Last month we started the process of looking back twenty years at my earliest and least accurate set of predictions about the deindustrial future, with an eye to learning from the mistakes and successes of my work in that earlier era, and drawing some conclusions for where we can go from here. This week I’ll turn the 20/20 vision of hindsight on the third post in that long-ago series, “Energy: Preparations and Possibilities,” which originally appeared on my old blog The Archdruid Report on September 20, 2006. You can read the original post here.
The basic theme of the post we’re reviewing is easy enough to summarize, though for some reason I didn’t think of the perfect summary phrase—“Collapse now and avoid the rush!”—for most of a decade after this essay was originally posted. The essential idea was already there, however, in that earliest phase of my blogging career. The one thing we knew then about the future (and of course we still know this now) was that access to energy was going to get more expensive and less reliable over time, and certain energy resources might shoot up in price or simply stop being available without warning. Given those hard facts, learning how to get by with much less energy was an essential skill, and those who cut their dependence sooner rather than later would be in the best position to deal with the turbulence of an unpredictable future.
At that time, as I’ve discussed more than once already, I expected disruptions in energy markets to play out via a quarter century or so of cascading crises, followed by a period of stabilization and partial recovery. The crises happened but they never got close to the scale I expected, and the recovery is happening but it’s not on the scale I hoped for, either. The thing that interests me is that my advice still turned out to be as useful as it did. Decreasing dependence on fossil fuel energy turned out to be a winning strategy in the long slow grind we experienced; the benefits weren’t as dramatic as I expected, but I’ve still heard from plenty of people who had a much easier time dealing with the last two decades because they trimmed their energy use, weatherized their homes, and made sure they had backups in place in case the power went out.
One salient point I made in the post we’re reviewing was that we Americans had a secret weapon in dealing with an unwelcome future: we waste so much energy on absurd extravagances that plenty of fat could be cut while leaving the essentials untouched. That played an important role in cushioning the impact of rising energy costs over the last two decades. As I also pointed out in the post, this was a natural result of Jevons’ paradox in an era of declining energy availability.
Jevons’ paradox? That was introduced to the collective conversation on energy back in the mid-19th century by economist William Stanley Jevons, who was writing about the economics of coal. He pointed out that when technological innovations allow a fuel to be used more efficiently, the rate at which the fuel is used doesn’t go down—it goes up. The reason is quite simple: increased efficiency decreases the demand for the fuel without changing the supply, so the price of the fuel drops, making it economically viable to use energy from that fuel for new applications that had been previously priced out of reach. Jevons was right, too, as every sharp decline in petroleum prices has demonstrated in great detail.
What Jevons didn’t discuss, because it wasn’t relevant to his situation or his argument, was how this plays out when access to a fuel is constrained by something other than market forces, such as declining production due to geological limits. In that case, increased efficiency tends to drive the price down, while the impact of declining production tends to drive the price up. Exactly how that plays out depends on intricate feedback loops connecting the rate of decline in production with the rate of increase in efficiency, but the short form is that it tends to keep prices more stable than they would otherwise turn out to be.
That, in turn, was a lot of what happened over the last two decades, as people changed their habits to use energy less extravagantly. I don’t recall ever hearing the term “staycation” before the 2008-9 oil price spike, to cite only one example. Now it’s a familiar option. America being what it is, of course, a whole new business sector has popped up to appeal to the staycation market, providing places to take the kids within an easy day trip of any major population center.
There have been a great many adjustments of that sort, some subtle, some much less so. The downside is that this means there’s less fat left to cut when we run into the next round of energy shortfalls, as of course we will. One consequence of the way governments worldwide responded to the peak of conventional petroleum production in 2005 is that rationing by price has become the de facto strategy of choice for dealing with such shortfalls. There are limits over the short term—watch the way the Trump administration has panicked and changed course whenever its foreign policy missteps made the price of gasoline rise significantly above US$4 a gallon—but that’s paid for by allowing prices to creep upwards steadily over the middle and long term.
The consequence, of course, is that demand destruction—we can define this as the process by which people who can’t afford a product or service stop using it—climbs the social pyramid from the bottom up. The explosion in urban homelessness set off by the economic crisis of 2008-9 had many causes, but one useful way to look at it was as the result of demand destruction hitting the urban poor first and hardest. Equally, of course, there are plenty of reasons why homelessness remains an intractable issue—I’ve discussed one of them, the Shirky Principle, in a previous post—but the simple fact that the energy resources that power our civilization are becoming ever more expensive to extract and refine is one major source of that intractability.
The same thing has driven one of the most important trends of modern times; it has a common label not suited to a family-friendly blog like this one, so we’ll call it crapification. This is the process by which inflation is masked by making goods and services cheaper, shoddier, and less satisfactory than before, so that price increases can be held in check. Mind you, uncrapified goods and services are still available, but you have to pay much more money to get them—one measure of the real rate of inflation, which is much higher than official numbers would suggest.
The pervasive crapification of consumer goods and services has helped kickstart a process I didn’t anticipate at all back in 2006, and only began to notice nearly a decade later. I’ve talked about it in various ways since then, but it deserves a label of its own, and the one I propose is technological bifurcation. It’s going to take a bit of a detour to explain this, but the trip will take us to some useful places on the way to that destination, so let’s begin.
We can start with the concept of technological suites. No technology exists in a vacuum; each one is part of a cluster of mutually dependent technologies, including core technologies that have to be present and peripheral technologies that the core makes possible. The electrical appliances in a modern American home, for example, are part of the periphery that depends on the core of grid-based electrical generation and distribution. If you don’t have 120 volts at 60 cycles per second coming out of sockets all over your house, the suite of technologies that defines a middle class American lifestyle is out of reach, and you need to turn to a different suite—for example, the propane-based suite that’s been common for many years in the back corners of rural America.
What makes this important is that not all technological suites are equal, either in their energy usage or in their degree of crapification. Some old technologies, in particular, tend to be much less dependent on extravagant energy use and also, not coincidentally, much less crapified than their glossy modern up-to-date replacements. Nearly all of these older technologies belong to much less complex and energy-intensive technological suites than those modern replacements, and this makes them preferable options for many people in the present.
The humble stereo system, which I discussed a couple of weeks ago in a related context, makes a useful example here. To enjoy music using this outdated technology, you need a stereo, a working electrical socket, and a selection of vinyl records. That’s not very complex, and the stereo and the vinyl disks are fairly easy to obtain on the used market these days. Streaming music, by contrast, depends on the internet, the most complex, fragile, and energy-hungry artifact in the history of the world. Furthermore, streaming music has been aggressively crapified in recent years, and there’s no reason to doubt that it will be even more crapified as things proceed.
The result has been technological bifurcation. A growing number of people have abandoned streaming music and returned to listening to music on stereos—enough of them that at this point new vinyl records are being produced at a respectable pace and used records command a lively market. At the same time, streaming music is still a very common choice. So you have two technological suites, one relatively simple, one much more complex, and users sort themselves out across the landscape between them, using one, the other, or both, based on a galaxy of personal issues in which price is only one factor.
The same is true of ebooks. As a professional writer, I well remember when the media was confidently proclaiming that ebooks would soon banish the printed book to some equivalent of the Island of Misfit Toys. They were wrong; ebooks ended up with a large but static minority share of the book market, and technological bifurcation set in. These days a lot of readers use both technologies in varying proportions. I’m one of them—I much prefer paper books but for the sake of convenience, I carry a used Kindle when I travel; it’s on permanent airplane mode so I don’t have to deal with fussing from the parent company, and I use the USB port to load it up with out-of-copyright books from Project Gutenberg and similar venues, which make great reading while waiting for the bus or kicking back on the train.
This is happening in more and more branches of technology nowadays. Fans of old computers, for example, may be interested to know that the venerable Commodore 64 is being manufactured and sold again; initial sales have been so brisk that the company has moved into another retro market and is now offering low-tech flip phones. The hottest trend in video games these days isn’t any of the latest releases from studios—it’s machines old enough that they use data CDs instead of connecting to the internet. No doubt some clever firm will start making new devices and games for that market, too. Comparisons of new kitchen appliances with their equivalents from half a century ago are common memes these days, and for good reason. Reconditioned old appliances sell very well these days, and we’re just waiting for some entrepreneur to spot the market niche and start making refrigerators and stoves that have some of the features that were abandoned in recent decades, and will last for more than a couple of years of normal use.
It’s important to distinguish between this movement toward technological bifurcation and the normal distribution of technology by income and social class. It’s been true since the emergence of social classes in late prehistory that the wealthier and more privileged classes have access to technologies that the poor do not, whether the technology we’re discussing is horsedrawn chariots, plate armor, indoor plumbing, or self-driving cars. These distinctions aren’t voluntary; they happen because prices are set so that the poor can’t afford the toys of the rich.
What sets technological bifurcation apart from this is that bifurcation is voluntary. Nobody is forcing people to go back to stereos, flip phones, and reconditioned refrigerators. They’re doing it eagerly because they want less crapified products. In many cases, they’re also doing it because they don’t want to give corrupt corporate interests access to any more of their personal data than they have to—along with product crapification, the last few decades have seen an explosive rise in what we may as well call turncoat technologies, devices that supposedly serve you but actually serve their corporate masters, reporting on your actions like little electronic Stasi agents.
It intrigues me that the elite groups involved in the deployment of turncoat technologies seem to have anticipated this reaction and made room for it. Many of my readers will recall Ida Auken, the Danish politician and World Economic Forum (WEF) shill who back in 2016 published a bit of highly crapified science fiction entitled “Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, I have no privacy, and life has never been better.” Auken’s impressively tone-deaf piece was shredded by readers across the political spectrum, and for good reason; I commented myself in a post here six years back that the oh-so-glorious future over which she was swooning, and which the WEF was busily trying to push on the rest of us, was simply Stalinism with a technology upgrade.
Yet Auken’s happy little dystopia had a feature I’m not sure most of its readers noticed: it included a substantial class of people who had opted out. Auken’s 2030 alter ego notes that there are people who haven’t embraced her Brave New World of intrusive corporate surveillance and total dependence on faceless technosystems answerable to nobody. These rebels against the future are squatting in abandoned farmhouses and homesteading neglected fields, living in what she considers wholly unnecessary poverty. In her story, though, the people who do this are unmolested by the corporate system. That was much more prophetic than I realized at the time.
It wasn’t that long ago that people who did without a cell phone or a television could count on getting angry or patronizing lectures from anyone who found out that they’d gone AWOL from the grand march of progress. I wrote some years back about Sarah Chrisman, who had taken up a Victorian lifestyle along with her husband, wearing Victorian clothing, riding a penny-farthing bicycle, and otherwise living her life along 19th-century lines. She received a remarkable amount of hate for that, including death threats, because she’d embraced what I termed the heresy of technological choice: the discovery that you really can pick and choose what technologies you want in your life, rather than letting corrupt and abusive corporate interests do it for you.
That pushback has almost vanished at this point. These days, when I mention to people that I don’t have a cell phone, the standard reaction is a sort of wistful envy. The same thing happens when they find out that I haven’t watched television in my adult life and don’t drive. A great many people who use the latest technologies, that is to say, wish they didn’t. Many of them think of it as “I wish I didn’t have to,” but in a good many cases they don’t actually have to. A few more encounters with people who’ve opted out, a few more frustrating collisions with gosh-wow technologies that go out of the way to make their lives miserable, and they may discover that in fact, they can slip off the electronic leash, send the turncoat technologies back wherever failed secret policemen go when they retire, and get by just fine.
As this attitude spreads further—and it has already spread much further and faster than I would have believed even a few years ago—it bids fair to solve one of the most serious problems we face on the downslope of the industrial age. In one of the very early posts on the Archdruid Report, I noted that technological progress was like a man on a ladder who kicked away every rung once he’d climbed past it. This is a bad idea, I commented, if you ever need to climb back down! In the same way, we’ve discarded most of the simpler, more sustainable, and more reliable technologies that might have served as fallback positions in the event that declining resource levels make it impossible to sustain current levels of complexity.
Technological bifurcation offers a constructive response to that dilemma. If a significant number of people choose to respond to demand destruction and product crapification by returning to older, simpler, sturdier technologies, this is equivalent to popping newly turned rungs in place of the ones that got kicked away. This provides a degree of resilience we didn’t previously have.
I suspect, though, that we’re in the very earliest stages of the bifurcation, and the later stages might resemble certain details of Auken’s fauxtopia more than many people expect. The current controversy over Flock surveillance cameras, for example, might end up being resolved with the neighborhoods where the affluent live and work being well and truly Flocked, while the rest of us are left to less intrusive methods of domestic spying. We could very easily end up fifty years or so from now with a fully bifurcated society, where a minority of technocrats and affluent flunkies live in walled communities patrolled by robot guards, getting access to impressively advanced technologies at the cost of having their actions and their thoughts watched 24/7 by implanted brain chips or the like, while the majority have walked away from so hellish a lifestyle and taken up something much closer to Sarah Chrisman’s Victorian habits.
I freely grant that it may take a good deal of hard fighting to convince the technocrats to accept that, even though it’s in their own best interests—the fewer people interned in some Aukenesque technocratic tyranny, after all, the easier it will be for the rich to create and maintain the high-tech enclaves of their dreams and our nightmares. For this very reason, though, it’s possible that so broad a bifurcation could be negotiated by all sides and treated as a win-win arrangement. I’m reminded here of a science fiction novel by John Brunner, one of the most prescient authors in the field back in the day, which imagined paid-avoidance zones where people accepted less technology in exchange for financial incentives, so that other parts of the country could keep their technology running. Whether that or some other arrangement gets chosen, I think there’s a real chance that the current trend away from the latest technogimmickry may be the first wave of a major shift, opening up the possibility of a somewhat less traumatic downslope ahead.
However this plays out, for those who don’t fancy leaving their survival to the tender mercies of an increasingly dysfunctional corporate system, the basic steps discussed in my post twenty years ago remain just as relevant now. Having some food and other necessities stashed so you can ride out unexpected disruptions, making sure you have ways to cook food and take care of your other needs when the power goes out, and assessing where you live and what kind of work you do with an eye toward a future of declining energy and resource availability, are important steps to take. If simpler technologies appeal to you, for that matter, consider going ahead with one or more of them. You might just be catching the wave of the future.
“technological bifurcation”
I’ve been talking in the science fiction community recently that moving forwards they need to take this phenomenon seriously when writing science fiction, that a person’s access to technology and technological progress is going to be very contingent on what social class that person happens to be in. If you’re well off, you’ll still be able to have access to all the newest gadgets and stuff like large language models and genetic engineering etc. However, for most people, they’re going to see themselves lose access to newer technology and having to return to older technologies.
I wrote to a online contact recently concerning just this sort of thing.
I am beginning to question the way that we do interpersonal communication. The possibility of someone reading my mail has begun to bother me of late, but when I start to research how to send a message to people that I know, it appears that any reversion to older means seems quite difficult. We get used to the privacy and anonymity of the internet to widen our contacts, but actually being able to contact distant correspondents is quite limited.
Think about letter writing to communicate, This is almost a lost art. The process remains easily within reach but the use has atrophied enough that its use actually becomes difficult enough to keep most folks away. But the best that I can tell, this is an all or nothing choice. There is only physical USPS or Email.
I would love it if someone here could point me to a intermediate means.
In my country of Canada, there was a big expansion a few years ago of an old vinyl store called Sunrise Records, so far the locations seem to be doing well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_Records
About the Commodore 64, apparently you can write C, C++, and Rust code for the Commodore 64 using modern compiler tools:
https://llvm-mos.org/wiki/Current_status
https://safereddit.com/r/rust/comments/uvshco/can_you_write_for_the_commodore_64_in_rust_why/
This might become a growing trend in the hobbyist software development scene as existing mainstream platforms get overwhelmed by LLM generated slop code.
One thing I’ve done this year is buy and wear a wristwatch. Mine is cheap, and tends to stop if knocked and require precussive maintenance to restart. This annoying, and means I have to keep checking the time against something before I leave home.
But it has let me leave my smart phone at home almost all the time, unless I want to take photos or something. It is lighter too, and I’m not digging through my backpack to find it. I don’t have a landline to myself, so I do need a phone and this is the cheapest option. But I don’t feel like being monitored wherever I go, so hooray wristwatch.
I’ve also been spending less time on the computer, and more reading books. This is easier on my eyes, but harder on my fibromyalgia. My goal of doing more practical things to meet my own needs compared to last year is a success, however. Gardening has been painful, but I’ve gotten a lot more harvested than last year despite deer and rabbit visits, and I’ve learned some new cooking skills and practiced them.
I’ve also continued with the drawing and painting, and have improved substantially over where I was last september. The wargaming stuff has also been going full blast.
I am finding that, at least the way I do them, art and wargaming put together are substantially cheaper than classical music by itself. Most of that difference is due to not taking private lessons.
The church stuff is going well, and I’m happier and less stressed than I have been in a long time. Now if only I could get the fibromyalgia to back off…
Bifurcation and people living outside of the technoparadise is at least as old as the novel Brave New World.
Thank you for the insightful essay, JMG.
I ‘ m wondering if you have reading suggestions of accounts of people living in the centuries following the collapse of a major civilization (e.g., Egypt, Roman Empire) and reflecting upon it, something similar to the account of Trey from Star’s Reach, but real account, not a fantasy fiction.
@JMG. Can you recall what John Brunner novel you are referring to? I’ve read “Shockwave Rider” and “Stand on Zanzibar.” I don’t care much for Brunner as a writer, but he is a great idea guy.
A slight variation on this theme may be that people decide that they have “had enough” technology. Not in the sense that they are fed up and angry, but more like refusing desert because your meal was already too filling and you just don’t want to eat anymore. For example, my dumb TV is good enough, it works after 10 years and don’t feel the need for an “upgrade.” And consider you may only have $20 for your dinner and when the waitress brings the check, you might not have the $5 for ice cream.
Tangentially related. I’m considering making some kind of small symbol or shrine in my work shed to the old Celtic god Lugh, who if I understand right was the god of arts, craftsmanship, etc. Anyone know of a traditional symbol for this deity?
Hi JMG,
That was a great post! When I see the homeless people in the nearby town, I always feel gratitude to you and Dmitri and James Howard. You let us know that being feckless was a strategy that was no longer safe to be indulged in.
With that in mind, we paid off our farm, made saving, spent 6 years without a car in the countryside and it was all fun. We were marching to the beat of a different drummer and have done very much better than a lot of other people.
Maxine
PS I cannot comment on Magic Monday and similar becuase my internet is so slow, I cannot pass that random check for bots.
Insulating our house, along with all the other fixes we did 20+ years ago, has really paid off for us.
If you haven’t insulated and weather-stripped, learned the window dance, or mapped out your expenditures and future needs, do it now!
