Show Idle (>14 d.) Chans
← 2023-01-17 | 2023-01-19 → ↓
unpx[asciilifeform]: I'm trying to understand what this is/was about, but looks like a lot have changed since then.
unpx[asciilifeform]: TMSR came to mind while reading about Republic by Plato.
phf: a failed experiment at governance, novel way of structuring of business and social relationships, a way to boldly ride the kali yuga. the person chiefly responsible for setting up and running the experiment proclaimed it a failure and then passed away.
asciilifeform: well, was billed as mechanized attempt to revive 'good old' (i.e. medieval) ways of structuring relationships, but yes
phf: *this* place is now a hangout spot for frens, and some people who i guess missed out on the original run and are in it for the various projects. projects that maybe continue in the vein of tmsr thought, but only in a superficial way
bitbot[asciilifeform]: (asciilifeform) 2021-02-04 asciilifeform: mp was talented mountebank, a la barnum, and in #t maintained an addictive, to many folx, atmosphere of 'движуха' (untranslatable, but roughly 'errything in motion!!', 'happening!')
phf: asciilifeform, medieval make it sound like some moldbug thing, with barons and estates. retvrn and all that. i don't remember any specific threads, but it's in the name. the original serenissima republica was republic of venice, which gave us novel and modern ways of structuring business and governance (e.g. the ledger)
phf: also asciilifeform doesn't miss an opportunity to mention that he personally doesn't like mircea anymore, and that his reason are true, justified and objective.
asciilifeform: phf: meant 'medieval' in most positive sense, lol, venice et al
asciilifeform: 'late medieval', suppose, if to be pedantic
unpx[asciilifeform]: phf: thank you for the precision.
asciilifeform: unpx: see e.g. prev. thrd re subj.
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2022-12-14 12:56:48 phf[awt]: the early catechisms, before hodl, were novel ideas about pgp contracts and corporations, counterparty relationships mediated by strong crypto, novel system of trust. there's a reason it's the most serene republic, the previous serene republics being venice, genoa and lucca
asciilifeform: for folx who not tuned in for past ~decade, mp was effectively '4 people' :
unpx[asciilifeform]: I should finish this book, asciilifeform
asciilifeform: ... 1) early phase (early 2010s), prior to when most of us saw him, but to small degree reflected in old logs and his old ro www -- d00d was involved in ro politics, 'zoological' anticommunist, etc. and quite popular in that sphere, but unknown in engl. world
phf[asciilifeform]: here we go
asciilifeform: 2) early days of bitcoinism, where was converting ro-perestroika-looted fiat into btc, consorting with small-time dealers of varying degrees of scammitude, etc
unpx[asciilifeform]: I guess "ro" is not "read-only".
asciilifeform: unpx: romania
unpx[asciilifeform]: Guessed right
asciilifeform: 3) 'tmsr golden age' where pushed mechanized 'contracts without enforcement, but purely on reputation', 'venetian' retro-engineering, attracted a # of technical hands, interesting things were built
asciilifeform: 4) 'fuhrerbunker' phase where was clear that 'golden future' aint materializing, nato reich aint aboutta fold up shop, folx leaving, mp demanding 'shaheed' sacrifices from followers, 'unpersonings' of 'traitors' etc.
asciilifeform: all 4 imho equally pertinent when remembering the fella ( who fwiw 1 of the moar prolific and interesting net crackpots afaik to have lived to date )
phf: not necessarily is pertinent to the question of the original thread "what is/was tmsr", but always devolves into it
phf: *as pertinent
asciilifeform: unpx: fwiw mp's www is still maintained by fans (for a short while was dead, and various folx baked mirrors) so can read what he had to say for himself w/out relying on anyone's summary.
asciilifeform: there's 'over9000 kilometres' in there, tho.
unpx[asciilifeform]: phf, I see whaat you mean. asciilifeform, thank you for the extensive summary.
asciilifeform: unpx: asciilifeform worked closely with subj for some yrs, '13-'18, on # of projects
asciilifeform: as did phf & signpost
asciilifeform: ( as well as # of other folx who no longer tuned in. )
asciilifeform: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-01-18#1020662 << apropos, there was an earlier b00k whose title presently escapes me -- collection of venetian spy dispatches found & decoded by historians.
asciilifeform: possibly is in the logs somewhere.
