Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    

*Nice housing discussion.  Everybody always says that the
architecture of two generations ago is beautiful, refined and noble
while their own is cheap commercial trash.  John Ruskin may have
been the pioneer here.  He hated cast iron worse than most people
hate plastic.

*If you’re into Internet of Things housing issues, I’ve got a Tumblr
about that.  It’s more or less about the future home automation
environment, the domestic lived experience of computational spaces, 
and it’s extremely dry and technical.   It must be the most
tediously technical thing I’ve ever personally assembled.  It’s
really into the harsh minutiae of stuff like LoRan and Lidar and
LiFi.

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/wolfliving
  

    

*I used to wonder why authors I admired, who’d been so dazzling,
wide-scale and inventive in their youth, somehow turned into
sententious, pedantic know-it-all geezers, going on and on about
devil-in-the-details grit that would make young idealists crazy. 
Nowadays I understand that process.   

*I do have a life-hack for that — I just go live in places where I
don’t understand a goddamn thing.   That promptly gets rid of the
“know it all” problem, but like a lot of hacks, it doesn’t resolve
the underlying issue.   Because I’m still old — I have acquired the
habits of mind of an older person.  Even when tackling some topic or
situation entirely new to me, I still want to bog down in the fiddly
bits.  That’s a metabolic issue, it’s the way the neural nets have
slowly settled inside their bone black-box.

*One might construe this as rather sad, but since it’s part of the
human condition, it’s also quite funny.
  

    

*Still in Ibiza.  You could not pay me to go get blisteringly high
and obtain some ecstatic release boogying in a night-club here.  
“Having fun,” that is to say.  No way.

*How the DJs get paid in Ibiza, what other local scenes the DJs come
from, those topics interest me.   What people wear that is novel and
different, I notice that. Self-serving memoirs by the aging hippies
who own the nightclubs of Ibiza, there I might actually pay some
attention.

https://pikesibiza.com/blog/read-an-exclusive-extract-from-mr-pikes/
  

    

*Here the Ibiza night-club entrepreneur, who is of course an
ultraviolet, globe-hopping hipster of the rankest description, an
Australian dude into yachts, party girls and Mercedes staff cars,
decides to get himself a house on the island where he’s dazzling his
customers with laser light-shows and blasting amplifiers.

*So of course he has to buy himself some ancient, crumbling, 
off-the-grid, John Ruskin heap.  A literal Spanish farm cottage. 
“The heart wants what it wants,” right, but there’s something
hilarious about such human perversity.  The guy gives up his seaside
penthouse to do this to himself.  

 If you’re on the WELL SoTW to ramble about futurity, but you’re
secretly thinking, “Wow, I really want to live in that 1920s stucco
bungalow, ’cause it’s so soulful,” you would profit by reading this.
  

    

MR PIKES, the Story Behind the Ibiza Legend, Tony Pike

“That’s when I spotted a 500-year-old finca near San Antonio for
sale in a tiny real estate office. Price on application. The
property was set in a couple of acres and for sale at six million
pesetas (around £40,000 back then). We drove up to see it and found
an abandoned house, with an original olive mill and flour mill, but
no water or electricity. I had a feeling about it, though.
(((Uh-oh.)))

I felt the house had an irresistible charm to it, but I wanted to
improve the look of it. I could see the potential, not for a hotel
but as a fine country-style house for my private life. I still felt
full of vitality and ambition, not for money or power but for a new
way of living.

“The thing that hit me was it was so open. Not a case of, if you sit
in this space between 2pm and 4pm you’ll get sun. Sun all the time. 
The finca was called Can Pep Toniet, which means ‘the property of
little Tony’. When I found out I was flabbergasted.  (((Because his
name is “Tony Pike,” you see.  It’s an identity issue.)))

I paid a deposit.

The finca was just not habitable. It had been used to process the
local farmers’ grain and olive crops, but it had not been lived in
for 15 years. It was six months before we could  move in. Hard,
filthy, dangerous work, having to climb down into the stores and
clean out centuries of dust and pollen. Caked in shit, and no water
to wash with. 

