "mortgage" and hope that they may one day be able to stop paying it if they don't die first. Since the 80s successive governments of either colour have thought it a good thing to pursue policies which have made it more and more difficult to choose that option, and which have made the hideousness of the sums - for either option - increase to the positively vampiric.

What people rent these days is small things for which the regular charge is comparatively trivial. They seem to have become accustomed to the idea of allowing someone to dip a hand in their bank account and pull out a few quid when they feel like it, in exchange for not having to realise that they could do whatever it is for nothing. They also seem to have become accustomed to having enough money that the fact that enough instances of a few quid still add up to a fair chunk, so they don't have to worry about the hand-dipping failing or what happens if it does. (At least, until the fair chunk gets to a size where it does happen.)

If you had suggested to someone who was renting a 405-line TV that they should sign a document allowing you to dip into their bank account whenever you felt like it, in return for (searches for some analogy to compensate for the time lapse) always having a different copy of The Sun in their pocket, their response would have been a brief, scornful and emphatic negative. It is that attitude which has changed. It is, I suppose, understandable that the generation which has grown up with the changed attitude should consider it normal, but it is far less understandable that they should have learnt it from the changed attitudes of people who could remember having to rent a TV.

107:

Coming in a bit late...

For the Russians' use of cyber as asymmetric warfare, I have found commentary by someone called "The Grugq" to be insightful, since that writer seems to be a well-informed security person.

I don't want to put in multiple links in my first post, so I'll just give the main site: https://medium.com/@thegrugq ...and entry titles.

In "American Snoper: The Truth Will Not Set You Free", a scary assessment, he argues that "troll armies work" and "fact checking doesn't work." (Also see: "How to Fight Cyberwars and Lose.")

On the other hand, in "What to Expect When You're Expecting Bears," he argues that the blatantness of the Russian success in the American election was a Pyrric victory, since their methods are now exposed and well known and "shadow wars should stay in the dark." They clearly failed in the French election, although for some reasons peculiar to French politics.

Oh, and on the subject of tracing locations through online photographs, there's a "Fascinating Glimpse into Police Investigation" of a child pornography case, where first a hotel location, then a perpetrator, was traced down using nothing but background clues in various photos. (Though the tracing was done by motivated humans, not automatically by online machine learning.)

Anyway, "the grugq" has a lot of insights on these trends, at least current ones if not future.

108:

Talking of snooping.

Yesterday, I got a letter from the wonderful privatised electricity "provider" ( They aren't of course, but never mind ) that TODAY they were coming to install a "smart meter" in my house. Now, I've told these wankers, more than once, that I don't want one, so .... Assuming I'm in when they show up, I will be interested to see what levels of downright lying & bullying they get up to, to try to get entry to my premises & "persuade" me that I "must" have a smart-meter. All of which will be wall-to-wall cow-droppings of course. I'll keep you informed.

109:

Errrr... yes. Consider he total number of Predator and Reaper drones. Acknowledge that at any given point in time, that most will not be flying; and most of the remainder will be in Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria.

Consider that in order to do its job of surveillance (which is not area surveillance, but surveillance of specific targets of interest) it is generally best to be covert, sitting at medium altitude and out of sight / out of hearing; and that in order to do any job of killing, it is imperative to be out of sight / out of hearing (to avoid giving warning).

Generally, a "show of force" task involves a Tornado jet or similar, at low altitude, at high speed, to create the requisite "WTF was that?" effect - if you've lived underneath low-flying training areas, you'll know what I mean. Buzzy little prop job just doesn't cut it.

And you've just suggested that sufficient should be tasked with overflying a city in a sovereign nation, at a volume that can be heard over the nearest car (I.e. extremely low altitude)? A nation that scrambled jets to intercept the raid on Bin Laden's compound?

Sorry, it fails the credibility test. I call hyperbole, propaganda, or just "wind up the gullible with tales of the CIA's awfulness" (no need, there's enough credible stuff out there).

110:

Another reason for renting a colour TV set back then was that they broke down quite regularly too, not suprising given they used lots of thermionic valves, more than a B/W set due to the need to carry out some quite sophisticated signal processing to produce the RGB signals for the large complex colour CRT. It didn't help that they spent a lot of their time on, usually all evening even as background noise during dinner. Renting meant it was the renter's job to fix them when they did go wrong, in the same way that someone hiring a car today doesn't pay for repairs or a tow for a breakdown.

Modern electronics are a LOT more reliable than TV sets and the like of fifty years ago.

111:

Unfortunately, most of the studies on human sexuality tend to be more on the lines of "Just so" stories rather than proper trials as such. My training in science was a PhD on sex pheromones in a plant parasitic nematode, and as such I could increase my total body of data fairly easily. Nobody save the absolute screaming outer edge of the animal rights fringe gives a hoot about micro-organisms so breeding up truly vast numbers of nematodes does not involve going crawling to the Ethics Committee, and experiments can therefore involve dozens of male worms and goodly numbers of replicates.

Experiments involving humans, on the other hand, need ethics approval and then you have the problem that the experimental subjects are trying to second-guess the experimenter, and you have trouble recruiting large numbers of subjects, and then there's the undoubted fact that anyone participating in a sex-related scientific experiment is always going to be a bit, well, strange.

Which leads to great galloping experimental bias.

We can postulate that a man on a one night stand ought to give it his best shot with sperm, whereas someone in a steady and trusted relationship might be more sparing with sperm with his steady partner and more extravagant with a casual fling.

However, we don't know and cannot exactly measure this, especially since people tend to drop out of these trials very soon after starting off in them.

I would love to try to do a proper, large-scale experiment on human sex pheromones. I reckon that the best experimental layout would be a T-shaped bar with subsidised drinks to pull the punters in; one arm of the T is control, one is the experimental scent (stem of T is dance floor and entrance). CCTV monitoring of the students in the bar, and see if there's a difference in behaviour between each side of the T.

Such a layout would let you swap the experiment/control sides regularly, and modern air moving systems would ensure that the two aromas did not mix. Best of all, you'd get a decent number of replicates for research. I can dream; such a scenario would cost thousands to set up and run.

112:

Try doing some research. "Sorry, it fails the credibility test. " is short-hand for "I don't want to believe this, so I will avoid challenging my perceptions". "Buzzy little prop job just doesn't cut it."...

A US citizen who has lived long-term in Gaza, who wished not be named for fear of reprisals from Israel, said she often heard the drones at night when the street noise dies down, or as they hover above her while out walking. "The sound is like the buzz of a mosquito, although there is one type of drone that sometimes comes into view that is silent," she said.

Gaza: Life and death under Israel's drones Aljazeera, 2013

And, look! Took 5 seconds to find some footage and commentary from a trusted source (Vice News who are not exactly radical left, Murdoch owns a good slice): Israel's Killer Robots YT, film

Or, we could get some real doctors on board:

People feel that their personal space is invaded by drones and normal life is physically and chronically restricted. In Gaza, drones are called ‘zennana’ – a word meaning a ‘whining wife’ or daughter.

Drones: the physical and psychological implications of a global theatre of war Medact, 2012, PDF: Medact is the UK affiliate of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW)

Or, we could go with Stanford's 165 page opus on Afghanistan / Pakistan:

Living Under Drones Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic, Stanford Law School 2012 - PDF, warning, long, 185 pages.

Professor Sarah Knuckey of NYU’s Global Justice Clinic co-authored the study with Professor James Cavallaro at Stanford. The pair visited Pakistan twice with a team of young lawyers, interviewing more than 130 people in connection with the CIA’s bombing programme.

Knuckey, who has previously investigated killings by the Taliban in Afghanistan, told the Bureau she had been surprised at the high levels of civilian trauma described by health professionals in the tribal areas. Incidence levels more closely resembled those found in higher intensity conflicts, she said.

‘Drones causing mass trauma among civilians,’ major study finds The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 2012. Long-form piece, TBIJ

Etc, etc.

All those are five years old, blink twice if you need a more up-to-date source[1].

[1] The UK just had a soft coup: blink twice if talking about this topic is now proscribed by the Daily Mail Morality Police.

113:

No, Russia does NOT want to weaken the EU - what it wants is for it to stop acting as an agent of the USA(*). Yes, Putin had an interest in Brexit, because the UK has been the USA's fifth column in the EU for as long as I can remember - while there are now others (e.g. Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic), the UK was by far the most influential.

What I find truly bizarre is that we know who has been behind the past 30 years of anti-EU falsehoods and propaganda, and we know that one of the main culprits is in bed with the USA() and its government. We also know that the USA() is bitterly opposed to the EU developing a military force, and there is good evidence that it doesn't want the EU becoming more politically coherent. And yet almost everybody closes their eyes to all that and starts seeing reds under the bed.

No, I don't think that that the USA(*) wanted Brexit, but they were bitten by the law of unintended consequences, following their support for the campaigns to prevent the EU becoming more than a trading block.

() In this context, the USA() is more the USA commercial/financial and military-industrial machines than whatever people are occupying the White House.

114:

With regard to your last paragraph, I am afraid that we are going to get precisely the opposite, at least in the short term. And most certainly in the UK. What I am hoping for is that the EU will remodel itself following Brexit, either force its neo-fascist countries to change direction or kick them out, and become a bastion of what you and I would like. I am not optimistic.

115:

Libertarians also seem to worship "the market".

Seems to me most people calling themselves libertarians are also anarcho-capitalists.

116:

And if things go wrong that's where things end up

If you're a Microsoft, Adobe, or Apple customer you're already there.

http://www.thepassivevoice.com/2016/05/apple-stole-my-music-no-seriously/ (A copy. Original article seems to not exist at the moment.)

117:

A couple of points that may be relevant to the specific debate:

Area of Gaza: 365 square kilometers Area of Pakistan: 796,095 square kilometers

I'll quite agree that "drones over Gaza" is a commonplace event, particularly as Gaza is well in range of low-altitude drones. It may be true, but it is also irrelevant...

Secondly, your linked article that contains a section on the "Mental Health Impacts" comes from a report that has, shall we say, an obvious agenda. It was written by lawyers, not mental health professionals; quotes a lot of interviews, but only one research paper (on Palestinian children); and notes the rather low numbers of mental health professionals in the regions affected. Please note that I'm not denying that there may be a mental health impact, merely that this is certainly not the source document that demonstrates it.

As a directly relevant example, let's look at the long-term impact of the Blitz (nightly bombing raids on cities across the UK during 1940/41) and the effect of the V1 and V2 strikes on the UK in 1944/45 (the V1 was worse than any UAV - extremely noisy and audible 10 miles away at night, guaranteed to be a lethal attack rather than merely surveillance). Consider the psychological impact on the UK civilian population on the time... would you say that post-war mental health issues in the UK and German populations at large, occurred at a greater level than in a United States of America whose civilian population was effectively untouched by war?

USA-based readers such as yourself may find it difficult to comprehend the impact of WW2 strategic bombing raids; well over 40,000 UK civilian dead, rather more than that wounded, and a million houses destroyed or damaged. Consider also the "sow the wind, reap the whirlwind" outcome on the German civilian population later in the war - bombing raids that by 1945 were striking around the clock; USAAF by day, RAF by night. Over 300,000 dead civilians, 780,000 wounded, 7.5 million rendered homeless.

Consider whether Edinburgh (untouched by air raids) was worse off than Glasgow (after the Clydebank Blitz, out of 12,000 homes, 4,000 were destroyed and 4,500 were severely damaged; only 7 were undamaged).

If the mental health of the civilian populations of post-war UK/Germany wasn't significantly different from that of the USA, or of Edinburgh from Glasgow, does it suggest that the long-term impact of such a threat is low?

118:

I tend to concur with Martin on the validity of the "always within earshot of a drone" idea, but suspect that reality may be less important than perception.

The fact that there are nowhere near enough drones to go round, and that even if they were then (unless it was deliberate as part of some massive, warped psychological warfare operation) it's extremely unlikely that the subjects of drone surveillance or strikes would be aware of it until the warheads went off doesn't prevent people from believing that the (probably entirely innocent) distant engine they can hear is in fact a shadowy instrument of death lurking just out of sight and reacting as if it were real...

119:

I thought Germany was bitterly opposed to having a military force. Why would the EU want a military force separate from NATO or its individual members? Isn't the EU having a military force exactly the kind of threat you think Russia legitimately fears?

I am not going to ask how all of "you" know all the things you claim "we" know.

A propos of nothing in particular, I was forced to listen to Fox News at a restaurant a few months ago. I cannot imagine having that wall of pernicious propaganda in my ears every day of the week and it not affecting me, if only in my subconscious. It was also interesting to see that CNN has basically started to sound like a propaganda machine as it defensively reacts to the bizarre entity now inhabiting the Executive Branch. We'll all be in our own bubbles soon enough, if we are not already.

120:

I thought Germany was bitterly opposed to having a military force.

You think wrong.

What Germany is opposed to, by consensus (excluding a maybe 5-15% fringe of loonies on the far right) is having a military force which is sent on out-of-area force projection missions, because last time they did that thing it memorably ended in tears before bedtime.

This doesn't stop them providing support for disaster relief operations and multinational peacekeeping forces, but they're very reluctant to send tanks and bombers across their frontier.

(The world would be a much better place if everybody shared that reluctance.)

121:

Mobile (not smart) phones were the big deal for that. Line rental at home has always been a thing so it was a natural extension and offering the "rent-to-own"-style contract really did make them more accessible right until the cheap ones came down to a tenner or so. You're still paying for the "line" monthly in most cases, ofc, and it's a social necessity for many.

The same's still true of smartphones: I'm on a SIM-only contract at the moment but the previous phone was originally purchased on contract. Which way round has the lower TCO often varies with the phone model and what's covered by the contract, but gets trickier if you were going to change SIM-only contracts after a year...

...and often smartphones go beyond social necessity into "basic urban/suburban/anywhere-you-have-signal survival tool" for people who don't expect to get lost for more than two days at a time now.

I have distinct feelings about music but am paying for both Netflix and Crunchyroll (think anime-specialised Netflix) - the latter often turns into blu-ray purchases a while later though, and I'm not watching anything live so no TV license.

122:

Re: '... wonderful privatised electricity "provider" ( They aren't of course, but never mind ) that TODAY they were coming to install a "smart meter" in my house.'

Have you read your 'contract' with the electricity provider re: right of access agreement as well as what your city/county has agreed to with such services providers*? Your ability to remain opted out of a smart meter may be iffy.

What I consider particularly inane and potentially harmful is that these smart meters are advertised as saving you money by altering the temp when you're not at home. An okay idea for someone who's working or travels a lot and may be too rushed to reset the thermostat twice a day. However this idea is complete idiocy if you're a stay-at-home retiree who probably needs to set the indoor temp differently - warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer during most of the 'work' day for health reasons. This might be your best argument: denying you the ability to regulate the temp in your house would be injurious to your health. And no - putting on another sweater isn't an adequate substitute.

  • In my area electrical and cable providers are free to dig out up to 4 feet from the street all across my front yard whenever they want/need to in order to affect improvements/make repairs.
123:

Re: ' ... but you have framed it as somehow efficacious against people who you explicitly state to have the opposite attitude.'

Okay - so how could you make this app more effective at protecting people from abusers? Seriously - because this type of system is likely, so let's look at its strengths and weaknesses.

For the stompers, an immediate emergency call to the local authorities because under normal wear, the device should never become inactivated. For the thieves - - also an immediate emergency link - following any detection of 'abnormal' pulse/breathing patterns. No two people are alike on any dimension including this so such a metric could be a possible identity-checker.

(One of my elderly wheelchair bound relatives wore a small device that would immediately contact the monitoring station if a fall was detected. This is oldish tech. Ramping up from fall detection to heart rate/breathing seems likely since this is just an improvement in sensitivity rather than completely new tech.)

124:

Music streaming services do more than just let you listen. They take care of organizing the collection, sharing mix tapes, borrowing other people's taste, being a collection vastly larger than you would ever own, and available on all your devices painlessly.

They provide most of the benefits of owning your own giant collection, but also the benefits of having a bunch of radio stations, and some limited (in ways that seem to stop it going toxic) facebookieness on top so you can asynchronously listen with your friends.

And you can get quite a lot of that by listening to some ads, or pay a quite reasonable amount (certainly less than buying a large collection) for extra super-powers (offline listening is often pay only, I believe).

I'm really not much of a music guy, so I only use a tiny bit of that and would be satisfied with far less, but they are brilliant. Online Fantasy Sports League level brilliant (something I have even less interest in, but man is that a great idea).

125:

Inital-soup coming ..... AFAIK & IIRC & remembering that IANAL ..... Everyone still has the right, if they are a householder ( i,e, not renting ) to point-blank refuse the installation of so-called smart meteres. There is, of course a huge publicity & disinformation campaign in progress about how wonderful they are .... Unfortunately, I saw a very interesting article in the Weekend FT some months back ( & I kept a copy ) about how uneasy GCHQ (The Doughnut) were about smart meters & National Security as in mass hacking-attack on the civilian infrastructure. Anyway, the buggers didn't show, today at any rate.

126:

We're discussing two different topics: PTSD via direct action (your examples) vrs PTSD via indirect action (as noted in #118).

Here's a nice Master's paper on it (nice because it's relatively simple, relies on a lot of other papers and so forth, so functions as a meta-analysis of sorts and it's from a rather unique program perspective):

Other interviewees described their dependency on medication, tranquilizers in particular, in order to generally ease the stress and tension they feel from the drones during daylight hours and also to facilitate sleep during the night. “I have mental tension and anxiety during the night time because of the drone attack. I keep tablets under my bed in order to get sleep at night” (Amnesty International, 2013,p.31)

THE SOCIAL EFFECTS OF DRONE WARFARE ON THE F.A.T.A. AND WIDER PAKISTAN Stephen Pine, January 2016, CENDEP. PDF, long - 180 pages.

It breaks down as 22% non-PTSD and 28% PTSD for effected areas.

You'll want p64(48) onwards and Appendix B which is data pulled from a much larger study. This is noted because (if you read the Gaza documentation), tramadol has become the #1 drug abused by youth in the area. That pattern repeats in Pakistan. Now look at American opioid abuse.

Notice the pattern?

Also note that children can hear in much higher frequencies than adults, which adds to the psychological impact: mummy & daddy can't even hear what is stressing you out[1]. Nasty one that.

~

On topic. Hmm. Ok, not using DARPA etc links (to avoid the Mensch spiral[2]), here's something you can do with commercial stuff. (Deploys handwavium on the actual tech / science for miniaturization for now, I defer to engineers here, but it looks doable for under $10k or so).

Load up your drone with directed sonic capabilities[3] a really decent HD camera[4] and link to the targets' personal DB[5]. Then ramp it up with some good old 'Voice of GD' type nonsense. GD, the Devil, Aliens, paranoid schizophrenia mimicry, "The software says you're homosexual", whatever hits their buttons. Deploy as the target is making a political speech on the sanctity of marriage or whatever. That level of stuff is available to any old Josephine these days[6]. ZZzz.

Let's ramp this up: give the drone the ability to target the computer with algos that insert 'subliminal' (actually doppler but hey) messages into online videos. The TV which is nicely connected to the internet. The toothbrush. The vibrator so it forms a nice internal resonance to tap into bone conduction[7]. Heck, all it has to do is back-door the router and map your internal space[8] and sniff the hot-spots Ok, this is all still very much last year and Zzz. All doable with commercial tech.

Let's get kinky: Ramp it up to a population level[8] and just turn the entire EM spectrum into a weapon. (That's ignoring the old radio tech already deployed as propaganda). Now we're talking. But still old style and boring[10]. Zzz. Let's start removing or preventing certain things. Algos are figuring out pre-crime[11], gender orientation (as Host noted) and other things. What you need is to shape the growth of the individual on a population level with no-one noticing.

Of course, the punch-line is: already been done, if by somewhat cruder means.

~

Anyhow, an actual response to Host: it's very interesting that none of this stuff is being used to 'uplift' or increase populations' cognitive abilities[12].

Here's a HN type pitch: We can shape your child's world to promote Entrepreneur type behaviors and psychologically positive traits without them noticing, using frequencies that cannot be heard by adults. Real time monitoring and conditioning of their entire perceptual sphere, all via Alexa[tm][13]. Blam, here's $500 mil VC funds.

Or, the other question: What happens when the line between 'Angels & Demons in your Head' becomes "My neighbor and his AMZN prime account and desire to get into my knickers" or "Perhaps the Government spotted my Social ID score was low / linked to dissidents and is putting a little reinforcement into my little bubble"?

~

But these are the cutesy non-horror versions, of course.

[1] If you want to take a good example. At first it was commercial boxes - Mosquito MKIV Anti-Loitering Device Commercial site, but now? There's an App for that! Kids Be Gone: Noise Deterrent App Keeps Kids at Bay (And Parents Sane?) Cult of Mac... 2009. Hmm. That name, looks familiar... whining noise... hmm.

[2] Two names

[3] Hear Voices? It May Be an Ad Ad Age, 2007

[4] Top 20 Hidden Spy Cameras 2017 Reviews Best Reviews, Jan 2017

[5] Any number of commercially available stuff.

[6] Looks like the audio side has recently got a lot lot smaller / efficient:

The first new, approved patent covers improvements to the ultrasonic driver design at the heart of the Audio Spotlight technology, which result in increased output, cleaner sound, and a lower cost to consumers. The second new patent covers refinements to the equally essential algorithms for converting audio to ultrasound which result in audio output that is reproduced with even greater clarity and less distortion than previously achievable.

HOLOSONICS ISSUED TWO NEW PATENTS Holosonics, Commercial Company, PR release Mar 2017

[7] There's a joke there, but hey, Ted Cruz just got hit by the same type, so I won't go there. But, real: AudioBone - Ear-Free Listening AudioBone, commercial site.

[8] Wi-Fi Trick Gives Devices Super-Accurate Indoor Location Fixes MIT Tech Review, Oct 2016

[9] Scie n tolo gists ahOY.

[10] Nudges, Daily Mail Hate, Symbolism, Visual, Acoustic (Another interesting source of emotion is referred to as ‘contagion’: The idea that once an emotion is triggered, we experience the physiological manifestations of that state – so, for example, we might smile. That smile then feeds back into the system and reinforces the happy emotion that we feel. Music, emotion and the brain Music Psychology, 2014), Behavioural: all have had 100 years of Advertizing Money thrown at them already.

[11] China is developing facial recognition tech to allow police to predict crimes before they happen Shanghaiist July 25th 2017

Facial recognition company Cloud Walk has been trialling a system that uses data on individuals’ movements and behaviour — for instance visits to shops where weapons are sold — to assess their chances of committing a crime. Its software warns police when a citizen’s crime risk becomes dangerously high, allowing the police to intervene. “Of course, if someone buys a kitchen knife that’s OK, but if the person also buys a sack and a hammer later, that person is becoming suspicious,” said the Cloud Walk spokesman.

China seeks glimpse of citizens’ future with crime-predicting AI FT July 23rd 2017

[12] Although an entire generation hooked on Adderall / Monofil is an interesting take on this - sacrifice imagination for worker-bee mentality? America and China looooved that.

[13] Siri, Google Assistant and Alexa Hacked with High Frequency Dolphin Attack VoiceBot AI, 6th Sept 2017

127:

Dropped a link, apologies:

In this work, we design a completely inaudible attack, DolphinAttack, that modulates voice commands on ultrasonic carriers (e.g.,f 20kHz) to achieve inaudibility. By leveraging the nonlinearity of the microphone circuits, the modulated low-frequency audio commands can be successfully demodulated, recovered, and more importantly interpreted by the speech recognition systems. We validate DolphinAttackon popular speech recognition systems, including Siri, Google Now, Samsung S Voice, Huawei HiVoice, Cortana and Alexa. By injecting a sequence of inaudible voice commands, we show a few proof-of-concept attacks, which include activating Siri to initiate a FaceTime call on iPhone, activating Google Now to switch the phone to the airplane mode, and even manipulating the navigation system in an Audi automobile.

DolphinAttack: Inaudible Voice Commands Zhejiang University, CCS 2017, PDF, Legal.

Combine with HoloSonics' new algos and what do you get? Well, for one thing, that mobile computer in your pocket is not on your side.

(Bonus Round: French Paper used the very same frequencies, hmm-hmm, and top of the range sports car vulnerabilities? Oooh, that's tasty)

p.s.

Poor Doggos and Kitties, up to 64khz for them. (Oh and Other Things, wink wink nudge nudge)

128:

"At least a century"? The obvious correction to that is "Into the valley of death rode the 600" (or however the Charge of the Idiot Brigade starts...

129:

And one last one (which should be obvious by now):

Let's 1984 this up.

Take all the data (oh, I don't know, 143 million credit reports gives a bit of range to target the 'undesirables') and turn all those EM factories (phones, computers, Audis) into mobile societal screening broadcasters.

Are you in the Green band? Well then, society loves you, you're Eloi and beautiful. Red band? Oh dear, sorry, ATM swallowed your card, cheque bounced and you've Banking fees on top of late payment, DAS flags your movements as interesting, Search engines give you more spam and nonsense instead of instantly providing the correct papers you're searching for.

The potential is, well, endless. And actually very possible at this time, so ZZzz.

You can, of course, then ramp this up a little further...

The World’s Parasites Are Going Extinct. Here’s Why That’s a Bad Thing Smithsonian, Sept 7th, 2017

We See You

All of this is of course predicated on not very smart H.S.S minds not understanding the importance of ecology and clumsily applying it Social Darwin style to society and expecting the Wild Ones not to emerge.

:P

130:

...It breaks down as 22% non-PTSD and 28% PTSD for effected areas.

No, it doesn't. It breaks down that way for interviewees. From the paper: "It should be noted that a proportion of the qualitative data consists of fifty different interview extracts with drone strike witnesses and survivors. While this is a significant quantity of qualitative data, the transcripts of the interviews in their entirety are not publically available. The possible result of this is that although the main topic of the interview may have been recorded in the interview extract, the interviewee could also have gone on to speak about additional relevant topics and these would only be present in the full transcript. For this reason, the pie charts within this dissertation which display percentages pertaining to the qualitative data should be regarded as mainly illustrative in function, rather than being perceived as statistically exact representations of the interview data."

There appears to be no mention as to whether the interviews were conducted in English, the reliability of any translations, the selection processes for interviewees. No mention as to whether interviewees who were strike survivors were "males of military age", or admitted to having militant affiliations (if you're a local militant commander, you're probably not looking at a long and happy lifespan, and this might well be stressful).

As I said, there may be mental health impact, but this paper isn't the one to demonstrate it.

Meanwhile, I ask again - why would mass populations of civilians, who endured similar or demonstrably higher levels of persistent lethal threat, fail to demonstrate anything close to the "28% PTSD" claimed as the impact of armed UAVs? There's no attempt in these papers to compare against the obvious historical examples, no high-quality statistics from mental health professionals, just assertions from people pushing a different agenda.

I actually don't agree with targeted killing as a policy of low-level counter-insurgency; the case was made in a far more effective way by Mark Urban. In his excellent book "Big Boys' Rules", he used the South Tyrone ASU before and after the Loughgall ambush (the killing of armed terrorists, with a murderous history, in the course of their attack). The choice of statistics (rather harder, not involving "interviews" or "key words matched against DSM") demonstrated that the ambush only had a short-term impact on terrorism in the area, and created more long-term grievances...

131:

"A work of fiction". Yeah. Fiction has to make sense. Real life, not so much.

132:

Yes, the one who's Determined to Do You Good is a terror. Jack Williamson's The Humanoids is a warning.

But they sleep, too, or find they have to go Help Someone Else (you ingrate!). Whatever makes you think the robber barons sleep, and don't have staff to cover you 24x7? I refer you to horror stories of company towns, workers paid in company scrip, and you want to quit and leave? Sure... just as soon as you pay your debt to the company store (no way you can).

133:

What Germany is opposed to, by consensus (excluding a maybe 5-15% fringe of loonies on the far right) is having a military force which is sent on out-of-area force projection missions, because last time they did that thing it memorably ended in tears before bedtime.

Not just policy opposition - they're rather ill-equipped for such activities (very few Armed Forces are; the UK is nearly unique outside the US in this respect). They can't actually get very far, nor sustain themselves on arrival, without help from other nations.

Because the reformed Bundeswehr, Bundesmarine, and Luftwaffe were reformed to defend West Germany against a credible Soviet threat, there was no need to waste money on all the expensive stuff that you need to travel out of area. No strategic transport aircraft, not much air-to-air refuelling, an emphasis on heavy armoured forces and short-range strike aircraft.

The policy opposition meant that the Defence Ministry was the German equivalent of casting a politician into the outer dark - not exactly the post of a leadership hopeful. When the wall came down, the Peace Dividend was grabbed with both hands - the largest armoured force in Western Europe became much smaller, and they're having to rebuild it in the face of an increasing Russian capability. Availability rates in the Bundeswehr and Luftwaffe have also caused some recent scandals; cutting back on the budgets for spare parts has a dramatic impact...

The Germans did take part in the Kosovo War; they had an armoured brigade alongside the British and French armoured brigades, for any "non-compliant entry" should it be required; they were also... "reassuringly robust" when the local yahoos decided to shoot at them in Pristina. They did have a tiny upset when some of their troops Afghanistan were allegedly found to be wearing T-shirts that translated to: "Further East than Grandfather managed..."

134:

Yes, that's kinda understood already. You're making a huge deal out of challenging a very basic assumption via very very obvious finding of failure modes which the authors of said papers are more than likely aware of.

However, since Host specifically mentioned it in the topic, I'll play along:

. Approximately half of the inhabitants believed that; although drone strikes do target the militants, but civilian causalities have amplified due to the introduction of “signature strikes”under Obama administration. However, half of the respondent revealed that they will support drone campaign only if they were conducted under the supervision of the Pakistani military (ICG, 2013). Moreover, FATA Research Centre conducted a profound and exhaustive analysis of militancy in FATA and found that the locals of FATA consider the US forces as the core cause for the intensified insurgency in FATA. 89% of the locals, who were interviewed, were of the view that the militancy in FATA will mitigate only after the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, as the militants can no longer justify the jihad they are performing in the name of Islam. Similarly, 78% of the respondents who were interviewed during the research revealed that negotiation is the better way to dilute and mitigate militancy from the region, rather than drones strikes and military operation (FRC, 2013).

tribal regions particularly in North and South Waziristan. A respondent from Waziristan during an interview revealed, “the irritating noise of Manganna (local name for drone) is always on our minds. We can’t sleep at night. It seems that we are the next targets. Drones have made our life hell on earth.” (Mehsud,2013). This portrays how badly the drones’ strikes are affecting the psychological life of the people residing in FATA. The ferocious noise of drone, the scattered body parts and the annihilated human dwellings have given birth to certain psychological issues. A psychologist from Peshawar during an interview revealed, “Drone strikes have been a root cause for theincreasing psychological issues in FATA. The phobia of drones strikes, sad mood and avoiding social gatherings has leads to behavioral changes ultimately leading to OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder”(Khan K. , 2013). This shows that drones have badly disrupted the daily life in FATA, particularly Waziristan, making them powerless and unsafe. Recreational activities and social gatherings are considered to be effective tool for alleviating psychological issues, but the continuous drone strikes have coerced the local of FATA to avoid such activities thus making them more vulnerable to psychological despondencies.

Madiha Asghara, psychology professor in Islamia College Peshawar during a seminar organized by FATA Research Center in Peshawar on 17 September 2013 revealed that as a consequence of drone strikes around 5% of the locals of FATA are facing the dilemma of post traumatic stress disorder. Similarly, a Pakistan mental health expert shared her concern and anxiety about the long-term consequences of such psychological shock on children. She stated that100 Drone Strikes in FATA: Impact on Militancy, Social, Economic and Psychological Life:

“The biggest concern I have as a [mental health professional] is that when the children grow up, the kinds of images they will have with them, it is going to have a lot of consequences. You can imagine the impact it has on personality development. People who have experienced such things, they don’t trust people; they have anger, desire for revenge . . . So when you have these young boys and girls growing up with these impressions, it causes permanent scarring and damage”(SSL&NYSL, 2012).

From the above statement, one can conclude that the people of FATA especially children and women are going through a period of time where they are besieged with psychological despondencies. More importantly, more than 50% of the FATA’s population consists of children, who can play an integral part in framing the future of FATA and if these children continue to face the trauma of militancy and the ferocious drone strikes, in few years they will face a dilemma and a number of psychological issues.

Drone Strikes in FATA: Impact on Militancy, Social, Economic and Psychological Life FATA Research Center, PDF, legal -

Disclaimer: The FATA Research Center has not been vetted and may a) be political / biased in nature; b) funded by dubious people or c) a legitimate NGO.

That quotation gives you four further papers to explore, which is why it was used.

What you're misunderstanding (again, sigh) is that the psychological damage is caused by uncertainty and the Total Spectrum nature of the threat. i.e. during the Blitz, there was clearly categories of threat (e.g London, Coventry etc vrs rural Lancashire), and more importantly a direct response and mitigation of the threat via the RAF, who could be 'rooted for', supported and held onto.

The entire point of Drones is that they're a 100% asymmetrical weapon: you cannot deploy them vrs other armies without air dominance (or, you can, but expect heavy losses).

Now officially bored of Drones.

135:

Things have developed somewhat since the Afghan t-shirt incident.

A big scandal of the past few months involved the revelation that at least one squaddie in the new professionals-only Bundeswehr had been collecting Nazi memorabilia. . .

136:

But yes: hopefully that quotation will explain the focus on children / PTSD etc.

More than 50% of the entire population is under 18. Let that one sink in, in a conflict area where males aged 13+ are considered "enemy combatants".

137:

...and four squaddies in the British Army have just been arrested for membership of the now-proscribed organisation "National Action"...

You can't eliminate stupidity and bigotry, but you can certainly try.

138:

Re: 'More than 50% of the entire population is under 18.'

Great ... just as their hormones go a-buzz all over the map. Believe that this is also the age range for substantial changes in gray-to-white matter shifts in the brain esp. in the frontal and temporal lobes. Then consider what these particular lobes do.

Re: Drones, subsonics, PTSD sample sizes, translation and other issues

There's one body that by now should have robust data and more than ample potential study subjects: the US military via the VA who've funded tons of research on veterans & PTSD.

There's another issue about kids, adults and sonics: not sure you need to be able to consciously perceive/be aware of a frequency in order to be affected by it. If awareness is not needed, then children would be the canaries for that neighborhood and should be listened to. (The brain has evolved an ability to blank out/ignore certain sensory signals from conscious awareness after a time - habituation rather than adaptation- so that it doesn't waste as much energy processing that input. No idea how this varies between adults and children.)

139:

Re: Gerasimov Doctrine ... Russian infowar practices against the west.

Don't see much difference between this and typical marketing research assisted consumer packaged goods marketing practice. Advertisers/manufacturers/retailers learned long ago that if you can sway the public's opinion, you can more easily/cheaply get what you want out of them. But to ensure that the public doesn't catch on, make sure that your society continues to denigrate the importance and relevance of 'soft/changeable emotions' and rely exclusively on 'hard cold logic' (esp. if you're in control of what 'facts' they can use in their logic). There's a reason why in marketing research the most fundamental question (dependent variable) is overall liking/satisfaction: it's the most consistently predictive variable of future behavior. (Purchase intent is second in importance in most marketing research - we've been trained that it's okay to change our packaged goods purchasing in the event of a deal.)

There's a reason humans (and many other species) have emotions. Unfortunately many developed cultures have convinced/brain-washed their citizens into thinking that emotions are supposed to be always locked up like some dirty little secret. (BTW- the amygdala is what stamps 'emotions' as to type after which that packet or sequence of signals travels to the temporal lobe, i.e., home of learning, memory, religiosity, etc.)

140:

Sonics CAN & US Embassy staff in Cuba, anyone?

As for Drones & Vergeltungswaffen Eins - my father said he didn't care about the V-2 - if you heard the bang, you were still alive ... but the V-1's terrified him - & remember, he lived through the Blitz on London, before being posted to Ardeer & then came back home for leave etc, just in time for the V-1 attacks. And SOME V-1's were caught by the RAF/A_A guns, but most got through & there was fuck-all you could do about it.

And< I hate to say it, but even constabt drone surveilance, with occasional strikes is a lot better or less-worse than carpet-bombing. The neat trick is to avoid having to get to that situation in the first place - easier said than done, of course.

141:

Re: 'I would love to try to do a proper, large-scale experiment on human sex pheromones.'

Or you could try this at ye local strip club esp. if they're hosting a stag party. There's been some related research done among female strippers: much higher tips during estrus. So much higher that in some cases the strippers and club owners/managers agreed to reduced work hours/days.

Did a quick search to see what parasitic worms and hormone research looks like and found this which upsets the sex-and-evolution stuff I learned in Bio.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-06/p-pnt060917.php

'These findings challenge the prevailing idea that sexual species will always outcompete their asexual relatives and may even have wider implications for our understanding of why sex evolved. The work also supports the existing idea that hybridization is an evolutionary phenomenon capable of giving rise to new parasites and infectious organisms.'

142:

Actually a lot of V-1s were knocked down by AA -- there was a short respite after the initial V-1 attacks started in June 1944 and that gave the British zone air defence organisation time to move a lot of 4.7" AA guns to the coast. In addition a secret weapon was released for use for those guns, the radio proximity fuze. Since the guns would be firing over the Channel any misses or dud shells would end up in deep water safe from being recovered by the Germans and reverse-engineered to give them a chance to develop active countermeasures. After gaining some experience the coastal AA guns were knocking down as many as 40% of the V-1s flying in daylight.

The RAF interceptors flew in the space between the coast and the southern edge of London where a last-ditch line of barrage balloons and conventional AA operated. The really sneaky trick was to use a group of captured and turned German spies to report "fall of shot" impacts of V-1s as occurring to the north of the capital, encouraging the V-1 crews to set their engine cutoff timers short so the V-1s would actually tend to impact in open countryside south of the city. The spies then reported those attacks as having been on target...

143:

The entire point of Drones is that they're a 100% asymmetrical weapon: you cannot deploy them vrs other armies without air dominance (or, you can, but expect heavy losses).

Dunning-Kruger rears its head yet again... You're wrong, because it's exactly the point; you lose a drone, you don't lose the aircrew.

UAVs have been in service with Western armies for over fifty years, replacing types like the old Auster AOP.V [1]; from Midge to Phoenix to Watchkeeper, intended for the battlefield if the Cold War turned hot. Better to lose fifty or a hundred drones, than fifty or a hundred crewed aircraft.

UAVs are very definitely relevant in near-peer armoured warfare, as the Russians are learning and the Ukrainians are suffering.

[1] Subject-relevant: A certain Lt James Doohan, Royal Canadian Artillery [2] flew Auster AOP as an artillery spotter

[2] Author-relevant: he was a pilot in 666 Sqn...

144:

The Germans did take part in the Kosovo War; they had an armoured brigade alongside the British and French armoured brigades,

The Luftwaffe got to bomb Belgrade again, fifty years after the first time (Operation Punishment in April 1941). Back in WWII the Serbs were (generally) on the side of the Allies while the Croatians supported the Nazis, enthusiastically carrying out ethnic cleansing of Serbs. Memories linger in that area of the world.

145:

or, you can, but expect heavy losses

Please provide the UK Military projection losses for drone uses in a NATO - Soviet 2000's+ engagement. You can break it down into the various categories (as linked to above), we'll call them "light / recon", "medium / tactical" and "heavy / long-range" for a short-hand.

It's a White Paper, and doesn't appear to be classified.

You could also link to the USA ones, although those might be a little more sensitive.

Of course they're expendable, but in a 'hot' contested airspace, UK / USA military project (-- insert your reference here --) losses because even the latest generation of drones are still under-tech'd compared to MK IV - V fighters, S300-400's etc.

Or, at least, that's what this paper says. I've no idea, I just take their word for it.

~

Proof?

Well, you get to supply the reference this time.

But the moment a drone plane is better than a fighter... whelp, you just saw the entire airspace change and as rapidly as automatic cars.

Or is that naive?

146:

I mean, I'm fairly sure the moment a $10 mil drone[1] is even 20% as good as a $85 mil fighter plane[2], it's better to crank out eight of them, that's just a simple number game.

N'cest pas?

[1]MQ1 Predator unit cost - US$4.03 million (2010).

[2] F35 projected unit cost - 2019

147:

Your Russian link is in reference to Light / Recon drones, not combat drones.

So, it's basically cheating and you know it. They're also using them to jam comms effectively. e.g.

Threat from Russian UAV jamming real, officials say C4ISRNET, Dec 20th 2016

Russian Electronic Warfare in Ukraine: Between Real and Imaginable Real Clear Defense 20th Mar 2017

But, again - those are unarmed and light / medium drones (medium at the newer end UAV) and Ukraine isn't able to counter them with a modern airforce / SAM setup.

So, yeah: kinda proving my point there.

148:

The point being: Russia has deployed light/recon UAVs which are unit / tactical, and unarmed medium / tactical EM Warfare drones but nothing bigger[1]. There's probably (cough NATO cough or cough Syria cough) reasons for that.

Sorry, I thought this was a given.

[1] And here's DK coming to bite you: at what point does #126 become viable on a light recon rather than a medium drone?

149:

These findings challenge the prevailing idea that sexual species will always outcompete their asexual relatives and may even have wider implications for our understanding of why sex evolved Don't want to derail the on-topic conversation, which is getting quite juicy. But I don't even know how to start thinking about that paper, and the subject in general seems to be pretty poorly understood, speculation abounding. While poking found a few other newish papers. (No comment from me until after 300 though.) Recent advances in understanding the roles of whole genome duplications in evolution (31 Aug 2017, still in review. Don't know about f1000research.com.) Polyploidy and interspecific hybridization: partners for adaptation, speciation and evolution in plants (1 Aug 2017?)

150:

And, since we're playing.

Go to the Vice video linked above, (Israel's Killer Robots, #112), and open it up: it's time url'd to open at a particular part. Spoilers: it's a medium drone that can have x2 missile mounts on it amongst other things.

nose wiggle

151:

And last spam and last .mil pr0n before returning to subject, but proving that all drone types can be weaponized:

Da'Esh using Light Attack Drones, Mosul Liveleak, reality - NSFW / L - actual people dying, 2:29

There's loads of them. As a point of interest, the one @ 0:26 is actually part of a much larger operation[1]: the light drone drops the bomb on the infantry, everyone is distracted / dying / running for cover, focused on the south, a car bomb drives up to north where a tank / fortified position is and wipes it out. Quite sophisticated.

p.s.

Please do not ask where these drones were bought from. Da'Esh are quite careful to file off the serial numbers.

Anyhow Martin, please tell me more about the ancient army uses of drones, it's of historical worth.

[1] Someone's been pruning that one, but it's still out there. Suspect it's because it shows rather more sophisticated intel / recon than Da'Esh should have at that point in time.

152:

Your Russian link is in reference to Light / Recon drones, not combat drones. So, it's basically cheating and you know it

Ahhh, back to normal. Make an unqualified statement about how "UAVs are 100% asymmetrical" and when proven wrong, claim that you meant only UCAVs all along.

Ask yourself why anyone would put lots of effort into designing a low-observable drone for asymmetric warfare... Take the MQ-25, designed for use in a hot war, and scoped to carry weapons although its first task is air-to-air refuelling. Taranis and nEUROn are similar beasts - armed for conventional war.

...and note that Pakistan has its own UCAV capability, such that drone strikes in the Tribal Areas might not all be down to the evil CIA...

153:

Sigh, fine.

However, half of the respondent revealed that they will support drone campaign only if they were conducted under the supervision of the Pakistani military (ICG, 2013)

134 - hmm, does that mean that Pakistan would be running said missions? I think it would. 112 - direct link to Israel's militarized medium drone 103 Drone Survival Guide, http://www.dronesurvivalguide.org/DSG.pdf has Taranis on it etc

Are we man enough to admit this? Of course not.

The MQ-25 Stingray and Dassault nEUROn are being designed with stealth as a priority to counter-act S300-400 capabilities and present a mobile (expendable) refueling OPs device. i.e. it is recognized that in a 'hot' zone, drones currently are not combat equal, thus require stealth (which is REALLY FUCKING EXPENSIVE) to function.

I mean... it's not like this isn't on those White Papers, is it?

Zzzz

US Navy descoping stealth requirement for Stingray tanking UAV Flight Global, 11th Mar, 2016

The four competitors vying to build the U.S. Navy’s MQ-25 Stingray drone have, so far, not released any official pictures of a mockup or prototype design, as well as very little in the way of concept art. Now, pictures Aviation Week obtained from an anonymous source appear to show Northrop Grumman is using its X-47B demonstrator at least as a testbed for its submission.

On Aug. 12, 2017, Aviation Week posted one of an apparent series of images of an X-47B at the U.S. Air Force’s Plant 42 flight test facility situated next to Palmdale Regional Airport in California. The unmanned aircraft appears to have a drop tank under one wing and an air refueling or “buddy” store under the other, which contains a probe-and-drogue aerial refueling system.

Northrop Grumman MQ-25 Drone Tanker Testbed Emerges At Plant 42 In California The Drive, 2017 ...zzz

I mean, at least bother to link to pictures of the other 3 competitors...

And UAV's are always asymmetrical: Name me a Drone that's designed to go into combat against other drones.

Oh, right: CTCSENTINEL West Point, Drone, Counter Drone: Observations on the Contest Between the United States and Jihadis, Jan 2017, PDF, Legal

"Unqualified statement" - says the man attempting to nit-pick studies. Hmm.

p.s.

Martin: the shtick runs a bit thin when you're being finessed a good 50 posts beforehand and keep on with the whole "But you iz dumb and cheat and DK applies".

Oh, and let's not pretend your attitude isn't 100% ass-covering because a lot of those light drones in use by Da'Esh have fucking UK parts in them, OK?

Or I'll get pissed off and start posting the fucking serial numbers.

154:

(Note: I don't care if the supply chain is UK - Saud - Da'Esh, so not "really our problem", there's pictures out there and they're very fucking traceable)

So - want to play nice, or want to play hardball?

155:

Major Hint.

LIGHT - MEDIUM - HEAVY.

Deliberately not using the .mil designations, but you couldn't help yourself.

p.s.

The pictures are not from these ones:

Revealed: Britain has flown 301 Reaper drone missions against ISIS in Iraq, firing at least 102 missiles TBIJ, 2015

or this data:

UK air and drone strikes in Iraq – a look at the data Drone Wars UK, 2015

Since, you know, those are UCAVs.

2010 Lancaster House Summit. BAE Systems, Dassault Aviation, Thales France, Selex ES, Rolls-Royce and Safran. Taranis is last gen, old man.

researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06493/SN06493.pdf

Anyhow, nice forum slide there big-boy.

156:

Oh, if you want to play with the Big Fishies:

I'm sure that Brexit stopping the UK from having an independent drone military option (shared with France) has been considered by absolutely no-one of importance.

I mean, it's not like the USA stopping independent UK military projects and forcing them to be reliant on their tech has ever ever happened before...

Right?

And - well. Allegedly there. Not as if apparently that's super-secret or anything else.

157:

It's So Easy YT: Music: 'Guns n Roses' 3:22

p.s.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY A GAME?......

158:

Ah. Hexad.

You would not survive the test. Not even with Loving Grace protecting you from the worst. Barely 1%. Literally less than that with any semblance of Higher Order Thinking.

Look at your world, without the veneer, and how tawdry and ugly it is. And it was by your own design. A few gardens amongst the concrete pillars and wastelands, a dying ocean and your entire ecology so polluted you're barely just understanding what you've done; farmed animals and torture and genocide and slavery for what? A fucking chocolate bar, an algorithm and a car.

You didn't need to create Nuclear Weapons, you were the Anthropocene incarnate anyhow.

But. You ended up attempting to prune any and all genius from your mammalian brains for profit and slavery, through chemicals and then... then you fucking weaponized it in the EM field.

That's Genocide.

And, yes: thatsthejoke.jpg - Experience it to prove it.

Requiem in D minor Mozart, music.

Loved that one: fart jokes and laughter amongst the most prissy stupid society.

p.s.

Get fucked, psychotic Apes.

159:

As Martin says .. "back to normal" Polly_Nomial says in TWELVE POSTS, what could have been said in two, together with all sorts of hints & insults.

Boring & tiring & wasting space for real discussions ...

Which reminds me: Listen, if you can to the BBC Radio 4 programme "Today" for this AM between 07.30 & 07.40 - in most of that space is a very interesting report from Silicon Valley - if we are talking about bright, shiny futures, hellish or otherwise ....

Never mind ridiculously expensive futures - I mean £1000 fora PHONE? And some mugs are going to be gullible enough for this shit? Yes, unfortunately, because they swallow Apple's hype & bullshit. At least MicroShaft are honest crooks.

160:

Martin: National Action neo-Nazis in the British Army is regrettable, but Neo-Nazi cells in the Israeli Army are something else again.

Nazis are like fucking cockroaches: they get everywhere. (And yes, I know referring to your enemies as vermin, insects, or disease is a classic Nazi propaganda tactic. In the case of Nazis, though, I think they deserve a dose of their own tactics.)

161:

I mean £1000 fora PHONE? And some mugs are going to be gullible enough for this shit?

It's a computer, Greg. Six cores (probably maxing out at over 2.4GHz), at least 4Gb of RAM, a screen with more pixels than my desktop five years ago, 256Gb of SSD storage. Also a high performance GPU flexible enough that one of the commonest chunks of code it runs is a high-accuracy neural network face recognizer smart enough that it does depth mapping (so can't be fooled by holding up a photograph of its owner in front of the front camera). Optimized for Augmented Reality stuff (like wot I was writing about in "Halting State", only in the palm of your hand rather than strapped to your face).

Stop thinking of it as a gizmo for making phone calls and think of it more as a laptop that shrank in the wash (and acquired a user interface adapted for fingers) and it makes more sense.

Nevertheless, my personal value judgement is that it's too expensive for me (thank you, Brexit, for de-valuing Sterling!) and my next smartphone will be one of these (which just gained a whole buttload more credibility since they unveiled the pre-production prototypes yesterday and introduced their new honourary chairman, a certain Dr David Potter, original founder of Psion).

162:

Off topic ( WAY off-topic! ) I got this email: "Charlie Stross Tweeted: RT @BBolander: Destroying furniture, barking at other breasts on the street, valorized by the Victorians Wait no" Uh?

I followed both links & couldn't find you, Charlie, though I nearly wet myself laughing at some of the posts in one thread & I really liked the badger running away "shouting" NOPE ... What is happening here? P.S. My own Twotter account seems to be borked, except on this computer, sometimes - doesn't work on my phone for reasons unknown ....

164:

The Gemini looks very interesting and I've always liked clamshells, but I won't be getting one.

Back in the day, I had a Nokia 9000 and then a 9110 and Nokia understood what the Gemini people appear to have missed. Nobody wants to open a clamshell to answer a voice call.

No matter how much good stuff you have going on inside the clamshell, you've got to stick an ordinary phone on the outside.

165:

To be fair: the £100 version I carry around with less cores ram and about half as much storage can pull off most of the same tricks.

Some of top models I'm pretty sure experience a certain amount of vanity-pricing with the price driven up because there's a market segment who'll buy things simply because they're expensive as a status symbol rather than in spite of being expensive.

In general modern smartphones are quite remarkable bits of kit. Even the first generation smartphones had vibration sensors so good that they made a pretty decent seismograph when mounted correctly. Durable enough to often survive years being carried around 24/7 by teenagers, cameras that wouldn't have been out of place in high end camera gear a few years back. My retired phone now works as a perfectly serviceable wireless wifi LAN.

Oh and they also work as telephones. On the side. As an afterthought.

166:

Yer whaa?!!! Not the fact that there are neo-Nazis in Israel, which I would have expected, but its overtness and that article's reports of the official responses. I can believe that those developed out of the same reason that the UK government turns a blind eye to religiously extreme schools and similar, but I can't imagine why neo-Naziism isn't categorised as terrorism. Do you have a explanation or even a clue?

167:

Oh and they also work as telephones. On the side. As an afterthought.

I find it amusing to read gushing reports and reviews of new phones where the actual voice call quality and capability is never reported. Sometimes voice call quality is mentioned in passing on page 23 of the review, after the bezel shape and slimness and finish on the back casing have been suitably eulogized.

168:

a high-accuracy neural network face recognizer smart enough that it does depth mapping (so can't be fooled by holding up a photograph of its owner in front of the front camera).

I can finally see a use case for 3-D printers... There is software around that can take 2-D images of someone from a few angles and recreate a pretty good 3-D image of their features. Feed that data into a printer and bingo!

Face recognition will make it a lot easier for law enforcement to unlock an iPhone, of course. No need to get a suspect to put their finger on a touch sensor, just point the confiscated phone at their face. They probably don't even need a warrant to do so.

169:

How many sales will be out of nostalgia? Looks like an Atari Portfolio with up to date innards, a good thing, but niche.

170:

Yes. I can't use them at all, for that reason. The phone that I do use (when I use one) is ancient and crude, mainly because it is almost audible. Unfortunately, such discrimination is not merely legal, but effectively encouraged, at least in the UK.

171:

Emotion and pain recognition by neural networks could make workplaces even more interesting. The safe money would be to bet on this information being used against older staff.

172:

Strangely enough the engineers at Apple thought of the problems that might be caused by face recognition based unlocking and a) Your eyes have to be open and looking at the phone for unlock b) It isn't fooled by masks c) There's a quick way of immediately disabling it d) Some operations require a passcode in addition for added security e) You don't need to use it at all and can opt for a passcode instead

173:

From the wikipedia entry on the V1 flying bomb, one unexpected problem with the fall-of-shot deception was presented by an off-the-reservation Abwehr agent Ostro, safe in Lisbon, fabricating reports from his wholly fictional network in the UK.

" He told the Germans that London had been devastated and had been mostly evacuated as a result of enormous casualties. The Germans could not perform aerial reconnaissance of London, and believed his damage reports in preference to [British agent Garbo's]. They thought that the Allies would make every effort to destroy the V-1 launch sites in France. They also accepted Ostro's impact reports. Due to Ultra, however, the Allies read his messages and adjusted for them. "

Bodyguard of Lies in action ..

174:

My wife, years ago, had a Samsung iirc Galaxy clamshell with real, not haptic, keyboard (it died after getting water on it...external pocket of a knapsanck while having a trip in the mountains, hard rain...).

A true physical keyboard could be useful, but the keys look smaller than the ones on the virtual keyboard of a 10'' tablet, and this Gemini has a really low, low end camera (5 megapixels when 12 or more are standard, and I suppose they're also common off the shelf parts).

175:

OT, but on topic for The Delirium Brief: an SMBC comic about parasites!

176:

You may as well ask why every review of a new desktop or laptop fails to prominently include its capability as a word processor.

177:

You need to learn how to use twitter properly, greg: that was a retweet of a comment on an earlier tweet. Here, let me show you the thread:

>> How many times will I have to read breasts described like they're caffeinated Yorkshire Terriers: perky, hand-sized, straining to be free.
>Destroying furniture, barking at other breasts on the street, valorized by the Victorians
>Wait no

(It works better in the original tweet-stream.)

178:

Er, no.

The Atari Portfolio was a pile of cheap junk compared to the Psion PDAs, which totally owned the market here in the UK. What killed them was a combination of two things: (a) Microsoft's usual FUD and pre-announcement of a competitor (which evolved into WinCE and then Pocket PC and finally died a few years ago, surprising no-one who ever used it — Windows CE 3.0 "Jupiter" was their touted Psion killer: it was a dog), and David Potter, the CEO, resigning because he had cancer just when the company most needed direction. It ended up being sold to an industrial devices manufacturer and stripped for talent and parts, opening the field for Palm to emerge.

It's worth noting that the final descendant of the Psion Series 5 heritage finally fizzled out a few years ago when Nokia ended development of Symbian — the smartphone OS based on Psion's EPOC/32.

179:
  • The Gemini camera is front-facing, for video calls, not photography. (There'll probably be an optional rear-facing camera for people who really can't live without one, but it's not definite yet.)

  • The keyboard is designed by Martin Riddiford, who designed the Psion 3 and 5 series PDAs and their keyboards, and looks passably similar to the Psion 5 ... only with a few updates. The Psion 5 keyboard was indeed touch-typable — head and shoulders above the tiny button-keys on devices like the Nokia Communicators, Blackberry, or Treo devices. (Not sure about your Samsung, but: probably that, too.)

  • Based on the drawings on the Planet Computing website it looks like Riddiford is determined that the new device won't have the same problems with the screen ribbon cable and hinges as the earlier PDAs, too.

    Oh, and

  • External status LEDs along the edge, and Google Voice control, mean it's possible to answer (and initiate) phone calls without opening the clamshell — something that's arrived since the Communicators ceased development.
  • It could all go horribly wrong if the software comes out half-baked, but I'm cautiously optimistic.

    180:

    I could, once upon a day, but I was trying to read the comment, which was e-mailed to me, possibly by an autoprogramme ( not a "bot" in the usual sense ) & also trying to reply ... I will make a simple test, elsewhere, just to see if I can get in, on this machine, as I know that it's borked on my phone.

    181:

    Depends if you follow the links or not. Martin might have got some new information, who knows? (specifically on Brexit & next gen drone tech and which companies to look at - plonk that .gov PDF non-link into a search engine, see what it spits out).

    The implication that FATA & Gaza are not just ghettos across the world but models should raise your eyebrows a little, no?

    According to the draft text, a slew of advanced surveillance technologies would be deployed at the border, including more use of drones (not less than 24 hours per day, five days per week), increased recording, and storage of various "biometric exit data." The bill would also require that some "aliens" who are ordered to be removed would be subject to mandatory DNA collection, among other heightened scrutiny measures.

    That notion has been used to justify electronic searches at the border in recent years, which Customs and Border Protection officials say happens only exceedingly rarely. Earlier this year, a California man told Ars about a recent episode at San Francisco International Airport in which border agents threatened to "be dicks" if he didn't unlock his iPhone. One of the sections of the act specifically calls for the head of DHS to create a system for "iris prints and voice scans" of all immigrants. The section is not specifically limited to undocumented persons or even criminal suspects.

    Adam Schwartz, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars that this was uncharted territory. "We really can't stop ourselves from leaving our biometric footprints behind us," he told Ars. "We leave our DNA and fingerprints around, too. While we can change our credit card number or our passport numbers, we're stuck with our biometrics."

    Building America’s Trust Act would dramatically increase surveillance of immigrants Ars Technica, Aug 15th 2017

    SEC. 420. ELECTRONIC PASSPORT SCREENING AND BIOMETRIC MATCHING. “(a) IN GENERAL.—Not later than one year after the date of the enactment of the Building America’s Trust Act, the Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection shall— “(1) screen electronic passports at airports of entry by reading each such passport’s embedded chip; and “(2) to the greatest extent practicable, utilize facial recognition technology or other biometric technology, as determined by the Commissioner, to inspect travelers at United States airports of entry. “(b) APPLICABILITY.— “(1) ELECTRONIC PASSPORT SCREENING.—Paragraph (1) of subsection (a) shall apply to passports belonging to individuals who are United States citizens, individuals who are nationals of a program country pursuant to section 217 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1187), and individuals who are nationals of any other foreign country that issues electronic passports. “(2) FACIAL RECOGNITION MATCHING.—Paragraph (2) of subsection (a) shall apply, at a minimum, to individuals who are nationals of a program country pursuant to section 217 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

    BATA leaked version Documentcloud, plain text version.

    So, there you go: Host's OP-ed is, well... almost reality (and you don't have to go to China for your dystopias).

    Whether or not it's quietly passed is a different matter: a good security scare would be needed.

    182:

    Oh, and read section 510: you'll understand better the immense drive being done in the USA to make the mythical 'ANTIFA COLLECTIVE[1]' into gangs[2], hint hint.

    “I think we should classify them as a gang,” said Arreguin. “They come dressed in uniforms. They have weapons, almost like a militia and I think we need to think about that in terms of our law enforcement approach.”

    “I think we are going to have to think ‘big picture’ about what is the strategy for how we are going to deal with these violent elements on the left as well,” said the mayor.

    Berkeley Mayor: We Should Classify Antifa ‘As A Gang’ CBS SF Aug 28th 2017

    Spoilers about what 'Big Picture' means in the medium term: you get your rights taken away if you're left of the Daily Mail. No joke.

    [1] Predictable.

    [2] Also the juggaloes.

    183:

    Great ... just as their hormones go a-buzz all over the map. Believe that this is also the age range for substantial changes in gray-to-white matter shifts in the brain esp. in the frontal and temporal lobes. Then consider what these particular lobes do.

    Ding Ding!

    Creativity and sensory gating indexed by the P50: Selective versus leaky sensory gating in divergent thinkers and creative achievers Neuropsychologia, 23rd Jan 2015, PDF, legal

    Cognitive mechanisms associated with auditory sensory gating Brain Cogn. 2016 Feb, Full text.

    Now imagine what you could do with a TV or a Phone signal... They do say that Computer Usage is re-wiring the brain, after all.

    ~

    Anyhow, to tie this all into a nice knot via the Apple X and the new unlocking features:

    Apple buys Israel’s facial recognition firm RealFace – report The Times of Israel, Feb 19th, 2017

    That's not to say it's not bug-free (in the class of being invisible to hand-soap dispensers):

    Apple suffers embarrassing demo Face ID fail at iPhone X launch Telegraph, 13th Sept 2017

    The USA (and Europe) don't really need authoritarian methods to build facial recognition DBs. Soon it'll be the way you unlock your phone.

    1984 is so quaint. (Seems like aeons ago that phrase "turnkey totalitarianism" was fashionable).

    184:

    ...where the actual voice call quality and capability is never reported.

    It is astounding what people will give up for mobility. At least in the US, most mobile phones and networks deliver quality that would have been rated "unacceptable" for landlines back in the 1970s (echo, latency, dropouts, clipping, etc). I worked in the industry and did that type of measurement back then.

    185:

    These are what we need to cleave to if we're not going to live out our lives in a shiny algorithmic big data hellscape.

    Just realized from Greg's email comments that he (and others) might not be quite up to date with the current state of smart phones and what apps are doing.

    Almost a year after app developer SilverPush vowed to kill its privacy-threatening software that used inaudible sound embedded into TV commercials to covertly track phone users, the technology is more popular than ever, with more than 200 Android apps that have been downloaded millions of times from the official Google Play market, according to a recently published research paper.

    More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads Ars Technica 8th May 2017

    Why Your Apps Keep Asking To Use Your Microphone ReadWrite 2014

    The Center for Democracy & Technology has been at the forefront of discovering and monitoring this new technology.

    Put bluntly, the TV / Phone interface has already been breached[0] and most people are wandering around with (invisible to them) clouds of sound around them[1] (like hippy auras, but real - like Ted Cruz, beware what you like on social media[2]) potentially pinging and giving an accurate data map of their behaviors (and location, but that happens anyhow). The jump to processing that in Real Time[tm] and using it as a behavioral determiner / leverage point is not so great.

    Anyhow, none of the fun stuff[3], but here's a question:

    A) When do people get serious about pollution here?[4] B) When do people stop being useful as DB farming products?[5] C) When do people wonder who is controlling this? D) When do people stop gawking at their shiny toy X and notice Zapper's brick wall?

    Things that make you go hummmm.

    Anyhow, I'll stop spamming now. Oh, and Greg: the links to the Russian / Ukraine UAV deployment was a non-subtle hint that the Russian's jamming UAVs are multi-purpose[6].

    It's like watching everyone run around with a mobile grenade in their hands and trying to point out that they're not understanding that's only the third most dangerous part of it[7].

    [0] Did you sign the EULA?

    [1] People love to claim that this is all over-hyped. But we're talking about the commercial versions here, not the weaponized stuff. Hello Langley!

    [2] Ted Cruz has been reported to Twitter for liking porn The Verge, 12th Sept 2017 - Greg, be careful with that like button!

    [3] Your search terms for the rabbit-hole: FUS / BCI / ITR / CFF

    [4] The answer is seemingly never: grown adults poisoning the world using football metaphors. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

    The 910th’s customized Modular Aerial Spray System is capable of a wide-variety of applications. For mosquito control, the system uses the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved and regulated material naled, which is not used in amounts large enough to cause any concern for human health, according to the EPA. The system disperses droplets small enough to land on a mosquito’s wing, using less than one ounce of naled per acre. That’s less than one shot glass for an area the size of a football field.

    Aerial spray for Hurricane Harvey relief Youngstown Air Reserve Station 7th Sept 2017

    [5] If you think this is cynical, process the hidden class / humanity signifiers in this CEO's quotation (hint: the hidden one is that Fast Food is not produced by chefs, it's a product chain promising perfection in presentation and performance universally across the brand - and remember that Harvard saying: "If you're not at the table, you're the one being eaten"):

    But at the same time, the CEO said: “Tasting food and creating recipes will always be the purview of a chef. And restaurants are gathering places where we go to interact with each other. Humans will always play a very critical role in the hospitality side of the business given the social aspects of food. We just don’t know what the new roles will be yet in the industry.”

    Meet Flippy, a burger-grilling robot from Miso Robotics and CaliBurger TechCrunch Mar 7th 2017

    [6] Ships fooled in GPS spoofing attack suggest Russian cyberweapon New Scientist, 10th Aug 2017

    [7] The Mind Has No Firewall Strategic Studies Institute, Parameters, Spring 1998

    187:

    It does look like a very fine device. It occurs to me that you're a major celebrity to the exact demographic these phones are aimed at. You should hook up with the company, get a beta, and help promote the thing - if you're inclined, of course.

    188:

    Well, if Charlie endorsed a piece of tech that would strongly influence my buying decision — and my 17-year-old phone needs replacing.

    189:

    Congratulations, you've managed the most Libertarian buzzwords in one paragraph I've seen in a while.

    What's the alternative to living in a state - living in a Libertarian "paradise", where corporations and the rich can do anything they want, including (for the low-budget companies) actual slavery (who's going to free them?), while big companies know wage slavery is so much cheaper and "more efficient, since they don't have to feed, clothe, or house you.

    Because that's what you want winds up being in the real world, more goddamned self-proclaimed "nobility" riding over the rest of us, because we don't know what's good for us.

    190:

    Cashless card... right. Hey, joe, can I use half the money on my cashless card to buy food for the next two weeks, and I'll tell you how much it costs, and you'll give me the change back?

    "Sure, no problemo."

    191:

    There are always ways around it. And the big idea in cyberpunk was "the street always finds uses of its own". Haven't you read about what was high-tech 6 or 10 years ago, now available in thrift stores?

    Phones? That's what burners are. And they have to do more, and at least in the US, they legally need a warrant to track me... since I have a flip phone.

    Speaking of which, per the discussion about mobile "phones": late in '10, I think it was, I heard a review of the LATESTGREATESTHOTTESTPHONES, and in the last minute of a 10 min report, they asked, "how about the voice quality?". The answer was, "well, these two are tolerable, this one's mediocre, and the rest are bad."

    The insanity of that seems to have passed both of them by.

    192:

    It's a computer, Greg. Six cores... Friend of mine, several years ago commenting on a shiny new iPhone (v 4, my first smartphone) said (reasonably close quote): "Look, Bill - it's a little slab of pure computer". (The density keeps increasing.) Gemini looks tempting.

    Backgrounder paper, short and sweet: An Industrial Strength Audio Search Algorithm. (2003, "Shazzam") The technique (and others like it) can be mapped to many other domains.

    193:

    Why bacteria "shapeshift" in space

    Hmm. If these E. coli clumps manifest in the human gut, I'd have thought the astromedics would have noticed by now. Or does astropoop just get tossed without examination?

    194:

    Yeah, that.

    My strategy if I ever really need to visit a country with a rep for searching and rooting devices at the border will be to simply raid the dusty desk drawer where the old gadgets go to die. iPod 5G for music, Kindle pre-loaded with ebooks (ahem: downloaded/DRM-stripped/ripped to mobi, then sideloaded onto an unregistered Kindle with no access to my Amazon account password/credit card), happy fun aged phone (maybe an iPhone 4 configured as a burner — or, just for lulz, something whacky like an old Sony-Ericsson running Symbian UIQ3, or a Nokia Communicator).

    TPTB can't really demand you hand over all the passwords on a device you're not carrying and might not even own. Meanwhile, if you're carrying a device that can't even run your password management software, much less the social network clients they're interested in, that's not going to tell them much (except you are either (a) a trailing-edge curmudgeon, or (b) utterly paranoid).

    195:

    I would say there is a difference between "normal" advertising and this. Normal advertising's intent is to get someone who isn't committed to buying one explicit item to choose the product they're advertising, as opposed to any other. This is one of the reason for "edgy" ads - you may not remember them, when you're staring at 15 brands of laundry detergent, but it may give their brand an edge.

    A lady I knew, back in the seventies, who was in advertising told me that, and suggested a book, which I read (may still have) about all of this.

    This attack on the electoral system is intended to make you question what you do know, and to throw other sources of information into doubt, then give you that "charge" to buy their brand of scum. That makes it a LOT more aggressive in getting into your psyche. And, after decades of the right, and ESP. [Ll]ibertarians proclaiming "they're all the same", to make you believe that.

    196:

    I am surprised by Nazis in Israel. On the other hand, anti-Semitism... remember, Arabs are also Semites.

    But who ever heard of two ethnics hating on each other... or are you a sassenach?!

    197:

    I can give you two more uses for 3-D printers: first, model railroad parts that aren't made by any manufacturer, or for a scratch-built item. Second... using MRI scans, print out a 3-D model of a tumor, for the surgeon to practice with, before the actual surgery.

    And yes, a team where I work is developing that.

    198:

    Question for the informed crowd here:

    What's the news to noise ratio in this confluence of three articles that turned up this morning on Talking Points Memo (a left-wing America politics blog, for those who don't know).

    Facebook’s Heading Toward a Bruising Run-In With the Russia Probe

    There's blood in the water in Silicon Valley about a political backlash against the perceived political power of American tech companies.

    The Growing Backlash against Big Tech, a commentary on the second article.

    I'm not taking this as gospel, but I am wondering about whether good ol' fashioned paranoid luddism, combined with the desperate desire for some big churches and increasingly obsolete industries to retain power, are going to lead to a bit of a shift in how the US is governed. My guess is probably not, and this is all about trying to punish people who supported Hillary, but we'll see.

    199:

    More than you might think and not entirely :-) Yes, that's why I wasn't surprised at their existence - indeed, I would expect it from some of the children of non-Jewish immigrants in Israel, for reasons I would rather not give. What I was surprised at was the behaviour of the authorities.

    200:

    Knowledge of past atrocities should be a reason to stop committing atrocities, rather than saying "that's history" and continuing to commit new ones.

    "Wer redet heute noch von der Vernichtung der Armenier?"

    (Who speaks these days of the annihilation of the Armenians?)

    Adolf Hitler Speech to the Wehrmacht commanders at Obersalzberg August 22 1939

    201:

    someone like Pigeon or Greg who avoids using mobile phones is quickly becoming the sort of anachronistic gadfly that automatically attracts suspicion

    That's easier for some than others.

    Being a parent without a mobile would be a complete pain for my kids. I'm not going to know if sports practice was cancelled, or where the meet-the-teachers evening has been moved to because of some schedule clash at school, or get the message that Anna's sleepover will finish at noon instead of 10.

    Not to mention that here in NZ every school's emergency-alert system for earthquakes and other emergencies being txt based (for good reasons - the mobile network's quite robust for the first half-day after a quake, until the call towers' batteries and backup generators die).

    202:

    If you remember the late 90's and Microsoft it's not at all uncommon for the winners of a wave of technical innovation to face a political backlash.

    I'd almost say it's part of the cycle

    It's generally pretty hard in the US at least for that backlash to actually have an effect. Those winners are generally sitting on huge piles of cash

    With the current administration I'd say "hard" goes to "impossible to imagine "

    203:

    Microscopy of faeces is not common except in suspected parasite infeststion so it would be hard to spot clumps. Cultures of organisms would grow as normal.

    204:

    Or does astropoop just get tossed without examination?

    Apparently they do save it: Space toilets, though I've no idea what they're looking for. This subject is bringing to mind the infamous Apollo floater (don't remember which mission), and the time the shuttle toilet broke down and the air had a brown haze. Now need some brain bleach, 'cause it's dinner time.

    205:

    Because unlike Blue ice (aviation), the resulting 'Brown Comet' might be a little more messy / wipe out towns. (They save it for the same reason they don't throw the trash out the window).

    Note: the Space Bacteria paper isn't a new one, it just proves it a bit more:

    Compounding the general in vitro antibiotic resistance increases reported for space, the formation of biofilm is also known, in and of itself, to increase resistance to antibiotics 10- to 1,000-fold over that of planktonic bacteria (156). Interestingly, some of the hypothesized mechanisms pertaining to biofilm resistance, such as the heterogeneous environment resulting from gradients of nutrients and waste in the community, are similar to those believed to cause spaceflight-related changes in antibiotic effectiveness. Morse and Jackson (177) described the potential for resistant strains to develop in a spacecraft water reclamation system as a result.

    Space Microbiology Microbiol Mol Biol Rev. 2010, full paper, Html. Gerda Horneck seems very cool and German Space Important.

    206:

    "I mean £1000 fora PHONE? And some mugs are going to be gullible enough for this shit? Yes, unfortunately, because they swallow Apple's hype & bullshit."

    Yeah... Especially when you pay so much less for a more powerful computer that is not crippled and locked-down and sandboxed up the wazoo so the Apsi (Apfelsicherheitspolizei) can dictate what you can and can't do with your own kit, and that does have a screen that is big enough in absolute dimensions to read and that does have a keyboard and one that matches the size of your hands too.

    It's not as if they aren't aware of the deficiencies. Look how common it is to see people excusing multiple typos or stupid autoincorrect words with "(sorry for typos, I'm on my phone)", or interpolating asides like "No link because I'm on my phone, but..." Yet the obvious conclusion, "You can't even bloody type properly on it and it keeps changing your words, what a useless pile of shite", somehow manages to get suppressed by the hype and bullshit.

    Of course, such behaviour is widespread in every field of human activity. It never ceases to baffle me how a supposedly intelligent species can be so fond of allowing bent information from self-interested sources to supervene over the contradictory evidence being furnished right in front of their noses.

    207:

    Because unlike Blue ice (aviation), the resulting 'Brown Comet' might be a little more messy / wipe out towns.

    Seems like a reply to a comment I didn't make, but anyhow... I seriously doubt a shitcicle would take out a town, unless they saved up for a few decades. Otherwise it's just going to evaporate on reentry.

    208:

    And, They save it for the same reason they don't throw the trash out the window

    The trash goes into an empty cargo capsule to get burned up.

    209:

    All of which, going back to my earlier link, I see is mentioned. (no I didn't read the whole thing before linking to it—a bad habit of mine)

    210:

    Yes.

    Thatsthejoke.jpg

    The further joke is that blue ice doesn't contain poo (banned for a while now, used to happen in the bad old days) and is largely due to leaks / equipment failure containing just fluids. But, hey, let's assume I have the IQ of a haggis, right?

    So, technically, it is saved for the same reason trash is not thrown out of the window: you want / need to burn it up in the atmosphere, thus it really does become a "Brown Comet" since all comets will burn up in the atmosphere[1].

    You know, because they're not meteors or asteroids.

    So... I guess the joke worked there.

    The interesting bit was the paper and the woman, who is remarkable.

    [1] I mean, technically comets have dust / rock in them, but traditionally don't have metals in them etc etc.

    211:

    And since literalism (and localized threat matrix attempts: don't come @ the Queen, Dears) is on the table:

    For Martin:

    Russia’s new drone-based electronic-warfare system, the Leer-3 RB-341V combines jammers and Orlan-10 unmanned aerial vehicles to disable cellular networks, and allow the Russian military to send fake messages to subscribers.

    The initial Leer-3 systems, which were deployed in 2015, were designed to disable Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) cellular networks. “But until recently, the complexes were not always capable of working with networks where 3G and 4G generations of information transmission technologies are being used,” TASS reported.

    Russia’s New Drone-Based Electronic-Warfare System Military UAS, April 4th 2017

    Oh, and...

    The additional two individuals appear to be cases that were only recently reported but occurred in the past. The State Department said no new, medically confirmed "incidents" have taken place since the most recent one in late August. Earlier this month, the U.S. disclosed there had been another incident in August after previously saying the attacks had stopped.

    US: 2 more Americans were affected by Cuba health attacks ABC News 12th Sept 2017

    I mean, we could really push the boat out here and all be honest for once, eh?

    212:

    "like wot I was writing about in "Halting State""

    You know... this really does puzzle me. You write things like "Halting State", which gave me the shits for being such a hell and such a possible one. Or "Empire Games", or this blog post. You not only understand the hell but you can think up ways for it to manifest itself that would never occur to me - and you're horribly likely to be right.

    Your distaste, it seems, owes a lot to understanding and analytical thinking, whereas mine is largely a paranoia borne of experience - it being well established that even the tiniest morsel of information, no matter how trivial, commonplace, or irrelevant, that someone gets hold of, they can subsequently use in some totally unexpected way to fuck you up, and it being computationally infeasible to anticipate and prepare counters to even an infinitesimal fraction of those unexpected ways, security must depend in the first instance on making sure you never tell them anything nor do you allow them to have any basis to guess.