@Deringolade: I’m not sure exactly what you’re looking for, but it seems a fax machine might fall in between email and USPS mail. There are also apps like Telegram that promise anonymity, for what that promise is worth. Then there are regular phone calls or meeting in person. You might also want to consider ham radio.
In Canada a group of truckers have created a company called Edison Motors – they have just created an old school diesel big rig for niche markets – logging and off road construction projects. The company has made the truck with the “Right to Repair” in mind. No custom features or software. They are confident that they will put the 1960s era truck technology into small scale production.
If the market responds then it confirms your observations in this post.
I spend a lot of my non-reading or YouTube time watching certain farming channels, in preference to watching the increasingly aggravating news from well-qualified (by me) sources. Given I can do little about either farming or the geopolitical situation, but at least farming is informative and entertaining. Turns out that what I have learned on the farming channels parallels what you’ve been saying here. First of all, even “hobby” farmers need to be skilled at a vast array of things and be prepared to pitch in to repair, replace and reuse everything they have. Secondly, these people are (and have to be) incredibly smart and well informed! Finally, along with renovation channels (for everything from furniture to houses), it’s clear that the array of technologies used to manage even a minimal lifestyle is so vast, and the supply chains so fragile, that I am increasingly amazed that “things” are as good as they are. I don’t expect that to continue, either.
Solid essay. Honestly, it makes me wonder if the classic “it’s different this time” mantra may hold true, just not as progressivists or doomers picture.
Most people say the modern global industrial civilization is “different” because it can either overcome all its systemic issues and leap to the heavens, or that it’s so big its end will end everything.
Maybe instead, it’s different because its sheer scale and knowledge base offers so many possibilities within itself that a long term collapse looks less messy than Rome or the Bronze Age? A 100-year slide from 2040s tech to 1940s tech could in theory be done smoothly if not entirely painlessly as people shed unnecessary technologies and re-adopt older, proven systems from the pages of any number of pamphlets and books. So the collapse may be a slow bifurcation, where the rich technophiles bleed population until they economically fizzle out and others’ slowly adapt tech to the current conditions. 2150 might look more like 1920 or 1890, but but the path to get there may be less painful or bloody than commonly predicted.
I’m probably being overly optimistic, but I’m only 30 and got a baby on the way, so I need a little hope. My wife and I certainly haven’t “collapsed” as much as we could, but we’re fairly unplugged and thrifty. Doing our best to get by.
Speaking of technological bifurcation, I have another one related to video games for you. Have you ever heard of a fantasy console?
https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
This trend started about a decade ago and has grown into a lively subculture among independent game developers old and new alike. Basically, it’s a programming environment that simulates an old BASIC computer, with most of the limitations and constraints that implies. New developers appreciate the simplicity of getting started without worrying about complex graphics and vector math, while seasoned developers enjoy the challenge of trying to fit their vision into a set of strict constraints, believing this helps foster creativity. It’s an interesting contrast to the mainstream, which is obsessed with ever-ballooning costs and protracted development cycles.
PICO-8 is, I believe, the trendsetter in this space, but others exist, like bitsy and puzzlescript. Every project is open source by default and the community is very enthusiastic about sharing knowledge and other tricks with each other. There are YouTube videos describing techniques one can use to fit relatively large game maps into the small memory footprint PICO-8 requires of you. This means a community of young developers are refamiliarizing themselves with what it’s like to work with much more limited hardware, quite enthusiastically I might add, which increases the likelihood these techniques will be preserved for the future.
It’s possible we’ll have to say goodbye to personal computing one day, given the energy constraints involved, but if it is going to survive in some form, even if just for a little while, trends like this are the best chance it has, I think.
JMG,
I was just thinking of good modern example of Jevons paradox. Up until the 1990’s the design and concept of Electric cars was for vehicles that were small light and aerodynamic to make the most of the battery capacity of the time. A good example of this is GM’s EV1, the subject of a movie titled ” who stole the electric car.” The movie marveled at now when the project was canceled GM tracked down and destroyed nearly every one of the vehicles.
Fast forward to the 2010’s when Elon and others resurrected the EV with the advent of more capable Lithium batteries. But instead of using these batteries in a new generation of small efficient vehicles like the EV1 they were applied instead to a new generation of EV’s who’s selling point was even more power and acceleration than a gas car. This trend got even worse as time went on with the industry turning out ridiculous land barges as the Tesla Cybertruck and the GM Hummer EV. So the energy efficiency of the technology improved but instead of being used to reduce energy use it was used to make bigger, more powerful and wasteful cars.
No wonder GM destroyed all the EV1’s. They did not want any examples of such vehicles around for anyone to see and ponder.
Mark, that divergence was all over science fiction in the 20th century. I gather it’s been dropped by more recent authors, which I suppose is not that surprising, since next to nobody wants to talk about social class these days…
Degringolade, one intermediate means might be ham radio. More generally, though, you’re right — there aren’t many options in that middle space.
Gunstone, glad to hear it.
Anon, hmm! That’s promising.
Pygmycory, good for you. I’m considering a pocketwatch, for similar reasons.
Anon, it’s much, much older than that. You’ll find it in “The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster, published in 1909, and “The Dark Age” by Clark Ashton Smith, published in 1938, among many other places — those are just two stories I’ve long admired:
https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/Machine_stops.pdf
http://eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/35/the-dark-age
Inna, one of the fascinating things is that people living in the immediate aftermath of a civilization’s fall rarely seem to reflect on it, or even notice that things are different. Here’s one of the rare exceptions, an Anglo-Saxon poem on a ruined Roman city:
https://sites.nd.edu/manuscript-studies/translations/the-ruin/
(Scroll down past the English translation and there’s audio of somebody reading it in Old English. It’s unnerving stuff.)
Watchflinger, The Shockwave Rider. It’s been a good long while since I last read it, but I was something of a Brunner fan back in the day. I don’t think there was a traditional symbol for Lugh, but you can always get an image of him.
Maxine, delighted to hear that it helped. I suspect more and more people will get screened out as time passes, btw.
Teresa, fine advice!
KenV, glad to hear it. I hope they make a mint.
Clarke, thanks for the data points. Yeah, it’s going to be a rough road down to genuine subsistence farming.
EchoEcho, the average civilization takes a couple of centuries to fall. There’s plenty of time still left for the slow grind downward, though it’ll probably get back to 1900 or so by the time you’re old — I don’t expect private cars to be available to any but the very rich fifty years from now, for example, and we’re fairly close to the point at which rural electrification will break down over growing swaths of the landscape. That said, 1900 doesn’t mean living in caves, of course!
Untitled-1, that’s very good news. As high-end computing technology prices itself out of reach of a growing share of the population, machines that can run BASIC will come back into common use; it’s good to know that people are getting ready for that.
Clay, that’s an excellent example!
Indeed, this is a common topic for people who grew up in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s..I used to take informal polls of people in restaurants by asking them which decade they thought was the best for life…The ’50s was by far the favorite because life was pleasant, most people were amiable, and the schools were better…..Many of us were volunteers who coached, tutored, and raised money for what we thought were good causes…It was a way of life that’s been dying since the Vietnam war, and people have been forced by the “Elites” to work long hours just to get by, as whole industries have been offshored and well paying jobs have disappeared….
Food for thought, Mr. Greer. Two ideas occur to me.
First, what, if anything, does population decline play in your prognosis? Reason I ask, is my son started 1st grade today and I was shocked to see a class of roughly 22 children. Mind you, this is in wealthiest zip code in the state.
Second, I’m pleased Flock and other tech has been as fracked up in the public consciousness as it has. Especially given that, from an evidentiary perspective, what the footage reveala is almost always impermissible hearsay–assuming you have an engaged and adroit lawyer on your case. Maybe the old common law will save us in the end.
Two trends I believe that everyone should pay attention to are the looming shortages and cost inflation of electric power and fresh water…Living in a very sunny climate, we have installed maximum solar on our house, not because solar is intrinsically good, but because electric rates are going up rapidly for a host of reasons….Unfortunately, fresh water is not something we can do anything about, except to get the most efficient use of what we have…I believe that a shortage of potable water is imminent, with the installation of data centers everywhere, on top of the drought that is plaguing the West…
As a further sign of disgust with recent technological fads, there is a project called the ProtoWeb that aims at recreating the experience of being online in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, using the Wayback Machine and software to emulate old game servers:
https://protoweb.org/
A similar project is NeoCities, which is modeled after the old GeoCities site, where people could host small websites they coded by hand. Judging by its user gallery, there’s still a real demand and hunger for that kind of creative outlet: https://neocities.org/browse
These are, of course, two of the less resilient examples of bifurcation, but I think it speaks to the widespread disillusionment that many people have come to feel with the Internet. Thirty years ago, browsing the Web could actually be a joy, webpages were often interesting and creative rather than all bland monstrosities, and video games weren’t just slot machines in disguise.
Hi JMG,
Something cool with records is that they can be functional even without the electric suite. I have memories of building a makeshift turntable as a kid with a piece of paper rolled into a cone, a pin, and a pencil shoved in the centre hole to spin on. Far from ideal, either for sound quality, or the health of any record played this way, but I would imagine you could develop something quite effective by building on those basics. Perhaps the hand-cranked Victrola is already optimal, but I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that more could be done to improve the sound quality.
There is a kid I see on social media every now and then named Gabriel Bonnin who has built an automatic hurdy gurdy by rigging it to an old Singer foot pedal. This allows him to generate an even tone while having both hands free and he uses this set up to reproduce something of the sound of electronic synthesizers used in dance music. As I like that kind of music, I’ve been curious about what the limitations of resources would impose onto the genre. It’s fine to say that music will revert to older forms, but it seems to me that some amount of musical tastes will persist beyond the technological suites that made them possible, and I’ve been curious at what that might be like, so have paid attention to people who seem to be already exploring that area.
In a somewhat related note, it might interest you to know that a fair amount of interest goes into particular bits of older gear, particularly samplers and sequencers that impose greater limits on creators because those limits end up giving the final products some of the desirable qualities of earlier recordings. There is something of what you are talking about at play there too, just for a different set of motivators.
On the syntehsizer and drum machine side, the unique sound of earlier instruments is so sought after that there are companies who produce knock offs of this earlier gear. The German company Behringer is notorious for this.
There is a large debate around the use of computers vs physical gear in the dance music world, which the basics of would be familiar to you, physical equipment is more of a hassle, but it imposes limitations on the process which speeds things up (and avoids writer’s block) but also frees things up, giving the results a more human and less predictable quality.
Thanks,
Johnny
@JMG: I snail mailed you an article about the latest fad in my grandsons’ generation: “Analog Bags.” Often from L.L. Bean, in which they carry print books, journals, and the like – real-life substitutes for social media, which they vow to eschew. Oh, and yes, they write letters.
In terms of companies who are doing well by catering to the “lower” (or more “previous”) end of a technological bifurcation, I would like to give a shout out to laptopwithlinux.com (a company based in the Netherlands) from whom I have just bought the first brand new laptop I have owned in more than 15 years.
That said, this one came pre-loaded with Linux software, and upon ordering, gave me a suite of personalisable choices, and I am very happy with it. **
The thing is that I, like many others, am not particularly tech nerdy, and while I have *wanted* to break free of the Microsoft dependency for many years, my personal attempts to follow online instructions , load up various USB’s, and try to reboot my previous computers, were abject failures. I am happy that somebody stepped in to sell me exactly what I was looking for, and as of about of week of testing, it is working out extremely well for me. 🙂
** and may I stress I have no connection to this company other than being a happy customer!
I’ll share an example of bifurcation from one area I became familiar with when I got into sewing: textiles and clothing.
First, I’ve noticed what feels to me like a LOT (though it probably isn’t many) Youtube inflluencers who have adopted historical fashion as their everyday dress, like your example couple in the post. They make their own garments out of natural fibers and often hand-sew them, preferring the quality, durability, and even functionality in many cases. I’m talking Victorian, Regency, and in some cases like V. Birchwood, even ancient fashions, being worn on a hike or to the coffee shop.
Second, one of these individuals, Nicole Rudolph analyzed late-19th century Sears catalogs and tried to calculate, adjusted for inflation, how much a working class sewist, one of the poorer occupations, would pay for a new dress. It was not unusual for her to spend $500 in today’s money–quite a sum, that required saving up, and then mending the dress for years to come.
I’ve noticed that clothing is bifurcating at the manufacturer level. Many companies are now producing what they call “heritage” wear, which translates into “normal clothes prior to globalization.” Again, they are made with natural fibers, using very old machines, and sewn in 1st world countries. People often complain about how expensive they are, and it’s true: a rugged jacket of the type formerly worn by working class men might run between $400-$700. A really well-made t-shirt will cost you $60-120. Notably, these companies are focusing on working class fashions like knits, jeans, waxed canvas jackets, etc. It strikes me that this is simply what it costs, and has always cost when you remove the petroleum subsidization, to make a quality garment.
And people are snapping them up like crazy. Right now it’s mostly those with disposable income, but I can foresee that these are the pioneers in what will become simply normal clothing, and the working class will have to save up for a pair of jeans and a flannel, own fewer articles, and use them til they’re rags.
I live with my grandma. Recently my grandma’s old oven gave out. It was in use for 40+ years, long before I was even born. Ovens today are designed to implode exactly one day after the warranty expires.
John, do you have any tips for life without a cell phone? I’ve switched back and forth between a jailbroken smartphone and a dumphone but never have had the discipline to cut out a cell phone completely.
JMG
I think a good metaphor for this is the “cento” era of Rome which was around the third century when soldiers had to make patchworks (centos) out of their cloaks. People start fixing old stuff and using that because the new stuff is not as good as the old, the new stuff is too expensive, or in most cases both.
Oh, and speaking of Commodore 64’s, there famously was an auto shop in Gdansk, Poland, that used a Commodore 64 from 1991 until the shop closed in 2016 or 2017 to run custom software to balance driveshafts:
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/commodore-64-kept-running-for-25-years—-in-a-polish-auto-shop
@ JMG: Well, I signed up for Dreamwidth, and they use Captchas to prove you’re human. This one included rapidly jumping figures, and I did click on the one that jumped the highest, and got nowhere. I am old and my reflexes are slow. I checked on their accessibility option for the handicapped and ended in a maze of information screens with no way to check a box to get one. I’ll talk to my daughter this coming Sunday.
@Untitled-1 and @JMG #15 and #17 Regarding Retro-Computing
Not video games, but I’m reminded of one of my own technological quirks that I think I’ve mentioned here before: Emacs. Emacs is a text editor that was one of the very first GNU programs (Gnu’s Not Unix). While it is zealously maintained and updated, and the kinds of people who write open source software and run Linux tend to be very new-technology-philic, at its core, it’s still a program that was first written in the 1970s, and the programming language its written in (a variant of Lisp known as E-Lisp) is the same one that’s been used all along. I haven’t looked into it, but it would not surprise me in the least if there are grognards running the same version and set up they’ve been using for the past 20 or 30 years.
Anyhow, my wider point is that there are at least a few live, up-to-date corners of the digital world that could nevertheless revert gracefully, which might help to smooth out some things.
Cheers,
Jeff
P.S. Fair warning to anyone intrigued by Emacs and considering giving it a shot: it has a very steep learning curve at first. Luckily, there’s lots of good documentation on how to get started and set things up, much of it built right in, but even finding that stuff can be a challenge at first. If you decide to try it, feel free to reach out for some guidance.
Technological bifurcation is a reality today if you go to any country in Africa. Perhaps it’s only the first world that’s had the luxury to have mass technological adoption in the past century.
Coincidentally, I picked up Jacob Lund Fiskers’ “Early Retirement Extreme” the other day so I could revisit his thinking on evaluating just how tied to “the system” I want to be. It’s been a long time since I read it, but I recall his point being *magical* (unbeknownst to him, I suppose) in that a change in consciousness as one wills it, to meet a goal and external circumstances, is powerful stuff.
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Noting an interesting phenomenon that’s occurred a few times, I wonder if you can speak to the wider implications of AI generated images getting past people’s filters. I like a good cottage and a book as much as anyone, but that image up above is certainly fake, with a treadle machine installed backward into the dining table, and a stove with no stovepipe. I’ve saved a few goLLuM-derived images to Pinterest, though I am trying to learn to be more discerning; so I’m not pointing fingers, and would instead try to elicit your take on the effects of the crapification of images (of ideals, or even of reality…).
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pygmycory – if you’d be interested in my heterodox take on fibromyalgia (as a fellow, likely, suffer-er, without the expert-provided diagnosis), and a possible avenue of exploration, feel free to contact me by email (my username, gmail account).
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degringoglade – how about those little repeater-like comm devices using MESH networks? Or maybe those are just to talk to random people? I haven’t quite figured them out (or put the time into figuring them out, to be clear).
Video games: My experience of that is that I stopped getting new games when it still was the CD era, just kicking over into the next one. Now I’m not a “gamer” in the sense of playing all sorts of games. I like two: Grand Theft Auto and Civilization. In both cases I declined to upgrade to a newer version in ~2000-2010 and continue to play the old one today. The reason why I did that with Civilization doesn’t bear much on the topic but the reason with GTA does a bit, or one of the reasons does.
You see, I completed the game, set up a free play thing I wanted to practice that depended on having an advanced save file, and then shortly after had a hard drive crash. Backup? I’m glad you think I’m so smart. So I set up the new hard drive, and downloaded a save file from the internet.
The save file didn’t work, because the game refused to load a file that was not generated by that installation itself. The game came with this component that resembles today’s Steam(ing crap) and had this thing where it tracked your accomplishments and showed them to people, and that’s why you had to use your own file.
Well, I didn’t want that at all! GTA was a thing I did for unwinding after work. I didn’t care about posting what I did or bragging about it, or competing with anyone, and there was no way to disable all that either.
And I’d found a lot of the story line gameplay tedious and frustrating. I was on no account going to do all that a second time, so, so much for the new GTA. I was really annoyed at the attempted forced socialization of what was really a me time thing. Typically I would have been dealing with enough people in my working day already and humans could now all please uckfay offay, thank you, please make an orderly exit.
(Speaking of intrusive electronica, have dating apps started electronically verifying height and weight yet? I anticipate the outrage about that might be quite amusing.)
I shant be surprised to hear other stories about how the corporate world tried to take away someone’s little me-at-play thing and force them into the group, in that era and at times since then.
Anyway, ha ha, I was on the CD side of that bifurcation before there was a bifurcation!
The problem with the version of GTA that I do play today is trying to control the thing when I’m laughing so hard at it that it’s hard to catch a breath. This is the kind of problem I WANT in entertainment!
Many word, few point. Oops.
I can code in Basic on a C64. I doubt if it’s coming back enough for THAT to help me though. I was never one of the 6502/6510 assembly code guys. But that’s way interesting, I’m really chuffed to hear about that!