Upstairs had flooring, but downstairs was still a dirt floor. Señor
José Pratz-e-Pratz was the owner and previously his family had lived
in it for centuries, the only family that had ever lived there.
There was no toilet so I bought the best toilet seat I could find
and fixed it on to a pomegranate tree, and dug a big hole. You could
sit and shit on that, looking out at the whole of San Antonio. The
tree grew too. Natural fertilizer.

The finca was so basic. The ceiling was decaying. The compressed
rock filled with clay was deteriorating into black dust. It was
filthy and dangerous. The roof was made from ash, seaweed and soil.
There was no electricity, we lived with oil lamps and a gravity-fed
water pump for a year.  No electricity meant using an old Singer
Treadle sewing machine, and I became quite adept at making curtains
and cushions.

We couldn’t get permissions to change things formally so I just
started fixing it myself. …. (((etc etc oh my God why, etc)))
  

    
>Housing

Standing in front of 10s of thousands of buildings with a clipboard
and thinking "what about it?" sort of gets you beyond superficial
matters of taste.  That's why I was so struck by the fall-off in
quality post-1930. 

For example, I personally dislike the Georgian style of
architecture, which I find overly symmetrical and sort of leaden. 
But that doesn't mean all Georgian buildings are ugly, it just means
there are qualities in the style that don't work for me personally.
If someone told me that they admired the style for its dignity and
sense of solidity I'd have no argument with them. 

But I just can't see how anyone could stand in front of, say, a
post-war split-level Colonial or a 1980s mini-mansion with six
different types of windows and think "Wow, what a beautiful piece of
architecture."  Style is a matter of taste, but bad is just bad.
  

    
Via email from Brian Slesinsky:

Getting back to the discussion of moral relativism: since leaving
Google I've been reading about the Civil War and (skipping ahead)
the Civil Rights era.

The Civil War era feels pretty ancient, but one thing struck me:
morally speaking, the abolitionist's arguments didn't feel foreign
at all, what they said just seemed obvious. And the South? Obviously
indefensible. But not in an unfamiliar way, no, it just sounded like
the usual self-justifying crap. The only surprising part is that
before the Civil War it was *expansionist* racist crap; they wanted
to spread slavery to as many places as possible. Which pretty much
led to the war.

I'm suspicious of the whole moral relativism thing because it seems
like suffering is ancient, is easily recognizable, and hasn't
changed much. At least some people will see it, some of the time.
The difference is more about what level of suffering is accepted as
normal and whether they think they can or should do anything about
it. People live with what they think they have to live with. Later,
they may come to wonder how they could have lived that way.

Even today, depending on where you go, who you're connected to, and
what you're trying to get done, you might have to learn to ignore a
whole lot of suffering, for lack of clear answers as to what to do
about it. Our ways of either paying attention to or ignoring
suffering have become rather advanced.

Stories about time travelers are often power fantasies: look what a
flap of butterfly wings can do! But this is random, uncontrollable
power, so a time traveller would end up learning to ignore things,
too.

We are all time travelers at one second per second. I wonder what
suffering we currently ignore that will seem strange in the future?
  

    
Via email from Stefan Jones:

Chuck Wendig's Twitter thread about ambulatory robots is a hoot:

https://twitter.com/ChuckWendig/status/950517393738158081

One of those things that is simultaneously hilarious and makes you
want to hole up on the couch and rewatch Steven Universe episodes
until you forget about reality.

You just gotta know that in ten years those prancing quadruped bots
are going to be in charge of kettling protestors, shooting fleeing
people in the back, and harassing guys who sell loosies.

I think the Maker movement should be all over creating anti-robot
weapons. Get on that right away. Milled fiber dispersers to short
out their electronics. Bolas to tangle those prancing little legs.
Paint bombs.
  

    
Via email from Andrew Hudson:

Hi WELL, Jon, Bruce,

Long time SotW reader, first time writer. I felt compelled to weigh
in this year by the discourse on libertarianism. It seems bizarre to
me that, of all our calamitous political happenings, we are talking
about libertarianism. I'm not sure libertarianism has been more
politically irrelevant or intellectually bankrupt in decades, in
perhaps 100 years of American political life. After all:

1) The most classically liberal policies of recent memory proven an
utter farce in Brownback's Kansas.