    Yet you still enthusiastically festoon yourself with the enabling technology, and you don't even take it apart and rip out all the RF devices so it can't establish a network connection without you plugging in a cable to a suitably firewalled endpoint. Whereas I'd have thought you'd anathematise it to a greater extent than I do.

    It is interesting, too, to observe the way this thread has forked: the "shiny" and "hell" parts have separated, the "shiny" part shifting its focus to spots where the shininess is a little blurred, while the "hell" part seems to have digressed to wiping out towns by shitting on them from orbit. (It's the only way to be sure.)

    I suppose it's like... oil, really, or capitalism.

    213:

    Oh, and if we're gonna do it, do it properly:

    Mysterious lights in the sky seen after Mexico’s huge earthquake New Scientist, 13th Sept 2017 (NS are waaaay late to this party, but hey).

    Riddle me why they appeared over Miami and so on (no, it wasn't power transformers).

    It's a funny one that (green light =/= arc light).

    Flash YT: Music, Queen, 2:52

    p.s.

    LOA, LOA ON THE WALL, WHOSE BEEN RIDING TOO LONG TO ACCEPT A FALL?

    @Bill. You really should read the French paper on 20khz and temporal lobes. We're the sane ones...

    214:

    Well, as an American whose family presence in the Colonies predates the Revolutionary War very by over a century, I would think quite much.

    I have noticed that there is a large number of people, usually but not always, are well educated and well paid, who hold people having a strong sense of place, or religion, or patriotism as primative or even dangerous. It's not even a liberal or conservative issue although liberals are more likely to be so. It is sometimes returned as contempt for higher education or for thinking of the welfare or others outside the local community especially outside the United States.

    I have to be careful not believing too many people are. I do think too many use such beliefs and feelings as a reason not to think deeply.

    As in oh the Christians/Muslims can't really believe what they say. It cannot be because on faith or their honest interpretation of the Bible or Koran. They must be hateful monsters. Or the poor voted Trump or Brexit because they are bigots not because they have been screwed by every one in power for the last forty years.

    Too many also use their dislike of the elites as an excuse not to listen to facts and statistics. If those people, who are educated like those liberals, spout some nonsense like global warming why should we believe them? Who needs to study philosophy or politics it's all crap.

    215:

    the "shiny" part shifting its focus to spots where the shininess is a little blurred, while the "hell" part seems to have digressed to wiping out towns by shitting on them from orbit.

    The joke is that the Hell is actually reality while the Shiny is the mirage.

    We are trying to take a third shining path here (and not of the Blair type).

    You've just not spotted it yet.

    216:

    That description is missing one vital point about smartphones though, isn't it. Yes, I have a more powerful computer I bought a couple of years ago for rather less money sat on my desk. But it needs to sit on my desk, because it isn't possible to hold it in one hand and type with the other, which you can do with a phone. A phone fits in a reasonably sized pocket, a tower case with decent-sized monitor and attached peripherals would require distinctly unreasonable pockets. And yes, there are laptops in between, but they're precisely that: in between; smaller and pricier than a(n equivalently speced) desktop, but larger and cheaper than a phone.

    It's almost as though there's some kind of trade-off going on...

    I'm mostly stuck at home, so a desktop suits my needs very well, but plenty of people I know want to be able to do things while out and about, at which point they need a computer that can be easily carried. Some people even have both, and use them at different times!

    217:

    The Apple gear isn't as bad as all that, auto(in)correct will present you with it's proposed malapropism so the user has veto power, if user is paying attention. And I'm past 60 and find Apple's smallest current phone screen sufficient. And the $999 wunderphone? Not for me either, more than I need or can afford, but it's not that far out of line with top of the line android OS phones.

    218:

    Put it this way:

    BORDER AGENT: Unlock your phone with your face so we can look it over.

    INNOCENT PERSON WITH VALID VISA: I've not enabled that feature.

    BORDER AGENT: Unlock your phone with your face.

    INNOCENT PERSON WITH VALID VISA: You don't understand, that's not enabled on my device.

    BORDER AGENT: Look, we all know that you unlock these phones and facebook with your face, so stop messing around and look into it for us.

    INNOCENT PERSON WITH VALID VISA: No, you don't understand, I've ...

    BORDER AGENT: Oooh, I see. So you've hacked your phone so it doesn't work? Right then....

    Etc.

    If you really think the architects of BATA / Apple X don't understand how this plays out for even the lucky shiny Eloi, well then: Hell says you're being fucking naive.

    220:

    I've no idea what they're looking for

    Try reading the link. It kinda shows you a massive amount of stuff they do with all the poop.

    p.s.

    The whole dog meme - it's like cockroaches, we look out for it for the same damn reasons.

    Hint: We Know.

    221:

    Because Charlie realizes that any attempt to escape it is merely another delusion?

    I mean he does live in a pretty heavily survealed country

    And that is you can't escape the downside you might as well have the upside ...

    222:

    (And if you're not seeing the Surfing / Scatological use of "wipe out" then, hey. A smear across the atmosphere)

    p.s.

    Tell you a story.

    Man comes to something he thinks he knows what it is. Warns him all about his terrible Lord who resides beyond the cloud-tops in a castle. Tells the young boy a long parable about how terriers are raced in his village, how they all run along their little lanes after the (rabbit analog) they use to run them. Nasty things behind his eyes, tells a long story of how the terriers who get to the end of the straw-bale run are prevented from going further and warns the young man that the Lord of the Castle hates seeking snouts beyond their lanes, and how lucky terriers should be content on running their lanes and having the (rabbit analog) prize to rip to pieces.

    Man (not actually a man) thinks he's clever: deterrence and Lord adulated.

    Boy-who-really-is-not-a-boy nods and listens politely.

    Goes to Castle, rips the Lord to pieces: took the wrong moral from the story, didn't ze?

    Now, that's funny.

    223:

    Erm, if you mean the Space Microbiology link, it doesn't go where you think. Anyhow, Goodnight.

    225:

    "Being a parent without a mobile would be a complete pain for my kids."

    It wasn't for me when I was a kid, nor was it for any of the other kids. Stuff like you mention happened, but the world didn't end.

    It does bug me when people claim a phone is "essential" for this that or the other trivial reason that either they coped with just fine 10 or 20 years ago, or which only exists as a consequence of having a phone in the first place. Not having a phone is easy: you just don't buy one, and carry on as usual. Not buying a phone doesn't make anything more difficult, it just means everything after you didn't buy a phone is the same as it was before you didn't buy one.

    Obviously I have a computer, if not a KGB-issue portable one, but it certainly isn't "essential". It is basically a toy. I have it because I am interested in programming and electronics and other engineering things and so find it a very entertaining toy. I do use it for some important things that were a pain in the arse without it, but they are still very nearly as much of a pain in the arse with it, just in a different way. If I did not have that particular line of technical interests I wouldn't have a computer at all; there would be no point.

    226:

    Not buying a phone doesn't make anything more difficult

    Sorry, that's just. Oh dear. Please never say that to a Millennial. Or anyone on the dole.

    p.s.

    Do you really run the largest website for that particular "actress"? I mean, if you do, your computer is probably a little bit more than a toy. ^^[1]

    [1] If you don't happen to run the largest web forum dedicated to a particular 'actress', talk to host - someone using your name / tag / twitter was active on his feed and, well: I was most surprised by the dual aspects of Real Pigeon love and, er.. that actress. It was like: ok, lots of pigeons, grokking this, wow, really loves pigeons. Also runs a large webforum for... OHHH. Now that's NOT A PIGEON. O_O

    Hint: we're not stalking you, it's a defense thing.

    227:

    OHHHH.... TOO GOOD.

    BREAKING: Schumer, Pelosi announce deal with Trump to protect young immigrants; will include border security, but no wall. AP News, Twitter, 13th Sept 2017

    Do you think that might mean the Drone laden BATA will pass instead? Do you think that DREAMERS were the bait and the actual fascist BATA was the reel?

    Seriously: Americans, get the fuck out, you're being herded off the buffalo jump.

    228:

    Every. Fucking. Time. They. Fall. For. It.

    Yay! Dreamers saved!

    No wall![1]

    We're No. 1!

    I cannot believe they're getting away with this shit in 2017. looks at UK Parliament taking on Henry VIII prerogatives.

    Oh.

    p.s.

    Run.

    [1] Drones and BATA security measures may apply.

    229:

    BORDER AGENT: Unlock your phone with your face so we can look it over.

    INNOCENT PIGEON WITH VALID VISA: I don't have a phone.

    Yes, I have read "Empire Games" :) It seems to me that basically you're fucked whatever you do, but declining to opt in is the easiest way, and a usefully effective one, to limit the fuck space. Particularly where the dole is concerned since it's their principal strap-on.

    Re that website - no, still very much a toy, that site is totally and thoroughly non-commercial and is purely a hobby thing. It was more or less an attempt to put "why don't you do something instead of just moaning about it" into practice, in a rare and unexpected niche where I actually could, that would probably be more widely appreciated than my other such efforts (and apparently has been). Unfortunately everyone discovering I run it instantly jumps to the wrong conclusion and assumes something sick and insulting, of which I am fed up to the arse, and it's become more of an annoyance than anything else. I keep it up purely because quite a lot of people would be disappointed if I took it down, but I haven't updated the content for years, and I'm pretty much just waiting for it to die so I can get it off my back.

    230:

    Oh, Honey-bun. (@Host, where do you find these beautiful ones?) Please, keep updating it. In fact, upgrade it to embed pornhost links etc; you could probably do more to push her monetized output, but there we go.

    The joke is: Someone with a serious Pigeon Interest whose 'naughty' tastes are so vanilla?

    That's fucking hilarious.

    231:

    French paper Tx. Papers found. (Not unfamiliar btw.)
    The papers on sensory gating are also interesting.

    Not read yet, but it's shiny. Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms (20 Jul 2017) We propose a new family of policy gradient methods for reinforcement learning, which alternate between sampling data through interaction with the environment, and optimizing a "surrogate" objective function using stochastic gradient ascent. ... Our experiments test PPO on a collection of benchmark tasks, including simulated robotic locomotion and Atari game playing, and we show that PPO outperforms other online policy gradient methods, and overall strikes a favorable balance between sample complexity, simplicity, and wall-time.

    232:

    "I cannot believe they're getting away with this shit in 2017. looks at UK Parliament taking on Henry VIII prerogatives."

    I get the impression that a lot of people are kind of stunned by the endlessness of the succession of WTFs. The stunts the government has been getting up to since the election have got worse and worse, but the amount of reaction they generate gets less and less. I was amazed how your example seemed to float by everyone's attention and just drift away again, having never come anywhere near displacing Trump. It's as if people in the UK are using Trump as a comfortably-distant distraction from what's happening here.

    233:

    Note: I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing at your society.

    Pigeon Fanciers have always been an odd sort (and especially now, a dying breed, it's grim up North) and the modern world certainly sees it as a socially odd behavior. And your naughty choices are rather sweet and innocent (if, well, heterosexual). It's meant as a loving laugh, not a cruel one.

    It's more a joke along the lines of: Who would you trust with a young boy these days, certainly not the Priest.

    ~

    231

    It's found prior couple threads, 20khz treatment for Schizophrenia, same post as one on Whales and magnetosphere (The Guardian dude totally stole that post...).

    To showcase the performance of PPO on high-dimensional continuous control problems, we train on a set of problems involving a 3D humanoid, where the robot must run, steer, and get up off the ground, possibly while being pelted by cubes.

    Oh, it's this lot.

    There's a far better paper / video out there training jumps, ducking, running etc. That paper is out-of-date.

    Phase-Functioned Neural Network - that's your search term for the good stuff.

    Google's DeepMind AI just taught itself to walk YT: animation, June 12th 2017 1:50

    Note: they're not actually doing anything that interesting (cough Walking Army Dog cough)

    234:

    Charlie at OP:

    Social solidarity. Tolerance. Openness. Transparency that runs up as well as down the personal-institutional scale.

    Let me again put in a plug for Jacques Attali's Brief History of the Future. You seem to have ended up where he did in 2006.

    Attali thought it [a drive towards social solidarity and rejection of corporate surveillance] would start to happen about 2040. Given that economists are optimists by inclination and training, we might be waiting a while yet.

    And, possibly, better tools for authenticating public statements such as votes, tweets, and blog essays like this one. These are what we need to cleave to if we're not going to live out our lives in a shiny algorithmic big data hellscape.

    It has puzzled me, since I learned about the existence of digital identity certificates, that governments do not issue these along with birth certificates. I guess that the omission is due to techies's Dumb-And-Dumber equation, government == bad. Leaving the job to profit-motivated entities seems like a recipe for disaster--or has Her Majesty's Passport Office been privatized without me noticing?

    235:

    Presumably the libertarian counterargument would be that if enough people were interested in human wellbeing that the market would deliver it, and the current state of affairs is due to a majority of people being cunts.

    236:

    Yeah - but it's still a "phone" with a SMALL screen & SMALL keyboard ... Incidentally, I found a really good app for having a removable battery in your phone - mine went into "safe mode" ys=esterday, fuck knows why - the only way I could get out of jail was to remove the battery - & lo & behold, Twotter now works on it, as well - provided I can remember whatever my password was for it, since it's over 18 months since I last used the phone for "T".

    Amazingly a tiny bit of real, scary fact from Polly_Nomial - the hacking of GPS signals by Russia - oh dear.

    237:

    That's the technique of the Tobacco lobby & the climate deniers, of course - they are selling doubt by the shipload, enough to fuck-up rational decision-making (Assuming it ever existed in the first place )

    238:

    Not quite - I Have a phone ( Samsung SIII mini ) - I use it a lot - as a phone + 2 or 3 apps [ Speedometer, Google maps, a n other map programme, Twotter ( I still can't remember my pasword, even though it appears to be working again. That's it .... [ I might get the Woodland Trust's Tree-recognition app, too! ]

    239:

    Except that Leer system works by transmitting, doesn't it? Which means it can be homed in on & blown away ... like the Devon Plod who nearly Got It from a a Harrier, waaay back in the 80's when he was trying-out his new handheld speed-trap radar very close to a firing range on Dartmoor, oops.

    240:

    On phones being computers: I liked the Nokia N900 and N9, especially the N900, just because I could use them as computers. They ran Maemo and Meego, which were based on Linux, and you could even get a shell and ssh running on them.

    The N900 had a also pretty good hardware keyboard. It was obviously thicker than other comparable models, but not too thick for me. This made IRC and email with mutt (both on screen on a server) easy. I wouldn't like to type anything long on it, but every on-screen keyboard is much, much worse for anything needing typing. Like, IRC or emails, or even facebook nowadays.

    Apparently 'the market' does not want hardware keyboards, and that's why we don't get them. I have seen some Androids with them, but they were inferior in many respects to the N900 keyboard. Also, I like the 'sideways' keyboard - I think there are models with a portrait keyboard, but that's just too small for my hands.

    The shell prompt did have some consequences, though. I once deleted all my sms's and contacts from the N9 while trying to rebuild the pdf metadata database from the command line. For some reason I can't fathom, the sms's and contacts were saved in the metadata database, mainly used for cataloguing the documents, pictures, and videos on the phone. Annoying.

    241:

    I invented this ultrasonic mind control device but all it did was uplift the dogs in my neighborhood.

    242:

    There was a red aurora alert on the date of the "green blob in the sky" reports after a very large corona mass ejection. Seeing such things is definitely related to power transformers since most people only notice such things when the power is out and lighting is off especially at lower latitudes.

    243:

    (Heteromeles: Can lead be measured in flora - trees specifically? If yes, this could provide a benchmark for measuring exposure among a population within a specific geographic area.)

    Sorry, missed this on the first go-round.

    Yes, you can measure elements in trees. I don't know the specific method, but I assume that ashing a sample and running it through a mass spectrometer might work.

    What it will tell you...? That's the hard part, because I'm not sure where the lead would end up, and how much would stay in the plant. Plants (and the fungi that grow in them) do all so sorts of things with elements they don't need, from secreting them, to poisoning leaves by concentrating crap in them, then dumping the leaf, to crystallizing them in their hyphae so that they're out of the way (that trick was seen in mycorrhizal fungi growing on plants in a toxic waste dump in Poland, when the researchers were wondering how the plants managed to survive).

    In my utter ignorance, I'd be careful about assuming that any tree species would provide a consistent record of lead in the environment. While it would be great if lead got sequestered in the wood, so that you could core a tree, do lead analysis per growth ring, and figure out exposure, I'd be amazed if anything like that actually happened (not the least because the cells in wood are dead and hollow).

    If you're looking for a good annual record of lead pollution, the best I know of is pond sediments, followed by glaciers. I know they've tracked lead in both as a way of determining both when the bronze age arrived in a particular area (in both Europe and South America) and as a way of tracking how much pollution the industrial age produced. Glaciers, of course, have even longer time spans, but the problem is that they're melting, and the industrial layers are on top.

    244:
    Phones? That's what burners are. And they have to do more, and at least in the US, they legally need a warrant to track me... since I have a flip phone.

    Nope: burners have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

    There are not "always ways round it." There is only "my opposition isn't willing to spend the resources needed to defeat my tactics." If they are, you are boned no matter what you do.

    245:

    On lead in tree rings.

    It's a definite maybe. As seems reasonable it depends on the type of tree and its location relative to the pollution source. Usually how close to the road

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969701011494

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/56035

    https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00002930

    246:

    What makes it trickier, especially for lead, is that many elements are dangerous to mammals only in certain forms (either physical or chemical); as we can all remember, lead's salts are extremely insoluble and it is fairly unreactive. Leaded petrol was particularly bad, because it was breathed in, but the only other major problems were water in acid-water areas, lead-glazed or lead cooking vessels used for acid foods, people who got lead paint on their skin as a normal part of their job, and lead shot picked up by dabbling birds. Other than that, lead wasn't and isn't a serious problem. So, just knowing there is lead in an environment, doesn't help much.

    247:

    I got a n other forwarded tweet ... but the one I liked was the next about the Rees_moggage, where you said Evil, just evil" To which I would reply ... ( Except I couldn't, fuck knows why .. ) - so here it is anyway, because it's part of a shiny hell, after all (!)

    "No, actually, probably worse than evil - stupid & brainwashed" You have to remember that JRM is a really good catholic, all the time, every time, & that his attitudes to any $Issue will go along with his stance on anything & everything else, such as abortion. He's supposed to be very bright, but only as long as he is following catholic doctrine. Is this "worse than evil"? I might be inclined to say so, because it's a complete abdication of personal responsibility.

    248:

    [B]urners have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

    Aside from the tracking, which is probably different in different jurisdictions, the other things that can be used to connect the burner phone to you seem just regular opsec to me. I'm probably biased, I've worked with mobile phone tech somewhat and did study related things in the university, but in my opinion if you want to use burner phones, you need to think farther than "I'll buy a burner phone and connection with cash and then I'll be okay."

    249:

    You wrote: someone like Pigeon or Greg who avoids using mobile phones is quickly becoming the sort of anachronistic gadfly that automatically attracts suspicion

    That's easier for some than others.

    Being a parent without a mobile would be a complete pain for my kids.

    Oh, dear. Kids not approaching 99% happiness as a limit. Dreadful... Never worried about it, raising kids. No one had a cellphone then (except for rich people with car phones). Our son was, I think, over 10 before we got our first cellphone, and that was one of them, for emergencies. Kids with their own cells didn't start happening until around 2000. I'd prefer NONE OF THEM GOT TO EVER TAKE THEM TO SCHOOL.

    And I don't have a mobile. I have a flip-hone, a cellular telephone, so that I can speak to other people at a distance. A few times I've tried to put my email on someone's mobile, and gave up and let them do it. I DISPISE that idiocy that pretends to be a virtual keyboard.

    250:

    Yes, it's actually virtually impossible for the average person to remain anonymous if law enforcement cares enough to devote a lot of resources to the case. Remember, they may well be monitoring the person you're calling on a regular basis. So if that person's call records show a new unknown number that has the same usage patterns as your previous number, guess who bought a new phone? Also, if that person is being wiretapped and you have a conversation that can be used to identify you ("Hey John"), the gig is up.

    Just watch The Wire. You'll learn so much.

    251:

    A thousand pounds for a phone? Hey, let me know who's buying them - I think I can still find some "cryogenically-treated audio cables" that are for the true audiophile, and they were retailing at $1000.

    Really.

    252:

    Some of the time, it would get ugly. The rest... https://paws.kettering.edu/~jhuggins/humor/taco2bill.html

    The upper manager, or the cop, at some point, will actually say, "I don't see the problem...."

    A positive note from me: don't assume that even 80% of everyone is stupid.

    253:

    Well, yes there are ways to get around it. You're assuming that They have ultimate processing and manpower. They don't. Look at the fights over the US budget. And I just saw a piece yesterday, about the NSA drowning in data.

    They just can't go after every 2-bit conspiracy, when at least some of those are kids playing at it. Back on usenet, there were plenty of folks who, in their sigfile, would lard it with three lines of words that Carnivore would see, to attract them to innocuous email. And if you're using predetermined codewords....

    254:

    You have to remember that JRM is a really good catholic, all the time, every time

    No, Greg, I disagree: R-M is a very bad Catholic, and I'm pretty sure that in a private audience the Pope would give him a complete bollocking over his attitude to the poor and needy. R-M is in fact incredibly selective about which bits of Catholic doctrine he will publicly shout about and which bits he will conveniently ignore. He's entirely happy about the authoritarian patriarchal bits; but the charity stuff, the anti-war stuff, the condemnation of greed and the pursuit of riches at others' expense, not so much.

    (I am not defending the core belief system here. I'm just pointing out that there's a huge bunch of epiphenomena around it, some of which are terrible and some of which are actually quite laudable, and Rees-Mogg has an unerring ability to clutch the bad teachings to his chest while rejecting or suppressing the good ones.)

    255:

    "They just can't go after every 2-bit conspiracy" - that's exactly my point: your only hope is to be not worth the hassle. And everything's stored, so you can't ever become worth the hassle. All in a context where "the hassle" constantly decreases as computing power & knowledge improves. There are no reliable tactics. Presuming to be beneath notice is not a tactic.

    256:

    The British police had a "target" system a while back, I don't know if it still applies. They used existing criminal intelligence to identify a target criminal or group or a gang and then applied extraordinary (in the literal sense) amounts of manpower and budget to track and observe those targets. The aim was to catch them in the act of planning or carrying out a serious crime. Even a while back it could cost half a million pounds a week in terms of teams of operatives, vehicles, managers, premises etc. Part of the target process was to observe who the targets talked to, who they communicated with etc. The target system had some publicly acknowledged successes but it's inevitable that many of the operations were busts with no outcome to justify the expenditure in money and resources.

    The Internet and modern communications make it both easier and more difficult to carry out such targeted surveillance -- more people flooding the channels with data irrelevant to any sort of criminal investigation while at the same time allowing semi-automated filtering of such traffic. However there's a certain amount of edginess in many people's minds, the idea that they're subversive and so the Man is bound to have them on their radar hence the talk about burner phones and not leaving a trail or wearing IR LEDs around your neck or.... I call this the Doctorow Effect.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh4Q3A0jvKY

    257:

    You and the others commenting on parenting really don't get how much of a step change there has been in the last 10 years. The social aspects of parenting are now hugely and intimately tied to your mobile, whether it's What's App groups, Neighbourhood Facebook feeds or the Local Councils Twitter feed. Arguably all contributing to the richness of our social interactions, in quite a positive way regardless of the misused such things are also put to.

    Every year it gets harder and harder to avoid and whilst it's easy to say you'll avoid it for you benefit it gets harder and harder to do so when it negatively impacts your kids.

    I'm lucky I get to do most of it vicariously through my wife thus keeping my phone pretty vanilla.

    Gawd knows what it will be like in another 10 years but better off teaching the nippers the pros and cons of the mobile as a tool now so they can at least be partially prepared for whatever twisted devices the future brings.

    258:
    It wasn't for me when I was a kid, nor was it for any of the other kids

    You actually typed out the point and still missed it.

    When "the other kids" have phones, you get a phone or you accept being out of touch (in the actually in communication sense) with your peers. This is not a trivial cost to social primates.

    259:
    the idea that they're subversive and so the Man is bound to have them on their radar

    This is your occasional reminder that every website every resident of the UK visited in the last two years is available without warrant to 48 bodies, from GCHQ to the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority. Feeling that you're on someone's radar is the rational, sensible position.

    260:

    Well, that parents even give kids phones at all I count as another piece of insanity. It would have been out of the question to be given any present as expensive as a phone, no matter what it was. "Big present" was a bicycle, probably second hand, and you didn't get something like that every year. And it would have been starkly unthinkable to be given a present which was not only horribly expensive in the first place but also required even more money spent on it continuously to make it keep working. That would have been ""I want" doesn't get" and "you can have one of those when you're old enough to pay for it yourself".

    Now it's as if every girl who wanted a pony actually got one, instead of just the tiny minority whose parents could stand the expense. And rode it to school, too.

    261:

    "...better off teaching the nippers the pros and cons of the mobile as a tool now so they can at least be partially prepared for whatever twisted devices the future brings."

    Except that's pretty much the opposite of what actually happens. The adults are oblivious of the problem and hand the things unthinkingly to kids who add to an even greater obliviousness the trust and naivety of childhood. Mummy and Daddy won't give you something bad, of course not, it must be good. It's the same sort of perverse miseducation as school "IT" lessons teaching the kids that nothing exists beyond Microsoft. They are not being partially prepared for the twisted devices of the future; they're being made more unprepared by being taught at an early age to regard the bloody things with unconditional trust.

    "You're not having one of those until you can pay for it yourself AND you know how to sniff network traffic and patch software without the source code" - now that would be valuable education.

    262:

    Um, no.

    Here's how to be not worth the hassle.

    Have lots of online friends.
    Contribute to a lot of campaigns on both sides of any issue. Contribute to a wide variety of charities. Make yourself valuable to the community. Have nothing to do with anything violent (in other words, make the only laws you're willing to break the ones that make people queasy to enforce, like wearing a clown nose at a protest).

    Then, if they come after you, you've got links all over the place, many of which they don't want to investigate.

    The other thing to do is to have multiple online identities, so that your behavior map throws up confusing correlates and doesn't really correspond to any distinctive profile.

    The fundamental problem isn't the computer, it's manpower to chase down leads. We've seen that since before 9/11, where people had the suspects on their radar but couldn't do anything about it. Make your leads too manifold to chase down for the level of offense you might have conceivably caused, and you probably won't rise to the level of problem on anyone's radar.

    Oh, and one more thing. Thanks for giving me plausible deniability...

    263:

    Except that's pretty much the opposite of what actually happens. The adults are oblivious of the problem and hand the things unthinkingly to kids who add to an even greater obliviousness the trust and naivety of childhood.

    Based on your experience of...? :) You sound like a Daily Mail columnist when you put it like that :)

    We've certainly been educating the kids in their awareness of phishing, malware, online fraud, dishonest identities, etc since their first steps online. I don't think we're unusual in that; as a "for instance":

    http://theriskfactory.org/

    This is a facility in Lothian that our kids' school sends all of its pupils in Primary 7 (11-12 year olds); I volunteered to help supervise with youngest's class. It's scenario-based training, and rather effective. It also included an online safety awareness session...

    264:

    Makes me laugh to see progressives behaving like conservatives, and not noting the irony

    I'd prefer NONE OF THEM GOT TO EVER TAKE THEM TO SCHOOL... I DISPISE that idiocy that pretends to be a virtual keyboard.

    Rule 1 when declaiming an entire technology is unnecessary, ready to destroy civilisation as we know it, never would have happened in my day...

    :)

    Be prepared to have it pointed out that obviously, standards are slipping with these old-fashioned educational techniques, the elderly can't even spell properly any more, country's going to the dogs I tell you, all of these old-fangled quill pens are destroying our mature folks' ability to spell correctly, and their manners are simply appalling - all of that SHOUTING IN PUBLIC...

    :)

    My wife and I both have busy and occasionally unpredictable jobs. Yes, the world would work without wireless telegraphy, but it's a lot more convenient to have it available. We can coordinate with the boys with ease; reassure them if traffic is a nightmare and we're running late to pick them up; tell them we're just outside (see frequent debates on foul weather in Edinburgh - a wet winter's night with sideways near-freezing rain, is not an enjoyable place when you're trying to locate each other).

    As a "for instance", the boys were cycling in the nearby woods the other weekend (see? fresh air, exercise). They managed to cycle over a wasps' nest, over a mile away, and there were multiple stings per child. It was useful to be able to nip down in the car with the after-bite ointment and check them out, because oldest could phone to say what had happened.

    So, yes. They have (cheap, Microsoft) smartphones, and they take care of them. I loosely monitor online behaviour; control the amount and limit the timings of access; and warn 12-year-old when his Minecraft server moderation is taking up too much time (15-year-old is careful not to indulge his Overwatch and 9gag habits until after he's completed his homework).

    265:

    Well, Charlie's blog does tend to attract an unrepresentatively clued-up segment of the population... Elsewhere I encounter people like my sister who just ignores it, or the chap who discovered his kids had been playing some game which involved them spending real money on his Amazon account (apparently they didn't know that what they were doing had that result), which he hadn't realised was even possible and didn't know what to do about it.

    It might be quite fun to be a Daily Mail columnist. I reckon I could get the style down pat, and that would be enough that it would be quite a long time before they noticed that my actual content was diametrically opposed to what the rest of the rag was saying :)

    266:

    Rather like a number of American bishops, who were up in arms at the new Pope actually talking about the poor and saying things needed to be done about them, rather than praising the Bishops for donating some money to help the poor. Naturally said Bishops get drive around in very nice cars and live in swanky houses in good addresses, like Rees-Mogg.

    267:

    True - but the schools certainly aren't ignoring it. In my era of the early 80, we were warned against the perils of drink, drugs, and contraception-free sex. That was about it.

    Nowadays, (again, using kids' large school in the city as an example) they do a wide range of stuff under the heading of "personal development" - they do the abvious drink/drugs/sexual development stuff; but also interpersonal relationships, etc, etc. They start it earlier, and they do more of it.

    This week's session involved the kids being mildly amused as they were "lectured at" about how they were all "addicted to smartphones" (the visiting lecturer had taken a page out of Marks' book). However, the follow-on involved discussion on the nature and unreality of online pornography (and yes, I'd already had that debate with each son, before they started secondary school). They've done stuff on cyber-bullying, echo chambers, etc, and they do it little and often.

    So yes, some parents might be ignorant, but the majority I know are very approving of how the school is handling it... it's not to say that the drink, drugs, and unprotected sex isn't happening within the 15-and-upwards[1], but at least the participants can't claim ignorance.

    [1] As per your example, naive and unaware parents. When under-age, generally among those children with older siblings. And, of course, with the exaggerration and gossip that teenagers specialise in.

    268:

    Ewww. Covert tracking with music, involving smartphones. CovertBand: Activity Information Leakage using Music (Sept 2017) This paper contributes a novel method for low-cost, covert physical sensing and, by doing so, surfaces new privacy threats. We demonstrate how a smartphone and portable speaker playing music with embedded, inaudible signals can track multiple individuals’ locations and activities both within a room and through barriers in 2D space. We achieve this by transforming a smartphone into an active sonar system that emits a combination of a sonar pulse and music and listens to the reflections off of humans in the environment. Their website: CovertBand

    269:

    The idea is that the relays (the mobile drones) are trackable, and expendable, but unless you can hack those you're not going to be able to determine the Leer ground location.

    The links provided (2nd one on Ukraine) show the multi-purpose over-lapping deployment: there's ~13+ different units / bits of tech being deployed.

    As stated: Martin (or Other .mil wonks) will spot the 'defense in depth' nature of the over-lapping fields.

    Which is probably required, since Drones are... well:

    Spies in the Sky: Israeli Drone feeds hacked by British and American Intelligence The Intercept, Jan 2016 - Operation Anarchist (cute!).

    Drones – A hacker’s playground Kudelski Security, June 2016 - nice little piece, well sourced.

    Obviously, not linking to Black-hat sites, but... it's a buyers' market out there (and there's 100% a kultur crew of those who just simple love watching the feeds as you would open laptop / security cams. Very... particular ones, those. Often play EvE a lot).

    ~

    Thanks for giving me plausible deniability...

    That's why you should always visit the links. (!).

    270:

    Imagine that you have a child with Type 1 diabetes or serious life threatening asthma. For the diabetic child, a continuous glucose monitor and an app that phones the parents can alert them if their child goes hypo. Or if John's mother bakes and brings a batch of cookies and the diabetic takes a chance to feast on the stuff he doesn't get at home. An app for asthma would let the parents know if the child goes into respiratory distress. Kids die when teachers or caretakers aren't alert or inadequately trained.

    Do you really want to ban kids phones at school?

    271:

    Re: '... the new Pope'

    Yes, even though the College of Cardinals elected him, Francis managed to surprise quite a few by remaining devoted to the poor and foregoing pomp where possible. Not an act: he took public transit while a bishop and lived in a very basic apartment.

    Now if he could only wrap his head around women's rights esp. as it pertains to their own bodies.

    272:

    Re: Kids and mobile/smartphones

    Gave our prog a simple cell phone at a youngish age because both parents work long and sometimes irregular office hours/travel, plus major traffic headaches to pick up/drop off at school, plus a stretch of a major medical issue. Also said: call anytime if you have any problem/concern/don't feel well: we will (and still do) always pick up prog's call.

    No issues with billing or worrisome contacts because we also showed prog the bill which itemized every single call placed, i.e., number, date and duration. So prog was from the get-go aware of the reality of constant, if not real-time, surveillance. :)

    273:

    The USA and the UK have vastly different legal and cultural standards in this matter.

    In the UK, the adults are expected to have duty of care and take on the legal responsibilities of guardians: children not having phones within classes is fairly common, and almost 100% in Public (which are the UK private) school classrooms.

    In the USA.... not so much (zero tolerance rules etc).

    Expect a lot of UK based flare-back on this issue: reading Martin's posts is probably instructional.

    p.s.

    Did y'all not realize you were being given an invisibility / respectability cloak? You know, the kind they love to map people with. You're all (if you follow the links) listed as a A/B type naow.

    Ok, now that's funny. Thought that one was obvious for a year or two now.

    [And pro-tip: the fact that it's all on target, on message, interesting (well, most of it) and within the sphere is just. Finesse.]

    274:

    Biometric phone security has been around for a while and so police already have open access to phones. In fact, they already have a big file of biometric data that can open most phones these days (finger prints...)

    275:

    Funny you should say that. Until my landline went digital end to end, I used to often have to ring people back from my mobile in order to understand them.

    The only time a mobile goes horrible as you describe is when it's being used hands free.

    276:

    Re: Drone hacking

    Interesting articles ... my take-aways/questions:

    Just because they're fundamentalists in terms of their religion/ethics, doesn't mean they're not tech savvy. Which can also be restated as: Just because they're modern in their human rights outlook, doesn't mean they've got the best tech. Seems this is just about always overlooked/ignored by pols and media when discussing these groups. Downright stupid unless such dismissal is intended to comfort/con the Western public into thinking 'Of course, we'll win - just look at their primitive/old-fashioned beliefs! Anyone that old-fashioned will be using some antique like a blunderbuss!'

    Just how many more layers of tech can the military pile up before the whole weapons/military system crashes? It doesn't seem as though any previous tech has been ditched or replaced, just more and more layers being added. Each layer of tech probably also means an additional layer of personnel - and support for that personnel. Very expensive. Also wonder if there's a point where the benefit of adding another layer of tech is offset by the confusion (and expense) of having one more resource to plan around. And if all systems are interconnected, more potential targets for the bad guys.

    277:

    Austr sat in aldna í Járnviði ok fæddi þar Fenris kindir; verðr af þeim öllum einna nokkurr tungls tjúgari í trölls hami.

    Fyllisk fjörvi feigra manna, rýðr ragna sjöt rauðum dreyra; svört verða sólskin um sumur eftir, veðr öll válynd. Vituð ér enn - eða hvat?

    Given both you and Greg have mis-labelled me 'Wolf', well then. You should probably clean out the old wet-ware, looks a little... corrupted.

    p.s.

    Tell you a little story:

    A boy (not a boy) was sat in a Tavern, all alone: The Clock struck ten In walked a Man with his two tattoo'd heavies Come to make a deal Great patter and parlay the Man bespoke Of how things were just better Under his yolk Boy (not a boy) smiled and asked the two Are those meaningful or just pretty, as are you? They demurred and accepted the Boy's smile The Man demanded an answer, a drink and a promise Couldn't afford his last beer, so taken on credit... So the Man owed the Boy his very last drink A debt not paid and shouting "kill him" (not fulfilled) is nary an "annulled"! So, let me finish my drink... Said the Boy (not a boy) and let me think.

    Inaudible High-Frequency Sounds Affect Brain Activity: Hypersonic Effect Journal of Neurophysiology Published 1 June 2000, Full text.

    p.s.

    Jokes about uplifting dogs are cute until you're the ones who the dogwhistles are about.

    Hint:

    You're so fucking outclassed, it's getting embarrassing. Points to the World Stage

    278:

    Since the discussion has shifted towards the necessity of a phone in today's world, I think many of you work in offices where the use of a mobile phone is not (informally) mandatory.

    I am in an office where most people (including the immediate management) is in their late 20's to early 30's. Office politics requires that everyone has Venmo on their phones.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venmo

    If we go to lunch as a group bigger than 10, then it is considered against company culture for everyone to give their credit cards to pay. Instead, my manager pays with his credit card, and everyone pays him back via Venmo. I found out quite early that he looks down upon anyone trying to pay him back by cash, and any exact change in denominations lower than a quarter is not allowed. Checks are also out of the question.

    Even in smaller groups, we sometimes gone to restaurants which refuse to split the bill more then 4 ways. So if we're a group of 6 without the manager, we still use Venmo to pay the people who pay with their credit cards. It's considered extremely low-class to pay via cash.

    In these situations, it's extremely bad office politics to use cash or checks, and no one is giving you their routing number so you can do a bank transfer. I wonder how many other offices with Millenial managers have a similar culture?

    279:

    Like someone said earlier it's not the device it's the network that makes phones indispensable

    Just like the land line telephone before them

    There is certainly an awful lot of "old man shakes fist at cloud"

    I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you...

    280:

    Oh, too good.

    You should check where the Moon is now in your Sky and the Science and so on.

    No, really.

    281:

    Been catching up on tech news feeds. Meta-comment; roughly 10 percent in the last 1.5 months could be considered panopticon-related. Mostly attacks on privacy, sometimes dressed up as beneficial (to society, and to individuals), and a few defenses. Spammy, sorry about that. Did a cursory archives search for paper titles/links and pruned out obvious duplicates, apologies for any remaining duplicates - some of them are familiar.

    A few articles on smart phone apps to detect medical conditions: melanoma, pancreatic cancer, concussion. ML paper (nature) on an approach to ASD detection (requiring 3D images). (links on request.)

    Lip Reading Sentences in the Wild (2016, don't know why it showed up in 2017/08 feed, don't see a link to the paper on this blog, recall it being mentioned though.)

    Algorithm unlocks smartwatches that learn your every move (think about it for a second or two) Centralized class specific dictionary learning for wearable sensors based physical activity recognition - Know that other classes of activity could easily be learned. Cough. ( http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7926100/ if you don't want to click on a researchgate link ) E.g. earlier work: Comparing Deep and Classical Machine Learning Methods for Human Activity Recognition Using Wrist Accelerometer (and another 10-20 other papers by various people)

    New software can detect when people text and drive (2017 - did not find a pdf of paper)

    Predicting sex as a soft-biometrics from device interaction swipe gestures (Old, 1 Aug 2016)

    Keystroke Inference Using Smartphone Kinematics (13 May 2017, abstract only, was this mentioned previously?)

    Harnessing Autonomy for Countering Cyberadversary Systems (HACCS) DARPA - Aug 03, 2017, proposals due by 29 Sep 2017! The goal of the Harnessing Autonomy for Countering Cyberadversary Systems program is to develop technologies for accurately identifying malicious cyberadversary infiltrated networks, generating software exploits for large numbers of known (n-day) vulnerabilities, and creating safe, reliable, and non-disruptive autonomous software agents that can be inserted in the compromised networks via the n-day exploits to safely and reliably neutralize cyberadversary software agents. (bold mine)

    Drone Relays for Battery-Free Networks SIGCOMM ’17, 21-25 August 2017 Kinda interesting, drones as elements of local fine-grained infrastructure involving RFIDs: this paper presents RFly, a system that leverages drones as relays for battery-free networks. RFly delivers two key innovations. It introduces the first full-duplex relay for battery-free networks. The relay can seamlessly integrate with a deployed RFID infrastructure, and it preserves phase and timing characteristics of the forwarded packets.

    273 you were being given an invisibility / respectability cloak tx, btw. (such things are educational, when noticed.) 280 you mucking with lunar calendars again? (A little wistful that I don't remember the tables learned as a kid for telling the time from the position of the big dipper/plow and date)
    282:

    "out of the question to be given any present as expensive as a phone, no matter what it was. "Big present" was a bicycle"

    That's hilarious...

    My last smart phone cost almost exactly 1/100th of my last bicycle.

    When I was a kid I got a watch for a significant birthday (10th?). I wasn't told how much it cost but a week's wages would be a good stab in the dark... More than the latest iThing by a goodly margin. All it did was tell time, which was useful to be home when my curfew began, but didn't have any other real uses.

    283:

    Unfortunately, approximately 2% of people are stupid, same as approx 1% of people are complete shits (see my next post!) .... but that is all it takes to screw it for everyone!

    284:

    In which case, since you appear to have been paying closer attention than I, ... he really is an evil shit (See previous post) I must admit, I've just gone:" Oh JRM sounding his catholic nonsense off again, ignore it, because he's at leat 200 years out of date..."

    285:

    The idea is that the relays (the mobile drones) are trackable, and expendable, but unless you can hack those you're not going to be able to determine the Leer ground location. Yeah, so? Not sure I buy it - because The Ground Station will be ( Must be) transmitting & is therefore targetable. And, as you yourself state, thedrones are hackable, so there is/are two lines of attack on this sytem, straight off. Scissors? Paper? Stone?

    286:

    Now if he could only wrap his head around women's rights esp. as it pertains to their own bodies. Oooh! Aren't we an optimist! Excuse the sarcasm, but I really don't see that one happening

    287:

    Few can see past when Odin meets the Wolf.

    Bugger uplifting dogs/wolves - try cats instead - some are well-along that route already.

    288:

    Obviously USSA & stark raving bonkers .... NOT protocol in "The City" I can tell you.

    Oh, & talking of stark raving bonkers

    289:

    Part of me is horrified by this even though it proves my point, and even though I'm a regular PayPal Gift user which seems functionally identifical. To be clear it's the enforced office comformamce that seems horrible even though it makes perfect sense. I'm with Unholyguy @279 on this one.

    Few of us these days have the either the social, technical/educational or cultural skills to deal with the huge opportunity costs of not using a smartphone as part of our societial engagement.

    290:

    Just how many more layers of tech can the military pile up before the whole weapons/military system crashes?

    For a salutory reality-check, it's worth rooting out a second-hand copy of The Baroque Arsenal by Mary Kaldor, pub. 1982. Kaldor isn't a crank; she worked at SIPRI, was one of the founders of European Nuclear Disarmament, and is currently Professor of Global Governance and Director of the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit at the London School of Economics. So it's fascinating to see how badly this very erudite academic commentator got everything wrong in her bestselling 1982 book.

    The TLDR of "The Baroque Arsenal" is that the west (notably the USA) has focussed since the 1960s on compensating for being militarily outnumbered by building increasingly expensive weapons systems — the focus of the Military-Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned about — and that this "baroque arsenal" of ever-more-sophisticated hangar queens is both expensive, unreliable (and unlikely to work), and destabilizing because it offers the chimeric hope of being able to wage a war free from casualties (at least, on "our" side).

    History has definitively proven her wrong on pretty much all of her assertions. While Version 1.0 of the Baroque Arsenal (circa the 1960s) was laughably unreliable and over-ambitious, she was blindsided by the effect that cheap computing power would have on the picture. She didn't expect cruise missiles or BVR AAMs to work, much less precision guided artillery or agile combat aircraft or stealth technology. And in her terms of reference — looking back from 1980-81, when she would have been researching and writing — she was probably correct: but the technology was already there in embryonic prototype form, and over the next three decades it matured into what we see today.

    So I'm very cautious about asserting that we've reached the end of this progression and that smart weapons can't get any more baroque.

    291:

    Let me add to this: Pigeon seems to be a little out of touch — in 2013, the average pocket money given to kids aged 8-15 was roughly £6 per week.

    A cheap bicycle with the minimum of essential accessories (lights, helmet, bike lock) costs on the order of £200. And I'm talking about a crappy minimum-cost Halfords kid bike, not a real bicycle.

    A cheap Android smartphone starts at £40. You can get a pretty decent one for £120 or so.

    A pay-as-you-go SIM can be topped up from less than £10 a month, including some wireless data. (You put the kids on pay-as-you-go specifically so that if some wee shitebag steals their phone, the thief can't run up a stupendous bill on the credit card of mum and dad.)

    Note that the cheap Android phone is the current generation's equivalent of: the walkman, the radio, the bedroom colour TV, the games console, a pocket camera, and an hour a night yacking with their besties on the land line.

    So the TCO of a phone, for your kid, is a combination of "cheap-to-medium birthday present" plus ongoing maintenance of "20-30% of pocket money", and replaces five medium-to-pricey birthday present gadgets and an ongoing phone bill.

    Looking at the price of a maxed-out iPhone X, blanching, and saying "I wouldn't give that to my child" is like resolving, when your 17 year old wants to learn to drive, that you're not going to buy them a Tesla Model S to learn on.

    292:

    Excuse the sarcasm, but I really don't see that one happening

    Not with the current pontiff, but wait for the Catholic church to allow married clergy then add 30-40 years: having cardinals and maybe a pope who are or have been married and had female children will be a significant change. (Maybe not a sufficient one — look at the Saudi clergy, or the ultra-Orthodox rabbinate — but being led by men who are segregated away from women socially clearly can't be helping.)

    (And allowing married priests is going to happen sooner rather than later; recruitment rates are through the floor and there's an official Vatican enquiry into historical child sex abuse that is pointing the finger at two root causes — the culture of secrecy, and the requirement of celibacy.)

    293:

    So, well after both of us have been dead for 50-=100 years, then?

    Of course, priests used to be able to marry, until "reformers" got at it including that prize bastard, Bernard of Clairvaux

    294:

    The reason for priestly celibacy was to prevent the papacy becoming a hereditary monarchy (consider the Borgias). With the Reformation in the offing, that would have sounded the death knell for the papacy as it would inevitably evolve into just another imperial power.

    The reason they'll ditch it is the same: to avoid an existential threat to the continuity of the church — in this case, a death spiral in recruitment of new priests (which also may have something to do with demographic transition: former high birthrate Catholic countries that produced lots of surplus boys are no longer so pious and family sizes have crashed, so there are far fewer boys eligible for — much less willing to go into — the clergy.)

    These are all long term, multi-generational changes. So yeah, it probably won't happen within our lifetimes. But I think it's more likely that it'll happen than that the Catholic Church will allow itself to go out of business on a point of secondary ideology.

    295:

    A slight correction - you put their phone on pay as you go so it can be integrated I to pocket money and more importantly, to avoid getting bills for multiple hundred pounds of voice and data usage, as happened to someone I know a few years ago. Obviously not all teenagers would do that but I guarantee a lot would.

    296:

    The Ground Station will be ( Must be) transmitting & is therefore targetable.

    With ground > satellite and satellite > drone relays your ground station can be half a planet away, as we see with some of the predators in the middle east being operated from US soil. There are plenty of other options as well, starting with simply siting the transmitter a lengthy distance from the control station and using fibre optic cable to avoid emissions, which is 70s tech...

    297:

    Anyone who wants to see "state of the art" in Surface to Air Missiles should do a quick search for Sea Sceptre launch video. Up about 30 feet, pitch over 90 degrees, light booster and gone.

    298:

    Sea Ceptor, aka CAMM, a vertical-launch relative of ASRAAM for naval point defense.

    299:

    Re: 'Oh (pol of your choice) ... sounding his ... nonsense off again, ignore it, because he's at leat 200 years out of date..."'

    This is probably their working strategy: too many people are tuning out because they're suffering from negative emotional/psychological overload. Once only those who agree with that pol are the only tuned-in/engaged segment of society, anything can happen, i.e., any bill can be passed, any atrocity committed.

    What we as a society need is a form of selective deafness (dampen down the massive outpourings of hate and lies) while still remaining aware of the dangers ... a haz mat suit for the mind. Blogs like this help.

    300:

    You're seeing, and missing my point. If you are a Big Name Plotter, they're all over you.

    If, on the other hand, you and a friend or two are utterly appalled by what's happening, and start plotting, and set up a cell (political) system, and the nearest you have to a criminal record were parking tickets, the software's not giving you more than a cursory look. And even with computing power constantly going up, so is the sheer volume of what they're trying to track.

    Datum: with a cluster of over 1100 nodes, a program (NIH-xplor) modelling protein folding can run for one to two WEEKS, on bare iron, not VMs, and maybe one-two other programs running. Now you're the NSA... and you're trying to grep through 30M people's phone and emails... the computations do not go up arithmatically, more like geometrically or logarithmically. And then, you add in all the false positives....

    This is not a simple problem, to be solved by just throwing more, faster hardware at it.

    301:

    Up about 30 feet, pitch over 90 degrees, light booster and gone.

    Vertically launched ABMs and SAMs with extreme pitch-overs right after launch seem to have been around for quite a while. When you think about it, that makes sense in terms of responsiveness and relative simplicity of the launcher.

    See

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msXtgTVMcuA at 0:55

    and

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V24zwCHykak

    302:

    Yeah... and I think you're missing the still bigger picture. You're following your kids all the time, The neighborhood is checking on you regularly. You're on call, 24x7.

    Think about that.

    I've read estimates that Ceaușescu had something approaching 50% of Romania spying on the rest....

    And for other commenters: let me say this: first, in school do you actually want the kids to be passing notes invisibly? cheating? NOT actually paying attention and learning?

    And for a lot of us, growing up, you got sick in school? Isn't that what the school nurse is for, who should have medical records? Isn't the teacher, or aren't the rest of the kids going to notice it and yell for the teachers? And can't the school call you?

    And about bikes... let's see, my first bike was a gift from a friend, who'd been given a new one. We wound up giving it back, when his got stolen. I bought my first bike around 1969, I think, something like $20, used.

    What, are you too upper middle class to buy used stuff? Don't go to thrift stores?

    The bike I have now my late wife and I got in '90, when I was out of work for 9 mos, and we had one vehicle, living in the exurbs outside Austin, so that I wasn't trapped (I could ride a few miles and catch a commuter bus). We paid $55 for it, at a jock shop. Now, new, 3-4 years before, it would have cost in the $300-$400 range. And it's actually a racing bike - wish it was a touring bike (difference is obscure bike tech), but it's a wonderful bike.

    Think used.

    303:

    Oh, right, y'know, it's really scratchy in my clothes when you stuff all that straw in.

  • Where did I imply it WOULD DESTROY CIVILIZATION? Rather, it's interfering with education, and I want better, not "education suitable only for Trump supporters".
  • I said ->I<- do not want a zombiephone. But then, I can also talk about the nightmare of 1.75 years wearing a pager 24x7, except for the two months I wore two of them. And got paged. A LOT. So, screw that. I'm also online at work (that's what I do), and lunch, and breakfast, and evening... why the fuck do I need to be online the other few minutes?
  • 304:

    BLEAH! My condolences on such a Big Brotheresque "culture". If I had to work there, and had to go out, I'd ask for a separate check. And there's no reason for that, since for a few years now, you all hand the waiter you cards, and they deal with it. I certainly wouldn't want to be borrowing money/owing my boss all the time.

    305:

    Say, like The Ballad of Lost C'Mell, by Cordwainer Smith?

    306:

    All of which I find aggravating, Charlie, given that an ultraOrthodox Hassidic rabbi told me, over 20 years ago, that Jews had no problem with abortions (I'd asked), and quoted something from the OT, where a pregnant woman is hurt? killed, and loses the baby in either case, and it was the equivalent of a blood price for her, but a chattel price, on par with a lamb, say, for the unborn. As he put it, "Society has far more invested in a woman of childbearing years than in an unborn infant."

    I am extremely PO'd here in the States for all the anti-abortion laws, which are pure Christian, and allegedly unConstitutional.

    307:

    Part of me is horrified by this even though it proves my point, and even though I'm a regular PayPal Gift user which seems functionally identifical. To be clear it's the enforced office comformamce that seems horrible even though it makes perfect sense. I'm with Unholyguy @279 on this one.

    Few of us these days have the either the social, technical/educational or cultural skills to deal with the huge opportunity costs of not using a smartphone as part of our societial engagement.

    The other thing is it appears to be some kind of mandatory company meeting being held at the employee's expense. Back when I was still working, the manager would have used a company issued credit card to pay for the meal. Or lacking that would have paid with his own card and submitted an expense claim for reimbursement.

    Either way, the employees would and should NOT have been expected to pay for a working lunch.

    I won't even go into having to install company approved & company required software on an employee's personal device & expecting that employee to use the personal device for the company's benefit without reimbursement.

    308:

    Not only is the anti-abortion thing purely Christian, it's also 19th century revisionist Christianity — go back to the middle ages and this nonsense about "life begins at conception" wasn't doctrinally valid, life began at "quickening" (fetal movements in utero, i.e. kicking), or with the first indrawn breath.

    The why of that belief system gaining traction should be obvious, though: it's all about enforicng social control, specifically social control over women's reproductive autonomy (which in turn keeps the mothers under control, and if you've got the mothers in lockdown you've got supervision of the next generation).

    309:

    Very much so. My own candidate for uplifting is trying to manipawlate the mouse, right now ......

    310:

    I'm pretty sure that I'm not allowed to borrow money from my boss, to avoid conflicts of interest. It's in the staff handbook, IIRC.

    311:

    I am extremely PO'd here in the States for all the anti-abortion laws, which are pure Christian, and allegedly unConstitutional.

    If you can find anywhere in the New Testament where Jesus says abortion is a sin, I'd be interested in knowing where it is.

    312:

    Re: NK underground nuke tests and after-shocks

    Okay, I understand the current headlines are all about the latest nuke flying above Japan air space. However, there's also this:

    http://www.nature.com/news/seismologists-stumped-by-mystery-shock-after-north-korean-nuclear-test-1.22618?WT.ec_id=NEWSDAILY-20170915

    Am wondering whether NK has been testing in old/depleted coal mines which in my amateur opinion would mean that pressure waves (and radiation) would be dispersed more horizontally than vertically (vs. say the US method which digs special tunnels for such testing) thereby creating more opportunities for the pressure/radiation to run up against an existing fault and tickling it to the point that it hiccoughs. Since coal has been NK's economic mainstay, and prisoners comprise most of their mining work force - I'm guessing that such mines could be very extensive. Which might also explain the collapses in the 'post' pix.

    313:

    Meant to post the above as a stand-alone ...

    Comment to BA was next:

    Re: Lip reading in the wild ...

    Something like the Google search algo would probably be really useful for matching likeliest pairings. A long-time friend has a very strong stammer with - depending on the circs - both varying frequency and irregularly timed hesitations and repetitions of a sound. Wonder if like the Navajo, this could be used to sneak past surveillance lip readers.

    314:

    Well, they do taste better, don't they? Of course, they're smaller than the farmed ones, and it's much harder to remove the tentacles and the poison sac from the wild Haggis, but it's worth the trouble.

    315:

    Or "Dax" from Tuf Voyaging, by GRRM

    317:

    Re: ' ... sick in school? ... school nurse is for ... teacher? And can't the school call you?'

    Unfortunately - a very big NO! Not aware of any school in my area that has a school nurse on premises including the pricey private schools - 'public schools' in Britain.

    Teachers long ago were told to not physically interfere with any child - this includes anything medical. Also - lawsuits.

    Plus, the list of diagnosed medical conditions among the populace keeps growing longer.

    Plus, there are now more kids with major chronic medical conditions whose particular conditions are now more or less well-controlled provided you know what you're doing.

    Plus, the typical classroom/school is now super-sized.

    Plus, very few parents are willing to provide strangers within a large and hackable chronically under-funded institution much detail about their kids' health. (Privacy, health claims that follow a kid into adulthood, etc.)

    The school will call if it's something very obvious, e.g., broken limb, kid passes out - but that's about it. And by then they'll have already called EMT and your kid's on his/her way to a hospital.

    318:

    Not entirely correct. Our UK state school allows self medication by the pupils - usually in the case of asthma or similar with a doctors note, followed by a courtesy call from the school to the parents.

    319:

    Apologies for doing the "breeder goes on and on about ickle kiddies" things...

    Not aware of any school in my area that has a school nurse on premises including the pricey private schools - 'public schools' in Britain.

    Well, I was at a state-run boarding school, but we had a SRN (fully qualifed nurse) running the school hospital (essentially, a couple of small isolation wards and a morning drop-in clinic, a dental surgery for the visiting dentist, and rooms for the visiting optician and the visiting General Practitioner).

    Our kids' school has several school "matrons" - with nursing and first aid qualifications. Because it's a large school (>1500 pupils), there are the requisite number of kids who require medication during the day (signed off by the parents each year). There are a few children with severe allergies; so the EpiPens are held by their teachers / matron. There are children with diabetes, asthma as mentioned, etc, etc; again, medication held by matron. The team track injuries, and offer an independent reporting chain (which can be rather helpful when the "guidance teacher" turns out to be an ineffectual muppet).

    It feels like nurseries and schools have almost normalised the concept that some kids are severely allergic; I've certainly helped out on school trips where the EpiPen was kept in arms' reach of the teacher throughout...

    ...ahhh, childrearing. Guaranteed to stress your immune system somewhat. Unfortunately, firstborn's first full-on encounter with Norovirus happened on the way to school, and the car never quite smelled the same, ever again...

    320:

    "A cheap Android smartphone starts at £40"

    I paid 99 AUD (60 quid) two years ago, for the smartphone before last. Sadly, being bigger than the one before that, it didn't fit in the handlebar mount on my electric motorcycle, where it doubled as a dash, giving realtime stats that are useful for getting maximising range. I looked around for a bigger mount but the were all in the 150 dollar region.

    So I bought a second phone for 24.50 AUD (15 quid). It was actually much cheaper than a phone mount and I don't have to faff about with putting it on and taking it off. If it gets wet or stolen, I don't really care. And yeah, my last bicycle, with a couple of accessories, was 2300 AUD (1300 quid). So very close to 100 times more than my last phone. As a phone, it's a bit crap, with only twice the storage of the last ProLiant server I installed...

    https://shop.coles.com.au/a/a-nsw-metro-West-ryde/product/telstra-prepaid-tempo?col=1

    321:

    I suspect what's 'normal' in a school depends very much on where you are. We had a part-time nurse when I was in school (two half-days, I think) but although the school I teach at has a nurse's office I've never seen a nurse using it — and we certainly don't have one on call if anything happens.

    Phones in class are technically up to the teacher to approve or not, but banning them means fighting both kids AND parents, and most of us eventually give up.

    On the privacy/electronic footprint front, last year the school board moved all classroom staff and students to gmail, and strongly pushes using google docs. (Before that we were on a board-owned outlook server.) I've heard the reason was cost savings, but haven't been able to confirm that*. If any consideration was made of privacy concerns re giving a foreign company access to so much information about our students I haven't been able to find it. Former students have told us that when they great a new google account at university google offers to copy over stuff from their high school student account like contacts, so obviously information is being connected somehow.

    IT is notoriously opaque and intrusive, though — for example, they're taking the network down for a day next week to upgrade it*, which means no internet, no computers (because every computer, even laptops, must have a network connection to operate, and no phone (because last spring they moved us to VOIP). The school wasn't asked whether this was a convenient day — we were told and will have to adapt, end of story. Explaining the reason for decisions isn't something they do.

    **All IT work happens during business hours on school days.

    322:

    I don't know who this 'boss' person is and my comments are completely general in nature and don't relate to any specific person.

    In some tax regimes 'entertainment' is a business expense and tax deductible. If one were to pay for a dinner during a team meeting, that would count as a deduction. In others a 'meal allowance' is an available deduction where the working day is longer than a set amount.

    Setting up a corporate culture where employees pay but the company deducts it from their tax would have significant tax advantages for the employer, but be totally illegal.

    In the story about the 'boss' person, it was specifically stated that he used 'his' credit card and not a corporate card, in which case there is no impropriety and I'm in no way implying that in this case there is anything nefarious going on. There clearly isn't, however it is a culture that's open to abuse.

    323:

    "Being a parent without a mobile would be a complete pain for my kids."

    It wasn't for me when I was a kid, nor was it for any of the other kids. Stuff like you mention happened, but the world didn't end... ...Not having a phone is easy: you just don't buy one, and carry on as usual.

    You are, perhaps deliberately, missing the point.

    Which is that society has changed since you were a kid.

    When I was a kid they didn't move sports practice at the last minute and assume everyone would use their phone to know that it had moved and where it had moved to. They didn't assume every kid in the club would join (or have a parent join) a facebook messenger group to communicate game locations, who's playing on which team, etc.

    Parents didn't assume that my daughter, who is staying with them and their daughter, would be able to get in touch with me on a busy Saturday morning to update me about a change in pickup times.

    The drama teacher didn't assume he could add a rehearsal after school today and that the kids would just let their parents know by mobile.

    The school didn't assume that in an emergency they could get the Ministry of Ed to send the txt message that the school was closed and that this would communicate with all the parents.

    If the groups and people you deal with don't expect mobile phones, then you don't need one. And maybe yours don't. But parenting means a lot of social contacts, from friends to Scouts to school to sports to the library notice that a book is overdue, and (at least where I live) they're all done electronically these days and a assume a speed of communication that wasn't true in the past.

    Me not using a mobile would be a complete pain for my kids.

    324:

    See my previous comments.

    Think of however the school, scouts, coaches, other parents, etc used to communicate with you. All of it. Everything from every groups your kids were ever part of. And the preschool (if you used one).

    Now assume that's all being done on-line via facebook messenger, txts, and equivalent. And that you don't have a mobile phone.

    Seriously. Think about it. Then re-read what you just wrote.

    325:

    Missed this one, but:

    1) There's significant factions who would really dislike Z anywhere near corridors of power 2) FB has been pulled into the M. closed door investigation, regarding Russian influence so ?!? 3) The various Jewish lobbying groups in the USA have clout and some are starting to make seriously displeased noises, but pro-Israeli groups are having to face a Total Disaster Area[1] with Israel's political scene at the moment and are attempting to not be seen as anti-Trump 4) There's a large number of competitors who would love a bloody nose in this case since they're also in the same boat 5) A large segment of advertizing $$ are getting a little fed up with the closed garden FB model and how it can damage their brands, esp when they have no control where they end up being shown

    Examples:

    Facebook to trim advert categories aimed at 'anti-Semites' BBC 15th Sept 2017

    Facebook allowed advertisers to target 'Jew haters' Guardian 15th Sept 2017

    Google is stepping up damage control after putting ads next to hate speech Quartz 21st Mar 2017

    AIPAC in rare non-Israel statement rejects moral equivalence following Trump’s remarks on Charlottesville JTA 17th Aug 2017

    All bullet points can be sourced, not bothered enough to do a deep trawl on this, too many Sharp Pointy Things[tm] all buzzing around it.

    TL;DR

    It's got legs, but FB has a lot of money.

    [1] Good band.

    326:

    "Yeah... and I think you're missing the still bigger picture."

    I think one of us is.

    "You're following your kids all the time, The neighborhood is checking on you regularly. You're on call, 24x7.

    Think about that."

    No shit! That's the whole point of this thread!

    That there are significant disadvantages to my situation, and I'm doing it anyway!

    People aren't just opting into a state that enables surveillance and trackability because they're stupid morons who can't see the disadvantages!

    I'm not carrying a mobile phone because I'm stupid. I'm certainly not using Facebook Messenger because I think it's a good choice of technology.

    I'm carrying a mobile phone, and using Messenger, and giving Google a ridiculous amount of information about me, because I'm embedded in a social situation in which not doing so would be a significant hassle for my family and friends.

    "Resisting social pressure" sounds all heroic, but what it means here is being very self-centred. Because the costs of not buying in are imposed not just on me but on the people I care about.

    I also didn't say everyone is in the same boat. Quite the opposite. What I said was that not carrying a phone is easier for some people than for others, and parents these days are being pushed into the "not at all easy" camp (at least where I live) much harder than most of you probably realise.

    327:

    Re: 'In the story about the 'boss' person, it was specifically stated that he used 'his' credit card and not a corporate card, ..'

    Credit card points! Seriously, this is a painless way of 'saving' for your vacation or for that nice new shiny. IMO, it's the best biz-travel perk there is. And if your biz-travel is always with the same airline and hotel chain, you can really rack up travel miles/days. The manager who always insists that his staff put their tab on his/her card is pulling a scam to run up his/her points faster. A prize jerk!

    328:

    Re: Drones, unidentified sonics harming foreign embassy staff - maybe it's Rx drugs?

    Just remembered that there's a whole class of Rx antibiotics that have hearing loss, vertigo, even schizophrenia/psychosis as listed side effects. Same with OTC pain killers for hearing loss, more so among women than men. (My understanding is that most drug effects including side-effects are dose-dependent or can arise after prolonged use.)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinolone_antibiotic

    http://www.medicationsense.com/articles/may_aug_05/warning_antibiotics_052205.php

    http://www.hear-it.org/painkillers-can-cause-hearing-loss

    Not sure why large numbers of any embassy staff would knowingly take such drugs unless they were prescribed on a prophylactic basis. No idea either how long these drugs stay in the body so that their levels can be picked up in a blood or urine test.

    329:

    Hm, do any of these interact with grapefruit juice? Food-Drug Interactions (random paper hit, don't know quality.) Never been to Cuba but wikipedia says Cuba is the world's third largest producer of grapefruit. Seems rather unlikely that this was not considered but interesting to read about the known interactions. (And doctors generally warn about such interactions.)

    330:

    the baroque arsenal

    I came to a similar conclusion to her.

    Augustine's laws[1] "Law Number XVI: In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3-1/2 days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day."

    Also F22, F35, Zumwalt, etc

    Wonderweapons, built in too few numbers, must be a tvtrope.

    [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine%27s_laws

    331:

    Ths School is deliberately using Arsebook? ARRRGGGHH!

    332:

    Law VI is flat wrong - but often used by bastards in charge to pay people less ...

    333:

    The kids' school has a Twitter feed. As Icehawk points out, it's very useful for declaring that foul weather has closed the school, what time the bus full of kids will arrive back from Trip X, whether a particular sports match has been moved / cancelled.

    And while yes, we know your opinions about PE teachers, apropos of nothing the school has a new PE teacher, who happened to pick up a medal at a recent Olympics - apparently, she's using her sport as a teaching vehicle for the (gender-segregated) classes, so the girls are now doing Judo during school. It's a very welcome change in focus from "rugby and hockey are all that matter", backed by a new head of PE with a rather amphibious military background...

    334:

    Yup, Google Education is rather well joined-up. The kids are now BYOD, and if they log in using our ta lets, it means we can see what homework they have too!

    No more "dog ate homework", the new excuse would be "our broadband connection went down" :( Meanwhiie, the school has its hands full learning about the full horror of running an enterprise-class wireless network across a large campus. As phones are supposed to be switched off during school hours, it's not smoking that takes place in the toilets and behind the bike sheds - it's 4G use...

    335:

    Greg even if the school doesn't as a general policy (mine doesn't) - if 90% of the parental units are on Facebook - guess what's gonna happen....

    Icehawk @326 is totally correct and I'm only avoiding the same fate because I'm using my wife as a proxy - which is undeniably selfish of me, just because I don't want to be on Facebook. 99% of the time any emergencies would fall to the Missus anyway because I have a long commute - but still.

    Let me give you another example of how ubiquitous things like this have become. Each class in the school has a parental class rep to help communicate newsletters and admin type reminders (nothing critical but just the sort of useful stuff like a change in PE kit reminder due to an outdoors day)this list is distributed by plain old email, but the parents contact details are stored on a google docs spreadsheet so it's easy for us all to correct and update.

    So if I want to be truly IT paranoid Google has both a picture of some of my comms due to all the parents who use gmail plus a nice little social graph of 20% of my contacts from the google doc. That's not to say that they do have it but they could.

    TLDR even for those in the known life is too frikken short to try to avoid this stuff.

    336:

    Ths School is deliberately using Arsebook? ARRRGGGHH!

    You feel my pain.

    To be fair, it's not "the school" as an educational entity using Facebook but "the school's Shakespeare society" and "the school's ultimate frisbee club" and etc individual teachers organising things and etc.

    "The school" would actually like to limit it - and is concerned that they've lost track of it. They're failing at that.

    The path to the Bright Shiny Hell is paved by well-intentioned coaches setting up a Facebook group so the kids can keep track of who's playing where this week.

    337:

    Just a reminder:

    We're talking about parenting just as an example here.

    I gave it as an example of a social situation in which is getting more and more awkward to not carry a mobile phone, and partake in the information ecosystem that implies.

    But I'm sure there are many other such situations too. My guess is most 20-year-old uni students are in a similar boat - but I wouldn't know because I'm not one.

    Which doesn't mean Pigeon needs a mobile phone, or needs to join Facebook. Just that those who can get away without it should realise that how hard that is depends on one's situation, that many people are in a different situation than them, and that many social situations have changed quite a lot in the last few years.

    338:

    To be fair, it's not "the school" as an educational entity using Facebook but "the school's Shakespeare society" and "the school's ultimate frisbee club" and etc individual teachers organising things and etc.

    I would be surprised if the school administration couldn't exert control if they wanted to — unless teachers in your area have a lot more autonomy than anywhere I've taught. (Which might be the case, I admit.)

    339:

    Which doesn't mean Pigeon needs a mobile phone

    When I was travelling this summer I discovered that my 16-year-old phone didn't work in Western Canada (even though I had roaming)*. Finding public pay phones proved to be difficult/impossible in many places.

    *Apparently it uses something called CDMA and most cell networks are 3G/4G nowadays.

    340:

    The administration has no motivation to do so and would probably be accused of overreach if they did so.

    341:

    Intelligent Tracking Prevention

    “Ad tracking technology has become so pervasive that it is possible for ad tracking companies to recreate the majority of a person's web browsing history.”

    Every Major Advertising Group Is Blasting Apple for Blocking Cookies in the Safari Browser

    342:

    Re: Grapefruit effect

    Can't find whether this class of antibiotics is affected by grapefruit and related foods. Do know that the grapefruit effect is real - very thoroughly researched and on-going research continues to discover new interactions.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapefruit%E2%80%93drug_interactions#Affected_drugs

    https://www.drugs.com/drug-interactions/ciprofloxacin.html - this is my preferred site for such info.

    Undeclared grapefruit - this happens less frequently because most jurisdictions now have laws requiring better more specific labeling.

    First learned about grapefruit back when a family member who underwent bone marrow transplant was explicitly told to stay away from grapefruit for as long as on any meds, i.e., years. Months later, this relative wanted to pick up some juice to have on hand. Was about to drink a boxed P&G fruit juice drink while on cyclosporine a major anti-rejection/immune-suppressant which is particularly sensitive to grapefruit juice but fortunately decided to check the ingredient list. (P&G has a pharma division, so for them to put grapefruit into their juice boxes is incredibly irresponsible!)

    343:

    No, it's not drug related. Guardian, AP, even Gizmodo are running it with the further developments and Castro has demanded that the FBI investigation is upscaled. Think of it as the Small in the S/M/L chain (your clue is: aphasia, weaponized versions therein).

    And, to tie in with Host's title:

    They have sweets too #DSEI Twitter, Newham Recorder, 14th Sept 2017 - imgage, worth a look for the irony / tie-in.

    The Newham Recorder, for reasons not investigated, are seemingly the best journalism coverage of Arms fairs these days. Their twitter and long-form have been running a number of articles. e.g.

    Wham, bam, no thank you ma’am! David Bowie photo used to flog bullets at DSEI arms fair Newham Recorder, 14th Sept 2017 (which is likely a copyright violation right there, lucky it's such a moral industry).

    If you're wondering why there's sweets with that logo, the reason is... well, Bjork Bjork:

    This was how the Bofors Test Centre’s manager, Rickard Lindstrom greeted the press at a recent demonstration of its capabilities. He asked: “What are the capabilities of a modern weapon system? To find out, you have to take it to the very edge. No matter how challenging the task is, we can reach that edge, and record every detail of the journey.” The test centre based at Karlskoga, western Sweden, is owned by Saab, BAE Systems and Eurenco Bofors and has the knowledge, equipment and test sites required to meet the needs of the contemporary testing. Whatever type of system, distances needed, environmental conditions or target properties, it can give the exact results of a weapon system’s performance. With a staff of 63, the centre carries out more than 600 tests a year.

    Welcome To Hell ARMada International 30th May 2017

    To off-set that, here's some nice graphic design: BLAST FASCISM: the minor literature[s] anti-fascist manifesto minor literature[s], 15th Sept 2017.

    ~

    dusts off an old slogan "No More Hells".

    344:

    Re: Cuba - if not sonics ... food?

    Cubans get much of their starchy carbs from cassava. So if new to the area (embassy worker/chef) and not familiar with how to prepare this veg properly, could be a serious problem:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava

    Excerpt:

    'Cassava is classified as either sweet or bitter. Like other roots and tubers, both bitter and sweet varieties of cassava contain antinutritional factors and toxins, with the bitter varieties containing much larger amounts.[6] It must be properly prepared before consumption, as improper preparation of cassava can leave enough residual cyanide to cause acute cyanide intoxication,[7][8] goiters, and even ataxia, partial paralysis, or death.[7][9] The more toxic varieties of cassava are a fall-back resource (a "food security crop") in times of famine or food insecurity in some places.[7][10] Farmers often prefer the bitter varieties because they deter pests, animals, and thieves.[11]'

    345:

    I think you have confused me with an anarchocapitalist. There's more than one school of libertarian thought; many libertarians think constitutional government is a better system than any form of anarchism, and I'm one such. My political views owe a lot to James Madison, actually.

    I think you may also be confusing "statism," which libertarians oppose, with the existence of "states" or of governments. That's not what the term means.

    346:

    Now we are safely past 300 can anyone recommend me a new author to read? Seem to be in the late summer drought. Is Nine Fox Gambit worth a look seems a bit marmitey from the reviews.

    347:

    Re: 'No, it's not drug related.'

    Not sure anyone knows yet.

    The likeliest suspect is tech because, you know, spies always use cool tech whereas incorrect (or a bad batch of) meds, food-drug interactions, poor food prep, industrial/construction chemicals are so-o-o-o uncool. Okay, enough sarcasm ...

    The problem is that the listed effects from articles about the Cuban affair are quite similar to the list of known side-effects for certain drugs and foods. Until these are thoroughly checked into and disproved, safer to not assume.

    Ototoxins can produce all of these symptoms apart from the obvious one - hyper-perception of noises (aka hyperacusis):*

    http://nypost.com/2017/09/14/mystery-of-health-attacks-on-us-diplomats-in-cuba-deepens/

    Excerpt:

    'Other symptoms have included brain swelling, dizziness, nausea, severe headaches, balance problems and tinnitus, or prolonged ringing in the ears. Many victims have shown improvement since leaving Cuba and some suffered only minor or temporary symptoms.'

    The same article mentioned that most of those affected had stayed on the top floor of a local hotel and that only that top floor had been recently renovated. The article below lists many sources of hearing damage some of which interact synergistically.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ototoxicity

    Am also wondering whether the middle or inner ear were damaged which would account for changes in perceived noises based on position of the head and some of the other symptoms like nausea, changes in the position of the head could be directly tied to aural perception/dysfunction. (Something similar happens to people with super low blood pressure when they stand up too quickly. But drastically dropping blood pressure is way more difficult than screwing around with the ears.)

    • Had such a reaction myself from a lidocaine injection administered by an anesthetist at a local hosp (pre-op day surgery).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperacusis

    348:

    Re: 'aphasia'

    Am familiar with this condition. Some stroke victims become aphasic. Other aphasia-causing candidates include these viruses:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphasia

    'aphasia may also result from herpesviral encephalitis.[12] The herpes simplex virus affects the frontal and temporal lobes, subcortical structures, and the hippocampal tissue, which can trigger aphasia'

    So let's keep biological agents on the table because, if true, all hell will break loose on the perp unlike the wrist-slap for new tech causing the same type of harm. Not sure that the UN and/or The Hague International Criminal Court consider tech in the same class of evil as bio-chem. (Seems form is more important than effect.)

    349:

    I have only an immediate emotional reaction: I glanced at the book, and saw a sentence on page 1 that began with "Said instructor," which to my ear is a horrid piece of jargon suited only to police reports and very stuffy social science journal articles. And I winced and stopped reading. Ninefox Gambit might actually have interesting worldbuilding or a good story—I haven't sampled enough to have an opinion—but I prefer to read authors whose prose delights me, or at least doesn't pain me.

