jbowles - Network

does anyone even remember SolarWinds anymore?

does anyone even remember SolarWinds anymore?

tyranny of the lobby -- that's a good one too but it's too narrowly scoped to govtyranny of the executive -- captures the new...

tyranny of the lobby -- that's a good one too but it's too narrowly scoped to gov

tyranny of the executive -- captures the new socio-economic reality in a way that ye olde timey phrases like "no taxation without representation" do.

the tyranny of the executivedon't tread on me

the tyranny of the executive

don't tread on me

ugh lol.borked another linux partition for encrypted backup... haha

ugh lol.
borked another linux partition for encrypted backup... haha

Content warning:weird story; personal, shouldn't read, reallyi started writing a book in october 2020 about an intel officer who retired...

Content warning:weird story; personal, shouldn't read, really

i started writing a book in october 2020 about an intel officer who retired to care for his dying wife ; cancer finally got her.

he gets work as a corporate mercenary, serving special federal warrants to confiscate trucks with medical equipment.

he's promoted and meets an executive of the company that hired him (large corp whose new interest is aggregating data from church members, their family, and outward... as well as building social engineering applications using machine learning).

Protagonist also meets a genius young logician, mathematician, and writer. the genius kid wants to flip the world order.

=======================

The book is past multiple drafts (a good thing [editing is hard :)]). I stopped working on the book because my wife started dying (circa 2022) from what used to be called "wasting disease" [she's 81 lbs]

the marriage in the book was heavily inspired by my own, and the wife as well; though the protagonist is not like me at all.

Some of the stuff i wrote about in 2020 happened similar enough in my 2022 life that i was rattled. I had become convinced that if I finished the book my wife would die. Reality it seemed was made in part by fiction.

It's not uncommon for people to see their creative life in the world, or to project it.

+++

Another part of the book that had affected me in a similar way (as it had with my relation to my wife), was the genius kid. Genuis kid, in my view, is the kind of person elon musk really wants to be and may even see himself as, on a good day.

Seeing him insert himself into the presidency is astounding.

It was surprising enough when I learned they were buddies. (Where did that come from? Who knew? Or maybe I'm just not informed?)

But that part of the book has stuff i've written, mostly the personality of genius kid and the influence it has on the older executives, that causes me to project my fiction into the world. It's eerie. Maybe i finish the book and we all die. And maybe, that's what the book's about: the fall of empires.

++++

I still can't bring myself to finish the book. 34 short chapters and I'm editing 28 where protagonist, by chance, ends up at a small contractor tech company, attending a tech brown-bag where someone is presenting on a new technique to use markov random fields to "represent social dynamics where we've got randomized causal relations and non-causal co-dependent relations" for influence [e.g. did someone cause you to be influenced or was it a larger socio-cultural effect like conformity].

I guess i'll just keep editing/finishing it along but i gotta start doing it again, or go on a walk... enjoy the spring

it's funny all the spartan dudes who are obsessed with roman soldiers and their empire.aztec warriors from the aztecan empire were no...

it's funny all the spartan dudes who are obsessed with roman soldiers and their empire.

aztec warriors from the aztecan empire were no joke either... it's just that all our modern spartans are too soft (or over-trained with vanity muscles and creatine-collagen recovery shakes) to know any better.

and the whole "but they lacked technology" bullshit... mfers built a massive city ON TOP OF A LAKE.

these aint gods you mess around with

I've stuck with the depictions from theold codex that survive... but check out modern depictions of Huītzilōpōchtli, Mictlantecuhtli, or Quetzalcoatl... not. only scary but super cool.