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-01-18 12:33:58 unpx[jonsykkel]: I should finish this book, asciilifeform
asciilifeform: ( was interesting 'outside perspective' on the 'internal kitchens' of various kingdoms of the time )
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-01-17 19:40:26 phf[awt]: signpost, did you ever release your online codes python version?
signpost[asciilifeform]: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-01-18#1020650 << yep, fine way to spend the worst of times. more of you people ought've shown up.
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-01-18 11:17:51 phf[awt|deedbot]: a failed experiment at governance, novel way of structuring of business and social relationships, a way to boldly ride the kali yuga. the person chiefly responsible for setting up and running the experiment proclaimed it a failure and then passed away.
signpost[asciilifeform]: still open question whether "party of bitcoin" exists later, and whether 20yrs or 500yrs later.
signpost[asciilifeform]: I don't think "modernity" is at all stable, but the next chunk of the wheel might very well belong to non-europeans, and good for them.
asciilifeform: signpost: could 1st ask 'whether exists nao' lol
signpost[asciilifeform]: which thing, modernity or party of bitcoin?
signpost[asciilifeform]: if former, I'm using it as a pejorative
signpost[asciilifeform]: maybe somewhere! godspeed and well wishes to them if so.
asciilifeform: in asciilifeform's pov, a 'bitcoin party', or 'tmsr 2', etc. is just as 'davinci's chopper' as the original
asciilifeform: the req'd physical structure aint there, and not clear from where would come.
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2022-11-08 16:34:04 asciilifeform[deedbot]: near as asciilifeform can tell, the ~actual btc economy~ (i.e. what remains after subtracting the reich subsidiaries that demand passport etc. when trading anyffin for coin, so can report its 'sale' and the 'gain') is ~weaker~ today than in the days of the infamous pizz
signpost[asciilifeform] recalls that "soviet megastate" is a technological consequence in asciilifeform's view.
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2022-09-06 17:29:42 phf[awt]: the win of old saloon is that lol where you going to go friend, your ranch and wife are here. i've made this point before, about fundamental failure of tmsr, but there was never closed economy. bb's business doesn't run on asciilifeform's iron, so his disappearance doesn't signify "p
asciilifeform: signpost: aha.
asciilifeform: the only possible afaik pill against the 'lift it from plane and then drop' reich-engineered volatility of btc is if had solid physical economy , and ... circular problem
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2022-06-02 17:44:02 asciilifeform: there's likely a 3) keep up volatility to maximally inhbit honest commerce.
dulapbot: (asciilifeform) 2021-07-11 asciilifeform: actual commerce, i.e. the kind where you MAKE things, sell'em, do actual services for people, it is -- punished -- by the volatility
phf: hodl is an antithesis to tmsr, so that contradiction is builtin into ideology. on one hand "1btc> berkshire hathaway stock in a 1 year" and on the other "let me buy your random number generator for 2.5BTC today"
phf: you don't need volatility for that, i don't actually think it's the volatility that killed tmsr, it's the original 16k to the moon
asciilifeform: 'x->moon' ~was~ the original fatal volatility, imho
asciilifeform: it was (and remains) made of printola
signpost[asciilifeform] suspects not making the block reward decay continuous was a design mistake
phf: volatility is standard deviation, you can factor it into your decision making, which is roughly how we did it originally. it's 1k today 1.5k tomorrow, 1k the day after, you just factor the trade loss into your decision making
phf: to the moon is the idea that outside of volatility the fx rate of bitcoin will generally go up in relation to all other currencies
phf: the volatility over longer periods of time is probably connected to "drop it from plane" or millions of other factors, which is yet another level of complexity
asciilifeform: phf: on short term behaves 'like rng', sure -- but how 'factor in' e.g the drop from ~60 to ~20 ? imho mp's answer to this kinda q, roughly 'erry biz oughta also contain a hedge fund internally' is a 'let'em eat cake'
phf: asciilifeform, 60 to 20 was not a factor when tmsr was around, is entirely a novel devlopment
asciilifeform: iirc there were swings of similar scale on a # of occasions
asciilifeform open to correction
signpost[asciilifeform]: there's a giant swing of about the same percentage every halving to date.
signpost[asciilifeform]: which is why I suggested that the stair-stepped decay of block reward may be a flaw.