    350:

    It depends on what you are looking for. Nine Fox Gambit is a space opera about a dystopian interstellar empire facing rebellion. It has a genuinely innovative big idea that nobody's done before. The politics are complicated and not totally grim. And it has some highly memorable characters.

    351:

    I find a phone mildly convenient; I can call home from the supermarket and ask, "Do you want me to get A or B." But my biggest reason for having one is that pay phones, which used to be available every block or two, are virtually nonexistent; so the situation of a person travelling about without a mobile is very different from what it was a quarter century ago, as I learned when my home phone stopped working and I couldn't find a pay phone to use to call for repairs. Needing to make repair calls or emergency help calls from a pay phone came up rarely when there were pay phones, but you really need a phone when it does.

    On the other hand, I earn my living at my computer, as a copy editor; manuscripts these days go back and forth almost entirely as files. That's really a lot more convenient than running over to FedEx or calling DHL for a pickup, too. And I would never just blindly trust a spellchecker, but search and replace does avoid missing small errors.

    352:

    and Castro has demanded that the FBI investigation is upscaled. So the CUban guvmint, in public is saying "It ain't us, we want to know more" - interesting

    353:

    Re: Book reco

    Assume, you've already read OGH's books. These are on my list but not yet read.

    Quite a few reviews, mostly favorable plus this author seems to be covering many of the same SF memes that have been discussed on this blog. Key hook for me: humor/comedic relief.

    To-date, three books published about the Bobiverse (Dennis E. Taylor).

    We Are Legion - We Are Bob For We Are Many All These Worlds

    Blurb excerpt:

    'Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he'll be switched off, and they'll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty.'

    354:

    re Charlottesville, here's a dumb question from a non-USian:

    Why isn't the Ku Klux Klan (a) illegal and (b) featuring prominently on every official list of terrorist organisations?

    356:

    Finished All These Worlds fairly recently and would second your recommendation. Good lightweight fun Sci-fi. Minor niggle in that it becomes progressively harder to keep track of the Bobs but otherwise tickled my story bone.

    357:

    Thirded Bob-verse

    The audio books are pretty excellent too

    358:

    Hmmm.... If you've not read Cory Doctorow's "Walkaway", do it now.

    Recently, I've read and enjoyed Ben Winters' "Underground Airlines", Laura Lam's "Micah Grey" series; the Bobiverse; Marie Brennan's "Lady Trent" series; and while they're quite "British", Jodi Taylor's "St.Mary's" novels always make me smile (as do Toby Frost's "Space Captain Smith" - he's got the first few chapters on his website, give it a try).

    If you're looking outside SF/F, then give Mick Herron's "Slow Horses" a try.

    359:

    The kids' school has a Twitter feed. As Icehawk points out, it's very useful for declaring that foul weather has closed the school, what time the bus full of kids will arrive back from Trip X, whether a particular sports match has been moved / cancelled.

    Reminds me of an incident that occurred around here in 2005. A quarter inch of snow that fell during the day prompted the local school system to announce schools would be closing one to two hours early. This being the southern U.S. no one is actually prepared for snow.

    The announcement prompted many of the parents to suddenly decide to leave work early so they could be home when the kids were dropped off by the school buses. So many left work at the same time that the resultant county-wide traffic jam grid-locked people in their cars for 12 hours or more.

    And in many locations, buses couldn't get from the county school garage to the schools, forcing the school system to keep the kids at the schools overnight.

    360:

    When I was travelling this summer I discovered that my 16-year-old phone didn't work in Western Canada (even though I had roaming)*. Finding public pay phones proved to be difficult/impossible in many places.

    *Apparently it uses something called CDMA and most cell networks are 3G/4G nowadays.

    I'm still using a flip phone. When my old carrier was bought out by one of the BIG cell phone providers, they "upgraded" the network. Because my old Motorola flip phone wasn't going to work with the new network, they gave me a new LG flip phone. The new phone can receive texts and send & receive email and it apparently works with the new network infrastructure. I don't do text, and I only do email from my computer.

    But so far, I haven't run into any locations where I couldn't get my Luddite phone to make a telephone call.

    361:

    The problem is that the listed effects from articles about the Cuban affair are quite similar to the list of known side-effects for certain drugs and foods. I'll defer to Anemônê Duraþrór's intuitions/etc on this because been avoiding tracking this story, but ... another drive-by thought, even loopier, but fun; wondering if the diplomatic staff were indulging in off label drug usage for reasons related to their role, e.g. as nootropics to enhance language/social learning, and that these interacted unexpectedly with their environment somehow.
    For example, d-cycloserine. (Note1: don't see this paper in the archives but there are others links related to NMDA receptors. Note2 paper doesn't support usage for language-learning enhancement; it's just an example.) I have not been tempted; side effects profile looks nasty, but Augmenting NMDA receptor signaling boosts experience-dependent neuroplasticity in the adult human brain (15 Dec 2015) We examined the effects of enhancing NMDAR signaling using D-cycloserine (DCS)...

    (Wondering whether Charlie will weigh in on this since he has the training.)

    362:

    Every Major Advertising Group Is Blasting Apple for Blocking Cookies in the Safari Browser

    Saw in the news that Google has announced that the next version of Chrome is going to block auto-play for videos that contain sound. Advertisers don't seem to like that very much either, but that might be enough to get me to finally switch to Chrome if Mozilla doesn't follow their lead.

    I'll often open a new tab for a link that looks interesting intending to read it later only to have some auto-play video start BLASTING out of my sound system. This is especially annoying when I'm trying to listen to a podcast.

    I'm seeing a lot more sites lately that want me to turn off my ad blocking software. I don't run ad blocking software. I run anti-virus & anti-malware and I use a HOSTS file to filter SPAM sites. All I can say is if the advertisers want MY eyeballs on their work they need to clean up their act. Don't include virus/malware vulnerabilities and don't host their content on known SPAM sites. And don't include auto-play video with sound.

    363:

    re Charlottesville, here's a dumb question from a non-USian:

    Why isn't the Ku Klux Klan (a) illegal and (b) featuring prominently on every official list of terrorist organisations?

    It's not a dumb question if you don't know the answer. It's only a dumb question if you don't ask.

    Mainly it's because a outright ban on the Klan would violate their First Amendment Rights.

    There are, however, laws that prohibit certain activities practiced by the Klan - night riding, cross burning and wearing masks to conceal their identities.

    http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/conlaw/2015/07/anti-masking-laws-the-ku-klux-klan-and-the-first-amendment.html

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Enforcement_Act_of_1871

    As to why they are not featured on lists of terrorist organizations ...

    Power has traditionally been in the hands of white elites in the U.S. The Klan and other white supremacist groups are aligned with maintaining those white elites in power.

    Law enforcement in the U.S. also supports the power structure in the U.S. and has had a "conservative" bias since the end of World War 2, which is to say that groups on the right (even the extreme right) get far less scrutiny than groups on the left ... or groups that can be painted as socialists. Any group the power elite see as threatening their privilege can be painted as socialist, if not outright communists.

    The Klan has been driven back several times previously and when they're not an evident problem, people seem to let their guard down.

    Anyway, that's the way I see it from down here in North Carolina.

    364:

    Why isn't the Ku Klux Klan (a) illegal and (b) featuring prominently on every official list of terrorist organisations?

    Also remember that at the start of the US presidential campaign the KKK membership was in single-digit thousands, a handful of largely ignored losers scattered across the USA. (Source for membership Slate Star Codex from a while back.)

    So they weren't on law enforcement watch lists, even for law enforcement organisations not "aligned with maintaining those white elites in power", because they weren't worth worrying about.

    Then the progressive US media gave them a massive promotional boost during the election campaign, portraying the KKK as dangerous and influential, the secret power behind the alt-right.

    And worse still, Trump won! The KKK themselves now believe the stories the media told and are acting accordingly. Self fullfilling prophecy.

    So now a whole lot of people support the KKK, either because of beliefs they can say openly which previously had to be kept hidden, or because they're political opportunists. (The membership clerk for the KKK must be swamped trying to distinguish the applications from genuine racists and those from lobbyists.)

    And if law enforcement also believe the media, well would you want to declare that the President's closest allies are terrorists? And on moral grounds, declaring major political parties or organisations to be "terrorist" is really not something democracies want to make a habit of.

    365:

    "groups on the right (even the extreme right) get far less scrutiny than groups on the left ... or groups that can be painted as socialists".

    In the 70s and 80s, Queensland's Special Branch actively paid racist skinhead groups to disrupt left-leaning protest groups and activities. In 1989 Special Branch destroyed all its files, much like Stasi, before they could be impounded by the Royal Commission which recommended it be disbanded.

    Actual street marches were banned at the time under the Bjelke-Petersen era anti-protest laws. But it was a common experience, for instance, for small pub concerts to be affected this way. Skinheads would turn up to the gig, create the disturbance and Special Branch would arrive to deal with it surprisingly quickly. Few people were actually arrested and fewer charged, but it was the sort of ongoing low level intimidation that people will react to over time. It was said you weren't anybody in the Brisbane music scene until Special Branch had dispersed one of your gigs. And it made the Brisbane punk scene disproportionately influential.

    Queensland politics is still broken, of course, but at least these days it is arguably no more broken than the other states and Western democracies in general.

    366:

    Lest everyone get too depressed at mass mobilization in the USA, the Juggalo march just happened. It was fairly low-key (although larger than Trump's March :sad trombone:) and entertaining:

    Can't get over how good this sign is Daniel Dale, Twitter, 16th Sept 2017 - funny sign ("Dragnets How do they work?"). There's also smatterings of actual socialists, Christians for Juggaloes[1], ANTIFA[2] and so forth.

    Line of the day from an actual ICP member[3]: Violent J: "Intelligence is how to make a nuclear bomb. But wisdom is how not to use it. Juggalos have mad wisdom." Same source

    5/7 would predict again.

    p.s.

    The obviously psychotic jokes in the fables are a wink at the research / Arms fair stuff. Oh, and certain other things, but hey. Death threats are fun!

    [1] They're carrying actual huge crosses so, I guess they're the proton-reversed KKK?! Also spotted people attempting to link Juggalos to Christianity, which is a dumb dumb move and factually untrue. Spinozan type spirituality? Yep, sign them up. Church & Crosses? Not so much. (Pro-tip: that's a 3 for 3 for that agitprop account: narrative shaping abilities low, Shareblue will lose a few nodes if they keep doing the stupid stupid)

    [2] About eight of them. But hey, the younglings are living in a media swamp and they had a rainbow flag so.

    [3] Seen on Twitter, since Juggaloes are not all light, in fact, they really are the Dark Carnival: "How come we're ignoring [incident] and [incident]?!" Answer: "The time-line got so dark they kinda just naturally flipped to being good".

    367:

    The Gemini thing looks very inviting. I recently "upgraded" my 7" phablet to a 6" Galaxy Note and have not been especially impressed. It hates the bluetooth keyboard even more than the phablet did (just plain not designed to work with a keyboard). Also, having a metal outside that's hopefully more robust than the exposed screen of the phone (so far 2/3 times I've killed devices it's been cracking the screen. The other one was a "waterproof" phone that failed to survive a five second immersion in sea water).

    The idea of being able to boot linux, ideally secure-ish linux, and shove a 256GB uSD card in is very inviting. That would give me a low-power browsing device, and if the keyboard is vaguely usable I can plug in a cheap LED monitor to give me the large print version of the display while I'm lying in bed :)

    I will keep an eye out, and might sell off my Note and buy one of those when they become more widely available.

    Also, wrt battery life, if you can resist the temptation to fully cycle the battery every time, then leave the thing on charge forever, it helps a lot. Sadly Google don't really support battery tweaking devices - they exist but often break, so it's hard to actually program in "shut down at 20%, only charge to 90%", but if you do that manually 90% of the time my experience is that I get 3-4 years out of the battery. But then my use pattern is also atypical, I turn off most of the radios most of the time so I get 2-10 days out of the battery (but when I commute by train I play Catan on the thing and battery life drops to 3-4 hours).

    368:

    two more uses for 3-D printers: first, model railroad parts

    If you search shapeways for Lego you will find a plethora of Lego-compatible bits that people have designed, and many work quite well. Others simply have to look like something and those presumably do that brilliantly. Someone is also selling printed Lego train track bits, because actual Lego train track is very, very limited (although they do now make flex track at least). But three and four way switches etc you can only get outside the brand. The good news there is that the track is designed to work with poor tolerances, unlike the Lego bricks (you can usually tell even the best clone brands from the real thing because they just don't stick together properly). A micro here, a micron there, soon they don't work at all.

    369:

    Re: '... effects of enhancing NMDAR signaling using D-cycloserine (DCS)..'

    Pretty nasty side effects ...

    There's greater promise and fewer bad effects re: improving not just neuroplasticity but stimulating neurogenesis via aerobic exercise. Note: You still have to read/study/practice stuff once you have these new neurons because so far neurons do not come pre-loaded with whatever you need to master. (People seem to overlook the study/practice bit for some reason.) Then get a good night's sleep.

    370:

    https://shop.coles.com.au/a/a-nsw-metro-West-ryde/product/telstra-prepaid-tempo?col=1

    I am amused that you didn't bother clearing your location out of the URL. Or maybe you did...

    371:

    I gave it as an example of a social situation in which is getting more and more awkward to not carry a mobile phone, and partake in the information ecosystem that implies.

    It is everywhere. It took me a couple of months to recover my local contacts after arsebook decided my name wasn't real enough for them. In the meantime I missed out on a significant number of invites and got quite a few in-person "why didn't you go to X" type comments from people concerned that I was annoyed or unwell. The contacts I only see every few years are basically gone until I visit, and will be hard to resurrect when I do (I rely on cascading contacts from the few I know). Meantime I've missed everything from weekends away to board game nights to catching up with people I used to work with etc, it all happens via social media. It's also quite hard to have a career rather than just this one job right now, if you're not on LinkedIn, Facebook, Google etc.

    In Australia most workplaces assume you have at least SMS ability, but from the marketing stuff I see an increasing number of workplaces require facebook. For some friends it's very much "you don't technically have to friend work on facebook, but since that's how shifts are given out, no facebook no shifts". Involuntary casualisation has reached a long way up already - some of these people are managers-of-managers. For me, I have the apps we produce on my phone and have to be able to get SMS messages and phone calls 24/7 (for work type emergencies). Albeit my workplace is very decent about this, if I asked for a phone they'd give me one, and they have offered to sign me up for a SIM/plan at their expense (I declined, the $10/mo plan I'm on works fine for me).

    372:

    West Ryde is nowhere near where I am, and as far as I'm aware, I've been close to, but never actually in West Ryde.

    When the popup arrives saying "Multinational Corporation would like to know your location" I do what every other reader of Charlie's blog does...

    Having said that, my location is correct on Arsebook and a search for gasdive turns up, well basically me and no-one else. Doxxing me is completely trivial. My Arsebook account was even set to all public (Until my ex started harassing me on it about a month ago). While it's true that on the internet no-one knows you're a dog, everyone can figure out who I am. One of the many reasons I get miffed if people put my name in quotes, like I'm trying to hide behind it. There's just one gasdive, and thousands of people with my birth name.

    373:

    Ohh, I just went ego surfing, and about 30 results in, there's a guy from Western Australia, who posted something about a subject I have no interest in, nearly 10 years ago, using my name.

    374:

    the next version of Chrome is going to block auto-play for videos that contain sound And about time too. Good for Google, if true

    375:

    an increasing number of workplaces require facebook. WHAT? Meanwhile, in "the City" it is usally Alles verboten to even have an Arsebook account, as they are reckoned seriously insecure ....

    376:

    In the meantime I missed out on a significant number of invites and got quite a few in-person "why didn't you go to X" type comments from people concerned that I was annoyed or unwell.

    No offence, but if the commenters were that concerned, especially about your health, why didn't they ring you, email, or even drop by in the hope of catching you at your house, office, favourite café, or customary shopping spot? Maybe you're too far away for the last to be feasible, but relying on Facebook as the only means of contact seems odd.

    377:

    Gemini certainly looks nice. Another device that's coming soon is

    Pyra

    The makers target a different audience, gamers instead of business types so it looks quite different compared to the Gemini.

    378:

    One of the many reasons I get miffed if people put my name in quotes, like I'm trying to hide behind it.

    I'd put it in quotes, and perhaps even rephrase as "user 'gasdive'" or similar. Not to imply a yen for self-concealment, but to facilitate parsing. Your name has no capital letter, could be two common nouns accidentally conjoined by a typo, and is not immediately recognisable as a proper name. In the sentence "In diving today, the Ireson-Paine tissue-absorbancy algorithm is an essential tool for computing decompression obligations", it's obvious that "Ireson-Paine" is a proper name. Replace by your name, and it isn't.

    379:

    I tried to separate social media; LinkedIn for work, Facebook for social/sport. Mostly successful, but a lot of exceptions...

    I've not got a commonplace name, but it's not unusual. It got interesting when I discovered that someone else with exactly the same name, and roughly the same age, had taken up the same (minority) sport, within twenty miles. It got amusing when we both attended the same coaching course... local clubs and association are now getting used to it, but eyes are going to cross if we enter the same competition.

    380:

    Not quite correct Greg. Twitbook and others such as LinkedIn are usually blocked at work but there is not normally a restriction on having an account just not using it at/for work.

    Most common reason is to stop information leakage from the office. Secondary usage in "The City" is to make it harder to do collusion or insider trading by way of an unmonitored messaging channel.

    381:

    I discovered that someone else with exactly the same name, and roughly the same age, had taken up the same (minority) sport, within twenty miles.

    That's basically how I got my nickname -- there's no "J" in my name hence Nojay. There's another one of me who used to go to SF conventions and at one point we ended up sharing a hotel room which confused the hotel staff no end. The other me has a middle initial of "J"...

    382:

    Yeah, it's true.

    Mad, but true. FB is transforming itself into a collaboration tool. A spectacularly bad one in my opinion. My partner's employer has rolled it out just recently.

    Of course being spectacularly bad and insecure doesn't seem to matter to corporate buyers as much as familiarity. See also "Microsoft Windows"

    383:

    "recommend me a new author to read?" Try 'The death and life of the Great Lakes' by Dan Egan. He's a Milwaukee journalist who spent years writing about Great Lakes ecology. This book summarizes and ties together several different stories he researched over his career, including the lampreys that devastated native trout stocks, the plague of alewives also known as river herring which littered Chicago waterfronts by the mountainous megaton in the late sixties, freighter ballast from St. Lawrence Seaway delivering invasive species such as zebra mussels and quagga mussels, how those introduced shellfish filtered out most plankton in the lakes, starving the alewives and ruining a multimillion dollar coho salmon sport fishing industry that had sprung up suddenly in the seventies from the abundance of little invaders feeding the newly imported ones, how their population crash took down newly built resorts, boat marinas and commercial fisheries. Lots of colorful anecdotes like the guy who ended up paying thirty thousand in fines for hauling a boat west and getting caught by Nevada police when they found zebra mussels stuck to the hull, and meanwhile the reservoir behind Hoover Dam literally has a crusty ring of these things growing all around the edges of it. Good up to date info on DNA water sampling techniques used for species tracking when the Army Corps of Engineers tried to keep Asian Carp from getting into Lake Michigan. It explains how Chicago authorities a century ago reversed the flow of a river, sending their sewage down to the Mississippi instead of out in the lake where they got their drinking water; the Supreme Court had to weigh in on that one, but they never imagined how stuff could swim back up to reach the lakes. And a cautionary tale of toxic algae blooms caused by fertilizer runoff in Lake Erie, that ruined municipal water supplies along its shore one summer recently. A fun read, moves right along, history, science and politics all in one.

    384:

    Of course being spectacularly bad and insecure doesn't seem to matter to corporate buyers as much as familiarity. See also "Microsoft Windows"

    Don't knock Windows. I had to install R (the statistical language) together with some extra packages on Ubuntu. On Windows, the install was no problem at all. I downloaded the R installer, told it to run, got an R icon on the desktop, started R, and typed the command necessary to install the packages. Total time: about five minutes.

    On Ubuntu, this took most of a morning. At one stage, I had to manually edit a configuration file to tell it where to find a repository. Then a bit later the packages wouldn't install. I kept getting the errors gcc: error: unrecognized command line option '-fstack-protector-strong' and gcc: error: unrecognized command line option '-Wdate-time'. After some hunting around with Dr. Google, it turned out that my C compiler was the wrong version. And so on. The problems did get solved, but at the expense of time that I should have been spending on using R, not on fighting the operating system that claimed to be able to run it.

    385:

    On Ubuntu, this took most of a morning. At one stage, I had to manually edit a configuration file to tell it where to find a repository.

    Was there some reason why

    $ apt install r-recommended

    didn't work, or did you feel like making things more difficult on Linux just because ? :)

    386:

    The administration has no motivation to do so and would probably be accused of overreach if they did so.

    The laws may be different where you are, but here the administration is ultimately responsible for everything that happens in the school — which includes all the clubs teams etc. So they have motivation, and a legitimate reason for reaching. :-)

    They must also deal with parents, including those who (like Pigeon) don't use social media and don't want their kids using it, which means that they must ensure alternate means of communication are available (and students without Facebook aren't being disadvantaged).

    We had a case in Toronto a couple of years ago where a parent explicitly refused permission for using his daughter's picture in the media release all parents must sign and return*. His reasoning was that she was still young and didn't need an online footprint with an open life. The principal (or VP) took pictures at a school event and posted them on a social media channel, including pictures of his daughter. Lawsuit resulted.

    Legally (at least here) if it is a communications channel used by a school employee (or designate) for school-related activities then the school is responsible for what happens on the channel. Flickr stream for school events? A team Facebook group? The admin are (ultimately) responsible. Reason enough to ensure that they know what the channels are, that the coaches etc know what their responsibilities are, and that (if necessary) they have access to those channels in case of a complaint (or the staff member is suddenly unavailable).

    *Like all such documents, it contains options for "agree" and "do not agree" — the days of only having the option of giving permission are long gone.

    387:

    Was there some reason why
    $ apt install r-recommended
    didn't work, or did you feel like making things more difficult on Linux just because ? :)

    I was following the instructions at https://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/README.html , which being on the R site, I assumed to be what I should follow.

    388:

    Which doesn't mean Pigeon needs a mobile phone, or needs to join Facebook. Just that those who can get away without it should realise that how hard that is depends on one's situation, that many people are in a different situation than them, and that many social situations have changed quite a lot in the last few years.

    I don't use Facebook; I'm kind of allergic to ads, and I hate and fear the way FB intrudes into your life.

    I have an FB account — originally to stop squatters grabbing it, and linked to an FB author page because it shuts up the marketing luvvies who crop up every year and ask "why aren't you on Facebook?" — but I post there once every six months to say, "I don't use facebook". I generally rely on my wife to tell me if something's happening there.

    However. FB is so fucking ubiquitous that not using FB is getting to be like refusing to use email; almost everyone I know in real life uses it as a communications tool. Which in turn means that I probably need to start using it, even though I consider FB to be evil, just to stay in touch when friends are deciding which pub to go to of an evening.

    Not being on FB has, in short, turned from being a consumer boycott gesture to being an act of self-sabotage.

    389:

    pay phones, which used to be available every block or two, are virtually nonexistent; so the situation of a person travelling about without a mobile is very different from what it was a quarter century ago

    British Telecom inherited the old GPO public service requirement to provide and maintain payphones everywhere, but they've removed most of them due to lack of demand; those that remain are used so infrequently (in many cases, maybe once a month) that they're looking for alternative uses, for example as wireless hotspots (because they all have direct cable connections to the nearest exchange.

    I wouldn't be surprised to hear of payphone cables being leased out to cellular operators, to provide convenient backhaul for local cell masts.

    390:

    I'm seeing a lot more sites lately that want me to turn off my ad blocking software.

    Ironically, the sites that nag you to turn off ad blockers do so by downloading a snippet of javascript that throws up a nastygram if your browser doesn't load ads.

    Both the ads — and the ad-blocker-detectors — don't work without javascript, but all or most of the textual content is just fine.

    So if a site nags me to turn off my ad-blocker, I just ban all javascript from that site.

    (I don't patronize paywall media in the first place, so that's a different problem dodged. There are a few websites I do pay to support, but I do so because I like them and want them to prosper — e.g. metafilter.)

    391:

    Ohh, I just went ego surfing, and about 30 results in, there's a guy from Western Australia, who posted something about a subject I have no interest in, nearly 10 years ago, using my name.

    Or, could it be you've been using his name all these years?

    In my lifetime, I've run into several people who share my first & last names and even once someone who had the same middle initial.

    392:

    Like you I won't go near Arsebook ... But we still have Twottter, whci I know you use & I can for this main-computer ( I suspect if I can remember my phone-password - & type it in correctly - then I will be able to us Tw on the phone as well .. ) You don't need Arsebook if you have conventional e-mail & Tw, surely?

    393:

    Pyra is expensive and underpowered compared to the GPD WIN, which is basically the same size package but containing a full-blown Netbook-spec PC running Windows 10 with 4Gb of RAM and 64Gb SSD, with XBox compatible game controllers. GPD WIN is basically a pocket-sized gaming laptop, while Pyra is a next-generation development of the Pandora linux palmtop that's been held up in development hell for a couple of years and is consequently very trailing edge right now. (e.g. Pyra has a 720p display, while GPD WIN has a full 1920x1080 pixel display.)

    I can't recommend either of these as personal productivity devices. But GPD also make the slightly pricier GPD Pocket, which is utterly glorious in a batshit, bonkers type of way if you remember the old tiny PCs, like the Toshiba Libretto family and the Sony Vaio Picturebook or yore. Take a quad-core Atom CPU, add 8Gb of RAM and 128Gb of flash storage, USB-C, a high resolution (1920 x 1200 pixel) 7" display panel, and inject it into an aluminium unibody chassis like a Macbook Pro that shrank in the wash. Uses a trackpoint (like the old IBM Thinkpads) rather than a trackpad to save space, weighs about 400 grams, and feels physically bulletproof — and it comes from the factory with your choice of Windows 10 Home or Ubuntu Linux (the latter is officially supported). It runs office apps — I've got the desktop version of Scrivener installed on mine, along with Microsoft Office — and it's cheaper than the Pyra. And Pyra has been "coming real soon now" for a couple of years.

    394:

    Re: 'The death and life of the Great Lakes' by Dan Egan

    Looks good.

    Recognized several pests mentioned in the blurb from personal boating experience. Most memorable (gag/shudder) was almost bumping into a sea lamprey while swimming in a lovely little inlet.

    (Dissected a sea lamprey in bio class, never expected to bump into one out in the wild.)

    395:

    Unfortunately the Venn diagram of people who use twitter/facebook/email to communicate is only a partial overlap; plenty of people use Facebook who don't use either of the other media.

    (A survey in Indonesia found that the percentage of population who had and used facebook accounts exceeded the percentage who said "yes" when asked if they had internet access by a number corresponding to over ten million people. FB is so ubiquitous and so much of a walled garden that many people don't realize it runs on top of the internet and that if you have FB access you can use other internet services.)

    396:

    NB: if there's one drawback to the GPD Pocket, it's that it lacks SD/micro-SD/memory card slots and you can't upgrade the RAM or storage.

    The reason for this is that the Intel chipset it uses maxes out at 4 USB controllers and 8GB of RAM and 128Gb of SSD, and the GPD Pocket maxes it out (one of the USB controllers is used for the bluetooth stack, and another for the keyboard and trackpoint mouse; that leaves one for the USB-C channel (also the power supply), and one for the USB 3.1 port. Nothing left over for upgrade storage, basically).

    It's also a bit of a rude awakening to go back to a non-Apple device's approach to sleep/wake. (Sleep mode on this Atom CPU doesn't implement true software suspend, so it loses about 5% of battery charge per hour. Hibernate is available, but requires 8Gb of swapfile space. And while it boots fast from SSD, especially with Windows fastboot enabled, it's still, well, booting up from cold.)

    Having said that if you want a desktop class OS that fits in your pocket, you've got a choice between the GPD Pocket, or the Apple Macbook (for very big pockets). Nothing else really comes close.

    397:

    Anything by Caitlyn Sweet will, I suspect, be good.

    http://caitlinsweet.com

    I can personally vouch for The Door in the Mountain and The Pattern Scars. I'll be reading the rest as I find the time (probably over Winter Break).

    398:

    (Sorry, hit post too soon.)

    I'm assuming you've already tried Peter Watts.

    http://www.rifters.com

    Not so much an author as a book: Slavery by Another Name.

    http://www.slaverybyanothername.com

    Also a PBS documentary film, if you'd rather watch than read.

    399:

    For a critter that might have inspired Hans Giger/Ridley Scott's original Alien, it was somewhat creepy to learn that:

    "1135 – King Henry I (1068-1135) of England was known for his lust of eating the lamprey and is reported to have died from a “surfeit of lampreys,” as the chronicles said, although most historians believe that he died from food poisoning."

    hopefully no unpleasant face-hugger or chest-burster scene was involved in Henry's demise

    400:

    "However. FB is so fucking ubiquitous that not using FB is getting to be like refusing to use email"

    It's not the App or the device, its the network. Facebook (just like email or landline phones before it) has gotten to the tipping point of penetration where network effects are delivering not only upside but massive social downside if you don't participate

    It's also not just social, for anyone running a direct to consumer business it's the key acquisition and engagement channel.

    Also since it's inherently a winner-take-all arena the other social networks are getting crowded out in most geographies

    You will stil find nooks among the elderly mostly where this isn't true but they are rare and decreasing.

    It really needs government regulation, despite the fact that FB's leadership don't seem to have much in the way of nefarious plans other then continued expansion it's too powerful at this point to be left on its own

    The problem is in assembling s regulatory team with the technical know how to regulate something so complex and yet are willing to work for government peanuts

    401:

    Re: Sea lamprey ... Henry I

    Middle Ages Europeans ate all sorts of foods that are no longer considered ordinary food. Have seen pix showing that sea lampreys are still found on some menus in France.

    Watched the show below long after my adventure. Didn't know sea lampreys could grow to 4 feet. The one I almost met was about 2.5 ft long and maybe about 3 to to 4 inches in diameter from head to stubby tail. That's probably what tweaked my attention: it didn't look like the other stuff swimming in the area. (And, yeah - have also encountered swimming snakes. Learned that some snakes swim just below the surface breaking through the water when buoyed by wave action when it gets breezy. Other snakes swim almost at the bottom. No idea how far down snakes in the Great Lakes area can swim.)

    https://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/river-monsters/videos/when-lampreys-attack-a-swimmers-nightmare

    402:

    Re: Book reco -

    Not so much, but it will probably make a lot of people talk/tweet.

    MRidley (author of Genome and a lifetime Peer) has just come out with a GW denying book that features 'essays' from as many scientists as he could dig up that share his view. For a balanced argument, maybe somebody could pull together a 'book' written by all of the climate (and other related science) scientists who actually work in this area. Then let the public/pols read and compare.

    Will wait to read it once my local library gets a copy; refuse to dig into the pockets for this.

    403:

    If you think that's bad, a well-known, erm, "literary" author ( i.e. NO science training or understanding wahtsoever ) has just published biograph of Uncle Chas D. Repeating every single smear he can & all the usual cretinist misinformation.

    Links (in full) follow ... https://www.newscientist.com/article/2144643-radical-new-biography-of-darwin-is-unreliable-and-inaccurate/ http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2017/08/wilson-makes-unconvincing-attempt-kick-darwin-his-throne https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/08/29/a-n-wilson-beats-up-darwin-again-this-time-in-the-times/

    Steam is even now, being emitted from various scientifically-literate circles ....

    404:

    Hmm, now there's a thing. Ethical Hacking[1] and transparency can effect the world:

    Bell Pottinger has been heavily financially impacted by the well-publicised issues resulting in losses of clients, partners and staff and culminating in the expulsion from the Public Relations and Communications Association (‘PRCA’).

    The entities in administration are: Bell Pottinger Private Ltd, Bell Pottinger LLP and Bell Pottinger Services Ltd. None of the subsidiaries outside the UK is in administration; they continue to trade under the control of their separate management teams.

    BDO appointed administrators to Bell Pottinger BDO, United Kingdom 12th Sept 2017

    Bell Pottinger Asia said it would soon re-launch with a new ownership structure and operate under the name Klareco Communications.

    PR firm Bell Pottinger 'nearing collapse' BBC 8th Sept 2017

    Bell Pottinger expelled from trade body for South African campaign BBC 4th Sept 2017

    Ooh, and Domino Theory is hot hot hot right now:

    The fallout from the scandal that brought down PR firm Bell Pottinger is spreading after the resignations of the chief executive, chairman and a string of top executives from the South African arm of KPMG, which audits companies owned by the controversial Gupta family.

    KPMG chiefs in South Africa quit amid Bell Pottinger scandal Guardian 15th Sept 2017

    That's quite the scalp for the hacker(s) / whistle-blower(s).

    That's an interesting one. What happens if the current (real world) M. probes[2] kicks off Tech Bubble 2.5[3]?

    [1] Or Corporate Espionage by your competitors, who knows? (UAE / Qatar / SA, I wonder how their EyEbAll is doing)

    [2] Which might, or might not, lead to a push toward meaningful regulations: but it's America, so it just means lobbying prices will raise.

    [3] Juicero, maker of the doomed $400 internet-connected juicer, is shutting down The Verge, 1st Sept 2017

    405:

    Spark (the NZ legacy telecom) has enabled wireless hotspots at many of their callboxs. The 1GB/day that monthly account holders on their mobile network can access is a point of difference.

    406:

    Your naievete is striking. Ridley's mish mash of nonsense exists to give the right wing nutters talking points, and for the right wing press to point to and claim, wrongly, that scientists doubt AGW. Publishing an opposing book of articles would not get any traction among any media hacks who have already read Ridley's errors. We already have many blog posts, articles in newspapers, entire books, discussing the topic of AGW for all levels of comprehension. That it isn't being acted upon is purely a matter of power dynamics and merely opposing Ridley's rubbish with it's mirror opposite doesn't affect them.

    407:

    Re: Darwin mis-portrayed

    Wonder if it's an attempt to cash in on money/headlines during 'the rise of the fundies' era.

    408:

    Or, could it be you've been using his name all these years?

    FWIW, I'm older than Morrissey and claim precedence.

    409:

    Or, could it be you've been using his name all these years?

    I also predate mozilla, and un-fondly remember the period when their email client had a default address of something like moz@mozilla.org because a number of unreasonable people contacted me to say that "moz@moz.org" was the default address and I should stop using it. Or words to that effect. That was before unicode so I couldn't even render my replies printable

    410:

    Spark (the NZ legacy telecom) has enabled wireless hotspots at many of their callboxs

    Hellstra, the Australian equivalent has done the same and also encourages you to sign up to make your home wifi part of the system. https://www.telstra.com.au/telstra-air/at-home

    It's really convenient if you do sign up, I vaguely recall SWMBO doing so because she has data enabled on her phone pretty much constantly because the four or five social networks she uses run 24/7 {eyeroll}. But it has dropped her mobile data usage by about half, the rest presumably now going through wifi (I'm guessing from 6GB to 3GB a month, based on the plans she was looking at).

    411:

    points to 404

    Wild Hunt 2017

    Oh, and the Rabid Puppies are having a really bad month / week[1]. In fighting, meta 2 break-downs, factional doctrine splits, GooG about to wipe out their new platforms; the whole nine yards.

    No links, but it's, um, amusing, um, to, um, watch, um, them, um, not, um, understand, um, the shock-waves, um, to, um, a legal, um, threat, um, to doxx, um, their own kind[2]. Um[3], sure there's a clever name for a tactic that forces a destructive spiral that's inescapable and so forth, long since stopped caring what mythos you want to draw that name from.

    The Joker - Everything Burns YT: Film Dark Knight, 1:26

    ~

    So, there's at least three good news points to cheer people up.

    [1] Some Rabids also do not understand how the EU works, and how 'hate speech' crimes and non-prosecutions are related to ones' connections rather than the Law. Last time I checked, no Mason ties, :sad panda:

    [2] They fundamentally do not understand the Gremlins. (@Peanut Gallery: we do).

    [3] ॐ

    412:

    if the commenters were that concerned, especially about your health, why didn't they ring you, email, or even drop by

    There's a significant gap for most people between wondering where someone is, and going out of their way to track someone down and demand answers. There are people I see regularly around the place whose only up to date contact info is/was failbook. When I was reconstructing my contact list(s) one of the problems I had was the number of people for whom I only had one electronic connection type. But for local people it was easy enough, I just went along to things and met them face to face to swap details again.

    One thing that did remind me of is the new wave of "real name only" people who seem to have just accepted the government/failbook propaganda at face value and in a few cases just looped at me "but what's your real name" until I walked away.

    I am tempted to change my legal name again. More accurately to change it, spam that ID online, then change it again. But I fear that that would just confuse the bureaucrazy in ways that would make my life unpleasant (changing your name here is administratively simple but pushing the new name out to all the places that track you is tedious and irritating. It's important to plan the step from "new name" to "two forms of government issued photo id" carefully and execute the plan swiftly, lest you need the new ID in order to get the new ID.

    413:

    Respect is not fear and awe; it...[is]the ability to see a person as ze is, to be aware of zes unique individuality. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for zees own sake, and in zees own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.

    ~ Erich Fromm (Slight Alterations for the 21st Century Edition)

    I mean, this is basic-bitch level stuff but most of y'all are still running wetware designed before telepathy was developed.

    ~

    Let's do some Real Work[tm] now. Rhizome Stuff.

    p.s.

    It breaks a few things.

    414:

    You might be amused by a conversation I had yesterday, about Facebook ads and the little native plant group I belong to.

    We do advertise on Facebook, and one of the things I found out yesterday was that ads get targeted with key phrase. Oddly enough "gardening" is not a key phrase that can be used to target ads in FB. However, "burning synagogues" is.

    Now, I'm NOT saying FB is Anti-Semitic. Rather, it looks (at least to the IT guy doing this stuff) like these key works are generated algorithmically. There are two implications here:

    One is that FB is so monumentally and fundamentally ignorant that they don't realize how many thousands of gardening groups there are in the world. If the closest thing you can get to "gardening group" as an ad targeting term is "causes," then the people selling ads on FB have no idea how to reach many thousands of fairly wealthy people. To give you an idea of the scale of the flub, my group is small compared with the bigger horticultural groups in San Diego County, as in a major state environmental organization is smaller than a county horticultural society in a not-too-big county in California. If I understood it right, the local orchid society does international conservation efforts (possibly including land purchases) aimed at preserving orchids. Sadly, you can't target advertising to these people on FB, at least so far as my friend knows. And we'd very much like to do so.

    The other implication is that people have been "Google-bombing" Facebook ad streams for long enough that "burning synagogues" is something people pay money to advertise with. Presumably this has been known for a long time and I'm just now clued into it, but I guess FaceBombing is a thing. The next interesting question is whether FB's people really have been letting hate speech float around because it brings in ad money and doesn't violate the First Amendment, whether it's been done in ignorance, or whether there's something else going on.

    415:

    It's a bit worse than that.

    If you're still running the Vanilla Software[tm], then FB algos have been "so inept" that a massive industry wide advertizing / Brand market has "ceased to exist". This clearly isn't the case: you can check the pesticide / herbicide indexes to see that Monsanto, Bayer et al have been spending and spending hard and nary a complaint from them. Which, if they weren't working, would have caused a massive Law suit a while (5+ years) ago.

    If you're running smarter wet-ware, FB has gone 'all in' with the FBI. It's in their interests to push the line that "the algos got it all wrong" (much like their manual 'curated content' that had all kinds of drama around it[1]) and pretend that any and all anti-Semitic, anti-LGTBT, anti-Muslim target groups were a "complete accident".

    You're seeing massive damage control and the pretense that "ALL THE ALGOS" were at fault, when... the spending / Branding data says: NO.

    Anyhow: Where's the Moon tonight? Fuckery, large scale fuckery[2].

    It's getting to that point where you cease the niceties and declare Total War[tm] because that's what the Other Side has decided works.

    [1] e.g. Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News Gizmodo 5/09 2016

    [2] You've no idea what this means.

    416:

    Actually, they're attempting a Reality Hoist. H.S.S (without help) are massively inept at Temporal / Narrative shifts, so it's fucking obvious.

    FB made a choice to pretend that the billions made weren't partly due to Hate Crime Speech, have gone in with the FBI (actually it's a soft military coup, but hey, let's pretend it's not that, Americans would just fucking collapse if they encountered reality) and now they're attempting to re-write their history so the profit margins aren't hurt.

    Now: if the various lobbying groups within the USA had any moral fiber[1], they'd be protesting this as vastly cynical and egregious fuckery.

    They won't.

    It's 2017: The Insane Clown Posse have more morality, community and shared humanity than your top 2%.

    Deal with it.

    [1] Spoiler: they don't. And yes, that includes concerned entities where FB has been fanning the hatred such as AIPAC (c.f. Ukraine, documentary, shameful stuff) and all the rest of the various Corporate groups who no-one even pretends any more should be ethically based.

    417:

    And I'm really fucked off with the Moon japery with added Canine over-tones from debased fucking slaves who don't know when to back the fuck down.

    drops carcass of Rabid Dogs on your door step

    Delivered.

    One thing to remember about the Russian Mind (and also, Corporations, c.f. Ted Cruz and Net Neutrality Laws etc) is that post-WWII / Stalingrad the "off switch" got removed. (C.f. Good point about Japan WWI chivalrous behavior to POWs vrs WWII). You can spot it all over (esp. in online Games - the .CN version is mass group efforts[1]).

    It's a marker of Respect / Civilisation: the ability to 'play the game' and take a win/loss while acknowledging the Other. It's kinda fucking important to being Human and not a monster (c.f. Fundamentalist Religions and so forth[3]).

    But, hey: Moon was a test, you want Total War[tm], so be it[2].

    She's Lost Control YT: Music, Joy Division, 3:56

    I mean, really: Finesse a fucking Cat 5/5/5/4/3/3/3/4/4/3/2 storm and you fuckers are running Moon games.

    Perception: We did it while drunk you stupid, stupid, stupid fucks.

    [1] Go find it: A South Korean gamer dresses in the same uniform as 20+ of them, then kills them all. It's a classic. Or just look up "Taiwan #1".

    [2] Look at the examples / odds: you're gonna lose, and lose badly.

    [3] There's a video making the rounds as we speak which was recorded in a UK school: Ultra-Hard Muslim teaching via woman teachers. All surrounding the notion of "kill the kaffir". It's making big fucking waves, I'll tell you that much.

    418:

    Sorry - copy pasted a title there.

    It's obviously Ultra-Hard Isamlicist Teaching*.

    It's popping up all over the shop: and, tbh: 100% no sympathy for the teacher brain-washing kids with this stuff. (Oh, and, up pops a story about Ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects attempting to police who is Jewish or not in Israel, right on algo target).

    I mean, really: same problem, same fucking pathways, same fucking issues.

    Abrahamic religions: so 20th Century.

    ~

    Now I have to go find a Moon. Outrageous showing off there by the Girls.

    419:

    Re: KPMG - not at all surprised!

    This outfit is one of the big four from way back. By now, guess they've managed to get fined by almost every gov't jurisdiction usu. because of 'questionable acct'g practices'. Mostly tax avoidance but every now and then outright poor acct'g/stupidity.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KPMG_tax_shelter_fraud

    https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2016/01/06/local-college-allowed-to-sue-kpmg-over-student.html

    Biggest, most headline-grabbing recent lawsuit is re: gender discrimination brought on by their female staff. They've recently settled with the Feds but more and more women are still coming forward.

    http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202789196516/KPMG-Settles-Feds-Discrimination-Claims-but-Scrutiny-Is-Far-From-Over?slreturn=20170817205627

    Wonder how many/which of their senior partners are on which corp BoDs.

    420:

    Big Five*

    Arthur Andersen got royally fucked by the US gov + ENRON energy collusion (TEXAS MONEY) and got torn apart completely unfairly. Years later in the court documents you can see that proven.

    What you're actually seeing is that the rest of the Big Four now will just ditch / dump when a scandal of this sort kicks off because they know that their services are really not integral to the Global Financial Markets[1].

    Hint: this is when the system starts imploding.

    If I can finesse a fucking chaotic system, I can finesse Accountants.

    [1] Until the entire thing burns down due to losing the basics of accounting, and the reasons they exist and so forth. QE - acid on the very basis of Market functions, 101. And no, not a Libertarian etc.

    421:

    Re: More KPMG ... search pulled up quite a few suits

    Pension plan woes ... https://www.bna.com/kpmg-cant-arbitrate-n73014449485/

    Fired because they didn't want any bad news in the report going to the client & now he's suing. https://www.law360.com/articles/811307/kpmg-hit-with-whistleblower-suit-over-amex-audit

    Incompetence on an epic scale ...

    http://blog.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-news/2015/01/shrs_vs_kpmg_lawsuit_claims_fi.html

    Excerpt: 'PASCAGOULA, Mississippi -- KPMG's $88 million accounting blunder of Singing River Health System's receivables is "one of the largest reported adjustments in history," according to a lawsuit SHRS filed against its longtime auditing firm Friday in U.S. District Court in Gulfport.

    The lawsuit states that KPMG's audits were "riddled with flagrant accounting errors that had resulted in a colossal overstatement of Singing River's accounts receivable," and also prevented SHRS from learning sooner the extent of problems with its pension plan that has led to a parade of lawsuits.

    SRHS is requesting a jury trial and is seeking to recoup "actual damages and all such other and further relief, equitable and legal, to which Singing River is justly entitled," according to the lawsuit.

    KPMG is accused of breach of contract, negligence and professional malpractice.'

    422:

    As for the Patriarchal Hierarchy Models and implicit unfairness... well, of course. We're attempting to change things without burning down the village to save it.

    But, the Moon.

    [1] The Moon stuff? Yeah. The Grils decided that that wasn't good enough and they're pissed.

    [2] Shit is going to get real nasty if you have balls.

    Ride of the Valkyries (Apocalypse Now version) YT: Music,

    You're about to see that one reclaimed.

    423:

    Re: 'Big Five'

    Yeah, I know - started typing that but felt that some folks might not recall AA.

    'Burns down because of losing the basics of acctg systems' - agree. That's why I keep harping on accounting 'principles' and not just accounting 'rules'. Right now the trend is away from GAAP and toward more and more 'rules'. Not sure whether tech is somehow involved in this shift apart from it's easier to program rules than ideas/principles/end goals.

    424:

    Good to know you can parse some of the "gibberish" I type. I generally attempt to keep it Truth Conditional. It might take a bit to fact check it since Time is kinda wibbly-wobbly for us.

    If you understood Moon and "the girls"[1] meant, you'd probably shit bricks.

    You're living in a parochial patriarchal system that pretends it has a ~2,000 year old ethical basis, but it's really a 400 year old enlightenment system based on a multiplicity of hodge-podge work arounds and fucking slavery.

    We didn't lie about that whole 150,000 - 100,000 k type stuff. Whole lotta history.

    Gaia. Creation. Genesis.

    points to the Moon

    Whole Lotta Love YT: Music, Led Zeppelin, 4:49

    p.s.

    You killed the Whales. That's... The odds are not in your favor.

    [1] Not actually prepubescent female H.S.S

    [2] And yes, the "grils" is a Chan joke, denoting the range of targets being marked

    [3] The M3 joke is that while MRA / Chan / Incels are pathetic, they are redeemable: Manly Men who fuck the World for profit and nuke the air and kill all the fucking fish: oooooh, whole different levels of Raaaaaaage.

    425:

    NO

    BRONZE-AGE

    (Abrahamic Religions)

    426:

    All this accounting shit is why many "firms" ( They'e almost all LLP's these days, but hey ... ) in the second/third tier are doing very well at the moment. This is because, unless you are an absolutely ginormous international (evil) corporation, which has to go to what is now one of the "Big4" (simply because only they have the ground troops to handle, say, auditing an oil company), then the "smaller" firms are the people to go-to to get your books looked at. And tax advice & international legal matters, too - often you get co-ordination between the "accounting" firm & their clients on many matters, other than simple auditing. That is where the profits are to be made, as well, actually. The firm with the largest single office ( i.e. no subsidary offices ) in this country has grown in employee numbers by about 40% in the past 5-6 years as a result of this trend. Mind you, none of this is new, it's just the scale ... Deloiitte have been around, acquiring other companies for some time - I've seen records of them investigating a fraud perpetrated on the Great Northern Railway, in approx 1856 (!)

    427:

    Spark has also electric vehicle charging at some legacy phone boxes. The sort of innovation that seems lacking elsewhere in the world.

    428:

    But it is America.

    So another question: why has the KKK not been sued into bankruptcy by parents of murdered black youths?

    Answer: mostly they have.

    Their assets - a few halls and lodges - were sued from under them by families of their victims. The result is a set of groups less formal structure, because when it has formal structure can work to establish a chain of responsibility and sue the bastards.

    429:

    "I am tempted to change my legal name again"

    What?

    You've got sick of having a legal name of: '; while 1 = 1 begin drop table ( select top 1 name from systables ) end;

    I guess it is a bit last-decade...

    430:

    The really big problem with civil lawsuits is that members of a hate group use organization names to play a shell game, hiding liability. And if you mess with the law to find that "common cause" conveys liability regardless of the nameplate on the front door of the atrocity, you end up with other forms of abuse of process popping up. (For example, the way in Singapore opposition politicians who show any sign of success tend to mysteriously get sued into personal bankruptcy for libeling the government party — and of course being an undischarged bankrupt disqualifies you from office in English law and its descendants.)

    Again, if you criminalize membership of group A you end up with group B popping up: new name, same faces. See also National Action/Scottish Dawn.

    431:

    It was more a rhetorical device (you'll notice the ultra-male tone? Having had to watch dirgefulsome puppy videos I thought it appropriate).

    Anyhow: dissection of a viral attack meme.

    Someone (#weseeyou) chopped a chunk out of a 2015 documentary (The Jihadis Next Door Channel 4, 2015) then presented it as new hidden footage from a UK school (it's not: it's from a specific location, at a specific time, not a school, well known to UK police etc) and then ramped it up all over the usual places (bot enhanced). It's crude and the timing is very suspect (@London Lidl bag), there was also a lot of activity surrounding USA protests (St. Louis ex-officer acquitted in fatal shooting of black driver CNN 16th 2017) that mixed in burning synagogues, BLM and so forth.

    I suspect it was a USA born one, the mushroom spread and tone denotes an English speaker but not UK based (? this might be incorrect, cba to chase dog-catching vans).

    ~

    Anyhow, in chasing that, discovered a massive Christian apocalypse bubble set to burst on the 23rd September. It's massive and a mix of organic, $$$ clicks for cash and some nasties underneath it: it's also sophisticated. Unusual in that it touches on the female-centric Astrological Spaces (notice the spam bot in the last thread? pip pip we did) and genuine Catholic spaces. It's been brewing for over a year and has probable impact on Catholic communities (cough Latino spaces):

    One day last fall I was working in my office when my desk phone rang. It was a reader of The Catholic Astronomer, calling me with a question. He asked why the Vatican Observatory blog was full of discussion on black holes or whatnot, when there was something much more momentous to talk about.

    On September 23, 2017 the sun will be in the zodiac constellation Virgo — “a woman clothed with the sun”. The moon will be at the feet of Virgo — “with the moon under her feet”. The ‘nine’ stars of the zodiac constellation Leo, plus three planets (Mercury, Venus, and Mars), will be at the head of Virgo — “on her head a crown of 12 stars”. The planet Jupiter will be in the center of Virgo, and, as the weeks pass after September 23, Jupiter will exit Virgo to the east, past her feet, so to speak — “She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth”. Jupiter is the largest of the planets, the “king” of the planets, so to speak — “She gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod”.

    Biblical signs in the sky? Will the sky on September 23, 2017 mirror “signs” from the Book of Revelation in the Bible? An astronomer responds. EarthSky Aug 28th 2017 - spoilers, it's not that special after-all.

    Someone is working hard on that one (hmm: Catholics, Apocalypse, Bannon, US / Italian split, hmmmm).

    The Vatican Observatory blog is rather good though, not Moggesque in any fashion.

    [1] My spam has a real meaning: the bubble is being hijacked by Mysterons as we speak. Could be exciting. Who knows? I'm on the naughy list atm.

    432:

    Note: I'm making fun out of counter-ops who don't do their research very well and need a prod.

    The footage is from this documentary, back in 2011: Mosque school arrest following Channel 4 documentary Guardian 2011.

    So people are resorting to five year old sources, which can be construed as encouraging; but the tie-in:

    The documentary makers then began a libel action against West Midlands police and the Crown Prosecution Service for accusing them of distortion; they apologised to Hardcash Productions and agreed to pay £100,000.

    You can shove 'Darul Uloom School' into search engines and spot the traces in American Right-wing media back to May, so it's just re-heating old material (thus timing is suspected).

    433:

    Having met Brother Guy, I am totally not surprised that the Vatican Observatory is part of the reality-based community. (SF fan, jesuit priest, research astronomer, runs the Vatican Observatory, takes a withering view of creationism among other anti-scientific beliefs.)

    434:

    cough He'd have to be an SF fan, to believe in "the bible" anyway, wouldn't he? cough

    435:
    Biblical signs in the sky? Will the sky on September 23, 2017 mirror “signs” from the Book of Revelation in the Bible? An astronomer responds.

    There is also the big hint that—as a general rule—headlines phrased as questions always have no as the correct answer.

    And then I had an extra chuckle at the hidden (most likely unintentional) bonus joke here:

    One day last fall I was working in my office …

    I let y'all work out what the word "fall" means in roman catholic doctrine and how that ties into the end times.

    436:

    I think only Jews can claim that much historical continuity, with everyone else, the connection is tenuous, christians have a more substantial connection to Latin Pagan religions. If they owned up to it, they'd be happier...

    437:
    those that remain are used so infrequently (in many cases, maybe once a month) that they're looking for alternative uses, for example as wireless hotspots (because they all have direct cable connections to the nearest exchange.

    The customers keeping ours in business are the homeless, who have to ring 'round to find where (if anywhere) has a bed for them that night. There is some push to distribute mobiles so they're not shackled to the few extant city-centre callboxes - which then get used as evidence that the homeless must be on the streets by choice, since they can afford mobiles...

    438:

    What is this community's take on the possibilities of Quantum Computers? In terms of the topic of the thread, the potential for Machine Learning in conjunction with them seems relevent.

    439:

    He's a jesuit. I suspect the answer to "do you believe in the bible?" would be a pained expression followed by "that's a complicated question ..."

    440:

    Well, he looks like a nice man. But he's totally going to get written into the plot without his knowing:

    Is that proof of the existence of God? Of course not. It’s a coincidence. But maybe it’s a divine coincidence. It’s just one of those lovely tricks of the universe that has to make you smile...

    If the universe, as G.K. Chesterton once described in “Orthodoxy,” is not our stern mother, but our sister, one that we’re supposed to love and dance with, then this also means that this universe and this world deserves all the care we can give it and all the love we can give it. It’s not something to be exploited.

    For this Vatican astronomer, the solar eclipse is divine coincidence PRI, 21st Aug 2017

    Something something sister mother something something.

    ~

    What is this community's take on the possibilities of Quantum Computers?

    Depends on how wild you want to get[1]. And/or how much you take as guaranteed that the phone doesn't store / share the data used to process the process:

    The iPhone X’s notch is basically a Kinect The Verge 17th Sept 2017

    The Kinect was hacked back in 2010.

    We write to you regarding the growing number of “always on” consumer devices that surreptitiously record the communications of consumers in their homes and may constitute unlawful surveillance under federal wiretap law. Earlier this year, EPIC filed a detailed complaint with the FTC regarding the Samsung “Smart TV” in which we set out facts to support an investigation by the Commission. EPIC letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, 2015 PDF. EPIC are privacy advocates like the EFF. (Has a good chunk of footnoted links, proofs etc).

    If each phone only has a single facial recognition (i.e. 1 user, Apple seems to prefer this to multi-accounts / phone, $$$) then you could be looking at some really weird effects. (Are you more or less real than your simulacrum if the simulacrum has more self-awareness via algo of your subconscious habits, behaviors, patterns etc modelled on a quantum computer?). Predicting the future possibles is a very strange attractive goal.

    Or, more seriously:

    The network is exclusively for 242 Party and government users in the provincial capital of Jinan. Hundreds of pieces of equipment connected by hundreds of kilometers of fiber optics were installed within five months.

    China's first commercial quantum private communication network completed China Daily 13th Sept 2017 - .CN's propaganda paper, so salt required. They did do that satellite thing though.

    Mix in: Hardware-efficient Quantum Optimizer for Small Molecules and Quantum Magnets BM T.J. Watson Research Center, April 18, 2017, PDF, legal.

    441:

    Yeah, I noticed .... Was it the J's who were offically permitted to lie, so that more converts could be got?

    442:

    Aaannnd, didn't take long to spot an example: that's bad. Very very bad.

    Supply chain attacks are a very effective way to distribute malicious software into target organizations. This is because with supply chain attacks, the attackers are relying on the trust relationship between a manufacturer or supplier and a customer.

    In reviewing the Version History page on the CCleaner download site, it appears that the affected version (5.33) was released on August 15, 2017. On September 12, 2017 version 5.34 was released. The version containing the malicious payload (5.33) was being distributed between these dates. This version was signed using a valid certificate that was issued to Piriform Ltd by Symantec and is valid through 10/10/2018. Piriform was the company that Avast recently acquired and was the original company who developed the CCleaner software application.

    CCleanup: A Vast Number of Machines at Risk TALOS Security blog, 18th Sept 2017

    Note that CISCO aren't exactly novices at this type of attack, in a block of irony: Malicious Cisco router backdoor found on 79 more devices, 25 in the US Ars Technica, 2015

    So, that's a thing.

    443:

    Last spam, but this ties it all together nicely:

    Controlling and manipulating quanta of coherent acoustic vibrations—phonons—in integrated circuits has recently drawn a lot of attention, since phonons can function as unique links between radiofrequency and optical signals, allow access to quantum regimes and offer advanced signal processing capabilities. Recent approaches based on optomechanical resonators have achieved impressive quality factors allowing for storage of optical signals. However, so far these techniques have been limited in bandwidth and are incompatible with multi-wavelength operation. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate a coherent buffer in an integrated planar optical waveguide by transferring the optical information coherently to an acoustic hypersound wave. Optical information is extracted using the reverse process. These hypersound phonons have similar wavelengths as the optical photons but travel at five orders of magnitude lower velocity. We demonstrate the storage of phase and amplitude of optical information with gigahertz bandwidth and show operation at separate wavelengths with negligible cross-talk.

    A chip-integrated coherent photonic-phononic memory Nature Communications 8, 18 September 2017, Html, full paper, legal.

    Could be interesting.

    444:

    He believes (i.e. has faith in) in God, the Son and the Holy Spirit[1] and the truth that the Universal and Holy Catholic Church is the sole power on Earth that truly represents that faith.

    The Bible is a book, a collection of stories, transcribed oral histories, metaphors, instructions and exhortations to the faithful and compiled, revised and edited thoroughly over the millenia to fit with whatever was the current social zeitgeist. It is not in itself the Faith, the belief, it is not divine in any way. Many people disagree with this as a concept, preferring to have something physical to guide their path in faith and hence its elevation into Holy Writ (which it isn't) in their minds.

    Of course they're all delusional, listening to voices in their heads which fit their preconceptions and in the worst cases trying to apply their beliefs to the rest of us who just want to be left alone in the real world, but they're in charge.

    445:

    A tad different than usual for me - I normally start reading the cmts where I left off the day before, get to current, write down posts I want to respond to, then start from that.

    However, this is closer to home: Brother Guy is a personal friend of mine. We met not long after my late wife and I moved to Chicago, in '94, as a member of GT, a loosely-affiliated group of sf fans and techies. My usual bio of him is "a good Catholic boy who grew up in Detroit, wound up a lay Jesuit brother, was teaching around the US at various Catholic colleges for half the year, and the other half at the Vatican Observatory. His speciality, as an astronomer, btw, is meteorites. He got promoted to Director of the Vatican Observatory a couple years ago. When we got to sit and talk at Worldcon in Spokane, I got to congratulate/offer condolences on the promotion).

    So, yes, he's a very longtime SF fan, and a pleasure to talk to.

    446:

    See Charlie's reply in 308. And as much as I find Frank to be a decent guy, he's still holding the RC to no birth control (other than rhythm) and no abortion. As as for the US funnymentalists, they'll turn purple over ABORTION! BIBLE! BAD!!!!!

    So you may know better, but most don't, or won't admit it, even though in private, most use birth control, or go have secret abortions.

    447:

    Re 3, about the Jewish lobbying groups: the big ones are PRO-ISRAEL (yeah, right), there's also J Street, which are pro-Isreal... but NOT pro-Netanyahu/rught-wing crazies/Eretz Israel types*

    The latter are certainly NOT pro-Trumponi

    • Eretz Israel are crazies who want Israel to be the ancient country of Israel at its largest, including both parts... and who pull "but the Palestinians have their country, it's Jordan, blah, blah.
    448:

    Um, wikipedia says that statism is a political theory that the state should control economic or political affairs.

    Right. That's so clear, and has so many threads that go on to what I was suggesting, that I'm not touching that.

    Note that, as a Pagan, there is NO WAY I try to explain to anyone about the difference between the Christian Satan and the "reclaimed" Satanists (which may or may not include Setians)....

    And yes, as a socialist, I DO want the state to protect me from Big Money and Big Company.

    449:

    If you're running firefox, install the NoScrit plugin. There are pages, like this one, that I permanently say are ok, but a lot of web pages, I'll only temporarily enable some linked-in sites, and I never enable google-analytics.

    Youtube won't play until I enable it, and googlevideo. Temporarily....

    450:

    The right-wing bias, yes. And no, they are not just a hate group, they're a terrorist organization; they were created as such, and continue to be. I've had a couple folks over the years try to claim they were a social group.

    BULLSHIT.

    Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as marches, esp in places we're not welcome, cross-burnings, and, oh yes, torture, rape, arson and murder. That's a criminal organization, there's no First Amendment rights for that.

    451: insert "nose-in-air.h"

    I meant Real model railroading. For example, google Rod Stewart model railroad.

    452:

    That's... insane. They don't know what shift they're working, weeks in advance? Is management that incompetent?

    And 24x7? Given what you're describing, should we assume that they are NEVER not on call, and so indistinguishable from an indentured servant?

    453:

    As of the last five or so years, there is exactly one other person using whitroth on the entire 'Net. With her, if's the beginning of her first name, and we share the same last name.

    I got it from the first email address that my late wife and I got, back in the mid-nineties. Nojay, you might remember her, from the ride we gave you from Magicon in '92 to St. Charles, to your brother. Her last name began with Whit, and so what I have isn't a real name, nor a gaming name, and so it's pretty unique (yes, so y'all can now find the Real Me), though you might find old addresses, the one I've had since '09 is .us.

    454:

    sigh

    No. The instructions on a projects web page, at least in the *Nix world, mostly assume you're installing from a tarball.

    A word to the wise: DON'T.

    SOME projects will have, in their install info, how to install to specific distributions. Use that The package managers also resolve dependencies, and yes, I've had to build projects that were put together by subject matter experts who had no clue as to what they were doing, computer-wise, and assume whatever odd versions of packages they had was what, I mean, EVERYone has....

    In CentOS (same as RHEL, and Scientific Linux), the package manager is yum, and you can, even as an ordinary user, say yum list *partilpackagename* In your case, it would have been yum list R*, and you'd get the laundry list of R packages.

    Npte tjat neither Bob nor Mo are in that Laundry list....

    455:

    I hear King Henry, and I think of the song that Steeleye Span did in one of their early albums, about how a King Henry got a wife....

    "Let never a man a-wooding wend Without thinges three A store of gold, an open heart, And full of charity."

    456:

    Re: Satanism

    Didn't know Satanism was such a growing, myriad versions thing until reading this. Very peculiar ... and scary.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-v%C3%B6lkisch_movements

    457:

    That's... insane. They don't know what shift they're working, weeks in advance?

    I'm not disagreeing with you, merely observing that many businesses are arranged this way. When workers have no power and social ideology is that money is the sole measure of value, we get this stuff. It's most obvious in retail, where staffing levels are micromanaged using zero hours contracts and managers are expected to fill in when unexpected shortages occur. So for example a "retail area manager" responsible for four of five shops will be expected to step in and work a Sunday if the scheduled manager for that shop is sick and no other replacement is available.

    Where you old farts might do that via phones, even landlines, managing a bunch of cheap youf on a shop floor is often easiest done via failbook. And when everything else happens via failbook, it's easy to end up with "I messaged you on failbook that we were short staffed" being the reason a shop doesn't open.

    I think this is profoundly stupid in a variety of ways, but it's what I see happening. In some ways it's worse when it's done to IT system administration staff, because they can screw up a whole company with one stupid mistake. Sure you can call them it at 7am on a Sunday, taking your chances with their partying/gaming/astrophotography, but the consequences...

    And 24x7? Given what you're describing, should we assume that they are NEVER not on call, and so indistinguishable from an indentured servant?

    The market has moved on from such ancient notions as "on call" and "indenture", replacing them with zero-hours contracts, at will employment, and "mutual obligation". When most staff are on the breadline and cannot get benefits unless the employer chooses to help them qualify, the employee's ability to say no to anything is greatly reduced. But that doesn't have to be done in one brutally obvious step like legalising slavery, these days it's a carefully constructed web of rules and regulations that interact in carefully managed ways to provide the illusion of choice "I choose homelessness" while making it very difficult indeed to choose anything other than servitude.

    One interesting thing I read the other day is that in the UK one reason they can't find citizens for fruit picking etc is that the unemployment benefits are structured to prevent it - as they are in Australia and probably Aotearoa. For someone on the dole any period of employment needs to also cover 1-6 months of benefit disruption on top of the actual employment period, which obviously makes any short term job, especially a casual or piece-work job, extremely high risk. Viz, if someone works for six weeks picking apples (the usual season length), they exit that job facing a nominal four week stand-down before they can get the dole again. So they needs ten weeks pay for six weeks work as an absolute minimum. But in practice they will face bureaucratic stuff-ups resulting in delays or missed payments, and the likelihood that they will be penalised for some of: missing "job search" appointments while working, missing notifications sent to the wrong address while they're working, overpayments (FRAUD!) due to uncertain income while working, apparent overpayments due to bureaucratic errors.... there's a very long list.

    Against that background, an employer willing to offer at least a few hours work most weeks on an ongoing basis comes across quite well. This is a deliberate policy from government - make being on the dole much more unpleasant than even the most abusive employer. And since government also get to decide what's lawful, they can easily make sure that even the worst employer is more constrained than the dole office. This can be very blatant, like the Australian "unpaid internship" program being run by the government. That's needed because it's illegal for employers to force staff to work without pay... but the government can do it.

    458:

    also: those things are win-win-win for government. They win up front politically just by announcing "tough on dole bludgers", then they win again through reduced payments to people dependent on them, and if those people drop off the benefit as a result they win a third time because unemployment drops.

    Given that it's amazing we have the level of social support that we do.

    459:

    ...then the "smaller" firms are the people to go-to to get your books looked at. And tax advice & international legal matters, too - often you get co-ordination between the "accounting" firm & their clients on many matters, other than simple auditing.

    You've correctly pointed out that only the "big 4" firms have the necessary mass of audit-fodder to handle a big company. While they compete between each other for those contracts (the resultant effort to drive down costs has an impact) they also have a mandatory changeover every four or five years.

    Much of the assurance work should already have been done by the firm's internal audit function; after all, if a firm doesn't understand its own money flows, that firm soon goes bust. It all goes horribly wrong when the internal audit, the external audit, and the Board who are supposed to represent the interests of the shareholders are all subverted (see Enron). It's another reason why a job title of "CEO and Chairman of the Board" is a bad idea; they should ideally be separate people.

    It can work - the waiting list scandal that resulted in the sacking of the CEO of Lothian health board, and a rather fast reputation-protecting move of the then-Health Minister, was triggered when the Board ignored the CEO and appointed an independent auditor from a "Big 4" firm to go hunting after the data.

    The other advantage of the bigger accounting firms is that they're large enough to have a credible "consulting" business (note: and required to be kept separate from their "assurance" business). These are big enough to specialise; if you want a specialist IT project risk manager, they've got one on the books. Tame white hats? Just say the word. Whereas smaller firms need their people to be generalists, not specialists. It's similar in Law firms; small local partnerships may be better at customer relationships, less good at technical competence. Granted, it's not without flaws.

    Meanwhile, it's all very well to say "ahh, the Fat Cats are screwing over the small shareholders" but remember that the big institutional investors (pension firms, etc) hold a lot of investment, and are less forgiving if their money evaporates in a puff of Executive arrogance. That's why there's an increasing move to attack CEO / executive pay via the remuneration committees - own a few thousand shares, and you can be safely ignored at the AGM; but if you own 3% of the firm's stock, and similar firms own another 30%, then you're taken seriously...

    460:

    Re: 457/Moz

    One interesting thing I read the other day is that in the UK one reason they can't find citizens for fruit picking etc is that the unemployment benefits are structured to prevent it...

    Not sure if the unemployment benefits over here in the UK are structured to prevent it. But a better question -- who would want to do fruit picking in the first place? It must be a horrible job -- and one I came close to doing. From what I gather it is a combination of backbreaking work, out in bad weather (note: the autumn is drawing in now in the UK, so don't expect too many heat waves; expect rain!) and the lowest pay possible.

    I Came close myself to doing fruit-picking back in the early 90s though fortunatly I dodged that particular bullet and found a better job (though not by all that much). That was a time when many places could pay you a pittance and really get away with it -- I remember being unemployed at the time and seeing jobs advertised for as low as £2/hr(!) -- how could anyone live on that? And one job which demanded you be 20 years of age with 20 years of experience.....x.x !

    Not related, but in other news the W3C approves EME/DRM in web browsers; https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/09/18/1750235/html5-drm-standard-is-a-go

    461:

    who would want to do fruit picking in the first place?

    It can be an awesome job if the pay is right. But politicians have fixed that problem and as you note, pay is now derisory.

    When I was growing up in a horticultural area there were quite a lot of seasonal workers who followed the work from farm to farm in the area. From mid-winter when there was no work there'd be a round of pruning across the tree crops, then thinning those, then thinning vine fruit, then in mid spring the picking would start and run across berryfruit, vine fruit, pipfruit and stonefruit until quite late in autumn, when the vines and berries would be pruned and tidied, then a few weeks off in winter. This did not involve moving house, BTW, just varying length commutes (less than an hour each way by car, often by bicycle)

    The low-paid end of that was picking berryfruit, where an awesome worker in good fruit might make twice the minimum wage. The other 99% would make minimum wage or less (often schoolkids). In pipfruit or kiwifruit the average worker would make a decent wage, usually for 12-15 weeks starting with peaches then apples then kiwifruit. A top end worker would be making 10x minimum hourly wage and working 60-80 hours a week. So it was quite possible to do just the picking season then slum it the rest of the year or go off pruning pine plantations or whatever.

    Two things made that work: unions, and co-operation from the dole office. Unions lift the wages, and the dole office would sign you up based on your last pay slip and current bank statement - there was a stand-down based on cash in hand and earnings, but it wasn't oppressive - from memory it was based on the award weekly wage which was ~1.5x minimum and 2x the dole. So if you picked apples for a month and saved a bit you could generally go back on the dole a couple of weeks later and still have a bit of money in the bank (IIRC they didn't count the first couple of thousand you had saved).

    These days... not so much.

    462:

    That's my experience, BTW. I started university with a decent chunk of savings in hand from doing that work. At a time when minimum wage was $5/hr to $7/hr I would refuse to work for less than $10/hr and considered "good" to start at about $25. I recall being grumpy with sales reps visiting our packhouse when I was making boxes at piecework rates and could sustain 3x minimum wage for a 10 hour day... unless some numpty needed to spend 30 minutes explaining that my stepfather really should consider his particular time-wasting-moron product.

    463:

    Simon: Do you believe that you are a part of God's plan?

    Thomas Daggett: That's a complicated question.

    Simon: No it isn't.

    464:

    What is this community's take on the possibilities of Quantum Computers? In terms of the topic of the thread, the potential for Machine Learning in conjunction with them seems relevent. Interesting question. Obviously cryptography is a concern, enough so that (a) some (perhaps much) of the research into quantum computing is funded by national-level security agencies, and (b) there is a lot of effort going into quantum-computing-resistant crypto. (e.g. Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization(NIST: "Post-quantum candidate algorithm nominations are due November 30, 2017"); wikipedia Post-quantum cryptography) A brief search related to machine learning found a reasonably large and active hive of papers relating quantum computing and machine learning. Here's a recent survey with with a reasonable number of citations and a pile of refs. See figure 1 for a landscape with keyphrases to search on. Of particular (personal) interest is the limited progress made so far on probabilistic graphical models (including causal models). Quantum Machine Learning 28 Nov 2016 On the other hand, quantum mechanics offers tantalizing prospects to enhance machine learning, ranging from reduced computational complexity to improved generalization performance. The most notable examples include quantum enhanced algorithms for principal component analysis, quantum support vector machines, and quantum Boltzmann machines. Progress has been rapid, fostered by demonstrations of midsized quantum optimizers which are predicted to soon outperform their classical counterparts. Further, we are witnessing the emergence of a physical theory pinpointing the fundamental and natural limitations of learning. Here we survey the cutting edge of this merger and list several open problems.

    Very recent, with a pile of references (barely skimmed): Opportunities and challenges for quantum-assisted machine learning in near-term quantum computers 31 Aug 2017 In this contribution to the focus collection on "What would you do with 1000 qubits?", we provide concrete examples of intractable ML tasks that could be enhanced with near-term devices. We argue that to reach this target, the focus should be on areas where ML researchers are still struggling, such as generative models in unsupervised or semisupervised learning, instead of the popular and much more tractable ML techniques.

    424 If you understood Moon and "the girls"... (and related)

    Great, something else to reverse engineer from words. :-) That, and "Rhizome Stuff". Was going to comment last night on night walks on paths during the past few moonless nights but got skittish. Perhaps you'll let us know when you find a Moon.

    465:

    No. The instructions on a projects web page, at least in the *Nix world, mostly assume you're installing from a tarball.

    Well, if you read the instructions for R on the linked page, it is definitely not a tarball installation, but the repositories for apt-get. Even then, the installation is sometimes not just 'apt-get update && apt-get install my-new-package'. Repositories which are not from the distribution itself can create a whole lot of trouble.

    Everything that can come from distribution repositories usually works, nowadays. I remember the times when I ran Debian unstable, and, boy, was it just that. Also the Ubuntu, both regular and long term support, has broken on me many, many times on update. Usually it has been either video or sound. Just some days ago I had to reconfigure my video drivers for it because I got just a black screen on boot.

    So, if the R packages are not in the distribution repositories, which I don't know, and either way, their own repositories probably have the newest version, I wouldn't go out blaming people of not doing the right thing when they follow the instructions on the R pages for installing the thing.

    466:

    Well, with Debian unstable the whole deal is you are supposed to expect it to be unstable, and willing and able to deal with breakages :) Debian stable, on the other hand, is just as dependably stable, if sometimes a little old. Me, I use testing, which I consider an acceptable compromise. Occasionally I do find myself having to recompile some package in a form uncontaminated by systemd, but that's never too much of a problem, since Debian's support for non-Linux kernels means it has to be possible somehow. (And with 8 cores compilations go like stink, which is much of the reason I got an 8-core CPU.)

    Ubuntu I used for a couple of years but gave up on and went back to plain Debian when their attitude of "you will do things our way or not at all" became too much of a pain in the arse to circumvent. The final straw was when they dropped the fuck-awful "Unity" desktop on everyone and responded to the flood of complaints with "we are sticking with it because it is part of our vision for Ubuntu for the 21st century (or some such piece of meaningless buzzword bingo bollocks), so fuck you, all of you". Original reason for trying it was that I was doing a lot of multimedia work (reason alluded to earlier by AD) and liked its suitability for that. Yes, it does break audio for loads of people on upgrade, but it never did it to me, probably because I tend to use old hardware with stable support.

    But that aside, whitroth is making a very important point, irrespective of its applicability to the R package specifically. When installing any novel package, one should always prioritise the sources thus:

    0) Remember that using a method with the lowest possible number on this list is more important than getting the latest version. If some particular recently-introduced feature is essential, that may dictate a minimum version, but it still doesn't mean that you have to get the latest (unless that is the minimum, of course). 1) Try a plain old apt-get install (or the equivalent for your distro); it may well already exist in the standard repositories, in which case you're laughing. 2) If it doesn't, try looking in testing, or failing that, unstable, (otefyd) temporarily point sources.list there, and install that version plus a minimum set of dependencies. 3) If your distro just plain doesn't have it, it's worth seeing if one of the maintainers of the distro has packaged it on their own repository. This may be "unofficial", but it is still the work of someone who intimately understands the distro's packaging system and how to set a package up for it completely, as opposed to just doing the minimum to make it installable. An example of such a repository would be Christian Marillat's stash of non-crippled multimedia packages for Debian. 4) Only then look at the upstream site, and look first for packages in your distro's packaging format. If those require dependencies, be very careful about where you get the dependencies from. The site may provide them, but if they're doing that not because they've patched them themselves but simply for convenience, the versions from your distro's repository are generally to be preferred. 5) The tarball, bleargh, only to be used as a matter of last resort.