I'd take these characters over any modern comic book crap

who else is sick of saying every 4 years, yeah but they not as bad as "you know who"from your whiskey patriots, beardophile...

who else is sick of saying every 4 years, yeah but they not as bad as "you know who"

from your whiskey patriots, beardophile magats, nothing-can-be-a-joke anti-icists, and wealthy i-have-a-black-AND-gay friend friendlies... we've all be hoodwinked and played.

a ruling elite was built into the fabric of this country and no matter how you distance yourself from that fact, if you in power then you the problem

not that there's any solution... it's compromise all the way down... but at least let's not all not pretend

wow i'm glad nobody from github or cloudflare or, god forbid, one of the internet backbones, doesn't have a person in bigT cabinet

wow i'm glad nobody from github or cloudflare or, god forbid, one of the internet backbones, doesn't have a person in bigT cabinet

finished nomadland while i was sick and resting.One thing on my mind: manufacturing losses in this country: hard working, upwardly mobile...

finished nomadland while i was sick and resting.

One thing on my mind: manufacturing losses in this country: hard working, upwardly mobile people (at least from 1970s-early 90s) got screwed; no justice... nothing new here.

we're close to possibly going into the same thing with digital. BUT, there's one diff:

when steel/grain/auto/etc... towns went under it left a scarred and visceral reminder. Digital going under will not be visible in the same way.

BUT... what if (assuming this happens) digital downturns are so catastrophic that people literally become nomads (some would argue we're already there 😬) ... and they all migrated to these decimated "company towns" and created their own little enclaves

original:"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;Or close the wall up with our English dead.In peace there's nothing so...

original:

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;"

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56972/speech-once-more-unto-the-breach-dear-friends-once-more

considering a parody of "O captain! My Captain" maybe a parody for "once more into the breach" ...."Once more unto...

considering a parody of "O captain! My Captain"

maybe a parody for "once more into the breach" ....

"Once more unto the breach, Qear friends, once more;
Close the bathroom up with our DEId.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a patriot
As fealty still and humble yet strong.
Exploit this empathetic weakness,
let overflow the govn'd buffers and
overcome the techbro ides of teste-worn fears
to let the magats grind with masculine gears... though thinning, the head and room is ours.
But when the blast of culture blows our spears
pegging the leopard's meal, then let us
flex elong the musky manlied trail, and
stiffen the sinews and clean up the blood.
Disguise this grift with false-favour'd rage"

woah, "protestee" is not a word... and so it doesn't mean the person being protested against.a quick duck search turned no...

woah, "protestee" is not a word... and so it doesn't mean the person being protested against.

a quick duck search turned no results for the query:

"word for the person being protested"

cc/ @trochee could use some help.

does american english really have not word for the "entity/person being protested against"?

i've always been on the fence about whether chris hedges is compromised by some nation state [no shade chris, i don't know you, and...

i've always been on the fence about whether chris hedges is compromised by some nation state [no shade chris, i don't know you, and seems like this kind of critical thinking is something you support]

but both him and chomsky (and i'm sure peltier, Mary Brave Bird, dolores huerta,..., and many others have said it):

once you've got the protestee willing to settle protestor grievances with violence then, and only then, do you know you've struck a nerve.

problem is, progressive thinkers don't want an apocalypse (that's a right nutter's fantasy) when in reality that is exactly what you need.

and often (stalin, mao, bibi) will give it you anyway... it's lose lose

last one i promise: remember all those times navy seals or some specops team saved some people and the commander reminded them to be...

last one i promise: remember all those times navy seals or some specops team saved some people and the commander reminded them to be thankful

ah, and that one time we bombed the shit out of some tiny country around middle east or southeast asia and they never thanked us for...

ah, and that one time we bombed the shit out of some tiny country around middle east or southeast asia and they never thanked us for blasting the commies

Remember that time george washington gave a speech to his troops asking them to express more thanks to him.

Remember that time george washington gave a speech to his troops asking them to express more thanks to him.

i remember when general Patton went around europe telling people they are not thankful enough

i remember when general Patton went around europe telling people they are not thankful enough

how strong a man must you be to be leader and complain that you are not thanked?

how strong a man must you be to be leader and complain that you are not thanked?