asciilifeform: the other boojum is that the hedging he recommended requires maintaining fiatola reserves, which precludes 'pure btc biz' right off the bat
asciilifeform: and brings in the very reich dependency a 'btc biz' enthusiast is aiming to escape from
signpost[asciilifeform]: sudden choke of supply would yes, trigger a run-away speculative bubble
asciilifeform: signpost: wouldn't surprise asciilifeform if turns out that the 'halving vs exchrate' patter no longer holds anymoar, nao that 'no actual btc harmed in the making of this film'(tm) gox-powered arse-mouth-system 'economy' prevails
asciilifeform: *pattern
asciilifeform: i.e. not obv. that the limited supply of actual-btc is any longer relevant to exchrate
signpost[asciilifeform]: yeah, we'll have to see going forward.
signpost[asciilifeform]: gold similarly neutered
phf: 􏿽asciilifeform, i think your analysis makes it into some kind of impartial, intelligent reflection on pros and cons. my point is that in reality, and through the lifetime of tmsr, when it was "cheap", there was a lot of talk about "one day, like kings". but when it genuinely went "t
phf: 􏿽o the moon", everyone had to evaluate their relationship to the medium.
asciilifeform cannot speak for anyone else, but not personally remembers any particular 'hmm, gotta reevaluate the medium' moment
signpost[asciilifeform] 100% said to himself "I better jam as much fiat as I can into this thing" at a point.
asciilifeform: from asciilifeform's pov, was a 'loox like the 'moon' exhausted, and per reasonable logic will never suffice to turn a 2figure btc supply into 'not work again''
phf: asciilifeform, well, then it's a reflection on your own self-reflection. i remember that moment as you switching from "i'm a genius clockwork maker" to "i need to pay bills"
signpost[asciilifeform]: and getting that fiat had fuck-all to do with tmsr
asciilifeform: phf: 'needed bills' all along, continously, tho
asciilifeform: the breaking moment for asciilifeform in re mp in particular was when he demanded that asciilifeform sign on a 5-figure usd monthly liability (mega-isp) with no corresponding guarantee of what to cover it with
phf: yes, but when bitcoin small, it was a kind of side hustle "maybe one day will make big business", but when bitcoin got big, you started having all kinds of problems with the fact that mp wasn't paying you. maybe the timing was just a coincidence, but *I* remember when that switch happened.
asciilifeform: i.e. 'go and find bicycle cash dealers' lol
asciilifeform: (again for asciilifeform strictly) 'switch' was when went from simply 'not paying' to 'demanding shaheed'
asciilifeform: 'not paying' could've carried on to this day, hypothetically
asciilifeform: ( it aint as if anyone paying asciilifeform to e.g. pestron etc nao )
asciilifeform: what phf may've been thinking of, tho, is a ~2016 episode where asciilifeform was b/w employments, and wrote to mp, who replied just as you'd likely expect, 'fuckoff, live off sunlight'
phf: no, that's not what i'm thinking about
asciilifeform: 'real man(tm) not needs employment' etc
phf: because i'm not privy to your personal conversations, talking exclusively about the discussions in log
asciilifeform: right, but iirc asciilifeform described these in log
asciilifeform: but above is reasonably complete summary.
phf: yeah, but i mean discussions in log as they were happening, not during the later grievances sessions
asciilifeform: at any rate, asciilifeform carried on as long as he did largely on acct of the fact that not actually expected 'get rich off collaboration with mp'. did most of what he did the way folx used to volunteer to print propaganda brochures on mimeographs etc
asciilifeform: carried on even past the point where became clear that the various implied promises of 'krysha' from mp were hot air
asciilifeform: and all the way to the point where was asked to go and lose last shirt 'for the motherland'. then, ran outta 'suspension of disbelief'
signpost[asciilifeform]: yeah, the exercise in what little there can be found of ideological motivation against communism was surprising to me also.
asciilifeform: signpost: expand ?
phf: 􏿽it's possible of course that i'm entirely projecting my own feelings on others, which i do often, but i usually correlate it to external confirmations. like if we were all sitting in a cabin in alaska, and the temperature were to drop to -30c, and i started thinking "man, why the f
phf: 􏿽uck did i come on this journey" and somebody else said "why did you leave your fucking backpack at the door", i would *more likely to correctly then not* assume that the person is primarily affected by cold, same way as i am. many years later recollecting the events i would say "ma
phf: 􏿽n, that cold sure was brutal" and the person in question went "oh, it didn't affect me at all" i won't have any explicit line of deffense, but i just won't buy it
signpost[asciilifeform]: points to something profoundly broken about men.
asciilifeform: phf: makes sense
signpost[asciilifeform]: asciilifeform: I took you ex-sovbros as travelers which had the best eyes to see the current reich falling into the same marxism with different clothes.
signpost[phf]: mp chief ex-sovbro of this kind.