2) Paul Ryan and other great intellectual proponents of shrinking
government revealed themselves to be nothing but mercenaries for the
1% by taking up tax reform and leaving the tax code more convoluted,
nonsensical and onerous than they found it, all a mad dash to loot
as much wealth as possible and thrust it into the hands of the
already super rich.  For the right in the age of Trump,
smash-and-grab class warfare and racial animus eat ideology for
breakfast.

3) Classical liberalism's globalized progeny neoliberalism has
become so maligned by millennials on both the left and the right
that shellshocked pundits have started likening the word
"neoliberal" to racial slurs.

4) the "energized" political movement of 2017 wasn't libertarianism
at all but socialism, with hockey-stick growth in once bookish
organizations like the DSA, an out socialist taking down a major GOP
leader in Virginia's off-year elections, and an online culture that
is quickly outpacing the right in its complexity, obsessions and
weirdness. Tens of thousands of millennials who thought Bernie
Sanders was pretty cool in 2016 have spent 2017 starting Marxist
reading groups, applying Momentum-style organizing techniques in
dozens of cities, and wearing red hammer-and-sickle t-shirts to
repair brakelights in police-ravaged neighborhoods. What exactly
have libertarians been up to other than dumping dark money into
laughable orgs like TPUSA, which try to convince young people to
love capitalism by...misusing memes and wearing diapers?

And most importantly, 5) climate change! Libertarians have zero
credible ideas about saving the planet from catastrophic climate
disaster other than "hope Elon Musk sorts it out." Meanwhile the
rest of us are quickly coming around to the obvious: that we can't
stop climate change without defeating capitalism first. And
therefore the political battles that for boomers and Xers were about
values and cultural wars are for millennials and younger about plain
old survival. Maybe if we had a time machine, and could bring the
sustainability posturing of some of today's corporate luminaries
back to, say, 1960, we could have kept emissions from getting out of
hand and let capitalism trundle along. But we're way past that now,
and if American socialists don't win enough political power in the
next decade to enact radical anti-capitalist environmental reforms,
we'll be in for a lot of dangerous geoengineering and Chinese-style
sustainability authoritarianism to get the atmosphere back in
human-habitable shape—if that's even possible.

Well I've added way more words than I had planned to a discussion
that I didn't even think we should be entertaining. Thanks all for
the enlightening meditations on Ibiza, chess, and time-traveling
cannibals.
  

    
Andrew: From my perspective, the very reason to talk about
libertarianism is its use as an excuse for shrinking government, and
the way it has called to question the role of government. 

I'm finding it hard to see that socialism has any power base at the
moment - so while an socialist opposition may be "energized" by
protest, they haven't found any meaningful way to take or
redistribute power. And I don't know that old-school Marxism and
socialism is the best solution. We should be able to re-think our
politics in the 21st century and find balance, emphasizing a
commons-based, cooperative approach to governance.

And climate change totally hasn't been addressed, not because of
libertarian opposition but because of powerful economic interests
unwilling to confront climate reality because, to them, a valid
response (e.g. end the burn) would be an existential threat. And
that problem's not being addressed very well by anybody of any
ideology.

This week I hope to have conversations about the commons, human
interdependence, and co-operation, the antithesis of libertarianism.
  

    
Libertarianism has two constituencies (other than people using it as
an excuse for looting, etc.).  It resonates well with the "you are
not the boss of me" attitudes that are part of blue-collar America's
core culture.  It also attracts people who are highly intelligent,
educated and cerebral.  It is intellectually elegant, especially in
contrast to the mix of markets, government regulation, and
corruption that are the norm.
  

    
Which of those two motivations prompted Charles Koch to bankroll the
founding of the Cato Institute?
  

    
I believe that would fall under "an excuse for looting, etc." but
I've been called a cynic.
  

    
appreciate your contributing, Andrew.

And looking forward to reading thoughts on those further topics,
Jon. The commons, interdependence, et al--what is unboundaried is so
often what is left voiceless.

Sounds like that Ibiza finca has some catch up learning (in Stewart
Brand's term) to do. Which leads me to think -- after his title "How
Buildings Learn" -- if it might be interesting here to ponder "How
Do Political Systems Learn"?

