One year ago today: August 20, 2016, around the new place.
Five years ago today: August 20, 2012, most were beneath contempt.
Nine years ago today: August 20, 2008, rock concert or police line-up?
Random years ago today: August 20, 2004, Good one, Winnie!
All day taking it easy, which in this case means kind of working on the living room slash bedroom slash bathroom. The wall that is being moved is into the living room area. You might remember this from last August, I’m pointing at the back of the medicine cabinet. That’s the wall that is moving closer by 18”. However, upon examining this wall more closely, you can see that it is not really substantially holding up anything. It is a spidery collection of 2x4s with no proper headers. This might save me some time because the wall I’m putting in is a solid 2x6 frame and 14” on center.
So the day had me listening to NPR. They predict clear, fine eclipse viewing weather. My forecast for tomorrow is “dark”, that’s a joke, Ken. They report Jerry Lewis died. I won’t say, “Again?” He was 91 and supported that charity drive thing for year after year after year. I will say that he was very good at playing that one character he used in every movie he was ever in. Pardon me, I saw him try to act serious in one movie, the one where he mistakes the little boy’s older sister for his mother. Man, that was bad, I wish I’d known in those days I could ask for my money back.
But the real comedy is all those Europeans chanting “I’m not afraid.” That’s just great, people, that is really going to deter the terrorists. You’re not afraid? Good, we’ll use you to clear the minefields. just you watch, the authorities will now institute surveillance of not just the terrorist types, but of everybody who rents a vehicle. That’s how loss of freedom works. They’ll say it is against the terrorists, but they will keep files on everyone. No presumption of innocence here.
In around three to seven years, when the purpose of the checking is forgotten, the record keeping will be slowly expanded and abused for either more surveillance, more taxes, more regulation, or simply more encroachment on personal privacy. But the Europeans, they’re not afraid. Well, not afraid of the right things, like the fact that part of the terrorist plan is create a police state in the west. The terrorists know that in a democracy, a police state will cause either revolution or bankruptcy, and they don’t much care which. Their plan is to step into the void.
Northland shopping mall, Detroit.
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Here’s picture of the grunge work. I’m going over the entire area, cleaning all the nails and staples out of the old wood. This is a dreary undertaking with creepy things like dust, cobwebs, and endless hours of anti-Trump AM. It’s super annoying how all liberal commentators speak with a hairlip. Do they, like, take lessons to sound that way? I kept at the chore all afternoon because I don’t have to do it for a career, but undoubtedly this type of job is a custom fit for your know-it-all millennials. The ones who will first get replaced by a robot with an artificial IQ of around 63. What? Well, son, just because a public school graduate has an IQ of 95, it doesn’t mean he is capable of using it all. A good 30% is easily chewed up by the propaganda he’s got stuffed into his brain.
A) complete logic where the computer takes the route that produces optimal conditions for future decisions.
B) sloppy artificial intelligence that gets watered down to the “majority rules” mentality of the Android users.
Right now, the momentum is toward option B). Look what happened to computers. They were once associated with progress and science. Today they are little more than toys of the semi-literate. If you think today’s users are sophisticated, listen to one of those call-in shows for “under 34’s”. My god, what a pack of absurdly stupid drones. Oh, sure, now they are all concerned about computer security. All they had to do was read this blog thirty years ago. And I’ve got worse news for that group—you are too late to do anything about your privacy. You gave it up without a fight.
Examples of what I mean are the “new” Amazon service that keeps your on-line shopping private. That’s kind of late when the other 99% of the Internet either already has your identity or is geared toward tracking your every move. It is doomed anyway, because it involves shipping to an intermediate address. This will either collapse from the added expense or the feds will subpoena the files, causing the majority of users to drop out.
Or this other service that keeps your Internet activity “local”. Sure, as if that’s gonna work. My point is, these are services to which you have to reveal your identity to sign up, so you are no better off than before. If Google or Amazon have it, trust me, your identity is not private. If the world had listened to my warnings alone, the Internet would never have been allowed to evolve into a record keeping entity. The provisions would not be there because they would never have been developed. The people who tried would still be in prison.