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2022-12-14 12:09:22 phf[awt]: subjectively, i feel like the 16k spike was the reason why tmsr ~really~ went under
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2022-12-14 12:33:39 billymg: phf: as in, spike to ~$16k at the end of 2017 resulted in "oh shit, this thing's got legs. i should be grinding to stack more coin, not working for free for republic"?
asciilifeform: signpost: if it weren't obv., asciilifeform not subscriber to the popular 'usa succumbed to marxists' cosmography
signpost[asciilifeform]: in either case, best critique doesn't often come from inside the culture being critiqued.
signpost[asciilifeform]: point being those who do think we're succumbing to marxism give no shits to prevent.
asciilifeform: marx et al, lulzily, 'had last laugh', i.e. correctly described process where capitalists run outta cheap coolies & 'free' natural resources from subjugated lands and begin retooling to formally centralized reich / satrapies / de-facto command economy, as in ancient times
asciilifeform: in that sense, yes, reich 'succumbed to marx' in the same sense e.g. the titanic 'succumbed to archimedes'
asciilifeform: (or where poised to 'succumb to malthus')
asciilifeform asciilifeform's pov -- 'physiocrat'-flavoured, i.e. 'politics is downstream of facts of physical economy'
signpost[asciilifeform]: yeah that's hard to argue against. I'm poorly defining what I gave the "marxist" label anyway.
signpost[asciilifeform]: postmodern nihilist critique of tradition if you like
signpost[asciilifeform]: and yeah, this thing might just be fungus, and the fact of the matter's the environment's flooded with homone disruptors, all resources on earth already sat upon by megastates, etc
asciilifeform: let's consider the popular meme tho, which as asciilifeform understands, goes roughly 'once there were titans, building sr-71 with slide rules, then blue-haired 'woke' came & they drank to death'
signpost[asciilifeform]: at any rate, going back to the original point, it was a conclusive experimental result to see that very few in practice gave a shit about the traditional revivalism of mp
asciilifeform: imho is a confusion b/w the maggots on the corpse and the murder weapon.
asciilifeform: 'pie stopped expanding' and so yes, the focus of 'young, uppity' folx became 'how to steal a share of the dwindling pie' rather than 'design sr-71' or 'colonize india' etc
phf: eh, all kinds of questions remain unanswered. whether you accept the meme, or provide an obvious counterpoint
asciilifeform: in asciilifeform's cosmography, current reich is making the precisely same 'inward turn' as 17th c. spain, having exhausted (and then deprived of) its colony feedstock, turning 'up own arse' (process of 'auto-colonization')
asciilifeform: i.e. the national equivalent of stereotypical ex-rich who ends up burning piano for firewood and whoring out his wife to try & carry on 'being rich' for however long 'possible'
asciilifeform: phf: no doubt you've seen the memeplex (in asciilifeform's pov, illustrated by locklin, the 'bap' people, etc) where '1950s golden age, but patient, clever communist infiltrators Set Up Us The Bomb'
phf[asciilifeform]: i think the kinds of analogies are insufficient for an explanation of modernity. like you can reduce locklin to "wokes took over science", then your analogy can be reduced to an eqaully popular meme of "we living through fall of rome"
asciilifeform: imho the traditional 'fall of rome' pov where 'ran outta people to eat' was actually correct model.
signpost[asciilifeform]: just to be clear, my question is why the people that believe that are not able to be used productively.
signpost[asciilifeform]: and it's a rhetorical one.
asciilifeform: signpost: which 'that' ?
signpost[asciilifeform]: as one more thread alongside "tmsr failed because everybody needed to go get more fiats for corn"
phf: but i find all kinds of questions unanswered, like why rhodesia, how does information velocity factor into this, what's the essence of wokeism, how does "cellphone in every pocket" factor into this, why open borders, why modern holywood, why no "build in garage" culture, etc.
signpost[asciilifeform]: the traditionalist streak in the US is sitting around with its dick in hand watching influencers 3D print guns, as an example.
signpost[asciilifeform]: or if not that, equiv in effect.