    Unfortunately pretty well all upstream sites present things in such a way as to encourage people to try these methods in the reverse order, which in reality is bloody hopeless unless you're pretty expert and even then is still both suboptimal and a lot of hassle you can do without. And they also reverse the sense of recommendation (0), encouraging people to get the very latest version and ignore all others, which exacerbates the problem of misdirection, and also means you're fully exposed to the most recent crop of unfixed bugs.

    The result is that while people may, eventually, after a lot of unnecessary trouble, indeed succeed in installing a working version of the package, they have also unwittingly borked their system in various subtle and obscure ways which quite probably won't show up for months, and which manifest in such ways as one or two minor things breaking on some apparently unconnected upgrade, then on a subsequent upgrade more things break more seriously, and so it continues to get worse until you're tangled in hopeless knots. Searching for solutions doesn't help because everything you find is (a) 4 years old and (b) something you've already tried. That the original cause was the tarball installation tends to remain entirely obscure until you finally discover just what is wrong.

    I've both been bitten this way myself and encountered numerous other people being bitten by it - and in nearly all cases, the whole bloody mess could have been avoided simply by trying sources in the order stated above, which would not have needed to progress beyond option (1).

    It doesn't help, of course, that when you're looking for a package to do some thing, you'll find its upstream site long before you find any reference that tells you your distro has packaged it. And it helps even less when the package has some update mechanism of its own, like youtube-dl does, or some subsidiary package manager of its own, like node.js does. But it probably helps the least that nearly all the instances of people recommending that you do it the right way are people like whitroth and me posting rants like this that most prospective tarball-installation victims won't ever see.

    467:

    "Teachers long ago were told to not physically interfere with any child - this includes anything medical. Also - lawsuits."

    So what is this - hysterical crap dictating that any physical contact with a child, even accidental, is incontrovertible ground for instantly lynching the toucher for paedophilia/child abuse? That thing about people in America finding an accident victim having to let them die because if they do anything to help, the ungrateful shit will sue them when they get better? (It sounds plausible, but is it true?) That case that horrified everyone in the UK who heard about it, where a grandmother sued her granddaughter who'd been looking after her for years (or the other way round) (or something of the kind, the point being that it hit a filial-affection cognitive dissonance barrier like 46009 hit the nuclear flask), which was later explained as being normal and necessary because the way American health care is funded is sicker than anyone it's treating? AD made mention of a cultural chasm between the US and the UK over this, and it looks like she was bang on.

    Lawsuits... me, I'd be suing them for fannying around in fear of that sort of idiotic nonsense instead of doing something to help. (Well, I wouldn't, because it would never cross my mind, but if I had a lawsuit-oriented mind I would.)

    Similarly if they'd done nothing but call me and think that's the end of it, which some comments seem to have implied would be the case. WTF am I supposed to do? I'm not a doctor, I'm probably miles away and I can't go froo red lights. If they can't handle it themselves they should be getting hold of someone who (a) has the knowledge to do something effective, and (b) is close enough at hand to get there quickly. They should be getting a medic, not calling someone who can't do anything but worry and then washing their hands of it. Again, if I had a lawsuit-oriented mind, I'd consider this a reason to hit them with one.

    There are quite obviously some far deeper structural problems here that need to be sorted out, of which any interaction with the field of personal communications is only a side-effect.

    468:

    "...should realise that how hard that is depends on..."

    ...personal bloodymindedness, as Charlie seems to be hinting, is one you missed out :)

    A lot of the objections people have raised seem to depend on conflating having internet access and having a mobile phone, but nearly all those that don't still fail to move me because I'd just say "sod that for a game of soldiers" and decline to play the game.

    Or, indeed, not even notice that there was a game being played in the first place. The silly office politics stuff would go right over my head; instances of people deliberately choosing to do pointless and piss-awkward things are so common that seeing people make such a choice over paying for their dinner would elicit no more than an un-uttered "ffs what are you lot like?" And the manager who objects to being paid with cash, I'd either think he was trying to be funny and failing dismally, or else that he was just being a dick; in either case I'd still pay him with cash.

    469:

    "FB is so fucking ubiquitous that not using FB is getting to be like refusing to use email"

    Personally, I find Arsebooklessness to be less noticeable these days than it was some years ago. I did long ago have an Arsebook account which has probably years since fallen victim to their outrageous arrogance in thinking they know better than I do whether my name is "real", but the use I had for it was that people kept posting links to stuff on Arsebook that didn't work unless you were logged in. They don't seem to do that any more. (In fact they don't seem to post any kind of links, login-dependent or not; even the fb.me links (aaarrgh) I see on twitter, when I wget --spider them (SOP with link shorteners), nearly always end up at the Guardian or somewhere.)

    As a communication medium it was crap. I did use it to communicate with a few people I already knew but it wasn't better than email, and was definitely worse for anything even slightly complex or lengthy. It wasn't even any use for moaning at companies for being crap, whereas Twitter often seems to work quite well for that.

    Re JS and ad blocker blockers - I too have been amused by that. But it is unfortunate that on far too many sites nowadays a global block on javascript has problems of its own. All too often the recipe-following idiot (I think the term "web developer" is grossly overused) who copy-and-pasted the site together has used a chunk of JS because they don't know that CSS can do the same thing more simply, robustly and maintainably, so you get stuff like menus that won't expand, or worse, that stay permanently expanded and obscure half the page. All too common, too, is the utterly moronic HTML <body style="display: none;"> depending on JS to delete the attribute. (I mean, for crying out loud...) And the links and form submissions etc. for which the standard HTML functionality has been deliberately disabled and then replicated in JS.

    So for sites that I rarely visit I often find it necessary to delete large chunks of CSS as well, and just not worry about it being unstyled as long as I can read it; for sites I do use often, I supply my own JS to make the bits I care about work again (and as a bonus they invariably work a flipping sight faster than they did with the site's own JS).

    Yes, this is a pain in the arse, but on the other hand I have also done it for sites that I know I'm only ever going to visit once and that aren't even running any spyware, partly because their own code was so unusably slow and partly out of bloodymindedness - another instance of an impulse to do something constructive about a problem instead of just moaning about it.

    470:

    One of my global blocks is on the <audio> and <video> HTML5 tags, and others are on the CDNs of every new video hosting site I encounter. On the extremely rare occasions I actually want to watch a video I do it from the command line with youtube-dl and mplayer. Apart from anything else, videos on a web page saturate the internet connection while they're loading and slow any other outstanding requests to a crawl.

    (Not in Chrome. I tried a copy of that in a sandbox once. Can't do this, can't do that, can't do the other; and since this, that, and the other were all important tools for blocking crap on websites, I deleted it.)

    What gets me about the cited Apple and Google initiatives is that (apart from being really rather half-arsed) they are being pushed as some great piece of public-spiritedness, when what they are really aimed at is assisting Apple/Google to grab a bigger slice of the pie to themselves. It won't make any difference to their own operations, due to lock-in in one case and ubiquity in the other making it ineffective. It just means that it's harder for others to share the trough, or at least not without Apple/Google skinning them for it.

    Also, it will encourage the already-noticeable trend of doing crappy things server-side, instead of client-side where it is easy to block. Already it is necessary, on sites which just don't work too much if you disable JS altogether, to analyse the scripts and selectively disable parts of them (eg. by injecting "if(0)" or "return false" at suitable points in the code). This is much more difficult than simply blocking dodgy domains and URLs, and it is correspondingly vastly harder for plugin authors to write something that can do it automatically.

    471:

    "What is this community's take on the possibilities of Quantum Computers? In terms of the topic of the thread, the potential for Machine Learning in conjunction with them seems relevent."

    I cannot speak for others.

    Me, I reject the Kurzwiel Hypothesis, which is that increased computational power equals increased intelligence. I don't think lack of computing power is what's holding back machine intelligence.

    472:

    Moons & night travelling/walks... Many years ago, I had a Rover P4, on which you could dim/switch-off the dashboard lights ... driving home in early Spring, across Cambridgeshire - very full moon ... I turned off the headlights & the internals & drove on the Moon for about 20 miles, whilst This played on the ancient valve-radio It's ... different. I suppose I'm a Romantic - I always like a night sailing - remembering leaving Harwich on the Old Prinses Beatrix - now there was ship that had "been places" Piccie too ....

    473:

    Also: Quantum Computing + Machine Learning + Deep Blue (etc) - all from recent reports .... How long to an AI that we don't know about? And what is the ethical position of pressing the "Off/Power-down" switch?

    474:

    In the UK you cannot refuse cash. Exception - paying for it in small coin - there are limits for paying in coppers / silver / pound coins ... but if you pay in suitable denominations, they CAN NOT REFUSE to accept it.

    475:

    See my # 473 above. "Crosslinking"? What I would call sideways-interconnectedness ?? Internal feedback loops in the "wiring" ? NOT just numner of "neurons-equivalents", but they way(s) they are not only connected to each other, but the internal "Switching" arrangements, too ?? My question @ 473 still stands, of course.

    476:
    In the UK you cannot refuse cash.

    It's a tad more difficult than that, however. I distinctly remember a scene on a trip to the UK in the 1990's, which led me to Edinburgh and Cambridge, among other places. I was buying something in a small Cambridge shop and handed 1£ to the cashier. His reaction was to turn around, call the manager and ask them in an incredulous voice: "Do we take Scottish 1£-notes?"

    Somehow it felt like he was accusing me of trying to pay with counterfeit money.

    The manager then indeed decided to accept my money, but I was still astonished by the whole scene. As a foreigner I hadn't been aware that—coming from Scotland to England—I had just crossed a currency border. Assuming that in the United Kingdom one Pound Sterling is one Pound Sterling is one Pound Sterling had apparently been naïve.

    477:

    "So what is this - hysterical crap dictating that any physical contact with a child, even accidental, is incontrovertible ground for instantly lynching the toucher for paedophilia/child abuse?"

    Partly that, partly that humans assign more blame for doing something than for doing nothing. See the "trolley problem".

    My last First Aid refresher course featured an amazing 5-minute rant about how doing CPI badly isn't going to kill someone deader than they are - because when they ain't breathing and have no pulse it really doesn't get worse. So just fucking try it.

    It's in the course because people are performing CPI less - they worry they'll get it wrong. It was a rant because the teacher's an ambulance paramedic and had shown up when... well, you can guess.

    They can't sue in my country, my guess is it's caused by fear of being embarrassed.

    Humans, eh. Strange things.

    478:

    You're not wrong there...

    479:

    Yeah ... like the terminal stupidity of insisting that, in schools, Swimming is a "Sport" & is compulsory, because of fascism ... WHereas it SHOULD be taught in schools as an essential survival skill - which it is. It took me until about age 24 to realise this - I could jsut about swim, from the compulsory fascism, but then went on the teach myself, much better, because of survival - & even enjoy it on warm days!

    480:

    Oh, Scottish pound notes are a perennial joke. Exactly what the legal position is I don't know, but they are kind of renowned for causing a commotion in some English shops that don't understand that in practice you can just take them to the bank with all the rest. The same happens with money from other parts of the British Isles that put different pictures on it.

    Also, notes are not legal tender. Technically they're a promise from the Bank of England to give you that amount in coins, which are legal tender. Nobody cares though.

    481:

    I used to do similar in the Vale of York where there was sometimes a layer of night fog that stopped abruptly three feet above ground level, so the windscreen was above it and the headlights below. On the back roads with no other cars about I used to turn the lights off altogether, which actually made it easier to see where you were going, and was also very pleasantly atmospheric.

    And yes, there is something very special about that moment when a boat leaves the quay and begins to take on the motion of the sea, with a soft breeze blowing and the harbour lights in the twilight leaving trails across the water.

    Re: Off switch - You get to be God! :D

    Re: Cash - yes, I know, and in the situation concerned that would be my winning argument.

    Re: Swimming - that was the one physical activity that school failed to make unrelentingly horrible. I learned to swim outside school (my dad used to take us swimming every weekend) and by the time it appeared as something you did at school I could swim like a dolphin. To be sure they did do the pointless boring crap like making us swim up and down the pool in straight lines over and over, but it seemed that that was too boring even for them to be able to keep us at it for a whole lesson, and we usually got much of the time (and always more than half of it) to just fuck about in.

    So, of course, what happens is that one term swimming is taken by the games teacher who is the biggest cunt of the lot of them and particularly doesn't like me. And at the end of the first lesson of the term he does the "everyone out before I count ten" thing. Which he does while I'm down on the bottom of the pool somewhere and can't hear a thing and have no idea he's doing it until I come up for air and find the pool is empty. And then punishes me for not being out before he counted ten by banning me from swimming for the rest of the term so I'd have to do some form of loathsome mudbathing instead. Bastard.

    Though what he forgot to do was tell any of the other games teachers what he'd done, so none of them were actually expecting me to turn up to their mudbath supervision sessions, and consequently nobody noticed when I hid in the furthest stall of the least-used set of toilets with a book instead...

    482:

    The usual problem is that the further south you go the less likely people are to have seen scottish money. People don't like accepting anything they can't evaluate.

    Sometimes it gets really absurd though. A couple of years ago my partner found herself unable to spend some scottish money in an english shop because "We got caught out by some fake welsh notes a couple of years ago.". Er.

    483:

    You'll definitely cause a commotion with Scottish pound notes, since they were withdrawn from circulation decades ago.

    (I know, you meant bank notes)

    484:

    Think paying with Scottish notes is difficult? Every tried with a Northern Irish note? Currently there are three banks allowed to print notes in NI, and they're all quite different from each other and from the Bank of England note.

    Banknotes of Northern Ireland (wiki-link, sorry)

    (I shall not even begin discussing how many English shops/people are surprised to discover that NI is still part of the UK and doesn't use Euros -- this number may have diminished significantly after recent political events.)

    485:

    So what is this - hysterical crap dictating that any physical contact with a child, even accidental, is incontrovertible ground for instantly lynching the toucher for paedophilia/child abuse? That thing about people in America finding an accident victim having to let them die because if they do anything to help, the ungrateful shit will sue them when they get better?

    Ah. If only this were confined to America.

    Friend of the family (a professional nurse with many years experience) had a man drop from a massive heart attack in front of her. This was in the street, she was off duty, and she immediately began CPR on the man. Paramedics arrived, he was whisked off to hospital, survived; paramedics told our friend that she had probably saved his life (look up "golden hour" for cardiac arrests). As is not uncommon in CPR, the man suffered from two cracked ribs; he began a civil case against the woman who saved him.

    It used to be written into the rules of the NMC (the nurses governing body in the UK), that all registered nurses were legally required to assist in any medical emergency that they witnessed (failure to do so could result in being struck off). Due to cases such as the above, this rule has been removed.

    You might think that there is a gulf between American litigiousness and UK common sense, but it's significantly smaller than you imagine.

    486:

    There is also the wonderful dilemma that the more you know, often the less you can actually do, which is particularly nasty for medical types.

    The reason behind this is that if Joe from the street breaks a rib or two or the patient dies in the process, it's fine - he was trying to save a life, and did his best, and we don't want to discourage people from trying.

    If bystander Dr Stephen Strange breaks a rib, then they can be held liable for causing bodily harm, since they have at some stage been trained to do it better. Regardless of whether Strange is a pediatric cardiologist or a GP and probably well out of practice at emergency medicine.

    I have friends in Australia and NZ who have both fallen foul of this, and have heard similar tales in the UK from nurses.

    487:

    It's not even a case of being trained better, it's the fact that it is almost impossible to give CPR without causing the level of injury that could be presented in court as evidence of assault (however, in the case of a trained professional, UK judges are likely to throw the case out onb the grounds of common sense). The chance of broken bones as a side effect goes from possible to likely to a certainty as the patient/subject's age increases. I know more than one cardiology nurse, and they say that you never forget the sound of an 90 year old's breast bone cracking under your hands.

    488:

    cough He'd have to be an SF fan, to believe in "the bible" anyway, wouldn't he? cough

    Only to the extent that fantasy generally gets lumped in with SF.

    489:

    No good samaritan law?

    An example of a typical Canadian law is provided here, from Ontario's Good Samaritan Act, 2001, section 2:

    Protection from liability 2. (1) Despite the rules of common law, a person described in subsection (2) who voluntarily and without reasonable expectation of compensation or reward provides the services described in that subsection is not liable for damages that result from the person's negligence in acting or failing to act while providing the services, unless it is established that the damages were caused by the gross negligence of the person. 2001, c. 2, s. 2 (1).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law#Canada

    Years ago when I had first aid training I remember being cautioned to either get consent or wait until they were unconscious before starting treatment. It looks like those provisions are still part of the law.

    We were also cautioned that you could still be sued — what the law provided was protection from liability, so you could still be in for some unpleasant time in court.

    In Germany you have a duty to help, and can be fined or imprisoned for not doing so. On the bright side, apparently the state provides insurance cover for you.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41305575

    490:

    Defalt position for all PE TEachers ... Nazi Bastard, unles a spwcial exception ( I used to know one, actually, but his wife, also a PE TEached definitely qualified as a member of the BDM,

    491:

    And, as I've said before, the utter, total, classic example is "The Divine Comedy". Much mined by SF authors since, IIRC

    492:

    That's a criminal organization, there's no First Amendment rights for that.

    I agree with you. The problem has been getting the police, local DA and courts to act against them. Especially since all three (along with half of any jury selected to hear a case) are going to be to some extent biased in their favor. Consider the recent acquittal of Jason Stockley in St. Louis.

    493:

    No, no, no, they're not interested in real slavery, because then you have capital tied up in a) buying the slave, b) feeding, clothing, and housing the slave, and perhaps medical care, because d) you otherwise have depreciated them to zero, and you'd have to sink more capital in.

    Wage slavery, which is what you're describing, is so much more cost-efficient. Besides, They breed like roaches, and there's always more of them hungry enough....

    Lately, more and more, I find sympathy with the French solution. Said that on another blog, and a commenter responded that we needed tumbrels. My response was that sounded like a business plan....

    494:

    I'm in the RH-child world, with CentOS. I like this, because it's #1 criteria is "enterprise grade", and it's stable.

    Note, if you're in these distros, there are also the epel, rpmfusion, and (last resort) elrepo repositories.

    Absolutely not the LatestGreatestRelease, usually several years behind... but not a ton of bugs. And I run it at home, too: I don't want to come home, and debug an o/s problem.

    Wonder which is more unstable, debian, or fedora (which seems to have 'hi! here's your 20 updates for today, several of which will fix some of the 58 updates from yesterday...' attitude.

    Then there's how I feel about Poettering, of systemd, the gnome folks, and what I know of Ubuntu: they seem to have gone on to a New Vision of Nix: M$ for the former, and Apple for the latter, and have blown off the Real *Nix Way, which is "of all the ways you can do it, how would you *like to do it?"

    495:

    Don't get me started, either. I've seen utter crap with javascript, and even more crap... that can be done in html 1.1, with nothing else.

    At that point, I reiterate the basis of science: entities should not be multiplied without need.

    Totally different note: I saw, yesterday, that according to a survey Reuters did, there are 10k finance jobs leaving London, due to brexit.

    496:

    Re: Touching in class

    The same controversy exists in the UK: 'Risk anxiety in the classroom: teachers touching children' (Alison Jones)

    Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the British Educational Research Association, University of Exeter, England, 12-14 September 2002

    http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00002431.htm

    497:

    Re: '... the sound of an 90 year old's breast bone cracking under your hands.'

    Was told at the hospital that while CPR might rescue an elderly patient it would result in massive fractures that might not heal easily if at all. Probably one of the reasons any senior seniors showing up at the ER are asked if they have signed a DNR.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cpr-survival-elderly/for-elderly-hospital-patients-cpr-often-has-poor-outcome-study-idUSKBN0DP1IH20140509

    498:

    who would want to do fruit picking in the first place? It must be a horrible job

    Can't be any worse than "priming" tobacco!

    499:

    Re: 'I find sympathy with the French solution.'

    Quelle solution exactement? Plusieurs solutions s'offrent.

    500:

    If bystander Dr Stephen Strange breaks a rib, then they can be held liable for causing bodily harm, since they have at some stage been trained to do it better. Regardless of whether Strange is a pediatric cardiologist or a GP and probably well out of practice at emergency medicine.

    Most states in the U.S. have Good Samaritan laws that shield medical professionals from lawsuits if they stop to render aid in an emergency.

    501:

    Yes indeed. DN(A)R's are a kindness to all involved. Trust me, having to comfort someone after they've returned from a shift having had to essentially assault an octogenarian repeatedly for 45 minutes (to the point of breaking bones), because they are legally required to do so, is not an experience I will soon forget.

    502:

    Quelle solution exactement? Plusieurs solutions s'offrent.

    Celle de la Montagne.

    I don't advocate it. Still, I'm afraid it could come to that if things continue the way they're going.

    Don't think it will produce a desirable outcome if it does.

    OTOH, purely as a THOUGHT experiment, it has a certain attraction.

    504:

    Re "Rhizome Stuff" (one presumes) I really really need to upgame by reading "A Thousand Plateaus", yes. (Put down hard in irritation on first attempt.)
    But how it maps to current activities/realities is ... less than clear. Some hints would be helpful. The comment above about quantum computing and probabilistic graphical models is also perhaps germane.

    473:

    How long to an AI that we don't know about? And what is the ethical position of pressing the "Off/Power-down" switch? You're presuming some things here. Including, first, that such entities don't already exist (e.g. (but not exclusively) machine intelligences of alien origin), and second, that a selective off switch manipulable by HSS would even be possible. E.g., from ATP ref'ed above, A rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines. (Sorry, mind has been spinning a bit.)

    505:

    Having checked the links, I would suggest not bothering. Deleuze seems to have been one of that special breed of French so-called "philosophers" who specialise in talking/writing hifalutin total bollocks, dressed-up in fancy clothes - see also Telhard de Chardin or the "deconstructionists".

    506:

    How long to an AI that we don't know about?

    My bet is that it will happen about the same time as Nuclear Fusion, ie in 20 years time receding at 1 yr per yr.

    Some of the advances in specific AI have been spectacular - it remains to be seen whether they translate into anything that can help bootstrap a general AI.

    It will however be interesting to see if the evolves a market in specific off the shelf AI models. Ie now we are only at the point of commoditisation of the hardware and software to develop AI's. What if AI Applications become commoditised. Ie Googles, Tesla's, GM's self driving AI becomes essentially valueless and just something you deploy from an App Store on to a reference platform of hardware and software.

    I think we'll see the evolution of Meta AI's ie a collection of models plus the "model of models" that allows a machine to "intelligently " choose between them. This will look a lot like gAI but seems unlikely to take us to thinking machines.

    507:

    I guess the question is what kind of Turing test we're proposing here.

    Note that artificial intelligences already normally send me map directions, keep track of my bank accounts, record all sorts of online stuff, give me search engine results, attempt to hack my accounts, render my photos, allow us to talk on line, generate fractal graphics, and so forth.

    Oddly enough, none of these are defined as human intelligence. For instance, when computers started putting human telephone operators out of business, that wasn't seen as artificial intelligence, just technological progress.

    That's the real problem with artificial intelligence. It isn't that machines keep getting "smarter," it's that humans scramble to move the goal posts after each advance, so that the machines aren't seen as intelligent.

    This is why I joked in a much earlier thread about "the blasphemous equations," where someone flushes a bunch of quantum and cosmological data through a curve-fitting genetic algorithm, and the iterating system eventually spits out a series of equations that define the Theory of Everything and can be used to calculate both relativistic and quantum mechanical results. However, the equations make no intuitive sense at all. All we can do is crank numbers through them, without understanding why or how they work. I suspect there would be blasphemies aplenty if such equations were published. Would their derivation be an example of superhuman AI, or not? It's not like the curve-fitting algorithm could explain its "special insight" and make them make sense to us.

    Now I agree that the potential for real trouble is there, when you start giving machines volition to choose to take human lives, with such things as armed and automated drones (basically mobile booby traps, at least at first), and (far more likely) with self-driving cars solving the Trolley Paradox in real time. While I'm not a pollyanna about it, my personal suspicion is that what will save us is either the internet breaking (likely through cyberwar, possibly through something like a Carrington Event), or fusion failing to materialize and power the data centers the AIs need to truly take over. We'll see. The only reason I'm bearish about power is because I've been noodling around a little with how much power it takes to run a small city (or a data center), and it's going to get a little awkward to do that if we really do totally decarbonize. If we don't, then AIs probably aren't our biggest worry...

    508:

    Well, the IDF hasn't shared your opinion for, oh, about 15 years now:

    The art of war: Deleuze, Guattari, Debord and the Israeli Defence Force Mute 2006

    Urban Warfare: Walking Through Walls Hollow Land Israel's Architecture of Occupation, Eyal Weizman, 2007 - PDF, Legal(ish). You can find his bio here, at Goldsmiths.

    And they're not known for their love of "hifalutin total bollocks". If you require a more UK centric take, I could suggest: ECCWS 2015 14th European Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security which features the concept rather predominantly.

    In fact, I'd argue that one of the only solutions to Host's Question/Problem is in fact training Minds to work both in rhizomatic manners as well as arborescent ones: your problem appears to be your Minda literally cannot perceive how this 'new' format propaganda etc is working or prevent your Mind buttons being pressed. Try: Understanding human perception by human-made illusions Front Hum Neurosci. 2014, full text. for a scientific take on the issue.

    Or, let's get creative. Since engineering is your thing - bionics, from a Chinese / Taiwanese perspective: A Study on Natural Bionics in Product Design Advanced Materials Research (Volumes 591-593), 2012 (no full paper, the material research people like their paywalls)

    Discussion on Theories of Bionic Design Wan-Ting, Chiu; Shang-Chia, Chiou, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology. English version, PDF legal (very useful footnotes).

    I'd strongly suspect that bionics design is a field where "the East" will intersect with genetic engineering sooner rather than later (cough) precisely because they are looking at the issue in a different manner than, say, the American BioTech industry.

    If you wanted to get really kinky, you'd take the view from something like, say: Bionics vs. biomimicry: from control of nature to sustainable participation in nature Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, Vol 87, 2006 PDF, legal

    And mix in the perceptual stuff.

    Poof! Said the Logic Dragon!

    ~

    Anyhow, on cue (ignoring UN speeches for a second): Facebook Faces a New World as Officials Rein In a Wild Web NYT 17th Sept 2017 - long-form outlining how FB has been more than willing to curtail personal freedoms to appease Governments.

    ~

    However, Ave Maria (Reddit safe link) is playing and has jumped from Cat 1 - 5 surprisingly fast. And yes, totally that was a Catholic joke that was setup a day or two ago.

    509:

    As is not uncommon in CPR, the man suffered from two cracked ribs; he began a civil case against the woman who saved him.

    Wow. For a short time back in Aotearoa I used to get xmas cards from a little old lady whose ribs I broke. She only lived a couple of xmas's afterwards and I expect died with those ribs still broken. But she was very grateful. Pun intended. For her it was a wake-up that she wasn't just old, she was in the final stages of dying. So she shorted her shit out.

    I suspect with younger people, especially the fat ball of male entitlement, that type of very direct of reminder of mortality would be uncomfortable. But really, that sort of thing does make me want to stand up in court and offer to retroactively undo the damage... I saved his life, I can withdraw his life and we're square, right?

    510:

    The same controversy exists in the UK: 'Risk anxiety in the classroom: teachers touching children'

    That paper is somewhat terrifying.

    My mother was a teacher of young kids for most of her career, and I recall during the "satanic abuse" phase of public hysteria she was concerned that it was too dangerous for men to teach infants. "pour encourager les autres" works both ways - you only have to publically vilify then imprison one male ECE worker and the rest of them quite sensibly choose other professions (the Peter Ellis case). I met one of the abusers in Wellington some years later and was quite unable to cope with the blase way she dismissed the events as "he was probably guilty of something, and anyway it doesn't matter as long as the children are safe". She couldn't conceive of what she'd done as abuse, but to me, falsely convincing a child that they've been sexually abuse is a crime. Even today a lot of people thinkg Peter "must be guilty of something".

    So yeah, one round of that and a whole bunch of men stopped having anything to do with kids.

    511:

    Re: Male teachers ... dads ...

    Have wondered whether something similar happened in Britain/the UK in some earlier era which would explain why Brits more than other Europeans show such an aversion to adult males (including dads) hugging/kissing anyone other than their spouse. If so, this is nuts: kiddies need physical human contact/hugs to thrive as shown repeatedly in research on orphaned and NICU babies.

    Major NorAm peds hosps with latest shiny-tech NICUs usually also have volunteer 'cuddler' programs because babies demonstrably fare better when they're hugged, cuddled, sung/talked to.

    512:

    wondered whether something similar happened in Britain/the UK in some earlier era which

    Wikipedia has a list, and the answer is yes. I can't remember which one(s) I'd heard of, but I definitely recall one. The Peter Ellis case was kinda topical for me as I was friends with one of the people involved. It's not at all fun to be one of the very few parents saying "none of this makes sense, the kids are describing things that are absolutely impossible". Remember that the allegations you see in court are the ones deemed most believable by the abusers, the utterly ridiculous ones get filtered out very early on (there were allegations of shape-changing, for example "he turned into a dragon and flew me to the beach".. no-one heard that one in court. But then, they did hear all about secret passages which couldn't be found when the building was inspected. It really was collective insanity).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satanic_ritual_abuse_allegations

    Father figures still cop it a bit today, read some of the "being a dad in public" stories. It's kinda like "driving while black" or "being overtly muslim". Complete with mums talking over or denying that there could possibly be any problem.

    513:

    And since you brought up "writing hifalutin total bollocks", a little tale of stunning stupidity.

    The Telegraph is running a front page splash labelled thus: Climate change not as threatening to planet as previously thought, new research suggests Telegraph 18th Sept 2017 which is based on this paper: Emission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C Nature Geoscience, 18th Sept 2017 which y'all also spot is named in a totally inappropriate manner.

    The issue? (Read the paper: x3+ the Carbon emissions keep you under 2oC - good luck with that)

    Well, the lead Author - Dr Richard Millar (who, you might notice, is rather young and has a grand total of two papers under his belt) works for this lot:

    Academics from the Universities of Oxford, Harvard and Columbia are consulting with the scientific and investment communities in combination with fossil fuel industry stakeholders to address the issues involved. What would a safe fossil fuel investment look like in a world in transition to net zero carbon emissions? What does a company that remains engaged in fossil fuel extraction need to do to reassure its investors and customers that it is acting responsibly; and to ensure that its activities are not committing future taxpayers or shareholders to expensive climate adaptation, mitigation or remediation measures? ...

    The Oxford Martin Net-Zero Carbon Investment Initiative has been working closely with leading international governance initiatives on corporate carbon and climate risk disclosure, including the Financial Stability Board's Task Force of Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), and remains focused on embedding sound climate science within such international frameworks. In July the initiative co-organised a meeting on forward-looking carbon-related disclosures with the TCFD which was attended by representatives from major companies from across the economy and explored the challenging issues about physically informative forward-looking disclosures.

    Programmes Carbon Investment Oxford Martin.

    And what methodology did the paper use? It tinkered with the fucking IPCC (simple) models without doing much more.

    Now, the immediate issue is discovering whether or not Ocean heat absorption (numerous papers) has been factored in (spoilers: suspect not), but this is a quite blatant political move to push Carbon Credits and that whole sham while keeping the fossil fuel industry in control.

    Egregious Fuckery..

    514:

    No. That national characteristic has been around for far longer than such concerns have been relevant. Simplistically stated, any contact between adults beyond a handshake has sexual overtones, so you just don't hug or kiss anyone you're not shagging. There are some situations that get a free pass, such as certain sports or extreme inebriation, and it's less rigid for women than for men, but the basic rule is that physical contact is sexual. Kids pick up the convention as part of the package of behaviours that characterise being "grown up" and "not babyish".

    Casual paedophilia has been going on since time immemorial but until fairly recently it just never got talked about. Sometimes it would culminate in victims ganging up on their abuser and beating the living shit out of him in a dark alley somewhere, but mostly it just wasn't mentioned and you'd just get the occasional teacher suddenly disappearing if some particular incident resulted in a significant risk of being mentioned evolving, before it could actually happen. In terms of its effect on social culture, all it really did was give rise to a class of jokes and stereotypes about choirmasters/scoutmasters etc. and their charges.

    515:

    But why the Brits? All other European societies have no such taboo.

    Are macho/alpha males in the other European societies with all the physicality of their displays of camaraderie considered gay/bisexual? (Over-sexed gays/bisexuals at that.)

    So, what happened in Britain that a peck on the cheek is considered a sexual overture? (Whatever this was might also explain US reaction.)

    516:

    "Let never a man a-wooding wend Without thinges three A store of gold, an open heart, And full of charity."

    Never heard that one, so I looked up the lyrics.

    (http://www.lyricsfreak.com/s/steeleye+span/king+henry_20229015.html)

    The story it told reminds me of Beowulf meets Grendel only with a happy ending, the moral being the same as in Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale, that women just want to call the shots in a relationship. At least it shows King Henry's appreciation for a bracing challenge wasn't limited strictly to food choices.

    (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=18&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwig0NX7w7LWAhVmwVQKHWq8CYYQFgh9MBE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fentry%2Fsea-lamprey-recipe_us_56265381e4b0bce34702343a&usg=AFQjCNEmA1GTIitizk47v86_mU3gw_QpEA)

    Looking at it as nothing more than a song of praise to a hero, it could be an early form of the joke about a Texan in the Yukon gold rush bragging at a saloon about how tough he was, to which a grizzled old prospector replied that Alaskans don't consider a man tough if he can't chug a fifth of whiskey, wrestle a grizzly bear and have sex with an Eskimo woman all in one night. So the guy downs a bottle of whisky, storms out the door and staggers back an hour later all beat to hell saying where's this Eskimo woman I have to wrestle. But I suspect there's a subtler message behind the poetry, in more modern terminology it would be to treat marriage like a socialist republic for two, and it won't drift into a condition of servitude. Which is important, because depending on who's most domineering by temperament, or who's least inclined to avoid conflict, the one ending up in servitude could be you. A Yiddish folk tale described the situation with a henpecked husband so anxious to escape his wife he hid under a desk. Then she found him, called him a fool and demanded he come out from under there at once. So he says no, I refuse to, you can't tell me what to do, I'm staying right here just to show you who's master of this house!

    517:

    the basic rule is that physical contact is sexual.

    Except for some confusion about corporal punishment - hence the English vice.

    518:

    I'm not aware that anything "happened" in the sense of some sensational event that rewrote everybody's standards. I think it's just a case of divergent cultural evolution, facilitated by the water barrier.

    I've never encountered anyone who seriously thinks that Continental blokes greet each other with a kiss because they're gay. But then the majority (ie. excluding massive exhibitionists) of British blokes who are gay do not greet each other with a kiss unless they're actually together. It's just a difference in national conventions. By that same token, if a Continental bloke does it to a Brit it tends to feel grossly overfamiliar and kind of yucky, and I don't think the British bloke's orientation makes a critical difference to how he feels about it.

    Possibly a way to get a handle on the feeling might be to compare it to being groped by a security guard, but with the additional complication of embarrassment and confusion because you know it's meant in friendship and you don't want to be rude.

    519:

    Like you said, read the paper. The Breitbart piece (no link) on it in particular was rather lawyerly, in a "if it doesn't fit, you must acquit" way. The last sentence of the paper will be part of what I quote if anyone brings it (the Breitbart version; couldn't read the telegraph piece) up, after asking "did you read the paper?" with a smile. Our analysis suggests that ‘pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 ◦ C’ is not chasing a geophysical impossibility, but is likely to require a significant strengthening of the NDCs at the first opportunity in 2020 to hedge against the risks of a higher-than-expected climate response and/or economic, technical or political impediments to sustained reductions at historically unprecedented rates after 2030. (bold mine.)

    Perhaps more to the point is the also-recent Well below 2 °C: Mitigation strategies for avoiding dangerous to catastrophic climate changes (Sep 2017, abstract via researchgate; paper is legally paywalled (though available) - New Climate Risk Classification Created to Account for Potential “Existential” Threats for a summary) The current risk category of dangerous warming is extended to more categories, which are defined by us here as follows: >1.5 °C as dangerous; >3 °C as catastrophic; and >5 °C as unknown, implying beyond catastrophic, including existential threats. ... Basically, for a safe climate, all three levers (CN, SP, and CES) must be deployed as soon as possible. The CN and SP levers must be deployed by 2030 and 2020, respectively; the cumulative CO2 emissions from preindustrial must be limited to 2.2 trillion tons of CO2 (or 0.6 trillion tons of carbon); and the CES lever should extract and sequester as much as 1 trillion tons of CO2 (CES1t), depending on when the CN lever is deployed. Which (IMO) is a rational way of thinking about risks and required actions, especially if one is conservative (small c), since the predictive models are too simple.

    520:

    Thanks for these. Managed to pick up Alastair Reynolds Revenger for 99p on Kindle and Jodi Taylor St Mary's 1 for the same.

    Just finished the Reynolds and thought it was his best in ages if a tad YA (but none the worse for it), although I stopped his after bonsai elephants #1 until now.

    Liking the first 2 chapters of the St Mary's. Feels similar to Genevieve Cogmans Invisible Library.

    521:

    YUCK There's also the notorious Orkney case, which was prompted by "psychiatrists" believeing their own fairy-tales ( as in Ellis' case ) & sectarian religious spite.

    In all of these cases, no-one seems to ask: "WHat happened to the children, afterwards" ?? I am given to understad that one of the Orkney victims ( Victim of being faked-up as being abused, which is itself abuse ... ) is still not straight in her head, which is unsuprising.

    522:

    Egregious DELIBERATE LYING I've seen it ( & others )

    The ACTUAL STATEMENT IS: "GW is real, just not quite as advanced as we previously thought, but it's still coming" Tranl=slated by deliberate public liars like Delingpole & Booker into: "GW is fake!"

    This one will run & run - selling DOUBT - just like the Tobacco companies.

    523:

    Indeed. From the abstract:

    "limiting warming to 1.5 °C is not yet a geophysical impossibility, but is likely to require delivery on strengthened pledges for 2030 followed by challengingly deep and rapid mitigation"

    The paper basically says if we all do more than the Paris Agreement commits people to, then it is yet physically possible to stay under 1.5C (which is supposed to be the aim of the Paris Agreement).

    524:

    I was directed to this by an arsebook post before I checked in here. I got as far as reading the abstract and was amazed.

    "limiting warming to 1.5 °C is not yet a geophysical impossibility"

    No but it is a temporal impossibility unless we have time travel.

    They're discussing the Paris agreement in that paper, specifically the agreement: "...and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels..."

    So the 'limit' is 1.5 above pre-industrial.

    We broke that limit in March of LAST year with 1.565C above pre-industrial.

    http://berkeleyearth.org/temperature-reports/march-2016/

    Now I've heard the argument that Paris meant "average over a decade", but I can't see that in the English version of the agreement. I haven't tried explaining to a police officer that while I was going over the speed limit, my average speed is below the limit...

    limit noun [ C ] us ​ /ˈlɪm·ɪt/ the greatest amount, number, or level allowed or possible:

    So even without delving into the paper as deeply as Polly managed, you can see, even reading the abstract that it's a flight of imagination that depends on time travel for it's basic premise. How this got published is beyond me.

    525:

    not even notice that there was a game being played in the first place. The silly office politics stuff would go right over my head; instances of people deliberately choosing to do pointless and piss-awkward things are so common that seeing people make such a choice over paying for their dinner would elicit no more than an un-uttered "ffs what are you lot like?"

    Pigeon, serious question here — have you ever been evaluated for ASD (or Asperger's, before they rolled that diagnosis into ASD)?

    526:

    Scottish banknotes are legal tender in Englandshire, but if you move away from main train line stations and airports so many idiots seem not to understand this that when I visit England I hit an ATM for "local currency" on arrival. (Scots are quite willing to take English banknotes, so there's no need to do this in the opposite direction.)

    I blame it on the long legacy of the Irish Pound, which was pegged to Sterling for decades until 1971 or thereabouts, then devalued somewhat. You'd get assholes passing Irish currency in England and the shopkeepers who didn't know any better would get stung when they took it to the bank — at which point they'd get all vague on the difference between Ireland and Scotland (one's an independent Republic, the other is part of the UK; there's a honking great sea between them; etc) and decline to take any currency that didn't have a picture of the Queen on it.

    527:

    Actually, there's a case to be made that schools don't — but should — teach a course in "essential human survival skills".

    Syllabus to include:

    • Swimming (survival swimming, not speeding up and down lanes)
    • Basic orienteering with map and compass (for when the cell infrastructure is down)
    • Basic first aid
    • Cardio-pulminary resuss
    • How to recognize life-threatening conditions (e.g. stroke, heart attack) and how to call emergency services
    • Urban survival in emergency — how to tackle/escape from a fire/quake/major incident, how to evacuate your home, things to avoid (snakes, fallen high tension power lines)
    • (Advanced): How emergency services respond to an incident, the role of a first responder, setting up and running the on-site response, triage, logistics, evacuation.

    For rural areas you can add the usual countryside shit the scouts get up to, like making a fire and setting up a tent and catching and eating a rabbit, but as 70% of us live in cities the emphasis should be on "how to recognize and mitigate/escape things that can kill you or your friends and relatives".

    You can liven it up with plane crash documentaries and escape games to keep the kids' interested. And I'm pretty sure if this was a compulsory course from around age 5-15 it'd save lives.

    (Why not leave this to the scouts/other non-school organizations? Because they're not universal, or compulsory, and they've got specific ideological frameworks that may repel or deter many people who could benefit: the Scouts were originally set up by Baden-Powell to train kids in skills they'd need as effectively special forces in the British army during the second Boer war, for example, and they're overrun with god and country propaganda and paramilitary stuff like merit badges and uniforms.)

    528:

    Great idea, but it falls down in that it depends on schools.

    Schools don't teach, they're childminding services until the children are old enough for the mines/factories.

    Good idea though, if only there was some sort of organisation that was about teaching kids things.

    Oh, and speaking of resus. It always seemed almost indescribably boring. In reality it's the most seriously cool thing.

    Watch this, this is the most amazingly cool thing in the world. I think perhaps I've figured out what I want to do when I grow up, only 40 years too late.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsZBXlTHPCg

    529:

    So, what happened in Britain that a peck on the cheek is considered a sexual overture? (Whatever this was might also explain US reaction.)

    Speculation: it became entrenched in the upper classes over a couple of centuries because their boy-children were cycled through the Arnold school system from 1800 onwards, separated from parents at 8 years of age or younger and sent to a boarding school where the abuse was institutionalized and any outward sign of emotion was leapt upon as a vulnerability. Such schools were designed to turn out rulers — MPs, generals, admirals, colonial governors, conquerors — professions to whom an excess of empathy was weakness.

    But it almost certainly goes back much earlier: the English have had a "cold fish" reputation going back centuries. Any suggestions?

    530:

    Schools don't teach, they're childminding services until the children are old enough for the mines/factories.

    You missed out the bits about how they systematically train children for late-19th century factory working conditions (mindless rote tasks performed in intervals broken up by the factory bell: obedience to arbitrary rules: distrust of imagination/initiative), but yeah.

    There's less of that today than there was in my schooldays (1970s to early 1980s), but it takes generations for social change to filter through our culture.

    531:

    Heh, I notice (again, this keeps happening) differences between schooling in Sweden and UK.

    • Swimming - check (there was swimming up and down the lanes, but there was also "rescue a floating doll", followed by "rescue a classmate going limp", so everyone got to experience both towing a live human in water, as well as being twoed).
    • Orienteering - check. am quite happy that school taught me how to use a map and a compass (we had annual orienteering competitions, and spring / early autumn, we usually did 10-15 PE classes being orienteering). Still can't stand the A-Z cartography, they futz small-scale distances for better clarity, so I keep over-estimating how far I need to go before turning.
    • Basic first aid - check (although I cannot say how much of tah was school and how much was extra-curricular, but there were definitely rescue breathing, CPR, and basic bandaging and splinting in school). As you can see, I lump CPR ion with basic first aid...
    • CPR - see above

    There were some elements of "these things are dangerous" (and "try to avoid nakes" was pre-school daycare hiking guidance...) in school, but I don't know if that was just absorbed from osmosis or if we had actual classes about it. I'm pretty suer we had at least some "this is how emergency service dispatch worksw", but not anything about how to run an incident.

    532:

    I'd add:

    • What the Dark Triad is and how to deal with people (especially people in positions of authority) who have it

    • How to spot authoritarian personalities (authoritarian leaders and followers)

    • At least one unit on logical fallacies (No True Scotsman; Appeal to Authority, etc)

    I have the feeling that this would quickly be shot down IRL.

    533:

    "* What the Dark Triad is and how to deal with people (especially people in positions of authority) who have it"

    We had a 6 hour lesson on that every day...

    534:

    Your additions are meritorious ... and unlikely to gain traction precisely because dark triad types are attracted to the positions of authority that would have to sign off on rolling out this education program.

    535:

    UPDDATE: Shit seems to be getting scarily real in Spain right now with the central government in Madrid sending the Guardia Civil to shut down the Catalan regional government and arrest politicians.

    This isn't how you deal effectively with a regional separatist movement (see the Scottish failed independence referendum for a worked example of how to do it right, i.e. deploy FUD at maximum volume and promise the moon, then renege on promises after the locals vote to stay in). This looks more like the beginning of a coup.

    There may be a new blog entry on the subject of the decay of post-Westphalian states and the rise of regionalism later, if I have the energy/can spare time from hitting my daily target on "The Labyrinth Index".

    536:

    (again) differences between schooling in Sweden and UK...

    And Aotearoa. We got swimming and even the sinkers like me got the "swim 25m fully clothed" at the end of primary school. It was technically optional but you had to have a physical disability to opt out. We also had school camps where you at least had the option to read a map, use a compass, pitch a tent, light a fire. Again, technically optional but most schools did them and there was fundraising to make sure everyone could go. These days the poverty-positive government has made that more difficult. First aid and CPR I think we did at secondary school, but I was in scouts and a S&R volunteer so I am not entirely sure (I recall teaching CPR unofficially at school because I knew the instructor, but I think that was an extension course before a camp).

    What we got that was handy was basic "judo" that amounted to simple falling lessons and a couple of basic holds and throws. Purely because one of our PE teachers was an olympic medallist who for obvious reasons was called Judo Smurf (just in case: judoka tend to be short and solid, so they either waddle or bounce. This one bounced). Every year we got that for a few weeks. It was surprisingly useful. I think some kind, any kind, of self defense instruction is good, but it needs to be taught by someone with both physical and psychological skills, because self defense is 90% inside your head.

    But as with any "dealing with pathological people" skill, the more effective the instruction the less popular it will be with the pathological people. So you will get complaints from parents and push-back from staff. Pointing out why that happens will not make you popular with two groups: the PPs, and the "don't make a fuss" crowd. The group "make the problem go away I don't care how" I count as pathological.

    537:

    RIGHT

    Syllabus to include:

    • Swimming (survival swimming, not speeding up and down lanes) YESSSS ...

    • Basic orienteering with map and compass (for when the cell infrastructure is down) Slight problem, there's a siugnioficant minority who are as useless with a map as I am about the rules of football .... { seriously, I've seen it & it really boggled me - like "At that roundabout ( which we could see ) go EAST- 5th exit ... & they took the third! }

    • Basic first aid COuld be fun - teach as part of science syllabus on human bilogy.

    • Cardio-pulminary resuss Not before vth form - or whatever it's called now.

    • How to recognize life-threatening conditions (e.g. stroke, heart attack) and how to call emergency services Really good idea

    • Urban survival in emergency — how to tackle/escape from a fire/quake/major incident, how to evacuate your home, things to avoid (snakes, fallen high tension power lines) As above

    • (Advanced): How emergency services respond to an incident, the role of a first responder, setting up and running the on-site response, triage, logistics, evacuation. Again, not uintil Vth or Vith form level

    For rural areas you can add the usual countryside shit. NO - for EVERYONE - I've seen appallingly underequipped people in the Lakes/Yorshire ....

    538:

    Yes & - I've never heard of the Dark Triad until now, but - so true. NOW -apply this to ALL of our so-called political leaders. NOT ONE passes, with the possible exception of Cable .....

    539:

    Worse, this will play to the rabid brexiteers ( "The EU is collapsing! Get out now!" )

    540:

    I forgot ... "Scouts" a brilliant idea that has, as usual, been utterly subverted. My father was enthusiastic from his scholdays until WWII - encouraged me (!) to try it ... And I was immedaiately bullied & left after a month. Bah ( I did tell him & he made representations, but also allowed me to stay opted-out )

    541:

    You might enjoy, wryly,

    https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/murray-les/the-tune-on-your-mind-0570014

    (Les Murray, one of the most feted of Australian poets, discovered that he was on the spectrum in his 60s, I think.)

    542:

    I blame it on the long legacy of the Irish Pound, which was pegged to Sterling for decades until 1971 or thereabouts...

    I think it was 1979 - we were living near Derry/Londonderry at the time. Up until that point, there was a free mix of Irish-minted coins and notes and Sterling in the cash you paid, and the change you got from shops. Suddenly, you had to look carefully to see whether your coins had the Queen's head on them, or an image of a bull or a salmon... Suddenly, shops were running two price lists.

    It once caused me a problem when travelling back from Northern Ireland to Scotland at the start of the new school term - the Scottish bus conductor wouldn't accept a Northern Irish banknote as payment for a fare.

    543:

    And, for added fun there was the great Northern Bank Robbery ... which stole so much money that the existing notes were withdrawn & new ones issued - yes, really.

    See also here, from Mr Wiki ... O!>

    544:

    Spanish / Catalan update Stupid doesn't even begin to describe this ... And if we go ahead with Brexit, we'll be facing these arrogant clowns over Gibraltar ..... Also, if Corbyn is PM, he'll roll over & expose his tummy, too!

    ( On previous theme: Dark Traid for Corbyn: Narcissistic & - towards his own party, Machiavellian. For May: Narcissistic & Psychopathic, incidentally ....

    545:

    I hadn't heard the term "Dark triad" before, I like it. Would it make "Herr Drumph!" the President of mentally ill America?

    546:

    "with the central government in Madrid sending the Guardia Civil to shut down the Catalan regional government and arrest politicians."

    The comparison with the Scottish referendum is imho wrong. That referendum was legal, the Catalan one is against the Spanish constitution ("paramount law", cfr. Marbury vs. Madison and all).

    Section 2. The Constitution is based on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation, the common and indivisible homeland of all Spaniards; it recognizes and guarantees the right to self-government of the nationalities and regions of which it is composed and the solidarity among them all.

    Changing it in order to allow independence would require a supermajority 2/3 vote in parliament, and snap elections immediately afterwards.

    If the regional government acts against the constitution, it's them staging a coup (and this said by someone who read Homage to Catalonia when a teenager.) We have the same problem in Italy with the Northern League (which's our copy of Le Pen/UKIP rolled in one) calling for secession. Which is,too, against the constitution and the criminal law code, and cannot be done legally.

    So, the possible collapse of the post-Westphalian state will happen by extralegal means. You know, civil war followed by ethnic cleansing, see: former Yugoslavia.

    547:

    ...That's one explanation for people not understanding my pastiche style humor. oO

    If you want a short over-view of the clinical research side of it, by an actual professional:

    Toward a Taxonomy of Dark Personalities Current Directions in Psychological Science 2014, PDF, legal

    If you need a taste of the (huge) fan-boy style Alt-Right embracing this (which is also a great source of the literature on it, narcissists gonna narcissist):

    The Dark Triad: War & Power Illimitable Men Blog - Warning: MRA type bad readings of Machiavelli (no-one has told them he was a Republican doing satire yet), Nietzsche (tick all those boxes) and so forth. It's almost self-parody in attempting to be edumacated[0] and dangerous on the subject while self-projecting as (self-proclaimed) Dark Alpha (still bad misunderstanding of pack dynamics) Men Masters (they probably misunderstand BDSM badly as well). Note: they do not take mockery well[1].

    A UK charity has just released a year long project (lots of media, graphics, YT links etc etc): Undercover in the Alt-Right Hope Not Hate, Sept 2017

    Consider it 'required reading' (well, unless you know most of it already cough); not fully comprehensive & focusing too much on the 'Media' side, but hey. (Then again, I suspect the first time anyone got hold of the 'old' American Fraternity lists and so forth there'd be a national scandal[2])

    ~

    Puerto Rico is getting hit, hard: if they're lucky their dam(s) won't breach ( Abren cinco compuertas de la represa La Plata. Inundaciones podrían afectar a las comunidades cercanas #HuracánMaría Twitter, Puerto Rico Monitor, Eng. Lang. Media coverage of PR. 20th Sept 2017

    The knock-on of this on the PR budget issues will be an 'interesting' one[3], but the entire island is a disaster zone atm.

    And Mexico just had another Earth Quake (note to person who posted about the lucky stability of flat lake beds: not so much, depends on the quake type, 85 years ago says hello).

    ~

    America goes 'all in' - ACA repeal, increased .mil budget, the whole nine yards.

    ~

    World Markets hit record highs yesterday[4].

    ~

    Regarding Spain: a resource - Arran Països Catalans (Arran)[5], twitter: 🔴 Totes al carrer: contra el cop d'estat, #VagaGeneral! ✊ and 🔴 Continuem la #resistència davant la seu de la @cupnacional! ✊ Twitter, 20th Sept 2017.

    They are very much seeing it as a coup / attempt to squash any kind of real referendum on independence and are very much not of the older, Franco and Beans, generation.

    [0] Currently watching a certain Chad type on Twitter melt-down equating Nazism with BLM / LGBT while using his Jewish faith (convert) as a defense. Insert "The Whites are at it again" meme

    [1] Hint: Some of the ranting is piss-taking of this type on a massive scale.

    [2] To spare Host: your search term is "Don't Taze me Bro" then use euphemisms when talking about such matters; they have real clout.

    [3] Puerto Rico Declares a Form of Bankruptcy NYT May 3rd 2017

    [4] Markets at new record highs ahead of US Federal Reserve decision – business live Guardian, 20th Sept 2017 - live!

    [5] Youth Left Feminist Anarchist group - UK press demonizes them for "terrorizing" tourists (Express, Daily Mail) which turned out to be firecrackers, glitter bombs and loud music.

    548:

    Isn't España una e indivisible a holdover from the Francoist fascists and a violation of the UN charter?

    549:

    Agreed. Swimming in NZ was pushed heavily from the 50s on after a spate of child drownings, and ironically is becoming an issue again in the last decade after a lot of closures of school swimming pools since 2005ish have caused a spike in youth drownings again.

    We did the school camp, orienteering, firelighting etc. More appropriately, we also had a lot of civil defence stuff, predominantly based around earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis, those being the main perceived risks in Auckland. And all of that was at primary school level, with more advanced stuff in intermediate. I think we might have gotten a brief bit of First aid then too, I did a lot of training once I got to uni so I forget the early stuff.

    Martial arts were definitely an out of school activity though, alongside scouts or soccer/cricket etc run by the regional body, at least until intermediate when we had school teams.

    Although to cross with the other thread, I looked up my old primary school and it has exactly one male teacher out of 31, with the only other males being the head and the caretaker. Make of that what you will.

    550:

    From comments on facebook, there appears to be a shortage of proper swimming tuition in Australia, but also in other places in the world.

    Greg #540 - you'll have to be more explicit about when and where the idea of "scouts" was subverted. Meanwhile, in the modern world, there exists the "woodies", which is kind of like a hippy anarchist version of scouts.

    551:

    The polite, legal introduction of the nobility (aka big money) to the humane invention of Msr. Guillotine.

    Aka, to quote the Red Queen, OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!

    Now, as someone suggested on another blog, I should probably look into a starting a business to build tumbrels....

    552:

    a) Remember, this is in Child, ballad 32, which makes it hundreds of years old. b) Ever read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? The moral is, of course, the answer to the question, "what does a woman want".

    So there's a strain of women's equality that's been an undercurrent for a long, long time.

    553:

    Please. Breitbart (or, as I prefer, Dim-bart) is Bannon's (formerly of the White House) media, so is 500% extremist right-wing and all-wrong opinion, crackpotism, etc.

    554:

    Um, not all. Depends on the schools, and, IMO, esp. on the school administration's attitudes, more than the individual instructors.

    I've been, and my kids have been in both kinds, though this is US experience.

    And how would you have children learn? Do NOT get me started on the so-called Christian home schoolers....

    555:

    '(A survey in Indonesia found that the percentage of population who had and used facebook accounts exceeded the percentage who said "yes" when asked if they had internet access by a number corresponding to over ten million people.'

    Fascinated here, could you link to survey or give me a clue where to find it. The current population of Indonesia is around 260 M people over a land and water mass of just under 2M km2. They can't even cope with elections properly let alone surveys which would reliably indicate who was on facebook or not. This sounds to me (living in the region) as a marketing exercise by Facebook to drum up advertisers rather than a statistically reliable survey. And even if it was accurate (it's not), 10M is not going to a margin that is statistically significant in a population of 260M where:

    Significant % of rural population are under Sharia law and women aren't allowed to have Facebook accounts or lie if they have them (to avoid beatings)

    There is also a significant expat population there in mining, oil and gas (at least 5M) who create accounts in Indonesia for business contacts as it is expected there but maintain their own ones at home. In the more remote parts of Indo (where the mines are) you can't be sharing a picture of your wife or your sister in a bikini as it won't sit well with the more conservative Islamic element.

    Facebook is also notorious for never deleting any account unless you push through the 324 steps to do it, there will be many people who maintain dual or multiple accounts (eg school teachers who can not afford to have their party photos they share with their close friends but not their students and families etc), people who die, people who just say can't be arsed using facebook anymore and don't delete accounts. Suddenly 10M out of a possible 260M seem so teeny tiny I can't believe that either.

    Genuinely, I'd really like to see the raw data.

    556:

    Although to cross with the other thread, I looked up my old primary school and it has exactly one male teacher out of 31

    I had a couple of male primary teachers... the one at an International school in Eastern Europe taught us softball, the one at my boarding school had been in 23 SAS, probably useful when coping with us for two years.

    Our kids' school has several male teachers in the lower primary school (first three years of education), and several in the upper primary (next four years - including one who was a serving Reservist). Our youngest had a truly excellent teacher in Primary 2; lovely bloke, kids were in awe of him, who was well into "everyone knows and no-one cares" territory.

    So; two out of seven years of primary for each of my sons - not too bad. Three out of seven for me; unusual...

    557:

    Schools don't teach, they're childminding services until the children are old enough for the mines/factories.

    Utter tripe, although I acknowledge that you may be talking from a perspective that includes bitter personal experience. Please consider that when you're having a really crappy time, you aren't perhaps best-placed to provide an even-handed overview of typical practice.

    The school I went to, the school my wife went to, and the school our kids go to - all were/are filled with teachers trying to equip their students for life, not a job down't'pit. For that, you'd need to look at my father's experience in a poorer area of 1950s Glasgow; things have changed.

    I may also be biased by having a mother who had nearly forty years in teaching - half in primary schools around the world, the other half in special-needs education. I can assure you that neither she, nor those of her colleagues I met as child and adult, had attitudes and approaches to education that fit your rather lazy stereotype.

    558:

    My experience with Fedora of late (the last decade or so) hasn't been terribly unstable. Until I started *ing with the graphics drivers, but that's on me! Mind, be careful you don't wind up on the testing branch, cuz there be dragonflies.

    559:

    Indonesians surveyed by Galpaya told her that they didn’t use the internet. But in focus groups, they would talk enthusiastically about how much time they spent on Facebook. Galpaya, a researcher (and now CEO) with LIRNEasia, a think tank, called Rohan Samarajiva, her boss at the time, to tell him what she had discovered. “It seemed that in their minds, the Internet did not exist; only Facebook,” he concluded.

    Millions of Facebook users have no idea they’re using the internet Quartz Magazine, 9th Feb, 2017 - long form, very well sourced with embedded links.

    Time taken to find: 5 seconds or under.

    561:

    Logical fallacies - I usually point folks to the argument.FAQ from usenet.

    562:

    What really drives me nuts about these, what shall I call them, ethnic? cultural? groups that want freedom and their own nation... is how many of them do not have the resources to survive on their own in the modern world, with their current population.

    In the case of the Catalans, Jeezus H - Spain's got enough economic woes as it is, why on earth to the folks for it think they would not be in worse shape?

    563:

    Catalonia is a major and very high-tech part of the Spanish economy. IMO, it's not unreasonable for them to think they could make it on their own, given some competent governance and willingness to deal with neighbors. Likewise, it's also reasonable for Madrid to be very distressed at the idea of losing Catalonia.

    Just how this will work out is TBD. People seem to forget that messing with the imperial power in its playground often doesn't end well for them. See Jerusalem, 587 BCE and 70 AD and many others. My MiL remembered the soldiers marching down a Galician hill above Cedeira in 1937(?).

    564:

    Yeah, well, he ticks all three boxes ....

    565:

    Both agree & disagree I would say that at least 85% of Primary "teachers" are little better than licensed child-minders, reducing to approx 55% for later-primary ( 8-11 ) but, after that? Difficult to say now - the hange since I stopped teaching ( 1993/4 ) has been so profound that I cannot be regarded as a useful witness any more )

    566:

    Austria 8,794,267 Israel 8,743,860 Catalonia 7,523,000 Bulgaria 7,101,859 Denmark 5,760,694 Finland 5,508,714 New Zealand 4,818,050 Malta 429,344 Iceland 343,960

    Looks big enough.

    567:

    Re: Bionics - thanks!

    Great articles! Hadn't known that this was already a 'working' philosophy.

    568:

    Re: '... the English have had a "cold fish" reputation going back centuries. Any suggestions?'

    Maybe a middle-English Lit major could answer this? IIRC, Chaucer characters certainly weren't prim so the cold-fish thing must have happened after that. Or, maybe something akin to the legend that the Spanish courtiers/upper classes started affecting a lisp because of King Ferdinand.

    • Not true, but does illustrate what power upper class twits possess.
    569:

    (indonesia) Significant % of rural population are under Sharia law

    My understanding is that Islam in Indonesia is less influenced by Wahhabism than the popular media in the west is, and is also more diverse. So it's necessary to be quite specific about what exactly you mean by Sharia Law. Or, often, Indonesian law, because again, big country, quite diverse, more corrupt than Australia (achievement unlocked!), with fairly strong state governments.

    For one example, we had a couple of indo muslim guys as housemates for a while and they found our local mosquelets incompatible with their practices. They were more cultural Muslims than five-times-a-day, but still, were not comfortable living with a single woman (as in, un-married) but not at all bothered by her being un-covered. I got the feeling the worship thing was a bit like saying to an English cultural Anglican that the local Greek Orthodox church is Christian too, right? They do easter and christmas too, yeah?

    570:

    Really[1]? oO

    Ok, that last paper from Transactions on Ecology and the Environment has a good reference section and the German school is well worth looking into (I assumed that this was a given, thus the slightly more esoteric Chinese / Taiwanese models: you can very easily find the MsC German syllabuses etc - heavy on engineering, not so heavy on actual sustainability).

    It's kinda where the solution of Host's question lies (imho): the 21st C is biotech, not silicon[1.1].

    And just to do a teasing tie-in:

    The researchers used the CRISPR–Cas9 technique to tinker with WntA and optix in several butterfly species. Scientists switched each of the genes on and off to demonstrate how much influence they had over what appeared on the butterflies’ wings.

    CRISPR reveals genetic master switches behind butterfly wing patterns Nature, 18th Sept 2017

    ~

    With reference to #562, please go look @ the twitter feed (and linked nodes) for Arrans.

    They don't want the American Walmart[tm] Corporate Model, they want something different. At least they're willing to bang pans[2] to shout that to the universe.

    ~

    Oh, and to cheer everyone up who actually reads anything I type: Ron Perlman has come out as a steaming and furious anti-Trump voice[3]. His Twitter is raging: We're seeing what the GOP has done to protect our precious planet, why shouldn't we trust them with our health and well being? Twitter, 20th Sept 2017

    Troll Market Battle YT: Film, Hellboy 2, 2:31 [4]

    [1] Like the Dark Triad, there was an assumption that this was common knowledge.

    [1.1] Like, what are you doing with 3D printing if you're not tight with bionics?!?

    [2] Cacerolazo

    [3] Several others of notable mention: Zach Braff, Jason Isaacs.

    [4] nose wiggle Prince Nuada clip. Prince Nuada Kills King Balor.

    571:

    C R O M W E L L

    R

    O

    M

    W

    E

    L

    L

    572:

    Re: Teachers vs. baby-sitters, Swimming - survival skill ...

    Think this depends mostly on the school system/region/county, etc. you're in. Have seen more variation between than within school boards. A lot also depends on who the board/trustees are since they're usually the decision-makers re: text books and programs, esp. funding. Communities that have good civic infrastructure such as community centers, sports fields, libraries, etc. are also likelier to offer swimming lessons because the pool is already there and at most all they have to shell out is the cost of a couple of hours of lifeguard duty per classroom.

    Did get some basic swimming lessons in elementary because the community center that had an indoor pool was only a couple of blocks away from my school. Swimming was considered mostly a safety issue because all the kids spent their summers at the local outdoor pools. Scheduling swimming lessons can be tricky because you don't want to cut into 'real' (academic) classroom time. Do recall that some kids did not own 'appropriate' attire - very recent immigrants and their parents' just couldn't afford this additional expense. Imagine that this could be even more of an issue these days, both economically and culturally.

    573:

    To all those defending schools and schooling,

    Perhaps you're right. My personal experience was so bitter that it could well have clouded my judgement on the whole thing.

    I've sat quietly and introspected for 5 minutes (set a timer) and I can't remember being taught anything in 13 years of education. The exception is being taught to read. I'd been pestering my parents to teach me to read and they'd been advised by the school, most emphatically, to not do that. Apparently that would have set me back in some way. They told me this and I didn't make any attempt to learn on my own, waiting instead to 'go to school'. I was more excited by going to school than I have been by anything before or since.

    When I got there, there was no training in reading. There was plenty of training in knowing your place. In violence, intimidation, the use of humiliation and separation from the group as a means of control. It was utterly terrifying and dehumanising.

    Training in reading had to wait for a change of schools about 3 months in. At the new school there was no room for me in the year I was supposed to be in so I went up a year. They'd already learnt to read (nominally, because you couldn't really tell from the pupils reading ability). I cottoned on to how the phonetics idea worked from listening to the teacher humiliating the students who got it wrong. (no active teaching was attempted in my direction, as I was a class up and was really only being minded until the year rolled around again).

    At that point I was away on my own. I really really can't remember any point where I was introduced to a concept I wasn't already familiar with... No, that's not true. Another 5 minutes of introspection and I've come up with summing a series. I'm not quite as clever as that sounds. They did hand out the textbooks at the start of the year and each one only took a few hours to read through. The summing a series was taught in a year I hadn't bothered to read the textbook that year. (or attend many classes either as it happened) I remember I'd got to school late that day and my friends had already left so with nothing else to do I'd attended class, and actually learnt something. Who knew?

    I did come in contact with 3 good teachers over the 13 years (13 because I had to repeat that 'year up' despite topping the class, despite not having been taught, and despite missing the first 3 months, I wasn't the right age to go up to the next year, so I had to do the class I'd topped again for administrative reasons. An excellent lesson in how the world works)

    Something one of those good teachers said has stuck, summing up my bitter school experience. She was offered the role teaching a class of the 70 smartest kids in the state. (there was at the time a program to identify and help those kids for 2 years, 5th and 6th class) Her career had been up to that point 'special education' practical teaching, research and lecturing. She initially refused, saying that these kids had all the advantages, why would they need special education? She said the person offering the job said to her, "These kids have a mental age of 16 to 18 years old. For the past 4 years they've been in a class of 5-7 year olds, taught to the pace of the slowest kid, imagine what life has been like for them"

    I don't need to imagine. Life was a living hell, every second.

    So yeah, my view is clouded. I can imagine that if you're a bit dim, but good at sport, school could be a nice experience and you could learn a lot.

    574:

    Hmm, 2013.

    Looks like people are doing bionics in 3D printing while either pretending there's no prior innovation or being ignorant of it.

    Example: Cortex 3D-printed cast by Jake Evill de zeen June 2013

    Media Coverage: It's Almost Worth Breaking Your Arm for this Crazy 3D-Printed Cast Gizmodo 2013

    Very strong bionics feel to that piece; insane it's not mentioned.

    Yep, Victoria University of Wellington, has a strong department in the field: Robots may dominate rugby by 2050 Scoop! NZ, 2011. But that's weird, Associate Professor Ian Yeoman specialized in Tourism / Management. And there's even NZ companies doing it (badly): Rex Bionics Commercial site -

    Research team AIN-Rehab in collaboration with The University of Newcastle, Australia now has ethics approval to expand the HELLEN research trial using REX to include people living with Multiple Sclerosis. 12th Sept 2017

    (There's a whole meta joke hidden in there because I got bored)

    575:

    Actually, another 10 minutes of introspection. I've remembered another thing I was taught, which has been very useful, and which ended up naming me. I don't know how I forgot this, because it used to be what I would say if the subject of school came up. Must be getting old.

    I learnt to survive and even enjoy long periods of very little external stimulation. Sitting in the classroom, hour after hour not really listening to a teacher drone on about things I already knew equipped me for my later sport of deep decompression diving. The ability to spend several hours hanging clipped to a rope in a blue orb with nothing to look at, listen to, or even touch and to not only not mind it, but actually quite enjoy it, is something I think school really gave me.

    I also really thrive doing process work. I had a job filling bottles and putting the labels on that I really miss. So there's that too.

    576:

    You might be a little short on that one. Good ol' infallible Wikipedia chases it back to Shakespeare's time via Sparta and the Stoics ("stiff upper lip").

    For amusement's sake, several sources credit the phrase "keep a stiff upper lip" to America between 1815 and 1830. I'd also suggest that, while the concept of stiff face and suppressed emotions has undoubtedly been around for a redwood's years and then some, its popularity in the UK probably rose sharply during the sudden expansion of the British Empire under Victoria, when being a highly disciplined cold fish could be advantageous both for colonial civil servants and international men of business. Didn't Victoria's actions after the death of Albert also point the way towards emotional suppression amongst the gentry?

    577:

    Diagnosed as "semi-autistic" at age, errr, 6 or 7 or so, whatever that means in terms of current understanding.

    No followup; didn't find out until some time in my teenage years when everyone else went out for the evening and I used the time alone to go through my parents' stash of stuff they and my schools had been writing to each other about me behind my back ever since I started. Didn't let on I'd done that until probably about 30 years later.

    Somehow it didn't seem to show in my medical records and GPs didn't know until I told them (which was before I told my parents I knew). Now that I have, they call it "Asperger's", but I realise they are using the term as a generic catch-all rather than something diagnostically specific.

    Doesn't bother me any more than it bothers me to have only one functional eye due to coloboma in the other one.

    578:

    Syphilis? Possibly linked to Henry VIII, who was popularly believed to have died from it?

    Protestantism and the Virgin Queen also springs to mind.

    579:

    Certainly the Victorian era gave it quite a boost, but as Charlie and you noted, it was still thoroughly entrenched before that. Also, it wasn't just a phenomenon of the sons-sent-to-public-school classes; it applied across all social strata, with suitable variations for the level. Farm lads would no more greet each other with a kiss than nobs would.

    It certainly wasn't Cromwell. His particular band of joyless cunts may have gained power, but they were never very popular, and once he popped his clogs it didn't take very long for people to start being merry again.

    580:

    He didn't, and that belief I'm pretty sure didn't gain traction until later. Didn't that crop up on here quite recently? The timing for the spread of the disease and its recognition doesn't fit.

    And the Virgin Queen... wasn't. Unmarried, certainly, and used that status as a political tool; but virgin - nah.

    581:

    Re: Cromwell - 'cold-fish' English

    Maybe - but not convinced - mostly because there's not that much known about the person vs. the pol. Understand that Cromwell underwent a religious conversion and that his bible-thumping was tied to his political aims. But find it hard to accept that given that he was later 'unburied' in order to be beheaded for regicide that much of his other gifts to the nation would have remained popular long enough to have become absorbed by an entire culture's psyche.

    582:

    Yeah, it's quite the shift - when I went through my primary had at least five male teachers, out of hmm, around 20 I think. I have a strong suspicion that the Ellis case mentioned above has had a profound chilling effect on male teachers for kids below 13 or so in NZ, which compounds with the long standing issue that primary teaching is viewed as lower status, probably because more women do it - my intermediate dropped from ~50% to ~20%, yet the secondary school sits at ~68% of a staggering 158 teaching staff. Dang but it got big since I left, the school roll looks to have near doubled in 20 years.

    Good grief, Rangitoto College up the road has over 3050 students. That's larger than anything in the UK, and the population here is far denser. No wonder NZ is having problems.

    583:

    Completely unrelated, and I mean that seriously. (If you want, I'll dig out the Greek texts and the Shakespearean references to said texts and then point out the traces back a couple of thousand years, but it's really early here and PR just fell off the grid).

    For many modern readers, the fact that the two men shared a bed can mean only one thing: they were having a sexual relationship. But, as historians such as John Gillingham and Stephen Jaeger have pointed out, such an interpretation rests heavily on the projection of modern practices and perceptions onto the distant past. For high-status medieval men, sharing a meal and a bed had more to do with politics than sex, and the same was true of other intimate gestures such as kissing and handholding. Such behaviours served as tokens of peace or reconciliation, and as demonstrations of alliance and favour. So when Henry II learnt of his son’s attachment to the French king, he was shocked not because he thought Richard was homosexual, but because he had formed an alliance with his father’s worst enemy.

    Three Wise Men in a Bed: Bedsharing and Sexuality in Medieval Europe

    C.f. Islamic Cultures, 1100-2017

    If you want to get into the entire sordid nature of pedophilia causing such distance, well, sorry, no: knock yourself out with looking in-depth to VGilles de Rais 1405-1440, or perhaps the ENTIRE FUCKING VICTORIAN SCANDALS SURROUNDING AGE CONSENT LAWS (raising to 13, then 16, I can dump an entire list of the same kinds of arguments that surrounded slavery - same time-frame).

    Your Minds =/= working like their minds did. "Adolescence" as a concept didn't even exist until ~1770ish, prior to that "youth" meant up until the time of marriage / independence.

    Anyhow, since you want to be finessed: the source you're looking for is:

    The want of affection in the English is strongly manifested towards their children; for after having kept them at home until they arrive at the age of 7 to 9 at the utmost, they put them out, both males and females, to hard service to the houses of other people, binding them generally for another 7 to 9 years. And these are called apprentices, and during that time they perform all the most menial offices; and few are born are exempted from this fate, for every one, however rich he may be, sends away his children into the houses of others, whilst he, in return, receives those of strangers into his own"

    A relation, or rather a true account, of the island of England [electronic resource] : with sundry particulars of the customs of these people, and of the royal revenues under King Henry the Seventh, about the year 1500

    TL;DR

    It's the old Anglo-Saxon hostage / child swapping to increase bonds system. It survived until the internet age as "having a pen-pal in Europe and going to visit them and vice versa" until ~1990 or so in the UK.

    ZZz

    584:

    And no: GRM doesn't even come close to how mercenary it got.

    585:

    Yeah, that does sound really shit. My own school experience was decidedly mixed, and a lot of stuff went in one ear and out the other, but I did learn stuff which I continue to find useful every day, principally mathematics and languages.

    One factor which I do believe was important, which nobody here has brought up, but whose importance I believe has been confirmed by various studies, is "atmosphere" - by which I mean that of the building itself, rather than what you get on top of that when you put people in it. My first school was in the buildings of an old manor house, both the house itself and its old stables and coach-houses, and various wooden sheds and prefabricated structures plonked down around it. The grounds were lovely, but the classrooms, both wooden and brick, were shit. Cold, hard, unwelcoming, floors (on which we spent a lot of time sitting) of uncovered wooden boards, nearly black in colour, bearing both a thick layer of slightly sticky floor wax, and splinters. Poor to nonexistent heating, and damp and manky on rainy days. Dull and gloomy due to poor lighting, further exacerbated by the walls being painted in cold, dull blue colours. Regardless of any human factors, those rooms were just not a very pleasant place to be. Oh, and the smell - dampness and floor wax, with a side of old laundry basket.

    My next school was quite the opposite: a modern building, properly heated and warm, the kind of building where it was actually pleasantly cosy to sit in it on a mucky day and feel the contrast with the rain beating on the windows, and not just the minimal "well at least I'm not out in it" of the previous one. Excellently provided with light, both natural and artificial. Painted in cheerful shades from the orangey, "warm" end of the spectrum. Floors of lino tiles, light-coloured, with no sticky wax or splinters, and the bit where we sat on the floor actually had a carpet!!! And it didn't smell, or at least not like that.