There was a woman who built a bass guitar out of a C64. The sound somehow went through the SID chip and I saw her on video making 64-like sounds with the strings, and she’d change voices with the function keys. It was pretty cool.
Clay Dennis (#16): actually, GM’s first EV after the EV-1 was the Bolt, which I consider to be a worthy successor (my wife and I each own one). They managed to sell about a quarter million of them and it’s making a short comeback for this model year. Tesla, too, sells a lot more 3s and Ys than they do Cybertrucks. That said, yeah, you can buy an electric land yacht or brodozer if you want to.
The Apple 2 still has a following as well including new software.
https://a2central.com/
Shockwave Rider was astoundingly prescient, including computer “worms” that worked through the networks to suck up data. There were also anonymous denunciation lines to rat out your neighbor.
Given there is only one state of the art silicon fabrication plant on the planet (TSMC) I’ve been wondering where computers might settle out on a stairstep down. Motorola, IBM and Intel all had decent plants running in the US in 2004, so one gigahertz G4 and Pentium 3 CPUs may be obtainable after a downshift. The rest of the supply line would be similarly simplified.
Oh, Maytag is apparently about to release a simple 30 year washing machine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCKghNqR2xA
I hope the trend continues.
I just did a quick (5 minute) look around the C64 world. It looks as if most of the current interest is in nostalgia gamers. So we get to thank those “idlers” for the current availability of this potentially useful old tech. The hardware is based on a newer chip(?) Please correct me. The concept of making it do useful work is intriguing. I’d like to know more.
I’ve relied on a wristwatch for many years. I use a Citizen’s Eko-drive SkyHawk that I purchased 20 or so years ago for $200-300. It uses solar power so it’s never needed a new battery. I like it.
Another way Commodore is paving the way to the future is that they’re giving customers the option to use salvaged chips in their phones, since the current efflorescence has led to a shortage of all sorts of higher end integrated circuits. It lets them charge a few less quid– which is very necessary. Without the ability to sell your data the company has to charge full price for that hardware, which is FAR more than we have been left to believe. I do not know if the same salvage operations are possible with the new C64.
I have one of their phones on order and will report back when it arrives after Michaelmas.
I would like to suggest something that isn’t exactly technical bifurcation. Maybe it is emotional bifurcation? There are all these retirement communities that cost a fortune, are very energy intensive, and make it so your family doesn’t have to take care of you when you get old. There is a lower energy alternative.
I am in my late 60s, so one of those horrible boomers. I realize how lucky I was to grow up when I did. I basically fell into a job when I was 21 and it became a career that allowed me to have a house and a car and four kids. Kids today don’t have the opportunities that I had. They are all struggling with demanding jobs, low pay, and lots of stress. Every penny and every minute of time that I can spare goes to my kids. To the extent I can, I help with bills for the kids that need it, go over and make sure my grandkids have breakfast and get off to school on time so my daughter and son-in-law can get to work on time semi-stress free. I have one of my kids and her boyfriend living with me because they can’t afford to rent an apartment right now. I know that there are others in my generation that find this appalling. They say things like, “Why should I help my kids? No one helped me.” Or they say, “They should pay you!” I think they have lost their minds. Who do they think is going to care for them when they are too old to do it themselves, especially in a down economy? Those uber-expensive retirement communities?
I think the people in my generation can best prepare for the bad times ahead by being pleasant, generous, loving, and tolerant with their children or whoever is their community. Too many people I know are nasty, selfish, holier-than-thou jerks. Good luck to them in finding someone to help them when they can’t help themselves.
I didn’t learn this on my own. My late mother-in-law was . . . a piece of work. She had 8 kids. Not one of them would welcome her into their home in the end because she emotionally destroyed everyone in it within days of her arrival. She spent the last several years of her life alone in a nursing home, where they basically drugged her up to shut her up. She did not have dementia, she was just really mean. I learned: when you are old, be nice to your kids. Actually, do it before you are old. As we go down the economic toilet, those nursing homes are going to get more nightmarish or just not be available at all. So the bifurcation is, don’t think expensive, very energy intensive retirement community; instead, think family.
JMG,
A good by slightly different example of energy/technology bifurcation happened at a city council meeting here in my town of Hillsboro Oregon. The purpose of the meeting was a hearing on a proposed Private Jet Base to be built at the Hillsboro Airport. When I was a kid the Hillsboro airport was a rural airport for crop dusters and hobby flyers. With the coning of Intel and such it has become the home for Intel Jets as well as Nike’s two jets. This company called Sky Harbor LLC ( not to be confused by the Phoenix Airport). Is putting together a network of ” Jet Hubs” for ” Home basing” Business Jets. The Billionaires have become weary of their multi-million dollar toys being parked at FBOs. Which are shared hangers at airport, which are like jet parking garages.
In this new model they get their own secure hanger, along with a clubhouse, maintenance etc plus security courtesy of the Israelis. Then when they need the jet, the pilots climb in at the secure “jet port” and bring the jet to the waiting Billionaire wherever they may be.
They tried to steamroller this thing with no oversight using the ” FAA is the only one with say as to pollution, noice etc.” The huge crowd overflowing the auditorium to testify against it was not having any of it. The Bifurcation part is that as the hearing ran on in to the late hours many of those who came to testify from the local community had to leave to catch a bus home before service ended for the night. Transit riders vs the Billionaire Jet Owners. Bifurcation for you.
#2 Degringolade: I sent my niece something I was clearing out of my childhood bedroom, and she (12 or 13) sent me a handwritten thank you letter back! It’s charming and like getting a little gift to get a letter.
#5 pygmycory: I still buy those Casio watches they’ve been making since the 80s. Used to be able to get them for $9 and they are great when I’m doing physical work outside. They do tear up, but they did something right if they’re making them for 40 years.
#12 KenV: Interested in the “old school” big rig. Check out Ursa Tractors, they are making high demand tractors using the same philosophy.
JMG @17
One thing I wonder about apropos the use of private cars by even the rich in 50 years time is the maintenance of roads. It would be difficult and expensive to maintain a modern road system for that few cars. I suppose they could be used within gated guarded enclaves and secure areas. Hard to imagine any kind of long distance travel in them though.
Stephen
JMG
apropos my comment about private cars: I do realize that there will be much less travel of any sort in 50 years, certainly very little tourism as we now know it.
Thank you for introducing me to the term of “technological bifurcation” and for giving me a bit more hope about the potential of a (mostly peaceful) transition to tiny Technohell enclaves surrounded by lives lived like Sarah Chrisman. I remember when you first mentioned her and it was lovely to her revisit her website and see what she has been up to these last years. I’m ordering a few of her cozy Victorian bicycle romances, which is exactly what I need right now. I don’t do view much on YouTube but her channel has reminded me to clean out my grandparent’s oil lamps for the winter and that I really do need to take a 2nd look at adding pigeons to our homestead. Also, there are a ton of book reviews. I have always gotten the BEST book recommendations from this space. Thanks for all that you do!
It is genuinely across the board now, and not just an early millennial, gen x revival thing.
Class A amplifiers and component audio, some of us never lost them. It will be interesting to see if amateur radio gets a pick up.
Computers, C and SQL are more popular than ever, especially in an age of LLMs where getting underneath the LLM is vital. One of the older database technologies, Postgresql, has basically eaten the world and runs most LLMs on what is a 1980s architecture. Ive seen a trend back to old style social LAN gaming, before fast internet, instead of people alone at home with a Steam deck.
I am not a board gamer, but the billions Warhammer has made speaks to the enduring power of tangible gaming. Warhammer shops exist in small town New Zealand, whereas larger outlets dont.
Kodak cant make enough film for the analog photography revival. It was running three shifts at Rochester, then had to shut down for a capacity upgrade. Ilford have produced a new colour film. All that is now required is a genuine new and cheap SLR to return to the market.
Anyone with a decent, non rusty light ute or truck I know gets the engine rebuilt, rather than getting a more modern, supposedly more efficient hyper complex thing that cant be easily maintained.
You are right that it is just waiting for someone to make whiteware like the 1970s and 1980s again. My pick is one of the commercial whiteware companies will realise their industrial grade tooling is well suited to a consumer market and when they enter it they will clean up.
I am waiting for the return of old style technical drawing and drafting, along with slide rules and the like. I would say, there is a niche waiting right there too.
What I think is still missing, and you have started this, is the social language of bifurcation. “Retrovation” was the more outre term you previously used, but that doesnt quite cover it either.
I go back to Mumford’s concept of technics here. Mumford is up there on the same shelf as Jevons in my book. A “technic” is your basket of related technologies and systems. It is also of course the brand name of the best component audio systems ever made, when Japan knew what it was doing.
People will become, and some are already there, skilled cross and multi technic operators.
I recall the young kids from the recent steam day near my home town, happily managing online businesses through their smart phones whilst maintaining a 19th century traction engine. It isnt even thought of academically, it is just what you do…
Speaking of TechnoHell Enclaves with endless Flock cameras. Margaret Killjoy just posted a piece discussing how widespread the destruction of Flock Cameras has become across the US. It’s really cheered me up!
https://margaretkilljoy.substack.com/p/people-really-are-cutting-down-flock?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1739310&post_id=211856247&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=pnxp6&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Hello JMG and commentariat:
Today post is very interesting, but ironically and unfortunately (due to some silly personal problems), I can’t use my computer for a while…so I’m writing from my smartphone (ahem).
First thing I’d like to comment is a “funny” story I’ve remembered after having read John writing about Jevons (with a photograph too). A heck of years ago, in an online site I can’t and I don’t want to remember, I read some frantic nutties claims supporting the abiotic oil fake science. It’s interesting their main tantrums were against Malthus and Jevons (you can guess easily why). Of course, there was a evily evil conspiracy by “biotic” supporters against good abiotic oil guys (ahem).
JMG has pointed crappification as a cause for current (and future) technological bifurcation. Yes, it’s a real and interesting tendence.
I think there’s a real but mild risk about neo-Orwellian hi tech dystopias coming soon, to some extent, against us. However, I’m not especially afraid of “mind onanisms” expelled by WEF usual elitist pets: I think the EU is slowly dying, especially after the Russo-Ukrainian war began (maybe an special post by JMG could explain better than me this thought). So megalomaniac European elites dreams will have a likely short road into a full failure, in the short or medium term. I’m not very happy about what could come after those events (I bet anything better than present; I wish I was wrong).
I guess some totalitarian wannabe American government could attempt to impose a full surveillance police state in USA in a near future, but oh, first it should convince and/or force American citizens to be disarmed: good luck with this hypothetical action.
I think the worst hi tech totalitarist danger comes from China. Its govt has been investing a heck of money in LLMs, evidently to control their own population (by now) and get military advantage; hi tech social control system “works well”, but it could be “improved” to be more ruthless agsinst citizens there; and finally, most Chinese don’t use real money anymore, but they use smartphones to pay and buy things. Of course, tracing money is much easier with this “modern and popular” system by the govt. What could be wrong? Of course, moronic western fans of China regime are cheerleading this “progress”. I bet in the long term China as rising hegemonic power is doomed, I give it 20 or 30 years of glory before its final crash; but during this time its ominous tendences could be desirable and fashionable…
I understood just how opressive smartphones are during the covid lockdowns. At some point it became obvious to me that the powers that be use triangulation of cell signals to send cops to places people seem to be roaming outside.
In my case the solution was simple, leave the thing at home. But I noticed many of my friends were unwilling or unable to do that, causing them to either get fined, or comply with the lockdown.
I always knew intellectually smarphones are a privery loss machine, but it really hit home during covid.
Recently, Shane from Recombination Nation wrote a piece called “The God of Small Internets” and he mentioned the El Paquete Semanal (“The Weekly Package”) in Cuba. It’s a weekly collection of digital material (including movies, music, etc… and small business advertising) on an external hard drive that is distributed throughout the country for around a $1 and doesn’t require the internet. I wonder if this could be a feasible rung down for many in the Global North?
Something I just learned, I don’t care about this because I never use it, but it’s just exactly right in that theme of turncoat technology. Apparently Uber monitors your phone battery, because people who are low on battery tend to want to get home promptly, and so they can hike the price for those guys.
I saw this on youtube shorts. It was US Senator Josh Hawley who was speaking.
Pygmycory: You’re making me think about how much I really need my cellphone. I don’t have any other phone to myself either, but I don’t care about that. Mine is for data. I still have it because the building internet is really choppy. And I like little things like being able to check the bank, or whether such and such a store is open yet, but I think if push came to shove it wouldn’t be the end of the world to let it go.
I don’t care for the idea of being monitored either, but my whole attitude about that this whole time has been that I’m not interesting enough to monitor *specifically*. I mean, I’m unusual visually, but not interesting in a way that power would care about.
Oh yeah, that was the other thing…
JMG: I thought I saw on shorts recently about a working class neighbourhood in the UK that got all wired up with cameras the way you’re predicting for rich neighbourhoods. If I find info like that again I’ll see if I can provide better detail.
We have some cameras on our Downtown Eastside, an area that makes it look as though a failed state has an enclave here. I’m not sure how extensive the coverage is.
Pugmycory # 5:
Writing about wristwatches, I can tell you that more or less from 10 years ago, it seemed (or usual suspects tried to make us to believe it), wristwatches were going to be outdated soon (like paper books?). Some snobs began to get rid of their “old fashioned” wristwatches and started to see the time only in their pretty smartphones, but nowadays, I’ve seen in my town there’s a slight majority of people (even young people) who wear wristwatches. Well, let’s compare reliability and time lasting between smartphones and wristwatches batteries and technology…Even cheapest digital watches last several years before replacing their batteries.
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Echoecho # 14:
Ironically, there’s a common ground idea between god Progress believers and usual creepy doomers: they hate History lessons from the past, because “it’s different this time”. Maybe there aren’t iron laws to explain every historical event, but I think some patterns and tendences repeat from time to time, with more or less external variants: for example, decline dynamics. So I guess this time won’t be different…There’s nothing really new under the sun.
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JMG # 17:
Thanks for your link to the Anglo-Saxon poem about a ruined Roman city. Well, there were some different decline levels across the former Western Roman Empire. For example, Hispania was lucky (and unlucky, too), because it was invaded by the Visigoths, who had been Romanized to some extent…but oh wait, they weren’t Catholics like Spaniards, for a while. On the other hand, they respected quite Roman local laws. Some Roman towns survived and some irrigation canals kept working for agriculture until
muslim invasion (though another ones weren’t repaired well, nor improved neither, until the Arabs arrived here).
South-East Spain was invaded for a while by Roman Eastern Empire troops, during Justinian emperor times; so local people and even some Visigoth kings envied and imited Byzantine fashion and technology. Decline here wasn’t full, so some Roman inheritance survived even after the muslim invasion (for example, some languages born from Latin).
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Today, I’ve had an argument with a guy, slightly younger than me. He told me next year the Moon will be visited by Artemis space mission, so in more or less 20 years there’ll be moon bases and first people will arrive to Mars. I’ve pointed when I was a teen, it was said there’d be a man in Mars before 2030 (cough). And the Moon is our “neughborhood” compared with distance to Mars (money, time and radiation grow for that hypothetical mission). So do the math: maybe we’ll never see an astronaut in Mars surface. I haven’t gone more in this argument (I’ve prefered by now not explaining him the Long Decline/catabollic collapse theories), for not upsetting nor scaring the poor guy for debunking his naïve “progressive” timeline in a deeper sense.
Joss Whedon’s “Firefly / Serenity” universe also shows this division. Near the prosperous centre of the galaxy, spaceships are everywhere. Out near the Rim, one bigwig has a hovercar and an escort on horseback while everyone else gets by on foot. It’s a very clear depiction of the urban / rural divide.
If you have clear title to your house AND can pay it off (or have already done so), you’ve got a tremendous gift for your children or nieces and nephews or whoever will inherit your house.
I know of several households, both relatives and not, who were long-term happy renters. When the owner of the rental died, the new owner threw them out. After FORTY (40) years in the case of my elderly North Dakota relatives.
The clear title is critical after the dreadful tomfoolery and cheating of the housing bubble.
But if you have clear title on a paid-for house, your descendants have a place to live.
Yes, that means you can move around the country every five years but I suspect relocation is going to diminish unless you’re forced to move and you’ve got little choice.
Thanks for this.
JMG,
Upon re-reading your “The Great Leap Backward” post, one of the first things I thought of was that you were practically predicting current Democrats’ populist rebellion, i.e., the DSA. Yes, let’s go back to the 1920’s so we can solve the problem of a system being strangled with too much bureaucracy (among other things), with of course even more bureaucracy. Yes, the warm embrace of collectivism.
My experiences this week aren’t about lessening access to energy, but to running water. On Sunday evening, there was a water main break and a pump break, that lead to a secondary main break. My family and I went 2 and a half days without running water. Turns out the damage drained the water towers and created and airlock. With 17 days straight of triple digit heat and no rain for 35 days here in Central Texas water was a hot topic. I was shocked at how many families didn’t have even the smallest amount of water stored. Most businesses and the schools, the first week back, were forced to closed.
The damage isn’t done though. Smaller paychecks for those that work hourly jobs is just the first example I can think of. Simpler ways of doing things day to day are absolutely the way to go. Then it doesn’t change anything, you just keep doing your thing.
At this page is the full list of all of the non-faith-specific requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts (printable version here, current to 8/17). Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below or at the prayer list page.
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This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests, selected from the fuller list.
May Trubujahs’s mother-in-law, Helen, who is currently hospitalized due to gastrointestinal bleeding related to stage 4 pancreatic cancer, be filled with vitality and be healed of all cancer and any ailments relating to it; may she and her family find the strength and support they need throughout.
May Trubujah’s best friend Pat’s teenage daughter Devin, who has a mysterious condition which doctors are so far baffled by necessitating that she remain in a wheelchair, be healed of her condition; may the underlying cause come to light so that treatment may begin.
May Atmospheric River’s gall bladder full of gallstones heal and be filled with such vitality that her current stones diminish, her comfort increases, and her gall bladder remains free of new stones.
May Northwind Grandma’s husband Jeff, who passed away unexpectedly on July 22, be blessed and make a peaceful transition to his next destination; may he be healed of the “wound in his heart” that he held in life.
May Jeff’s cat Henry accept, twice a day, Northwind’s giving him his Flovent inhaler dose and pill, and let her take him to the veterinarian once a month for an injection.
May Anonymuz get the strength and resolve he needs in his endeavors for justice, and may truth and justice be served.
May Lukeszy’s father’s post-surgery swelling be healed.
May Helen in Oz be free of inflammation in her biceps and shoulder, and may she be successful in the slow process of regaining pain-free range of movement and increased muscle mass and strength therein.
May JC of Geauga County, Ohio, who is fighting cancer, be blessed and uplifted so that he may receive the healing he needs and recover as best as possible.