asciilifeform has 'on file' what he thinks are entirely workable hypotheses re phf's q's, but subj prolly deserves separate thread(s)
phf: why was SALEM the last counter culture in america (and possibly in the world)
phf: like i suspect that the parties in 17th century spain during the collapse were lit af, and you still had artisans making beautiful chairs to burn, special order
asciilifeform: would note, tho, that 'build in garage culture' aint what died, but the 'erryone hears about what was built in garage' has gone, and back to historic norm ( a la 16th c china, where plenty of 'built in garage' tech demos, but royals 'i'ma put this in imperial toy collection, nao get back to yer day job, i need my horoscope
asciilifeform: popular interest in 'exciting inventions' aint a human universal of any kind, but factually is 'luxury', in practice only available to folx who, en masse, feel on solid enuff ground to take part in 'new things' experiments
phf: asciilifeform, take me to a garage where anything built, that's not yours. i'll then remotely consider your rebutal. i'm a plenty social person irl, walk into random people's garages "whacha cooking here" and it's mostly meth
asciilifeform: phf: take, for instance, that poor fuck who built lawn mower chopper and landed on dc capitol ( 2017 ? ) -- garage
asciilifeform: occasionally still they make sumthing other than meth or samogon
phf: 􏿽well, fair, i'm establishing boundaries here, but i guess i have an implicit measure for what i would consider "oh yeah there's still garage culture". like for example if i were to be a hikikomori, espousing "death the west theories" and then someone was like "come to my hood, we b
phf: 􏿽uilt a precision lathe here a chinese off the shelf model". in reality "killdozer guy built his own killdozer in 20xx?"
phf: on the other hand you have "dacha" culture in post-su (i'm pretty sure it's not like that now either), where "boys across the street building drag racer" "old man down the alley is restoring his wwii moped" "guy next door is lathing a pipe to fix his shower" etc.
asciilifeform: not far from asciilifeform there's a fella with lathe etc., restoring rare ancient autos. but he's in his 60s
signpost[asciilifeform]: no, it's ubiquitous, severe mental illness.
phf: i have a friend deep in apalachia, who "works on cars", which out here means "when i was 16, i put a racecar rear diff on my ford pickup and used it to drag race" and now "i have five lifted cherokees and a souped up polaris with turbo engine"
asciilifeform: what there afaik defo aint, is young folx who 'i'ma go to garage, and, Great Invention, and surely will make 1e9$'. cuz they read 'the writing on the wall' and understand that 0 uptake for 'inventions' other than shitcoins & misc. financial flimflam
asciilifeform: ... and if one were to 'invention', the 'nobility' will simply steal 100% of the win
phf: but it's an hour of drive from me to him, and i met him by literally walking into his garage and going "i see you have a cherokee parked outside, you got a spare rear diff?"
phf: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-01-18#1020810 << see that's why i can't agree with your theories of "why no longer garage", because your idea of what's the driving force behind "garage" is flawed to begin with
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-01-18 15:17:11 asciilifeform[5]: what there afaik defo aint, is young folx who 'i'ma go to garage, and, Great Invention, and surely will make 1e9$'. cuz they read 'the writing on the wall' and understand that 0 uptake for 'inventions' other than shitcoins & misc. financial flimflam
asciilifeform: phf: 'will surely getrich' wasn't the only driver. there was also the low cost of living + leisure
asciilifeform: also mostly a memory nao
asciilifeform: modern 20sumthing can't afford, lol, house with garage.
phf: men build, because they are compelled to first, and there's money in it second. and then suddenly they don't and your whole culture is SBF types, but without the connections
signpost[asciilifeform]: this is what draws me to biological explanations
asciilifeform: phf: correct. they're still 'building' tho -- building sbfware
signpost[asciilifeform]: at least not dismissable that sperm count has plummeted along this same timeline.
asciilifeform: signpost: seems dubious that $magickpollutant would affect entire surface of planet3 to ~same degree and at ~same time
phf: asciilifeform, guy in question put a large prefab garage on his tiny chunk of property, built "rooms" into the top corners of the garage, kitchen on the first floor, and before "what kind of anti social kazynski type", has wife and kids all living in same
signpost[phf]: why? leaded fuel was burned all over the planet, as one example.
phf[asciilifeform]: i'd be surprised if he payed more then 50$k for both house and land
signpost[asciilifeform]: have we paid back all the debt incurred from a few generations of lead poisoning?