Last, Bruce, appreciated your ponderings about elders and how
thinking changes with age. The neuroscientists sometimes have
offered a different/opposite description: that older brains grow
(for a time) stronger at globalized thinking, as memory/particulars
get less strong/quick.
  

    
(just wanted to add-- I'm grateful this conversation is not about
the state of the world in only the standard political terms, and
wouldn't want to see it turn into only that.)
  

    
Libertarianism, socialism... might there not be some hope in
tinkering away at the current system, even if it is a bloated and
ungainly beast?
  

    
I'm a muddletarian.  I think the best system possible is an
inelegant muddle.
  

    
Don't know if it's the "best" Mark, but most def where we are. 

And that's probably good, all things considered. 
  

    
Well, it's different from being (shudder) a moderate.  Simple,
intellectually elegant systems are more prone to going off the
rails.
  

    
That's what happens in a pluralistic society. No simple solution
comes close to serving everyone well.
  

    
Via email from Stefan Jones:

Regarding Muddletarianism, there is a Stewart Brand quote I adore.
It appeared in a review hidden away in the Last Whole Earth Catalog:

"We're generally down on Utopian thinking around here, holding to a
more evolutionary fiasco-by-fiasco approach to perfection."
  

    
Via email from Brian Slesinsky:

I'm surprised we haven't talked much about computer security yet.

In 2017 ransomware hit the big time with hackers (possibly from
North Korea) shaking down power companies and airports and hospitals
for Bitcoin. And it could have been much worse, except for a lucky
bug.

Also, the Equifax breach leaked 140 million American's social
security numbers.

Also, hackers tried to steal the French presidential election, but
they failed so never mind, next crisis.

2018 is getting off to an early start with the discovery of a
fundamental design flaw in basically all CPU's (Meltdown / Spectre).
Apparently, the pressure to build faster CPU's is so intense that
even if-statements aren't safe.

Meanwhile, this whole notion of researching "friendly AI" seems so
charmingly naive. It's like if we can tell everyone how to do it,
there will be a gentleman's agreement to keep these AI's under
control. Somehow I don't think North Korea's hackers will agree to
that, and I don't think they'll care much whether it's "real AI" or
not, so long as it does the job. You don't need AI to have a mind of
its own for it to be weaponized.

Mark Levine likes to make the sarcastic claim that it's the nature
of all Bitcoin exchanges to be hacked. I wonder if he's not thinking
big enough?

I expect it will be increasingly attractive to make computer
security the problem of some other organization that seems to know
what it's doing, whether it's CloudFlare or Google Cloud or Estonia.
This is how Big Tech gets bigger and decentralization loses. Even
when they do get hacked they have a leet team of hackers standing by
to fix it; what does your server in the closet have? Some unknown
electronics firm from Shenzhen or hippie retrocomputing collective
isn't going to cut it.

Also, lots of people are angry at social networks right now, but
what if they actually got *good* at filter bubbles? The customers
are demanding more protection, not less, so eventually someone will
give them what they want.

Or maybe just get rid of social networks altogether? It seems that
some people are happy to have a microphone and speaker in their home
from a trusted company. It answers questions. It plays music. It's
cheap, kid-safe, non-addictive, and doesn't let spam or nasty
politics in. Yet.
  

    
Corporations brought us into a new geologic era. That doesn't happen
very often. Extinction events event less frequent. 

"The current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to
1,000 times higher than natural background rates." wikipedia

My Dad used to tell me, when I was  a wee lad in the 1960's, that
all world religions(and enlightened humans such as Jesus of Nazareth
and Gautama Buddha) held the same basic set of morals, and that
stewardship of the Earth was one of these. 

 

It troubles me that modern man has rationalized away that
responsibility. I can't understand how anyone could consider an
extinction event as anything less than an organizing principle of
the highest urgency. 

I wonder how the Karankawa felt about protecting Mother Earth? 

    
  

    
#122 Hey Brian, we gave up on any notion of security during last
year's SOTW

But, good points....shuddering time to be operating a company that
actually requires computer security -- that would be ALL of them :)
  

    
Seeing a general stepping down of technology...folks going back one
or two gens of tech in order to get something that actually works.