May 1Wanderers’s partner Cathy, who is still undergoing chemotherapy in preparation for a surgery, be given the physical and mental strength to fight it, and tolerate the treatment; may she enjoy a full and permanent recovery.
May Dustin, a relative of Brenainn, who still has some lingering issues in his ongoing recovery from a heart condition, be healed and strengthened.
May Brother Kornhoer’s son Travis’s reconstructive surgery on his left ureter go well; may his right kidney heal; and may his empty nose syndrome abate.
May Brother Kornhoer be able to afford his son’s international surgery.
May a safe and happy home environment be enjoyed by Laurelmirror, her daughter, and her mother, as well as protection from evil influences. May their family situation be resolved in such a way that Laurelmirror’s mother will get a chance to recover physically and mentally from the stresses it has caused.
May Geoff G’s sister Lindsay, who suffered a stroke at the end of May, recover to the fullest extent possible, and be blessed and supported in her mental wellbeing throughout.
May Mathew Damon Gallowglass, who has been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, be treated successfully for his condition and make a full recovery.
May Lisa C be blessed and healed for a complete recovery from breast cancer.
May 6 year old Max be blessed and protected during his parents’ contentious divorce; may events work out in a manner most conducive to Max’s healthy development over the long term.
May Bob W of Lake County, Ohio’s treatment for cancer go well so that he may heal and recover as quickly as possible.
May Larry Mulford, who has entered hospice after a year battling with pancreatic cancer, pass in the smoothest possible manner, and may his wife be enveloped in our love.
May Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
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Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
Somewhat a propos is Samuel Delany’s (1968) “We, in Some Strange Power’s Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line” .
Atmospheric River, if you see this: I apologize, I missed your prayer request at the time that it appeared a couple of weeks ago, but I’ve got it now. Please feel free to adjust the wording if you’d like.
Clay Dennis # 16 … Just today, whilst stopping at the Post office, I had to wind my way between parked vehicles .. one of which was a CyberYuck! I swear, those muskmelons remind me of those janky, boxy conveyances featured in just above every Verhoven flick – think SUX 2OOO via Robocop or Cohagen’s toadies tooling around in their ride, gunning for Quade in Total Recall. Even the JohnnyCab had that funky angular vibe .. as if some ersatz cubist went crazy with the concept of bulky, non-aerodynamic design features. The term ‘Ugly’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. Tech-Bro Hubris however, does .. to a T. Meanwhile, the Chinese are producing practical vehicles that regular humons actually need.
Pygmycory 5
> fibromyalgia
I have had fibromyalgia since the early 1980s. The first years were truly crippling-awful-terrible-agony, a hellish-landscape.
In that I survived, I can speak. I only discovered this ‘secret’ between 2015 and 2018: if I regularly sipped water at least once an hour, my fibromyalgia was halved. Henceforth, the condition was livable. But for me, the information came too late.
I couldn’t believe it was so simple. If MDs know this water trick, they are hiding it. It is after this dawning that I gave up all faith and trust in anything medical. “Medicos” are only in it for the money.
Basically, my particular version of fibromyalgia was caused by chronic dehydration, or what I now feel is a better description: terminal dehydration. I was literally dying.
Chronic dehydration, and not knowing it, ruined not only my life, but Jethro’s: we decided not to have children because my pain-level was so high (off the chart) for so long (30+ years), we dared not put even one child through the hell of having a near-dead mother barely hanging on, and nobody knowing why. I was unable to build the career I had gotten educated for.
In the 1980s, if only I had a kindly neighborhood doctor say, “Ya know. You drink almost nothin’. Drink water.” Instead in reality, a mean doctor laughed at me, saying it was all in my head, and that I was mentally ill.
I keep a water-bottle nearby always. Even at night, my brain wakes me every dream cycle to take a sip. “Wake and sip.”
Give me an olde-world herbalist any day.
No, I was not imagining it, nor was I puffing it up for attention. I give “medics” a big middle finger. I lump them altogether, and steer clear.
Every body is different. May you find permanent relief.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
age 73
Every now and then, throughout my life, I have really vivid dreams. Only a handful in 66 years. These dreams can have smell, temperature, vivid colors, long passages of time that seem real. I remember the first one when I was maybe 5 years old. They’re all first person.
About maybe 10 years ago, I had one where we were riding in an open vehicle, small but like an open top tour bus. We were driving through the downtown of my city. Then we rode through the tony neighborhood to the west of downtown. When we crossed the busy road that divides that tony neighborhood from a more working-class one, everything changed from the present:
The road was somewhat raised, higher than the land on either side, and everything was shanties . . . homes created from pallets, corrugated metal, breeze blocks, tarps or even blankets. Crammed cheek by jowl as far as one could see.
It was still my town, I could see the hills to the south and the flats to the north, the mountains west and east. I felt the sun and the breeze, and smelled the unfortunate smells from the shanties.
I totally believe that it’s a very possible future. So many people are unprepared and it breaks my heart. I would be one of them (might still be of course) if I hadn’t had two very disruptive times in my life that forced me to assess the modern lifestyle we get herded into. Boy did I complain during those! Pobrecita. But they not only got me to change, but also gave me more resilience when hard/bad things happen to me these days.
I moved into my house back in 2017. I still have the washer and dryer left behind by the previous owners. I have had to call a repair man in to service the dryer exactly twice. once to replace the heating unit and once to replace some rubber thing that turns the drum in the dryer. Both fixes were a lot cheaper than buying a new dryer. The repair man himself said that my old washer and dryer would outlast any of the newer models.
Hey JMG
This is probably off-topic, but I imagine that you would get a kick out of learning about it anyhow.
The famous YouTuber/maker Tom Stanton has just made a small trebuchet that managed to launch a projectile at the supersonic speed of 776 mph. I’d say that if the kind of hi-tech enclaves that you mentioned in this post develop, they would better hope that future barbarians don’t figure out how to deploy military-grade equivalents of Stanton’s “Supersonic Trebuchet”.
https://www.popsci.com/technology/supersonic-trebuchet-video/
Jean (#38): hear, hear! Two of my three children live with us (and one makes more money than I do!), and we pay health insurance for the third so she can teach inner-city fourth graders to read. (Non-union substitute teaching doesn’t pay much.)
“I think the people in my generation can best prepare for the bad times ahead by being pleasant, generous, loving, and tolerant with their children or whoever is their community.” I think EVERYONE can prepare for the bad times ahead that way!
“In my case the solution was simple, leave [cell phone] at home.”
That’s what I do. According to my phone I’m a shut in who never leaves the house.
Rural electric is still up and running here, but the wired phone system is not. It’s cell phone or nothing. Technically you can do voice over IP (use the internet to send the call) but that won’t work it the power is out. The in-house router and the fiberoptic hub on the corner are both powered by the same power line. So I need the cell phone to call the power company if that’s out and I need the power and Internet to contact the phone company if that dies.
Also more and more things require two-factor verification and that needs a phone with a screen.
One related comment, the local National Forest campgrounds have replaced the old leave a check or cash in the envelope and deposit it in the metal tube system with a new system requiring a cell phone to scan a QR code at the campground. You can check it out at recreation.gov.
It’s supposed to work even without cellular coverage at the campsite. Camp now, pay later?
Dear JMG,
Thank you for your writings‼️
————
Kyle 25
> make their own garments out of natural fibers
This your note inspires me. Sewing is❣️beloved❣️by me, so maybe there is life after Jethro.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
Seen elsewhere this morning
@jellyTBeagle@plush.city commented
20 years ago, normal people avoided technology and techies would jump on the newest gadgets as soon as they could.
now, normal people by smart toasters & coffee mugs while every techie I know is on the verge of retiring to the forest.
As for the image at the end showing the assembled lower tech. It feels like both a likely combination, just not quite as seen as the items feels artificially assembled by entity that doesn’t know how they work. No chimney for the cast iron stove, and the sewing machine looks to be missing some bits + I can’t see why you’d build it into a main table without ability to have it hide underneath like the many I have seen.
Pyrrhus, people have various reasons for suggesting the mid-20th century. I suspect all of them circle back ultimately to the oceans of incredibly cheap crude oil we produced in those years.
Anon Millennial, we’ll be talking in great detail about depopulation in an upcoming post. As for the lively public response to corporate Flockery, quite a bit of creativity is going into it. It’s been pointed out, for example, that if people who chop down Flock camers simply dress in hijabs, a great deal of helpful confusion can be generated by insisting that anyone who objects to the process is just being Islamophobic. I also admire the sang-froid of the guy who pointed out in public that every Flock camera contains three pounds of copper and a non-negligible amount of gold…
That reminds me of an announcement I meant to make:
Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye!
The word “Flock” and all its, er, conjugations are now Approved Cuss Words on this blog. You can, with my blessing, say that something is completely Flocked, describe somebody as a mother-Flocker, tell people to get Flocked — well, I imagine you can take it from there. As for the sleazy corporation in question, all I can say is Flock ’em if they can’t take a joke.
Thank you, and we now return you to our regularly scheduled comments.
Pyrrhus, both of those are very valid concerns, and water shortages will be crippling as the West dries out — we’ll talk about that in an upcoming post on climate change.
Slithy, delighted to hear it. They may not be sustainable but they’re steps in the right direction.
Johnny, thanks for this. That end of music isn’t something I’ve followed at all, so it’s fascinating to hear what’s up in that world.
Patricia M, delighted to hear it!
Scotlyn, thanks for the heads up — this is very good to hear.
Kyle, on the subway today, the guy sitting next to me wore a straw boater, a nice jacket, tie, and slacks, and brown and white saddle shoes; his whole outfit was mid-20th century. Oh, and granny glasses. He seemed very comfortable. That is to say, the world is healing. 😉
Nephite, see if it can be repaired! That’s often a good way to make sure of quality. As for living without a cell phone, what’s there to learn? You just check your answering machine on the land line when you get back to your place. It helps to have a good map of the place you live, and any other place where you spend time; it can also be useful to look up things online before you leave home, and write details on a paper note; and if you need to know the time, a wristwatch or pocket watch is helpful.
Anon, that does indeed seem like a good comparisin.
Slithy, smart of them. New tech generally isn’t better, just flashier.
Patricia M, sorry about that. Unfortunately I have no control over the Dreamwidth company.
Jeff, no doubt. I’ll leave that to those who can think in computer.
Peter, interesting! Can you give some examples, or some places to read more?
Temporary, I’m not at all good at spotting such things, especially when I’m just looking for an illustration to more or less make a point.
Cynthia, I’ve been told that the few human beings on dating apps are massively outnumbered by the bots, so your suggestion might be a little challenging to enforce!
Siliconguy, good for Maytag. Here we go…
Phutatorius, no surprises there. I know, though, that the C64 can also run astrology and bookkeeping programs…
Tyler, I’ll look forward to your report.
Jean, can you write up 500 to 1000 words on your experiences with this, and send it to the email given in this post? It’s something I’d like to include in the Technonomicon. (Housing is a technology.)
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/376728.html
Clay, I wonder how long it’s going to take the kleptocrats to realize how unpopular their sense of entitlement has made them.
Stephen, I expect some roads to be kept drivable for the rich, while most are allowed to decay into muddy tracks. It won’t be a matter of long distance car trips, granted.
Catoctin, delighted to hear it — and the fact that she’s taken to writing cozies is a plus. (I don’t read them, but I know a lot of people do, and it’s a fine harmless pleasure.
Peter, thanks for this. If you’ve got better terms in mind, please suggest them — retrovation and technological bifurcation are two different phenomena, btw.
Catoctin, I hear rumors that Halloween this year is going to be colorful in that way.
Chuaquin, well, we’ll have to see!
Circle, thanks for this. I’ve never owned or used one, which helped me during the Covid craze, of course.
Catoctin, fascinating! Yes, I could see a kind of expanded sneakernet taking on that role.
Cynthia, well isn’t that just charming!
Kfish, interesting.
Brandi, you’re welcome.
John, well, there’s that!
Aubrey, ouch. Yeah, that’s going to be a challenge, too.
Ecoprayer, thanks for this as always.
LeGrand, not one I’ve read — which of his anthologies, if any, is it in?
Laughingsong, that’s uncomfortably possible at this point.
Moonwolf8, “We are time itself,” say the two appliances in chorus. 😉
J.L.Mc12, “Supersonic Trebuchet” would make a great band name. I’m delighted to hear that Stanton’s managed that; given that impact power rises with the square of the speed, that’s got to land with serious force.
Northwind, you’re welcome and thank you.
Andy, glad to hear the techies are getting a clue.
So folks know the word Staycation, it was invented in the early 1940’s. The reason as might have guessed, World War 2 rationing. Sort of highlights were we are at economically.
As for the Commadore 64, the older machines may out live these newer one simply due to the more hardened processor tech of the 80’s. There are similar machines such as the Commander X16 that are built with older chips. Turns out those chips have life times measured in centuries/millennia provided no corrosion. No modern chip will last that long or even to the end of the century.
That said the point of their growing popularity isn’t missed. The return to more resilient and people focused technologies.
I am waiting for someone to bring back the essentially what the ipod/Walkman was. Silicon valley would never touch it because it is not “WOW! Exciting!” but you would have many folks that would love to have something like that back. Also, you should see the looks I get when people find out I never switched to streaming anything.
If feels odd to be putting this here, but if anyone here is into TV and Movies, I think DVD’s are now hitting the bottom of pricing. In many cases you can purchase a full TV series (hundreds of episodes) for less than one month of whatever streaming service. But move quick, the first winds of the rebound are already here. For instance, the last DVD rental place in our city has found business is booming in the last few years as people start dropping online crap. – https://picturesearch.com.au/
I hear rumours and rumblings around that there are others looking to independently bring these stores back. It is a good sign of change.
Also JMG… “neighborhoods where the affluent live and work being well and truly Flocked” Very nicely played. 😉
As Chuang Zu would say something like “If you are useless to the system, they leave you alone.”. Over the last decade or so have been growing moves of walking away from the grandiose expectations of the system IE: Being a meat cog to make others rich. These usually get quickly hidden away and silenced. When they do that, you know it is something real as the actually structure of power become brittle. But unfortunately for them, censorship doesn’t remove the idea, it advertises it.
JMG: Thank you for that information, fellow human, for I am also a. human.
JMG,
While many people are worried about WW III, I am thinking that it is over and no nukes will be flying around.
https://wwiii.substack.com/p/wwiii-ends-not-with-a-bang-but-a?r=16w8dp
Is your book Twilight’s Last Gleaming still a good guide on what to come?
You seemed to be touching on this with a few sentences. I know several Instagram users who reported that they were uncannily served an ad for the thing they were just thinking of. It’s always Instagram. I don’t have social media for the most part so I avoid this.
JMG, and that is an important part of it – we’re getting fooled and each time we point it out and talk about it online, the LLMs learn how to improve. For a moment there, they couldn’t do human hands, but that’s improved once everyone pointed it out.
Perhaps this is another straw on the camel of “I’m walking away from the digital world”? That’s why I wondered what your take on the fakery would be.
I’ve seen some really lovely images of cob houses and “cottage core” settings, and vintage people in vintage clothes- and they’re fake, and in some ways I think it underscores how fake the internet actually is. There’s a growing dissatisfaction, as others have pointed out, culminating in people returning to the real world.
JMG
Something concerning old video games and consoles that you might find interesting or funny. There is actually a trend of people who buy older consoles and “jailbreak” them which basically allows people to put whatever software they want on them. Funnily enough one of the most popular consoles people do this with is the Nintendo Wii U (which was a flop). This is because the Wii U can basically play any Nintendo game prior to 2017 once jailbroken. So the console that failed to sell in the 2010s now consistently sells on eBay and for a while it was being scalped and sold well above MSRP.
@ Mark RE : Technological bifurcation.
That is common idea in Cyberpunk literature. A hard economic divide between those that are in the techno-sphere and those who are exorcized on the outskirts. The funny thing is that the depictions of those in the high tech space generally seem miserable as they are desperately trying to keep up with everyone else. Today there is a subset of people today that see Cyberpunk as aspirational rather than a warning of a world driven by reckless pursuit of technology without the humanities. That fits considering the space some folks inhabit, they think they will be at the top of the pile.
@ Anonymous RE : Coding C64.
Turns out LLM’s are actually pretty decent at it because the smaller scale hardware targets means there is less places for errors to appear. That is all well and good, but when the bill comes to actually start paying for this LLM generated stuff, I don’t think there will be many people coughing up the tens of thousands of dollars to run AI systems just to make something for a C64 when it would cheaper just to pay someone to do it.
@ Pygmycory RE : Wrist watch
I have seen folks claim that a wrist watch is elitist because only the rich wear them to signal wealth… apparently *eye roll*! I think those pushing this narrative have an agenda because if you are using a wrist watch, you aren’t using their smart junk and the last thing they want is people stepping away from the latest spying device. I have a Citizen watch that is now probably 15 years old, it has a few scratches but at the rate it is going, it will see me to the grave.
@ United “It’s possible we’ll have to say goodbye to personal computing one day”
I have mentioned this before, but this is why I think the Permacomputing people are onto something. Computers that are small, low energy and user fixable. I’m not saying they would still be around for the average person in a centuries time but they will be a nice parachute on the path down.
@ Kyle RE : Textiles and clothing.
Personally I am looking towards making things like robes, as they are easy to make, comfortable and easy to maintain. I suspect my later years will be heavily associated with the aesthetics of wizardry. 😉 The only major question is, hood or pointy hat?
@ Jeff Russell RE : Emacs.
The creator of GNU Emacs, Richard Stallman has his entire workflow running though it since 1976. He never upgraded to using a graphical interface and only switch’s to graphics when absolutely necessary. He has a system that grabs the news articles from certain sites once a day and emails them to him, so he can view them in Emacs. He has semi-jokingly been very vocal against graphical interfaces as not being necessary. If computing got blasted back to the 70’s/80’s he would be one that would be just fine.
@Siliconguy “Motorola, IBM and Intel all had decent plants running in the US in 2004”
Intel is in the final stages of rolling out their Intel 18 and Intel 14 manufacturing nodes in the US. That is 1.8nm and 1.4nm, so it is fairly top end stuff. One of the pay offs of the Biden Chips act and the continued support of the industry via the Trump Administration.
Mind you it depends on a global supply chain and something like 80 elemental materials to make modern chips. A 486 chip only needed 12 elements. Also it is thought that anything manufactured below the 28nm node (about 2010 era tech) will have a less than 10 year life span of non-stop usage. And that declines the smaller they get. I suspect modern chips could only go a few years before they start failing. It is estimated that any chip made before about 1995 could go for centuries of use, and any chip before 1990 is considered radiation hardened due to the large size of the components means the amount of energy needed to flip a transistor via radiation is simply too high to be considered an issue.