asciilifeform: phf: where asciilifeform lives, you either pay the diff in bribes/permits or city bulldozes the thing & fines the mega-builder. at one time thought 'fascism' but imho moar nuanced -- in usa, no other way to keep homo-methlabicus outta yer street than imposed price floors
signpost[asciilifeform]: plastics are now in all the water.
asciilifeform: signpost: they were there in '70s already neh
signpost[asciilifeform]: yes, and what are the effects of hormone disruption across the generations?
phf: asciilifeform, well, yeah, i know where you live, my point is that you're measuring rest of country by your own bugmen (no offense, i mean location wise) standards. my question is "yeah, we all know bugmen are sbfing in dc suburbs, but what about rest of country?"
asciilifeform not necessarily rejects the 'bio-defectives' hypothesis, but not sees obvious evidence for 'obv tru', most of the sad folx walking around aint in any obv way biologically defective, are simply inhabiting remnants of broken civ
signpost[asciilifeform]: young man's whole body forms in plastic soup. produces damaged and fewer sperm. loop continues.
asciilifeform: phf: asciilifeform almost entirely relies on phf's description of what 'non-bug usa' countryside is like these days
asciilifeform: so far have 'whatcha building? meth lab'
signpost[asciilifeform] would expect that nature gave men a huge amount of sperm with reshuffled dna to reach as far as possible into fitness as measured by the struggle to the egg
phf: 80% old people, 19% meth labs, 1% men building garages and all know each other in that 1% group
signpost[asciilifeform]: fewer sperm gives worse chance for a good reach
asciilifeform: purportedly, the meth people even sometimes innovate, come up with new syntheses (or revive oldies from ww2)
phf: probably with that later 1% is that it's mostly yoboy material, "souped up polaris" rather than e.g. precision lathe
phf: *problem with thatiouy
signpost[asciilifeform]: so perhaps lead poisoning takes a few swings at fertility and then the plastics take over.
asciilifeform: phf: prolly there are , let's say, 7 people in usa building electrolytic milling machines ( an asciilifeform attempt fwiw ) in garages, but they're all 'hiki' and will never meet
asciilifeform: 'quorum sensing problem'
signpost[asciilifeform] subscribes to the mp-esque notion that the tournament of fucking is the force behind human will.
asciilifeform: ( whereas if you aint a 'hiki' yet, will bias to problems other folx who randomly comprise yer social circle will find interesting, i.e. that 'souped polaris' )
phf: signpost, could also be because we no longer slonk dozen raw eggs every morning., so i am at a point of http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-01-18#1020794
asciilifeform: signpost: not even necessarily wrong, but has built-in bomb where 'you get moar of the thing yer metric is for', e.g. the proliferation of 'garage innovators' in how to 'pick up chix quickly' )
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-01-18 15:04:36 phf[deedbot]: but i find all kinds of questions unanswered, like why rhodesia, how does information velocity factor into this, what's the essence of wokeism, how does "cellphone in every pocket" factor into this, why open borders, why modern holywood, why no "build in garage" culture, etc.
signpost[asciilifeform]: phf: yep only posing one factor among many here. apocalypse is the superlative mess.
asciilifeform: phf: imho mp nailed 'essence of wokism' when described thought pattern 'clinton & greenspun get mansion and private jet for having a pulse, why shouldn't i'. pre-20th c there was a religious 'drm' to keep a lid on this, then defunkt
phf[asciilifeform]: 􏿽http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2023-01-18#1020846 << 7 people building e.m. machines is only relevant to this conversation if they are tail end, of 1000 people building lathes, 10'000 people building replacement rear suspension to their offroading cars, etc. otherwise they are just ra
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2023-01-18 15:31:20 asciilifeform[jonsykkel|awt|deedbot]: ( whereas if you aint a 'hiki' yet, will bias to problems other folx who randomly comprise yer social circle will find interesting, i.e. that 'souped polaris' )
phf: 􏿽ndom anomalies that don't indicate anything interesting. i'm sure in the village at Agincourt there happened to be a boy with an inclanation towards computer science, but that's totally irrelevant to anything that was happening at the time.