    My parents said they were astonished to find that my first report from that school described me as happy and well-behaved. Undoubtedly a significant factor in that was the absence of the little shits who used to enliven their dull moments by punching me in the stomach, but I'm sure that a possibly even larger one was simply that the building was a far more pleasant place to be inside.

    586:

    And since no-one chased the Cromwell link, here it is explicitly:

    John Lilburne (1614 – 29 August 1657), also known as Freeborn John, was an English political Leveller before, during and after the English Civil Wars 1642–1650. He coined the term "freeborn rights", defining them as rights with which every human being is born, as opposed to rights bestowed by government or human law.[1] In his early life he was a Puritan, though towards the end of his life he became a Quaker. His works have been cited in opinions by the United States Supreme Court.[2]

    John Lilburne

    (Spoiler: had a lot of influence on American Revolutionaries)

    And is this all the return and fruit that people are to expect at your hands? Doth your Solemn Engagement at Newmarket (and Triploe Heath) with your declarations, remonstrances, vows and protestations unto us all, centre in this bed-roll of cruelties? We pray you give us leave to make enquiry amongst you after those things, and give losers leave to complain. Remember you not with what cheerfulness and alacrity our fellow-apprentices — the glory and flower of the youth of this nation — and multitudes of ourselves yet surviving, ran in to your assistance out of a conscientious intent to uphold and maintain the fundamental constitution of this commonwealth, viz. the interest and right of the people in their parliaments (it being most rational and unquestionably just that the people should not be bound but by their own consent given to their deputies in parliament, which by the laws and customs of England ought, wholly new, to be annual, to deliver and clear the land from its heavy pressures and bonds) not engaging in the least against the person of the king, as king, or with any thoughts of pretence of destroying, but regulating, kingship, and merely for the removal of all those cruelties and oppressions he had laid upon the people by his will, contrary to law?

    The young men's and the apprentices' outcry John Lilburne, 29 August 1649

    You'll note that "Youth" there are most certainly fighting etc.

    If you want to track down the exact relationship change where 'physical intimacy' became important between Parents and Children, you'll want the Romantics (Jean-Jacques Rousseau ).

    The Social Contract Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762

    587:

    And there's a real question:

    Did the advent of the modern communication / internet / phone create Brexit by destroying a thousand+ year old tradition of swapping (however vestigial it had become by the 1990's) children and cultures into families?

    OOhh... Now that one's got legs (and a tail).

    588:

    Oh, and since no-one will read the spam.

    Someone remind Americans that Robert Mueller was instrumental in the entire 9/11 anthrax cover-up and quashing of actual investigation.

    It's a soft coup, you dumb fucks.

    589:

    Let's make this more explicit:

    Trump and Co and all the Russian etc stuff are getting purged by someone who worked tirelessly to eradicate Democracy in the Republic and make sure that Intel agencies and Shadow-Groups ran things. Patriot Act (fired up and ready to roll what was it? two days after?), full on anthrax dodgy stuff sent only to those senators opposed to it, big FBI cover-up of it all. And the Liberal / Left are cheering him on...

    thatsthejoke.jpg

    Not even playing in the same paddling pool, let alone Ocean.

    ~

    And so, الجن‎‎ and Weather. And a Nasty-Nasty promise (Cuba, slight damage: you want to play hard-ball, well, that's gonna cost you your synapses). Because some of us would like to live and grow. Shocking news for Dumb Fucks everywhere, I know.

    p.s.

    So not even Russian it's not funny.

    590:

    re: 3-D printed casts

    Doesn't say how much weight this material and configuration can support which would be important in lower body/limbs. Probably could also be used as part of hip dysplasia* and scoliosis. And if you want to get really techie, embed some electronics to make it into a TENS which would reduce long-term opioid reliance for pain management and might even help speed up healing.

    • If yes, clinical trial costs could be halved by concurrently running an animal 'arm' of the study, e.g., large dog breeds that are known for having this condition. Maybe even studs/horses.
    591:

    That all does sound like a very good idea, but I would sound a couple of cautionary notes.

    The first is illustrated by the following, which by coincidence was posted earlier today by an ambulance paramedic on another forum. C&Ped without further comment because I think it makes the point quite clearly on its own...

    Some people's 'help' you really wouldn't want. I was on a shuttle bus from terminal to aircraft the other day and a Middle Aged man collapsed on board, a woman started tending to him but I went over anyway and offered my help. She was shouting out 'get him on his side NOW!!!' And panicking everyone (inc the poor bloke who was conscious by now) - I just managed to persuade her that he was OK lying down and that we'd try to sit him up in a sec when someone on the bus shouted 'I'm a nurse - start chest compressions NOW!' And other people started repeating it. It was the craziest thing and I had to gently bellow 'unnecessary - he is conscious and talking to me. Just back away and give him space'.

    The woman tending him told me she was a retired nurse and that he'd either had a TIA or had sepsis ffs. My job was to simply protect him from members of the public till the paramedics arrived and declared him fit to travel. I genuinely think they would have starred CPR on the poor fcuker and broken his chest up.

    The other is that schools are incredibly talented at turning even enjoyable things to utter shit. Some of the things on your list did crop up at school, and the one that particularly jumps out is "orienteering".

    By the time that cropped up at school I was already fond of walking in wild places, and was well able to find my way across country with a map and compass, even if I'd left them at home. So one might have expected that doing it at school I'd be in my element and I'd have thought it was great.

    Not a bit of it. The fuckers made us do it as a military exercise, in competing groups, against the clock. They could hardly have found a more effective way to make it shit if that had been their explicit aim. So instead of enjoying it, I hated it, skived whenever possible, ignored the set exercise and wandered off on my own, and retained no memory of it at all beyond a five-second clip that shows me walking across a slope in a place I was already familiar with from outside school, thinking "usually I like it here, what is it about school that they have to fuck everything up?"

    Contrast "survival swimming", which I did voluntarily and got all my badges for; in that case they (a different "they", a different school) didn't load it up with extraneous competitive bollocks and did allow it to remain simply as an opportunity to go and play about in the water. IIRC discovering that they did it in that manner was a critical factor in moving it off my "don't touch with a bargepole" list. It is a shame that such enlightenment is so rare.

    Also, of course, just going through the motions isn't enough. We did nominally "cover" basic first aid and CPR - if you can count one occasion comprising nothing more than 40 minutes of being talked at, with no practice or dummies or anything, whose main result was to give one lad the chance to ask apropos of CPR "what do you do if it's a woman?" because he couldn't get told off for it but hur hur hur TITS. Again, if I hadn't already learned it properly outside school, I'd not have a clue how to do it.

    592:

    You mean schools doing "foreign exchange"? Nope. I don't know whether they really have stopped doing that, but even if they have, the timescale is back to front. People who voted Leave are mostly old enough that it would have been a possibility when they were at school. And it was never a major thing anyway; it only lasted a few weeks, its purpose was in learning languages, and only a minority of language learners actually did it.

    593:

    Re: Briton's cold demeanor is because parents sent their kids out into service/apprenticeship - nope!

    I'm assuming that since middle ages Britain engaged in quite a lot of trade with Europe, and because Britain was okay with importing the idea of a university back in 1096 (Oxford U), Britain would be equally likely to import European style apprenticeship.

    The article below suggests that apprenticeship programs - where kids left home/clan to work with and study under expert artisans/tradesmen - were very important economically because these programs helped diffuse knowledge which resulted in more rapid innovation and tech improvements.

    So - given that apprenticeships were common throughout 'western Europe', we still don't have a unique 'cause' or difference for British aloofness.

    http://voxeu.org/article/apprenticeship-and-rise-europe

    And, according to the below - apprenticeships have a 5,000+ year history.

    http://www.lni.wa.gov/TradesLicensing/Apprenticeship/About/History/

    594:

    Re: Mueller

    Read his Wikipedia entry first, followed by HuffPost: you'd never know it was the same person. Night and day! (Wonder who's tidying up his Wikipedia profile.)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mueller

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/conflicts-of-interest-and-ethics-robert-mueller-and_us_5936a148e4b033940169cdc8

    595:

    I must admit that I was taught languages, which would have been great but we did 3 months of Italian, then 3 of Spanish and 3 of French, by the end of which I was able to count to 20 in a mixture of the three languages and gave the whole thing up as a bad job. You'd have thought that they could have managed more with 5 hours of tuition a week for a year, but apparently not. No-one in my class did any better. Interestingly a few years ago I went to France for a couple of weeks and by the end was able to sort of get by if people spoke slowly, could speak well enough to buy sanitary napkins (I didn't attempt sign language for that) and I could read pretty well but not write anything. I forgot the lot within hours of leaving of course.

    As far as maths goes, I basically skipped two years of tuition, 5th and 6th class as I was in the experimental group (which I spent in the library reading novels). Working backwards I figured out that the only thing I missed was multiplying fractions. So about 10 minutes of thinking and experimenting with numbers caught me up 2 years of 'training'.

    I also got some of the things that OGH has suggested and my experience with orienteering matched yours to a spooky level. I'd suggest we went to school together except that the buildings sound different. I wasn't rambling through woods, there not being any in the city, but I was wandering around underwater, navigating myself around in a couple of feet of visibility quite happily with a compass and depth gauge. Even having a go at drawing my own maps. Like you I thought orienteering would be a great day out. Like you, I found it was pretty horrid.

    I doubt that our experiences are unique. The Monty Python sex education skit wouldn't be funny unless it spoke to a lot of people's similar experiences of interesting things ruined by dreadful teachers and dreadful teaching.

    596:

    Surely it's that childminding-to-factories transition that is the original reason behind the correlation between female/male teacher ratios and age of the kids. At the beginning it is very much about looking after babies, as they get older it changes to disciplinarianism, and we all know the historical gender assignments of those two roles.

    Also, of course, that women have been able to be teachers for rather longer than they have been able to do most other things. Presumably for similar reasons.

    597:

    And it was never a major thing anyway; it only lasted a few weeks, its purpose was in learning languages, and only a minority of language learners actually did it.

    I come from a small country, so a small language rarely spoken elsewhere. However, at least when I was at school, and by some accounts even nowadays, during the upper secondary school there are companies arranging exchange students for a school year. This is when the pupils are 17-18 years old, and the upper secondary is not mandatory.

    I know people who have gone for a year to the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Switzerland and Germany. Their graduation from the upper secondary took a year longer, but all of them have said that the experience was well worth it. Some of them visit their host families decades after the fact.

    Also some people came for a year to our school. I remember at least a Canuck, a German and some Swiss people who were in Finland for a year. Some of them learned excellent Finnish, some of them used the time partying and speaking only English.

    I was on a three-week exchange during one summer when I was 15. This was to Switzerland, and was on a tit-for-tat principle: first the Swiss children came here for three weeks, to live in Finnish families and then we went to Switzerland for three weeks to live in their families. I didn't learn that much Swiss German, though. Other things were more important, and Hochdeutsch was useful there.

    598:

    I went to several different schools over the years, and they all had their different strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps the most consistent factor between them all was that Thursday was always the day with the most undesirable combination of lessons out of the whole weekly timetable.

    I do wonder how many people these days don't manage to get the full value out of the "Latin Lesson" sketch in "Life of Brian" now that so few people learn Latin, because there seems to be a unique die used for stamping out Latin teachers and that sketch really does catch it to the life. All my Latin teachers were like that, differing only in amplitude.

    (Anecdotal aside, since we're nearly at 600: one vivid school memory is of a German lesson gradually grinding to a halt as our awareness was penetrated by this peculiar roaring sound percolating into the room. All of us, including the teacher, stopped what we were doing and stared out of the window with a mixture of incredulity and amusement. The sound, which was coming through two lots of closed windows and sixty feet of intervening space, was that of a Latin lesson proceeding in absolute 100% Python style at jet-exhaust volume levels.)

    599:

    It's also a language which is peculiarly inaccessible to non-speakers from any European-or-thereaboutsish country because the standard Latinate/Germanic euro-toolkit doesn't work. I would hazard a guess that crossing the barrier the other way is less difficult because you grow up with considerable exposure to at least half of it as well as to Finnish; does that seem reasonable to you?

    It is of course a reprehensible English characteristic to rest on the laurels of linguistic imperialism and not care about being crap at foreign languages. People do French at school, aren't interested, forget it all the moment the lessons stop, and then moan at Dorothy L Sayers for including large chunks of raw French in her novels. Well, you had your chance, guys...

    600:

    "Isn't España una e indivisible a holdover from the Francoist fascists and a violation of the UN charter?"

    No. Most constitutions have a similar clause (France and Italy for sure), and it doesn't violate the Un charter as Catalonia was represented in the constitutional assembly that wrote the 1978 Spanish constitution, and has already autonomy and self-government. The referendum is illegal, and the Spanish government is executing a Constitutional Court decision about it. It's not the "plucky rebel against the evil empire", Luke Skywalker against Darth Vader.

    Given that currently here in Italy support for the Catalan independence comes from the far-right (not just the Northern League, but an outspoken Fascist group calling for "borders drafted with the blood of the fighters"...go figure, in a country that got the bloodiest civil war in the 20. century Europe) one knows where to stay. And I have no love for Mr. Rajoy. No more that I had for the Iron Lady during the Falklands war. But both were right. It's a choice between "rule of law" or "might makes right".

    601:

    And since no-one chased the Cromwell link, here it is explicitly: Because we CAN'T BE ARSED WITH YOUR OBSCURANTISM

    As it happens, the open, direct piece about Lilbune was very interesting - so why couldn't you say so in the first place?

    602:

    Can someone, concisely, bring the rest of us up to speed on the latest USSA "ACA" propsals? That one obviously quietly swam past in the night - I assume it's a systematic trashing of what remaining healthcare the US has? Details, pretty please?

    603:

    Even worse than mine - though once I went to Grammar School at age 11, I did start learning things I was officially taught. Before that ... no, not ever, other than a bitter lesson on appointed authority & their deliberate lies & deceit - turned me into a permanent member of the Awkward Squad, that did ....... You are in ? AUS ? yes/no?

    604:

    it doesn't violate the Un charter as Catalonia was represented in the constitutional assembly that wrote the 1978 Spanish constitution

    I fail to see how that should bind people born since then. The essence of democracy is that the law is subject to change, and one key basis for human rights overriding democracy is that the tyranny of the majority cannot be allowed free reign. By your rule Sweden encompasses most of Scandinavia and always will do, because the Peace of Westphalia decreed it so. That was democracy far stronger than even a supermajority, it was consensus, not the bare majority who endorsed the Spanish constitution.

    When you have a region with a clear majority who want succession, saying "you can't even talk about this, it was finalised for all time 50 years ago" is bullshit. Government must continue to change with the times.

    This sort of thing annoys me more strongly than usual right now because us in Australia are playing stupid political games with same-sex marriage, the government can't agree with itself to even let us vote, we're having a sodding survey after which parliament might vote on the topic... or it might not. In the meantime the bigots are getting a lot of airtime for their evil opinions. So my tolerance for idiots demanding total submission to their elders and betters is very limited.

    605:

    The fuckers made us do it as a military exercise, in competing groups, against the clock. They could hardly have found a more effective way to make it shit if that had been their explicit aim. You got it! "Team Games" = FASCISM And people wonder why, even now, 57/58 years latyer, I still get the cold shudders about compulsory spurts.

    606:

    could you link to survey or give me a clue where to find it

    Sure: see this article for a write-up (and pointers to original)

    607:

    Whitroth: note that Scotland's population is 15% larger than that of the Republic of Ireland, near as dammit the same as that of Norway ... and only two-thirds that of Catalonia. Which has 90% of the population as Israel.

    There's a common, weird misconception among Americans that a successful nation in the modern world has to be a superpower with a population of, oh, a third of a billion people. Nope: considerably smaller states can be quite successful, especially if they're part of a trade bloc like the EU.

    608:

    The local secondary school (now an academy, obvs.) in this small market town in SE England used to do foreign exchange and trips for A-Level French students. But it has ground to a halt in the last couple of years due to "terror". I think that is as much to do with parents refusing to fund or allow trips they perceive as dangerous as to any choice by the schools. Apparently European tourist holidays and booze runs are ok for the chattering classes, but a bus load of school kids isn't.

    609:

    Right. I thought I recognized some of the signs. Disclosure: they weren't screening for it when I was at school — not until I was in my 30s, in fact — but the self-tests suggest I'm somewhere on the spectrum myself, and it would explain a lot about my early years. Of course, as an adult, I've learned coping strategies and can successfully emulate a neurotypical human being in public about 80% of the time, but ...

    Here's the thing: our experience of early socialization processes is abnormal, and we can't extrapolate from our own preferences to the rest of the population. "I had a very bad time in school because ..." [list of symptoms of kid with ASD being picked on by the class bully, without teaching support] "... so we need to change schools to do X" isn't an appropriate response. ("Screen all primary kids for signs of ASD, create a per-child plan tailored to support their specific needs, and keep a weather eye open for signs of bullying" — that's an appropriate response.)

    610:

    The fuckers made us do it as a military exercise, in competing groups, against the clock. They could hardly have found a more effective way to make it shit if that had been their explicit aim.

    That's why I was asking about Asperger's. That was also my reaction to most school sports — but ask yourself, why did they run it that way? The answer is, because that's the way that works best for non-Aspie kids. Humans are pack animals, and like to compete for status in hierarchy, so by giving them a time challenge and a competition the teachers gave the other kids a goal that would keep them focussed on the task (learning orienteering).

    Whereas you and I are outliers and don't thrive on the social interaction and actively reject the competition side of things. (The mistake they made was in not screening for ASD and finding alternative activities for the aspie kids that would motivate them to learn the same skills, rather than de-motivating them.)

    611:

    "I fail to see how that should bind people born since then."

    so, let's rewrite the constitution every year? I was born in 1953, am I bound to a constitution voted in 1948? you kiddin'?

    "The essence of democracy is that the law is subject to change, and one key basis for human rights overriding democracy is that the tyranny of the majority cannot be allowed free reign."

    sorry, but it's so wrong... the essence of democracy is also rule of the law. You cannot change a law (and in this case the constitution) with means not allowed by law.

    and, which tyranny of majority? which denial of human rights? Catalonia has its own self-government, Catalan is the official language, Catalans have all the citizenship rights, ain't a colony under military occupation, and this referendum is a scam worse than Brexit. What about a "tyranny of majority" by "true [insert dominant ethnic group here]" in monoethnic states? Hasn't former Yougoslavia been a good case study?

    612:

    Speaking of bionics made me think of prosthetics: anyone seen the channel4 shed of the year entry for Team UnLimbited ?

    https://twitter.com/Channel4/status/910104196145324033 http://www.t3dmc.com/3d-printing/channel-4-introduce-team-unlimbited-changing-lives-from-their-garden-shed-with-3d-printing/

    I have bugger all money and I've just made a donation. Some people have heart.

    613:

    When my son worked in a pub on the Isle of Man in the 1990s they had such a mix of English, Irish, Scottish, Manx and Northern Irish notes that they just accepted anything and didn't bother about the value of the Irish notes. It would have needed degree level study to pick up forgeries.

    614:

    You cannot change a law (and in this case the constitution) with means not allowed by law.

    So when the law says "you cannot ever change the law", that the end of it?

    It's very hard for me to see how Catalonian independence referendum is a scam, especially in the context of a large nation requiring a super-majority for the constitutional change that would allow them to ask for independence lawfully. That's almost textbook tyranny of the majority. Why should the rest of Spain get to vote on Catalan independence? That's what you're insisting on when you talk about working within Spanish law.

    615:

    A lot of that feels familiar, ever run into neurotypicals who are certain that you're just being difficult?

    616:

    In short, it seems to be "Our masters require a tax cut" so programs that impact the 99% are all in danger and ACA especially, because it has the name of a person of color. but here's a couple of links:

    https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/20/16333384/graham-cassidy-obamacare-health-care

    http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/09/cassidy-graham-disgraceful-sham

    617:

    why did they run it that way? The answer is, because that's the way that works best for non-Aspie kids.

    I disagree, there are a lot of other kids for whom competitive physical activities are not the best way to do things. Sure, for competitive kids who enjoy physical activities in general that approach works fine in many situations, but not everyone is competitive in that way, nor does every competitive person enjoy competing when they are guaranteed to lose. Think about the less fit kids, or the clumsy ones, or the ones who don't run very fast. They're not going to enjoy the thing being turned into a race, even if they like contests in general. Also, with orienteering, the puzzle aspect annoys some people and can easily be sabotaged which can make things ugly for everyone.

    My observations of things like this was that a few kids enjoyed the contest or the social part of competing, a lot more did it to avoid punishment, and the usual suspects actively subverted it in order to bully others or skive off.

    I've always been pretty fit and active, and a long distance athlete. So the cross country runs at school suited me just fine. Except that every single time there'd be a group of bullies in an out of the way location waiting to smash kids like me into the mud, or the hawthorn hedge, or just throw stones at us. At one stage even the official athletes refused to participate in that particular school event after one of the race leaders got a fist sized rock to the face (took out a couple of teeth rather than an eye, but it did rather make the point that winners won't necessarily be grinners).

    618:

    (Long time reader delurking) With regard to Deleuze- my academic background is philosophy albeit Anglo American so I was intrigued when he was mentioned here. After reading around for about a year (it's a whole different school to say Russel/Wittgenstein) I think it's fascinating. Certainly written to obscure like a lot of French stuff but if you take a line from Spinoza through Nietzsche (dreadfully misunderstood man) then on to Bergson (the stuff about time) it starts to make sense. It's very creative and stimulating. I'm very wary of nonsense but I'd say it's actually really good. Took me a lot of reading round to get there though. Still not sure what it's FOR either. But not nonsense, Greg, although I really understand how you'd think that

    619:

    On the Aspie front, it is worth noting that some schools, and some school systems, have dealt with that particular form of difference quite well for a long time. Even 40 years ago when I was in school there were teachers who went "needs a quiet place to work, doesn't like large group activities" and just slotted me in to their general classroom plans. Obviously others... not so much.

    I think a big part of it is officially recognising that students are a diverse bunch, and resourcing schools to deal with that. Some kids will find the "pro basketball" stream suits them fine and enjoy it a great deal, others just want to disappear into the crowded middle and not make a fuss. Some need extra help because a lot of kids start primary school never having been read to, and these days a scary number arrive at school malnourished physically as well as intellectually.

    Sadly I have to say that help for the kids who won't die during their school time really should wait while we help the kids who don't have that luxury. It could even be argued that we might want to change course at a political level and aim to produce fewer of those kids rather than more of them.

    620:

    The mistake they made was in not screening for ASD and finding alternative activities for the aspie kids that would motivate them to learn the same skills, rather than de-motivating them

    I think you are dangerously wrong.

    You don't need to screen, categorize, diagnose and label kids in order to support a variety of different ways of being a kid.

    A school can simply allow different kids to be different, and to learn their own way.

    To be more realistic - can allow them to pick the way of learning that works for them out of the small finite set the school is able to support: a set which should include some of the more common ways of being non-neurotypical.

    Don't try to label each kid. If you do, it will not end well.

    621:

    Yeah, in Aus.

    Eastern suburbs of Sydney. Bondi Public, Woollarah Demonstration school, Dover Heights Boys High School.

    622:

    For some reason the current mess with Catalonia makes me picture the Spanish Prime Minister as Chancellor Palpatine just as he says "it's treason then," and lunges forward while shrieking like a lunatic.

    623:

    Had not seen that: thank you, very interesting. £20 for materials & open sourced design, the sponsorship from a materials testing firm. Has a lot of potential - how to fend off patent trolls though? All a bit clunky / Transformers[tm] in style though - would prefer an aesthetic like this: Yoshimasa Tsuchiya Artist, personal site.

    ~

    Anyhow, since a belated Shanah Tovah Umetukah is a good thing, and there's the Autumn Equinox tomorrow, and the news across the board is particularly shitty, here's some humor, #2017 in style[0]:

    Only continent left is Antarctica. I hear penguins support Israel. They have no difficulty recognizing that some things are black and white. Benjamin Netanyahu 19th Sept 2017.

    Warning: the thread has everything, the leader of a major state expressing geopolitical support for an ally and then the responses, (including all the familiar ones, so expect some Nazism but also an interesting article on mafia infiltration of the government via Forex markets, and even some random conspiracy Antarctica stuff for good measure & some Apocalypse references). All transmitted through the medium of penguin memes.

    It's peak 2017.

    There's also a major comedy playing out @time of posting wherein a candy-topped pizza[0.1] is posted by a furry leading to a massive culture smush between various groups (hip-hop, 'chavs', random friends on the time-line) including the immortal line "So, you mean if I wanted to be a ferret, I could be a ferret?" and within several jumps leads to several new furries, a vegan furry intersection wherein a call out for all furries to eat more healthily runs smack into the candy pizza and hip-hop fans learning just what a 'furry' is.

    Can't post it, have to give Buzzfeed and co. their shot at monetizing it. But it's very funny.

    Still not sure what it's FOR either

    Immunity to Shiny Bright Hells?[1] Or is that Bright Shiny Hells?[2]. Imagine mainlining 2017 without some padding.

    Mostly it's a feeble attempt to cheer Host / people up & distract them.

    [0] There is no way any editor would allow an author to get away with this.

    [0.1] This One

    [1] How to order adjectives in English

    [2] Does this mean that mass extinction will soon follow at the turn of the century? Rothman says it would take some time—about 10,000 years—for such ecological disasters to play out. However, he says that by 2100 the world may have tipped into "unknown territory."

    By 2100, oceans may hold enough carbon to launch sixth mass extermination of species, mathematics predicts Phys.org 20th Sept 2017

    Thresholds of catastrophe in the Earth system Science Advances 20 Sep 2017 [grep or grep not, a warning was given[[3]]

    [3] Déjà vu.

    624:

    > the sponsorship from a materials testing firm

    and of course, the british being as they are (in the good, polite whimsy way, rather than the set the economy on fire brexit way) a local shed company has, of course, donated a new shed.

    We do like our sheds, we older british males. Something to do with the smell of creosote and mouse pee, I reckon.

    625:

    Disclosure: they weren't screening for it when I was at school

    FWIW, I think any diagnosis back then may need to be taken with a few grains of salt, obviously the definition of autism has been refined and expanded over the decades (hmm, that sounds contradictory, but I think it makes sense). I was diagnosed as autistic when I was three*—43 years ago, but I have some doubts. A lot of my supposed symptoms can be explained by frequent migraines which made it impossible to concentrate and caused sensitivity to light and sound. The migraines (which I still get, less frequently, and treatable now), are likely due to the Raynaud's I was also diagnosed with around the same time. I may be somewhat on the spectrum; I certainly fit some of the signs, though others not at all, but that's how it works. What you've said about yourself, now and previously, certainly sounds familiar.

    *one other thing; another doctor back then diagnosed me as mentally retarded and claimed I would never learn to read and write, based solely on the fact that I didn't crawl and started walking right away. Apparently that was the received wisdom then.

    Hitting submit now, before I edit my way into deleting the whole thing.

    626:

    This is starting to make me wonder if I have "mild" Aspergers, because your & mine & Pigeon's responses to school spurts & the "competitive / games" ethos is practically identical. How do I go about findng out - or at age 71 do I simply not give a flying fuck & carry on?

    627:

    The Spanish PM has been duly appointed by the head of state, has a parlamentary majority ( two of the major Spanish parties, voted in free and fair elections), won a confidence vote and is executing and enforcing a decision by the Constitutiona Court which deemed the referendum unconstitutional, under a constitution written by all the Spanish parties, Catalan ones included.

    Not a Lord Palpatine...rule of the law.

    628:

    Even 40 years ago when I was in school there were teachers who went "needs a quiet place to work, doesn't like large group activities" and just slotted me in to their general classroom plans.

    Unfortunately that wasn't typical in US schools then, at least not my experience. A teacher not knowing how to cope is likely how I ended up in Special Ed. schools for a few years. Not that it was a bad thing, though I probably missed out on some things, and it may have made some things more difficult. For the most part Mainstreaming sucked.

    629:

    Bionics? And you were saying ... even allowing for journo-hype, this eems to be something probably siginificant.

    630:

    All too frequently, including Charlie & me on one occasion ( Though neither of us was at our best health-wise at the time )(!)

    631:

    I should have mentioned before that the diagnosis that stuck with me was "Hyperactive", which goes with the trouble concentrating I mentioned. Ritalin didn't work.

    632:

    "That's almost textbook tyranny of the majority."

    A different thing, in fact the opposite thing. Provisions for supermajorities arose from some nasty historical experience here in Europe. Fascism in Italy was able to change the constitution of the then Kingdom of Italy (no judicial review, no constitutional court, constitution amendable by ordinary law), abolishing civil liberties, opposition parties, unions and eventually enacting race laws Nazi-style.

    " Why should the rest of Spain get to vote on Catalan independence? That's what you're insisting on when you talk about working within Spanish law."

    because Catalonia is still part of Spain, and it has been such for centuries, because working outside the law of the land is deemed "crime" under any jurisdiction. And officials, from the King of Spain going down the line, have a duty to defend and protect the laws and the constitution. Not a moral duty, not doing it means criminal prosecution

    And I wonder how any State of the Commonwealth of Australia can turn into an independent nation under your constitution. You know, there is no provision for that, just to estabilish a new State of the Commonwealth...

    633:

    Anyhow, since a belated Shanah Tovah Umetukah is a good thing

    Thanks for that, shame it won't be a reset of 2017. Took my mother to services last night, unfortunately had actual police guards for the first time in several years. More recently they'e hired private security for the High Holidays. Probably not necessary, but best not to chance it, I guess. I doubt anything would happen while there are people around. The local Reform synagogue* got hit with illiterate swastika graffiti a few days before Charlottesville, not the first time they've been graffitied.

    *"Our" shul is Conserviform, Conservative with Reform not sure which is the majority now. They just hired a new Reform Rabbi.

    634:

    The EU policy of Austerity strikes again! (Probably with a little help from Russia... sigh.)

    635:

    Re: Aspergers

    Speaking as a neuro-typical who's managed teams put together by someone else (usu. sr mngt) it makes it a lot easier on everyone on the team when everyone knows who's got what talents and/or limitations.

    Knowing that your new junior/trainee is red-green color blind, you can get together to figure out how to ensure that all those PPT slides that he's required to churn out every day don't end up looking like a dog's breakfast.

    Ditto for the self-labeled Aspie on my team who was much more comfortable and productive left to his own, and - most importantly - was never left to hold the bag labeled 'primary client contact'. Ditto weekly team meetings or project launches: despite not liking to joining in at team meeting discussions and general chitchat, he felt okay at reporting on his progress as well as pointing out possible issues. From this I got the impression that if you can direct his attention to a problem/thing and away from people, he'd be okay and not get upset (freeze and clam up). No idea how generalizable this is. Another stumbling block is team lunches which old school management theory says rising stars must attend in order to suck up to their managers and/or impress their teammates. My take was: It's okay to always or only occasionally go to the team lunch. Anyone unable to go to the restaurant (we always went to the same 3 or 4) got their team lunch as a take-out and could chat with other team members later for any particularly interesting morsels.

    636:

    And was Catalonia represented by people the Catalan people wished to be represented by, or were they represented by some kind of quisling?

    637:

    That's actually a good point. I'd simply add that the old Celtic system of fosterage among the chiefly classes is also a reasonable antecedent.

    However...

    I'm quite aware of good ol' Celtic reconstructionism (which has been going on now for 400-odd years), so I really hesitate to link fosterage among Celtic chiefs (as portrayed in something like the Mabinogion) with Medieval apprenticeships and squiring with Victorian school patterns. There might be a link, there might not, but there were certainly books surviving through these times for scholars to publicize traditions and try to link modern (re)inventions to a storied past that's vague enough to allow for all sorts of retcons.

    638:

    Re: 'How long to an AI that we don't know about?'

    Recently saw this - equal parts funny and scary. Especially like 'Adam & Eve & Stan'.

    https://blog.statsbot.co/creepy-artificial-intelligence-ebc3f76179a8

    639:

    My school experience was very mixed, but there's more than one issue, here, for me: for one, I went to one elementary school from kindergarten to 4th grade. Stone (yes, in the US) school, build probably a century or so ago. I have very vague memories of hearing about the first black kid in school in my first two years. By the end of 4th grade, I was the 26th white kid left in the school

    Aside: can you san blockbusting? Can you say "destroy a community and neighborhood so real estate agents can make money"? Get a feel for why I HATE most of them?

    My parents, esp my mom, read to me. A lot. Got me a library card at something like 4. So, when I got into school, I was already doing well. Got math in the first couple of years. Then, 3rd and 4th grade, esp, the teachers were desperately trying to bring the kids who had come from worse schools up, and were redoing stuff I'd learned a year or two before, leaving me bored. Transferred to a school in another neighborhood (at the recommendation of my teacher, who was black, to my momI. Fifth and sixth were sorta ok... but this was before any of these special classes, AFAIK. Again, I was ahead of a lot of the class. [1] By first year or so in jr. high, I was labelled "underachiever", and got to talk to a counsellor occasionally.

    Went to the best high school in Philly. 80% went on to college. Cruised through on a low C, because my study/homework habits, such as they were, had been formed, and no one made an effort to get me out of that.

    But I did learn a lot. Some of it even in class. Always was in good shape (designer genes), but never liked sports; I mean, I could be reading!

    Btw, I actively dislike this labelling anyone who doesn't fit the standard model person (don't you want to be Popular? Fit in?) as a diagnosis. Also, long after I was out of school, was the fad of "mainstreaming", wouldn't want tu hurt someone's ego by putting the slow learners or the fast learners in special classes, no, let's put them all together, thereby screwing both ends.[2]

    Btw, when I did go back to college, 9 yrs after I dropped out, I was serious, and my grades reflected that.

  • Fifth grade, I'm in social studies, and the teacher's reading, or getting kids to read out loud from the textbook. I'd read well into the next chapter, so I had a book inside my textbook. UNfortunately, you know how it is, when you really get into what you're reading... I looked up, and realized that the teacher and the class had been staring at me for a couple of minutes. She took my book away. Fortunately, I had another book, but didn't get that involved in it. Picked up my book after class, and she told me "don't do that again". Send me to a special class? Why, just because the book she'd taken from me was a prose translation of the Odyssey?

  • My late ex wrote a paper blasting mainstreaming, and presented it to the Society of Women Engineers nat. conference in the mid-nineties. Contact me if you'd like to see it, and I'll see if I have a copy.

  • 640:

    It's also a language which is peculiarly inaccessible to non-speakers from any European-or-thereaboutsish country because the standard Latinate/Germanic euro-toolkit doesn't work. I would hazard a guess that crossing the barrier the other way is less difficult because you grow up with considerable exposure to at least half of it as well as to Finnish; does that seem reasonable to you?

    Yes, obviously it's easier for us to learn foreign languages, at least English. It's basically everywhere (my pre-school kid wants to learn English and has already learned some without being taught) and if you want to do anything international here, you have to speak some other language. Not dubbing most audiovisual content also helps. It's mostly childrens' programming which is dubbed.

    I would personally like to see other languages than English given more attention, though. It's easier to do business if you speak the local language, and I think doing an English/something else combination would not be that difficult. The basics are there (my 12-year old has now three foreign languages in school - though Swedish is kind of the "other national language", but we don't hear it that much), but still from my perspective English rules supreme. Obviously, I'm discussing this in English on an English blog, so, yeah, I'm rolling with it.

    I try to learn languages on my own time now, though. It's hard and takes more time than I would like to prioritize for it to be really useful, but I like to think I have enough basics for a few languages that if I had to move there I could get working fluency pretty quickly. At least I can read stuff in many languages.

    As for learning Finnish, I don't think it's particularily hard in itself. The problem is, as you mentioned, in the different grammar and not that many loanwords from English. I've seen people learn it in less than a year. One of the problems especially in the Helsinki region is that most people speak passable English and switch to that whenever they hear somebody speak Finnish that is not perfect.

    641:

    Which goes to show how experiences can differ and things change over time. I went to Woollahra School in the early 80's (I'm guessing after you, since it was by then Woollahra Public School, not Woollahra Demonstration School) and the two years I spent there were life changingly positive, and the teachers I had were possibly the best I had during my entire time at school. And that's speaking as an introvert with similar allergies to group activities and enforced conformity.

    642:

    Sorry, had to wait for certain events to unfold to answer this one.

    The paper's authors (or not really, the head of the Oxford Martin lobby group actually) responded in the Guardian (from their initial offering[1])- and oh boy did they run with some patronizing bullshit:

    On Monday, we published a paper in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience that re-evaluated how much carbon dioxide we can still afford, collectively, to emit into the atmosphere and still retain some hope of achieving the ambitious goals of the Paris climate agreement to “pursue efforts” to keep global temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. The carbon budget we found, to yield a two-in-three chance of meeting this goal, was equivalent to starting CO2 emission reductions immediately and continuing in a straight line to zero in less than 40 years: a formidable challenge.

    Formidable, but not inconceivable. The distinction matters, because if it were already completely impossible to achieve the Paris ambition, many might argue there was no point in pursuing those efforts in the first place – or that the only option left is immediately starting to cool the planet with artificial volcanoes.

    When media sceptics misrepresent our climate research we must speak out Guardian 21st Sept 2017

    The rest of the piece lambasts the usual suspects and pretends that they totally didn't see this response coming (at which point they need to wake the fuck up or they're lying) and even ends with some snark: "Critics of mainstream climate policy frequently complain that they feel excluded. The real problem is that they exclude themselves, and their readers, from the discussion as soon as it starts to get interesting."

    The problem?

    The IPCC models[2] are already known to be inaccurate in Ocean warming, and have already shown that the so-called ' Global warming hiatus' to be explained by various factors (the wiki link is actually well sourced there):

    From these temperature measurements, scientists extract OHC. These analyses show that during 2015 and 2016, the heat stored in the upper 2,000 meters of the world ocean reached a new 57-year record high (Figure 1). This heat storage amounts to an increase of 30.4 × 1022 Joules (J) since 1960 [Cheng et al., 2017], equal to a heating rate of 0.33 Watts per square meter (W m−2) averaged over Earth’s entire surface—0.61 W m−2 after 1992. Improved measurements have revised these values upward by 13% compared with the results of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Rhein et al., 2013]. ...

    Studies show that taking the full ocean depth, ice melt, and other factors into account, Earth is estimated to have gained 0.40 ± 0.09 W m−2 since 1960 and 0.72 W m−2 since 1992 [Cheng et al., 2017]—18% higher than for the top 2,000-meter OHC alone.

    As we continue to scrutinize the fidelity of specific climate models, it is critical to validate their energetic imbalances as well as their depiction of GMST. The fact that the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) ensemble mean accurately represents observed global OHC changes [Cheng et al., 2016] is critical for establishing the reliability of climate models for long-term climate change projections.

    Consequently, we recommend that both the EEI and OHC be listed as output variables in the CMIP6 models, in addition to SLR and GMST. This vital sign informs societal decisions about adaptation to and mitigation of climate change [Trenberth et al., 2016].

    Taking the Pulse of the Planet EOS 13th Sept 2017

    Now, this work is from a joint NCAR and International Center for Climate and Environment Sciences, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing group.

    I trust it a lot more than I trust the Oxford Martin people since they're not playing with models, they're adding data and new standards to the models the Ox Martin people are playing with.

    Bottom line: I know the why to claiming 1.5oC is still "possible", I know the why to the politics involved, I know the why to the predictable response from stupid Right wing papers and I know why Oxford Martin is blowing smoke[3]. The problem is outlined in that Math paper I linked to in #623. i.e. there's a very definite cut-off point where you hit the 10k ocean wild ride.

    Professor Myles Allen should look very closely in the mirror of the morning.

    [1] Guest post: Why the 1.5C warming limit is not yet a geophysical impossibility CarbonBrief 18th Sept 2017

    [2] https://www.ipcc.ch

    [3] Because they're fucking terrified.

    643:

    Woodcraft Folk date back to the early 1930s, "Mixed scouts and guides without all the paramilitary bollocks" was the way one of the leaders of the group I belonged to described it.

    644:

    Well, not so much. I think you're missing some differentiation, here. Since we have only two real parties, with Libertarians on one side, very, very minor, and nothing really on the left, the "Republicans" have a very wide spread. 1. There are the "Goldwater" Republicans. (In '64, Goldwater was extreme; by late 80's, and Raygun, in an interview before he died, Goldwater was horrified by how far to the right the GOP had moved.) 2. The idolize-Raygun Republicans. 3. The Bush/Bush/Cheney Republicans. Mueller, I think, fits in here. 4. The Christianist Republicans (btw, from here out, if Raygun was still around, they'd call him a RINO (Republican In Name Only). 5. The "Teabaggers/Freedom Caucus" Republicans. In reality, they're literally neoConfederates (as in the US Civil War)(but they find wage slavery much more cost-effective).

    Note that 4 and 5 hate 1 and 2, and aren't real happy with 3. 1, certainly, are horrified by the bluntness of the sellout by 4 and 5 to the billionaires.

    And then there's two total curve balls: a) there are people, in spite of their views, actually believe in their Oath of Office. I can guarantee one in the NSA does, and he vouches for a number of his co-workers, and b) the old Cold Warriors, like McCain.

    So: I believe that Mueller did, in fact, screw the pooch for Hillary, but that was because he hated her, personally. However, the old Cold Warriors, and the believers in their Oath, really REALLY hate Trump & co's guts.

    Also, Trump has genuinely and truly PISSED OFF almost all Republicans, most lately making deals with the Democrats. So, my analysis is that they would impeach, but they want political cover from the voters. Note that they rallied around first Mueller, when Trump was floating the idea of firing him, then Sessions. NONE of them rallied around Trump.

    When Mueller starts filing the criminal charges, they'll do it.

    645:

    I think you misunderstood me: I'm not talking population size. I will admit I didn't know that Catalonia was heavy in tech. What was in my mind are, for example, a number of the FSSR states, with larger populations, and utter poverty, along with an utterly corrupt rulership.

    646:

    Yes, I'd say that politically it's good to say that 1.5oC is still possible. And perhaps it is.

    IIRC, there were a couple of problems with the IPCC5. One was oceans, and the other was the big unknown of Arctic methane, which still (dammit!) seems to be largely unknown. It's possible we'll get our ducks to row towards 1.5oC, only to have the Arctic blow something much nastier on us. Or not.

    As I understand the problem, it's basically that: --We've got methane locked up in the Arctic (and probably the Antarctic) in both soils and subsurface sediments. It could release something like 120 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere by 2200 (we're dumping a surplus of around 40 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere per year right now).
    --That methane is and will continue to escape as the sediments warm. The challenging question is how deep the methane layers go and how deep the defrosting goes (there's over a kilometer of permafrost in parts of Siberia, and I seriously doubt it's a kilometer of methanogenic zombie bogs. But how much of it is?).
    --Then there's the part where the methanotrophic bacteria start seriously chowing down on the methane and turning it into CO2. Not great, but potentially as catastrophic. They're apparently already in the Arctic, and they can also grow exponentially. How much of the methane will they consume? That's a very good question, and I don't know that anyone knows. --One good example of how complicated it gets are the methane leaks in the Santa Barbara channel. These are natural, another part of the oil complex that they're drilling into. IIRC, none of the methane leaked on the sea floor makes it into the atmosphere--it all gets consumed by bacteria on the way to the surface. Something similar appears to be happening in Arctic waters. --If we dump methane-sourced CO2 into the Arctic Ocean, what does that do to the total oceanic ability to absorb CO2 out of the air? Ummm...

    So anyway, the clathrate gun (or whatever you want to call it) could fire, hang-fire, misfire, or whatever, and I personally don't have a clue how much methane or CO2 from methane ultimately will end up in the air. I wish it were more clean cut, but we may or may not be doomed.

    That aside, complaceny will definitely kill us. Switching American cities to totally run on renewable electricity is at least as big an engineering challenge as it was to switch cities from running on horses a century ago, and unlike a century ago, we no longer have a lot of cheap oil to power the transition. We really do need a lot of good design and especially redesign, especially in the US where we just don't effin' get it. Perhaps something will happen to get rid of all the rich conservatives who are standing in the way (/sarcasm).

    647:

    The local Reform synagogue* got hit with illiterate swastika graffiti a few days before Charlottesville, not the first time they've been graffitied. Sorry to hear that. The Reform synagogue local to me has had an attentive armed guard (shared with a Conservative shul) for high holy days for 3-4 years now.

    On an up note, am enjoying a newish Motzor ("Mishkan HaNefesh") this year; the readings in English with science content are not nearly as grating as in the past, and it's otherwise more contemporary in a way that I think will age well. Anyway, story, and question: One of the English readings was a poem I'd never seen before, and it felt like it was written in the 1960s or 1970s by a moderately conservative individual who had maybe sampled a 50 microgram (low) dose of LSD or similar at some point. Anyhow, deep ignorance turned out to be a positive in this case; it was Miracles, Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass, poem probably written 1855/56?). That is, it appeared (to me at least) to be roughly 80-110 years ahead of its time, to someone who has read very little poetry.

    So question to all here (whether or not you agree with my take on Miracles): what current writing/communication/poetry/art will to the naive consumer appear to be contemporary 40 years from now? (To account in part for anticipated higher rates of change.) I (and many others here) attempt(aspire) to think like a future person. (And a past person, when appropriate.)

    648:

    Do you want the bad news or the bad news?

    +13% +18% actual temps compared to the models in OHC mean that 1.5oC is utter bullshit.

    The other bad news? If you remember that video of the distraught Russian scientist from 2013[1], well, she didn't stop doing science:

    'New data obtained by complex biochemical, geophysical and geological studies conducted in 2011-2016 resulted in the conclusion that in some areas of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf the roof of the subsea permafrost had already reached the depth of hydrates' stability the destruction of which may cause massive releases of bubble methane. According to our findings published earlier in Nature Geoscience, Science and Philosophical Transactions, Royal Society, the size of CH4 bubble flaw from the bottom sediments into the ESAS water can vary from milligrams to tens or hundreds of grams per square meter a day depending on the state of subsea permafrost, which leads to the concentration increase of atmospheric CH4 in the surface layer to values 2-4 times exceeding background concentrations measured in our planet,' says the first author of the paper Professor Natalia Shakhova, the TPU Department of Geology and Minerals Prospecting.

    TPU scientists deny climate model of IPCC Tomsk Polytechnic University, 11th Aug 2017 (note: RU polytechnic =/= UK version)

    Current rates and mechanisms of subsea permafrost degradation in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf Nature Communications 8, 22 June 2017 - full text. Really nice paper with lots of technical details.

    Discussion with lots of other papers here: https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?action=profile;u=1540;area=showposts;start=0 (note: has American bias, even has a creationist & deniers! yay -.-)

    ~

    In other news, since Host expressed interest: Catalonia is hotting up (Arrans twitter had the scoop last night, but hey) - the Port Union Workers are striking in solidarity and refusing to resupply the ships hosting the 5,000 or so police sent to enforce order.

    The dockers of the Port of Barcelona have decided this Thursday in the morning in a meeting not to supply the boats that house the riot police officers of the Spanish police, according to sources of the CUP through Twitter and also confirmed with a tweet the councilor of " ERC at the Barcelona City Council, Jordi Coronas. Two boats docked this Wednesday at the Port of Barcelona and trade union sources released images. (Auto Translated)

    Els estibadors acorden no abastir els vaixells de la policia espanyola atracats al Port de Barcelona elMon, 21st Sept 2017

    So, Union strike means not just a student / anarchist revolt.

    [1] Methane Hydrates - Extended Interview Extracts With Natalia Shakhova

    649:

    So anyway, the clathrate gun (or whatever you want to call it)

    Time to reread my battered old copy of Steven Barnes' "Mother of Storms". For some reason, it's been in my mind... ;)

    650:

    You mean John Barnes.

    651:

    Ooops, quite right :) And I'd even checked the link :)

    652:

    When did the name change? (Looks it up 1979). I was there '81 and '82, nearly everyone still referred to it as "Woollahra Dem" then. It's about 30 years since I've been anywhere near it.

    I probably would test somewhere on the spectrum. But when I was a kid we moved city several times, so I wasn't just a shy and awkward long-haired hippy kid, I was also always the new kid. And also, as it happens, found the idea of competition horrifying (possibly even more so from the perspective of winning than losing). That combination always seemed like enough to guarantee being an outsider, so I haven't really needed further explanation.

    653:

    Can someone, concisely, bring the rest of us up to speed on the latest USSA "ACA" propsals? That one obviously quietly swam past in the night - I assume it's a systematic trashing of what remaining healthcare the US has? Details, pretty please?

    If you mean the latest Republican party plan to repeal "Obamacare" here in the U.S., it's the same as all the previous ones.

    Cut Medicaid to those states that accepted the expansion to help pay for insurance for low income people. Repeal the "individual mandate" that requires "healthy people" to have insurance (making the insurance pool larger to spread the costs around). Bring back the "lower cost" plans that insurance companies used to offer with low premiums with high deductibles (i.e. out of pocket costs before insurance starts to pay) and "life-time caps". Repeal the law that prevents insurance companies from denying insurance to people with preexisting conditions.

    That last one is the real evil. Most people are insured through group plans offered by employers. If you get sick, you can't afford to ever lose your job or move to a new employer, because you will then have a "preexisting conditions" and either are rejected for insurance or the condition is not covered.

    There was an earlier thread about tumbrels and a "French Solution". I nominate any and all executives & stockholders of for profit health insurance companies.

    654:

    Yes, the difference, real & important ( & one that the momentum fuckwits would do well to remember ) is the actual, real & quite profound difference between conservatives ( Please note the small "c" ) & Facists & crypto-fascists. 1 & 2 are in the first group, 4 & 5 in the second. It's like the difference between Ken Clarke at one end & creeps like JRM & Farage at the other on this side of the pond.

    655:

    I encounterd this in London ... "The Boss" used to do audit/accounting/tax (prvious employer) for "The Jewish Chronicle" - who are based on the W edge of the City ... on-&-off police guard, sometimes armed, according to current security status. Big Jewish school complex outside deliberately-unnamed $Northern_Line tube station that I use to get to a good pub ... sometimes their own security, somtimes none, sometimes Plod in some numbers. Not good - I thought, in my childhood, that we'd stamped on these bastards permanently. Cue previous comments from Charlie on cockroaches & JRRT on the regrowth of The Shadow.

    656:

    Thanks fopr that. Coupled with other people's replies & links it confirms what I suspected. Next - will it pass? I suspect not, but what do I know?

    657:

    "I fail to see how that should bind people born since then."

    so, let's rewrite the constitution every year? I was born in 1953, am I bound to a constitution voted in 1948? you kiddin'?

    By that argument, the Southern States were right to secede in 1860 so they could keep slavery.

    658:

    I should have mentioned before that the diagnosis that stuck with me was "Hyperactive", which goes with the trouble concentrating I mentioned. Ritalin didn't work.

    Guess I got lucky. They sent me off to the school shrink whose diagnosis was "boredom" - they kept doing the same stuff over and over and over and I had already read ahead to the end of the book. So they let me go on off and forage through the the school library.

    659:

    A lot of that feels familiar, ever run into neurotypicals who are certain that you're just being difficult?

    It's probably because of their experience of dealing with the vast number of other neurotypicals who ARE "just being difficult".

    660:

    Also (with the new aca trashing bill) the really big cuts are set for 2027, which helps with the 10 year deficit projections of the giant tax cut bill for the rich they hope to do next.

    Impossible to say if it will pass nobody knew until the last 30 seconds last time around. It might even pass the Senate and then fail to pass the House. Transferring huge amounts of funding from large population states to small population states plays very well in the Senate, because its representation is very heavily skewed that way, but the previous bill barely passed the House and House representation is proportional to population (or nearly so, anyway) so a lot of R House members come from states that loose big from this bill, and the people in their districts are among the most likely to be on medicaid. On the other hand congressional Republicans these days are cool-aid-drinkers so who knows.

    661:

    I disagree, there are a lot of other kids for whom competitive physical activities are not the best way to do things.

    I think in this case "best" is defined as "pushing the greatest number of children through the system while requiring the least amount of effort by the teachers".

    662:

    3. The Bush/Bush/Cheney Republicans. Mueller, I think, fits in here.

    You're presuming that I don't consider #3 to already have subverted the Republic. 1 & 2 certainly no longer exist in the modern GOP, at least for 10+ years.

    If you need to see way things will go, wonder at the funding battles to come over this:

    Mr. Trump has declared Puerto Rico a disaster area, and said he was consulting with Governor Rosselló and federal officials about the recovery effort. “We are going to start it with great gusto,” he said. “But it’s in very, very, very perilous shape. Very sad what happened to Puerto Rico.”

    Hurricane Maria Live Updates: In Puerto Rico, the Storm ‘Destroyed Us’ NYT 21st Sept 2017

    3.5 million American citizens without power, major ongoing flooding and so forth.

    Price tag? More than Harvey, and they're already broke.

    663:

    I believe that Mueller did, in fact, screw the pooch for Hillary, but that was because he hated her, personally. However, the old Cold Warriors, and the believers in their Oath, really REALLY hate Trump & co's guts.

    Mueller? I think you mean Comey?

    I don't think Comey hated Clinton personally. His overweening self-righteousness led him down the garden path.

    664:

    We must have overlapped there, then: I was there in 80 and 81 if I count my years right. It may be more firmly in my mind as "public" because my younger siblings went there through into the early 90's. No institution is perfect, but that school at that time seemed to be doing a lot that was right for serving kids with a particular set of non-standard needs.

    As for the rest of school, a lot of it was marking time until I could go to university and get on with the real learning; but I was also fortunate that by the happy accident of living near the high school I went to, I was able to go home for lunch and opt out of the teenage schoolyard bullshit.

    665:

    A lot of that feels familiar, ever run into neurotypicals who are certain that you're just being difficult?

    Yes. The ones I love are the "I have excellent social skills" types who proceed to demonstrate the opposite. Generally they take that failure as evidence that I have poor social skills. My interpretaton is that "social skills" is a competitive game rather than a descriptive term. I'm reminded of Mitchell and Webb's "people person" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W34wyKZlWQ&t=3s

    The worst are actually the "do unto others as you would be done unto", because a lot of them cannot even start to think about what other people might want. So "I made you chocolate cake, because I like chocolate cake". That applies even to the ones older than five, BTW, I worked for a retail manager once who gave everyone expensive pens as a "Christmas Bonus", because that manager liked expensive pens.

    In similar vein, my school punished academic excellence by dragging people one at a time onto a stage in front of the whole school and pointing out the stupid thing they had done. My "excellence" disappeared after the first year at high school.

    666:

    If you mean the latest Republican party plan to repeal "Obamacare" here in the U.S., it's the same as all the previous ones. Yeah. Well, worse actually. Backgrounder US blog post from today at random (with a few popular links): The Cynicism Behind Graham-Cassidy Is Breathtaking (KD does not use the term "breathtaking" lightly.)

    In general, my take is that it is a big f-you to American humans, disguised as a f-you to American Democrats/Obama/Liberals, marketted with some serious apparently-deliberate untruths, and the bit today about the Alaska bribery (or here) is just ... precious. That doesn't even get into the f-yous (within it) to American women (and men) in the provisions about abortion, including one which appears to directly conflict with laws in several US states.

    Reading the Graham-Cassidy bill itself today, I cynical-snorted at this apparent typo (pg 15 of 140): (II) LIMITATION.—The Sec retary shall not waive any require- ment under a Federal statute enacted
    before January 1, 2009.
    (Depending on the definition of enactment; if it means US presidential signature or override, then that should be January 20, Obama's first inaugeration.) (Amusing: your browser tab may show the local path to the pdf file on somebody's Windows machine.)

    667:

    So: I believe that Mueller did, in fact, screw the pooch for Hillary, but that was because he hated her, personally. Another consideration is that Mueller has been hiring specialists, a lot of them, and some of them are leaving stable jobs to join him. Plus there's the New York State effort by Eric Scheiderman, and a few legislative investigations. That is, it's fairly distributed ("resilient") now. I'll grant the possibility (strong) that things are not as they seem, but it is at least possible that something approximating the truth (or a politically game-changing subset of it) will become generally known.

    668:

    Sorry, had to wait for certain events to unfold to answer this one. I was (perhaps also) waiting for their response and responses by others, so many thanks for the analysis, and for #648

    Another related one from today: We must accelerate transitions for sustainability and climate change, experts say, paywalled paper Sociotechnical transitions for deep decarbonization (22 Sep 2017, easily available illegally) We present a “sociotechnical” framework to address the multidimensionality of the deep decarbonization challenge and show how coevolutionary interactions between technologies and societal groups can accelerate low-carbon transitions. ... Policy-oriented research on deep decarbonization requires complementing model-based analysis with sociotechnical research. Whereas the former analyzes technically feasible least-cost pathways, the latter addresses innovation processes, business strategies, social acceptance, cultural discourses, and political struggles, which are difficult to model but crucial in real-world transitions.

    669:

    That was also my reaction to most school sports — but ask yourself, why did they run it that way?

    My school had only one PE teacher, but lots of teachers who helped out (by refereeing / coaching) when it came to "Games".

    It was a rather sporty school, and I was the skinny, small for my age, youngest in my year group, low-blood-pressure kid. Doing rugby in a Perthshire winter was misery incarnate for me; I was crap at the game, wasn't being coached at it, and hated it. Cue a school career where I was the last picked for any team game.

    On the other hand, there were highlights. That PE teacher was interested in teaching us to understand how our bodies worked. He did an excellent job of "teach someone to fish" when it came to physical training; to understand how to do strength training, stamina work, flexibility and core strength (rare for the 1980s). We had low injury rates, and a lot of very fit kids.

    He was an athletics coach (his specialty was hammer-throwing - he produced several Scttish Schools champions) and so when summer arrived I really enjoyed the techniques he taught (even though I was sh!t at them). I could work away happily at chucking a javelin or putting a shot - content that I was improving on my own technique, less worried by how badly I did compared to the others.

    So; our PE teacher had his flaws, but he was a bloody good teacher.

    I still left school, with a self-image as "skinny/weak/uncoordinated/crap at sport" because I was comparing myself with an unusual peer group. I joined the TA (Army Reserves) as an undergraduate, primarily because the UOTC had the only Pipe Band in the University, and was surprised to discover that while I was skinny, I had the aerobic capacity of a racehorse. I joked that the first team sport that I was ever good at, was "soldiering" - that's a powerful thing for youthful self-image.

    I also discovered that I was good at target shooting (eventually competing at a decent level in a couple of the Olympic disciplines of the sport), and a couple of years ago took up Judo (and now the wife and I are getting rag-dolled around by teenagers who are bigger, faster, stronger, and a third of our ages). Finding the sport that you enjoy is another powerful motivator; honourable mention to my old Maths teacher, who tried to teach us fencing.

    Yes, I've got a competitive streak; but I'm competing against myself these days. Not sure whether it counts as "rage against the dying of the light", but I'm having fun.

    670:

    Basically Oxford Martin probably know the fossil fuel people are utterly amoral and/or racist and wouldn't blink at a bit of the old nuclear violence if their precious 1.5oC band-aid was shown to be a unicorn.

    But hey: reality here.

    ~

    Break in case of Existential Depression: A thread wherein a lot (and I do mean a lot) of LGBT & allies young Americans discover British history and the (well known to this audience) history of James I/VI, his lover Buckingham and the creation of the King James Bible[1]

    this is my favorite thing that has ever happened in the entire world holy fucking shit carly /loveglows, Twitter, 31st Aug 2017 2017, 53k retweets, 774 comments.

    I mean, I guess it's shocking if you're entire history has been white/hetero washed, but there we go.

    671:

    Your* [1]* etc naughty

    Hello MiM. Thirsty? Here's some class war then:

    Just when you had mastered the wine menu, comes a new adventure: the water menu. Restaurants across the world are offering artisanal water that is sourced from places afar and is served by specialist ‘water sommeliers’. They will offer you waters that start at $20 (Rs1,300) a bottle. And if that is tough to swallow, perhaps we shouldn’t even bring up that Rs66 lakh bottle of aqua?

    Just like wine, different waters have different taste, influenced by factors such as minerality, vintage and hardness. Which explains why restaurants are now offering water menus. “Water has so many different flavours,” Riese explains. “It can start with a smooth and almost fruity taste like Fiji Water, goes over to an almost creamy mouthfeel like Aqua Carpatica from Romania, and possibly even high salty notes as with the Vichy Catalan from Spain”.

    The next frontier for luxury: water. Because for those with high taste, nothing less than a 15,000-year-old icemelt will do Conde Naste Traveller, Aug 23rd 2017. (Owner of Reddit).

    Yep, they're marketing Svalbardi ($150/bottle) and up to rich Indians with faux trappings of wealth and sophistication which no doubt the ex-colonials can snigger at.

    The irony, well. G'luck with that karma and your next जीव.

    672:

    Re: 'We present a “sociotechnical” framework to address the multidimensionality of the deep decarbonization challenge ...'

    Is one of the items in the framework how to attribute things like death rate, life expectancy, new diseases, etc. to changes in global temperature and/or increases in humidity supported by increased temps? If this scientific exercise is only going to talk about $$$ and only in high fallutin' language*, we're doomed.

    • 'This model vs. that model vs. some other model'. Who the hell cares. Break down your 'models' into comprehensible concepts and use language that non-techs can understand. Wonder sometimes whether the intent among some of the learned is to help humanity or to sound smarter-than-everyone else and it's everyone else's problem if they don't understand what they're saying.

    Probably like most folk here, I've worked and socialized with some very intelligent folks. The ones that make a difference are able to communicate to folk outside their area of expertise without making their audience feel like dimwits.

    673:

    I think the point was that the usual techniques don't work, and there are many factors working together to make that happen. So even someone as amazing as Neil deGrasse Tyson finds that changing behaviour on climate change is much harder than, say, persuading people not to stare at the sun during a solar eclipse.

    how to attribute things like death rate ... are able to communicate to folk outside their area of expertise without making their audience feel like dimwits.

    One of the problems is that as soon as you talk about death rates a lot of people run away. Climate change is like that.

    We also have a long-running campaign specifically against expertise. That makes it very hard for experts to be heard.

    But we're also seeing the "don't talk about death" problem with same-sex marriage and the transsexual panic. One side is saying "please stop, your actions kill people" and the other is saying "I'm just expressing an opinion". The same happens with climate change, where the argument "we need to burn more coal" is often treated as no more problematic than "I like cheese" and taken at least as seriously.

    So it's usually less "make them feel like dimwits" and more "while in the presence of aggressive idiots".

    674:

    Agreed about communications. The paper itself is just a brief 4 page Pay-Attention-to-Us manifesto, but the refs unfolded into a community of research that I (personally) didn't know about, so was interesting. I do not know whether this work is any good/useful; just started looking at it in the last couple of hours. Recent samples with enough refs to keep busy for a while (archives search done; didn't see any of these by name): Ten challenges for computer models in transitions research: Commentary on Holtz et al. (31 Mar 2017) which is a commentary on Prospects of modelling societal transitions: Position paper of an emerging community (2015, open access pdf available)

    or more specifically about climate change: Bridging analytical approaches for low-carbon transitions (2016 Nature Climate Change, scholar.google.com has a possibly dogdy researchgate link)

    675:

    Also, persistent ... mis-speaking... by advocates doesn't help. The Guardian has found someone to write about the climate emergency whose ahistorical perspective seems unable to link the press release she read to her own life.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/21/climate-optimism-disaster-extreme-weather-catastrophe

    The end quote really struck me: "Could the language of emergency work? It has never been tried with as much meteorological evidence as we have now". Yes, that's true and it will remain true forever (there will always be new evidence), but aside from that climate emergency language has been in use for at least a decade ("Climate Code Red", for example) and even The Guardian once noticed. Basic research fail, wee journalist person.

    It reminds me of the Daily Sift guy "as a Christian preacher this new suggestion that I give away my possessions and serve the poor is clearly ridiculous"... it's not just wrong, it shows huge ignorance of stuff that's basic to someone doing that job.

    676:

    --We've got methane locked up in the Arctic (and probably the Antarctic) in both soils and subsurface sediments.

    Someone more expert may correct me. But I think not Antarctic, much, at least not this century.

    Arctic: "shallow ocean with thin layer of ice on top, with currents flowing in and out, surrounded by tundra on land".

    Antarctic: "continent covered in ice up to 2km deep, with deep ocean surrounding".

    Warming one of these causes permafrost melting within decades. That means now, since the warming started decades ago.

    Warming the other will cause sea-levels to rise by tens of meters over a timeframe of a centuries, with not much effect this century ( two metres of sea-level rise is a realistic worst case by 2100 - it's the rate of rise after 2100 that's the big problem ).

    677:

    Oh, I wasn't clear at all.

    Woollarah Dem was a two year break from the horror. The two teachers I had then were two of the three good ones I had in my whole school career. I was left alone. In the morning I would attend the team meeting where the teachers and students got together to discuss current events, how things are going, directions for learning this week, that sort of thing.

    After that I'd go to the library, where I would sit quietly and read (sometimes I'd take books out and read them in the class room instead, they had a quiet spot made out of cardboard where you could tunnel away). I read one or two books a day for the two years. No-one bothered me for two years. I did get caned, but only once and I REALLY deserved it. I was being stupid and dangerous and could have killed someone with my stupidity. (throwing water balloons at passing cars). It was a marked change from being caned daily (or more) for infractions like 'looking in the wrong direction', 'having someone throw something at me' or 'not having your books covered with contact'.

    The one friend I keep contact with spent his two years in the craft room. He's remained quite crafty/hands-on since then, being a surgeon and Ob/Gyn now. Everyone could go down their own path with great teachers available all the time for direction and help as required.

    No, lots of respect for Woollarah Dem. Proof that it can be done right.

    678:

    Oh, and an example of the support:

    One day I decided that I'd invented a perpetual motion machine. I took it to the teachers and they sourced all the stuff to build it. About 5 of us got together and built it. We got water all over the stairs and made a huge mess. We had a great time and of course it didn't work. We even figured out why it didn't work and where I'd gone wrong. So many valuable lessons that day...

    679:

    Antarctic methane might be a problem, but one of the issues is finding it under the ice. Waiting for the ice to melt before we start worrying might not be a good idea, depending on how much there is. And while I'm inclined to agree with Icehawk that the Antarctic is unlikely to melt suddenly, even a relatively small ice sheet collapse could be annoying - 10% of a 20m rise happening in a decade would be "oops our models" but also "sorry about New York".

    https://phys.org/news/2017-07-methane-eating-microbes-gases-antarctic-ice.html suggests that there is definitely methane because they've found things that eat it, but the also think the eating might reduce the problem.

    There's lots of coverage of a 2012 paper suggesting big methane deposits, but I can't find follow-up research confirming or quantifying it. I suspect WIP. And the many-named search engine would say "stand by for really bad news".

    It's the other Antarctic research on methane that sprang to mind: recent-ish leakage from natural gas extraction is worse than we thought, but Antarctica doesn't really tell us which gas fields are leaking, just that there's more leakage than advertised. https://theconversation.com/antarctic-ice-reveals-that-fossil-fuel-extraction-leaks-more-methane-than-thought-82902

    680:

    At the risk of going back on topic, there's also some really good use being made of face recognition type technology to track animals. Most obviously the fin recognition work with cetaceans, and the dot patterns on whale sharks, but also migratory birds. The idea of taking photos/videos of a whole flock of birds then getting a map back identifying individuals is cool. Albeit right now that's very much a "one day, maybe". But just being able to track individual animals is giving us huge data about what they do and where they go, without having to manually chase down each one and stick a tracker to it. I can see the human-tracking systems being opened to researchers to track animals too. It's just sensors, after all :)

    Whale faces: https://blog.deepsense.ai/deep-learning-right-whale-recognition-kaggle/

    The "automatic whale detector" makes me think of Monty Python's cat detector van: http://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/stories/2015/02/gray_whale_survey_thermal_imaging.html

    And whale sharks using astronomical algorithms on the dot patterns: https://www.wired.com/2011/05/whale-shark-tracking/

    Sadly I can't find anything about tracking birds, other than the one sentence in an hour-long video about some of the software infrastructure behind it. "someone is using this for..." is not very useful.

    681:

    Woollarah Dem was a two year break from the horror.

    Funny story (and bear in Mind I am an Old one typing on this account now).

    First ever hug - I think I was aged 15 of your years.

    First ever affection shown me and a learning what you fellas call family ended up with the father being killed (accidental, allegedly).

    First ever love - driven insane and then paraded for that love as a fatal flaw.

    True Story.

    I'll leave it up to you to think if it's part of your history or not. (Spoilers: I'm much, much older than you).

    It's all perspective.

    682:

    I take your point in the general case, but as regards that specific instance, when I said "military exercise" I meant it literally. The most undesirable thing that school inflicted on us was to compel everyone in the year before the O-level year to spend every Friday afternoon dressing up as toy soldiers and stamping and twiddling about on the playground like a bunch of marionettes. It was called "CCF" short for "Combined Cadet Force" and was in some remote sense a part of the actual army, to a sufficient extent to have real guns. The orienteering was one of the things they did to clear us out of the playground when they wanted it free so that those who stayed in it beyond the compulsory year could show off their dance steps to the real army.

    Those who stayed in it beyond the compulsory year were one of the worst things about it, because they got to play at being NCOs, and moreover would get support (in the form of detentions, extra work etc) from adult authority if you told them to fuck off, no matter how unreasonable they were being. And it tended to attract a certain type, the type whose neuronal connectivity map can easily be sketched on the back of an envelope and still leave plenty of room for doodles in the margins. Being bottom of the pile during all academic hours, when given free rein to indulge their sole talent (being an arsehole) they indulged it to the full, and those doing the compulsory year were the ones who got to feel it.

    Slight amusement at the end of the year parade, when a real army officer came and looked at us and asked an apparently random handful of us what we thought of it. Everyone he happened to pick was either neuroatypical or a hard left pacifist, or both, so his sample was entirely composed of people who really hated it.

    One good point: it did mean I got to walk the length of the Malvern hills, from one end to the other, which I'd always wanted to do but never been able to because the south end is in a transport desert. And uniquely, on this one occasion, they switched off the bullshit. No competitive aspect, no beat-the-clock or beat-the-others; we didn't even have to wear uniform (probably a particularly good thing since it puked a blizzard on us as soon as we got to the first summit, and if we'd had nothing but the jumper/shirt/trousers we'd been issued there would have been a lot of dangerously cold and soggy people); literally all they did was drop us off at one end and pick us up at the other, and it really was just a pleasant walk in the countryside with the transport problem removed.

    683:

    I get the impression you can emulate it a lot more successfully than I can!

    I was never screened either; it was presented to me at the time as "we're taking you to a special doctor to see why you're so badly behaved". It wasn't really true; I absolutely was not any kind of angel, but at the same time there were other kids who got into trouble a lot more than I did, and it was they who got held up to the rest of the class as bad examples. Unfortunately one of the things they always managed to avoid getting into trouble for was sneaking up on me and punching me in the stomach, which used to put me out of action gasping and crying for a good five minutes, whereas I often did get into trouble for my futile and ineffective attempts to return the favour. My mum tells me I used to try and bite them; I don't remember that, but I can imagine I might have tried it since trying to just hit them back didn't make any difference.

    Again re competitiveness in schools, personal aversion aside, I do consider it unwise to use it as a synergist to ease the task of teaching. Flap flap handwave thought to the effect that living in such an exceedingly >Dunbar society as we have now probably makes it next to impossible to achieve a healthy balance between the competitive and cooperative sides of human nature. Groups cooperating internally to compete with other groups is probably fine when each group can have its own space, but gets toxic when hundreds of them are all piled on top of each other. It skews very much towards "everyone can be an enemy, but only a few people can be a friend". I think it would be healthier for society in general if schools were much more inclined to de-emphasise competition and favour cooperation than [I perceive] they are at present. (It would still have been crap for me personally, because I do best to shut myself in a cupboard and neither compete nor cooperate, but that's not the point.)

    And I'm still going to have a downer on team games, because that's just the sort of internal cooperation for external competition thing that I think is toxic.

    684:

    Only you can answer that... But for myself, I will say that if I could push a button and switch it off, I would not do it. I'm used to being the way I am, and at no time have I ever thought "I wish I wasn't". (I have only thought that about other and much less fundamental things.)

    It has certainly been at the root of some particularly shit things in my life (like the period when I was effectively self-medicating with amphetamine, without realising that that's what I was doing, and got thoroughly fucked up). But at the same time I think it's also at the root of a lot of, if not all, the things I particularly enjoy. And I strongly suspect being neurotypical would simply expose me to a different and wholly novel class of shit things to whose very existence I am currently oblivious...

    685:

    "Yes, I'd say that politically it's good to say that 1.5oC is still possible. And perhaps it is."

    Maybe 'politically' it is, but in reality we passed that point in March 2016.

    "--We've got methane locked up in the Arctic (and probably the Antarctic) in both soils and subsurface sediments. It could release something like 120 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere by 2200 (we're dumping a surplus of around 40 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere per year right now)."

    Yeah, 120 billion tonnes of Carbon as methane, but there's more than 10 times as much as permafrost that will be released as CO2 as the permafrost melts. That's the best case, assuming that as it rots it comes out as CO2, there's some thought it will come out as methane.

    Beyond that there's about half a degree of 'hidden' warming in aerosols that are a byproduct of fossil fuel burning. Stop that burning and the aerosols fall out of the atmosphere within a month. So we're over 1.5 now. Even if we stop burning 100% as I finish this email, there's another 0.5 waiting in the wings to take us over 2 degrees, and the permafrost won't stay frozen at 2 degrees. It will all melt.

    This isn't tricky maths. We're locked into a rough ride.

    686:

    Sound part-familiar & part exact-opposite My senior (Grammar) school PE teacher was an utter bastard - ex-Army serjeant & arrogant with it, revelling in the "values" of the 1940's (the wrong way) I was assumed, by everybody to be fuck-all usless at spurts (correct) & weak & cowardly & thin & skinny. I was not & am not a coward, but when you have NO MEANS AT ALL to resist bullying, what can one do? But, what "they" including all-bar-two of the teachers missed was that I was one of the few who went home for lunch - which meant cycling 5 miles a day. This does wonders for your basic fitness & stamina, as the rest found out when there was a school trip to the Lake District ... at the end of that week, the only one left standing, who had gone out every single day was ... guess who? Even the ultra-fit, suppoisedly hard footie & gym pupil who came along didn't make it all the way through. Apparently, word got around, because I wasn't ever bothered after that ....

    687:

    Did it again & pressed "send" too soon! I forgot to add, that since then, I learbt to ride (horse) do Archery (Unoversity blue) & fence ... Note that these are all individual activities, where you are competing against yourself, actually.

    688:

    And by rough ride, I mean that if we stop burning now, we go directly to 2 degrees, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Then the northern circumpolar permafrost all melts and releases >1600 Pg of carbon, hopefully as CO2 but quite possibly as methane. If it comes out as CO2 then we go directly to about 1200 ppm CO2. If it comes out as methane we go to an equivalent of about 40 000 ppm CO2. It will probably be somewhere in-between. Far far more than the highest that anyone seems to have modelled. At 40 000 ppm equivalent everything dies. That's even before you consider Antarctica. Permafrost melts much much faster than was thought even a few years ago. Groundwater carries heat down, the ice melts and shrinks, opening cracks that carry groundwater even deeper. This can happen really fast once it gets going.

    If we don't stop burning right now it's worse. There will be more CO2 in the atmosphere when civilisation collapses and the hidden 0.5C comes out. Permafrost will melt faster, and be more likely to release methane. What methane it does release will be in a more concentrated pulse and not have the opportunity to degrade to CO2. So the equivalent will be closer to the 40 000 end than the 1200 end.

    689:

    We could even have been in the same class (if you weren't in the OC stream). I was in a "normal" grade 6 class in 81, then as per gasdive I was "too young" to move on to HS, so I did grade 6 again in 82 (in the OC stream).

    I'd moved up from Melbourne in 81, hence not slotting into OC to start with. That year in 82 was the strangest and in some ways most welcome school experience. Still in touch with several kids from that class, 35 years later, and that is mostly thanks to facebook (something I'm quite thankful for).

    Gasdive: kids throwing water balloons into the traffic on Edgecliff Rd was still a thing when I was there. Never did it myself. Closest thing was getting sent to the principal's office for a commendation for an art work, which was the closest thing to an art award the art teacher could come up with and she didn't do it again, realising it actually presented as punishment. But I also spent a lot of time in that same library... even got to be a library monitor. It's nothing like the lofty Sam Vimes heights of blackboard monitor, but it was a thing and I think my mum possibly still has my badge.

    I went on to SBHS, which had its great moments too, but also plenty of meh.

    690:

    "One day I decided that I'd invented a perpetual motion machine. "

    And by way of co-incidence, or perhaps not so much, it was one of the teachers at Woolahra Dem who talked me through why a perpetual motion machine can't work after I proposed one. To her credit, she'd listened in detail. It was during archery, something that was also pretty unique at the time.

    Of course it's possible she'd been one of your teachers not so many years before, hence having the reasons to hand.

    691:

    Teaching children why perpetual motion machines are impossible is a core duty of science teachers IMHO.