“Inna, one of the fascinating things is that people living in the immediate aftermath of a civilization’s fall rarely seem to reflect on it, or even notice that things are different. Here’s one of the rare exceptions, an Anglo-Saxon poem on a ruined Roman city:”
For context, the end of the (western) Roman Empire in Britain was unusually quick, brutal, and total compared to many other parts of the empire. The very fact that the poem is in Anglo-Saxon, a language not used in Britain during the empire, reflects that.
The other part of the empire with a similarly sharp decline and linguistic change, is the Balkans, much of which was depopulated as the empire fell.
Pyrrhus,
One thing on my to-do list inching it’s way towards the top is to make a rain/snow collection system for our roofs.
If you should live in a state where this is legal (to my knowledge, that is NOT Colorado, but I am not a water lawyer, this is advice to consult your water law), that might be very helpful in mitigating the situation. The Earthship people down by Taos, New Mexico, say they can collect sufficient to need no other water, and even if that level of reuse is beyond you, you may well achieve some water security.
Regarding the recent announcement, about Flocking time! 😉
I’d love to bifurcate away from the smartphone, but at least here in Finland this has become nearly impossible. Practically everything has been constructed around apps.
For instance: I recently re-enrolled in university to get a teacher’s qualification and I simply can’t see how it could have been done without a smartphone.
My son forgot his fishing gear at my parent’s and we asked them to send it by mail. The entire process is app based and the package ended up in an automated pick-up locker that could only be opened with an app.
And so it goes all across the spectrum of everyday activities. Pay your bills? Ride a bus? Go to the movies? Apps. Not owning a smartphone would require a gargantuan effort and effectively rule out some ordinary activities entirely.
Oh, and it was recently announced that what remains of the national land line system is to be completely physically dismantled. Talk about removing the rungs!
I work in publishing which is now very computer based. However, I have discovered that everything you need to set Books was available in the early 2000s and there is remarkably little improvement in the software from there. I recently bought one of Apple’s 2010 Mac Pro ( it cost less than $300). It’s a huge 20kg monolith built like a tank and fully upgradable. Everything is modular and can be replaced or changed. As it is Intel it can run macOS, Windows OS, and Linux. As I grew up with Apple software, it’s good to know that in fact, everything you need for publishing is available for free from sites like Macintosh Garden. You can even connect it to the Internet as people have made browsers that still work for the old operating system. It’s extraordinary to think that 15 years later the software really hasn’t improved any and in fact is more opaque and the boxes we buy to run it are completely sealed and unable to be upgraded or changed if anything breaks. I’ve also found with modern Macintosh’s that it becomes very difficult to change various settings as they’ve been hardcoded in. Anyway, if you want to still run what is perceived as modern software and not have to pay for it particularly now with the increased imposition of subscriptions for software. . Added bonus is load of games for free and no AI integration. You can also unplug it from the Internet and it works just fine.
Pyrrhus # 20:
A likely trains crash between data centers “drinking” a lot of fresh water and current (and future) droughts, maybe related with climate change, is an elephant in the room, which our reckless elites don’t want to see. Only the few citizens who are doing activism against current data center frenzy, are able to point this dirty and nasty contradiction (at least here). Fresh water shortage thanks to hi tech: What could be wrong?
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Four Sided # 47:
Yes, the COVID lockdowns were an “before and after” in my own life, too. My experience: I remember during its first times, I liked to have video talks with my family and friends, but days passed and I ended fed up of video talks, so I avoid them like the pest until present day. Another ominous thing I saw during those times was screens addiction grew within children and teens. This tendence has worsened until today (more work for children psychiatrists).
I met a guy who got crazy due to the lockdowns and he went to the street to relief his anxiety. Police arrested and fined him. He told me he hated video talks too, indeed their abuse by everybody when Covid explains partly his panic attack in those times.
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Fibromyalgia:
During my life as a person with some mental “problems”, I’ve met some people who suffer that illness. Often, they’re depressed and anxious due to their disease, but it’s also interesting it seems to be more women than men with this illness, and they’ve usually lived troubled lives before their problem began or worsened. A coincidence or a common tendence?
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JMG # 68:
I’ve got a slightly different view than you about likely decline of roads repairing in the future, but I can also say it isn’t opposite, but it would complement your view about good roads only for rich people. I think during the long descent, second order roads would be “sacrified” to keep fit main roads which go between countries capital cities (where there’s the central government) and bigger towns. For example, here I’m thinking in Madrid and Barcelona (second town of my country).
I bet it would be the same with high speed train lines. Countries where high speed rail lines are very spread won’t be able to repair and offer trains in all their network, due to money cost and “peak of everything”(for example, let’s think in copper: a very common metal in rail lines). So I think high speed trains will probably work only in a few lines between main capital city and biggest towns, before their final implosion in the long term. I’m thinking in China, Japan, Spain and France, countries with more investing in high speed trains, methink.
@ Pyrrhus # 20
Re making dirty water potable. The following link is to an extraordinarily good teaching video on how to make a good water filter system using readily available supplies of gravel, charcoal and sand in plastic containers. They are teaching this to inhabitants of a refugee camp, and therefore are very careful to explain do’s and don’t’s, which many other water filter explainers do not do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=232xA2e8RiQ
In addition to filtering water, one can make doubly sure by boiling it.
Flock rocket!
There, I used it.
JMG: I don’t know which part of what I said earned that sarcastic “charming”: people paying a surcharge to Uber for having a low battery, that I said I don’t care about it, the business about the cameras, or something else.
If it’s the second thing, I clarify that “I don’t care” means it doesn’t affect me directly, not that I don’t care about people getting soaked by Uber, or the impact of turncoat technology.
I will admit to not caring *deeply*. A grape and a half, let’s say. No, not that much. A grape and two peas. The entire sphere of life that includes Uber is unattainable luxury to me, after all. I don’t cry about the pitfalls of Gulfstream parking either.
Chuaquin: I’ve seen the case made that anyone who goes there will become so habituated to the lack of gravity during the trip and the lower gravity at the destination, that the person will be unable to take one full gee ever again. In other words, they’re not coming back. That’s without even getting into the impact of radiation.
—
My bank has been trying to ID me in person by sending a verification code to my phone, when I am then supposed to show them. I’ve been resisting that and insisting on using my driver’s license. (I find it morbidly amusing that I still have a driver’s license. Should I get a Tie Fighter license too? My likely need for that is at a similar level.)
It first came up about a year ago and I just felt like I should resist it being a *requirement* to carry a cellphone. I do except when I forget it, but a person shouldn’t *have* to. My thought was that your government ID is wholly a thing of the nation and society you’re part of, not any corporation, and that should be sufficient to identify you. I don’t agree that Samsung or Apple or any private entity gets to mediate my citizenship that way.
JMG,
I think the bifurcation of tech is well underway.
Pre-made homes showing up in the suburbs (return of the Sears pre-made home), mechanical/analog tractors made in Canada selling out (John Deere fighting “right to repair” angered farmers more than their finicky tractors), and the most hopeful change, parents and teachers steadily pushing for a return to books, workbooks, pens, paper, and art supplies for learning. (On that last one, the rich have been sending their kids to no tech schools for years now.)
I’ve been collecting books for years, and my house is now bursting at the seams with them, much to my wife’s chagrin. And so I’ve also reached the point where getting an eReader makes sense, knowing full well its limitations. If you like old books that are out of copyright, there’s a great site I recently discovered that lovingly formats said books, gives them nice covers and offers them for free download. That site is standardebooks.org.
Naturally, Amazon doesn’t like people loading free books onto Kindles, and is somewhat uncooperative. I’m not sure about other eReaders, but Kindles do seem to be problematic. Luckily however, someone has created a free easy-to-use tool that allows you to get round it – it can be downloaded at the site with the URL calibre-ebook.com.
Spotted recently :
“2020: Learn to code.
2025: Learn to be a plumber.
2030: Learn how to hide in the woods.”
Yeah, we’s gettin’ there 🙂 Moods are a-changing
Speaking of staycations, for those who missed it, I wrote an article on what summer vacations might look in our futures, with an eye to the what people did in the past before vacations were widely taken at all, and our more recent past when they were more modest.
https://justinpatrickmoore.substack.com/p/getting-away-from-it-all
My wife and I did go on a vacation this year, but it was only across the river in Kentucky. Part of it we spent first visiting family in Lexington, KY, only two hour drive away… then a bit further drive to western Kentucky and camping in a state park. That was all pretty cheap, and then our main expense was a visit to Mammoth Cave and a cabin near the state park… but all still very affordable. We bought all our groceries before hand and only ate out twice on the trip. We’ve tended to pick spots in the two-five hour range for a more modest trip, and explored places well off the beaten path of what most people think of as vacations as well. My friend Stephan Kunze, a music writer from Germany, recently posted about giving up vacations all together here:
https://www.zensounds.de/p/im-done-with-traveling
Speaking of homeless people, I got to see firsthand what rural homelessness looks like at the campground we stayed in. In all my years of camping, this was the first time I have seen this… The place was right off a main backroad that went through Pennyrile Forest. There was a small town about 15 minutes away (Dawson Springs, where the current govenor of KY is from… like him, I keep wondering what the heck is up with Mitch?) Anyway, I noticed that the bathrooms were very convenient for people not staying at the park to come and take showers in, and there were a few people who kept coming, who appeared to be living in their cars, over the course of our stay. I have seen people living in their cars in the city, but hadn’t thought of how the resources of a state park might be useful to those living that way out in the country.
One idea I raise in my article, and could also help with energy, is shutting everything down for two weeks to a month in August and giving everyone a vacation like they do in Italy. It seems to me that the problems with heat & humidity and the like are only going to get worse (along with destructive storms). Shutting everything down won’t earn money, but it won’t cost much either.
I see the siesta and such also being adopted in the humid midwest and elsewhere as AC gets less reliable in our summers… and people head to a nearby lake for a week of swimming and taking it easy, and the like.
Although slightly off-topic for today, I just came across an interesting Substack article relevant to the current series of posts: https://www.snafuinvesting.com/p/why-china-canceled-the-oil-apocalypse
Something else I just saw from musician and writer Kim Cascone on homelessness and the capitalist drain:
“Just saw a post on social media by a Bay Area TV news reporter where she posted a drive-by of a homeless encampment in Berkeley while dropping off her son at the housing for UC Berkeley students. She claimed the encampment was “right behind” the housing, which it wasn’t; it was ~five blocks away.
A homeless encampment is the “capitalist drain” I often refer to here; it is where capital disposes of those who fail to become useful to the machine, albeit they are recycled as signifiers of fear/repulsion to a Hyperpresent public.
//The capitalist drain is the modern-day equivalent of village invaders placing heads on pikes to warn others of the same fate if they resist.
A well-heeled TV news reporter ignorant of how capitalism works is no surprise; most of the news media is populated by Hyperpresent bobbleheads regurgitating whatever their sponsors deem appropriate.
The truth is that capitalism has always had this drain built in; money/energy flows through “plumbing,” and all that flows needs to empty out somewhere if it’s judged unwanted—homeless encampments are just one form of the capitalist drain; there are many others.
Another truth many are unwilling to see: *we* keep the drain open by participating in a system that requires disposing of human beings unable to be exploited for their labor.
//And no need to mention how easy the tools of self-destruction are made available to the drain. There are dozens of clips on YT showing this horror.
Capitalism is like a game of musical chairs; when the music stops, those who know how to play the game get a chair, and those who don’t are swallowed by the drain.
The TV news reporter’s post displays a vulgar form of entitled privilege, which sees fellow human beings as disposable objects to disparage on social media rather than given food & housing.
tl;dr — resist becoming inhuman” [ https://silentrecords.bandcamp.com/community ]
–& Speaking of capitalism, my latest article is on Postcorporate Surrealism. It’s my proposition for a surrealist economy in place of either communism or capitalism. Also, I note how on substack, its the socialist newsletter that are first to put a paywall to their readers ; )
https://justinpatrickmoore.substack.com/p/postcorporate-surrealism
https://www.sothismedias.com/home/postcorporate-surrealism
Start building the dream economy now. Tomorrow I post on “Oblique Business Strategies” -using divination and dreamwork in the bored room.
Mr. Greer, thank you for another excellent and insightful post, sir. I’d like to mention that another major complaint people make these days about the poor-quality new products is that they don’t just break down in three years: they also charge you a monthly “subscription fee” to use them for the handful of months before they reach the breaking point. Some so-called “luxury apartment complexes” in the USA, for example, come stocked with microwaves that are locked up and refuse to turn unless a monthly subscription fee has been paid. Some new cars also require something like a $50 per month fee to turn on, in addition to all the rises in the price of gas and insurance. No wonder the demand for older products is rising!
Iron-air batteries for seasonal energy storage. This time they did the math.
https://abundanceca.com/156-iron-air-batteries-niche-or-next-big-thing/
“Could iron air batteries store 50,000 GWh?
Theoretically at least, the answer is yes. They can store electricity for months. And at 300 megawatt-hours per acre, it would “only” take 166,667 acres, or 260 square miles, to hold them all.
As for the photovoltaics required to produce 500,000 GWh per year? At five acres per megawatt of output and a 25 percent yield, they would require another 1,784 square miles, 1.14 million acres, or, for visualization’s sake, a gargantuan square measuring 42 miles by 42 miles, filled with PV panels.
Photovoltaics installed, including balance of plant hardware, cost under $1 million per megawatt of capacity. At a 25 percent average year-round yield, producing 500,000 GWh per year would require installing a collective photovoltaic output capacity of 228,000 megawatts in full sun, which is a $228 billion investment.
That’s actually not bad, depending on what comparisons you make. Using official state and federal estimates, the 87,000 GWh per year, best case, that Californians will get from the planned floating offshore wind farms will cost, before overruns, operations, maintenance, or battery storage, $232 billion. With proven cost metrics, photovoltaics are at least six times cheaper than floating offshore wind.
As for purchasing 50,000 GWh of iron air battery storage capacity, Google recently bought an iron air battery system from Form Energy at $33 per kWh. That’s not encouraging. To store 50,000 GWh at that price would require an investment of $1.65 trillion. ”
Oh dear.
Alright, one more comment for the moment… I had to meme up the “electronic stasi agent” … what a great phrase:
https://imgflip.com/i/az9jq3
There is a is a process that occurred in the crapification of consumer products, furniture and clothing that is a little more complicated than just energy use. Prior to the middle 1980’s most things Americans used wore or sat on was made in America. These were fairly expensive as a percentage of an average American’s take home pay, as one would guess, because they were made by people who had an average American’s take home pay. To keep prices affordable while returning profit to the company that made them they were kept simple.
My wife has an Osterizer commercial blender she bought at the state fair in 1983 that cost $125 and was fairly simple with 4 buttons and a dial. It was made in the USA and still works to this day. But it was expensive by todays standard. The shoes an American high school girl wore in the 1970’s were made in the USA or perhaps Italy.
By the late 1990’s off-shoring made many consumer products much cheaper and gave the profit headroom to start making them fancier. More gadgets, Womens clothing and shoes became more elaborate for a time. Some simple products were much cheaper than they had ever been. I remember you could get a regular refrigerator for under $300.
Then the costs in the whole system started to go up in the 2000’s including energy, transportation and tariffs. People ( and companies) did not want to give up the fanciness, the features and the gadgets so price went up and quality began to drastically decrease. Pendleton stopped sewing shirts in the USA . Cars got more gadget filled while price went drastically. As we approached the pandemic era there was a real race to the bottom. Clothing became fall-apart junk. Home appliances last a year or two, furniture is now mostly from China.
I think if we had a smooth ride down the energy curve from the 1970’s on we would have been better off. If we had not had the ” good times” in the 90’s we might still have simple reliable but expensive products made here and offshore. But the consumer economy got a taste of the 1990’s good times and like an addict adjusting back to reality poorly.
@anon
The local music teacher a couple blocks up from us https://www.youtube.com/@ashtonsretrocomputerroom
has been keeping the traditions of the Commodore 64 alive for some time now!
He’s a great music teacher too btw.
I had the same experience as Moonwolf8 with the washer and dryer, save that we’re on our first fix with the dryer. They’re late-90s vintage, so the rot set in a bit later. We also have a similarly-aged dishwasher that may rust out before anything else kills it. Yes, yes, I know– but a dishwasher you didn’t pay for is a very nice convenience. In keeping with the theme here, the 2010s fridge the place came with died before we moved in! That was lucky as it meant the old owners were on the hook for a new one, since it was working when we bought the place.
One thing I wonder about all this– how much of it is efficiency vs. resiliency and how much is plain crappification? All the plastic shelving and crap inside the fridge we got when we moved in is falling apart, which you can’t blame on the energy efficiency standards. That’s pure crappification; I wonder how much of the difference in the life of the compressor etc is down to the same penny-pinching and planned obsolescence? My guess is most of it.
You can try and make something durable and efficient, but it seems you can’t do both and still make money: I think that’s how Sun Frost died– their Made-in-America superefficient DC fridges apparently lasted forever, so I suspect they sold one to everybody who need one at the time and then went out of business. Someone with capital to burn could probably do worse than finding out if the plans and/or tooling still exists. The business case gets better all the time, and you’d be the rare sort of capitalist making the future a little less worse.
Thanks JMG,
I was thinking a little bit more about it after writing you. Electronic dance music historically is linked very closely with technology, and so its many genres evolved with and often directly due to various technological changes. It’s pretty common for people to talk about particular micro-eras created by the available instruments of that time (sometimes in combination with existing genres, often that combination leading to new sub genres). There is a sound of a certain time period in a given scene (perhaps defined by the computer chips that were available for a couple years, or the amount of memory a sampler had), and it has a feel too, which brings in all this extra stuff like fashion and visual aesthetics.
People get nostalgic for a previous time period, and musicians in their nostalgia will try to emulate aspects of it, often times seeking out this older technology to do it. Sometimes their excitement over learning these older (and often more cumbersome) ways of making tracks is contagious and they’ll make a particular sound more popular because they give a window into the history of the culture. I would say they are somewhere in the process of moving from an innovative period, to a performance period (I think those are the terms you have used before), and where it lands is that they create new pieces of music, but in forms that are mostly established. Because they are looking back though, they aren’t bound by any set rules that forbid some particular bit of innovation (other than their own desire for “authenticity”, or fidelity to that older sound), so sometimes they will do things that are a hybrid of earlier ways of doing things and newer ideas that formed after that period (or maybe before, but were unpopular at that particular moment).
All of this is to say that I think this makes an interesting case study for some of what you are describing in this week’s post. I’ll try to use it as a microcosm for thinking about the broader ideas you are getting at about voluntarily choosing older technological suites and see what comes out of it
Thanks,
Johnny
Flocking hell, John… I’ve been thinking about these gated communities and a bifurcated outcaste for quite awhile. The idea of them getting amped up by various groups, some Christian Nationalists, others techies, all coming together under the umbrella of “sovcorp” with their own nuclear power (scary as flocking heck to me) and plugged into private intranets. It’s very plausible to me.