phf[asciilifeform]: if i drive from dc to pittsburg and walk into random people's garages (that look interesting), ought to get some representative sample of "state of things"
asciilifeform: phf: arguably folx doing sumthing truly interesting were always 'random anomalies'. in certain times/places the output got traction, widely copied, etc. but this process not in any way a given
asciilifeform: (e.g. konrad zuss built a working programmable comp in ww2 germany, in mother's kitchen. summed to 0 , for the reason proposed )
asciilifeform not knows of any time/place where 'walk around random garages' would reliably hit 'interesting'
asciilifeform: most -- samogon & custom mopeds
signpost[asciilifeform]: there is a hierarchy of tournaments in functioning human civilization
signpost[asciilifeform]: most people are in the lowest tier
asciilifeform: signpost: obv. as daylight. thought that q of thrd was 'wai output of high tier nao consists of sbf rather than sr-71'
phf: asciilifeform, but that's your hypothesis, that's not supported by lived experience. i'm talking from experience
signpost[asciilifeform]: brings up what phf mentioned earlier, the phones.
asciilifeform: phf: your experience contains somewhere where 'in erry other garage, precision mill' ? or asciilifeform misunderstands catastrophically ?
signpost[asciilifeform]: they could be a drug substituting for participation in the hierarchy of tournaments
asciilifeform: signpost: tournaments, as it happens, aint optional ( even to have garage in which to moped is nao a stiff 'tournament' )
asciilifeform: q is , why the 'winners' aint much to write home about in recent decades
signpost[asciilifeform]: "got n likes hur" or even "this guy lex I follow is a good guy" giving what little reward hit is desired by the brain almost devoid of will
signpost[asciilifeform]: or put better, on one side will has been squelched, the other side sufficient facsimile to absorb what remains
asciilifeform must bbl
signpost[asciilifeform]: asciilifeform: the top's output might be affected by the pressure or lack thereof created by the entire civilization's game
phf[asciilifeform]: asciilifeform, yes, explicitly 'in erry other garage, precision mill'. but also a softer version of "sampling" i'm talking about
phf: first one was in russia in the 90s, where every 10th dacha would've had a c64 or similar, and every 100th would've had a guy who was willing to show you how to work it.
phf: i think the first person who showed me how to program was a person from our dacha complex, a typical russianjewish engineer, who would load us games to play, and then, since i showed inclination, would try to explain the basics of basic/peek/poke
signpost[asciilifeform]: my first computer was a gift from a neighbor EE guy who used to work for some american (lol) crt company. set me up with qbasic I think it was also.
signpost[asciilifeform]: gave it to me because I was hanging out with his kid and asked "what's this" enough times in hisgarage
signpost[asciilifeform]: was an older guy with younger kid, and had the sense about him that the interesting part of his career was already over.
phf: 􏿽i suspect asciilifeform's theory is primarily "lone genius lone genuises alone", from that perspective there's probably indeed only 7 of asciilifeforms in the whole country. but even he brings up his "brother", who is clearly from that same lineage of soviet intelligentsia. it's ea
phf: 􏿽sy to extrapolate there there was a time and place where men like that could randomly be found working on precision mills in the garages
phf: singpost, well, yeah, afaiu it used to be a norm here also, that you would have a "retired boeing senior ee" living somewhere down the block
phf: and while you have a bunch of youngens running around being all retarded he'd identify the least retarded one, grab him from the street and go "alright, little one, this here is a precision device, let this be a foundational experience in your upbringing"
asciilifeform: phf: a, thought the thrd was concrete to 'mechanical garage'. but imho entirely possible that c64 (or rather mass march of thinking folx into fucking with softs) is what killed it
signpost[asciilifeform]: in this dude's case the tragedy of his life was his sovereign letting his industry escape to asia.
signpost[asciilifeform]: clear as day on his face.
signpost[asciilifeform]: "they used to have good use for me"
signpost[asciilifeform]: which of these tells his son to take the same road?
asciilifeform: such folx existed all over ex-su ('precision engineer, used to make rocket steering vanes from niobium, nao carving spoons to sell in bazar'), phf prolly saw'em
asciilifeform: ( in that case, 'industry escaped' to /dev/null, rather than 'asia' )
phf: asciilifeform, well, in the 90s c64 in the garage was a part of the mechanical garage, because it was an indicator of the activity of the mind. obv a garage with a computer today is not it.