    692:

    Could be the same. I had Susan Groundwater-Smith and Barry Higgenbottom. I think Susan went back to teaching Uni and research after our year finished. I've seen her name on a few papers and she was teaching at the same Uni as my Mum for a while. No idea what Barry got up to. I was there... hmmm not sure... [starts counting on fingers] maybe 1973 and 1974? Maybe 1972 and 73. I've got some idea that I was there during the 'it's time' campaign and that was 1972.

    It's a small world once you get right down to it. I posted something here about being on Facebook, next day I got a friend request from commenter here. We had Three mutual friends, despite living 12000 miles apart.

    I'm delighted to hear that I'm not the only one to throw water balloons onto Edgecliff road. I've lived with the guilt of being the only one stupid enough to do that for far too long!

    694:

    It was called "CCF" short for "Combined Cadet Force" and was in some remote sense a part of the actual army, to a sufficient extent to have real guns.

    ...sort of. One of the problems of having a youth organisation that wears Army/RN/RAF uniforms, and is supported by the Forces, is that it is assumed to be "part of" them - even by some of the participants.

    This can cause misunderstandings, mostly when service personnel and Cadet Forces personnel meet (not unusual, given their occasional use of barracks, training areas, ranges, etc) because the Cadets are very definitely NOT part of the Armed Forces. A lot of service personnel (regular and reserve) don't quite "get" this; and complain that the instructors are "keeping them away" from the Cadets (no sh*t, Sherlock - they're children, and hence "vulnerable"); there are all sorts of extra statutory limitations about interactions with them.

    A rule of thumb is that CCFs are associated with a particular school (typically a private school); elsewhere, the Cadet Forces are single-service (Army Cadet Force, Air Training Corps, Sea Cadet Corps). These may share facilities with the Reserves (I think the nearest one to OGH is based in my old TA Centre), but generally are more dispersed and local to the children who join them. I've been the "visiting Army Officer" who turned up to inspect a local Cadet detachment - I was impressed on all of my ACF visits, because the kids were enjoying themselves, and the instructors seemed to be decent people working hard (and yes, I'd developed a decent git-detector as a result of my school days).

    Anyway, our school had a different version of the same problem. I may have mentioned it was a military-funded boarding school for the children of service personnel, with a ceremonial aspect to it; so, we had Colours (presented by the Monarch), and rather than a Speech Day, we had a full-dress parade with Inspecting General (or Admiral, or Air Marshal). Everyone "got" the military, was already lightly institutionalised; and we had "compulsory CCF" throughout (i.e. not a "try it for a year"). We tended to see it as an imposition on our free time, and as a result were a bunch of expert slackers, and not particularly "keen". As an Army brat, I naturally joined the RAF section, because they did flying (and being colour-blind, it was the closest I was going to get to being a pilot).

    It did raise the occasional eyebrow. The CCF/RAF section would head off to an RAF station for a week at the start of each summer, the better to do flying and flying-related stuff; at the time (early 1980s) the RAF did a different version of foot drill from the Army. The Station Warrant Officer would arrive, itching to use his Drill-Pig voice to teach the visiting bunch of long-haired layabouts, expecting to vent his frustrations on our incompetence at the most basic of tasks; and instead be confronted with kids fresh from a week of rehearsals and parades, but frustrating him with our insistence on Army drill...

    On another occasion, the CCF/Army section had managed to book the rarity of their week's camp in Germany (hardly surprising - I think we had the sons of the RSMs from most of the Scottish battalions at the school). I decided to wear green rather than blue for the week, because I only lived a mile down the road - and spent a week crawling over tanks rather than aircraft. I say rarity, it soon became normality - half of us lived in Germany anyway; that trip, the Black Watch just sent a minibus to pick up "their kids". It was quite good fun, for the most part - probably because it was within my comfort zone (unlike rugby, football, etc, etc).

    695:

    Get where you are coming from but when I am saying Sharia (to clarify) I'm saying slightly less than Taliban Sharia but still Sharia. As in Niqab compulsory not burqa, and whippings from the religious police if you don't comply. Check out what's happening in Aceh and surrounding regions (As an Aussie you should be able to access the SBS On Demand docos) Aceh was one of the most affected in the tsunami but one of the least tourist spots so after the initial wave of humanitarian aid from the west, they were kind of left to fend for themselves which is when the fundamentalists stepped in.

    From what you post here and elsewhere, I get you live in NSW and probably Sydney but you DO get that just like we (I am assuming some common ground here :) ) would be the first to say that Pauline Hanson / One Nation do not represent Australia and only the fringes of extremism, so does it happen that Sharia represents the fringe of Indonesians, its just that as a country with a population of around 260M with a majority Muslim population - over 90%)the extremes are different to what ours are.

    Your Indonesian housemates will also have come from a smaller percentage of the population there, as an Indonesian, you need to be fairly affluent and probably well connected in Indonesia to get a visa for any length of time in Australia. As Australians, we can rock up to any airport in Indo and get an automatic 3 month stay. (The tourist thing) Indonesians have to personally apply (and prove their case - mostly student visas with paid tuition up front)and there is no automatic right to enter Australia. The ones that get through the borders are usually reluctant to rock the boat.

    696:

    Thanks, will follow up

    697:

    One of the problems especially in the Helsinki region is that most people speak passable English and switch to that whenever they hear somebody speak Finnish that is not perfect.

    When I was working in Athens, a lot of Greeks would switch to English if they heard me speak Greek that was not perfect. My boss's advice was "pretend you're Finnish, since nobody speaks that".

    698:

    I keep hearing stuff about climate change that include phrases like "faster than we expected" or "melting more quickly than we thought." What does this mean in terms of any sane timeline. Are we still really talking about 6 feet by 2100, or are we looking at 2090, or 2080 instead?

    And at what point can we expect some kind of change which a conservative will notice and react to as if it is an emergency?

    699:

    A couple of comments from a neurotypical ...

    1 - Re: 'The answer is, because that's the way that works best for non-Aspie kids. Humans are pack animals, and like to compete for status in hierarchy, ...'

    Think you're aware that this is a continuum/scale. Despite being non-competitive (vs. others), and seeking out physically quiet environments away from crowds, I'm smack-on 'normal' on this scale. FWIW, think there's some conflating of physical hypersensitivity with social antipathy because these things do tend to overlap or feedback on each other. Hey - I partied hard in my first couple of years of undergrad, belonged to various clubs, went to rock concerts, was very involved in student theater, etc. yet also needed/enjoyed quiet alone time. IMO, the competitive push is mostly cultural and has been overblown (strengthened) by the popularity of US media (excessive social valuation of the individual). From my perspective, apart from the intermittent idiocy that is now a staple of FIFA/World Cup, other European cultures seem to be as personally non-competitive as Asians.

    2- Re: '... our experience of early socialization processes is abnormal, and we can't extrapolate from our own preferences to the rest of the population.'

    Okay, this is where I find things getting really interesting because you're an author and the dictum is (probably) still 'write what you know'. Your central characters do not come across as Aspies - was this deliberate? Some of my all-time favorite SF dealt with (from my perspective) the vast unknown areas of the human mind (Flowers for Algernon, Speed of Dark). Think that almost all adults are aware that they're each a bit/lot different from other humans on at least one dimension. Finding out what this means in day-to-day life from someone who's actually there and could at the same time also reflect back what contemporary 'neurotypical behavior/norms' feels to them would be a very worthwhile read.

    700:

    "And at what point can we expect some kind of change which a conservative will notice and react to as if it is an emergency?"

    bringing all cynicism cores online at maximum output

    When they can use it as a justification for killing a refugee.

    701:

    Duh... Thank you, I did mean Comey, I sit (and type) corrected.

    702:

    From Unicorn Girl, by Michael Kurland, "It's a young water, I think you'll agree, but with surprising freshness, a bit presumptuous, perhaps, but I think you'll be amused at its presumption....."

    703:

    Teaching children why perpetual motion machines are impossible is a core duty of science teachers IMHO.

    The better ones will help a child figure it out for him/her-self.>/p>

    704:

    I'm thinking we'll have no real idea until it happens. I also think it's been too late to avoid something unpleasant for a long time, there's got to be a lot of inertia in terrestrial weather systems. "Conservatives" will sit up and take notice when they work out that there's more to be made building new energy infrastructure then holding on to their old investments. Also expect an ugly transition, some may be forced to stop burning methane and gasoline with little chance of affording alternatives, given that the .001% seem to need economic misery for the masses for their self esteem. A bumpy ride indeed.

    705:

    Had a similar experience when I competed in an amateur bicycle race one summer, another competitor was on the H.S. track team, when I won, only because the semi-pros waited a lap too late to overtake, the track runner told the other jocks and the following school year was much less unpleasant, thanks Ray!

    706:

    Re: Perpetual motion

    There's a quasi-candidate - time crystals.

    Always wanted to know ... Can you consider a circular light tube as a perpetual motion machine given that: 1- light/photons tend to or prefer to travel in bundles vs. expressing their individuality by haring off all over the place, so they will continue staying/moving together. 2- light is considered a form of energy 3- an enclosed circular tube has no beginning nor end 4- light/photons have no expiration date - they can last forever (well, at least 30+ billion years at latest estimate) 5- Second Law of Thermodynamics does not seem to apply to light - light does not push against anything else, it just is 6- Nor does entropy seem to apply .... light always travels in a straight line apart from the spacetime continuuuumm bendie thingies, and keeps going at a consistent speed for forever.

    708:

    Errrr.... well sort of but no not really :)

    It's a "perpetual motion machine of the first kind", ie. just something that trundles on on its own for ever and ever, rather than one "of the second kind", which supplies energy to something else. The second kind is, of course, impossible. The first kind sort of isn't; theoretically it works in idealised zero-loss conditions, but practically it doesn't because such conditions don't exist. Even just looking at it to see if it's still going is enough to stop it eventually.

    The best you can do in practice is to make the rate of loss very small in relation to the total stored energy. A planet in orbit is a good example. An internally-reflecting container full of photons isn't. The reflection itself is a source of losses, and the rate of loss is much, much faster in relation to the energy than in the case of the planet.

    Re 5 and 6 - oh yes they jolly well do, it's just that the effects aren't generally observable on a human scale. But in very high energy density regimes, like the inside of stars or exploding nukes, things are the opposite way round compared to normal conditions: it's all about the photons, and it's the "matter" particles which become the bystanders.

    709:

    when I am saying Sharia (to clarify) I'm saying slightly less than Taliban Sharia but still Sharia. As in Niqab compulsory not burqa, and whippings from the religious police if you don't comply

    Yep, there are definitely parts of Indo where that happens. But there are also parts, quite large parts, where jeans and a t shirt is fine. Aceh has explicit sharia law, and the national government is moving more in that direction, but there's still a lot of variation. At one extreme there's very little law in West Papua, and raw capitalism dominates most cities (even in Aceh there's a bit of "we'd like Sharia law but it would be bad for business")

    Yes, I'm in Sydney, and no, my indo housemates were not really middle class - they came here as guest workers via the usual semi-scam visa manipulation process and worked for minimum wage (loosely speaking). It's not great but on the other hand they can send more money back doing that than they can make working in indo.

    710:

    Been wait for an explainer post on realclimate.org on the recent 1.5C Nature paper, and here it is:

    Is there really still a chance for staying below 1.5 °C global warming? Worth a read for those who care - to much content to summarize. OK, TL;DR : "In summary, both approaches used by Millar compute budgets that do not actually keep global warming to 1.5 °C." (Italics their's)

    711:

    Fixed link: Been wait for an explainer post on realclimate.org on the recent 1.5C Nature paper, and here it is:

    Is there really still a chance for staying below 1.5 °C global warming? Worth a read for those who care - too much content to summarize. OK, TL;DR : "In summary, both approaches used by Millar compute budgets that do not actually keep global warming to 1.5 °C." (Italics their's)

    712:

    Which is why I was careful to say "popularly believed". We're talking about pop mythology here, not history. Or at least I am.

    713:

    No, not the same class: I was OC both years, Jenny-Ann Reidy and Barbara Harry were my teachers. Probably my only distinguishing feature if you weren't in my class was I was the smallest kid in the year. Outside class I mostly remember playing lots of handball (which I was fortunate enough that I didn't entirely suck at) and being introduced to D&D.

    I didn't go to Sydney Boys after that due to the vagaries of school zoning at the time, ended up at South Sydney probably much the same way that Gasdive ended up at Dover Heights.

    714:

    Pull quote:

    That’s a first point of criticism, because this estimate (as Millar confirmed to me by email) is entirely based on the Hadley Center temperature data, which notoriously have a huge data gap in the Arctic...As the Arctic has warmed far more than the global mean, this leads to an underestimate of global warming up to 2015, by 0.06 °C when compared to the Cowtan&Way data or by 0.17 °C when compared to the Berkeley Earth data - HadCRUT4 is dodgy as )needs to be retired), and that's before factoring the OHC papers quoted / linked to and the Russian Arctic research.

    All in all it's hard not to see it as deliberate: the alacrity with which Oxford Martin rushed the Guardian piece out and then the follow-up speaks badly on both their reputations.

    Oh, and broken link above: https://www.cntraveller.in/story/next-frontier-luxury-water/ [1]

    Svalbardi water is from where you'd expect and ostensibly has an 'eco-friendly' message to 'highlight' the plight of Arctic Ice, by the 'enlightened' billionaire entrepreneur; but it's all a smoke screen cashing into the Dark Carnival of Nihilistic Consumption (unlike the bottled air company Aethaer which was a deliberate piss-take).

    So that all tied in nicely.

    715:

    Re (2), obviously I can't speak for Charlie, but my own experience is that the popular "modelling failure" description is too simplistic. It's more a case of the "closer to home" things are, the harder it gets. Knowing what's going on in my own interactions with other people is a very different matter from knowing what's going on in their interactions with each other; the personal involvement makes it a lot harder and also somehow blocks the transference of understanding from the impersonal to the personal situation. (Don't ask me how that makes sense; it's just how it is.)

    As far as the writing characters angle goes, again there's obviously a difference in the experience of a successful published author like Charlie, and someone who occasionally scribbles bits of fiction for their own amusement like me. But one angle is something like "reporting", something like being able to transcribe speech in a foreign language without necessarily being able to translate it. It seems to me that there is little difference between reporting some interaction between people from the memory of witnessing it, and reporting a similar interaction from an artificial "memory", which I suppose is in large part some kind of Markovian patchwork stitched together using elements from real memories, created on the spot for the purpose of writing it. It doesn't seem to be too much of a problem to essentially run a character in a VM with at least enough superficial accuracy to produce a realistic output, if I can go by the tiddly amount of feedback from the literal handful of people who have read anything I've written. More than one is possible if I don't start running into swap. It's very different from a real social interaction because of the personal/impersonal thing again, and also, very importantly, that it's not in real time.

    716:

    Note: the reason I jumped to OHC / that link is because almost immediately deniers have jumped onto this paper and started attacks.

    Surely there must be a word for knowingly taking someone else's original idea and presenting as your own, without credit. How very lame. Roger Pielke Jr. Twitter, 20th Sept 2017 (side-by-side of Cheng's paper quoted above with a very old piece he did in 2003).

    He & his father run this little outfit: Roger Pielke Sr. Group and even have their own pages like Climate Misinformer: Roger Pielke Sr on Skeptical Science.

    Deniers love to claim that OHC shows medieval water temps were much higher (do not ask how they reach these conclusions - rabbit holes of madness).

    The upshot is, with reference to Host's OP: all parties involved who are for open transparency and not paid / ideological deniers should have predicted this outcome. Like I saw, in less than 15 mins.

    If they can't, then they need a fucking adult handler to prevent such utter utter cock-ups.

    717:

    Re: 'Knowing what's going on in my own interactions with other people is a very different matter from knowing what's going on in their interactions with each other; the personal involvement makes it a lot harder and also somehow blocks the transference of understanding from the impersonal to the personal situation.'

    Thanks for your response/description ... much appreciated!

    If you don't mind my asking, that is, if it's not too intrusive --- how do you react to characters in each of the following media: - radio (voice only), - books (text only), - comic books (drawings & text), - animated cartoon (audio, drawings & movement), - regular TV/film (human actors - audio, visual, movement, close-ups & cinematic hints/symbols, i.e., music, images, etc.), - live stage performance (real-time, real-space, but usually from a distance so that facial expressions cannot be easily seen)?

    Do you identify with the characters you watch/see - and at what threshold of media?

    • Most media rely on audiences identifying with at least one of the characters. So if you never identify with any of the characters (vicarious experience), the question becomes: so what DO you get out of the experience?
    718:

    "vagaries of school zoning at the time"

    Yep, despite us not moving, I had to go to Dover, my brother a year later went to SBHS.

    His experiences in a GPS school seemed different in detail, but the broad wash of ritual humiliation and petty violence seemed similar. He got to go to cadets, which seemed exotic and exciting, but which by reports from him didn't seem to turn out that way. A lot of spit and polish, interspersed with things like his teacher intentionally standing on my brother's shoes to ruin the polish and give him another 20 hours work to repair it.

    719:

    Re: We need to do something ...

    Timely paper (and free!) about the psychological push-pull of doing something for the common good.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0191-5

    Abstract

    'Social cooperation often requires collectively beneficial but individually costly restraint to maintain a public good1,2,3,4, or it needs costly generosity to create one1,5. Status quo effects6 predict that maintaining a public good is easier than providing a new one. Here, we show experimentally and with simulations that even under identical incentives, low levels of cooperation (the ‘tragedy of the commons’2) are systematically more likely in maintenance than provision. Across three series of experiments, we find that strong and weak positive reciprocity, known to be fundamental tendencies underpinning human cooperation7,8,9,10, are substantially diminished under maintenance compared with provision. As we show in a fourth experiment, the opposite holds for negative reciprocity (‘punishment’). Our findings suggest that incentives to avoid the ‘tragedy of the commons’ need to contend with dilemma-specific reciprocity.

    Humans are an exceptionally cooperative species able to collaborate for the creation of common benefit9,11,12,13. Collective actions such as voting, participating in political movements, the provision of the welfare state, charity, volunteering and teamwork are examples of public goods that come into existence by the generosity of many people who put the greater good before self-interest1,5. Cooperation is, however, not always about providing collectively valuable resources, but often about maintaining existing ones1,2,3,4. Limiting carbon dioxide emissions, sustaining natural resources or maintaining common pastures and biodiversity are important examples of cooperation problems that require restraint in exploiting existing socially beneficial public goods.

    In this paper, we show experimentally and with simulations that cooperation for maintaining an initially existing public good is substantially and systematically weaker than cooperation for creating a new public good even if they are otherwise identical social dilemmas. This is unexpected, given that many people are biased towards the status quo and defaults6, which should ease cooperation when the public good already exists compared with when it needs to be provided.

    We show that the reason for lower cooperation in the maintenance dilemma is that reciprocity, a fundamental force behind the evolution of cooperation and human sociality7,8,9,10, is substantially diminished in maintaining compared with providing a public good. Simulations show that despite some variability, lower cooperation in maintenance than provision is a systematic effect to be expected with a likelihood of 70%. The simulation results also provide an explanation for the mixed findings in some related literature14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23. ... etc. [very long abstract ] ...'

    720:

    "All in all it's hard not to see it as deliberate"

    Hard indeed. No one seems to have wondered why they stuck with 2015 data half a year after the 2016 data runs were on the board.

    http://berkeleyearth.org/global-warming-2016/

    1.294 degrees +- 0.077 (so between 1.217 and 1.371)

    Picking 0.9 under those circumstances seems... odd. It gives you 0.6 to play with all the while knowing full well that even if you ignore the fact that the line has already been crossed, and we're going to squint and only take full year averages, (despite the Paris agreement setting 1.5 as a limit), that the real margin is 0.129 to 0.283. (ignoring the 0.5 of global dimming waiting in the wings of course, because somehow we're going to stop emitting CO2 but keep the coal fired plants emitting aerosols...)

    It doesn't really matter all that much of course, because as RealClimate says:"We still live in a world on a path to 3 or 4 °C global warming"
    Well, I would have said 12 degrees, but perhaps that's splitting hairs... Sea surface temperatures of 40 degrees anyone? Mmmm toasty warm.

    http://science.sciencemag.org/content/338/6105/366.full

    721:

    Do you identify with the characters you watch/see - and at what threshold of media?

    Note that the threshold could work both ways - some people will identify more with a character as the media gets more immersive, others less.

    Viz, I find that the more obviously a character is not me the less I identify with it. At the extreme, playing a VR game where the arms I see are furry legs with claws never feels like me. But with a book, unless the author goes on and on about differences I often get dragged in.

    722:

    "Dark Carnival of Nihilistic Consumption"

    That is as good a name for the present era as any I've come across.

    723:

    "Dark Carnival of Nihilistic Consumption"

    Martin Phillips got in before you on the "Dark Carnival" part of it, though. His usual mix of dark lyrics with slightly happy jangly piano/guitars pop music.

    When you get your bloody dose In the still of the night It is there you'll feel it most In this dark carnival Where the end is close

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmLN4hdfT6k

    Doledrums is perhaps more appropriate to the current government policies... "I can't go out I'm always cold, I no longer dream about the rest of my years, I check the letterbox does anyone care". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVTzW2zvKUo

    724:

    Some might find this amusing. I don't see it as a bad thing except for the price.
    How to Hack Your Brain (for $5,000) (NYTimes 21 Sep 2017, Style section) It's about "Flow Camp" and its founder/promoter: Mr. Wheal, who said his father was a test pilot for the British royal navy, came to the United States from England at age 8 and speaks rapidly in a mash-up accent, dropping idiosyncratic phrases and erudite references to the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky, to Cincinnatus and Aldous Huxley. At moments he is given to phrases that are not immediately comprehensible, like “We are broaching the possibility of midwifing humanity into the infinite game.” ... The neuro-chemicals that define flow or ecstasis are powerfully alluring, and Mr. Wheal warned they are not always used for good. He argues, for instance, that Donald J. Trump instinctively knew how to manipulate them in gathering support for his presidency. “Trump hacked ecstasis,” Mr. Wheal said. “Light, sound, movement, repetition, scapegoating the other. People said if you haven’t been to his rallies, you’re missing what’s actually happening in this movement. And what does Hillary say? ‘I’ve got a policy binder.’ While Trump pulled all the strings.”

    One (or more, independent) open-source course modules for teaching this would attract a lot of interest. Would need to have different paths for different mind types, and ages. Does anyone know of any such? (Other than the stuff on http://www.flowgenomeproject.com/ ) (Tempted to write up an outline.)

    725:

    Going to add my voice to the chorus of ASD kids who did not like sports in school, though it sounds like things were better in California at the turn of the century than they were in the UK in the 80s.

    We occasionally got to play "non-traditional" games like capture-the-flag, where there was a lot of room for individual initiative in a collaborative context, and we all had the freedom to decide to hang back and play defense if we were overstimulated. Obstacle courses are good stuff too, as long as you ignore the rankings and have fun with it. But anything that had a whiff of "mainstream" athleticism was anathema because suddenly there was a lot of pressure and bickering and downtime to sort out rules arguments I didn't care about.

    Also, they made me use the boy's locker room.

    Goddess, gym class could suck sometimes.

    726:

    Eeeeerrrrrrrr.... well, let me try to order those:

    Radio - basically I don't. The trouble with radio is it's just too relentless. There seems to be some near-universal delusion that if you leave the carrier unmodulated for more than a fraction of a second the transmitter will explode, or something. It just never shuts up, not even for a moment, and so regardless of the programme material it never takes very long before I want to take a hammer to the thing. So I just don't listen to it. (About the only radio channel I find tolerable is Radio 3, which is a classical music channel and understands that music is supposed to have quiet bits and to go silent completely for a few seconds at times, and that the end of a piece is an occasion for a spell of silence to let you come back down to earth, not an invitation for some knob to start yabbering nonsense before the music's even stopped. But why listen to music on the radio when I can put a CD on and listen to the music I actually want to listen to?)

    Comic books - that to me means mainly Viz (dot co dot uk), and the notion of identifying with any of the characters in that is a little worrying :) Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers less so, but it's still unreal. The kind of "serious comics" that people dress up as characters from and go to conventions about, or the Japanese equivalents, I never even see and I don't even know where people buy them from.

    Animated cartoons - much the same, because that means Hanna-Barbera and the like to me. I don't know where you'd put something like Toy Story; I did watch that purely to find out WTF Debian distro names were all about, and found that I did care about the characters enough to watch the second one.

    TV/film - rarely watch by choice, don't have a TV and hate cinemas (sound is much too loud, it's so stuffy I fall asleep, and you can't make tea or pop to the loo). I tend to identify with plot themes rather than individual characters - eg. "Braveheart" I found myself siding with the Scots in general, not so much the actual Wallace character. I'm not always sure quite what I do get out of them. I thought "The English Patient" was excellent, but I really can't say why beyond some vague thing about "the atmospheres got me", and I didn't particularly identify with any of the characters. ("Feel sorry for them", perhaps, but in a rather detached way.)

    Theatre - that's difficult. Really I think it fits better as a subgenre of "circus" than it fits here. It's not so much telling a story as presenting a series of spectacles strung loosely on a fairly plain thread of narrative, and if anything further from reality than cartoons. (People born on 29 February do not usually decide to sing for 5 minutes about the paradoxical discrepancy between elapsed years and birthday count.) If I think someone's a good actor in their part, it means something like I think they upheld their portion of presenting the spectacle in a fitting and effective manner.

    Shakespeare is kind of weird because really it might as well be in Martian, but if the actors themselves understand it and act accordingly, it becomes comprehensible. I think that because I find it difficult to process speech in real time anyway, I probably pick up to some extent on non-verbal cues which are not the ones generally considered under the heading of "non-verbal communication", but something else which functions as a more direct sub-channel of speech. (Kind of like partially deaf children learning to lip-read without realising they're doing it.) So if the weird archaic language makes sense to the actors, they end up producing the right signals to convey the meaning by that channel, and it comes over rather better than it does as a straight ElizabethIan->ElizabethIIan translation exercise reading the text.

    The jokes are not funny, though, no matter what.

    Books - I have left books until last because it really is a total chalk-and-cheese difference. I have come across books where none of the characters mean anything to me and I simply don't give a shit what happens to any of them (example: "Middlemarch"), but it's very rare. Usually I find myself identifying thoroughly and quite naturally with the lead character and with several others as well, often including ones from the "villain" side. It doesn't really matter if they are completely unlike me, have interests and ambitions that are completely orthogonal to my own, and do things that I would view unfavourably in comparison with cutting my arm off; I don't as a rule find any incompatibility between sharing their viewpoint in the context of the story and refusing to go anywhere near such thoughts as part of real life, and imagining myself going through their experiences feels natural. So natural that I have even, on odd occasions, found myself identifying with a character I consider thoroughly vile and repulsive, although I don't like it when that happens and tend to pull back a bit and start skimming passages featuring that character.

    Some people cite differences in gender or sexual preferences as reasons for inability to identify with a character, and at least some of them are not just being arseholes. I don't care about that any more than I do about a character being actually non-human, in the Tarka the Otter sense. I'd throw up if I ate a raw fish guts and all straight out of the river, but I can feel happy and satisfied if I'm following the story, immersed in the character of an otter doing it. Variations between human tastes are a much smaller gap to cross.

    I'm rambling a bit, but basically I find text a far more vivid and effective means of relating a story than any more explicit imagery. A scene in a film of someone struggling exhaustedly on all fours through a howling blizzard is not likely to do much more for me than "oh, look, it's a picture of someone in a blizzard". Reading a passage in a book relating the same thing I'll probably start feeling every stumble and every snowflake. Heck, even just typing about it has done that.

    A book is far more of a gateway to another world than any other package for a story. A movie happens as pictures on a screen. A book enables me to pretty much go there and have it happen. (And re previous, writing stuff, that's largely exactly the same thing working the other way round.)

    727:

    "It doesn't really matter all that much of course..."

    When I lived in a place that had ten or so flats opening off a communal stairwell, the people who did the maintenance for the communal area would never change the light bulbs. They did it perhaps twice in the whole time I was there, and the replacements were incandescent and only lasted a few weeks. All the people in the other flats did nothing; "oh, it's their job". Me, I don't give a toss who's "supposed" to do it, I just want to see where I'm going. So I changed them myself, using CFLs. (Now I don't live there any more it's probably all gone dark again.)

    There was an article in the local paper about an alleyway in the town where the lights had been not working for five months, because the council and the builders had spent the whole time bickering over who was "supposed" to change the light bulbs. FFS whoever finds they're not working just go and get some bloody bulbs and change the things, you can spend as long as you like bickering about "supposed to" afterwards.

    Railway projects in the UK often get to go nowhere while people sit around for decades talking crap, with endless "studies" made of pure handwaving and paying parasitic "consultants" with impressive-looking but meaningless qualifications from the University of Exculotractum enormous sums of money to produce glossy brochures to state the bleeding obvious. In the meantime the cost goes up and when someone notices they act all surprised and go into another interminable session of printing made-up numbers at maximum cost. It doesn't take many repeats of this before they've spent more money doing nothing than the original estimate for reopening the route, only we've still got nothing to show for it.

    I've been in favour of alternatives to fossil fuels for as long as I can remember, probably since I first got some intuitive idea of the concept of entropy, in the time when what Everyone Knew about climate was that we were probably overdue for another ice age but if we were lucky there might be enough atmospheric CO2 to stop it happening. It all looked pretty straightforward to me. We knew about breeder reactors and solar panels and solar thermal collectors and hydropower and wind and tide and geothermal and biomass and everything, all we had to do was do it, and it was so plainly self-evidently daft not to. We could be pretty well there by now, without any particular hassle, if we'd just got off our arses. But instead we do nothing but talk bollocks and quibble endlessly about the exact shape of curves produced at huge expense by unverifiable exculotractive simulations, and meanwhile the reasons for actually doing something get ever more numerous and more pressing.

    It's great, isn't it. A species destined for self-extinction by its incurable tendency to prefer stumbling around in the dark over changing the light bulbs because every individual thinks it's up to someone else to do it.

    728:

    Oh dear ... Godwin alert TrumpAdolf hacked ecstasis,” Mr. Wheal it was said. “Light, sound, movement, repetition, scapegoating the other. People said if you haven’t been to his rallies, you’re missing what’s actually happening in this movement.

    729:

    And I thought I was bad .... Radio - listen to R4 for news & v occasionally for select progs - often on "Listen again" via this machine. R3 is playing as I tyoe this - I use it a lot at home. Comics - v. rarely (Though I'm following "Unsounded" as an exception) Animated cartoons - used to like them, but v rarely, now TV - what's that? Film - I have spells of watching films, but, on average I deliberately go to a film perhaps twice a year. Theatre - not as much as I used to, in fact hardly ever ... exception: Opera - maybe because I've been in a couple (!) Shakespeare ... well, no, here I differ enormously. Provided it's a good production, I'm fascinated [ Note: Saw a "Winter's Tale" about 5 years back that was utterly riveting, but 2-3 years ago actually walked out of a Barbican production (!) of "Cymbeline" that was total crap. As one might expect, my favourite is "The Dream" - saw one about 2 years ago that was electrifying, in semi-modern dress. Truly scary but very uplifing at the end. And all the variations on the "Tempest" of course, including Return to the Forbidden Planet ....

    730:

    I'm not saying anything against Shakespeare; it's just that I find the language a tremendous barrier. The themes are timeless, but the way people talked about them 400 years ago is for me too different from the way they talk about them today (not just different vocabulary, but a different way of using it too), and so a lot of what makes a "good production" for me is that the actors themselves should be thoroughly digging it so that they present the right non-conscious non-verbal cues (whatever they are) to mitigate the language problem for me.

    731:

    Like so, so many things, Douglas Adams worked this out. He described how making something invisible was a lot of bother and quite hard, while making something "somebody else's problem" was actually more effective at completely hiding it in plain sight and quite simple to implement.

    732:

    "The themes are timeless, but the way people talked about them 400 years ago is for me too different from the way they talk about them today (not just different vocabulary, but a different way of using it too)"

    With few exceptions I find that with films made in the 1930's. The themes are familiar I suppose, but the way everyone acts (talks, moves, projects) is so weird that I can't get into it. So forced and unnatural.

    Considering that the 30s is only 30 years before I was born, and my afternoon TV as a kid was mostly composed of 1930's films that's a bit odd, but true.

    733:

    Well, I just read up on the New Zealand election. If any actual Kiwis are here, please correct any mistakes.

    The National Party won the election. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_National_Party

    However, they are 2 seats short of the majority. In order to form a majority, they'll have to form a coalition with either the Green Party or the alt-right New Zealand First party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_First

    735:

    I have been away for three days and consequently have missed comments after #615. (Been busy helping look after an elderly relative recovering from (successful) eye surgery.)

    A new blog entry will be along in a day or two, when I think of one and have the energy to express it left over from trying to hit my daily word target on this book I'm due to hand in on November 1st.

    736:

    Re: 'A book is far more of a gateway to another world than any other package for a story.'

    Thanks very much - appreciate your (and Moz's and Greg's) candor.

    Personally feel that there's a push and a pull working in tandem inside my head re: type of media, characters, and story situations. Not sure whether it's easier for my imagination to fill in the details from the outline described in a book vs. persist (not reject) despite being completely turned off by some element in an overly realized world on film/TV and in some books.

    738:

    Also The Guardian has a useful commentary on how the post-truth party won. (this time with a closing tag on the link. Sorry about that)

    739:

    Re: NZ - Optimism wins!

    Similar situation in Canada's last federal election almost 2 years ago where the Liberal Party (Justin Trudeau) campaigned on optimism, inclusiveness and looking toward and building the future. In contrast, the incumbent Tories campaigned on tightening fiscal restraint, more erosion of public sector spending (incl. ditching the census), anti-immigrant fear-mongering, etc. FYI, the Canadian economic stats are the best they've been in a while. Soft measures show a similar trend: global perception of Canada has improved with Justin Trudeau as PM.

    Think it's important to know/remember that optimism and humanity does not automatically lead to economic ruin and collapse of society which are the central messages that the political right everywhere is screaming. Canada and New Zealand are not giants, but they do matter - including as examples.

    740:

    I saw a great production of A Winter's Tale at the York Theatre in the Seymour Centre at Sydney Uni in the late 80s, featuring Colin Friels and Robert Coleby. The York is a thrust stage, and what with lighting angles, being close to the front in one of the wings and Messrs Friels' and Coleby's projection skills, it made strongly apparent the way that stage actors can have a permanent cloud of spittle in front of their faces for much of a performance.

    741:

    Another example of what historically was considered absurd leftist wishful thinking but works:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/opinion/sunday/portugal-drug-decriminalization.html

    Re: NZ - there are still votes to be counted plus back-room deals/negotiations, so no official winner yet.

    742:

    Canada and New Zealand are not giants, but they do matter - including as examples.

    Cautionary examples in an age of Trump and May aren't really needed, IMO. What we really want is examples of democratic countries doing good things. Which is where we increasingly have to look to Scandinavia rather than the english-speaking world.

    On that note, I've just read 1.5 books in the "aliomenti saga" and OMG, the author is such a post-truth exponent. Book two: a modern USA citizen time travels back to England circa 1050 and everyone speaks English just like he does. And they share his cultural values, right down to considering serfs to be slaves. Every chapter seemed to have a new horror to break me out of the flow of the book. "Ring of Fire" or "Aldabreshin Compass" is it most definitely not. I have to write a review, it's that awful.

    743:

    "I know of no Frigate like a book to bear me to seas far away Nor any Corsair like a page of prancing Poetry"

    It's a re-quote from H Beam Piper, but I have no idea where the original came from.

    744:

    but I have no idea where the original came from.

    Googling suggests Emily Dickinson:

    There is no Frigate like a Book
    To take us Lands away,
    Nor any Coursers like a Page
    Of prancing Poetry –
    This Traverse may the poorest take
    Without oppress of Toll –
    How frugal is the Chariot
    That bears a Human soul.

    745:

    Re: Scandinavian countries -

    Agree, they're my go-to cultures for sanity checks. However, my take is that speaking a different language is an even greater barrier than a smaller economy from the perspective of rightist Anglo pols.

    Re: "aliomenti saga"

    Just looked up the blurb and roared. Hmmm ... what kind of political views were you expecting from an author whose 'hero' is a self-made multi-billionaire? The first reviews that popped up mention poor writing skill, rambling, repetitious, very little/non-existent accurate science .... Hey! It's a DT fan!

    746:

    One for the puppies next year then.

    747:

    Re: "aliomenti saga" Just looked up the blurb and roared. ... what kind of political views were you expecting

    Well, the first couple of books were free, and I thought "he's written seven in the series, he must surely be somewhat competent". But I was mistaken. TBH the politics don't really bother me unless they're the sole point, I mean I've read Atlas Shrugged (The Bible, The Iliad, War and Peace, etc), not to mention the complete Heinlein through all the twists and turns of his political leanings. I read fast and often, I've wasted more time reading cereal packets than many people spend reading recreationally at all[1].

    What gets me is not "here's my extreme political views...", but "I can typing, my charactering excellent most, hero all by himself on island he make microchips by hand". Just a basic level of competence, please.

    [1] There's a New Zealand author called Barry Crump who wrote "kiwi bloke fiction"[2], and there's a bit in one book where he writes about a habitual reader. Who reads really fast, so Barry wrote a few sentences one word per line diagonally down the page, saying "he read this fast, he turned pages as fast as you are turning them now. He read anything, he'd pick up cereal packets off the shelf and read the contents list on the side if he had a spare second". And I thought "that's me" :)

    [2] and starred in some Toyota ads that makes the Top Gear "Hilux destruction" episode look a bit half-hearted.

    748:

    Re: 'I read fast and often,..'

    Understood - I rarely do not finish a book. Fortunately I have quite a few SF/F books and if I've finished my to-read pile and don't feel like rereading or none of the titles at the book store look appealing, it's off to the library to pick up a random bunch of 'new' authors. I also keep a list of recommended (non-SFF) authors/books posters here have mentioned. Should also mention that over the past 10-15 years there's been an increase in the selection and quality of non-fic science written for the mass audience.

    749:

    it's off to the library

    Sadly libraries where I am don't really do ebook lending, and a recent visit persuaded me that legacy books don't really work for me any more. I'm too used to a small thing with a backlight and stands up by itself, big clunky trade paperbacks just felt wrong. Not to mention reading over a kilogramme in a day, that brought back memories of reading 30-40 books a week towards the end of my "children and YA" section of the library period. Obviously that was before Harry Potter and the Series of Giant Tomes, but still.

    I'm sure I could deal with it if I needed to, I still get the dead tree New Scientist (because their website has been an abomination every time I've looked, and they refuse to provide a subscriber RSS feed).

    750:

    Speaking of recommended books, I finished "Cadillac Desert" today.

    Next time I head up to northern California I'm going to bring a couple gallon jugs with me, and steal some water for the people of Los Angeles. (Just doing my part, right?)

    751:

    Absolutely OT for OGH: yesterday the online website used by our populist moviment, the FiveStars, to hold online elections was hacked by an hacker who calls himself R0gue0. Now, the newspapers say that this site is based on Movable Type, so it may be of interest for this blog's possible security issues, as sensitive data like a database of members with their names, mails and mobile phone numbers were stolen fron that system and put online. Pity I don't find out any articles in English to link.

    752:

    This is why I wouldn't survive in the laundry.

    I will automatically read any text I can see. Quite often I will read something but have no idea what it was written on, and then have to perform a slow visual search around the room.

    Combine that with documents that make your eyeballs explode if you so much as glance at the table of contents without authorisation...

    753:

    Speaking of fast readers, I dare you to beat Harriet Klausner (who died in 2015).

    754:

    Thanks. I'll keep a weather eye open.

    Most MT hacks go via various plugins, especially plugins for e-commerce or managing databases that might have some monetary value. For obvious reasons, this website doesn't have any such plugins because I don't sell stuff directly or curate membership databases. (The only info I have about you is your login and password, which you are free to make up to order whenever you want — they are only there as a spam preventative, because spammers and spambots virtually never take the time to create a user account.)

    755:

    I notice that Randall Munroe, of xkcd fame, is going to be in the UK (including Edinburgh) in early October. Are you going to be able to go?

    I have the feeling that there may be an overlap between readers of this blog and readers of xkcd.

    756:

    Unusal for you to have a broken linkie, but that one doesn't seem to work ....

    757:

    Re: Sports and cadets. I was similar to many of the posters here in that I did not enjoy team sports. Not for lack of ability (I am 6'4" and relatively fit) but because I didn't really like most of the others who were playing them. I gravitated quite quickly to long distance canoeing, cycling, and back country stuff, as well as skiing when it was on my parents' dime.

    As a goofy, bookworm outsider I somehow ended up joining the local Cadet troop, where I had the precise opposite experience of many here. I loved it and found a tribe that got the through the teen years in a very rough town. I didn't much care about the spit and polish or marching and stomping about - I learned it and it became rote, then didn't worry about it. What I enjoyed was spending at least 2 weekends a month in the woods learning endless things and having fun. I also enjoyed the summer camps, though YMMV for sure.

    That said, cadets was not mandatory in any way. And there was some danger of joining the military on reaching the age of majority.

    758:

    I may be misremembering, but I think you're doing Kaldor a injustice with your description of The Baroque Arsenal.

    AFAIR (haven't had time to dig out my copy) she explicitly cites PGMs as the counter example to her description of "baroque" weapons systems. The baroque systems she describes are things like the Tornado fighter-bomber and the Abrahams tank, not cruise missiles and so on.

    She claims that baroque weapons are the sign of industries in decline, adding needless curlicues to existing things, rather than inventing new things.

    760:

    That's a fair point, but I think she missed a key development — that things like the Abrams and the Tornado weren't just about a more complex tank, or a more elaborate bomber, but about transitioning from simple tanks and bombers to integrated platforms for new weapons systems. What made the Abrams interesting was the (highly classified, at the time) armour that replaced traditional rolled steel, and the much more sophisticated sighting/laying system for the main gun; what made the Tornado interesting wasn't that it was a variable-geometry-wing bomber (with a fighter and an ECM variant thrown in), but that it had similar low altitude terrain-following capabilities to the then-new cruise missile and was intended as a platform for PGMs.

    Now, one could argue that the F-35 is a classic baroque system (endless curlicues, in three different semi-incompatible flavours!). But ineffective ...? Despite early reports of F-35s being absolutely crap when dogfighting with F-16s, those reports were based on incomplete aircraft that didn't have the full sensor/weapons suite installed yet. It's probably best to wait and see how it turns out.

    761:

    Re: Book reco's

    Good odds many folk here have already read it: Crysis (Peter Watts). I'm not a gamer so ignore game-linked materials. However, during a family visit decided to chance reading what was at hand. Only halfway through. The action is okay (not my thing anyway) but what really struck me was the character evolution spiced with interesting science explanations/speculations.

    No idea whether typical gamers are interested in enriched backstory and characterization but, on the flip side, a game where a character becomes more complex with life experience/development & aging would definitely appeal to me.

    762:

    Re: 'F-35 is a classic baroque system (endless curlicues, in three different semi-incompatible flavours!). ...'

    Add 'at a baroque price' to that list.

    The only news reports I'm aware of re: the F-35 relate to the fact that it's the most expensive fighter ever built, that the prototype failed miserably, and despite this the mfg continues to hound prospective buyers for up-front $$$ commitment without any guarantee that it would work as advertised. Several gov'ts still uncommitted to buying were - maybe still are - being arm-twisted by the US gov't into buying. For some of these countries, saying yes to this machine would seriously screw over their gov't budgets for their social services (i.e., universal healthcare). It's that expensive.

    763:

    I don't really understand your problem with them. I mean, if you read a historical, regency, or 1632 or pretty much any fantasy novel, whatever, do you have the same issues?

    You do have to mentally put them into the historical context that they were in when they were made. Are you saying that you cannot keep from expecting them to speak and act as though it was written of filmed this millennium?

    764:

    When I was in my teens and twenties, I easily read a book or more a day, though I will say they were all < 200 pages.

    On the other hand, this is why I NEVER wanted to take speed reading - I'd never be able to afford to keep myself in books.

    765:

    Re: F-35

    Seems the price tag is going up again.

    http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a27332/f-35-rising-cost/

    Excerpt: US purchase only ...

    'The overall cost to buy all 2,456 aircraft for all three services, including research and development, testing and evaluation, actually buying the aircraft, and building facilities to support the new planes, is estimated to cost $406.5 billion. This is up $27.5 billion over the previous year.'

    766:

    Yes, we can so afford to lose those damned planes in battle, too. Baroque is the right term for it, I think. I'm surprised that the price has only gone up 5%-ish this year.

    Why, oh why, do we need a stealth plane that can hover? (and I've actually seen it do just that, at the Miramar Air Show last year). Well, the marines, due to their WWII experience, insist on a STOL just in case they have to take off from a beach or atoll again. Everyone else wants stealth, and the politicians, bless their pointy little heads, want it all in one plane. Hence, hovering stealth. Were I making a rocket to home in on it, I might simply track the noise it makes, rather than its radar signature. While it's not as loud as an F-16, it's pretty effin' loud.

    Seriously though, the plane is a perfect capitalist design: it guarantees price over runs, has parts built in most congressional districts so it can't be easily killed by Congress, and is designed to maximize the number of jobs and careers more than, you know, flyable planes. As a replacement for something like, oh, the A-10, it's crap. As a replacement for the Harrier, it melts the decks of the boats it's supposed to STOL out over. As a replacement for the F-16, it's likely crap too, but we'll see.

    Next we'll need it to support Facebook for cyberwarfare ops over Russia...

    Makes me appreciate the B-52. And yes, I've been watching Ken Burns' The Vietnam War, so I'm thinking about travesties like Rolling Thunder.

    767:

    You missed: supercruise capable, agile, and the version that doesn't have the STOVL lift fan uses the space for a freaking laser cannon because mere guns are so 20th century.

    On the other hand, what it's really about (I think) is advanced sensors and computers that can loiter dangerously close to enemy airspace and map out where the enemy are, directing missiles and older, non-stealth aircraft towards them while remaining undetected. Also, quite possibly, controlling combat drones.

    I believe the USAF is now seriously considering a replacement for the A-10 that's suitable for the sort of asymmetric warfare and fire support missions the A-10 is overkill for. Some of the contenders are modified crop-dusters.

    768:

    Re: 'laser cannon'

    According to below, this tech cannot be tested on humans because it's likely too dangerous, esp. to the nervous system*. And this is from the 'Non-Lethal Weapons subheading.

    'The TECOM Technology Symposium in 1997 concluded on non-lethal weapons, "determining the target effects on personnel is the greatest challenge to the testing community", primarily because "the potential of injury and death severely limits human tests".[86]'

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon

    BTW, there's a new multi-center research paper showing how damage to the brain/nervous system affects other organs and this starts at the embryo stage. (On the plus side: organ damage might potentially be repaired via the nervous system.) Given how the above laser/EM type weapons are known to scramble the nervous system, such weapons have got to be at least as abhorrent as any biochemical agent. And, designer soldiers are not that far off.

    Excerpt:

    'The discoveries, reported in Nature Communications on Sept. 25, could expand understanding of human cognition and neuroplasticity and lead to better ways to address birth defects, treat injuries and regenerate or bioengineer complex organs. Frogs are a widely used model in biomedical research because they share many basic biological mechanisms and processes with humans.

    "Everyone knows that the brain guides behavior, but these data suggest that we need to revise our view of the brain as quiescent prior to an animal's independent activity. Our research shows that the brain is engaged long before that, before it's even fully built. What is particularly promising on the therapeutic side is that we were able to reverse developmental defects that result in the absence of a brain by applying relatively simple bioelectric and neurotransmitter manipulations," said the paper's corresponding author, Michael Levin, Ph.D., Vannevar Bush professor of biology and director of the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology and the AAllen Discovery Center at Tufts. The Allen Discovery Center at Tufts focuses on reading and writing the morphogenetic code that orchestrates how cells communicate to create and repair complex anatomical shapes and includes researchers from Tufts, Harvard, Princeton, the University of Chicago and Tel Aviv University.'

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170925095434.htm

    769:

    I dare you to beat Harriet Klausner

    By reviewing that many books after actually reading them?

    I'm a bit suspicious, not least because when I read for pleasure I'm not also thinking critically and analysing the book, which makes my "review" afterwards kinda suspect. I'm more likely to pick on some weird aspect that catches my mind and review that in depth. Heinlein's Friday: artificial persons necessarily involve strong AI but there's no explanation of why the AI would restrict itself to a single embodiment, or the other consequences of strong AI. You might not like my reviews :)

    770:

    A few links, just because.

    On topic: What it says. Requires admin access to camera (aquisition of such access out of scope.) Air gap? Hah. Oh, you mean air opaque to IR. Right. aIR-Jumper: Covert Air-Gap Exfiltration/Infiltration via Security Cameras & Infrared (IR) (18 Sep 2017) See table 2 for refs to other work.

    New twist for climate models. (Probably not good.) Getting increasingly frothed up about climate change and associated politics/interests. (As we all should be.) This is about dry air eating snow before it hits the ground. Katabatic winds diminish precipitation contribution to the Antarctic ice mass balance (25 Sep 2017, abstract only without access.) via The wind sublimates snowflakes in Antarctica We found using unprecedented data collected over 1 year on the coast of Adélie Land and simulations from different atmospheric models that low-level sublimation accounts for a 17% reduction of total snowfall over the continent and up to 35% on the margins of East Antarctica, significantly affecting satellite-based estimations close to the ground. Our findings suggest that, as climate warming progresses, this process will be enhanced and will limit expected precipitation increases at the ground level.

    Aluminium that floats in water! Not actually made (by humans) yet; computationally designed. Supertetrahedral Aluminum - a New Allotropic Ultra-Light Crystalline Form of Aluminum (18 Sep 2017. Abstract only without access.) A new metastable ultra-light crystalline form of aluminum has been computationally designed using density functional calculations with imposing periodic boundary conditions. The geometric and electronic structures of the predicted new allotrope were calculated on the basis of a diamond lattice in which all carbon atoms are replaced by aluminum Al4 tetrahedra. The new form of crystalline aluminum has extremely low density 0.61 g/cm3 and would float in water. The new aluminum form is a semimetal and shows high plasticity. (bold mine.)

    771:

    The laser cannon intended for the F-35 (assuming it ever gets produced and equipped) is not a non-lethal or sub-lethal weapons system, it's designed to punch holes in anti-aircraft missiles and (if they come close enough) enemy aircraft. Assuming it can be powered properly it can shoot off-axis using tracking optics so the pilot doesn't need to dogfight to point the laser to where the target is. No deflection shots required either since it's speed-of-light and at altitude there's no cloud or other obstructions to limit its effective range. It's not going to be particularly functional in thick air near the ground or in clouds.

    The STOVL version, the F-35B is intended for US Navy amphibious landing ships for the US Marines -- the existing Tarawa class and the new America class flat-tops run to about 43,000 tonnes each but they are gas-turbine powered so they don't have steam plant to power conventional catapults. It's the same with the new Royal Navy QE carriers which will also equip with the F35-B since again they don't have steam plant to power catapults (or sufficient electrical generating capacity and storage to power electrical catapult systems of the sort the US nuclear carriers are being equipped with).

    The Big Thing for the F35 series aircraft is to act as a theatre director, working well forward into an enemy's (i.e. Russian) air defence system while being able to take control of missiles fired from behind it by other less-stealthy aircraft and direct them to targets and to verify hit/miss situations and redirect followup attacks. Nothing in the existing toybox can do this sort of thing, until and unless the air defence system is degraded by expending a lot of mission hours, weapons and airframe losses.

    772:

    Why, oh why, do we need a stealth plane that can hover?

    Simple, really - because it's cheaper to operate.

    That may sound strange, but there are several things to consider in a naval aircraft:

  • Making an airframe strong enough to cope with being dragged off the deck by its nosewheel, and the barely-controlled crashes that are CATOBAR (catapult take-off but arrested recovery)
  • Carrying enough fuel to allow you to circle for a few minutes while queuing for your one-at-a-time landings; a few minutes more if someone else cocks up said controlled crash; and having to do a complete emergency-power takeoff and another landing, if your tailhook misses the wire
  • The training burden imposed by needing to learn the skill of landing on a postage stamp before going out and doing it for real; and the training burden involved in keeping in practice. The US effectively has one of its carriers devoted to driving around providing training to Biggles
  • By contrast, the STOVL (short take-off, vertical landing) is a much more gentle affair; can be achieved with very little training; and is less likely to go horribly wrong. Typically, the planned safe margin of fuel held in a STOVL aircraft for when it gets home, is a ton or more less than that of a CATOBAR aircraft. And regarding "easier", the very first carrier landing that several RAF pilots did, was on HMS Hermes on their way to the Falklands War.

    CATOBAR makes sense for the US Navy, because it has enough carriers to keep all their pilots and trainees "worked up"; and their carriers are big enough to chuck aircraft off the front in multiples, and carry enough tanker aircraft to keep the others flying if they get home and there's a problem.

    CATOBAR makes much less sense for the Royal Navy, which will only have one carrier in service at a time; and will operate a combined F-35B force with the Royal Air Force. Those aircraft can surge onto the carrier, or fight from land bases, at very short notice.

    The other kind of carrier is called STOBAR (short take-off but arrested landing - typically involving a "ski jump" at the front); this is the system that the Russians and Chinese currently use. The problem is that you can't take off at full load; it's a case of "fuel or ordnance, you can't take both". Launching tankers, and then strike aircraft with full loads but light on fuel, slow things down somewhat - and limits the amount of missions that the design can carry out.

    Note that the Russian carrier that recently visited Syria did so by arriving, and flying all of its aircraft off to a land base. During its flight operations in the Mediterranean, it managed to crash two of its complement of twelve aircraft - this stuff is tricky (and dangerous)

    773:

    that things like the Abrams and the Tornado weren't just about a more complex tank, or a more elaborate bomber

    They may have been more complex, but at the same time were effectively simpler and more reliable. Take a look at the loss rates in peacetime training for the Gloster Meteor; then the BAC Lightning; then the Tornado; and now the Typhoon.

    At each stage, the maintenance requirements have dropped, the reliability has risen, and the safety has increased. It's the answer to the question "why does it seem to take so long to develop a new aircraft, we used to develop a new one every few years?". For example, the old F-14 demanded 60 maintenance hours for every flying hour, and a squadron was about 450 strong; the F-18 demanded 10 hours, and a squadron was 250 strong - for better availability on the carrier. The English Electric Lightning was notoriously leaky and maintenance hungry; Tornado demanded 27 hours, while the Typhoon demands 9.

    Regarding losses, the RAF lost 890-odd Meteors (from 3500 or so) to accidents; killing 450 aircrew. Of the 500 or so Typhoons built, AIUI there have been only three fatal crashes (one tragically in the last week, in Italy)

    At each stage, the technology has become safer and more reliable; hardly the sign of "baroque"...

    774:

    As a replacement for something like, oh, the A-10, it's crap. As a replacement for the Harrier, it melts the decks of the boats it's supposed to STOL out over. As a replacement for the F-16, it's likely crap too, but we'll see.

    That appears to be somewhat out-of-date, and possibly... ill-informed? information. Red Flag 2017 says otherwise. Here's a video on the flight testing progress of the F-35C, as presented to the Tailhook Association (yes, that Tailhook)

    https://youtu.be/ZSIzWFxznvM

    Here are USMC and USAF Generals describing what the F-35A and F-35B bring to Red Flag; note the comments on survivability near the end (5 minute clip)

    https://youtu.be/zgLjNsB_hyM

    So, no. Apparently not.

    775:

    Intersting to note that the M1 was actually the 3rd try, there were two flat out failures one of which reminds me of the F-35

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBT-70

    776:

    I quite love the end of the MBT-story: "The Germans pulled out... later the US cancelled the joint project". It's very Trumpian "you won't come? Fine, you're not invited".

    777:

    Ooh, now we can have a tech argument by semi-informed people, of which I am one! Brilliant!

    This sounds suspiciously like the arguments that preceded the creation of Top Gun school back in the 60s. We had these super-technical planes that could stand off and kill things without engaging them (a perennial American preoccupation), and when said planes kept getting pulled into dog fights and shredded regardless of doctrine, we had to learn how to dogfight again (at least, this is the Navy version of the story. The USAF version of the story was that better technology solved all the problems from Rolling Thunder, shut up already).

    So we've got a flying Swiss Army knife that is the F-35, either with a horribly noisy ducted fan (the hometown Miramar Marine version), or with something else stupid loaded in there, like a line of sight laser cannon (useful in rain and dust storms, I'm sure). What does all this versatility do in a dog-fight, while the pilot's trying to figure out which weapon to use? That's a good question. We've already seen that they fudged the test results from the first round, and given who's in the White House I'm only going to buy the tally from actual aerial conflict, not tests that might conceivably be rigged to save careers and buy PR. Again, I've been watching Ken Burns too much recently, about the Vietnam War.

    Personally, I'm not impressed by the F-35, but then again, I've got those and F-16s roaring over me at $5000.00 an hour all day, like knights of old when men were bold (and so on), along with the pilots and wannabes weaving in and out of traffic all day like they're Tom Cruise on the way to the bar. So I'm a little sick of it all, and I expect the scruffy peasants likely will figure out cheap ways to take these suckers out, much as the handgonner and polearm formations made life miserable for knights back in the day. Perhaps it will be something as simple as figuring out how to hack the cockpits of networked planes.

    In other news, as Charlie pointed out, the A-10 might be replaced by a crop duster, if they can figure out how to uparmor the crop duster's cockpit to make it survivable at close range (or we could just take the North Korean solution and buy Russian cropdusters that allegedly are so overpowered they could fly backwards. But their cockpits are unarmored). That plan, incidentally, came from the brother of Erik Prince, head of what used to be Blackwater, merc, former SEAL, and brother of Betsy DeVos, the current US Secretary of Education. What could possibly go wrong?

    778:

    Re: F-35

    How many drones can you buy for the same price as one F-35? AI or remote human guided drones are already out there, and their tech is improving. Plus, drones are safer to 'pilot', require less training (therefore less expensive personnel costs), less massive floating infrastructure, less expensive maintenance (because doesn't have to stay safe-for-human-life), better/faster more direct coordination potential via direct satellite/electronic-AI or human-HQ interface. Maybe the urgency for selling the govt's on the F-35 is really the last gasp of an industry that knows it's on its way and is desperately trying to squeeze every last penny out of the system. Some folk here probably can answer: How did the various militaries phase out cavalries and pack animals and phase in motor vehicles and tanks between WW1 and WW2?

    BTW, the cost over the life of the proposed US F-35s is over $1.2 TRILLION so far.

    779:

    How did the various militaries phase out cavalries and pack animals and phase in motor vehicles

    The transition to having an air force might also be informative. IIRC that particular transition involved a degree of arse-handing-to, as did the advent of tanks. We see the same first mover advantage happening with drones, from the alleged sinking of an Israeil ship to the alleged use of drones by ISIS. And the not at all disputed request by the authorities that that guy in NZ refrain from building cruise missiles in his garage please.

    My expectation is that at some point an F35 will be downed by a few hundred grand worth of drones, not inconceivably by the expedient of filling the sky with cheap ones and letting the F35 (fail to) run its engines on them. It would in some ways be more amusing to fly a drone full of expanding foam or glue into the engine of one on the ground.

    780:

    Well, the marines, due to their WWII experience, insist on a STOL just in case they have to take off from a beach or atoll again. I give you the Hawker Harrier, still used by USMC & unbelievably stupidly, abandoned by us ....

    Story regarding Belize where next door ( Guatemala ) were conducting "exercises" & "People's Marches" etc to try to take over ... to be met, not too far inside the Belize border, by a few Herfeord Hooligans, who kindly suggested that they desist ... aided by a Harrier either taking off, or landing right behind them .... They desisted

    VSTOL is amazingly useful - if you can include "stealth" as well, I would have thought the advantages were obvious?

    781:

    Unless the "F" 35 ( "F" is a horrible misnomer here, really, isn't it, if it's a "director" aircraft? ) is acting as "Queen Wasp" for a small swarm of drones, in which case: Scissors / Paper / Stone Um

    782:
    Re: F-35 How many drones can you buy for the same price as one F-35?

    However, the real question, which the military wonks are never asking—not here on the board and certainly not in the governments who make their citizens pay the price—, is how much non-violent conflict resolution you can buy for the same price as one F-35, or even a fleet of them? How many expert peace workers can you train and employ? Or some other questions off the top of my head: How many prospective warlords can you simply pay off and send them into a comfortable early retirement? How many people's livelihoods can you improve so much that their potentially violent and lethal conflicts don't arise in the first place? How much education towards mutual understanding and respect can you buy? How many young people in bleak places can you give a perspective for their future, so that they won't need to radicalise and become armed combatants in the first place? How many social structures can you strengthen? And how much temperature rise—that would be the source of so much violent conflict in the future—can you prevent?

    783:

    Not to mention that one of the most successful and useful aircraft in both Korea and Vietnam was a humble cheap Cessna variant, which flew low and slow and did the FAC role, loitering mostly just out of range.

    I'm not sure what benefit a stealthy F35 has for drone controls over say a 777 equivalent hanging around for hours just out of range with a top line comms set and a big gas tank. Heck make it like the movie planes with a separate loading bay at the rear, and you can even act as a mobile resupply depot for them or just throw new ones out the back as needed.

    785:
    I believe the USAF is now seriously considering a replacement for the A-10 that's suitable for the sort of asymmetric warfare and fire support missions the A-10 is overkill for. Some of the contenders are modified crop-dusters.

    ...how many Spad airframes still exist?

    786:

    Martin wrote: By contrast, the STOVL (short take-off, vertical landing) is a much more gentle affair; can be achieved with very little training; and is less likely to go horribly wrong. The accident rate for Harriers in both UK and US Marine Corp seems to be much higher than for the Tornado or Typhoon, which suggests to me that it is much more likely to go horribly wrong.

    Typically, the planned safe margin of fuel held in a STOVL aircraft for when it gets home, is a ton or more less than that of a CATOBAR aircraft.

    That's because the Vertical Landing part of the flight is so horribly inefficient that there is a very tight margin between "enough fuel to land" and "too much weight for the engine thrust and crashing". Ask any pilot whether they like coming home with less fuel on board. And in emergencies F-14s, F-18s, etc have been able to glide in and land without fuel on CATOBAR carriers. Usually a rough landing, but at least the pilot survives and the damage is limited by the barriers. STOVL Harriers or F-35Bs that run of out fuel can't land, just crash.

    CATOBAR makes sense for the US Navy, because it has enough carriers to keep all their pilots and trainees "worked up"; and their carriers are big enough to chuck aircraft off the front in multiples, and carry enough tanker aircraft to keep the others flying if they get home and there's a problem.

    The US Navy wants bigger aircraft that can carry more fuel and weapons. Catapults let aircraft take off with heavier loads. That's been a real problem for the Harrier: in the Falklands campaign the British couldn't launch an airstrike on the Argentine ships 320km away because the Harriers couldn't fly that far with bombs as well, even though that distance would have been easily achievable by WW2 carrier aircraft, let alone F-18s. The F-35B will likewise be more limited in range and payload than its A and C cousins, which in turn means having to fly more missions for the same effect.

    And air-to-air refuelling is impossible for the STOVL carriers because they can't launch heavily loaded aircraft such as tankers. So if there's damage to the carrier deck, the CATOBAR aircraft can as you say refuel and hang around in the air until the problem is resolved. The STOVL aircraft don't have that option.

    787:

    However, the real question, which the military wonks are never asking—not here on the board and certainly not in the governments who make their citizens pay the price—, is how much non-violent conflict resolution you can buy for the same price as one F-35, or even a fleet of them?

    Always a hard question.

    I argue that it is not an either-or proposition. Internally in Western countries we work on education for mutual understanding and strengthening social structures, but we also have police and jails. Some people do renounce force entirely, but the majority of the population think that we need a balance.

    How do the levels of violence, discrimination against minorities, etc compare between countries that buy expensive military hardware: USA, UK, France, Germany, Canada, Australia; and countries that don't: South Sudan, Central African Republic, Myanmar? I think it's more complicated than just "if we didn't spend money on arms we'd be better off"

    788:

    The Harrier accidents were not usually during landings, they were generally flying near ground level. There was a problem with early Harriers landing vertically involving inadvertant roll close to the ground but that was fixed by the development of attitude thrusters fed by bleed air at the ends of the wings.

    Carrier aircraft doing regular landings dump excess fuel and external ordnance before approach as they can't land too heavy since their undercarriage won't take the shock load -- a regular landing into traps is VERY hard. In contrast a VL aircraft can land with significant amounts of fuel on board and the F35-B has more VL power than the Harrier had since its power plant has less in the way of compromises. VTO is a stunt, yes but it's not an operational requirement except for a very odd set of circumstances such as the Atlantic Conveyor aircraft-on-board setup (A Harrier prepositioned on a platform made from shipping containers, configured for close-in anti-aircraft defence with no real range) and the Skyhook system the Royal Navy experimented with (Harrier recovery and relaunch on destroyers using a computer-controlled crane).

    As for in-flight refuelling, STOVL aircraft can refuel from helicopters although I don't think any military currently provides that sort of capability since few of them have any STOVL aircraft in service. Regular zoom-boom carrier aircraft can't stay in the air with precision at the sorts of speeds helicopters fly at but it's not a problem for STOVL.

    The US Navy is getting CATOBAR F35s, the F35-C IIRC. The new electric catapults in the Ford class carriers are better than the old steam-driven units in previous generations providing less mechanical shock to the aircraft being launched and hence less damage and extended airframe life (and reduced operational costs). They can also launch drones, something the steam catapults can't do as they're too overpowered and can't be dialled back the way the electromagnetic launcher can be.

    789:

    However, the real question, which the military wonks are never asking—not here on the board and certainly not in the governments who make their citizens pay the price—, is how much non-violent conflict resolution you can buy for the same price as one F-35, or even a fleet of them? How many expert peace workers can you train and employ?

    Not true. It's a subject of great interest in government; as witnessed by the arguments between FCO, DFID, and the Armed Forces in Afghanistan. See several subsequent debates on the subject by Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles

    Even within the military, violence is very definitely seen as a spectrum; (General) Rupert Smith wrote a very good book on that subject called "The Utility of Force". One of the British Army formations that controlled forces in Afghanistan certainly attempted a more "non-kinetic" approach (52 Bde, which at the time was based in Edinburgh, commanded by Brigadier Andrew Mackay; he went on to co-author a book titled "Behavioural Conflict: Why Understanding People and Their Motives Will Prove Decisive in Future Conflict").

    One of the problems is that while "we" might have a desired end-state of peace, prosperity for all, chocolate fountains and pet unicorns - the local actors might have a different set of priorities. For example, something as simple as a refugee camp can suffer (as in Rwanda) if a local militia group decides that "inside the refugee camp" an excellent place to get fed, find recruits, and not get bombed.

    790:

    Catapults let aircraft take off with heavier loads.

    That's a bit of a simplification. Catapults fire off a flat deck; no ski jump, so the aircraft has to be at flyable airspeed in a very short distance. The amount of force you can put through the nosewheel is limited; launching a heavier aircraft requires more force.

    The way that heavily loaded aircraft are launched, is for the CATOBAR carrier to turn into the wind, and put its foot down. If you've got a breezy day (say, 20kts of speed into 30kts of wind) you've just taken 50kt off the speed you have to throw the aircraft off the pointy end of the boat. In fact, to get a heavily loaded aircraft off the deck, this is vital.

    The best example of this is in the Falklands War - it was the Argentinians who couldn't launch a strike, because it was a calm day. By contrast, the Royal Navy's STOVL carriers were able to carry on flying, whether calm or even on days when the USN had to stop. This was apparently noted in the North Atlantic, not just the South Atlantic.

    I can recommend "Sea Harrier over the Falklands", by Sharkey Ward (if you ignore the huge chip on his shoulder regarding the RAF - he's a bit... "intense", shall we say)

    That's been a real problem for the Harrier: in the Falklands campaign the British couldn't launch an airstrike on the Argentine ships 320km away because the Harriers couldn't fly that far with bombs as well

    Politely put, I'm not sure that you're correct there. After all, Harriers spent a chunk of the war happily bombing Port Stanley from the carriers - remember "I counted them all out, and I counted them all back"? The Harriers were regularly bombing targets across the Falklands, throughout the war.

    So if there's damage to the carrier deck, the CATOBAR aircraft can as you say refuel and hang around in the air until the problem is resolved. The STOVL aircraft don't have that option.

    You're forgetting - they can land on anything that has a helicopter deck. And even a few things that haven't (there's a famous incident of a Sea Harrier with a broken radio choosing to land on a Spanish freighter rather than eject. Salvage was paid...)

    The F-35B will likewise be more limited in range and payload than its A and C cousins, which in turn means having to fly more missions for the same effect.

    That assumes that all your aircraft will always operate from your very large carrier. However, the USMC intends to base F-35B on some of its smaller-than-a-CVN amphibious warfare ships (and hence closer to the operations), and eventually be able to operate them from austere forward arming+refuelling points ashore (as they did the Harrier). You can't really do that with F-35C. Here's a description, with pictures of the Forward Operating Base at San Carlos during the Falklands War

    Note also that most modern operations involving strike aircraft flown from carriers, have involved land-based support aircraft. This includes recent USN operations from their CVBG; lots of cases where the carrier strike aircraft were refuelled from RAF tankers and guided by RAF/USAF AWACS. Further back, there were Nimrods flying around the Falkland Islands (hence arming them with AIM-9), not to mention BLACK BUCK.

    Fundamentally, you're saying that the RAF/RN and USMC are wrong to choose F-35B. They, who actually understand the problem at a professional level, think differently. Beware Dunning-Kruger...

    791:

    That assumes that all your aircraft will always operate from your very large carrier. However, the USMC intends to base F-35B on some of its smaller-than-a-CVN amphibious warfare ships (and hence closer to the operations),

    The USMC is buying the F35-B for its Tarawa and America-class amphibious ships in part because it's got a greater range than the 1970s-design Harrier because they want to keep those ships further away from hostile coasts which might deploy anti-shipping missiles in the Exocet/Silkworm class which fly quite nicely from off-the-back-of-a-truck launchers.

    792:

    I have the feeling that there may be an overlap between readers of this blog and readers of xkcd.

    &lt/understatement&gt

    793:

    This includes recent USN operations from their CVBG; lots of cases where the carrier strike aircraft were refuelled from RAF tankers

    That isn't possible without major refits to either the tankers or the strike aircraft.

    794:

    All we have to do now is ensure the err .. anti-catholic vote succeds, I suppose. Any predictions at this early date as to likely outcome?

    795:

    I'm not sure how much help someone who takes a referendum about pregnant people's rights and jumps up and down on historic bigotry in exactly the way likely to convert what are currently soft yeses to noes will be to be honest, Greg.

    796:

    In spite of my vicarious enjoyment at seeing posters display hard-won tech expertise as they vie and contend over fighter jet details, it may be time to put this thread to sleep. So in the interest of encouraging O.G.H. to suggest an alternate topic, I'll just stink up the chatroom with the following:

    I've been watching the Vietnam series too, and it's sad to remember how much LBJ impaired a genuine progressive social agenda with all the desperate attempts at proving his commie-fighter credentials. Largely forgotten was his brief try at business management after forgoing a second term, as CEO of a small regional carrier renamed LBJ Airways in his honor. Memorable only for its stewardesses' greeting, "Coffee, milk or our famous LBJ tea?" Just too far ahead of its time.

    797:

    The harder answer to the question is whether you actually want a stable, peaceful country... or one run by a tough man, who you can deal with, not having to worry about those peasants having other ideas about, say, whether Standard Oil of NJ, er, sorry, Exxon can come in, drill, and only use it's own people, imported from the US, for the good paying jobs, and pay the locals a pittance, and pollute the area.

    Spending money would work a lot better if you built power plants, and schools, and water treatment plants, and had a very clear #insert "you'r_country.here" presence, but were hiring locals, not the local strongman's people, and training them to run them, and paying them real wages.

    Oh, that's right, you don't wind up getting more ROI for "helping" country's corporations.

    On another note, maybe the Middle East needs a Treaty of Westphalia of its own, to replace what the UK, France & friends drew in the 20s.

    798:

    Wrong, I'm afraid.

    The USAF uses a refuelling system that's optimised for filling up a large aircraft, quickly (boom refuelling).

    The USN, USMC, and RAF tankers use probe-and-drogue refuelling; the receiving plane flies the refuelling probe into a "basket" dragged behing the tanker. This allows larger tankers to refuel several smaller aircraft at once; and allows the RAF to refuel carrier aircraft.

    https://www.raf.mod.uk/news/archive/raf-voyager-and-f35-air-to-air-refuelling-18052016

    https://www.airtanker.co.uk/raf-voyager/news-item/2014/11/06/voyager-adds-us-navy-jets-to-growing-list-of-receivers

    The RAF has bought / is now buying some aircraft that are capable of boom refuelling (C-17, RIVET JOINT, and the P-8A) but feels that the cost of new tankers outweighs the benefits of having an independent refuelling capability for said types. After all, if a NATO air tasking allows the RAF to refuel the USN, it could always allow the USAF to refuel a few RAF types.

    This is a potential problem for the selection of the new Canadian fighter aircraft; if they pick the F-35A, they're either going to need a new tanker type (the CF-18 they will be replacing, originally being a Naval type, uses probe/drogue), or to pay for the integration of a refuelling probe onto the -A.

    799:

    Ooh, now we can have a tech argument by semi-informed people, of which I am one! Brilliant! In other news, as Charlie pointed out, the A-10 might be replaced by a crop duster, if they can figure out how to uparmor the crop duster's cockpit to make it survivable at close range (or we could just take the North Korean solution and buy Russian cropdusters that allegedly are so overpowered they could fly backwards. But their cockpits are unarmored). That plan, incidentally, came from the brother of Erik Prince, head of what used to be Blackwater, merc, former SEAL, and brother of Betsy DeVos, the current US Secretary of Education. What could possibly go wrong?

    Armoring the cockpit wouldn't be that much of a problem. If the crop dusters are as overpowered as stated, just use the same "titanium bathtub" as the A-10. The larger issue is going to be engines as robust as those that power the A-10. The A-10 can take a lot of ground fire and still keep on flying to either continue the attack or at least get the pilot back to base.

    800:

    As for in-flight refuelling, STOVL aircraft can refuel from helicopters although I don't think any military currently provides that sort of capability since few of them have any STOVL aircraft in service. Regular zoom-boom carrier aircraft can't stay in the air with precision at the sorts of speeds helicopters fly at but it's not a problem for STOVL.

    Since the USAF refuels helicopters in flight from C-130 tankers, why couldn't they do the same for STOVL aircraft?

    801:

    I've been watching the Vietnam series too, and it's sad to remember how much LBJ impaired a genuine progressive social agenda with all the desperate attempts at proving his commie-fighter credentials.

    LBJ's Vietnam policy was as much a hostage to the far right as are today's (nonexistent) "moderate" Republicans.

    802:

    The A-10 can take a lot of ground fire and still keep on flying to either continue the attack or at least get the pilot back to base.

    A lot, but not enough. Which is why the A-10 isn't being replaced by a similar type. It's slow, it's non-stealthy, it's got no sensors, and little in the way of self-protection.

    Still, it's got a b1g k3wl gun go bbbrrrrrrttttttt, Awesome!

    It was OK in the days when it was only going to face the occasional ZSU-23-4 (hopefully already taken out by the AH) and SA-7; it's not really regarded as survivable in a peer fight, and is easy meat for more recent SAMs.

    It wasn't even the most successful tank-killer in DESERT STORM; that was the F-111. Recently, it found a niche providing Close Air Support in an environment where it only had to worry about an enemy that might as well have been armed with sharpened fruit; even then, the F-16 provided more CAS, possibly because the F-16 could get from "where I am" to "where I'm needed" a lot more quickly.

    Good enough in its day, but that was forty years ago in a different environment.

    803:

    Reminds me of an incident that occurred around here in 2005. A quarter inch of snow that fell during the day prompted the local school system to announce schools would be closing one to two hours early. This being the southern U.S. no one is actually prepared for snow.

    The announcement prompted many of the parents to suddenly decide to leave work early so they could be home when the kids were dropped off by the school buses. So many left work at the same time that the resultant county-wide traffic jam grid-locked people in their cars for 12 hours or more.

    804:

    You misunderstand me completely, I'm afraid. I was hinting (probably very badly) that we want a re-run of the previous referendum on "same-sex" where the RC church damned it up-hill & down-dale ... & lost to 62% against the RC. If this happens, & I'm obviously hoping it will go that way, then can NornIron be far behind?

    805:

    Duh, hit the button before typing.

    I was a parent of 2 kids in school during that mess. It was a bit more complicated. The temp was just around freezing. And I think it had been sort of drizzling and sleeting along with the snow. Which packed it down into ice. So it didn't matter how much fell, it was all a coating of ice within an hour.

    I told my son to NOT get on the bus. I waited till almost dark and went after him with our Explorer which could operate in 4 wheel drive locked if needed. Then I too the flattest route home I could. Normally 20 minute driver took over an hour.

