I'm testing whether I can successfully rip some shit from the page of this blog post. I'm going to put some sort of separator next, then I'm going to come back and try to extract what I put! Fun and hopeful success!

~~~~~

ok here is something here 


~~~~~

so now i'm going to see if i can get that to happen. wish me luck! :)

bjarne stroustrup

i had a hunch that i had to understand the mind of this man, bjarne stroustrup, in order to have any clue about this strange language c++, so i'm reading "the c++ programming language", and i think i was right.. here's an example that strikes me:

This form of explicit type conversion is inherently unsafe and ugly. Consequently, the notation used, static_cast, was designed to be ugly.

and it's not that i disagree! casting should be ugly. all of this ugliness has reasons for its ugliness. i'm increasingly convinced that c++ does indeed make some sort of sense! it has a perspective and it makes sense from that perspective. that's what i've been looking for.

hmm, i think my program has heard of itself?!


r-2:~/code/gccstudy ixkey$ g++ experi.cpp -o experrr
r-2:~/code/gccstudy ixkey$ ./experrr
hello
hello this ihello this is the testhello this is the test array! ٰ?p???4??????4???p???
n???m??4???$???)%,???4??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
???x???./ex


this is what i typed while i was cleaning out under my space key:

+bbvm,,mnvbmnbvnbv,mnb.,

i read this on wikipedia & i felt tripped out:

"The phenomenal world is the dream of Vishnu.[citation needed]"

hehe, citation needed.. woo

two songs

a song about the internet:
-----

it's nothing but some sentences upon a sparkling screen
but god bless us something happening; there's something those words mean
the world's people all together for the first time ever seen
because information wants to be free

CHORUS:
so now we're all deciding how we want the world to be
and some people've started saying that's a sorry sight to see
but they can't take the internet away from you & me
because information wants to be free

they strung a couple wires in case someone dropped the bomb
i don't think they were expecting that we'd all come along
but now this place belongs to us and i'm singing you this song
because information wants to be free

(chorus)

you may ban me, reprimand me, if you don't like what i say
you may throw me down and cuff me if you think i'm in your way
but i'm clutching to my camera and the world is gonna see
because information wants to be free

(chorus)

it seems some folks are hoping that we'll just go away
they hope next time they start a war we won't have much to say
but we all know the rich & powerful have cause to be afraid
because information wants to be free

(chorus)



AND

What If Ebvreyoinse Grew up PResidne:
---

CHORUS:
what if everyone grew up to be president
why can't everybody have a say?
what if everyone grew up to be president
i really think it's possible someday

read my lips no new taxes
slick willy doesn't know what is is
and w said he'd unite us not divide
they say they'll represent us
till we start our four year sentence
then suddenly they're on the other side

(chorus)

choose one yale boy or another
pretend they're different from each other
when really you've no preference either way
or vote for a third party
if your soul is feeling hardy
and hope they count your vote before it's thrown away

(chorus)

The fact that the bill is deeply encrusted with incomprehensible jargon and prehensile programs dating back to the 1930s makes it almost impossible for the average legislator to understand the bill should he or she try to, much less the average citizen. It’s doubtful this is an accident.

You Are What You Grow (by Michael Pollan in the NYT)

I got halfway through this article before I realized it was by Mr Pollan. It's fantastic to see this man's mind, with such evident power to reshape our current mental landscape, appearing so prominently. Cheers, Michael.

I find myself despairing, though, about the reform that his article imagines. We have a political system which has developed so many layers of defense against any sort of reform. We have a political system to which reform feels like death.

It's not that we couldn't organize some sort of organization and take on the farm bill & the subsidies and win, because surely we could. The thing is that we're also working right now on media reform, on environmental reform, etc. And there's no way that we can make the system dramatically more flexible OVERALL this year. This legislative cycle we are stuck with the same system-- the same PEOPLE running the same system-- and we'll be likely if they're humbled into changing anything at ALL.

Theoretically it should be possible to open this sort of government up somehow, so that it would be capable of reconstructing itself. I don't really see that as plausible. Just because of the time spans. You'd have to construct an alternative model, and then defend it against systematic resistance by every single entrenched interest. There's plenty of that defense to last us another decade or two.

So I see it as more likely that we're going to have a ghost of this old political system, which is going to seem stranger & stranger as things change fundamentally underneath it. It's no longer going to be the government of anything that matters to us, as we move along with the situation-- but it's still the government of the old world, slowly trying to understand what's happening to it. It's like when you take a mind altering agent, and for a while your normal rationality tries to hold onto the perceptions you're having as if they belonged to that old understanding. No, it's more than that-- it's like being thrown actually into a different world, as in spirit world travel or death.

The farms will start to be roboticized, reconstructed, made of magical materials, actually genetically engineered, actually transformed and the farm bill will just keep trying to rationalize, keep feeding the dogs that it feels it needs to keep at bay. That's what it has to do; a government that transforms as quickly as a Singularity does is no government at all.

unsubscribe response to moveon

Reason:

Too busy to read emails

Comment:

Hello. I am an Anarchist. I'm also a Singularitarian. Our orientations & contexts are thus very different, so consider this an outside opinion.

Your emails are very demanding. They exude, in fact, a desperate need for attention.

It's not that I don't understand where this feeling is coming from. As a serious Singularitarian, I am well aware that we are in a tremendously dangerous and complicated situation.

This does not however change the psychic reality of the human experience. We can only make deliberate decisions in an atmosphere of calm, because of our ancient reflex responses to immediate danger.

It's not that to stand as one of my political voices and one of my political media I would want you to deny the seriousness of the situation. What would have held me with you would have been if you could stand against this situation without becoming another wailing alarm. If you could stand against it with equanimity and vision.

Yeah, so um, too much whining. Sorry.

<3