…so I just had to comment another time, thank you.
On the topic of flocking: back around 1968 or 1969 there was a fad of applying flocking to car exteriors. Does anyone remember this? It was one of the most short-lived fads I can remember.
@Johnny,
if you’re wondering about resource constraints on music, keep an eye on things written for electric guitars and the like being played on acoustic instruments, sometimes far away from those they were designed for… metallica sounds great on a harp, far better than on the original instruments in my opinion. But then I like harp more than electric guitar.
This also applies to things written for full orchestra, large church organs or other expensive acoustic instruments. You can rearrange music written for orchestra for smaller orchestras, or bands ( I played a lot of transcribed orchestra music in my 30-50 teenager youth band, and some of those transcrptions and arrangements were really good. Others, meh.) Or groups of whatever instruments you have handy. The move does change the music, and sometimes a lot is lost during translation (Holst’s Jupiter does not sound remotely similar when played by a group of harpists) but other time it works brilliantly or even gains from the change.
The skill and choices of the arranger has a lot to do with how well this works.
By the way, I think classical music has a potentially solid future – but more in the chamber music space than in large orchestras. Especially if we’re willing to switch up instruments or run with those that are already suited… there’s some wonderful classical guitar literature out there.
And even a ukulele can play some classical or other complex music, if the player is good enough.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPdqGGbNysA&list=RDcPdqGGbNysA&start_radio=1 Though they do tend to offer their own take on things!
Before we start, I’m intrigued to note that for once, I may have caught a trend on the rising arc. My morning search of assorted news aggregator sites turned up this news article on the growing PR problems our would-be lords and masters are facing in their attempts to ram AI down everyone’s throats:
https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/19/ai-was-supposed-to-win-people-over-by-now-it-hasnt/
It mentions, in some detail, the emerging trend of young people getting interested in “granny crafts” and simpler technologies. Then there was this, which I found on a site way over on the rightward end of things:
If this is what’s moving through the crawlspaces of the collective mind right now, the techlords should be scared. Very scared.
Now, on to comments!
Michael, fascinating. I didn’t know the term was that old. Regarding the Walkman, hmm — seems to me it shouldn’t be too difficult to retrovate that; I hope somebody does it. Oh, and you’ve earned today’s gold star for quoting Chuang Tsu — his extremely valuable comments about staying free in an unfree society have been guiding stars for me since I first read the Inner Chapters more than forty years ago.
A Reader, Twilight’s Last Gleaming was never a guide to what was to come; it was simply a fictionalized account of one of the many ways that the US empire could unravel, based on how previous empires have unraveled in the past. I discussed that, using the original version of the narrative (which appeared as five blog posts on The Archdruid Report) as an example, here:
https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-post-american-future.html
There will be no Third World War, by the way. The energy resources to make one possible no longer exist.
Luke, I wonder if it’s occurred to them that they were prompted to think those things by the content that appeared immediately before the ads. That sort of thing is child’s play — stage magicians and con artists have been doing it since before the beginning of recorded history.
Temporary, that’s a very real possibility.
Anon, ha! I bow to the jailbreakers — they’re pioneering the approach to technology that will be standard a century from now.
Jessica, which was doubtless why the author of “The Ruin” noticed how much had changed. Most others didn’t. Late Roman authors generally were astoundingly clueless about what was happening all around them.
Tommy, interesting. Here in the US it takes a little work but it’s remarkable how many people are willing to help with workarounds.
Mr. O, this is very good to hear — thank you for the data points.
Cynthia, oh, the “charming” wasn’t directed at you. It was directed at Uber, who are obviously a bunch of total Flockers.
GlassHammer, all of these are very encouraging signs!
Jason, the other thing you can do is get an old Kindle, cheap. The Big Slimy River hadn’t caught on to us USB bandits when those were made. Thanks for the heads up regarding standardebooks — I’ll check ’em out.
Thibault, ha! Somebody’s getting a clue…
Justin, thanks for this. Out west, campgrounds have been a resource for the homeless for decades — long before I left Washington State in 2004, there were communities of homeless people in the woods, usually close enough to a campground to use the bathroom facilities but not close enough that the park rangers would bother them. I’ve suspected ever since that the tribal cultures of deindustrial North America are being born there.
Blue Sun, thanks for this — bookmarked for future reading.
Justin, and thanks for these as well. Of course the socialist blogs are first to put up paywalls — the logic of socialism is always “you have to share with me, but I don’t have to share with anybody.”
Chad, I’ve somehow managed to avoid such things — another benefit to living below my means, I suppose. Thanks for the heads up!
Siliconguy, good heavens. Don’t they know better than to do the math? You’ll never get suckers lining up for your schemes if you fall into that habit!
Justin, thanks for this! I’m tired of seeing the Gestapo get all the free publicity, when the Stasi were at least as brutal.
Clay, of course. As I noted, energy is just part of the picture — an important and fundamental part, but only part.
Tyler, good to hear. I hope you’re right and somebody has the brains to revive the Sun Frost brand.
Johnny, this is fascinating. Yes, those are the terms, and music is among the arts that moves most smoothly from eras of innovation to to eras of performance — since what the audience wants is to listen to (and often dance to) the music, they’re usually happy either way.
Justin, it’s an interesting question as to whether nuclear power will be involved in the tech enclaves. My guess is that it won’t be, since so far it’s never come close to breaking even; instead, I’d expect to see a mix of hydroelectric, solar thermal, and fossil fuel energy sources. But we’ll see.
Phutatorius, I missed that — not surprising, since I was in Seattle back then and I doubt a car that had been Flocked with in that way would do well in the rain.
@Northwind Grandma,
I already pretty much do that, so I doubt it is what is causing the problem for me. Major factors in day-to-day how bad it is tend to revolve around the weather (low pressure low temperature bad, high pressure high temperature good), and exactly what I’ve been doing physically in the past few days.
Chad @ 90: “Some so-called “luxury apartment complexes” in the USA, for example, come stocked with microwaves that are locked up and refuse to turn unless a monthly subscription fee has been paid. Some new cars also require something like a $50 per month fee to turn on, in addition to all the rises in the price of gas and insurance.”
This reminds me of a P.K. Dick novel in which the protagonist’s apartment door required a small payment just to open. Everything else in the apartment was similar, and of course, being a PKD protagonist, he was always “a bit short” and had, absurdly, to argue with the door to let him out. PKD style comedy! Was it “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”? “Ubik”? Darn, I’ve forgotten.
The local SCA turns out to be rather more alive and well than I’d realized. They just fail at answering emails and also at checking their facebook page for people trying to contact them. Just went to an outdoor fight practice/arts and sciences stitch and chat yesterday. There were issues for me with it being a pain to access without a car (40 minute walk each way groan, probably won’t be doing that every week, but apparently they move indoors to somewhere much closer to me when things get colder), but it was fun once I was there. I got given handspun yarn.
There was also a renaissance fair in the park last weekend, which is how I ran into the SCA.
Butlerian carnivale does seem to be a thing here.
JMG,
Just thinking that the technological bifurcation you speak of also fits well with the ‘butlerian carnivale’ idea you discussed some years back. But perhaps a bit more enforced and less freely chosen, because we are somewhat further along the decline curve than we were.
@Chuaquin, that doesn’t surprise me. I find that when my fibromyalgia interferes with my sleep and/or takes out something I was doing that I valued AGAIN, I get depressed. So for me the fibro tends to trigger depressive symptoms. And of course, I also get anxious about having a fibroflare at the wrong time, fibro taking out something I was doing that I love, etc etc. Having fibromyalgia will worsen any mood issues you already have.
Why now and why this brand of cameras? Surveillance cameras already existed and license plates could already be read from the images. AI already existed, as did databases. Law enforcement already was what it is.
Is the something new here that I don’t see, or is it more like, this happens to be when the intrusiveness of the entire everything around us reached critical mass, and this particular azzhaul company happened to stand out to the public at the time.
Huh. Maybe Twisted Sister was right: we’re not going to take it. That would be some surprising good news.
From the article JMG linked about how AI is losing the PR battle:
“The solution, [the Anthropic CEO] said, was to deliver on AI’s promises — for example, curing cancer.”
Comedy gold!
JMG,
The other major positive to the return of the analog/mechanical is that you can repair things without any advanced degree and a decade of experience.
That more hands are capable of maintenance not only cuts down the. Cost but given demographic de-growth its 100% necessary for towns, cities, etc… to function.
I probably played right into their hands in some way but darn it, it was very satisfying to claim to the yootoob survey just now that I have not heard of any of the above brands, including Coke and Pepsi
@TylerA, #95
Hey, at least from my perspective, you don’t have to make any apologies about a dishwasher. No one will ever catch me denigrating dishwashers.! I lived without one for years, with a big family and we mostly cooked (and washed up) at home every day. Washing dishes is like milking a cow — there are no days off. I will gladly take the extra few minutes that a dishwasher gives me every day. Dishwashers and clothes washers are wonderful and I am going to hang on to both of them long as I can possibly afford to. I know what it is to live without them, and I’ll fight to keep them and indoor plumbing as long as possible!
@ Aubrey #55 and sudden shutoffs of water
I’ve lived through this several times, the first when I was in Hawaii and maintenance had to be done in the apartment complex. We got no warning and no water for hours.
The really challenging one was in the mid-90s in South Carolina. A pump broke in the reservoir. No water. At all. By that time, I always kept a few jugs on hand but it wasn’t enough. Off to Walmart which was swiftly being stripped bare.
The city got the water moving within a few days but it looked like tea and stank of chlorine. You could flush a toilet but not drink, cook, wash dishes or laundry, or bathe. You couldn’t give it to your pets, either. By then Walmart and the local supermarkets had sprung into action and pallets of water were stacked up at every entrance.
Anyone on well water had all their friends and relatives going to their house for showers.
After this experience, I have NEVER gone without at least a dozen gallon jugs of water in my basement.
In my experience, no matter what the label says, the water doesn’t spoil as long as you don’t break the seal. It’s also MUCH cheaper, quicker, and easier to buy water in gallon jugs at the supermarket than it is to reuse containers (like 2 liter soda bottles plucked from recycling bins), treat them with bleach, attempt to seal them, and store them.
The secret to water storage is what else? Cool, dry, and in the dark.
My other point: if you have advance warning, don’t just buy more water. For the immediate emergency, fill every single container you can, including the bathtub with an added rubber seal and bucket. With a bathtub of water and a bucket, you can flush the toilet.
I do collect rainwater but only so it remains on my property and goes into the soil where my garden can use it. Berming and swaling are wonderful techniques!
This is a matter near and dear to my heart. I despise modern digital technology, despite being quite addicted to my phone. It’s a position many younger people find themselves – actively aware that this little box is awful for us, unable to put it down – the addicts dilema. Any and all techniques or tips you can offer for helping disconnect from the digital drug are appreciated.
I will report from the trenches – I work with a lot of young men, many born in this century. None of them think modern vehicles are cool. All of them like old classic vehicles – though to them classic means from the 20th century. I know a 23 year old who lamemts that they dont make cars like they used to, hates all the modern gimmickry, and wants trump to deregulate the auto industry – something you suggested 2 blog posts back, I believe. Guys brag about theor record collections – no one mentions thei mp3 collection, the way I remember kids doing when all music was supposed to go digital. Digital was cool at the start of the century – I was in school when they brought in the internet and cell phones, when everything switched from cassette to cd, from vhs to dvd, I remember the fascination, the magic around the technowizardry. All the kods thought it was cool and wanted to brag about their mp3 collection they pirated off napster, their fast computer, the latest cell phone. No longer. The glamor has worn off and no one’s into it – its just sort of begurdginly accepted, at best, with everyone wanting to avoid it all. At least that’s what I see among my coworkers. And I work in the heart of the technotemple, building data centers!
I’ll also say that, when my washing machine broke recently – because of a sensor malfunction – I tried to find a basic analog appliance. It was hard – most were old and in bad shape – and I had to settle for a used digital one. If someone started building old analog appliances, they could charge just as much as the digitalized ones, maybe even more, and I would have happily paid just to have something simple and reliable. Its the same with older cars, though there’s so many regulatory hurdles to that. But yeah, among the common people, new is out, and retro is very much preferred, and there is money to be made taking a pencil and rewinding the cassette tape of time back.
About problems people are having with Dreamwidth and internet crapification in general, I’ve noticed that the site has gotten progressively worse over the past year or so. I’m barely able to use the site when I’m not logged in. For example, on MM for the last couple months at least, I couldn’t get any threaded comments to expand at all while logged out of my account. Once I logged in the problem went away. I suspect the DW admins are seriously throttling site functionality for anonymous users as they’re struggling to adapt to the Brave New Internet, i.e. the internet where most web traffic now consists of spambots and LLM creepycrawlers. Since the AI-pocalaypse, running an independent web site has become an increasingly-expensive thing. Of course Big Tech loves this as its doing a cleanup job of whatever remains of their competition.
An issue with DW in particular is its software (DW is a fork of LiveJournal) being tailed toward anonymous commenting, and in 2026 allowing anonymous commenting means no protection from being swarmed with bots unless you pay for some very expensive intervention tools. Requiring a login to use a site is the most effective first line of defense against spambots and LLMs destroying the site. But of course, requiring a login does away with anonymous commenting. So it’s not DW who is the problem per-se; it’s the 2026 internet that’s at fault. I suspect that DW, being a fringe social platform and mom-n-pop operation, simply doesn’t have the money to do what needs to be done to keep their version of the LiveJournal format viable in the current year and onward. Tbh, I wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up folding within the next couple years.
So, if I may make a suggestion, JMG, it might be time to start shopping around for a different place to host MM, or maybe even rethink the format itself; anonymous commenting may no longer be feasible unless they come in the form of email submissions or some other way that prevents everyone else from seeing who is submitting the inquiry. I really hate to doompost here about the internet-as-we-know it becoming almost unusable, but this really does seem to be the way things are quickly unfolding.
Technological crapification means many of us will have to look for different ways of doing things with our computing devices.
“it’s an interesting question as to whether nuclear power will be involved in the tech enclaves. My guess is that it won’t be, since so far it’s never come close to breaking even; instead, I’d expect to see a mix of hydroelectric, solar thermal, and fossil fuel energy sources. But we’ll see.”
That seems reasonable to me, but the techies really WANT to have their own personal little reactors. Which doesn’t mean they will get them of course. But just think of the metldown that could ensue after micro softie Bill Gates runs another system update!
Maybe Phoebe Gates will get it all figured out during the long think of her possible jail time for her alleged crimes.
I guess that’s a different kind of meltdown for the uber wealthy.
@Jeff
Some of us Linux nerds are Vim guys, just to let you know 😉 Also, the bifurcation is very much a thing within the Linux community. Yes, the technophilies are one loud faction. But there’s many of us who quite like the old way of doing things and see many of the “innovations” astroturfed into the Linux ecosystem (in the name of progress, of course) as being things that have degraded the user experience and have introduced needless complexity into things that have always just worked. Some of us still prefer using Linux desktop environments that stopped innovating in 2006. And we tend to loathe the modern designs that were forced down users throats the moment smartphone and tablets became a thing, and corporate Linux developers thought that making the desktop look and function like a tablet or phone was the wave of the future that must be embraced or else. Yuck, no thanks.
btw, I’ve never delved into the world of Emacs. I’m still getting my feet wet with vim/neovim and there’s only so many hours in a day. Right now I’m exploring the idea of modding neovim to be a distraction-free creative writing environment. There’s something very “zen” about doing as many things as possible on my computer through the command line interface. And in general, I’m all about applying the concept of retrovation to the world of computing.
I’m convinced that late 1990s cars, like the 1999 Caravan that my husband and I own, are the best cars ever made. At 350K miles it works as well as it did when it had 30K miles on it. It does have a computer chip in it, but so far nothing has gone wrong with the chip. Plus the cars uses an old-fashioned key to lock and unlock it!
My husband and I don’t have a garage door opener – we get out of the car and open and close the garage door ourselves. No worries about anyone hacking into the automatic opener to open the doors. Also still have the 1980s era clothes dryer (entirely mechanical) and range/oven (it has a chipped display which failed years ago, but the knobs that control the burners and oven are mechanical) that came with the house when we bought it in 2001. Also still have the stereo system I bought in 1986, with a used 1990s CD player replacing the CD player I bought that finally failed and my husband’s older cassette deck that still works, along with all of the CDs and cassettes he and I have collected over the years.
I use a pen and paper to do household bookkeeping instead of accounting software (admittedly I employ a calculator for the sums, but I can do them by hand or borrow one of my husband’s abaci [if that isn’t the plural of “abacus”, it should be] for the job once I learn how to use an abacus).
My husband and I set up a collection and storage system for rain that falls on our roof. I’ll write a piece on it for the Technonomicon and post it to my Dreamwidth site when it’s ready.
“the logic of socialism is always “you have to share with me, but I don’t have to share with anybody.”” Remember Walt Kelly portraying communists as cowbirds?
Further to the previous, which I saved early because I was at the laundromat and my stuff was about to come out. I don’t let my clothes sit – I show up right away when the machine stops and get out of the way for the next person. It’s very important to me that people I see repeatedly in person view me as courteous and cooperable. (Peals of bitter laughter from the building staff who dealt with me during the HVAC installation.) I’m already transgender, I can’t also be that azzhaul who’s always in the way and thinks it’s fine that others can wait.
Not that I ever really was that anyway.
So about that survey question I answered for doodootoob (youtube). Of course I know exactly what the bot does with people who claim not to have heard of Coke and Pepsi. It stamps us “soi-disant maverick” and applies to us the designated ads and whatever else that’s meant for that group. No actual sand in the gears at all. 🙁
The trans bit does confuse it a bit. I might get ads for big diesel pickup trucks or for cosmetics. It can’t seem to decide. It does however, seem to have finally realized that I don’t speak Mandarin.
JMG: Thank you. I didn’t really think that was a shot at me, but insecurity is a birch you know. It’s a lot like that other thing a few weeks ago. Anyway, thank you.
@Michael Gray,
They still make portable cassette decks a la walkman and mp3 players like the iPod. It never quite went away, so I don’t know why you’re waiting for it to come back. Even CD players like the diskman are still being made– the _only_ personally-portable music format that has actually disappeared from the market is the MiniDisk, because Sony is run by flocking shale heads.
@Tommy,
You may consider looking into the Commodore flip phone our host mentioned as a step away from smartphones– it’s smart enough for most of that, while blocking social media, youtube and web browsing. The underlying software is Sailfish, licensed from Jolla, a company started by a bunch of ex-Nokia engineers. It’s actually Linux but they’ve got a fancy compatibilty layer to run the android apps the government want. Jolla makes their own smartphone, but it’s even more expensive than Commodore’s “Callback” flip-phone. The Commodore looks like a nice halfway option for those of us who feel trapped in the system.