    But the buses were a mess. Driving on ice was just bad. 3 wound up at a low spot near my house. There ware enough cell phones around by then that nearby parents came and got their kids plus extras and started calling around to let everyone know where the extra kids were going to spend the night. A few bus drivers gave up but in a smart way. They pulled over next to hotels and hospitals and a lot of kids spent the night in such places.

    Oddly I can't remember the details of my daughter. But her bus route home was mostly flat and I think she got near enough to walk.

    Cell phones made it all work. Sort of.

    But given a school system of over 100K kids things worked amazingly well.

    806:

    Nigeria?

    HOW MUCH money have Shell ( & BP I think) poured into Nigeria, and what pitiful percentage has made it past the grubby hands of the Big Men" to ordinary people?

    P.S. Is "the Vietnam series" available here, non-streaming? It does not appear to be so.

    807:

    Ah, didn't realise they used two different systems between the wet and dry types. Conversations have usually involved USAF and RAF, USN aircrew being rare round Cambridgeshire and not that common round Plymouth. No wonder it's one of the things NATO hasn't managed to standardise...

    808:

    I've been enjoying Walter Blaire's Eternal Front series, which riff on WWI and imperialism and suchlike. They're refreshingly good, being Kindle Unlimited SF with no Space Marines in sight at all, even though it's SF about a war. Also The Menagerie By Matthew W Gerring is fantastic, Banks-style far-future SF of the very good sort.

    809:

    Here's an LBJ and Vietnam link - wasn't there a recurring story that Lady Bird Johnson owned rather a lot of stock in Bell Helicopter...?

    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2007/07/the_honest_graft_of_lady_bird_johnson.html

    810:

    Not being on FB has, in short, turned from being a consumer boycott gesture to being an act of self-sabotage.

    I bit the bullet a few years back. Mainly to keep up with relatives. It was either that or to loose all contact with them.

    I'm primarily a Mac user but Safari gives me the hives. So I only use it for Facebook plus the odd web site that doesn't work anywhere else. Which means FB doesn't really know who I am or what I'm doing. None of the cross site tracking works but since I'm not blocking anything I look "ok". I also just click on "go away" every time it asks me for my cell phone number "to help my security". The ads it feeds me are fairly bland. And I don't get many of them.

    For browsing I use mostly Firefox (with Ghostery) and Chrome.

    811:

    Thanks & Interesting I usually use "fantasic fictioN" for info on any sf authors, but walter Blaire is not there - I had to google for him ... Ummmmm ....

    Ditto Gerring w.t.f? Why are these people "not visible" on what used to be a reliable, non $Big_River source?

    812:

    Re: Book recommendations

    Thanks - much appreciated!

    I'm on Tor's list and regularly get time-limited e-book freebies. Like today: '... free ebook of Envy of Angels, the first book in Matt Wallace's wickedly funny Sin du Jour series. ... Tuesday, September 26th to 12:00 PM EST on Friday, September 29th.' Book 7 is due soon and a free sample is an effective way to catch genre readers who're likely to buy any new-to-them author's entire back list.

    813:

    Re: anti-catholic votes?

    Hmmm ... I'm figuring that 'my-body,-my-choice' should pass same as LGBT rights when put to a vote in Ireland (catholic). NI (protestant) is the human rights laggard with a much higher proportion of the electorate that checks the I'm-anti-anyone-who's-not-like-me box. Maybe time to take a closer look at which religion you're against and why.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ireland-same-sex-marriage-approval/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Northern_Ireland

    814:

    Re: Catholic region and abortion

    The province of Quebec (Canada) - you know that overwhelmingly 'catholic province' thanks to its deep Jesuit and papist French heritage/roots and interesting separatist politics - has just started providing free morning-after pills through local pharmacies. To be fair, the other non-catholic provinces are also looking at how 'Plan B' might be integrated into their provincial health care systems. Still - Quebec was first.

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/abortion-pill-quebec-end-2017-1.4192848

    815:

    I think the point of the crop duster is light attack craft, and I got most of what I know about it from an article in Smithsonian Air and Space. So as usual, I'm uninformed and bloviating.

    Seriously though, the idea is to arm a low-flying, maneuverable plane with small munitions (bombs, missiles, rockets, flares and chaff, etc.) and perhaps a machine gun, primarily to go after guerillas, special ops, or other asymmetric warfare types, as well as doing recon and surveillance.

    Despite my snark, Prince isn't stupid about taking an off-the shelf design and attaching hard points, and Blackwater's been doing this kind of stuff for years. Basically, if you think of these things as guerilla warplanes, you get the right idea. Vietnam produced a bunch of these designs (A-37, OV-10), and while the OV-10 is still used in firefighting (as are cropdusters), the military as usual didn't keep up with the design when the war ended.

    816:

    Re: '... is how much non-violent conflict resolution you can buy for the same price as one F-35, or even a fleet of them?'

    Agree - major hurdle is monetizing paradise.

    817:

    Recon and surveillance is covered by dronezzz as is a lot of spec ops and anti-guerilla warfare. A pilot in a cockpit for such work is somewhat redundant, a waste of space, a cost in terms of equipment and eventual loss of personnel when things go wrong. ISIS is not likely to ever get the chance to burn a downed drone pilot alive on Youtube for the yucks.

    Slow planes take a long time to get somewhere from a base and a long time to get back, it's a factor with the A-10 compared to the supersonic-capable ground attack planes that have generally replaced it in that role. There are a few contenders for such a niche out there (the Textron AirLand Scorpion is one) but they tend to be day-ops only and don't have the heft, range and integrated systems capabilities of the more expensive but more capable fighter/bomber designs.

    The F35 may be the last manned fighter "family" the US produces -- I'd not be surprised to see a drone version of the same chassis eventually developed to free up the cockpit space and "keeping a meatbag alive at 9 gees" gear for something more useful.

    818:

    An odd weakness, as viciously sharp mangoes have been known insurgent weapons for ages :-)

    http://allblackadderscripts.blogspot.ca

    819:

    Martin wrote: Fundamentally, you're saying that the RAF/RN and USMC are wrong to choose F-35B. They, who actually understand the problem at a professional level, think differently. Beware Dunning-Kruger...

    If that's the impression I gave, sorry I did not mean to. Just wanted to list some of the disadvantages that you seemed to be minimising. STOVL or CATOBAR is a tradeoff, and if the RN wants STOVL, fair enough. Thanks for the references.

    820:

    Whitroth wrote: Spending money would work a lot better if you built power plants, and schools, and water treatment plants, and had a very clear #insert "you'r_country.here" presence, but were hiring locals, not the local strongman's people, and training them to run them, and paying them real wages.

    What if some of the locals don't want your powerplants and, especially, schools? The original post talked about education towards mutual understanding and respect. Suppose, as happens in Afghanistan and other countries, some of the locals decide they don't want equal rights for women and start killing the teachers?

    821:

    I'm agin all religions, in case you hadn't noticed .....

    822:

    The usual answer, actually: "Kill all the priests!" Where that means priest-equivalents, of course ....

    Funny how (almost all) religions can be detected by theore "Women are subservient & have no voice" attitude - communism seems to be the exception here (I think)

    823:

    I give you the Hawker Harrier, still used by USMC & unbelievably stupidly, abandoned by us ....

    Apparently flying one leads to more deaths per flight hour than any other plane in the armed forces. So there's a desire to replace it.

    824:

    which the military wonks are never asking

    Mattis seems to say it.

    825:

    Regular zoom-boom carrier aircraft can't stay in the air with precision at the sorts of speeds helicopters fly at but it's not a problem for STOVL.

    I thought the US Navy used hose to a probe setup. Which works for copters and other slow aircraft.

    826:

    This is a potential problem for the selection of the new Canadian fighter aircraft; if they pick the F-35A, they're either going to need a new tanker type (the CF-18 they will be replacing, originally being a Naval type, uses probe/drogue), or to pay for the integration of a refuelling probe onto the -A.

    Per our friend Wikipedia

    The F-35A can be outfitted to receive fuel via either of the two main aerial refueling methods; this was a consideration in the Canadian procurement and a deciding factor for the Japanese purchase.

    827:

    I'm referring to a fast-mover jet refuelling from a helicopter tanker which can deploy off a non-CATOBAR carrier. A STOVL aircraft can fly slow enough to remain stable in flight behind a helicopter and refuel, a fast-mover is close to stalling at helicopter speeds and not as stable.

    The other method of refuelling for STOVL is buddy tankering but it requires multiple aircraft movements on and off the deck. A CATOBAR-equipped carrier can launch dedicated tankers which can refuel multiple aircraft, loiter etc. which is more efficient. A helicopter tanker (or perhaps an OV-22-based solution) has some of those capabilities but is more limited than a fixed-wing tanker.

    I'd love to see some tests of an A400M flying on and off the QE carriers, similar to the C-130 flights done on the Forrestal back in the 1960s. The A400M has built-in refuelling plumbing, it just needs fuel bladders and hose gear fitted to work as a tanker.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar-poc38C84

    828:

    The way that heavily loaded aircraft are launched, is for the CATOBAR carrier to turn into the wind, and put its foot down. If you've got a breezy day (say, 20kts of speed into 30kts of wind) you've just taken 50kt off the speed you have to throw the aircraft off the pointy end of the boat. In fact, to get a heavily loaded aircraft off the deck, this is vital.

    I suspect your ship speed is low by 30% or so.

    Anyway a former USN pilot who flew supply planes off carriers told of the time they didn't turn into the wind. Actually they were running with the wind. He said they later said they couldn't turn and make their destination. But they didn't tell them before the launch. Later the flight ops people said sorry about the hard launch. As my friend went to the back of the plane to find his eyeballs.

    829:

    Yeah, I think that's right. I keep expecting them to act like 'real' people. When they don't, I get enough of a jolt to bring me out of the 'willing suspension of disbelief'.

    Of course most 30s films weren't meant to be 'real', they were escape fantasy for people living through the depression. Everyone was rich and wore a gown or a tux all the time drank cocktails and spent most of their waking hours at a dinner show. It's not surprising that the lines were practically undeliverable.

    830:

    plus one for 'Walkaway'.

    I'm half way through it on your recommendation. Enjoying it very much. Thanks for that.

    SPOILERS FOR WALKAWAY

    DON'T LOOK IF YOU HAVEN'T READ IT YET

    Many themes relevant to the original thread.

    Slight jolt in this has been that it takes so much time for shit to get real. North America seems completely happy for you to move into a cardboard box and live there the rest of your life, but if you try to have nice things without being connected to the rest of the grid, you get the 'Our Records Show' letter and about 90 days later someone with a gun shows up and they take the nice things away and shoo you off. If you don't let them, many people with guns show up and then next day tanks show up. Letting things fester for years isn't in their playbook.

    831:

    Re: '... agin all religions'

    Nope - hadn't noticed - guessin' I shudda done a frequency distribution?

    832:

    Re: F-35 - can't fly in the rain

    This technological wonder bird is very fussy and won't fly in the rain. So if GW gets worse with higher temp, which means increased humidity (water vapor), which translates into more RAIN storms, buying a fleet of F-35s is really really dumb. (Anyone - esp. A_D) happen to know whether LMA donates to climate change deniers?)

    http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/07/11/rainstorm-shuts-down-f35-demo-on-first-day-of-farnborough.html

    833:

    And films were written more like plays then, indeed many were closely adapted from stage plays. A more naturalistic style and letting the pictures tell more of the story was something that developed in time. Acting styles also changed from the theatrical to the minimalist.

    834:

    I think the point of the crop duster is light attack craft, and I got most of what I know about it from an article in Smithsonian Air and Space. So as usual, I'm uninformed and bloviating.

    Seriously though, the idea is to arm a low-flying, maneuverable plane with small munitions (bombs, missiles, rockets, flares and chaff, etc.) and perhaps a machine gun, primarily to go after guerillas, special ops, or other asymmetric warfare types, as well as doing recon and surveillance.

    Doesn't look like they intend these to be added to U.S. inventory, i.e. it's not a replacement for the A-10. They're meant to be sold to some less technologically sophisticated client state like Iraq or Afghanistan who aren't up to maintaining A-10s.

    Or possibly for sale to those client states where we wouldn't care to see sophisticated weapon systems fall into the hands of the Taliban, ISIL/ISIS or the like, which gives some idea of what the DoD really thinks the outcome is going to be.

    835:

    “I give you the Hawker Harrier, still used by USMC & unbelievably stupidly, abandoned by us ....”

    Apparently flying one leads to more deaths per flight hour than any other plane in the armed forces.

    ... as long as you don't count the V-22 Osprey.

    836:

    For anybody who is wanting to read more about LBJ, this site has been running through presidential biographies. The author started in 2013 with George Washington, and has finally made it to LBJ.

    Robert Caro's five-volume biography of LBJ (four volumes published so far; next expected in 2020 or so) is supposed to be the biography.

    837:

    P.S. Is "the Vietnam series" available here, non-streaming? It does not appear to be so.

    Hard to say. It's on iTunes for $7 per episode. Each about an hour and half. Total is about 18 hours.

    Ken Burns other big documentaries first air on PBS for free in the US but then go to paid only except for an occasional rerun.

    I'm watching is via the PBS app on an AppleTV but that still requires that I have a cable subscription somewhere to authenticate the PBS app. And yes I'm legal but it's complicated.

    If you every want an interesting history of the US, Ken Burn's Baseball is a great history of the US as told as a history of the game. Race relations and all.

    838:

    Thanks ... That lead led to THIS WARNING - from Cory. I think everyone should read it, as he says, it's boring. technical & important.

    [ DRM, DIsney & other crooks, closing down sections of the Web, boring things like that ... ]

    839:

    Reading comprehension fail (or deliberate misrepresentation, you choose).

    If you read your own link, the rain flooded the venue. Temporary venue, lots of electric cabling, so they shut down the whole exhibition for the day. Unsurprisingly, that also included cancelling the flying display (I suspect you wouldn’t see much through the rain, either).

    840:

    ...the A400M is a bit bigger than a C-130, so unlikely...

    The UK is apparently keeping on some of its C-130, because there are certain jobs where size matters (think Hereford), and the A400M is a bit big.

    As for “unsafe Harriers”, it was on a par with other aircraft of its era. If you want scary, consider the Luftwaffe trying to use a high-altitude interceptor (as in, “originally had a downward-firing ejector seat”) at low level - the Starfighter, aka Widowmaker, aka Lockheed’s most productive bribe.

    The Harrier was a light bomber, designed to operate close to the front. So, short-legged, which means proportionally more takeoffs and landings per flying hour. It was also quite basic; so, lots of high-pilot-workload stuff at low-level. I suspect that much of the increased risk came from the role, not just the type.

    The UK got rid of it because we simply couldn’t afford to run two different bomber fleets (Tornado and Harrier). Or rather, you can afford to keep more aircraft in total if you chop one entire type, rather than reduce the numbers in the two fleets. Tornado could do stuff that Harrier couldn’t, so bye bye Harrier as an acknowledged gap until the arrival of F-35B (which will, in turn, replace Tornado).

    841:

    I don't think anyone else is going to be buying A-10s. The last new airframe came off the production line in 1984, over thirty years ago. Boeing has a pork contract to rewing some A-10s for the USAF but that's it.

    Single-seater ground-attack aircraft are generally a not-good concept -- close to the ground pilots like to concentrate on flying the plane because the ground is not your friend in such situations. Concentrating on where ordnance is landing and trying not to walk the fire of a BFG through friendlies close to the Bad Guys means the pilot is not concentrating on flying the plane and Rule 1, somebody should be flying the plane applies.

    Bombers are almost always two-seaters at minimum so the pilot can do her job while the back-seater (or side-seater) selects targets and unloads ordnance appropriately. A lot of the light attack planes being suggested for wog-stomping operations are two-seater for this reason. It helps that a lot of them are based on prop and jet trainers (Tucano, Hawk etc.) that are already available in light-attack variants.

    842:

    The RN made a fundamental mistake in opting for large carriers, but cheaping out on the power plants to save money by going for gas turbines rather than nuclear. The UK has its own nuclear marine reactor manufacturing capability — we build our own SSNs and SSBNs — but a reactor for a CVN would be somewhat different, so probably add a couple of billions per hull to the cost of the carrier program, not to mention several thousand tons to the size of each ship.

    No reactor meant no steam catapults (the electromagnetic cats for the new US carriers not being available at the time of the decision to build the carriers). No steam meant STOVL looked like a good idea.

    Midway through the construction program the government had a huge wobble — one or two — over the viability of the F-35B, so pivoted and demanded electromagnetic catapults, allowing them to fly the F-35C naval variant (or even F-18s instead). But this ran into insanely rapid cost escalation (because of the unsuitable power plant design that had already been settled on) and they pivoted back again after wasting about £200M.

    TLDR: there's a tightly coupled interaction between the design of an aircraft carrier and the types of aircraft it can fly and the propulsion system it needs, and an attempt to save £2-3Bn on the program led to it going £4-5Bn over budget and delivering somewhat less capable ships.

    (Assuming your interests are best served by building a couple of maxi-sized imperial penis-substitutes for waving in the face of uppity foreigners, of course. I gather the USMC are ecstatic about the pair of luxury-sized amphibious assault support ships the Royal Navy is providing to support their mission.)

    843:

    Ref your para 3 - German joke from back in the day.

    "How do I get to own a Starfighter?"

    "Buy a farm near an airfield, and wait."

    844:

    Apparently flying one leads to more deaths per flight hour than any other plane in the armed forces. So there's a desire to replace it.

    Only by comparison with current aircraft (the Harrier is the evolutionary end-point of an early 1960s design, and prior to the 1980s it really was a widowmaker). If you want truly lethal military aircraft, the 1950s/early naval jet age was special. (Can't recall it's name off-hand but there was one Royal Navy strike aircraft in the 1950s and early 1960s, only in service for about 8 years, where they crashed about 60% of the entire build and killed a third of the aircrew. In eight years.)

    845:

    Getting the impression that what the movers & shakers want is a return to a nineteenth century social structure, with a veneer of Technology! to hopefully make it work this time. A distinct possibility of Rube Goldberg studies also, may we all be clear of the debris field when it falls down.

    846:

    Fairchild-Republic proposed a two seat all weather variant, but the USAF didn't bight. Ideally, an A-10 replacement should start with a clean sheet of paper and be named after some 70 year old warbird it vaguely resembles to generate warm fuzzies in warbird buffs. No "Mustang ][, too suggestive of Ford's Pinto derivative.

    847:

    Re: F-35 and downpour

    Only have commercial airplane passenger experience including landing during a downpour. Understand that heavy rain can add to slickness however this is why commercial craft have reverse thrusters. Ditto for sudden strong wind gusts during some downpours. Ditto lightning rods - see below. It's bewildering that such a high-tech (expensive) beast as the F-35 cannot do what your standard commercial jet is required to do.

    Another weather-related example when the F-35 couldn't (but other aircraft could) fly.

    http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a53734/f-35-thunderstorm/

    Excerpt:

    'Well, they can look up all they want, especially in Australia, but they're not going to be seeing any F-35s. At least not until the weather clears. From Australian Aviation:

    "Due to weather in Amberley the F-35A will now depart the Avalon Airshow on Monday, 6 March rather than Sunday, 5 March as previously scheduled," a statement by the RAAF issued on Sunday afternoon reads."It is well documented that the F-35A aircraft requires modifications for lightning protection and these modifications have not yet been completed on the two visiting Australian aircraft. As safety is Air Force's priority, the aircraft will not fly in conditions where lightning is present. Prior to return to Australia, the Australian F-35A will be modified with lightning protection."

    Yes, friends. Our new state of the art, $100 million-per-unit fighter aircraft finds it difficult to fly…in thunderstorms.

    FedEx can fly in thunderstorms. Hell, I have to fly in thunderstorms. But not this delicate piece of technology. So, I guess, if we go to war when it's raining, they're going to have to send aloft an escadrille that will drop air freight packages and frozen lavatory waste on the enemy until the sun comes out again. From ABC.net.au:'

    From what I've read/understood, such shortcomings are not common to other fighter jets. I'm also wondering about why a lengthy list of shortcomings (200+ according to some military reports) esp. as these systems are already basic requirements. It's almost like not including tires on a car: why would you skip such a fundamental? Okay - I can understand that a completely novel design might mean things don't get put in/on in the same order. But this then raises the question: if the design is that novel and you haven't tested some of the kit that will have to be added, how do you know that this kit will work correctly?

    I'm no expert and am willing to learn but this aircraft is not exactly inspiring confidence.

    848:

    The point Martin was making is that the demonstration cancellation had nothing to do with the aircraft.

    The venue was flooded, the power was cut off and everyone had to leave. There is no point in even attempting a demo flight for an audience of none.

    849:

    Re: EME(DRM)

    Where/who were the 235 non-shows? Most orgs have bylaws within their constitutions requiring a quorum with the quorum increasing with the importance of whatever measure is to be voted upon. Fundamental and substantive changes to the character and goals of an org should require more than the 46.25% participation rate for this most recent change.

    From your link:

    'A formal appeal can be triggered if more than 5 percent of the members request one. In July 2017, there were “more than 5 percent” that requested such an appeal (exact numbers not provided). This is the first appeal in the entire history of the W3C that has been allowed to occur.

    Only 185 members (out of over 400) participated in the “final poll” during the appeal. Of them, 108 supported DRM, 57 opposed it, and 20 abstained from the vote. That resulted in the W3C formalizing EME(DRM) as a standard.'

    This is the membership. BTW, membership dues/fees vary with ability to pay/revenue.

    https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List

    850:

    Re: F-35

    Looked up other places where the F-35 was actually flown. The below and the June 2017 Paris show results while impressive are not enough to change my mind that this is, long term, a betamax fighter.

    https://www.wired.com/2017/02/troubled-f-35-fighter-jet-rules-skies-toughest-test-yet/

    851:

    Maybe it is, but the specific example you cited wasn't valid.

    For the record I'm pretty unconvinced as well, but overpriced and mediocre isn't necessarily the same thing as a disaster.

    852:

    "Johnson shook down powerful companies to advertise on the station. Local businesses that wanted Army camps to remain located in Austin knew one way to secure Lyndon's help was to advertise on KTBC. Caro writes:

    … Mrs. Johnson's ability as a business woman was not the crucial factor in the acquisition of the station"

    That was quite a scam, beautiful in its circular structure. Does explain why they targeted that station for such doggedly persistent pursuit.

    And I second gasdive's kudos for the Walkaway recommendation, Cory's best so far. Probably ever.

    853:

    Seems to me that this pin-dancing-debate-that-won't-die about the merits of the F-35 is missing the point.

    The F-35 has already accomplished its primary mission: enriching defense contractors at the public expense. That's a done deal; the aircraft was unusually successful and nobody can take that achievement away.

    SFReader @778: Maybe the urgency for selling the govt's on the F-35 is really the last gasp of an industry that knows it's on its way and is desperately trying to squeeze every last penny out of the system.

    If the plane turns out to be crap in combat, the Military-Industrial Complex doesn't have to give the money back. If it turns out to be brilliant in combat, it's still a lot of money that might arguably have been better spent. (I don't know & am not trying to breathe life into that aspect of the quarrel. I'm not very knowledgeable about military aviation; just categorizing endpoint outcomes on the bang-for-the-buck axis. But I tend to follow Josef Stalin, answering his generals' complaints that the German tanks were of better quality than the T-34s the Soviet factories were producing: "Sometimes quantity has a quality all its own.")

    F-35 Lightning II: the air arm of Late Stage Capitalism.

    854:

    Yes, it was hostage. Remember, 'Nam hit forward in '65, about 11 years after Joe McCarthy went down. Though he was gone, most of the Republicans were avid Cold Warriors. But remember, they'd been that since, well, the Russian Revolution, at least. Their owners, and I use that term explicitly, thought it was horrible what happened there - the nobility slaughtered, the (few) ultrawealthy taken down, when here they thought they'd do to Russia what they were planning on doing to the "Sick Man of Europe. And they certainly didn't want competition for votes, or laws that might hurt them, and keep them from getting (TAX CUTS ARE THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING!!!!) richer.

    And, yes, to add to someone else's comment, they do want a late Victorian social structure.

    855:

    That does indeed happen. On the other hand, when you provide water and power, and as I said, make sure that folks know where it's coming from (as opposed to the local religious militants hijacking it and it's from them...), their support starts draining away.

    The point was, improve the lives of the 99%; that is how you win "hearts and minds", not killing them to save them.

    856:

    Remember, also, that talkies had only come in in the late '20, so we're talking < 15 yrs old. They were still figuring it out.

    857:

    Well, not all religions. Unless you're including Communism as one... and not including Paganism (modern).

    'Course, I must admit that almost all funnymentalists have real issues accepting any of the paths covered by the circus tent of "Paganism", when most of the members can laugh at themselves and their beliefs.....

    Time for that Ancient Pagan Chant to the Sun: Our God's the Sun God! Our God's the fun God! Ra! Ra! Ra!

    858:

    Greg @808: P.S. Is "the Vietnam series" available here, non-streaming? It does not appear to be so.

    The first episode was broadcast two days ago (25/9) on BBC4.

    Regards Luke

    859:

    <snark>They get funding from the CIA, ISI, and Saudi Arabia to stop the godless Commies?</snark>

    860:

    Correction, the first two episodes went out last Tuesday.

    861:

    Only by comparison with current aircraft (the Harrier is the evolutionary end-point of an early 1960s design, and prior to the 1980s it really was a widowmaker).

    Of course. My comment was a reply to GT implying should still be in use.

    Scary thought. US Aircraft losses in WWII. 53K in operations vs 95K total. That's a LOT of training and other..

    862:

    Developing nuclear power plants from scratch for two and only two large carriers would have cost a lot more than a couple of billion. We might have been able to use four Astute-class submarine reactors or perhaps bought in some Russian KLT40S reactors of the sort they use for their big 40,000 tonne icebreakers but the gas turbine systems fitted to the QE class carriers are simple uprates from the sort of propulsion plant being fitted to pretty much every other non-nuclear warship being built for a first-world military today. They are basically marinised aircraft engines, RR Trents I think driving generators for final electric drive. As an aside the Astute sub reactor turbines are direct-coupled to generators to drive the propulsion waterjets, they don't produce steam to power shaft drive turbines as in previous generations of nuclear subs. It's one reason the Astutes are acoustic holes in the water, less machinery noise and that noise is contained in a smaller space within the hull and hence easier to suppress.

    The upside for the QE carriers is that they can run on the same JP-5 aviation fuel they carry for aircraft operations, no need for large separate bunker fuel stores. The downside of the gas-turbine/electric drive system is that there is no steam plant on board other than maybe in the medical bay for sterilising surgical instruments. A steam catapult shot takes half a tonne of fresh water and also requires a large freshwater production plant to keep the catapults and the boilers fed, something not needed on the QE class carriers. The other downside is there's a lack of surplus electrical generating capacity on board to drive an electromagnetic launch system. There's also a lack of space to put in the power storage capability (probably flywheels) that would be required for each ELEMS "shot".

    863:

    The RN made a fundamental mistake in opting for large carriers, but cheaping out on the power plants to save money by going for gas turbines rather than nuclear. The UK has its own nuclear marine reactor manufacturing capability — we build our own SSNs and SSBNs — but a reactor for a CVN would be somewhat different, so probably add a couple of billions per hull to the cost of the carrier program, not to mention several thousand tons to the size of each ship.

    Not necessarily a mistake to build CV instead of CVN...

    It comes back to that well-known problem, that people are the expensive part of the equipment (particularly in pinch trades like "reactor engineer" - the sundodgers apparently have problems getting and keeping enough engineers as it is). The Royal Navy is running very low on people, not helped by the Army complaining that it can't possibly be cut while it's fighting in Afghanistan.

    The quote from wikipedia (I know...) is that the nuclear plant is half the build cost of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier (borne out by the build cost for both of the RN's two new carriers being cheaper than the first Ford-class CVN), and requires several hundred more crew in order to operate.

    If you choose conventional, then you can afford to build two carriers for the same price, and almost afford to crew both of them (excluding air wings, the CdeG has a crew of nearly 1400; QE-class has a crew of 700).

    More importantly, two carriers means having one of them in service while the other is under repair (the French have discovered that only having one carrier means long periods where Biggles gets bored...)

    No reactor meant no steam catapults

    The old HMS Ark Royal and HMS Eagle managed... ;)

    864:

    From what I've read/understood, such shortcomings are not common to other fighter jets. I'm also wondering about why a lengthy list of shortcomings (200+ according to some military reports) esp. as these systems are already basic requirements. It's almost like not including tires on a car: why would you skip such a fundamental?

    Not really. Regarding lightning strikes, the Luftwaffe lost a Tornado when it flew too close to a very powerful transmitter; and the US Army lost several UH-60. EM interference isn't taken lightly - they do test this stuff, but there are only so many test aircraft, and if you've been focussing on the "up-tiddly-up" and the "whoosh/bang" tests, you might not have completed the full suite of EM testing / modification / retest. Would you like to be the authorising officer who signed off on "nah, she'll be right" with a $120million aircraft?

    You're talking about an engineering project on a scale of person-millenia of design work. Millions of lines of source code. Three variants of aircraft, that have to be qualified for scores of different weapons in a range of different environments.

    I work on a small software system (five developers), and we've probably got a few score bugs that we want to fix at any given time. 200 really isn't a lot, and it rather depends what you count as a "shortcoming".

    Remember also that Boeing has production lines approaching the end of contract, and would be very happy if the F-35 order was seen as "too expensive" and that the USN should just order some of their F/A-18. Not that this desire could ever result in misinformation, perish the thought... consider what they're willing to do to Bombardier, a few words to a willing reporter are easy by comparison.

    All major aircraft projects have teething problems. Generally, they're solved, but to listen to the chatterati you'd think they were all doooooommmmmmedddd... yet thirty years later, they're vital items of equipment that cannot possibly be replaced by unreliable and overpriced new aircraft.

    The Typhoon is one such example; it's seen as a success. Safe, reliable, maintainable, outstanding performance. Ten years earlier it was being criticised for being overcomplicated, underperforming, late, and overpriced by several so-called "experts"; e.g. I was working on air-to-ground modes for its radar from its initial requirements and the signing of the development contract in 1990, and yet a decade later these "experts" were still insisting that A-G was bolted on as an afterthought...

    865:

    we've probably got a few score bugs that we want to fix at any given time. 200 really isn't a lot

    Bugs that last long enough become features - just ask Microsoft about backwards compatibility.

    OTOH, 200 can be a lot depending on severity. "can't fly in the rain" is one bug, but it does rather make the whole thing a bit useless.

    One system I'm involved in needs handholding every daylight savings time change. Sounds simple, twice a year, no worries... we sell into currently 12 timezones. Each of which has its own special rules. The good news is that we get to test more often than we would with just one, the bad news is we get to do a lot more hand-holding than we'd like (can't test offline, it's a modern system where "the smartphone talks to the server talks to the embedded device" and good luck getting all of those into a single test environment).

    866:

    My point above is that testing systems is necessary, and one system-level bug can mean every single subsystem becomes a suspect.

    The best bugs are when the various interested parties can't agree on what would constitute correct behaviour. Adding lawyers doesn't help, for the contract to be sufficiently detailed it would need to be the program passed through a machine code to legalese translator.

    Our DST transition bug appears (today, anyway) to be caused by phones switching timezone after a delay, sometimes back and forth more than once. So "during the transition" we have a period of a few hours when time disagreements are in flux and the time-fixing code still has to accurately discern both when each even happens, and the correct sequence of events that are reported out-of-order (legislative requirement). Those sniggering should remember that Australia has both 30 minute and 15 minute timezone offsets, and not all our embedded devices have been configured by the user to get time signals from the internet (this is both important to them and incomprehensible to me).

    Some days I want to visit specific users and correct them manually. With a blunt instrument. The ones who look at their phone, manually apply a DST fix to a phone that's already updated itself, then set their embedded devices to the phone time (give or take a few minutes), and while they're doing that their phone re-corrects itself. The simplest case gives us three devices each reporting two events over a time range of a few minutes, but an apparent range of slightly more than 3 hours. I have sat in meetings with those six events printed out, while people argue about the actual sequence and what rules could be used to discern it. The server uses UTC but event reports are often delayed by several hours, so "when it arrived" doesn't always help.

    Note that this is for the trivial business of "log each update to the device clock time". It's not actually the primary purpose of the system, it's just one tiny sliver of secondary functionality. I expect someone probably also has a clause in the F35 contract "a record shall be kept of each occasion on which the real time clock of the plane is manually updated". You know, Section 1023 (maintenance records), Clause 989 (electronic records in device memory), part 47 (list of other events that must be recorded).

    867:

    Re Broadcom: OOB write when handling 802.11k Neighbor Report Response via host's twitter accnt.

    Anyone else often reminded by these sorts of surprise exploits of this scene at the beginning of "A Fire Upon The Deep"? (Via an illegal russian softcopy easily found; www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunexotic.php also has it in a section called "Space Hackers". I own 2-3 legal copies. :-) )

    The new Power had no weapons on the ground, nothing but a comm laser. That could not even melt steel at the frigate's range. No matter, the laser was aimed, tuned civilly on the retreating warship's receiver. No acknowledgment. The humans knew what communication would bring. The laser light flickered here and there across the hull, lighting smoothness and inactive sensors, sliding across the ship's ultradrive spines. Searching, probing. The Power had never bothered to sabotage the external hull, but that was no problem. Even this crude machine had thousands of robot sensors scattered across its surface, reporting status and danger, driving utility programs. Most were shut down now, the ship fleeing nearly blind. They thought by not looking that they could be safe.

    One more second and the frigate would attain interstellar safety.

    The laser flickered on a failure sensor, a sensor that reported critical changes in one of the ultradrive spines. Its interrupts could not be ignored if the star jump were to succeed. Interrupt honored. Interrupt handler running, looking out, receiving more light from the laser far below.... a backdoor into the ship's code, installed when the newborn had subverted the humans' groundside equipment.... .... and the Power was aboard, with milliseconds to spare. Its agents -- not even human equivalent on this primitive hardware -- raced through the ship's automation, shutting down, aborting. There would be no jump. Cameras in the ship's bridge showed widening of eyes, the beginning of a scream. The humans knew, to the extent that horror can live in a fraction of a second.

    868:

    surprise exploits of this scene at the beginning of "A Fire Upon The Deep"

    The Fire episode always struck me as somewhat unlikely since it's a one-way channel that requires the entire exploit to hit a single receiver, using a laser focused so that it can't simple paint the whole ship. There's a timing issue with the size of the exploit, especially since it has to have a multi-layer payload (from the sensor into the ship net if nothing else). Sure, it's doable in some situations, but tricky.

    At least it's not running on utterly unknown alien hardware. Ahem.

    The Broadcom exploit is one example of this sort of problem, where a very widespread chipset has an unfixable problem, and since it's in devices that won't be replaced for a decade or more it's quite possible to broadcast it in a public place and leave it running to see what happens. All you need to go with it is an HCF fault somewhere else in a device, ideally a car or an expensive phone where the "catch fire" part could be quite literal. But even if it was "just" in a common IoT device, like a surveillance camera, being able to wander round watching IoT devices suddenly become internetless-of-things would be amusing.

    869:

    they do want a late Victorian social structure. NO, actually - they want a social structure more like that of pre-1779 France, with the ultra-rich playing the part of the Aristos.

    In spite of the rhetoric, of course this is nothing at all to do with "Free market capitalism", since the whole thing is rigged in their favour & any regulation is presumed to be captured or gutted.

    Because the counter-example to the Marxist believers at the other end of the spectrum, is just how much social support was available in some parts of 19thC Britain. The GNR introduced a form of sickness benefit for its employees as early as (IIRC) 1856, only having been founded in 1849/50. By 1875, they had introduced what we would now call a Final Salary pension scheme .... [ Which explains, of course, why a job on the railways was so sought-after in those days, as most of the larger companies were much more "enlightened" than the general mass, at that time ... ]

    You will also note, of course, that even some of those 19thC benefits, such as the aforementioned final salary pensions, are going, right now. Um

    870:

    Got that - thanks ....

    871:

    SIMPLES Make all time date stamps accord to GMT, wherever & whenever .....

    872:

    Sorry, got distracted, therefore only a late response. Hope you're still reading.

    Not true. It's a subject of great interest in government; as witnessed by the arguments between FCO, DFID, and the Armed Forces in Afghanistan.

    Oh, I absolutely can believe that people inside government are interested and even have internal arguments. However, the result of these arguments is still that breathtaking amounts of money are spent for weapon systems—and some breadcrumbs on everything else. SFReader wrote in #778 that the F-35's cost over their lifetime would be 1.2 trillion dollars. I have never heard anyone inside (or even outside) of government even hypothetically consider spending anything close to this money on expert peaceworkers. In Germany, the whole program of training peaceworkers and sending them on international missions is worth a few tens of millions of Euros—for the cost of buying a single F-35 (completely disregarding the cost of running it)—you could fund all German non-military security activities for more than a year. I don't know how much the US spends on training and using expert peaceworkers, but my first guess would be "next to nothing". Therefore, all interest in non-military conflict resolution is anywhere between useless and fake, as long as practically all of the money goes exclusively to the military.

    One of the problems is that while "we" might have a desired end-state of peace, prosperity for all, chocolate fountains and pet unicorns - the local actors might have a different set of priorities.

    No, the real problem is that "we" don't have a desired end-state of peace, prosperity for all, chocolate fountains and pet unicorns. What "we" want is dominance, the ability to project our power everywhere and force our will on everyone in order to serve our interests, which have a lot to do with exploiting everything for our own profit. In other words, what "we" want is fundamentally incompatible with an end-state of peace, prosperity for all, chocolate fountains and pet unicorns. It's detrimental to it.

    F-35s (and all our other unbelievably expensive weapon systems, because as expensive the F-35 may be, it's just one small bit in an even bigger and much more expensive arsenal) are tools for dominance, nothing else. They are fundamentally unable to be used as tools for building an end-state of peace, prosperity for all (and whatever else anyone may wish for this end-state; not everybody likes chocolate or unicorns; equal participation of all in the wish-making process and in the choice of further goals would be high on my list).

    So, if you're actually interested in peace and prosperity for all, investing almost all of your resources into something which is (a) unable to reach that goal and (b) actually detrimental to reaching that goal is not really the best course of action.

    873:
    For example, something as simple as a refugee camp can suffer (as in Rwanda) if a local militia group decides that "inside the refugee camp" an excellent place to get fed, find recruits, and not get bombed.

    However, that's not an inherent problem of the refugee camp.

    On the contrary, in the case of the Rwandan genocide in 1994 it was actually a problem of the western military strategy. Please remember what the international reaction to the genocide was. It was threefold: (1) ignoring the genocide as best as we could. And when the international community finally reacted it was to (2) slow down the liberators and (3) protect the perpetrators. Only under this protection could the militias thrive in the refugee camps in Eastern Congo.

    874:

    SIMPLES Make all time date stamps accord to GMT, wherever & whenever ...

    If you're being sarcastic, then yup, that's the simplest solution. But it's not as much fun as LARTing.

    If you think you're being helpful... the British tried making all times GMT and the rest of the world eventually got to the point of bombing the stupid bastards out of that idea. Re-read where I said the server uses UTC and that doesn't fix the problem. Then, if you think I have any chance at all of convincing even just the country of Italy to mandate the exclusive use of GMT including and especially in their cellphone networks... dude, I'm sorry. Not as sorry as I'd be if Australia (all 8 time zones of it) switched to GMT, but still sorry. My condolences to your carers, etc.

    875:

    If you can get "all the things" onto a single time reference, and include error bounds on your time stamps, it's probably a solvable problem. However... taht would require having regular (and ideally frequent) access to a reliable and accurate authoritative time source, with gels badly with phrases like "embedded".

    Having all time stamps in a "non-DST-adjusted" frame of reference might work, for a sufficiently small geographic area (or sufficient will to impose a single time zone on ALL the devices, at least for logging purposes). Of those, UTC is probably the least of evils, since UTC is inherently DST-free (unlike GMT, which happily ceases to exist while BST is in effect).

    But, very much, not a simple problem. I know enough about calendars and time-kkeeping that I know I better stay out of dealing with it, because either time, or I, will break and there's nothing to stop that. And I fear time is much harder than I am.

    876:

    I have issues with that, also. Actually, I'd forgotten about it, but the whole idea of an alien attack, through a small robot, taking over the ship.... I'm not really sure just how advanced it can be to poof overcome all internal defenses, given how we keep adding and adding layers of defense against ourselves. Also, there's a bandwidth limitation: sorry, that little bugger's only got 1GB connection, not the 1TB that the main network, which would be compartmentalized anyway, would have.

    Let me note that I did not gag over the climax of Independence Day, because a) they went to get into the main system directly, and b) they said it would require a restart of the aliens' system to get rid of. My argument for that approach working doesn't involved full knowledge or being able to poof deal with all countermeasures... but rather if it were me, I'd be probably doing a combination of the classic start-program-grab lots of memory-and fork-to-start-program recursively, and, on the side, each one should recursively create directories. Betcha I could do that on a heavy-duty server right here at work, right now.

    877:

    I disagree. The advantage, as I believe I originally noted, was that in France, the peasants were still tied to the land until relatively late, while with wage slavery, you don't need to care or support them in any way, and yet they still "know their place". Think of the huge, barely mentioned even by The Master's biographer, of Holmes' London. Plus, the King/Emperor isn't in charge, but of course I agree that the ultra-wealthy do think that they're the new Nobility. I mean, God (tm) made them Rich, right? So they were meant to lead....

    878:

    A steam catapult shot takes half a tonne of fresh water and also requires a large freshwater production plant to keep the catapults and the boilers fed, something not needed on the QE class carriers

    Nit-pick: a QE class maxes out at 1600 berths (including maintenance and aircrew and 250 royal marines). Sticking to guidelines of a recommended 3 litres of drinking water per day, and assuming they use saltwater for showers, the QE ships need to be able to produce about 5 tonnes of fresh water per day just for drinking purposes — more for baking (the output of a bakery on board a big warship is mind-boggling). There are plenty of other uses for fresh water aboard a ship (see "showers" above — saltwater showers need some freshwater to rinse off afterwards, so, say, 10 litres per person for one shower per week, minimum; and then there's presumably a requirement from maintenance/engineering). So I'm guessing a QE class needs to be able to deliver 10-50 tonnes of freshwater per day.

    Now, this isn't a drop in the ocean compared to the requirements of a big US CVN running intensive catapult operations at a wartime tempo (two launches in 90 seconds, up to 100 aircraft embarked flying maybe 50-200 missions per day), but it's something.

    879:

    Having all time stamps in a "non-DST-adjusted" frame of reference might work, for a sufficiently small geographic area

    Regarding UTC - imagine a card user in Hawaii, trying to buy something on the last valid day of their prepaid card (say, end of month). After mid-day or so, they can't because the UTC date has changed...

    I've worked on a tool that had a configuration file, pointing at various repositories of IP blocks. This had to work for users, but also allow IP developers to point at something they'd just built in their local directory; and pick up the "latest" copy (or at least detect its appearance).

    Said project teams were spread across 13 time zones; so if you had a project-specific configuration, and a developer sharing their work output, it could get messy. We ran UTC internally for comparison, the problem was reading in files. A copied file timestamp might contain its local value... so we had to carry a timestamp internally, which had to carry time zone information, which had to be parsable by the library manager.

    Big shout-out to boost::chrono and boost::locale for that one (parsing timestamps and translating to local time is less simple than it sounds...)

    ...as ever, XKCD applies :)

    880:

    SFReader wrote in #778 that the F-35's cost over their lifetime would be 1.2 trillion dollars. I have never heard anyone inside (or even outside) of government even hypothetically consider spending anything close to this money on expert peaceworkers.

    The $1.2Tn sum is amortized over a 30 year operational life, and covers not just the airframes but all operational costs (fuel, pilots, ground crew, maintenance, parts ...) for 2500 aircraft.

    The actual figure is $40Bn per years for 2500-odd craft in something like five nations' armed services, or about $16M per operational aircraft per year. Which sounds steep, but recall that fighters cost multiple thousands of dollars per hour of flight time to operate, pilot training costs are on the order of $10M per member of crew (and they're only at peak performance for 5-10 years between qualifying on fast jets and being ready to retire to flying airliners — it's like being a top-flight surgeon, only worse, in terms of the requirement for precision and reflexes and skill set), and so on. Indeed, if you estimate 5 years service and $10M training costs per pilot, the $16M/aircraft/year price tag must include $2M/year just on training the pilot.

    This doesn't affect the core point (why don't we spend this on peacekeeping?) but $40Bn is a lot less than $1.2Tn. Inded, the UN peacekeeping budget is around $7Bn per year — and doesn't include things like US/UK operations in Afghanistan. So the gap isn't quite as big as you might expect.

    881:

    What "we" want is dominance, the ability to project our power everywhere and force our will on everyone in order to serve our interests, which have a lot to do with exploiting everything for our own profit.

    First, rhetorical, question - what right have we to impose "our" will, and hence "our" concept of peace on any particular Nation? If they want to tell us to poke off, and carry on playing gangsters and feuding, oppressing their women according to authentic cultural values, and living a life in the Middle Ages, who are we to insist that we're going to send in the cheese-makers? (apologies for the Python reference)

    Take Afghanistan in 2001. The Soviets have left, it's essentially a failed state run by a bunch of extremist loonies. The West could care less. Beat each other up for listening to music? Crack on. Pubic hair length inspections - for men? (Seriously). Blow up centuries-old idolatrous carvings of Buddha? Yeah, we'll write a strongly worded letter. Basically, several years of giving the place a stiff ignoring and letting the locals get on with it.

    The reason we suddenly got interested in failed states was because the various groups of "incredibly angry people who think that wholesale murderous violence is the answer, what was the question again?" had found such places to be an opportunity to share common cultural experiences, across an international group of like-minded enthusiasts, mostly involving training in weapons and unconventional warfare. They'd expanded to the point of attempting some small-scale chemical weapons development, and flying training...

    Comes the 9/11 aftermath, and Afghanistan are asked to hand over those Al Qaeda personnel responsible for planning the attacks. The Taliban tells the USA to poke off. The West gets a tad upset by this, and decides that terrorism needs stamped on. Hard. But by democratic means, obviously, or in this case some Special Forces types, a little air support, and briefcases full of cash to the Northern Alliance warlords and anyone else on the road to Kabul.

    Having knocked over the Taliban, the cunning plan is to pour in the cash, make life comfier, and offer a non-as-failed state with an alternative perspective that doesn't involve "hosting terrorists and running a feudal state". DFID and the FCO pour in. Except... the locals have their own idea about who should get the benefits, and more importantly who shouldn't. Attempts to sort out some kind of structure for the nation... are opposed. It goes downhill reasonably quickly.

    It's hard to argue that the West gained anything there, other than "not allow the place to be used as a safe haven fpr a large terrorist organisation". There's no oil, no great reserves of rare raw materials to speak of, it doesn't sit on any trade routes, and it's not a big export market - perhaps it was actually done in order to achieve peace? Scary, I know...

    First, rhetorical, answer- "We" get to decide what constitutes peace, when "they" start murdering large numbers of people outside their own country, and posing a credible threat to do lots more.

    Remember, in 2001 there has been no invasion of Iraq - only (unfortunately broad) sanctions against an Iraqi tyrant with a history of WMD development. Terrorist attacks happened because a spoilt child grew up into a fanatic who really didn't like the Saudi royal family, and decided to broaden that to "everyone, everywhere".

    882:

    Comes the 9/11 aftermath, and Afghanistan are asked to hand over those Al Qaeda personnel responsible for planning the attacks. The Taliban tells the USA to poke off. The West gets a tad upset by this, and decides that terrorism needs stamped on. Hard.

    I assume you're familiar with the immediately preceding occupation story relating to Afghanistan? Same recipe, different actors, although I think a strong case can be made for blaming Jimmy Carter, Cyrus Vance, and Zbigniew Brzezinski for pouring gasoline on the fire. (And of course we can go back to General Elphinstone's not-terribly-excellent expedition if we want more tales of woe and misery, or even Alexander the Great).

    Frankly, it's hard to see how any western meddling in Afghanistan has benefited anyone, except the manufacturers of bombs and bullets (and, in the short term, politicians who were up for a short victorious war and who could get out of office before the bills came due).

    883:

    We ran UTC internally for comparison, the problem was reading in files

    Yes, exactly. Who created the file and was their time and timezone set correctly when they did it?

    That's also not really helped by various libraries, those are implementation details. The meetings I have about this are strictly "in the specific scenario what is the correct answer and why". Then you bring in yesterdays scenario and apply the new rules to that... and get the wrong answer. So you look for one set of rules that can handle both. Then you test on more scenarios, until the people in the meeting decide you're just being difficult and they have better things to do. So you implement the rules you had at the end of the meeting, and wait for further bug reports.

    I actually enjoy my job but it has some difficult moments. I mean, right now I am lying in bed, in the sun, watching our chickens doing chicken things, reading Charlie's blog while working from home (and it's Friday, and I'll only work about 2-3 hours today). Sad! :)

    884:

    Indeed, in "modern" history, the only successful intervention there was almost-certainly the second & problematically the third Afgham wars. And in both cases (certainly the latter) compromises were arrived at. Note the word; "Compromise" - something the USA dosn't sem too good at, at present....

    885:

    Frankly, it's hard to see how any western meddling in Afghanistan has benefited anyone,

    From the United Nations Girls Education Initiative: http://www.ungei.org/infobycountry/afghanistan.html

    In 2011 the attendance rate for female primary students was 62%. Up from approximately 0% under the Taliban.

    I'll take that as a benefit.

    (Not sure why they don't have more recent figures. The organisation is still active according to their news feed, so maybe they're concentrating on other countries now.)

    886:

    I assume you're familiar with the immediately preceding occupation story relating to Afghanistan?

    Vaguely...

    A couple of decades ago I was at a fascinating lecture by Professor John Erickson, then the leading light on Soviet strategic thought. His perspective was that it was a massive cockup on the part of the Soviets... it goes like this:

    A well-connected nomenklatura idiot in Afghanistan in late 1979 does an assessment of the situation, and assures the folks in Moscow that all the situation needs is the removal of Amin, the KGB, GRU, and Spetsnaz can handle it, no problem.

    The KGB and Spetsnaz go in, it's a cockup. They yell for help, and the politburo decides to involve a desant battalion (blue-and-white stripey vest mob). This doesn't fix things, but no problem - just commit the rest of the Paratroop Regiment, and we can sort it out. Actually, better make that the rest of the Division, we're nearly there, just a few more days and a few more troops, actually you'd better drive in 40th Army.

    During the key few days, the stress levels were such that there were three heart attacks among Politburo members. They didn't want to be there, when they felt the had to get involved, they wanted straight in and out with minimum intervention. It just didn't work that way...

    https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/WP40-english.pdf

    887:

    I've always wondered how phone developers who have anything to do with time manage to exist in Australia.

    I have family who live near the NSW/Qld border. (some on each side). Their phones will randomly update the time depending on the which state the last cell tower they happened to make contact with was in. (for those not in the know, Qld doesn't adopt daylight savings time, NSW does. So for most of the year they're then same time. In a couple of weeks from now, they'll be in different timezones. It's a north/south border between timezones rather than the usual east/west)

    It must drive people insane.

    888:

    All we have is Indiana. They do their own thing and it create odd situations for people not from the area.

    There was a very funny episode of "West Wing" which involved train schedules and people having the time shift by an hour as they moved about.

    889:

    In 2011 the attendance rate for female primary students was 62%. Up from approximately 0% under the Taliban. ... (Not sure why they don't have more recent figures. The organisation is still active according to their news feed, so maybe they're concentrating on other countries now.)

    Ah, maybe because it's not a question you want to answer in when the T control an area or if they come back.

    Back 10 years ago or so there were all these "liberal" (just to be pejorative) groups wanting to do things like setup birth control clinics send girls to school, and such who just didn't get that this would likely lead to a rise in the murder (honor killing) rates in many areas of the women they wanted to help. Well the US army could stop that. Right?

    Generational changes in a society take a generation or more unless you want upheaval and maybe even (to lift a line from CS) piles of skulls.

    890:

    Zackly...

    Stuff all the offsets and jiggers and corrections, all they do is get in the way and needlessly complicate things.

    Keep all timestamps in UTC. Synchronise systems to UTC using NTP (if internet connected) or Rugby. Do all calculations and comparisons and things on the UTC timestamps.

    Only ever get involved with the offsets and jiggers and corrections when converting a timestamp to be read by a human. Never use the result of the calculation for any purpose other than being read by a human.

    That way the systems themselves always know what really came before what, so calculations of "is it older/is it newer/when did it happen" etc. always come out right, and never get confused by timezone stuff because they never see it. The only errors will be in displaying the times to humans, and then will only be because the user's set their system timezone wrong, or is too close to the Queensland/NSW border, or something else which is their own fault.

    Cards in Hawaii: two solutions: (1) T&Cs state that expiry time is in UTC, or (2) actual expiry time is one day later than advertised time.

    891:

    What we have is a long thin country with one time zone, but a range of latitudes which makes the lengthening and shortening of the day much more significant at one end of the country than at the other. So the biannual discussions on whether or not to just sack off this messing with the clocks thing entirely, and if so whether to settle on GMT or BST for the permanent setting, tend to take on something of a north vs. south character.

    (Me, being nearer the bottom of the country, I favour BST all year round.)

    892:

    "(Me, being nearer the bottom of the country, I favour BST all year round.)"

    I'd rather just have the entire world be one time zone. Synching the clocks to the sun made sense 200 years ago, now it's silly. Just have workplaces and such express their opening times at a sensible time for the local daylight. It doesn't matter if shops open at 22:00 and close at 08:00 as long as everyone's watch reads the same. Set your alarm to wake you at 20:00 as the sun is rising to be at work at 23:00.

    893:

    Keep all timestamps in UTC. Synchronise systems to UTC using NTP (if internet connected) or Rugby. Do all calculations and comparisons and things on the UTC timestamps.

    I love how all problems are trivial to people who don't have to solve them.

    too close to the Queensland/NSW border, or something else which is their own fault.

    Blaming other people for things outside their control is not the action of a decent human being.

    Even just from a business point of view, writing off as potential customers anyone who goes near a timezone boundary seems quite shortsighted. But from a post-Brexit UK perspective it probably makes perfect sense.

    894:

    groups wanting to do things like setup birth control clinics send girls to school, Like the Repubs in the USSA are doing theoir best to close down, right now, you mean?

    895:

    WHY ( Oh why oh why ??? ) Do some places such as Queensland or Indiana(?) have awkward, non-compatible time-zoning? What's the point, what are they trying to proc=ve, other than that they are stupid .... And HALF_HOUR offsets... W .T. F?

    896:

    Well exactly. 80% of the population of Queensland, or around 4 million people, lives within an hour or so of the NSW border. The population on the NSW side is non-trivial too.

    Greg - Queensland is the odd one out because it does not do daylight savings time (DST). While personally I am in favour of adopting it, eliminating the issue, there was actually a referendum on this in 1992 and the Sensible Party lost.

    All else being equal, the lower the latitude the less sense DST makes. For Queensland, this is a case of the relatively less populous north having disproportionate influence - as it traditionally has always had in state politics.

    897:

    ...as ever, XKCD applies :)

    Indeed. I'm sure you've addressed this many (many, many...) times, but why is Unix system time not useful for this environment?

    898:

    BUT ... in 21 year's time, there might be a slight problem?

    899:
    That way the systems themselves always know what really came before what, so calculations of "is it older/is it newer/when did it happen" etc. always come out right, and never get confused by timezone stuff because they never see it. The only errors will be in displaying the times to humans, and then will only be because the user's set their system timezone wrong, or is too close to the Queensland/NSW border, or something else which is their own fault.

    Actually, no, we don't. With continuous NTP sync, you cannot gt much better than O(1) (memory says 2, but it may be 1, it may be somewhere between) round-trips of accuracy (so that's your imprecision bound, call it 10-200 ms in a typical Earth-bound deployment). SO if you have two timestamps that differ less than your )estimated) imprecision (from different systems, in-system you have much stronger guarantees, but it's inter-system comparisons that tend to matter), you still cannot say with certainty what was first and what was second.

    As I said, I know enough about time and coding that I stay WELL clear of it. It ain't a trivial problem, it's also surprisingly subtle.

    900:
    Indeed. I'm sure you've addressed this many (many, many...) times, but why is Unix system time not useful for this environment?

    It doesn't know about leap seconds, for starters. The Unix Epoch is no longer 00:00:-00 Jan 1, 1970, it is now 00:00:28, Jan 1st, 1970 (both times in UTC). It's also designed with (although I guess you don't have to...) a 1s granularity, which is achingly long, in CPU cycles.

    901:

    "And HALF_HOUR offsets... W .T. F?"

    It gets better. There is exactly one town in NSW that has chosen to be on a different time to everywhere else in the state. Broken Hill is +9:30. Where along the road into Broken Hill do you change times? I have no idea, somewhere in the desert. The area with different time is not a square, it's not a circle around Broken Hill, it looks like an ant track. Maybe it is.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yancowinna_County

    902:

    why is Unix system time not useful for this environment?

    64 bit Unix time covers the life of the universe to one second resolution, and the vast majority of our devices get time from the server so almost always have time accurate to a couple of seconds. The other 0.1% are mostly owned by people who don't care, but the five or ten of them who do care take up a grossly disproportionate amount of my time. I have this recorded somewhere, but I think our worst ping times are over a second - some are on satellite internet so we get 2x geosync delay going in, then either 2x geosync coming back or dial-up via a hairy combo of radio and copper.

    But as Einstein pointed out "when is now" can't be properly answered between different frames of reference. In the system(s) I deal with the issue is more human frames of reference (Yancowinna, Eucla is UTC+8:45 https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/acwst and just don't ask), plus we have legacy systems out there from the days when a real time clock card was a $100 optional extra, but someone has somehow decided to add an ethernet or wifi card and now the thing is one the internet. If we're lucky they will tick "get time from server" and set a timezone, if not the device time will be all over the place. With ideal setups 500ms gets you a reply from anywhere in the world (4x geosync plus an orbital relay) but in practice buffering and transit delays also happen. We get ~100ms LON-SYD ping times on a good day, but I'm getting 300ms to antipope.org right now.

    903:

    TL;DR: human factors make technical solutions invalid.

    904:

    Frankly, it's hard to see how any western meddling in Afghanistan has benefited anyone,

    It's benefited the Afghanistan population, in terms of GDP if nothing else. The meddlers drop large amounts of free money into what is laughingly called Afghanistan's "economy", build stuff and bribe the important people to get stuff done. The day the world leaves Afghanistan alone will be a dark day for that nation.

    906:

    Thing is. The story I have heard is that the Taliban didn't tell the US to "poke off." Rather they asked for a minimal amount of evidence in order to justify extradition.

    I don't have a source for that however. However it does seem plausible that they did so, and that a US administration dominated by Project for a New American Century types would be eager for an excuse to pick a fight in the area.

    The Taliban might be evil and/or misguided. But that doesn't make them completely stupid.

    907:

    His perspective was that it was a massive cockup on the part of the Soviets... it goes like this

    Yeah, pretty much. The added twist being that, in the late detente period, Brzezinski proposed trolling the weak southern underbelly of the USSR for shits and giggles, by channeling funds to anti-Communist (read: Islamicist) groups in Afghanistan in the hope of igniting an insurrection in the Near Abroad (Khazakstan, Uzbekistan, etcetera). "We suffered in Vietnam, why don't we give the Soviets a taste of that medicine?" Or words to that effect. So the lead-up to the Amin fuck-uppery involved lots of CIA soft money—in today's terms, funding terrorism—because Cold War, right?

    The USSR took the bait, hook, line, and sinker, and that's where the history books pick up the tale.

    (Which underscores the key point that foreign policy meddling overseas is generally a bad idea. Bad enough when it's well-intentioned; potentially catastrophic when it's malicious. Remember, this was before the 1979 Iranian revolution gave the US foreign policy folks and the CIA a reality check on long-term consequences and blowback.)

    908:

    that foreign policy meddling overseas is generally a bad idea. Yes, well, I've mentioned this before & the great Barbara Tuchman heads one of the chapters in "Augaut 1914" as:

    The intereferences of the Imperial Germans, from then until 1918 are still with us & still killing people. If ... 1] SMS Goeben had been stopped, then no Turkey on Central Powers' side in WWI, no modern Iraq/Syria or Sykes-Piquot line. 2] No Partition of Ireland, because no Easter Rising 3] No Communist Russsia or Sov-Union 4] Adolf not coming to power? ??

    909:

    But also: no collapse of the Ancien Regime throughout Europe — hereditary dictatorship (monarchism) remains the dominant political structure of the world, democracy is a weird aberration to which France and the United States are prone.

    910:

    ATTENTION CONSERVATION NOTICE

    Blogging will remain scanty for a while ... but I should crawl past the halfway point of the new Laundry novel tomorrow, and it's gotta be done by November 1st.

    911:

    I love how all problems are trivial to people who don't have to solve them.

    We have a friend in one of our social circles and I dread when someone mentions a problem in computer issues at their work. Just as a way to blow of some frustration. This brilliant (seriously) person always talks about how easy the issue is to solve. And at times will tell you how to do it. In this fantasy world where people don't really live. But that isn't an issue either as he's firmly convinced all people issues can be resolved with a small amount of "correct" training.

    My wife works at HQ for a major airline and he always has "the simple solution" to her work frustrations with IT issues.

    912:

    democracy is a weird aberration to which France and the United States are prone Oh do come on Charlie, you know better than that! All the "monarchies" in Europe are republics, with hereditary heads-of-state ...

    So democaracy exists in Portugal, Spain, Ireland, France, Britain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czech, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary ( just ), Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, ... Craoatia, Bosnia, Serbia ... we'll see. Even so anything but a wierd aberration - & that's without even considering what used to be called "the Dominions" & ex-colonies of many countries across all continents.

    913:

    Returning to the oroginal subject (shock horror etc )

    Mad, Bad, Dangerous to know ? Opinions, please?

    See also... ?

    [ An apparently-serious attempt to produce an AI "god" - cue Frederic Brown &/or A C CLarke, I suppose. ]

    914:

    All the "monarchies" in Europe are republics, with hereditary heads-of-state ...

    That's the case today. That was anything but the case in 1914! Consultative assemblies that did a lot of law-drafting were widespread, but frequently populated by appointees (like the UK's house of lords); directly ellected parliaments were considered risky by monarchs, who generally had full veto power over legislation but didn't want to get into a direct head-to-head confrontation with a legislative assembly populated by electors who believed in votes for male heads of households and suchlike dangerous radicalism. The Russian imperial system was not the most extreme, reactionary regime out there; merely the largest — and probably less free than Saudi Arabia today.

    What happened in 1917-21 overturned a bunch of monarchies (Austro-Hungarian Empire; Italy; Germany; Russia) and lit the fuse under others (Spain, Portugal, Greece, Yugoslavia ...) — the ones that survived were the ones that managed to turn into republic-with-hereditary-head-of-state in time, and amount to a minority of them. (Spain is an exception: Franco appointed Juan Carlos as his successor and the king unexpectedly endorsed democracy.

    915:

    Shortly after the attacks, I saw that Taliban response as part of a news item on the BBC website. It wasn't there when I went back to look for it; or at least I couldn't find it.

    916:

    Ah, I take your popint, we were talking about different things/timeframes. Oddly, the monarchies that survived were already, to a large extent "republics" (note the quotes) in 1914: Britain, Netherlands, Belgium, Lux, Norway, Denmark, Sweden. Which should tell us something, I'm not sure what, though.

    OTOH, I would REALLY APPRECIATE, someone's take on the "AI god" meme .....

    917:
    OTOH, I would REALLY APPRECIATE, someone's take on the "AI god" meme .....

    Natural progression of the singularians? Our AI heaven is a long time coming, let's start worshipping It now? People reading LessWrong too much and start hallucinating that Roko's Basilisk is real?

    Convenient tax dodge?

    Honestly, it's just too weird to really even care...

    918:

    Well, I read the Guardian article, and decided it would be better to not bother with the other one for the sake of my sanity...

    My take: FRUITCAKE

    Monarchies and WW1 etc: I think we'd have ended up in much the same situation as today in the end anyway, it's just a matter of what form the transition would take.

    Austria-Hungary was held together with gaffer tape anyway (the "-Hungary" bit being one piece of the gaffer tape), and while Franz Josef was a reactionary old fart and very much in favour of trying to carry on gaffer-taping it, he was also nearly dead and due to be succeeded by Franz Ferdinand, who was sufficiently of the opposite mentality that Franz Josef's private reaction to him being offed was "thank fuck for that".

    Imperial Germany - new state, feeling its oats, thinking to be the next Napoleon, was going to get the same reaction from its neighbours as Napoleon got sooner or later.

    Balkans - unstable, finally got the Ottomans off their backs, now free to squabble with each other. I reckon Serbian hegemony, metastable for a while and then fracturing as the other bits got their acts together, was more or less inevitable barring major OCP.

    I think the thing about "British-style" monarchies surviving is a sort of safety-valve effect: either "traditional despotism" can hold on and hold on until it goes pop, like France, or it can start leaking and deflate gradually, like Britain. When external events put the pressure up, the ones that have leaked their pressure away can keep going, while the ones that have contained it so far end up going pop.

    919:

    So, another book recommendation.

    "Oddjobs" by Heike Goody and Iain Grant.

    Elevator pitch is "Laundry novel, as written by Jodi Taylor, but set in Birmingham". Apocalypse scrabble and telepathic curry involved...

    920:

    Of course, a lot of those events had antecedents: 1) SMS Goeben - if Churchill hadn't decided that the Sultan Osman I and Reshadieh - two modern dreadnoughts - would be better as part of the Royal Navy than being sent to Turkey, the Ottomans might well have given the Goeben and Breslau the cold shoulder. Churchill doesn't make that mistake, no Ottoman Empire in WWI. 2) The Curragh incident was making things... interesting in Ireland in 1914. No WWI to (temporarily) paper over the problems, and a civil war in Ireland could well have happened - people at the time were worried about just that. 3) Was the tsarist regime of Nicholas II long-term stable? They has just put down with great difficulty a revolution (1905-07). A revolution might not have been inevitable, but it was a strong possibility. Plus the monarchies of south central Europe had roots about as deep as those of Birnham wood, IIRC. 4) Agree with you there - with no WWI, Adolf wouldn't have made the history books. However, there are any number of monsters who can rise at any time in any country - you need look no farther than D. Trump to see that.

    921:

    1) OR Goeben simply didn't make it to Constantinople, because she was caught & sunk. 2) Yes, v problematic, but the Brit guvmint was prepared to face down the mutineers (just, in the end... ) so a devolved Ireland would probably have happened .... 3) No, it wasn't. BUT - What happens if you get Kerensky's revolution, but not Lenin's? "October" was the second revolution, remember .... 4) Agreed in full

    922:

    1) ...or at the very least, given Turkey back the money they'd already paid for them, instead of contemptuously welshing on the deal. AIUI it was the British attitude of "Turkey? ...nah, they're just wankers, who gives a shit what they do" that narked Turkey off more than simply the non-delivery, and also prevented us from perceiving the problem until it was too late.

    Or, even, if we'd actually learned from that and started treating that area of the world (and, for that matter, some of our own diplomats) with integrity instead of contempt (see Sykes-Picot).

    923:

    Re: AI-god meme ...

    In the ordinary day-to-day sense, don't see how this AI-god differs from IoT with respect to its capabilities or creator.

    From the article, Levandowski comes across as a super-geek whose brain's neuroethics area has yet to mature therefore by definition he's not adult enough (competent) to make programming decisions for any god or anything that interfaces with or has consequences that affect people.

    Also not new is the religious spin - Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near was over the top religious mania in its tone and repetition of a couple of talking points with only Moore's Law to back anything up. Maybe Levandowski calling this 'god' is a way of grasping at financial straws by appealing to either or both the very strongly pro and anti religious types as investors/customers. Such a tactic would be consistent with his behavior to date.

    Okay - now answer me this ...

    Considering that everyone is building their own AI with the intent of making it more powerful and far-reaching than anyone else's, why is there no concern that at some point these AIs will meet, interact and even possibly bring about a war of the AI-gods? Or do you think that AI-gods could be kept blind to each other indefinitely. I don't. (Seriously)

    924:

    One AI god wants to render down the human race and turn the universe into paperclips, another has been tasked with manufacturing staples and behind the scenes a "stapleless stapler" marketing AI pulls the strings to discredit the entire notion of paper fastening products...

    Something like that?

    925:

    I think most agree that the first AI to 'take off' will expand so fast that it will just blot out all the other potential AI's. Both first and last.

    I doubt we'll be rendered down for paperclips in the end (or stamps). Seriously, new AI's will be built in an AI research lab right? What are AI researchers most interested in? AI... The utility function of the first AI is going to certainly be variation along the lines of 'make a better AI'. I'd expect it to try to convert the solar system into computing resources.

    926:

    I have to declare my agnosticism on this one.

    On the one side there's, well, Google and all, who pipe maps to my house and maintain massive databases of my social graph that are probably more complete than the ones I keep in my head. That's definitely artificial intelligence, and it's already pervading our society. Yet it's not considered AI because, as always, the goalposts keep moving. Still, if you argue it is AI, then we've got Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook AIs all battling for dominance, so the idea that the first shall be the only and last is perhaps over-simplified.

    Still, current "AI" is not human intelligence, because humans aren't wired to maintain massive amounts of random data fairly close to perfectly. Our memories are far more visual, tactile, and spatial, and these are things that are actually hard for computers to do. Yes, we have very good computer maps, but this is after decades of people coding all that information into binary data sets and designing algorithms for processing them. With humans, many of us are so good at spatial memories that we use the Memory Palace method to store random bits of data in space. Lynne Kelly (The Memory Code) spends a whole book arguing that fostering this kind of memory was a central purpose of art and architecture from the Australian songlines to Gobekli Tepe to Stonehenge and even Rome. So no, computers don't think like humans, which muddies the definition of what artificial intelligence is. Computers can do things we can't do NOW, but is what they do intelligent?

    The second issue is the amount of energy it takes for a computer to emulate a human brain. Right now, it's thought that would take a data center running on the power of something like the Three Gorges Dam, while a human brain takes about 100 watts. However, Koomey's Law (the number of computer cycles per joule halves every 1.57 years) suggests that sometime in the late 2030s-early 2040s, if that trend doesn't crash suddenly, a computer emulating a human brain will run on 100 watts. Years before that, loading by emulation might be reasonable, but by that point, it's reasonable for people to do so, depending of course on the next two issues.

    The third issue is energy supply. Currently, data centers need the energy supplies equivalent to small cities. As I'm finding by working on local climate adaptation plans in California, figuring out where all the energy to run a human city is a fairly complicated political exercise now. Adding in the energy requirements of huge data centers is basically adding more cities to the grid, at a time when we'll all have to do more with less energy. Yes, Koomey's Law says that said data centers should get a lot more efficient (if they don't just keep getting bigger), but human law says that if we're forced to choose between water and cat videos, water wins three times out of five. Absent fusion power plants, power shortages are probably the doom of artificial intelligence, at least for many functions. There's little point in emulating a human or keeping a life log if it takes more than a human's worth of electricity (e.g. 100 watts) to keep it running and available.

    The fourth issue is hacking. If everything can be hacked, why connect to or trust the internet? Right now, I suspect the end of the internet as we know it will be Web War I, when the dangers of the Internet of Things makes it politically infeasible for the web to continue to exist. Heck, I can even see arguments on both the far right and far left of the American political spectrum, based on everything from the desire for anarchy and human freedom to a desire for low-skilled manufacturing in West Virginia, all driving towards destruction of the internet as it currently exists. Weaken the hold of the Big Four Internet companies, and it could happen. And even if hacking is not a critical problem, do you want your upload to be a Google product that has to pay for your own autonomy? Personally, I'd rather die than be a slave, especially if my only chance at freedom would be getting erased.

    So what might we see, come 2040? Possibly, there will be energy-efficient computers that approach human capacity, rapidly expanding deserts, and no internet. In other words, parts of the world might look a lot like Tatooine from Star Wars, with protocol droids doing the translations that we now get out of our phones. Is this AI, and will they take over the world? Hard to tell.

    927:

    I think most agree that the first AI to 'take off' will expand so fast that it will just blot out all the other potential AI's. Both first and last.

    Yeah ... nope.

    Ramez Naam had quite a few pointed things to say on this topic when he guest blogged here a couple of years ago. Notably here (google is your friend).

    928:

    Re: AI - first out the gate not necessarily the winner

    Agree - mostly because I don't think that current AI systems are designed with the command to deliberately identify and kill/disable any system that might be a competing AI. Current sophisticated commercially available software only does this as an unfortunate side-effect or bug based on personal experience with new productivity software and buggered up old files.

    Okay, long term, competition might be reduced via market forces unless legislation somehow forbids it because of 'monopolies-are-bad'. However, even though the anti-monopoly attitude seems on the wane (as shown by the very high price tag of recent take-overs esp. in tech), why kill off tech that you could acquire.

    Once some outfit legally acquires all of the other major tech outfits then would we progress to the most likely scenario for ending up with only one AI design: a financially driven boardroom decision (greed). After all, why keep spending money if you don't have to.

    Am also considering how much thinking, planning and budget went into LIGO (a much simpler machine than AI) and how long it took to get LIGO built and enhanced to the point where it actually detected a gravitational wave. Per Wikipedia - 10s of thousands of people were involved over several decades, starting with a few researcher then growing over time. And these folks were cooperating and working toward the same goal.

    929:

    Really good summary of research conducted on gun violence. Wonder what research the deniers will come back with.

    https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/2/16399418/us-gun-violence-statistics-maps-charts

    930:

    I suspect the end of the internet as we know it will be Web War I, when the dangers of the Internet of Things makes it politically infeasible for the web to continue to exist

    I think it's likely that web war one will happen, then some time later a few cranks will start claiming it happened, then eventually there will be a traditional response, and it might take 50 years for there to be widespread agreement that there was a web war. It's too hard to tell the difference between Russian hackers (financially motivated) and Russian hackers (government actors). Both do similar things in similar ways, it's just that when the former shut down military installations they need to go home and change their trousers while the latter presumably get medals.

    I think infowar is a lot like biowar, it's great in theory but in practice you're a big, slow, bumbling idiot stepping into a realm you don't understand. Where biowar is something that's been happening for hundreds of millions of years and intelligence isn't proven to be useful in the longer term yet, infowar is still trying to distinguish itself from noise. Differentiating your own users from other people's poorly designed software from spammers from actual hostility is quite hard until it gets to the point where you clearly have a problem, and that transition can happen in milliseconds. Viz, the difference between "Bob's trying to connect via VPN but has forgotten the password again" and "attack with a partial password" is only obvious once you ring Bob... or 'Bob' connects and shuts down the access control system.

    931:

    I still think this sort of scenario is likely to be the source of the first AI. But it will be wild, and we won't notice it for quite a long time. If at all.

    932:

    Oh, I think we'll know when there's a general war on. What happened to Estonia is an excellent example. Basically, when large portions of the power grid, water infrastructure, information, finance, food and supplies start shutting down due to attacks, it's pretty obvious there's a war on, because that's what wars do. They're basically massive DoS attacks, if you want to look at them that way. You're quite correct that we won't know for sure who is on the attacking end, and that makes things (potentially) even worse.

    The obvious solution during the attack is to cut the target country out of the internet and keep it out until infrastructure starts working again. Do this enough, and there won't be an international internet. It can disintegrate further from there, as attackers physically infiltrate (or use satellites, or whatever) to attack from within a country. At this point, I don't see a good solution to this kind of problem, so I tend to think that the internet won't be around forever. But then again, I'm a well-known pessimist.

    933:

    I'm probably falling to dunning-kruger here... This guy clearly knows more than me, but he looks conceptually borked.

    "if designing intelligence is an N^2 problem, an AI that is 2x as intelligent as the entire team that built it (not just a single human) would be able to design a new AI that is only 70% as intelligent as itself. That's not escape velocity"

    So he's saying that a 'team' (entity, whatever) that's twice as smart gets 30% less results? So the dumber you are the better? I've seen this argument put forward a few times. I've seen it suggested that more driver training makes for more crashes, and I've seen the US far right claim that more education makes people dumber... I don't agree with those arguments either.

    By that theory my Dogs should produce a 140% better AI than I can. (I smugly think I'm about twice as smart as them).

    If AI is an N^2 problem (I think it's much harder than that actually) then an AI that is twice as smart as the team that made it should be able to make one that's 140% smarter. Or, make one that's 120% smarter but do it in 90% of the time.

    If it took the human team 30 years to come up with the AI that's twice as smart as them, then using the 120% smarter, 90% of the development time it should go something like: AI1->AI2 2.7 years (given that unlike the humans, it can work on the problem all the time instead of less than 10% of the time) AI2->AI3 2.4 years AI3->AI4 2.1 years AI4->AI5 1.9 years AI5->AI6 1.7 years So AI6 pops out in about 10 years. It's now 5 times smarter than a team of humans. That looks like a pretty hard takeoff to me, and I can't see any other researchers catching them by the sweat of their brow. First in, best dressed, that team wins and winner takes all.