I should coin the term “sloppy intelligence” to describe how the big players are going about the research. They seem overly concerned that the artificial intelligence be acceptable to the proletariat and behaves in a fashion that even the childish can follow. Neither is the best use of intelligence. By making it humanoid, they are incorporating one of the major faults that the technology is emerging to overcome—human error. The programming should be emulating the top 1% of mankind, not gearing itself to the lower orders so sales remain high. Developers like Google don’t want to outright admit it, but if the bulk of people were making the right decisions, there would be little demand for smart machines. Mark my words, outfits like Google have no incentive to produce something that really has a brain.
You see, the one thing you have to know before teaching a dog is: more than the dog. If the existing system produces a thinking machine, who are they going to sell it to? And even you sharp ones said they could sell it to me, not Google, they wouldn’t fucking dare. Their touted driverless cars are being baffled by urban pranksters who simply spray paint out the street signs. I’m saying if the developers had focused on the “intelligence” behind driving rather than chasing government grants, this type of mischief would be practically impossible. But I’m one voice against millions, or better put, against their mindset that says it is progress if they heard about it before you. There’s a lot of that going around. Notice how I shrewdly I only mentioned “millennials” the one time?
Meanwhile, here are pictures of the newest islands on Earth.
“Old people complain about their memory
but never about their judgment.”
~ paraphrase of Ben Franklin
I ran out of spikes at sunset.
The blocking is 32” high for the bathroom counter. The work was rather enjoyable but then, this was an unusually good day for me. Not counting the labor, this framing used $80 in materials. But it will add $8,200 to the house when the finishing and electrical are done. And it will outlast me by fifty years.
During this construction, I uncovered and re-inspected the major termite damage. It has been arrested but the damage means I have to bring up the entire bathroom floor. I was hoping to avoid that. No dice. I may get away with adding some sister joists. Come back for photos tomorrow. The damage is bad, but at least it was localized to where the insects had a daily supply of moisture.
ADDENDUM
Okay, will somebody show me how to make the FM work on my new little MP3 player? Never mind, I found it. You have to hit the “next selection” symbol to make the speakers work. I was looking for Bushnell Adultery station, which is AM, because they announce they have simultaneous FM broadcast. And the technology of that player is certain to be generations ahead of my GE desk tuner. Ah, here it is. I was right, what a beautiful sound. Do I have my Lone Ranger shows? My Tarzan broadcasts? Now that I’ve got it working, if it’s there, I’ll find it. (Er, this ain’t my first radio.) And I don’t mind armed forces broadcasting, in fact, that may be the only thing I like about armed forces.
I would also like to get the last partition up as quickly as possible. That makes the room inhabitable while I level the floor. I’ve done it in the bedroom, work on half the room while the other half is storage. Unlike before, however, I will not be leaving that floor open very long due to the proximity to the kitchen. Lots of critter live in the area. And not all of them scare so easy.
And what would the day be without music? You see, even the remote possibility of a guitar player has me ignoring my own and playing bass. Just not so much, since now I know I can solo I don’t bust my chops. It is not as much fun as playing bass, just so you’ll know. There is advancement with Agt. R, he is moving ahead around a month each practice, though this will taper when he gets to learning individual songs. I tend to emote on the bass show, but not with the notes. I’ll over-emphasize technique like I done told you years ago. The time to watch me do this is when the bass line is a little bit too simple.
Nor am I subtle about it. It’s not like I go nuts, but once the front row catches on what’s happening, I can keep them watching for the rest of the night. I’ll tell you about my newest two techniques, I’m still working on them. One still has to let any such showing-off match the music. One is on stretches where the guitar player is doing a simple down-down-up strum and the bass is just roots and fifths. I’ll move my arm and wrist to apparently match what the guitarist is playing. Unless he looks, of course.
The second is to remove my left hand to seemingly too impossibly far away to hit the next note. I have many variations on this theme, but my favorite remains a string of lighting fast transitions from the highest to lowest notes on the bass fretboard, back and forth rapid fire, not just once. Glen, anybody can do it once. Show ‘em what complete mastery of the instrument looks like, so they can tell that tale from the trailer court to their grandchildren.
Last Laugh
(Air guitar.)
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