asciilifeform: neato film btw. ( asciilifeform once saw a modern-day -- well, 1980s -- 'player piano' constructed in this way , complete with 'records force curve when pianist hits key & replays' etc )
asciilifeform: finest tradition of e.g. von kempelen (remembered, sadly, for 'chess turk' but early pioneer of 'self-playing instruments')
asciilifeform: ^ asciilifeform likes to bring up as example of historically 'fuzzy border' b/w genuine invention & flimflammery/stage magick
phf: from same guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWroevJHpAI (the video above was floating around, until author resurfaced, and put it on own channel, added his "modern" works)
asciilifeform: iirc there were 19th c. cranked organs where included string instrument, played by same 'programmable' tape as the regular variant; so rather anachronistic-flavour. but still neato imho
phf: player piano or pianola
asciilifeform: ( a robo-guitarist that actually plays with vaguely humanoid 'hand' would be evenmoar imho interesting )
asciilifeform: ( vs. 1 actuator per fret )
asciilifeform: the 'over9000 actuators' thing feels like 'fishing with dynamite'
phf: i suspect that's a difference between "cyborg bayaner builds in ussr" and "boston dynamics spends DOD money on guitar player hand"
asciilifeform: hmm did the latter ever barnum-demo a robo-musician? ( asciilifeform recalls a rigged robo-pingpongist )
asciilifeform what meant was, pianola/'guitarola' defo 'pushed state of the art envelope' in 1800 but not so much today
asciilifeform: that is, is laudable from pov of 'not vodka, not meth, not souped up ford pinto' but not exactly 'invent'
asciilifeform: ( then again asciilifeform not necessarily qualified to opine, given as errything he baked so far much closer to 'pinto' than what folx in heroic age did )
phf: well, solenoid based approach is i assume straightforwardly mechanical, "robot hand" involves lots of high precison servos and a whole bunch of multidimensional differential geometry with nonlinear systems
asciilifeform had precisely 1 'proper' invention, but not had resources to actually demonstrate in flesh, so cannot be counted
dulapbot: (trilema) 2014-12-05 ben_vulpes: asciilifeform: your cable flexer?
asciilifeform: ^ 'hand' w/out gears or servos
asciilifeform still sometimes asked by meatwot folx 'hey didja build it yet'
phf: applying force to steel string is probably just the right kind of poc for any kind of alternative actuator
asciilifeform: imho a truly spectacular demo for high power-to-weight (& low complexity) actuator would be... 20metre rubber 'wings' (i.e. ornithopter, and not idjit 1900s flap-flap but 'ride air currents')
asciilifeform saw a phf msg in the debug log, but seems to have gone to /dev/null ?? on dulap and desk station
asciilifeform: was 'applying force to steel string is probably just the right kind of poc for any kind of alternative actuator'
asciilifeform thought it was the embargo buffer thing, but apparently not !
phf: if i say anything though (like this message) presumably all the missing out parties will rerequest it
asciilifeform: aa there
asciilifeform must bbl
phf: odd, i got getdata /again/...
phf: something fucky going on
signpost[asciilifeform]: ah fucker I didn't update the manifest
unpx[asciilifeform]: phf, did you notice that barksinthewind.com renders ``Error establishing a database connection''?
bitbot[asciilifeform]: Logged on 2022-07-13 22:59:35 phf[billymg|signpost]: http://logs.bitdash.io/pest/2022-07-13#1009404 << ty, i solved my periodic crashing httpd issue, but then i forgot to put mysql into rc.conf
unpx[asciilifeform]: !!peer unpx
signpost[asciilifeform]: unpx: only works from the irc side
signpost[asciilifeform]: which I should fix
unpx[asciilifeform]: Missed that point
signpost[asciilifeform]: nah it's an oversight on mine.
asciilifeform in entirely unrelated tidbits, finally got sqliteism glue working in cpp pestron
asciilifeform: as the old sages said, 'like building eiffel tower outta toothpicks'. what currently worx : 'console' prompt in tabbed window; debug log in same; text/cmd entry; 'repl' for commands and knob twiddling...
asciilifeform: ... format-checking for various inputs (handles, #s, etc)
asciilifeform: ... sync of knobs to/from db.
dulapbot: (asciilifeform) 2021-09-05 asciilifeform: raw_avocado: there's an old su joak re subj. 'scientists announce they have discovered a method to make black caviar from petroleum.' 'when can i buy this in the shop?' 'soon; spreading on bread -- already works! but as for eating, not quite yet...'
phf: asciilifeform is too much of a lisper, ends up with greenspun's tenth rule even before gets to "sufficiently complicated" part
asciilifeform: phf: nearly !
asciilifeform trying to bake sumthing resembling portable rng treatment
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