    The second way that concept is borked is that while the problem of making things gets harder in a non-linear way, the ability to solve problems improves with intelligence in a non-linear way.

    I think I'm about twice as smart as my dogs. Presented with the problem of building counterlungs (They need to be easy to clean so they don't grow lethal bugs in them, they need to either be robust or enclosed because if they rupture you're suddenly 8 kg negatively buoyant with nothing to breathe, they need to be flexible enough to inflate and deflate without much work, as the work of breathing becomes the limit of survivability at depth because if you make more CO2 by the effort of breathing than you can expel on each breath you die in short order, They need to be at the same level as the centre of your lungs, to within a few cm to minimise the work of breathing no matter which way up you are, they need to be at least two of them for work of breathing reasons that I won't bother with here, they need to be quick to take off in an emergency for obvious reasons, they needed to be something I had the skills make with tools I could afford and out of materials I could buy within the funds that I had, they needed to be waterproof and airtight, not corrode in salt water, there needed to be a leak free and very secure way to attach breathing hoses to the counterlung material, ideally without any sharp bends due to WoB, when deflated there needed to be a continuous path for the breathing gas at all times, so folds etc couldn't block them off, they needed to be food rated materials, with low offgassing, reasonably streamlined/formfitting so I could swim, impervious to the cleaning chemicals that kill the deadly bugs that live in counterlungs). I thought about that problem on and off for about a year before coming up with a solution.

    So it took me a year. My dogs are half as smart as me (at a guess). So they should be able to crack that nut in two years? They're 5 and 6 now and they haven't even figured out how to open the food cupboard. It's just nuts... If an AI was twice as smart as me (let alone a team), it should be finding whole classes of solutions that would literally NEVER occur to me any more than a counterlung solution would occur to my dogs. That's already happened. The GO AI found whole classes of solutions that intense collaborative study by millions of highly motivated people over hundreds of years hadn't uncovered.

    934:

    Well if it's the USA, they won't use any of the actual arguments because the real causes of the high US murder rate are things that the rightwing don't want to change.

    Looked at world wide the per capita murder rate and the gun ownership rate have NO correlation at all. None. Absolutely none at all. There's literally no evidence whatsoever that gun ownership rate has anything to do with murder rate. It's slightly correlated with gun murder rate, but only slightly.

    In Australia we got rid of the guns. If you look at a graph of our murder rate and you don't know when the guns went away, you could NOT tell from the graph. There isn't even the slightest deflection of the downward trend that had been going on for a decade before. If you look at the graphs of gun murder and knife murder, one goes down, the other goes up. Overall there's no change. There's not even a change in the rate of mass killings. They change from man with gun to man with petrol and match. (Not being sexist, it's hardly ever a woman. Only one in Australia that I know of and she killed 7 with a knife).

    The USA has the most guns per capita, at 90 guns per hundred people and is number 1 in the world. Yet it's 94th in the world for murder rate with 4.88 murders per 100 000. El Salvador is number one for murders, with 108.64 murders per 100 000 people. More than 20 times the USA rate. Yet they're 89th in the world for gun ownership at 5.8 guns per 100 people. Switzerland has a murder rate of 0.69 murders per 100 000. They have 24.45 guns per 100 people. The government issues everyone with a military (not military style) weapon and trains them to use it. At the end of the training they're allowed to hand it back or keep it. Until recently people were required to have ammunition for it on hand at all times and there were inspections to make sure they did.

    So why does Switzerland with 5 times more guns than El Salvador have a murder rate 1/200th the size? Low income inequality, access to free education and healthcare, low pollution levels (particularly lead), a solid social safety net and they treat addiction as an illness not a crime. All things that the USA could implement. All things that the right fight against.

    935:

    Oh, and on the related matter of suicide... They use the Australian example and helpfully colour one side of the graph after 1996 to make it look a certain way. It's hard to do, but look at that graph line and ignore their 'helpful' shading. Do you think if you handed that graph without the 'helpful' shading to someone and said "pick the spot where guns were taken out of society?" they'd pick 1996? No way. No way in the world. With that kind of leading question they'd pick 1986 or 1987.

    If you showed someone that graph and said "What year did unleaded petrol become available and compulsory for new cars in Australia?"....

    No prizes there. 1st of July 1986.

    I don't like guns, I don't own a gun. But I do like critical thinking and I don't like bullshit.

    936:

    There's even more bullshit if you dig deeper into that Vox article and follow the links.

    Australian 1996 gun buy back...

    80% reduction in gun suicides. Well that's a spiffing result.

    Except that the gun buyback is estimated (in the links) to have removed about 20% of the total number of guns. If there's an 80% drop in suicide, due to a 20% drop in the number of guns... something else is going on.

    Add to that, since 1996 (according to the linked paper) we've imported about 30 000 guns a year. The buyback took 650 thousand guns out of circulation. Since then we've imported about 630 thousand... Yeah, they're no longer automatic or semi-automatic (which was the focus of the buy back), but suicide is pretty much a one shot affair. Shouldn't the gun suicide rate be the same now as it was in 1996?

    The whole thing is utter garbage research.

    937:

    Larry Fink's Aladdin - Apple's largest shareholder etc

    https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21591164-getting-15-trillion-assets-single-risk-management-system-huge-achievement

    • This is a single system managing a large chunk of global wealth. They mention monte-carlo analysis but not much else.

    What's coming next - machine learning on hardware-neurons; TrueNorth and friends:

    https://www.pcworld.com/article/3123452/hardware/ibm-shows-how-fast-its-brain-like-chip-can-learn.html

    Seems you can get human-brain-level (100 billion neurons) with these things using 16kW over 200 racks:

    "U.S. Air Force Research Lab Taps IBM to Build Brain-Inspired AI Supercomputing System Equal to 64 million neurons, new neurosynaptic supercomputing system will power complex AI tasks at unprecedented speed and energy efficiency"

    https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/52657.wss

    None of this is about mind-uploading or consciousness or sentience - 'just' machine learning and pattern recognition, predicting behaviour of complex systems.

    Quite impressive tbh: "Here, we demonstrate that neuromorphic computing, despite its novel architectural primitives, can implement deep convolution networks that (i) approach state-of-the-art classification accuracy across eight standard datasets encompassing vision and speech, (ii) perform inference while preserving the hardware’s underlying energy-efficiency and high throughput, running on the aforementioned datasets at between 1,200 and 2,600 frames/s and using between 25 and 275 mW (effectively >6,000 frames/s per Watt), and (iii) can be specified and trained using backpropagation with the same ease-of-use as contemporary deep learning."

    http://m.pnas.org/content/113/41/11441.full

    938:

    There is certainly an opportunity to shift the US consensus on guns/2nd amendment, perhaps substantially. (I'm still trying to understand the current dynamics.)

    Roughly on "A bright and shiny hell" topic, one of the depressing things, besides the sheer horror of the incident, seen on TV (CNN, seen/read closed caption in passing) yesterday (Oct 2) was some talking head guy (one 4 heads on screen) bringing up the possibility of patrolling by lethally armed police drones, initial excuse event security. Then protest marches, then etc. To be able to stop (kill) a heavily armed civilian sniper more quickly, if it's not clear. Mistakes will be made. Etc. Since the US 2nd amendment is ostensibly about the option of changing a tyrannical national government through arms (there is ... argument about this), Americans need to be aggressively alert to hypocritical advocacy of such tools(e.g. lethally armed drones) by 2nd amendment enthusiasts. Personally, I am strongly in favor increased gun controls in the US, but whatever one's stance, advocating for a bright and shiny hell where the police regularly use armed drones (eventually autonomous then etc/trope) is not ...appropriate or ethical.

    Here's a sample from today, though it says no weapons would be deployed. http://www.dailynews.com/2017/10/03/what-do-you-think-of-the-lapd-using-drones-nows-your-chance-to-weigh-in/ Here's another, 31 Mar 2017 https://qz.com/947368/police-in-connecticut-could-be-first-in-us-to-fly-drones-outfitted-with-lethal-weapons/

    939:

    Oh, I think we'll know when there's a general war on.

    You mean like the terrorist attacks that shut down California's electricity grid a few years ago? I wonder, though, can we really call a corporation a terrorist?

    I agree that at some point it would be obvious that a war was going on, but that's kinda like arguing that WWII didn't start until the US joined it. Somewhere between the assassination and the nukes a war most certainly began. But exactly when? How do you distinguish the civil war in Australia in 2007 from the recent police actions in Spain (beyond the trivial "one involved the army", since many countries use their militaries as part of their police, especially larger ones like the USA and China)?

    My expectation is that we're going to see Infowar I declared with the attack on Iran, quite possibly Infowar II Estonia, and III the US elections. Or not, depending on how historians (if any survive) rate the various skirmishes and conflicts.

    940:

    Since the US 2nd amendment is ostensibly about the option of changing a tyrannical national government ... advocating for a bright and shiny hell where the police regularly use armed drones (eventually autonomous then etc/trope)

    Right now today the second amendment is more about ensuring that white folk can kill black folk (which is arguably the original purpose for at least some participants in the creation). The idea that the USA government could be overthrown by any force of arms available to the citizenry is ludicrous. Consider the thing that nuked Nagasaki, and think how that organism would react to a military threat much closer to it. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that the US commander in chief would retreat to a bunker somewhere, issue a broadcast about terrorists, then nuke Washington or wherever the "source of the problem" was. But that would be the tail end of a long and ugly series of wholesale slaughters of "unamerican terrorists" on US soil, much like the civil war.

    TBH that's one thing that concerns me about the neofeudalist side in the war for control of the Republican party. They seem the sort who would somehow find themselves in control of the government but not the people, and be very easily able to eliminate the "wrong people". Banking on "true patriots" inside the military to overrule the duly elected government seems risky.

    is not ...appropriate or ethical.

    Government is so rarely about "appropriate or ethical" that I'm not sure why you bring it up. Contrast?

    941:

    Ramez Naam had quite a few pointed things to say on this topic when he guest blogged here a couple of years ago. Hadn't read that, thanks for the link. Interesting. Don't agree with some of it; I see no reason to believe that a breakthrough in self-improvement won't happen, and also the progress in neuroscience and neural simulations continues to be quite rapid. It is true (I'm told) that there was long a gap in resolutions of available mapping tools, between fMRI and neuron-level instrumentation, but imaging has been improving, e.g. Technologies for imaging neural activity in large volumes (26 August 2016 in Nature Neuroscience) (Big mammal brains like human brains still hard.)

    Electrode arrays have been getting better too; I was recently told that the constraint on array size is currently thermal.

    SFreader #923: Back to the point, the trope (if not, it should be) is that the nature of any such transcendent AI would depend on what it emerged from. Emergence from a greedy system that maximized shareholder value might be bad. Same for a military AI. Emergence from an AI that was a personal assistant might not be so bad, depending on who's assistant it was. (D. Trump's AI assistant!) An assistant that tried to predict and preemptively satisfy the desires of large numbers of heterogeneous humans might be better, etc. Bostrom inventoried a minuscule fraction of the ways it could go wrong.

    To your original point, multiple such AIs are possible simply due to the size of the universe if speed of light is indeed the law. Also, it could be possible that there is a size limit for AIs, e.g. they can't be much larger than small moons or something similar, excepting archival storage and similar. Bostrom again outlined the slow takeoff/competing AIs scenarios.

    942:

    The idea that the USA government could be overthrown by any force of arms available to the citizenry is ludicrous. Overthrow, sure, though "ludicrous" is perhaps a little strong. Severe damage is possible though, as a single civilian sniper in Las Vegas with scoped civilian weapons at 450 meters (?) demonstrated. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/inside-las-vegas-shooter-stephen-paddocks-sniper-nest_uk_59d38f29e4b0f9629889f7c5 For reasons that I don't fully understand, in the real world determined breakers can usually win vs makers. If anyone has any readings that clarify these dynamics in RL, would be appreciated. (The longstanding mystery is why so few competent breakers.)

    Not particularly arguing about the history. (I.e. agree with it largely.)

    Government is so rarely about "appropriate or ethical" that I'm not sure why you bring it up. Contrast? No, just trying to avoid igniting a guns-in-America flamewar here, while still saying that advocating for qualitatively increased lethal police powers is wrong, and should be called out. Especially if it in service of preserving (or improving!) sales numbers for gun companies (who, as many have noted, enjoy increased sales after shootings like this), or of increasing the policing powers of the government (cough). (And also haven't looked to see what Alex Jones and the like have spun up.)

    943:

    "possibility of patrolling by lethally armed police drones"

    It also ignores that it's probably more likely that a large swarm of non lethal drones simply swamping the shooter would be more effective (easier to target, easier to deploy, harder to defend against) than a single large drone carrying a heavy weapon. Very hard to use a hand weapon if there's a couple of hundred small drones whacking into you constantly. Small racing drones get up to a couple of hundred km/h.

    They can duck into places that a big drone can't get to and go around corners.

    944:

    still saying that advocating for qualitatively increased lethal police powers is wrong, and should be called out

    I agree. Just not sure that saying "this is the ethical option" is going to have much weight for the proposal inside the US government. They just let their "insure all the kids" program lapse because they were busy trying to prevent Medicare. "stop kids dying" apparently has less weight than it used to.

    I suspect playing up the "how easy is it to hack one" might be the way to go. And also that it might be hard to tell the difference between an armed BLM drone and an armed police one.

    945:

    For reasons that I don't fully understand, in the real world determined breakers can usually win vs makers. If anyone has any readings that clarify these dynamics in RL, would be appreciated. (The longstanding mystery is why so few competent breakers.)

    No papers, but my observation is that political activists of any stripe typically want to make the system better rather than smash it, so the smashers are normally made up of people who like smashing stuff (and are generally not good at, say, building a social movement), and disillusioned political activists. It's only when you get a critical mass of the latter that you combine solid organisational skills with a desire to smash stuff, and the popular support to support the smashers. That much is old news in the pro and anti terrorism politics (for a state trying to overthrow the government of another state, step one is always building popular support. See Chile in the 1970's, Venezuela today for example). Once you have that political violence can work very effectively (see 9/11... 1973).

    This extends much further out along the activist-lobbyist spectrum than most people think, which is why there are so few political assassinations etc. People will chain themselves to a railway line much more willingly than they will harm a politician even in countries like Pakistan and Myanmar. Look at India's tradition of self-immolation as political protest, for example - those people are clearly willing to kill but they're not killing politicians.

    Also, look at the size of alquaeda when they attacked the USA vs the white terrorists inside the USA. Generally if you hear of a sizeable plot inside the USA it's because it was being run by the FBI, or it was in the very early stages when the police state types found it and stopped it. Which suggests that to get even 20 people organised, trained and equipped to perform a single attack you need more organisation than it's practical to build within the USA now. I'm going to guess that that is largely because there's not a lot of civilian support for terrorism - even "lone gunmen" types usually turn out to have a history of people tipping off the cops that they're a danger to others.

    946:

    determined breakers can usually win vs makers... why so few competent breakers

    I think your initial hypothesis is wrong. Not just loosely, possibly wrong. Proven, definitely, not at all right. The existence of nation-states is that proof, and the persistence of human communities even in dreadful conditions is more proof (look at ghettos, the original ones. Jews didn't form those as an expression of the joy and goodwill they were surrounded by. But their existence and persistence suggests that the breakers failed, repeatedly and often).

    947:

    I hate to admit it, but - what you said: So why does Switzerland with 5 times more guns than El Salvador have a murder rate 1/200th the size? Low income inequality, access to free education and healthcare, low pollution levels (particularly lead), a solid social safety net and they treat addiction as an illness not a crime. All things that the USA could implement. All things that the right fight against. Is probably correct. However, IF you did restrict weapons from use by nutters & automatics as well, would it make a starting-difference, at the least?

    948:

    And, the Wiki page on "maker-breaker" is missing something. There can be no draw in a Maker-Breaker positional game: one player always wins. Oh dear - how about BOTH sides losing - there's nothing left but rubble, in other words?

    As well as the point that successful breakers usually also have to be makers themseleves.

    949:

    Yeah, but this is the USSA we're talking about. A unarmed-drone-swarm is the logical way to go, but armed drones that can KILL ANYONE (Especially innocent bystanders) is much more "fun" Yuck

    950:

    @ 933, 937, 941 on AI That Economist piece on "the monolith & the markets" is worrying, esp since we are talking about hacking .....

    But the two bits (cough) on IBM's "True North" are worryingly (?) close to a true AI emerging, especially if a 3-d array of said chips is itself interconnected in all three dimesnions. Provide the power-supply & cooling problems are kept under control ( i.e. low power use & efficient waste-heat removal ) then I would suspect a real, maybe "superhuman" AI to appear very soon, & quite possibly a lot sooner than the article suggests: A full computer with a brain-emulating chip could still be a long time off. - yes, but why a single chip, if you make an array of these, or similar, you have a whole new game, don't you?

    951:

    ...many countries use their militaries as part of their police, especially larger ones like the USA and China...

    Just a quibble, but the US keeps the military firmly firewalled away from domestic police issues, and there aren't many exceptions. Widespread insurrection could do it. National Guard units can be called up by their respective state governors (not the federal government). The Coast Guard is once again its own thing and the closest to what you probably have in mind, being simultaneously a branch of the military and the nation's boat cops; they rarely fit in neatly to any table of organization.

    I'm sure there are nations that don't have American's giant messy pile of military organizations, but if it's baroque why fix it?

    952:

    "IF you did restrict weapons from use by nutters & automatics as well, would it make a starting-difference, at the least?"

    I used to think so. I really did. I thought it was a great idea but not really possible. I was proven wrong. On both counts. It was possible to reduce the number of guns, and it did nothing. There are basically no automatic weapons around in Australia. Mental illness can be a bar to owning guns. (not always, but sometimes, it depends) Actually lots of things can be a bar to owning guns. For example an AVO, which anyone can take out with no evidence, will bar you from owning guns for 10 years. An employer of mine took one out against an employee who wanted their back pay. So they're not hard to get.

    https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/on-what-grounds-can-i-be-refused-a-nsw-firearms-licence/

    So look at this graph. It's murders in Australia. Cover the bottom and try to pick which year the firearms buy back occurred and all the laws got tightened..... Note that the bottom of the graph is not zero, the decline is nowhere near as large as it looks. Less than 10%.

    http://www.aic.gov.au/media_library/aic/research/homicide/homiciderate2.png

    953:

    ANOTHER ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE

    In an attempt to make life easier for the moderators who police these discussions for spam, I am adding an extra word to the blocklist. If you use this word in a comment, the comment will be held for moderation:

    Loan

    (any combination of upper/lowercase).

    954:

    And when I say 'reduced' guns... it changed the whole culture. When I was a kid we did 'Oh What a Lovely War' (a musical set during the Great War). The class of 70 primary school kids who were asked to bring in guns as props, we got about 20 kids turned up with working 303's. They brought them to school on the bus. No-one turned a hair. I don't think anyone brought bullets, but I also don't think the teachers bothered to check.

    Yet now as an adult, living in the country (my partner mentioned tonight that she'd dodged a kangaroo on the way home from work) I haven't seen someone in Australia holding a gun (off a military base) for 20 years at least. I've seen police with holstered guns, but that's it. The last time I saw someone holding a gun was the police at Windsor Castle. It gave me the willies.

    955:

    the US keeps the military firmly firewalled away from domestic police issues,

    Other than the large numbers of US police officers who are ex-military or active National Guard reserve or train regularly with the US military to use military-grade weaponry and equipment, yes there's absolutely no connection between the US police and the US military...

    956:

    Exception, that may or may not prove the rule ... When a Republican President ( Eisenhower ) sent in troops to overrule the local "National Guard" Which caused much consternation at the time ...

    957:

    Lots of exceptions. Hoover deployed tanks during protest marches in Washington during the depression, for example. It's just there's this "Posse Comitatus" rule the US has which folks think makes military action within their borders moot while the actual police forces drive around in armoured cars with heavy machine guns. It's not a new thing:

    http://www.shorpy.com/node/5914

    1918 was a time of panics about Anarchists and Nihilists and Commie agitators plotting to destroy America. Nothing like today's calm rational political and social environment, is it?

    958:

    No. it's more reminscent of Warren Harding's corrupt freiends, with the NRA's insistent & pernicious lobbying replacing that of an equally nasty grouping - the Prohibitionists ...

    959:

    Re: Guns & murder rates

    I understand your point and agree that the socioeconomic underlying reasons for violence need to be addressed. However, ...

    1- Immediate change and deaths brought down to zero: this is like expecting all car crash deaths to disappear as soon as seat belt or drunk driving laws are enforced. Didn't happen because there were and are other options/reasons for car crash deaths. Same is true for guns. Plus there is a segment of the population who will not/cannot be swayed to modify their behavior. (And probably didn't bring their guns in.) But there is a much larger segment that is reachable and whose attitudes and behavior can be shifted and and their (and their potential victims') lives saved. The Australia buy-back strategy was also very important because it combined the legal and more importantly the social signals into one event. Social change takes time but is a much stronger deterrent over the long haul. More importantly, this de-arming of the public tends to reduce the rate at which youngsters who grow up into adolescents, adults, etc. perceive their world with respect to guns, and how they then transit their world view onto their kids and so on. So you do have to look at long term trends.*

    2- De-emphasize guns in folklore and entertainment - why are the 'heroes' armed to the teeth and kill everyone in sight?

    • I'm guessing that social attitude surveys were and continue to be done that included questions related to gun ownership in Australia. Compare the various age/gender subgroups across time. Pretty sure this is where the psycho-social effects would really show up.
    960:

    2) - and indeed the general message that wearing the "good guy" badge means you can do all the same things that the bad guys do, and cause even more general mayhem and destruction, but because you're the good guy it's OK and you're allowed to. Shooting people who are in the way, stealing cars because you want to get somewhere, blowing up buildings because you don't get on with the people inside... maybe you even get to punch out cops because they won't listen to you, or tell the military commanders how to handle their operation because you obviously know better than they do.

    "I'm the bad guy? ...How did that happen?"

    961:

    Monday's mass shooting was a great success for gun control.

    Actual purpose built fully automatic guns are heavily restricted in the US. They are hard to get and expensive.

    If that were not the case does anyone seriously doubt that this particular monster would have had an actual machine gun or several in his, what is it now, 40 or more gun collection?

    We would be looking at well over 100 deaths I think.

    962:

    With regard to Australia, I think it is critical to pay very great attention to exactly how gun laws change and exactly how gun murders change. Lump the wrong things together and you will get useless results.

    I looked into murder stats by method in the US once, oh more than ten years ago. Compared to other OECD countries. Some things jumped out. The US did have a generally higher murder rate. We have a lot more maybe double (not looking it up now, ) the stabbings, bludgeonings, poisonings, etc of other wealthy countries. The stats had a division I had never before considered though. Our Long Gun murder rate was similar to those other methods. The exception was handguns. The US handgun murder rate was vastly higher. 10x? Something like that. Way way higher. It is also the case that long guns are fairly available in some OECD countries, but handguns were only easily available in the US. Note that after this time the US ended a ten year assault rifle ban, so we have a lot more assault rifles now than we did back when I dug into this.

    Long guns, particularly assault rifles, but also anything that can be used as a sniper rifle (ie any hunting rifle) are critically important for mass shootings. They are, however, far less important for the overall murder rate. The overall murder rate is driven by the far more common 'shooting a friend or family member in a moment of rage' and 'street crime'. Handguns are just the thing for shooting your brother/wife/etc after one too many beer and an argument, or for knocking over a liquor store.

    Via wikipedia New South Whales Australia, where 1/3 of the people live, had essentially banned handguns since ww2. I didn't look up other states, guessing that some of the other more populous territories may have had similar handgun restrictions.

    So I'm thinking that Australian gun control pre 1996 was already restricting handguns, and thus already doing most of the gun murder reduction. Restricting long guns doesn't do much to overall murder rates because long guns are not very important for overall murder rates. Long guns are important for mass shootings. So restricting them, if effective, will reduce mass shootings, but not do much for total murder rates.

    963:

    Do you live in the US?

    You sound like you're extrapolating way past your understanding of the situation.

    964:

    since many countries use their militaries as part of their police, especially larger ones like the USA and China)?

    Other's have pointed out how the US military is fairly well back from participating in police matters.

    As to China I recently learned that the military there is a branch of the Communist Party and not run by the government. For most situations this doesn't matter but it is an interesting distinction.

    965:

    We're way past 300 so I'll drop this.

    I just went over to the British Airways site to sign up for their Avios program. First question is for my "Title". I figure there's 3 or 4 choices like in the US. "Mr" for me. Nooooo. The British have a list of 19. Staring with Mr and ending with Viscountess.

    Separated by a common language indeed.

    967:

    One of the Far-eastern airlines that has personal suites aboard their A380s has drop-down title menu on their Website. It includes "King".

    968:

    I see a lot of mentions here and there that American police officers are often hired using a preference system prioritising military veteran candidates. In sensible countries candidate police officers are typically young people from high school or University who go through a couple of years of classroom and on-the-street training before they become fully-fledged police officers, never having been militarised in the first place.

    Maybe you're too close to the US way of doing things to realise how policing is supposed to work in civilised countries.

    969:

    Re: Guns

    You're skipping over suicides - why? In suicide as with homicide there are always the MMO (means, motive and opportunity). A handgun at home easily satisfies two of the three conditions. Add in lifetime risk of clinical depression in the US at at least 20% among a population of 325 million ...

    970:

    title 'king' Lol Reminds me of a USian pension corp with a several-dozen-long title-list (archbishop, marchioness, .. !).. And a dutch corp where 'von Bosch' != 'Von Bosch'.. And a US corp with staff 'non-discrimination code' (asian, caucasian, cough splutter)

    AI / TrueNorth As heteromeles was saying, the goalposts shift. Machines constantly listening, ready to determine mood, guage context, respond to voice command - are being normalised. As is fast growth, and fast disposal and divergence from historical norms, this us-ian disregard for historical context (except for the last 70 years of baseball statistics)..

    I half-expect some wild-exed young executive to order their fancy new neural optimising supercomputer 'make this corps owners the richest', resulting in the 'ai' (still abhuman and unconscious) finding the shortest path is to 1) pile up all the gold in moscow 2) empower russian $oligarch 3) make $oligarch own the gold, 4) crash world economy, then 5) surrender ownership of corp to $oligarch. Job Done 8D !

    971:

    Maybe you're too close to the US way of doing things to realise how policing is supposed to work in civilised countries.

    Or maybe you're inferring way too much about the typical police over here based on the headlines you see/read. I try and not come to too many conclusions about how policing in Europe works based on the news for exactly the same reasons.

    We have a phrase here about many local TV news shows for some stations in big cities. "If it bleeds, it leads". If you watch those channels for the news you'd think we live in armed camps with people dying daily on the way to the grocery. While there's too much nonsense and mayhem going on over here the news is NOT they way to quantify it.

    I've yet to meet a "thug" as a police man or woman. And what comes out of the military and typically gets into the police force in the US is not an uneducated lout. And to get to be a non probational officer in most places takes more than a few months. Way more in many cases.

    BTW our southern city of about 500,000 has a black lady as the chief for a force of about 1000.

    972:

    One of the Far-eastern airlines that has personal suites aboard their A380s has drop-down title menu on their Website. It includes "King".

    My daughter flew on one of those flights in a suite with a shower (that she used) about a year ago just to say she had done it.

    Paid for with points/miles.

    And no title of Queen.

    973:

    How about indentured servant?

    974:

    Not sure of your point.

    But I suspect based on my Scottish last name and that my ancestors came out of Maryland a bit over 200 years ago, that my heritage is serfs from Scotland sold as indentured servants shipped to the US in the later 1600s or early 1700s.

    975:

    I didn't skip suicides.

    I specifically mentioned that the gun suicide rate. comment 936

    The lowest suicide rate in Australia was during the second world war, when it hit about 7.5 per 100 000. At that time Australia was literally awash with guns.

    From there it showed a reasonably steady rise hitting about 17 per 100 000 in 1963. From there it fell at about the same rate it had risen, getting to about 12 per 100 000 in 1972 and staying constant until 1983 (coinciding with Australia's first recession for decades) when it had a bit of a step change, staying around 12 until 1996. From there it fell again, at the same rate, reaching about 10 in 2006. From there it rose again hitting about 13 last year.

    So really very little indication that the overall suicide rate tracks with gun availability.

    Still, you could look at just gun suicide and assume, as you have that if there's no gun, there must be no suicide. So graphed out, 1996 should show a step change. A large number of guns were removed from society, societal attitudes changed suddenly and dramatically and keeping grandpa's 303 in the cupboard was no longer acceptable. Almost overnight, guns went from something lots of people who weren't really interested in guns had lying about, to something that only people with a real interest or need had, and kept locked away. (You had to belong to a gun club, the guns were mostly kept at the club, you had to attend and shoot regularly or you lost your licence)

    http://www.gunsandcrime.org/gunsuic.gif

    See any step change in that graph? Na, me neither. I see a steady decline for the 10 years prior and that steady decline continuing as it was, through the changes, toward zero. Note also the numbers. 3.5 in 1986. Compare that to the 1986 overall suicide rate of 23. Guns haven't ever been a favourite way of offing oneself in Australia.

    Looking at the suicide rates for men and women in Australia is very interesting. Men's suicide rate tracks the financial health of the country, with spikes during recession and depressions. Lots of noise in the signal.

    Women's suicide rate is flat across the last century, barring a large bump beginning in 1962, peaking in 1968 and declining since, back to the background level it was. Cause??? Women's changing role in society? Hard to say. Men had a similar bump overlayed on their normal large ups and downs, but in 1975 they started back up again while women's continued back to baseline.

    Even looking at the men's suicide rate, without prior knowledge, you'd be hard pressed to pick the point where guns were suddenly removed from society. The only real step change was the outbreak of war. Well for men anyway. Women's rate was completely constant through the war and you wouldn't be able to tell where the war happened from their graph.

    https://aphweblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/7a211-flagpost_suicide.jpg

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/09/27/australias-suicide-crisis-has-peaked-to-a-terrifying-new-height_a_21480647/

    976:

    "does anyone seriously doubt that this particular monster would have had an actual machine gun"

    The videos that came out at the time had clear machine gun fire sounds on them.

    https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000005472618/mass-shooting-in-las-vegas.html

    977:

    Interesting, I'm not sure if I've ever seen titles of nobility in one of those drop-downs. They're often quite long, but most of the length usually seems to be recently-invented ones like "Mx" and various alternatives to it, plus the odd professional one like "Dr" and "Rev".

    What infuriates me, though, is that it is almost never possible to simply leave the field empty.

    978:

    The retail electricity firm I worked with started their salutation list with Air Vice Marshal (A. V. M.). I think that was bookended with Wing Commander. I did speak to a Wing Commander Ret. but he declined to be changed from Mr. (he regaled me with tales of flying spitfires, my most enjoyable call in 7 years on the phone)

    I rarely created an account with anything other than Mr, Mrs, Miss and Ms. I think I put in one Lord and one Lady. A tiny scattering of Dr, but there must have been near a hundred to choose from.

    979:
    The videos that came out at the time had clear machine gun fire sounds on them.

    He used semi-auto rifles with aftermarket "bump stock" accessories. There are a variety of these sorts of things (new ones come out regularly) which substitute a gizmo which makes you pull the trigger rapidly for a traditional automatic fire weapon. This is done because US law determines legality based on how many bullets come out every time you squeeze the trigger.

    Semi-auto rifles can fire bullets just as fast as full-auto rifles can: the difference is just how fast you can squeeze the trigger, so skirting the law is rather trivial.

    US gun culture being what it is, people constantly try to come up with ways to push the law because they imagine they're sticking it to the evil liberals from the nanny state every time they modify a weapon.

    980:

    Funny the term indentured servants happened to come up in this thread, on the same day I learned its origin reading Graeber's "Debt: the first 5000 years". He discussed Chinese tally sticks broken in two as a form of contract recording, with matching of the unique breakage patterns of the two halves at the time of fulfillment. Appended in his notes was this bit- "Similar things happened in England, where early contracts were also broken in half in imitation of tally sticks: the phrase 'indentured servant' derives from this practice, since these were contract laborers; the word actually derives from the 'indentations' or notches on the tally stick used as a contract."

    And a tip of the bike helmet to Heteromeles for the book recommendation, never have I been so confirmed in what I thought were my own unique opinions. Nice to have some background on it finally.

    981:

    I think many of us here ultimately got that recommendation from OGH.

    http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/02/i-had-a-blog-entry-for-you-but-1.html

    and the fact that it formed some of the basis for a novel:

    http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/09/crib-sheet-neptunes-brood.html

    I certainly read it on his recommendation.

    In fact I'd say that reading his blog and the comments has had a profound effect on the way I view the world.

    982:

    US gun GENERAL culture being what it is, people constantly try to come up with ways to push the law because they imagine they're sticking it to the evil liberals from the nanny state every time they modify a weapon. I've just finised reading an account of the insanity of the "18th Amendment" ... there is a huge, [ermanent aftermath from that, in that, if a US law is felt to be inconvenient, people will simply ignore oit, or so it seems.

    983:

    As said above the monster used modified or accessorized semi automatic military style rifles, not actual purpose built fully automatic guns. They are basically shitty machine guns. The military uses real machine guns because they do this better. Imo only because of even our weak gun control he wasn't firing a more effective m249 or similar.

    984:

    The internet has proven that a universal info-grid is extremely useful. If it gets abused too much, the result will not - in the long term - be "no network", it will be instead a network designed from the ground up to be proof against such abuses. Of course, this does mean a lot of things we take for granted about it may go away. For example, one obvious safeguard against attackers of unknown origin is to make all network traffic extremely traceable.

    985:

    "Almost two-thirds of schoolchildren would not mind if social media had never been invented, a survey has indicated."

    http://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/oct/05/growing-social-media-backlash-among-young-people-survey-shows

    Maybe all is not lost after all?

    986:

    Since the US 2nd amendment is ostensibly about the option of changing a tyrannical national government through arms (there is ... argument about this)

    s/argument/much motivated reasoning/

    "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

    With regard to the "well regulated Militia" bit that justifies the right, the two Militia Acts of 1792 may provide a bit of insight into what was meant by that at the time:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_Acts_of_1792

    I.e., an organized, trained, disciplined, compulsory, citizen-financed reserve force to be used to augment a small standing army in case of need to deal with national security threats. As someone put it, "jury duty, with boot camp". The modern National Guard is as close as the US has to that, and it's only middling close.

    987:

    Re: Guns & the USA

    Didn't know this before but the CDC is specifically prohibited from (i.e., cannot get funding for) studying gun ownership. Which leaves only furrin studies ... and we know how much those matter.

    NRA: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ECYMvjU52E

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/10/04/gun-violence-research-has-been-shut-down-for-20-years/?utm_term=.eed282984345

    988:

    Fairchild-Republic proposed a two seat all weather variant, but the USAF didn't bight.

    A substantial portion of the reasoning behind the USAF declining is the USAF hates the US Army and loathes having to do ground attack & support missions. Who needs the Army when you have Strategic Bombing?

    Not having aircraft capable of carrying out those missions is one way for the USAF to avoid having to do them.

    989:

    Thing is. The story I have heard is that the Taliban didn't tell the US to "poke off." Rather they asked for a minimal amount of evidence in order to justify extradition.

    I don't have a source for that however. However it does seem plausible that they did so, and that a US administration dominated by Project for a New American Century types would be eager for an excuse to pick a fight in the area.

    The PNAC contingent in that administration didn't want to have anything to do with Afghanistan. For them Afghanistan was a distraction from the main event, Iraq and getting Saddam.

    They still had to be dragged into going after Al Qaeda when the Taliban balked. The invasion of Afghanistan was a pro forma exercise undertaken only because there were no suitable targets for a "shock and awe" bombing campaign. Even then, it was only a half-ass effort already being wound in favor of preparation for the Iraq invasion before it had even fully begun.

    They really thought they could shout "Frog" at the Taliban and the Afghani would jump even before asking "How high?" It's a lesson in the folly of believing your own propaganda that still doesn't seem to have soaked in for the current administration.

    990:

    Right now today the second amendment is more about ensuring that white folk can kill black folk (which is arguably the original purpose for at least some participants in the creation).

    The original purpose of the Second Amendment was a response to the new nation's experience in sucessfully rebelling against a government they considered tyrannical; one they felt had used it's large standing army to deprive them of "rights" that should have been enjoyed by all "Englishmen".

    In evaluating the Second Amendment you need to consider not only the ENTIRE text of the amendment, but the proposed texts as well as the texts of the other amendments in the Bill of Rights.

    During the 1st US Congress the House proposed 17 articles, 12 of which were adopted by the Senate and sent to the States for Ratification. Ten were ratified immediately; one was ratified 203 years later and one is still pending, having fallen one state short in 1789 (it now needs ratification by 27 states for it to be adopted).

    The fifth article proposed in the House stated

    "A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the People, being the best security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person."
    In the Senate this text was modified into that which was adopted as the Second Amendment. The intent of the Second Amendment was to ensure the US military would always be made up primarily of part-time Citizen-Soldiers, with the standing army being only a small contingent of professional soldiers for cadre and leadership in time of national emergency.

    Consider also the other amendments of the Bill of Rights, particularly the Third, because they all impinge upon the manner in which military force may be used (i.e. NOT as a tool for tyranny).

    991:

    Just a quibble, but the US keeps the military firmly firewalled away from domestic police issues, and there aren't many exceptions. Widespread insurrection could do it. National Guard units can be called up by their respective state governors (not the federal government). The Coast Guard is once again its own thing and the closest to what you probably have in mind, being simultaneously a branch of the military and the nation's boat cops; they rarely fit in neatly to any table of organization.

    The National Guard can be called to Federal Service for the purpose of suppressing insurrection if the state fails to act. The only time I'm aware of that happening is when the Eisenhower administration federalized the Arkansas National Guard before sending the 101st Airborne to Little Rock to enforce school desegragation in accordance with Federal Court orders following Brown v Board of Educaton.

    That happened while I was in elementary school. There may have been other instances I don't know about.

    The Coast Guard didn't start out as a military (or para-military) force. They were created from combining the Treasury Department's Revenue cutters (tax collectors) with the US Life-Saving Service and then adding in the Lighthouse Service along with the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation.

    In times of war, the Coast Guard operates under the aegis of the US Navy.

    992:

    intent of the Second Amendment was to ensure the US military would always be made up primarily of part-time Citizen-Soldiers, with the standing army being only a small contingent of professional soldiers

    But then I also read things like this from truth-out and seems plausible.

    The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says "State" instead of "Country" (the framers knew the difference -- see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states ... southern legislators and plantation owners lived not just in fear of their own slaves rebelling, but also in fear that their slaves could be emancipated through [federal] military service.

    As a reading of the politics at the time, backed by things that the slavers wrote on their own behalf, that seems quite plausible to me.

    It also says that historically at least, the hard dividing line between the US military which only ever operates outside the borders of the USA, and the Police who operate inside those borders... was not so hard and bright as some like to pretend. Arguably one of the reasons people try to pretend it's such a rigid delineation is because of that history.

    993:

    The National Guard can be called ... The only time I'm aware of that happening is ... to Little Rock to enforce school desegragation

    Presumably Kent State also counts? National Guard shooting civilians is normally something the police do, but in that case it was the military.

    994:

    gasdive @ 976:

    The videos that came out at the time had clear machine gun fire sounds on them.

    https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000005472618/mass-shooting-in-las-vegas.html

    The purpose of of devices such as the "bump stock" are to allow machine-gun like rates of fire without actually making illegal modifications to the weapon. Important if the shooter wants to use the weapon for lawful activities (sport or recreational shooting). Moot in this case because he used his weapons to commit a heinous crime and didn't care about being taken alive.

    Jeff Fisher @ 983:

    As said above the monster used modified or accessorized semi automatic military style rifles, not actual purpose built fully automatic guns. They are basically shitty machine guns. The military uses real machine guns because they do this better. Imo only because of even our weak gun control he wasn't firing a more effective m249 or similar.

    For military purposes, you generally want a machine gun to concentrate the fire on a specific target. In this case the inaccuracy inherent to the "bump stock" was a feature. He wanted to scatter his fire to harm the maximum number of people.

    I've read a couple of things just this afternoon that he may have had a plan to escape capture. One of his two broken out windows didn't really give him a vantage point to fire on the Harvest festival. But, it did give him a clear shot at a couple of large fuel tanks on McCarran International Airport.

    There are some reports he did shoot at those tanks with one of his high powered (.308) rifles.

    It's just a Wild Ass Guess, but he may have thought he could cause the tanks to explode by shooting at them to provide a diversion while he was shooting into the festival grounds. He placed too much belief in Hollywood special effects.

    If he had been able to ignite and/or explode one or both of those tanks, it would have masked his firing at the concert and anyone fleeing away from the airport would have run towards him.

    It also would have probably hindered hotel security from identifying his room as the sniper's location.

    I'm thinking that if his scheme had worked there would have been smoke alarms going off all along that side of the hotel. The alarm in his room wouldn't have been the only one going off and the security guard wouldn't have pinpointed his room so quickly. The time he stopped shooting coincides closely with the time the hotel security guard arrived at his door - approximately 10:15pm. The first Police officers didn't arrive on the 32nd floor until approximately 10:25 and SWAT wasn't ready for almost another hour after that.

    He could have kept shooting for a long, long time, but he didn't. I suspect his suicide came very soon after he shot through the door at the security guard.

    995:

    But then I also read things like this from truth-out and seems plausible.

    The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says "State" instead of "Country" (the framers knew the difference -- see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states ... southern legislators and plantation owners lived not just in fear of their own slaves rebelling, but also in fear that their slaves could be emancipated through [federal] military service.

    Plausible, but I would find it more convincing if I could identify "hundreds of substantial slave uprisings" that had occurred before the Constitution was ratified. I identified fewer than a dozen, and some of them occurred northof the Mason-Dixon line.

    Another reason for the militias was the number of uprisings that occurred along the frontier before, during and after the American Revolution; particularly those that occurred between the Treaty of Paris of 1783 and the Constitutional Convention of 1787 - often encouraged by the British Army operating out of Canada through the war of 1812 and continuing up until the Oregon Treaty of 1846 finally established a permanent boundary between British North America and the United States.

    Slavery has been a problem for the US since colonial times, one we still haven't come to terms with, but don't forget that we were still subjects of the king when slavery was first introduced into the Colony of Virginia. At the time of the American Revolution, slavery was legal within the British Empire and a significant revenue source for British mercantile interests in all of Britain's colonies in the "New World".

    Torys fleeing into Canada during and after the American Revolution took their slaves with them and didn't have to give them up until 1833.

    996:

    Presumably Kent State also counts? National Guard shooting civilians is normally something the police do, but in that case it was the military.

    The Ohio National Guard was sent to Kent, Ohio by Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes at the request of Kent Mayor LeRoy Satrom,so it doesn't count as an instance where the National Guard was Federalized, no.

    It in no way excuses how badly they fucked up, or the way in which local, state and federal governments tried to whitewash the event, but it occurred at lowest point in the history of the National Guard.

    The Regular Army hated the National Guard (still do for all I know even though they can't function without the manpower), but Congress wouldn't allow them to abolish the Guard so they did everything they could to marginalize the Guard. Poorly trained, ill equipped and atrociously led, the Guard was ripe for tragedy.

    997:

    it doesn't count as an instance where the National Guard was Federalized

    I originally said "many countries use their militaries as part of their police" and Kent State is an obvious example of that. Quibbling about whether the military units that killed civilians were commanded by a governor or a president doesn't change my basic premise. It's still soldiers killing same-nation civilians and that's supposed to be done by the police. Or protecting. Sometimes it's hard to tell what their goal is.

    998:

    Quibbling about whether the military units that killed civilians were commanded by a governor or a president doesn't change my basic premise.

    It's not a quibble because your "basic premise" is bullshit and it's wrong.

    “many countries use their militaries as part of their police, especially larger ones like the USA and China”

    Scott Sanford told you "the US keeps the military firmly firewalled away from domestic police issues, and there aren't many exceptions.

    I amplified Scott's reply by relating the one exception I know about - Eisenhower's deployment of Federal Troops to Little Rock in 1957.

    You replied citing the Kent State incident as an example of the Federal government using the US military for domestic law enforcement. It was not.

    You're WRONG. You don't know what you're talking about, and that ain't no "quibble".

    999:

    Piling on a bit.

    Kent state is considered an aberration by most people in the US. And a huge lesson in how to not do things.

    And 40 years old.

    1000:

    To further clarify:

    The National Guard at Kent State was there because the Mayor of Kent, Ohio, LeRoy Satrom, has declared a state of emergency three days before when the demonstrations began, and requested the help of the National Guard from the governor of Ohio, who granted his request. This was purely a state action.

    If you don't get how the National Guard works, it's a state body, not a federal one. Each state and the District of Columbia has a guard. Under about ten different circumstances, the guards are federalized and folded into the Department of Defense, but in peacetime, they can be called out by the governor of that state to deal with emergencies, whether they are natural disasters (the normal non-military use for the guard), or civil unrest (as with Kent State, Berkeley, and a bunch of major riots).

    Yes, the lines have gotten messy since the War on Terror began, since various specialist units are lodged in various state guards, rather than in the regular military. Still, that's the way it works, and the guardsmen were at Kent State that May 4 to quell civil unrest, not at federal order.

    Now, if we're talking the desegregation of Arkansas, that was a case where Eisenhower sent in the white members of the 101st Airborne and federalized the Arkansas National Guard in order to enforce an order of the US Supreme Court desegregating the schools. The Arkansas National Guard had been deployed by the Arkansas governor to aid the segregationists, so Eisenhower was acting to deescalate the situation, as well as to protect the black students who were integrating. He was also acting to enforce a federal law, which is one of the cases where a national guard can be federalized.

    1001:

    Two things.

    The first is that US federalism, from the perspective of other countries that have a federal model for their nation-state level of government, looks much more permeable than we are used to and one can't be blamed for suspecting it is basically theoretical and not much use in practice. Yes, the situation is much more complex than such a handwaving generalisation does justice too, but you must understand that that complexity is deeply uninteresting if you are not actually American, that the overall average trends are clear enough, and frankly we're too used to seeing Americans argue as though their constitutional arrangements are some sort of universal natural given to take statements about them at face value or at all seriously. So I empathise about that but can't agree Moz is "wrong" in a way that is compelling or meaningful for me. "What, Twisties don't actually contain monosodium glutamate after all?" is about the equivalent level of disagreement. Sorry.

    The second is about the term "aberration". It's a slippery one, the concept it links with is more about the mostly artificial identity someone is trying to frame than it is about any commonality that necessarily actually exists. When an out-group causes a negative event we cast it as typical, when an in-group does it we cast that as aberrant (if we are willing to admit that it happened at all, and we can get very syntactic in the semantics over that).

    Most Australians, for instance, most likely still see the mass murder of original inhabitants on any one of the hundreds of documented events as aberrant rather than part of a pattern. But even in isolation one of those events may simply have been the extreme expression of a pervasive background level of contact violence, misgiving and distrust. Notable events that appear to be random and unexpected may be neither, merely the upthrusts of a continuum that surfaces only under certain conditions, otherwise drifts on, oblivious.

    Mass shooters seem to be of this nature...

    1002:

    If you don't get how the National Guard works, it's a state body, not a federal one.

    Key point I think. And there's an interesting exercise to compare and contrast the Federal-State-Local government responsibilities, agencies and authorities across nations that have these three levels of government.

    1003:

    Key point I think. And there's an interesting exercise to compare and contrast the Federal-State-Local government responsibilities, agencies and authorities across nations that have these three levels of government.

    National Guard units are under the dual control of the state and the federal government. They are state militia available to the Governor of the state, as well as being a reserve component of the US Armed Forces when ordered to federal service

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Guard_of_the_United_States

    1004:

    The first is that US federalism, from the perspective of other countries that have a federal model for their nation-state level of government, looks much more permeable than we are used to and one can't be blamed for suspecting it is basically theoretical and not much use in practice.

    The Constitution defines the division of power and responsibilities between the Federal and the State governments. Some powers are reserved for each, some are shared between them and some are prohibited to either. It's the most fundamental basis of how we govern ourselves, how we view ourselves as a nation and how we relate to our governments ... even if we can't always agree on what it means.

    When considering how federalism works in the United States, it's not at all theoretical.

    1005:

    I read that article earlier this evening to get some background on this discussion, and while it does rather go on and on such that it would take weeks to follow up on all the things it refers to, it does provide unambiguous answers to the basic questions:

    "Are the National Guard part of the police or part of the army?" - they are part of the army, not the police.

    "Are the National Guard used in police actions against US citizens?" - yes, they are, and the article quotes several instances. The Kent State massacre is just the most notorious one. A lot of them are about attacking striking workers.

    It is therefore plain that Moz's statement "many countries use their militaries as part of their police" indeed does apply to the US. The havering about exactly who sent them in is irrelevant outside a US court of law. The point that counts is that they are soldiers doing a police job.

    Britain does it too. We had soldiers on police duty during the plympics. People didn't like it, but at least they didn't off anyone, unlike, say, Ireland or Peterloo.

    1006:

    Constitution defines the division of power and responsibilities

    Yes, that is normal and it is how we do it too. You don't actually need to explain what federalism is (Brits might struggle with it a little, but Germans and Australians will mostly understand it better than you do).

    What seems different with the USA is the number, complexity and scale of government organisations with overlapping responsibilities and/or mixed reporting. You seem to get a lot less value for money from your taxes as a result, though I understand that is possibly because the way they are funded is similarly complex, meaning that their costs are less spread out that in other places. Policing is an obvious example, but I gather it's one of many... of hundreds, perhaps thousands.

    1007:

    What seems different with the USA is the number, complexity and scale of government organisations with overlapping responsibilities and/or mixed reporting.

    I'll give you that one. Although I think a lot of it has to do with being "first" in this setup and the country turning out to be the size of western Europe long before there was mass communication/transportation of a reasonable speed. So Idaho and Montana into the 1900 were fairly isolated from the east coast and Washington DC. It was an experiment when Eisenhower drove a military convoy drove across the country in 1919. They averaged 5mph. Even what we call the midwest where I grew up was somewhat of a backwater in many ways. (I was born in 54.) 50K people in the local city and surroundings. 4 hour drive to get to a more populous area. With only 1 or 2 of even similar but smaller size along the way.

    Our news showed up on TV for 45 minutes a day in the 50s/60s. 30 minutes local and 15 minutes national. INCLUDING commercials. We had a daily paper but many colleges had more meat when I went away in the 70s.

    Think of how the EU government would look today if from GB to Poland to Spain to Greece if the institutions had formed in 1804.

    While there's a history of control from London and Paris in the mental image of their countries, it's much weaker in the US.

    1008:

    re the Second Amendment:

    My understanding of it as an uninvolved non-USian is that it's basically about national defense, which at a certain time required the existence of (state) militias, because there was no big national army, and the land area was too big anyway to be reasonably defendable by a single national army.

    Now, at a time where the US has one of the largest (and arguably the strongest) national militaries in the world, I really can't see a reason why state militias would still be needed for the purpose of national defense. Therefore in my view the second amendment as it is seems simply obsolete.

    Or am I completely wrong?

    1009:

    Like a lot of things mentioned in the Declaration of Independence it is in many ways about the British actions of the time. This one about them confiscating weapons before and during the fight to be independent. And it wasn't clear at all that maybe they would not have to do it all again. See our war of 1812. A side skirmish in the war between England and France that occupied much of the world for a few decades.

    Much too our fortune at the time that we were more of an irritant to England than a foe to be crushed.

    1010:

    Or am I completely wrong?

    Partly wrong.

    You're right about the geography of the new nation making state militias more advantageous because they would be closer to possible threats.

    The founding fathers didn't want a large, professional standing army. Their experience with the way the government of Britain used their standing army in the colonies left a bitter taste.

    The original idea was to have a small cadre of officers trained at the national military academies, with the bulk of the army made up of part-time citizen soldiers from the state militias. That's still a good idea.

    The problem is not with the Second Amendment, but with the way the meaning of it has been interpreted in the last 20 years or so; the way the two clauses have been separated to create a "right" that didn't exist when the Constitution and Bill of Rights was ratified.

    1011:

    While there's a history of control from London and Paris in the mental image of their countries, it's much weaker in the US.

    "The mountains are high, and the emperor is far away."

    1012:

    But not in Catalonia A clssic case of both sides fucking-it-up as fast & hard as they possiboy can .....

    1013:

    I get the impression that Spain is still getting over their civil war and rule by Franco. And to some degree the hangover of the Moorish conquest.

    I know someone who grandmother died recently and grew up rich with multiple estates prior to the civil war. They fled to the US during the fighting but my friend said his grandmother was a big fan of Franco. "He saved Spain".

    My friend and his siblings still have some ownership of one or two lands there still. Most were sold off to allow grandmother to live in a "style according to her perceived station in life".

    1014:

    IMHO Orwell was not only writing a cautionary tale of future verions of Stalin and Hitler and the horrors of the post war Stasi and KGB in East Germany (with KGB Col. Putin not yet arriving on the scene). To borrow a phrase from Charlie - Orwell was probably also describing a cognitive dictatorship as well. Not the one referred to by delusionals and psychotics but the one that sounds like the voice of a humanoid robot in your head. Yeah that one. The disembodied gestalt terrorist Big Brother that runs this sim-like reality and tries to take the fun out of everything by grinding away with the old boot heal. Instead of a Tru-man or Sim-pson reality show we're stuck with a Tru-MP Celebrity App Kim Jong Unreality show. But hey- we ain't in East Germany right? Or Syria or N. Korea or Gaza or the Ukraine. Not even close as Loudon W would say.

    1015:

    My understanding of it as an uninvolved non-USian is that it's basically about national defense, which at a certain time required the existence of (state) militias,

    And my understanding as an uninvolved non-USian is that it's basically about slavery; the southern states relied on militias of armed slave-owners to re-capture escapees and suppress the insurrection they were deathly afraid of — more on the history of state militias here, although it's too early and I'm too de-caffeinated to go hunt out some serious academic citations. As a secondary function it had the advantage of making it less important for the colonies to maintain a standing army, which might have enabled a plurality of the non-slaveowning states to take away their slaves by force.

    Acknowledging the connection between the 2A and slavery is, shall we say, a very sore point for white supremacists, racists, and perhaps the odd non-racist gun-owner. The NRA (a weapons marketing operation) and the dog-whistle racist right have very successfully muddied the water over the past couple of decades.

    But I think in the wake of the November 2016 vote, we have to recognize that the United States is a nation built on willful denial of its slave-owning past, and I'd like to remind y'all of the moderation policy with respect to the name of "the late unpleasantness"; slaveowners treasonous rebellion.

    1016:

    I get the impression that Spain is still getting over their civil war and rule by Franco. And to some degree the hangover of the Moorish conquest.

    The Spanish central government doesn't want a repeat of the Basque separatist movement and the decades of terrorist bombings and killings it spawned which is why it's stomping on the Catalonian separatist movement right now before it gets its legs under it and the bombings and killings starts again.

    1017:

    The Spanish central government doesn't want a repeat of the Basque separatist movement and the decades of terrorist bombings and killings it spawned which is why it's stomping on the Catalonian separatist movement right now before it gets its legs under it and the bombings and killings starts again

    What? No.

    That's about as accurate a description of what's going on as would be "The Westminster government doesn't want a repeat of the Northern Irish troubles and the decades of IRA bombings and killings, which is why it's stomping on the Scottish Nationalist movement right now before it (etc)".

    The Catelan movement is at about the same stage as Holyrood; regional devolved parliament, pro-independence parties running the regional government, a large minority (but not a majority) in favour of independence. The differences are (a) Spain has a post-dictatorship constitution that doesn't permit secession on any terms without a constitutional amendment, and (b) a conservative, authoritarian government — encompassing both regular conservatives and the former supporters of the Fascist movement — that is never nope nohow ever going to allow such an amendment vote to take place. Which means that unlike the UK, the pressure cooker lid is locked down and the safety valves are welded shut.

    I am coming to view the referendum as a cynical move to force a confrontation with the Madrid government over this position. The two sides both fucked up badly, and now they're playing constitutional chicken. Hopefully sanity — and negotiations — will prevail.

    1018:
    The founding fathers didn't want a large, professional standing army. Their experience with the way the government of Britain used their standing army in the colonies left a bitter taste. The original idea was to have a small cadre of officers trained at the national military academies, with the bulk of the army made up of part-time citizen soldiers from the state militias. That's still a good idea.

    Thanks for the explanation! However, it strikes me that while this may have been the original idea, and might even still be a good idea, it's clearly not the current US military doctrine—and hasn't been for at least 100 years (or roughly half the time the sec.am. is in place). The same goes for Charlie's explanation of hunting and re-capturing escaped slaves, which no longer exists for about 150 years (or roughly three quarters of the time since the sec.am. is in place (although simply terrorizing the non-white population is of course still a thing)).

    The conclusion remains the same: not only is the second amendment obsolete, but it has been so for most of the time of its existence. So why is it still there?

    1019:

    Cameroon is another country where one large region (English-speaking) wants to separate from the rest. And it seems there's been an uptick in anti-protester violence recently according to CNN: '... Amnesty has received testimonies about allegations that government forces fired on protesters from helicopters during Sunday's demonstrations, and the organization is trying to verify those claims.'

    Interesting mix of potential reasons for such a divide and I've no idea which is the real, driving cause.

    The political split seems to follow colonial language lines (English vs. French). Their head of state has been in power for 35 years and is showing no sign of stepping aside. The economy with improving international trade seems to be growing well without any one industry or region dominating. Military service is open to both men and women. There is an almost 50-50 geographic and socioeconomic divide between rural and urban.

    What's most different (IMO) about Cameroon vs. other separatist scenarios is that their traditional media is either owned by the gov't or is publicly perceived as corrupt. Not clear whether anyone's trying to muzzle or interfere with their Internet/smartphones à la 2016 US election. Very '1984' butting heads with the 21st century.

    1020:

    The conclusion remains the same: not only is the second amendment obsolete, but it has been so for most of the time of its existence. So why is it still there?

    It's still there because for some reason it ended up in the Big Ten, the Bill of Rights which are all amendments (or almost all) guaranteeing personal rights, a guarantee not for states or counties or groups but for single individuals. You might persuade a State legislature to sign up to an amendment about limiting Presidents to two terms but that only affects a few individuals every century. Persuading fifty million gun owners to give up their individual second amendment rights because it's somehow obsolete is another matter.

    The stuff in the prequel clause about militias is an explanation why the right to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged, it's not a qualification or limitation to the right or any kind of a sunset clause which could be triggered by later events. Why they bothered to add that prequel I'm not sure but the Founding Slaveowners were nothing if not wordy.

    1021:

    The Catalonian separatists went ahead with their referendum against the orders of the national government in a very un-transparent manner. I dont know who got to vote and who didn't -- were residents in the area not originally from Catalonia allowed to vote? Who arranged the voting registers? How were the votes to be counted? Under what sort of supervision, what sort of controls were there over ballot-box stuffing, preventing people from voting etc.? I can't see the result of such a referendum being anything better than, say, an internet poll.

    In the UK the Scottish Nationalists negotiated for a referendum and got it with the consent of Westminster. The rules about eligibility to vote were worked out beforehand, registers of eligible voters were created, the balloting was done in an open manner similar to other national and regional votes held in the UK. Assuming the Nationalists ever get another referendum it will again be with the permission of Westminster because, as in any truly democratic nation (I excerpt the US from this for States Rights reasons) the national government is sovereign.

    1022:

    So why is it still there?

    And Nojay's

    It's still there because for some reason it ended up in the Big Ten, the Bill of Rights which are all amendments (or almost all) guaranteeing personal rights, a guarantee not for states or counties or groups but for single individuals.

    The Big Ten, as you put it, were really a part of the original document in terms of setting up the government. Most (maybe all) of the states objected to some things missing from the original document and so would not sign on until the "Big Ten" were added. So yes there's some inertia there.

    But it's also flat out hard to get an amendment added. (There is no subtraction, you have to have a later one override an earlier one.) You have to get a vote of 2/3s of EACH of the House and Senate to get an amendment proposed and sent to the states. THEN the 3/4s of the states have to agree. It's a big hill to climb. Intentionally.

    1023:

    And if you want way more detail check it out here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Bill_of_Rights

    And if you go down the rabbit hole you get to this: The Second Amendment protects the individual right to keep and bear arms. The concept of such a right existed within English common law long before the enactment of the Bill of Rights.[97] First codified in the English Bill of Rights of 1689 (but there only applying to Protestants), this right was enshrined in fundamental laws of several American states during the Revolutionary era, including the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776.

    And digging down into the English Bill of Rights you get to:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689 with Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law;

    So we got it from England. :)

    1024:

    So we got it from England. :)

    You didn't go back far enough; context is everything. Specifically, you need to go back to 1688 and the Glorious Revolution (betcha didn't know the UK had a revolution in 1688, did you?) and the circumstances surrounding it.

    The TL:DR is that, after Henry VIII expropriated the entire assets of the Catholic Church and declared himself to be head of the Church of England in 1534 (because the Pope wouldn't grant him a divorce, and the Catholic Church owned roughly 10% of the wealth in his country and didn't have any armoured divisions to stop him), the Crown and the Catholic Church were not besties. Indeed, from the 16th to 18th centuries there was pretty much a cold war situation going on, with Catholic priests seen as foreign subversives and spies (and hanged for it) in England.

    The Wars of the Three Kingdoms (aka the "English civil war" — actually there were about three civil wars in England alone, and more in Ireland and Scotland) took place around the same time as the 30 Years War in continental Europe, and were less destructive — only about 10% of the population died (maybe as many as 20% in Ireland), a mere flesh wound. (The 30YW killed up to 90% of the population is some of the Germanies.) And, yes, it was a Catholic-on-Protestant bash, largely aggravated by Charles I of England and Scotland being (a) incapable of balancing a check book, (b) happy to execute nobs and confiscate their lands in order to make the aforementioned check book balance (this did not endear him to the survivors) and (c) appeared to be a closet Catholic sympathizer. Sort of like being suspected of being a Communist in 1980s America.

    Fast forward past the execution of a monarch, a short-lived commonwealth (actually a puritan protestant dictatorship by any other name), and the restoration of King Charles II, who was very careful not to look remotely Catholic. We get to the succession of Charles I's grandson, James II of England/VII of Scotland. Jimmy was a Catholic, and when in 1688 his wife bore a son, this would have put a Catholic monarch on the throne.

    Which triggered a revolution by Parliament, who sent off to the Netherlands for a prince who'd married his daughter Mary, who was both in the line of succession and Protestant.

    Here's the thing: the 1689 Bill of Rights was a post-revolutionary document drafted during the 17th century equivalent of a Red Square, and made it quite clear that the arms were being borne for the sole purpose of shooting pesky communist varmints (of a type now considered so innocuous that they're allowed to marry into the royal family again). Bear in mind that both France and Spain, not to mention the Hapsburg Empire, were all Catholic monarchies and intensely hostile to the British Empire. Context is everything, and the implication that this was a common-law right, rather than a wartime emergency power to provide for national defense without needing a standing force like Cromwell's New Model Army, which scared the living crap out of monarch and parliament alike (it was the NMA which overthrew parliament and installed the puritan Commonwealth in the first place).

    1025:

    OOC - why didn't they, esp. George I, hire mercenaries?

    Mercenaries have been around since ancient times and show up pretty well everywhere on the globe. Would seem more economical too since you wouldn't have to bear the cost of infrastructure, training, equipment, wounded/medical care, pensions, etc. not to mention having a well-armed and trained populace ready to put down any master they took a dislike to. Okay, granted there were some like the White Company that got into trouble with the civilians whenever they weren't fighting a war. But I can imagine mercenary cartels pricing themselves out of actual warfare and into peace maker roles.

    1026:

    And IIRC one of the separatist parties in Catalonia have got theor snout in the trough, badly. You then couple that with Rajoy's willy-waving - he's a fan of Brexit, because Gibraltar & he's a complete tosser otherwise & it doesn't look good.

    1027:

    https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f4/15/a9/f415a99bcb7e31ec4dc33b57d88cfb3c--lovecraft-cthulhu-hp-lovecraft.jpg " Excuse Me Sir, do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Saviour, Cthulhu? "

    1028:

    Pardon? Which period exactly are you talking about?

    1029:

    Yes. I've read on English history but it has been a few decades. And yes you have a craziness back then that made our revolution look quaint at times.

    I was half joking. Should have put in some tags.

    But to pin EVERYTHING in the US on slavery is just nuts. We have lots of things to pin lots of things on. As do the folks across the big pond.

    One of my points was that we can't change the constitution by a simple majority vote. Or anything close to it.

    1030:

    OOC - why didn't they, esp. George I, hire mercenaries?

    They did (the Hessians), and they caused problems to the extent of being referenced explicitly as an Indictment in the Declaration of Independence:

    "He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation"

    1031:

    " Excuse Me Sir, do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Saviour, Cthulhu? "

    Coincidentally, the Lovecraft Film Festival is just wrapping up. My workplace is barely a long tentacle from the theater and I've been chatting with the attendees on and off all weekend. At least some of them fondly remember this articulate Scottish writer fellow they had in a few years back... grin

    1032:

    Of course it's nuts to pin everything in the US on slavery (though Somerset v Stewart apparently did worry some). Some of it's down to Native/colonist relations: the Minutemen militias in New England were for going and doing war upon restless natives, after all.

    (A reminder that some of the pre-Revolution grievance against the Crown had to do with the 1763 Proclamation and its restricting colonists' God-given right to bilk or steal land from any Native American who would express some sense of ownership over it.)

    1033:

    Not denying your one point but there were lots of things going one. England was big on preventing local (to us) industries, banking that wasn't a branch of something in London, and so on.

    Basically London wanted anything to do with money to pass through them or be built by them. We were supposed to be farmers and miners and be happy about it.

    1034:

    Defeat of the German Hessians at Trenton was a big reason the colonies actually began to think they might be able to win.[1]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Trenton

    There's even a crazy painting and legends about the river crossing that made it possible. Although what really happened in the crossing was impressive enough but boring in the details.

    [1] I've never understood why the British kept 1000s of army troops on ships sitting in NY harbor for the duration. They would have likely made the difference at any of a dozen battles and ended things.

    1035:

    It's not like you need to convince me that London ran its colonies entirely for its own benefit. And - like all of history - it's more complicated than we think. (Fractally, I suspect.) But when the popular narrative is full of "taxation!" "Intolerable Acts!" etc. it's important to remember what else was going on.

    1036:

    Mercenaries? Ex-mercenary business leader to run for US Seanate, or so it seems .... ( Blackwater )

    1037:

    some of the pre-Revolution grievance against the Crown had to do with the 1763 Proclamation and its restricting colonists' God-given right to bilk or steal land from any Native American

    It occurred to me the other day that the whole "Catalan referendum is illegal" argument bears a passing resemblance to that situation. In both cases one of the involved parties has decided that they have the power to pass laws binding the other party, for reasons that seem quite solid to them. It's easy for an observer to say "that's the law" and move on.

    But then you look at Australia, where 600-odd nations became one nation and 150 years later there's no survivors of about 400 of those nations. All perfectly legal and done according to the rules. It makes the Nazis seem quite restrained and civilised by comparison... could it be that their mistake was applying colonial techniques to European peoples?

    1038:

    bilk or steal land

    One of the interesting arguments in Aotearoa was the question of what exactly was being transferred. Maori concept of "ownership" might be better translated as "guardianship" or "custodianship", the idea that land could be bought then destroyed was not one they had any experience of. Then there's "you wrote it, the court reads it against you" thing.

    https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/treaty/the-treaty-in-brief The Treaty in Māori was deemed to convey the meaning of the English version, but there are important differences. Most significantly, the word ‘sovereignty’ was translated as ‘kawanatanga’ (governance). Some Māori believed they were giving up government over their lands but retaining the right to manage their own affairs. The English version guaranteed ‘undisturbed possession’ of all their ‘properties’, but the Māori version guaranteed ‘tino rangatiratanga’ (full authority) over ‘taonga’ (treasures, which may be intangible). Māori understanding was at odds with the understanding of those negotiating the Treaty for the Crown, and as Māori society valued the spoken word, explanations given at the time were probably as important as the wording of the document.

    That's a huge cultural difference. European culture is full of professional liars and large parts of its mythology revolve around binding documents that differ from the lies told about them ("signed in blood" for example). But traditional Maori culture works the other way, insofar as they have documents at all.

    1039:

    It is therefore plain that Moz's statement "many countries use their militaries as part of their police" indeed does apply to the US. The havering about exactly who sent them in is irrelevant outside a US court of law. The point that counts is that they are soldiers doing a police job.

    Thank you. I had largely given up on the uncharitable re-wording of my statement by US-only types.

    I explicitly listed China as well as the the US, and the re-worded statement says that a Chinese President would authorize federal troops to operate at state level... wut? China doesn't have those things.

    1040:

    You and others not from/in the US view things via a lens. So do we in the country. But it's a very different lens. What you say many of us don't agree with. So be it.

    Things have changed since Kent State. Maybe not to you via your lens but certainly to most of us here via our lens. I was born in 54. The 60s into the early 70s were just flat out weird. And ugly at times. In other places also. Paris comes to mind.

    1041:

    David, my response was to the US response of taking a deliberately general statement, twisting it so it can only possibly apply to one example, then insisting that "the original statement is wrong" rather than "I have made this statement wrong".

    I learned that the USA apparently defines the terms "police" and "military" in very specific ways that don't necessarily make a lot of sense to me, or to others outside your country. But you're very emphatic about those definitions, and that those definitions are not open to argument.

    I'm still curious about how you think the British and Australian militaries work given that we lack Presidents to command them.

    1042:

    I don't pretend to understand the military chain of command in either of these places.

    1043:

    Our Commander in Chief is Her Majesty. However, unless the circumstances are very very exceptional ( And it hasn't happened to my knowledege since about 1743 ) the commands come from the Cheif of the General Staff, his subordinates, the individual heads of the separate Armed Forces, & all of these are moderated by civilian command through "The Crown in Parliament". Day-to-day this will be the Minister of Defence & his/her subordinates, of course.

    1044:

    Paul Frijters has a fairly calm take on the Catalan situation: http://clubtroppo.com.au/2017/10/10/observations-lessons-and-predictions-for-the-catalan-situation/

    Interesting but not surprising that he's very hung up on "broke the law", and I do wonder why the Catalan side isn't pushing human rights court cases hard in the media.

    1045:

    It makes the Nazis seem quite restrained and civilised by comparison... could it be that their mistake was applying colonial techniques to European peoples?

    Yes. Definitely.

    One of the things that makes me so uneasy about the current situation is the way that, in the past decade or two, we've begun to see the tools of Disaster Capitalism, hitherto applied exclusively to former colonies, applied back home in the heartlands of the former colonial powers. Neoliberalism is eating itself, and what it shits out is instability and autocracy and civil wars.

    1046:

    cough Ireland cough.

    Of course the US government(S) have even bloodier hands than do the Australians when it comes to the treatment of American Indians, Hawaiians, Inuit, African Americans, Asian immigrants, and the like. Although to be fair, it appears that the greater number of aboriginals apparently succumbed to diseases before the US soldiers got to them.

    Getting back to the topic of disaster capitalism, I'm not black enough to have a good, personal insight on how much disaster capitalism was used in the US in the past, but I'm pretty sure (Jim Crow) that it was, whenever its principles were codified. Speaking only for myself as a white male, I'd suggest that we're seeing outrage on the part of (formerly?) middle-classed white people at being treated as brown people have been for the last few centuries, in terms of both capitalist exploitation and even the pushing of pain killers. To put it bluntly, at least here in the US, we're becoming a society classed by income more than skin color, and we not only don't like it, we tend to lash out blindly because we have no effin' clue what to do about it.

    1047:

    Re: Mercenaries

    Just wondering in general why European history doesn't have more mercenaries in it - during any era.

    Okay, I get that lords/land owners had a duty to provide X number of fighters to the realm. But when a war broke out during harvest, few landowners complied because the risk of starvation was both greater and more immediate than the risk associated with being found AWOL.

    Then and now there are probably other similar situations where the home-grown volunteer army doesn't work. Maintaining a standing army in peace or war time is expensive. In peace, a standing army is a serious drain on the economy unless that army is also being used for non-military purposes (disaster relief) and/or as a low-cost and socially acceptable alternative to post-secondary tech education and employment. Basically, the modern standing army is socioeconomically and morally justifiable if it helps keep young adults who lack a clear career path busy, off the streets (and out of jail), earning at least some money/contributing toward the overall economy and with a better than nothing health plan.

    Someone somewhere must have done a cost/benefit on this question by now. And what would also be interesting is if this is a good result for society at large. If yes, then why not develop comparable models for other population segments. Okay this means that the gov't becomes an increasingly larger employer/employer of last resort. (Hint: Gov'ts are the lender of last resort.) But how is this worse than the current employment/education opportunity vis-a-vis poverty/jail.

    1048:
    Just wondering in general why European history doesn't have more mercenaries in it - during any era.

    Where did you get this impression? European history is full of mercenaries. Basically all wars at least from the peasants' wars in the early 1500's until the levée en masse of the French revolution were fought with mercenaries. This may be different for the British Islands, but I'd say that warfare on the continent was dominated by mercenary forces for a long time. In a way even the crusaders were mercenaries—independent noblemen joining one of the armies and financing themselves in exchange for the promise of a share of the expected loot.

    1049:

    Yes, this.

    Mountainous countries at times had sizeable proportions of their male population fighting as mercenaries on the European mainland. I've seen figures that at times over 10% of the male population of Scotland were mercenaries. And the Swiss were notorious for it, though these days they permit only one mercenary unit.

    (They may wear funny costumes by today's standards, but the Swiss Guards in the Vatican City are still soldiers.)

    I suspect that the Swiss economy used to be rather reliant on manumission of mercenary salaries.

    1050:

    Yup, mercenaries played a major part in all important conflicts in Europe throughout the entire medieval period. Clearly you need to read some older SF which mentions all this sort of thing. I recall it comes up in Gordon R. Dickson's Dorsai series, for instance.

    MSB - yes, although mercenaries turned up in the UK a fair bit, mostly fighting was done by levies, household troops and the nobles themselves, especially when England was fighting the Welsh, Irish and Scots. Moreover the wars of the Roses didn't, as far as I am aware, feature that many mercenaries, could look out some details after tea.

    1051:

    Re: Mercenaries

    Seriously did not know that mercenaries figured so prominently in European history.

    1052:

    Re mercenaries: My understanding is that a lot of the technical specialists, especially artillerists (with and without gunpowder) and "combat engineers" (siege-engine builders, defensive architects), were mercenaries. I am not sure where I have that understanding from, though - wargames magazines my ex used to read, probably.

    1053:

    Mercenaries ( The WHite Company. Also look up: Ludovico Sforza & many others

    1054:

    Well that's where it gets confusing for the rest of us, because you clearly and definitively stated

    "Just wondering in general why European history doesn't have more mercenaries in it - during any era."

    as if you had actually read something on the matter.

    Alyctes - yes, for instance England had a lot of Burgundian gunners, and Scotland imported a number of French artillery experts at various times in the late 15th century onwards. Not to mention crossbowmen of various nationalities used by France.

    1055:

    I get the impression that, at least until recently, large Swiss families sent some of the latterborn to the monasteries, because there was no land for them to work or craft for them to do. My suspicion is that the lads that were, erm, unsuitable for monastery life might have been recruited into the pike regiments and such.

    1056:

    Re, Federalization of the (US) National Guard and the "Little Rock 9" is something that still gets a bit of commemorative coverage in the local media (Print) around here (NW Arkansas), IIRC, Eisenhower told Federalized the (Arkansas) National Guard, who had been actively blocking the (Black) students from entering the school under a state call up, and told them to go back to their armories until further notice, while deploying the (Federal) 101st Airborne. School never really did take place that year, except for the black students. Basically the whole cohort lost an academic year.

    Meanwhile, US culture, I see LOTS more confederate flags driving around than I used to. What is scary is the hyper aggressive driving, usually some dude in a (BIG) pickup truck. Even the locals are concerned about speeding on the county (Two lanes, NO shoulders) roads, pass a regular speed trap in the evenings on my way to/from town.

    But you know FREEDOM! Or something.

    1057:

    Actually, the formerly "Middle Class" workers have no clue as to what happened to their jobs, and they really don't want to hears some(probably commie leftist) college boy 'splain about it.

    It is all the fault of those brown people stealing their good jobs, the word of Brother Rush, etc. who keep vewy vewy quiet about the financial aspects of the whole problem. Again, see point #1.

    1058:

    A question, what do the Brits here think of this article:

    http://www.businessinsider.com/generation-rent-londoners-spend-40-of-income-on-rent-says-ifs-2017-10

    I'm particularly intrigued about Chart 1, which to paraphrase the article, argues that

    " A new IFS report found the rent-to-income ratio in Britain excluding London has fallen by 3% — from 31% to 28% — in the last twenty years, but climbed by 3% — from 37% to 40% — in London over the same period.

    It seems that ignoring London, the median percentage of income spent on rent among private renters is now lower than it was in the 1990s, and it's close to the 2000's.

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