I would vote to make my ” Amishville” match the 1970’s. Though some view the 70’s as a grim time of inflation and gas lines I don’t think most people who were there think of it that way. The advantages of the often touted 1950’s is primarily one of equality and civil rights. In the 1950’s it would have been illegal in most of America for my wife and I to have gotten married. We had segregated schools, Jim Crow etc.
While in the 90’s globalization had started, food, education, healthcare and general health had already stated downhill. Having simple video games does not really make that decade worth it.
In the 1970’s we were free from cellphones, most computers, relations between the sexes were more normal. Kids could work on farms at 14 or so. College was affordable , especially at the state schools. For most of the decade we were not involved in a war. An that decade had by far the best and most diverse music where jazz, fusion, funk, soul, disco, country rock, prog rock, rock and real country all coexisted in relative harmony. We had the green wizard movement with publications like the Whole Earth Catalog and Rain magazine. And unlike the 1950’s we we were cleaning up pollution and cars had seat belts.
Another quick thought, it seems like Auken’s fauxtopia is sort of like Retrotopia told from the opposite perspective.
I suspect that if the actual fauxtopia comes to pass in some form, the ultra-rich who run the place will need to be constantly importing newcomers in to do the work machines can’t do, because the fertility rate in such a place will probably be in the negative bracket. As the general observation goes, animals in captivity do not breed. Even then, we don’t know if these Flockscapes will be able to sustain themselves longterm. Maybe we just have to wait them out?
Re: homeless people at campgrounds
When I showed up with my car and my belongings here in Vancouver two years ago, I figured on sleeping in the car at a highway rest stop at the edge of town, and I wasn’t sure whether they were keeping an eagle eye out for people who were showing up every night and using the day use area improperly. I was a little apprehensive about how it would go in terms of the cops watching it. Only a little. I’d done this previously.
When I showed up there were trailers and RVs up on blocks! There was NO effort to be discreet about living there. None at all. I was still discreet because I’m trans, so I darn well left during the day, but that’s what it was.
I can’t believe it’s only two years. I reconfirmed my memory of that a couple times. It does feel like longer.
Oh, I meant to say…
Chuaquin: Just to let you know friend, the word is “tendency”, not “tendence”. (Plural is “tendencies”)
@JMG
The reference to AOL Instant Messenger got me to look up whether anyone had implemented third-party AIM servers (the underlying OSCAR protocol has been well-understood for a long while now) and sure enough, there is:
http://iwarg.ddns.net/phoenix/index.php
Not only are they hosting AIM servers, they’re apparently hosting ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, and MSN Messenger servers.
@JMG
Yes, like you I was expecting the rung to have been kicked out from under us, but seeing the enthusiasm around these trends in recent years has given me hope that more things might make it through the coming bottlenecks than we anticipate. Who knows, some of it might even find its way unexpectedly to the ecotechnic civilization on the other side of all this. Not that any of us will be around to see it happen 🙂
@Phutatorious #36
“So we get to thank those “idlers” for the current availability of this potentially useful old tech.”
Gamers are always on the forefront of computing technology, in my experience. They’re always the most motivated to champion obscure technology before it becomes more useful, because you can play a game on just about anything, even if the specs aren’t good for much else yet, and having fun is a solid simple motivator for people to buy things until the technology matures, the bugs are worked out, and put to more useful work. In this case, the reverse is happening, where gamers are seeing value in preserving older technologies, and thanks to them, they are more likely to be available if and when we actually need them 🙂
“The hardware is based on a newer chip(?) Please correct me. The concept of making it do useful work is intriguing. I’d like to know more.”
It is based on a newer chip, but my understanding is they chose one that’s comparable, maybe slightly more powerful and with less power consumption than the original chip that was in the C64. Others can correct me if I’m wrong on this, I’m not a hardware specialist.
As for your other question, have you noticed that your word processor still takes several seconds to open, after decades of order-of-magnitude improvements to processors, graphics cards, and computer memory? It’s because every time computers get faster, companies use it as an excuse to cut more corners, and so long as the software, the website, whatever it is still loads in a few seconds, they don’t concern themselves with optimization beyond that, even if what’s under the hood is a horrible mess.
If you took a word processor from the 80’s or 90’s and properly spruced it up for modern chips, keeping the same strict standards they had back then for memory and performance, it would be opening up and performing tasks in milliseconds. Everything instant, no wait at all. Some of the best programmers in the industry have been lamenting this fact for many years, that new software hasn’t been “better” than old software from a technical perspective for a very long time.
Sure, “”modern”” software is flashy and colorful and companies employ designers to make everything look pretty, but from a technical perspective, everything under the hood is a mess of hastily hacked-together shortcuts, bloatware, telemetry and spyware, and now “AI” being added for no good reason at all but to make executives and shareholders happy.
All of these things could be safely cut without compromising the core functionality of the vast majority of useful software.
All that’s to say, this humble Commodore 64 could probably handle just about any practical task you’d like to throw at it, if we held programmers to the standards we did back then. That’s a big “if” though. This machine would have to start seeing serious demand before I see something like that happening again. Companies will continue to sell bloatware so long as most of the people they are selling to have computers that can run it.
@Jeff Russell #30
I don’t use emacs myself but I am acquainted with people who do. My impression of it is you can get it to do pretty much anything as long as you’re willing to configure it yourself. Some of the best programmers I know make good use of it. It’s definitely a testament to the idea that software doesn’t need the newest hardware to be both powerful and capable.
@Michael Gray #75
Agreed! Thanks for mentioning Permacomputing. That wasn’t on my radar, but it’s very encouraging to see.
@Cynthia Christie #33: My youngest grandson is an avid gamer – a *board* gamer. whenever he’s home, there’s always a table covered with boards, cards, and tokens.
@Northwind Grandma #60 re; fibromyalgia and dehydration – BINGO! I’m in from New Mexico, where people carry water bottles, and exercise classes had water breaks. I moved to Florida, and let that slack, but have been advised to drink plenty of water, and have to remember to do so when I get busy. Thanks for this!
The new C64 is rather exciting! Going on the wish list.
Instead of keeping up with digital tech I am exploring the reverse. In a sense “keeping up” with older and older tech. I am slowly procuring (castoffs from family and friends) older and older computers and building a computer lab with them.
Linux is a bit too mainstream for me. NetBSD is my next operating system to explore. Their motto is “NetBSD can run on a toaster”. With Emacs, a web browser and some other useful applications I think I can do some fun things for a long time. As long as the power stays on.
Just how old can I go, how far back in tech time can I find a usable, for me, system?
Pretty far back it looks like.
Among other ideas, I am hoping to start working on writing tiny astrology programs that each do one thing. An astrology software toolbox to run on whatever working hardware I can find. Maybe even my toaster!
A constrained world does offer some very interesting puzzles to challenge one.
I wonder if the Catskill Mountain hotels are due for a comeback one of these decades. They were the staycation spots of choice for the NYC metro area until plane travel, Disneyland, and Las Vegas turned them into abandoned ruins. It’s hard to imagine the social changes that would be necessary for this to happen, like NYC turning into a working class haven again, though the rich certainly seem to be abandoning it in droves these days.
Pygmycory, somehow it doesn’t surprise me that the SCA would have trouble keeping up with the times. 😉 I’ll be talking about the Butlerian carnival concept in detail a little further down the line. In the meantime, if anybody’s wondering what the Flock I’m talking about, here’s the original post from 2015:
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-02-12/the-butlerian-carnival/
Cynthia, that’s exactly what I’m brooding about just now. Why this, why now? Still, it seems to be happening.
Patrick, oh, granted. You’ll notice they don’t mention that once they have this supposed cure for cancer, they’ll charge you $250,000 per injection, and you have to agree that the manufacturer can’t be sued even if it makes you and every person who touches your skin die screaming in agony.
GlassHammer, another good point.
Paedrig, never having become addicted to it, I’m not sure what to suggest. Maybe try sticking your phone in a drawer before you go someplace, just to start getting used to not having it?
Mithridates, oh, I’ve got a fallback in place; I can open another site on my hosting company, use WordPress with a few gimmicks reset, and once again be able to screen every single comment before it gets posted. I want to postpone that as long as I can, though.
Justin, oh, it could get more colorful than that. I’ve been watching the babble about putting nuclear reactors down boreholes in the Earth’s crust, and wondering if it’s occurred to anyone that if the core melts down, it might just proceed (being denser than the surrounding rock) to melt its way down far enough that magma starts bubbling up. Then, of course, with an opening already made for it, you get this where your tech enclave used to be…
…except the first round of ash drifting on the wind is highly radioactive. Fun times!
SLClaire, I’ll take your word for it on the cars, but the rest of it — yep. You’ll be pleased to know that the music playing in the background is modern jazz circa 1960; it’s Henry Mancini conducting tunes from the “Peter Gunn” b&w TV show…
Roldy, I do indeed!
Clay, I could certainly live with that, but only if you promise prog-rock bands in the bars, and lots of strange paperbacks with lurid covers in the grocery stores and drugstores. 😉
Mithridates, it’s an interesting question. I imagine them perfecting robots to ever greater degrees, until the last humans in the enclaves die, and a community of robots lurch through their programmed routines until the power finally runs out…
Slithy, I don’t know the first thing about any of this, so I’ll take your word for it.
Untitled-1, here’s hoping!
Eric, hmm! That’s encouraging. At some point I’ll look at downshifting; I know I can do everything I need to do on a computer with Windows 95, and it would be interesting to see what programs I can get with that level of functionality (enough to run a WYSIWYG word processing program and a decent astrology program).
Mandrake, something like that would be a lot of fun; I’d book a room for a couple of weeks in the shoulder season, certainly!
“We could very easily end up fifty years or so from now with a fully bifurcated society, where a minority of technocrats and affluent flunkies live in walled communities patrolled by robot guards, getting access to impressively advanced technologies…” To be honest JMG I’m a bit surprised to hear you say this. I was under the impression you thought such technologies wouldn’t be possible in the future, even for elites, because you thought the international supply chains and economic activity that give rise to them wouldn’t be possible in the low-energy future you envision. Do you think the “myth of progress” can indeed continue for centuries, but only be available to a small elite?
The Internet may indeed still be “the most complex, fragile, and energy-hungry artifact in the history of the world”, but AI is catching up amazingly quickly, if it hasn’t already taken the top spot. Of course AI is mostly delivered through the Internet, so it becomes a bit fuzzy.
I’m a software developer at one of the leading AI companies. My previous company was acquired a few years ago and we’ve spent the last few years porting our code from one environment to another over and over. We still perform almost exactly the same functions we did 10 years ago, just in constantly new environments, many of which are considered interim until we achieve the Shangrila of complete integration with the parent company, but that always turns out to be a moving target since the parent isn’t staying still either. Then a couple of years ago the great AI push began and we were encouraged to incorporate the new imp into all of our workflows. It was never flatly required, but the message from their ever-growing measurements of our adoption was unmistakable.
A lot of true believers threw themselves into it at once, giving constant demonstrations of ‘look at what I can get AI to do for me now!’ On the other hand, there was a surprising uptake of the first voluntary retirement program in the company’s history. It’s surprising to me how much hostility AI has generated, I can barely keep up with the YouTube videos of tech professionals who despise it for a huge range of reasons and even a hardcore who even refuse to incorporate it at all, often after giving it an extensive trial and deciding it was a retrograde move generating an enormous technological debt for the future.
Personally I was reluctant to use it at first, drawing lots of lines in the sand that all ultimately got crossed. I’m now at a point where I haven’t genuinely written a line of code in months and spend all my time describing to AI the code I want. On the one hand it’s robbed me of an activity that I genuinely enjoyed and had fun with. On the other hand it lets me code at least 10 times the speed with probably better quality than I’d have come up with on my own. It’s also let me break through roadblocks that my laziness and inertia kept me from addressing for years. I just turned 60 recently and can’t imagine myself still working in 10 years, so skill regression is not something I care about much. I see this as an interesting professional journey that will probably end soon on its own because it is prohibitively expensive and they haven’t come to terms with the costs yet. Once they start talking about token budgets I’ll know the end is near, if the whole AI market doesn’t blow up first, since it seems to be a house of cards on the level of 2008.
I am intrigued by the rise of the term “crapification” and its synonym, “ensh**ification,” which seem about equally prevalent at the moment. The issue of linguistic register confuses me, since both roots were considered vulgarities when I was growing up–but then, my mother also considered “butt” to be a cuss word (we were supposed to say “bottom”). And then I watched one swear after another get rehabilitated–e.g. “crap” appeared in a late-1970s Aquaman story, in a comics-code approved issue of “Adventure Comics.” Anyway, the dueling terms remind me of the late 1980s media-driven shift from “rubber” to “condom.” (Perhaps regionalism was involved.)
JMG (no. 100) “There will be no Third World War, by the way. The energy resources to make one possible no longer exist.”
My friend and I were discussing whether World War III had already broken out, or might soon, and what would have to happen in order to count as a “world war.” He thought that (some? most? all? of) the Great Powers would have to be directly involved in fighting one another. I wondered if an indirect conflict that fundamentally changed the global geopolitical order might qualify–but then we would be on like, World War V. I like Rudyard “Whatifalthist” Lynch’s take, that the current situation resembles the Thirty Years’ War.
Pygmycory (no. 99), I wonder what musical instruments would survive such a downgrade. Sure, they made most of those instruments during the Middle Ages, but how many craftsmen could make a valve trumpet or slide trombone today? They’re precision brass tubes.
@Teresa Peschel #111 All great suggestions. My family and I didn’t blink except to wonder if I was going to be able to fix the washing machine. We lost water with no notice and I was in the middle of running a load. The electronics/ai got really confused. I did manage to fix the washer once we had running water and enough pressure. My husband promised I can get a Speed Queen set when we move. Otherwise, we try to not use tap water for drinking, cooking, pets, and more. There are several smaller towns here in Central Texas that have been struggling with dirty water issues for several years. Real repairs have been promised, but nothing has come of it. People are trying to sell their homes for very low prices, but there just aren’t any bites.
Watches: I have 2 Citizen eco-drives and I love them. One I have had for about 12 years, still runs like a champ.
Dumb phones: I have been using dumb phones for about a decade. I have a Light Phone, but it can be frustrating trying to text on it. There are a number of people in my life that won’t call and insist on long text chains. The phone I use daily is a Mudita Kompact. It has been wonderful. It’s simple with an E-ink screen, so no lights for those that are sensitive. It does talk and text quite well, but also has available apps like an alarm, calculator, camera, chess, meditation, etc. I personally love the meditation app.
@Slithy
Geocities! Be still my heart – thanks for that, how many times have I mused how much better the internet was when all you could do was browse people’s loud, garish, amateurish websites! Felt like you were invited into someone’s living room. It was the best. Actually this website and commentariat right here is the closest I’ve ever seen to recapturing that.
@Jean #38
“Every penny and every minute of time that I can spare goes to my kids”
Thanks for that; I admire it very much and aim to do the same. I have done a lot of soul-searching this summer, which I won’t re-hash here but the tl;dr is that I’m over spending luxuries on myself ever again and I really would like to reach an old age where I can see my kids not have to struggle.
I follow the conversations about future career opportunities for kids with great interest. Because my oldest is coming on high school age, I had a convo with a co-worker recently about her oldest’s recent first year at university. She told me an interesting story about her son’s friend who wasted the year drinking and partying.
Now I’m not so old that I don’t remember what it was like to be 19… and yet. Boy howdy, a young person today who (a) attends university for a generic useless degree; and (b) WASTES their time there, is going to find the 2030s and beyond very unforgiving.
Anyway it all brings me back to Jane Austen, and what I said in a thread some week ago about traditional marriage arrangements coming back. Many people will have some idea that Austen’s novels are a commentary about social norms and behaviour, but I would go further and argue that in another respect they are technical/inspirational manuals for navigating family dynamics. I would argue that they should be foundational material, today, for anyone raising kids and trying to figure out how to maximize their chances of success in life.
It’s interesting to delve into the question of how Austen’s gentry achieved their status to begin with, and I won’t go into that just here, but to say: I’m nearly sure that two or three generations from now, the folk who are Doing Well will be the ones whose forebears right now, today, are making life choices that look a bit eccentric, a little odd, to the normies.
@ JMG RE : “Chuang Tsu — his extremely valuable comments about staying free in an unfree society”
I think this is the big misunderstanding people have with Taoist texts. Lao Tzu and Chuang Tsu were both closely involved with the governments of the time and their works are not in praise of idleness for the sake of being lazy, but strike at the very core of how to undo structures of power. They saw the internal structure and understood the fundamental weakness of it. In demanding less of the system, you build yourself up and with that starve power of its capabilities.
Back in the late 90s/early 00s when pentium chips were all the rage I chatted with a guy who worked writing realtime software for an aluminium smelter. Back then they were still using 286 chips precisely because they weren’t as flaky as the newer chips (a failure of a chip could cause a stoppage and letting the aluminium cool in place at the wrong part of the process could be disastrous). I fully expect those simpler chips to get a renaissance.
vim 4ever
Cargoman, heh heh heh. I wondered if anyone would fall into that trap. Please note the explicit time frame in that speculation: “fifty years from now.” There’ll still be concentrated energy sources available circa 2076, though much less of them than we’ve got now. A hundred years from now the enclaves will be abandoned ruins stripped of every scrap of metal. By the time we finish settling into the low-energy future ahead — say, by 2250 or so — their very existence will have dropped out of memory, and archeologists in the thirty-first century will pick over their ruins and wonder who might have lived there.
Mandrake, thanks for the data points! It hadn’t occurred to me that one of the reasons that most computer technology will drop out of use is because all the programming has been handed over to AIs, and when those stop working due to resource constraints nobody on the planet will have any idea how a program is written. It’s an elegant turn of events, though.
Ambrose, interesting. When I was growing up in the 1970s “crap” was considered rude but not profane, and we were encouraged to use it in place of the more robust term. “Butt” wasn’t even considered rude. As for a world war, based on the two we’ve had, it would have to (a) involve all the world’s major military powers, and (b) have campaigns on at least three continents (counting peripheral island chains as part of the continents). Yes, the First World War counted; there was quite a brisk conflict in and around German East Africa, and active campaigns against German and Austrian colonial bases in east Asia and the Pacific, including the siege of Qingdao and the conquest of German New Guinea.
Michael, oh, granted. The Tao Te Ching is among other things a manual for emperors and their close advisers. Chuang Tsu’s more nuanced, and was very clear on when it’s useful to participate and when it’s a much better idea to head for the exit and keep on walking.
KAN, does anyone still remember how to make them? And is the equipment available?
JMG: I’m sure there’s more involved than this, but the branding sure isn’t helpful. I guess there’s worse things it could’ve been, they could have called it “Obey”, or “Submit”, or “Cower”, or “Serftrack”, or “Peasantwatch”, but really I don’t think naming it after the way actual sheep are grouped was really the brightest thing. Nobody likes to be thought a sheeple. But like I said I’m sure there’s way more involved than that.
But I saw the name of one of their competitors. I’ve forgotten it already, which is probably what you want for your branding if your business model is unlikely to endear you to the public.
Blue Sun: Really appreciate that share, that essay and the one preceding it gave me an important missing piece of the puzzle. Thank you.
Weeeee!
Hi John Michael,
Agreed, collapse now and avoid the rush is great advice. It takes an awful lot of time to learn to live on the cheap and get by just fine, and I grew up in a poor household. That experience tends to teach the value of a buck, better than spending the stuff does. 😉
By the way, this loose talk of Commodore 64’s is right up my alley. As a teenager I had one of those computers, and what was interesting about it was that an individual could comprehend the core architecture of the thing, like how is that coloured dot on the screen displayed. You could get right down into the guts of it, because it was truly open. Knowing the Basic programming language is not all that dissimilar from 6510 Machine language, just a bit nicer and easier to work with, but you know, much the same.
What’s the word for gradual improvement, rather than leaps to a new paradigm? Is it iterations? Oh well, looks that way to me.
And therein lays the entire joke of the computing sphere. For all of the whizz bangness of desktop computers running flashy looking operating systems, the core is… … much the same!
As a teenager I wrote a word processor program on the Commodore 64, and all you’re doing is moving numbers from one memory address to another, with those numbers representing letters. Databases do much the same but provide better ways to organise the stored memory. The biggie search engines look like simply super fast SQL databases to me. I won’t mention that arty-fish-al nonsense looks to me as much the same with a probability layer for the output built over the top. Same, same, nothing new to see here. No wonder the things are hungry for data, require vast computing power, and yet are so easily poisoned. It’s been remarked upon elsewhere that a difference in scale, is not a difference in kind.
What that lot doesn’t look like to me is, sustainable.
An old Commodore 64 machine, probably has about two decades of life in it depending on the components used in production, and their quality. Electrolytic capacitors ain’t the same in quality terms, no siree! 🙂
I’m very much enjoying this series of jumping into the way-back machine (you know! 😉 ) and reviewing what was written in the past. How good was that show?
Cheers and today pruning, thinning and feeding the raspberries is on the to-do list. But first, work.
Chris
All the parents and teachers these days who are panicking about the future of their kids are all tripping over themselves trying to teach them AI. Meanwhile, in my household:
Son (9yo): “Dad, how do you type so fast?”
Me: “You want to learn that, huh?”
Son: “Yes!”
(Hollywoodized fantasy version of) Me: “It’s time!” (cue montage music) *installs Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing*
My high school class was one of the last ones to learn touch-typing on actual typewriters. Not even the fancy electromechanical ones but the loud clunky stuff that whack the ribbon onto the paper. As I live in the “third world” this was in the early 00s, which might be quite a bit later than many of the others here have experienced. We already had “computer” classes and all “computer” class did was teach basic word processing, Excel, and programming – learning all that and more a nerd can do on their own time much better.
I never did take the typing class seriously, but during my final year in undergrad I thought I’d eventually make a career doing something with computers for a good while, I might be well-served learning to actually touch-type. I have no idea if my son will ever get into vintage typewriters, but I suspect that the most universal “computer” skill that he (and I) would ever learn is touch-typing!
No, I am not going to be barking voice commands at the computer. None of that stuff ever worked properly, even to this day, notwithstanding all the privacy implications with modern day voice recognition software processing your conversations on the “cloud”.
On a related note, my wife recently took a sewing class with a friend, just for fun. Her two biggest takeaways were a) it was so interesting and fun, she wondered why people stopped doing it, and b) the rest of the class were bored middle-aged upper-middle class ladies. I still have childhood memories of my grandmother putting together clothes from scratch on her sewing machine. People also dressed much nicer back when they made their own clothes, which I do not think is coincidental.
Alright, I’ve got weird one for you, hear me out. Torx head (the star shaped ones) screwdrivers and screws will become high tech obsolete. I used to work on pianos, and most of them were manufactured in the mid 20th century. Those pianos all used flathead screws. Move up to Japanese pianos made from the 80s or so, and they had switched to Phillips head screws. There are engineering reasons to use Phillips or Torx screw heads (something to do with consistent torque and more force being applied equally than flat head screws), but for a lot of purposes, flat head screws are just fine. Plus, if you’ve ever bought Torx head wood screws, they always come with a screwdriver head in the box because the heads wear out real quick and it can be a pain to pull out those screws if the heads get deformed. I’d hazard a guess that the advantages of Torx head screws will be overcome by the downsides, especially if products in the future become more repair friendly.
@JMG #138:
> KAN, does anyone still remember how to make them? And is the equipment available?
If I may – the 486 (Pentium predecessor) is still being produced today mostly in embedded “system-on-chip” version for industrial (and I believe, military) applications. They are basically smaller and more power efficient logic-equivalent versions of the original 486. We will likely have Intel 486s (and the Zilog Z80, MOS 6502, and Motorola 68000 among others) long after the datacenters running NVIDIA Blackwells have stopped running!
Interestingly enough, in the 2000s when Intel encountered a thermal and power brick wall with their Pentium 4 Netburst architecture , they came up with the legendary Core architecture which was a throwback to the P6 architecture which its predecessors (Pentium Pro, Pentium II, and Pentium III) were based on. Then a few years later, people got really obsessed with power efficiency for a while (remember netbooks?) and Intel’s answer to that was the Atom, which in its first iteration was a rehash of the original Pentium architecture!
“I was under the impression you thought such technologies wouldn’t be possible in the future, even for elites, because you thought the international supply chains and economic activity that give rise to them wouldn’t be possible in the low-energy future you envision. ”
Think stair steps, not a cliff to the 1700s. Streaming 4k video won’t last past the first power down, but the internet itself doesn’t use that much electricity. Look at the wifi router in your house. the power supply for mine is 12 Volts at 1 amp. My old one I keep as a spare is 5 V at 1 Amp.
The Raspberry Pi 4 uses 5 volts at 2.5 amps and can do most of the internet functions. My 2014 Mac mini runs a full modern Linux distribution on 85 watts including the power to 4 USB 3 ports (so about 20 watts total) and another 10 watts to the thunderbolt port. So the CPU and logic board and the drives are running on half of that 85 watts.
Laptop technology has really increased power efficiency which will make it easier to keep things running in the future. Server farms are not the whole of the internet.
The same thing applies in other field too. Diminishing returns set in long ago in most things. The change from carburetors to throttle body fuel injection was a huge change. Throttle body to direct injection has give negligible improvements in emissions and economy for a large decrease in reliability. These eight speed transmissions are never going to exceed the reliability of the Ford C6 or heaven forbid a manual transmission.
JMG,
Related to the last comment, in one of the stories I heard, the teller was in the shower thinking how they needed shampoo/deodorant/something and then they got out and and checked the app a short time later and then had the ad for the very thing they were thinking they needed.. Does this still fit into your explanation in your previous reply to me? I’m not sure if it does or doesn’t.
JMG (no 138) We’re about the same age, so it may be a regional difference (me: Texas). Or maybe my mother was just unusually prudish, although she wouldn’t think of herself as that. I vaguely remember her saying that “butt” wasn’t the correct scientific name. (On analogy with other body parts that actually *are* associated with cuss words.)
One practical consequence of this linguistic drift (the rehabilitation of formerly taboo words) is that that last line of “Gone with the Wind” loses its oomph. Ditto for “The Man without a Country,” when he shockingly says, “D— the United States!” Maybe the remakes could substitute f’s for d’s. Also the well-bred captain of the Pinafore, who never uses a big big D.
(no. 68) “Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! The word “Flock” and all its, er, conjugations are now Approved Cuss Words…”
I associate this style of writing with., er, Congress!
(badump tish)
@JMG. If I may answer your question to KAN. I used to be a semiconductor equipment engineer. The answer to your question is that it is quite simple for current semiconductor equipment to make the old chips. In fact, it’s a cakewalk and well below the current equipment’s capabilities. The problem you may run into is if there was some obsolete and specialized tool that was necessary for the process that no longer works and does not have parts or technical support. There is one photolithography tool in particular, that every university with a cleanroom lab has, which is robust, everyone knows how to use it, but the manufacturer stopped supporting a decade ago. There is a robust aftermarket of parts and technicians for this particular tool, but some of the core components like circuit boards are drying up. But it is a relatively straightforward procedure for the design engineers to design the chip. It may not be exactly the same as an old 486 processor, but it could serve the same purpose. Think of it as if you needed to mow your lawn, but all you had was a tractor with a hay cutter.
Michael Gray (no. 136) “Lao Tzu and Chuang Tsu were both closely involved with the governments of the time…”
Both texts seem to be products of multiple authorship. Biographies of their supposed authors came later, and are quite fanciful. It’s a bit like thinking of King Solomon as the author of Proverbs. Laozi can be interpreted as a “mirror for princes” text, and anyone literate enough to read it back then can be assumed to be contemplating, following, or evading a career in government service.
@Mithridates #115 re: Vim vs Emacs
Indeed! I’m just old enough to know that Vim vs Emacs was the original flamewar. Of course, by now, you can get mods to either to incorporate whatever features you like, but I think fundamentally, modal keystrokes or non-modal shortcuts just “make sense” to different kinds of users. To me, the idea that the default mode of a text editor is not “hit a key, that letter appears in the file” is just incomprehensibly alien, even if on a theoretical level, I get it, and even if it saves you from contorting your fingers in unnatural ways (to be fair, Emacs is greatly enhanced by getting a keystroke mapper that allows you to move the control key to something easier to reach, like the caps lock key. On Mac, I use Karabiner Elements).
I’m also not surprised to hear there’s a significant non-progress contingent in the Linux world – it’s so thoroughly about “doing things you own way,” that it’d be hard to imagine otherwise. Not sure if you noticed my usage of the word “grognard” – it was the term for the veterans of Napoleon’s army, and in the wargaming scene, it came to denote old-fashioned gamers who liked doing things the old way. In the 00’s – 10’s, it got adopted by the “Old School Renaissance” movement in the D&D world for folks who had been playing OD&D (or 1E AD&D, or whatever) and were still quite happy with it, thank you very much. I notice a lot of cultural overlap between Linux and D&D, and so the presence of an old school wing in Linux doesn’t surprise me in the least (hell, I imagine there’s plenty of folks who are literally into both).
For what it’s worth, I set up Emacs to allow me to draft blog posts in .org (an Emacs-specific markdown plaintext format), export them to .html, and post said .html files to my blog, all with a few keystrokes. I don’t run Emacs from the command line, but I can invoke the command line from within it, and have likewise enjoyed the simplicity of doing darn near everything in a single, retro, environment. It’s native programming language, Lisp, is beautiful in its own way, and was an early pioneer in function-based languages. The idea that if I want Emacs to behave differently, I can write some Lisp in Emacs, compile it, add it to my config file, and then never notice the deficiency again warms my heart. It’s very much parallel to the ethos of modding your shell config to work the way you think it should, but even stronger. I’m sure there’s similar capability in Vim-derivatives, that you likely know all about.
Cheers,
Jeff
It occurs to me that this might not be an inappropriate time to talk about some of the supply-chain attacks affecting modern programming languages.
As a little background, it’s completely normal in programming to reuse modules of code — called “libraries” — that others have written as part of your program, either using royalty-free open source libraries or commercially-licensed libraries. The standard way of installing these libraries now is through a package manager that comes with your language: Python has pip, JavaScript has NPM, Rust has cargo, etc.
Late last year, NPM was hit with a worm: some packages were compromised and their installation scripts were altered so that when the library is installed, it will scan your computer for GitHub credentials and use them to infect any NPM libraries that you maintain. The worm was called, somewhat appropriately, Shai-Hulud.
IIRC it took about a week to notice and stop the spread of Shai-Hulud. Then a few months later a new version of the worm was detected. Then a few months later… and a few months later. This is clearly just going to keep happening, though NPM has finally changed their policy about executing install scripts by default. But it’s not just NPM: nearly all major package managers are at least theoretically at-risk because of this design flaw, and an attack on Rust’s cargo was detected just today. Even libraries for the language Go, which doesn’t use installation scripts, was found to be vulnerable through a technique called cache poisoning, where infected code is snuck into the package manager’s cache and distributed instead of the real code.
This is going to be a major problem going forward, and the only safe option is probably going to be cutting out the package managers and going back to getting libraries directly from the authors, and then only using trusted versions, not the newest and shiniest.
@JMG #100 Re: Ebooks
I’ve likely mentioned it here before, but a very nice program for managing your ebooks is Calibre. It plays very nicely with a USB-centric focus, and allows for easy conversion of ebook-specific formats to PDF and vice versa (though it’s text recognition for the latter can leave something to be desired). It allows for updating the metadata on ebooks as well, so you can more readily search by author, publication date, category, et cetera. It’s open source, and free (though donations to the programmer are appreciated and solicited), and is actively maintained. I rely on ebooks much less than I used to when my job required constant travel, but I’ve continued to find it helpful for managing those I have.
It also has a number of plugins for users looking for further features, which can come in handy, but are by no means required to make it useful for DRM-free ebooks from sites like Project Gutenberg or the like.
Cheers,
Jeff
@Untitled-1 #120 re: Emacs
Yup, that fits with my impressions as well. Eric S. Raymond, for one, who did much of the work to popularize the term “open source,” does almost all of his work in Emacs, and what little programming I do happens almost entirely in there, up to and including committing to Git repositories. But it does have a steep learning curve, and that configuration can be non-trivial. I came to Emacs hoping to implement a Spaced-Repitition-Based “Incremental Reading” (see supermemo.com) set-up, and ended up staying for what I appreciated about it.
Cheers,
Jeff
Michael Gray #75 re: Richard Stallman
Doesn’t surprise me at all, and yeah, he’d likely be just fine!
I run Emacs through a Mac GUI, myself, so I’m not quite as much of a purist, but I could do 90% of my internet production through it, and could do more if I had ever figured out the MacOS security bottleneck for email (or just switched to Linux…).
Cheers,
Jeff
Re: Emacs
I realized I had neglected to mention why I’m such a fan of Emacs, retrovative or not. For me, the “never going back” features are an ability to move through the text, highlight it, copy/paste, and perform other common actions, without my fingers leaving the home keys of my keyboard. Sure, you can use a mouse to do all that, but once you can do without, it’s hard not to notice its absence (for example, I’ve programmed in keyboard shortcuts to go to the beginning/end of a line and to cursor up/down with home key shortcuts no matter what program I’m in, but outside of Emacs, I miss the ability to skip forward by word, sentence, or paragraph).
Cheers,
Jeff
P.S. For all you Vim aficionados out there, I’m sure you can do the same in Vim, I just don’t know how, and it’s more the getting used to those abilities I mean than the specific keystrokes/combinations that get you there.
Hi JMG,
In the last open post I asked about the possibility of people moving back to the “declining hinterlands”(as the mainstream calls it) of America, adopting the toolkits of the forgotten appropriate technology era and other, simpler technologies. This essay gets at what I was thinking about, a cultural bifurcation between a declining but entrenched “wealthy” world doing its best to keep the Gernsback dream alive and a subculture that is less affluent on paper but is building an actual future instead of holding on to the dreams of the 20th century.
I suspect the science fiction fandom that passes for our elite caste will not let this happen easily though. They need people to play along or else their worldview is threatened. All I can say for sure is I find the dominant culture, filled with jet age fantasies hopelessly unrelatable and their desperate attempts to keep their narrative dominance comical.
All this to say, I’m excited about future possibilities and the development of new cultures as the old one fades away. Let them argue about LLM models and Mars bases that will always be 40 years away. There is more interesting work to be done.
Best,
JZ
Here in Rhode Island, the governor has ordered a 60 suspension on the installation of any new Flock cameras. He’s soon to lose in the Dem Primary to a former CVS VP, so he’s throwing out anything that might be popular. Meanwhile, the multiple traffic light and speed cameras continue on collecting the fines from the public, with no outcry about civil rights.
Re: putting nuclear reactors in boreholes: “And the [techbros] delved too greedily and too deep, and disturbed that which was hidden.” I don’t want Tolkien to be the prophet who was right!
Campground nomads as future tribes: that trend’s already underway, thanks to Bob Wells and his Youtube channel, CheapRVliving. After he had to move into his van for economic reasons, he formed a new worldview drawing on Emerson, Thoreau and anthropological writings about nomadic tribes. He’s working hard to get his people thinking of themselves as a free tribe living the way of the future, rather than miserable dropouts. “Houseless, not homeless”, as the vandwellers say.
@ Paedrig RE : Phone addiction
As with many behaviour addictions, there are two key steps.
The first is just to reduce and remove the very thing you want to avoid. Try to reduce the amount of distractions on your phone. In the same way if you are an alcoholic, you remove the alcohol from your house, remove any apps that take up your time. That means all social media or anything that serves to distract rather than gain. A phone (as in speaking to people with your voice), a map, the camera are fine at getting you a defined and thing. To set a task and do it, then move on. Social media doesn’t do that. It doesn’t get you anywhere it just goes on forever, there is no finish line.
This is how I run my phone. No social media, no video anything, the very occasional podcast. Basic functionality. My screen time this week is 14 minutes. On plus side the battery lasts for over a week because it isn’t running all that junk in the background.
Secondly and most importantly is to train is your attention. Notice when you are using these things or are compelled to use these them. To notice the though patterns and habits.
JMG may not know about directly know about phone addiction but he did write about the very mechanisms you need to command to help you guide your will. ‘Training the will’, all 7 parts are here.
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/tag/will
Mr Greer, there is a noticeable spring in your verbal step this week. Your new digs, the weather, or perhaps a lady ?
Andy, JMG,
I built and programmed a robot about 15 years ago when I was in high school, and have written my own computer programs to run on my Arduino; I am also an avid fan of a number of (mostly older) video games, and actually even made my living for about a year as a professional gamer back when that was still considered quite odd; and I used to work in IT for a few years as well. This qualifies me as a techie, and so I’d like to talk about this here: there’s a simple reason why most of us are utterly done with more advanced technology: most of it is not actually meant to meet the needs of the people it’s being pushed on. There are plenty of us, however, who make tons of money as long as we pretend otherwise, which is why there’s long been a divide in people who work in Silicon Valley over the tech they make and the tech they use.
The advances in bandwidth, data storage, processing speed, digital graphics, etc., up to about 2000 or so all opened up new possibilities for computing, and there are an awful lot of things that would have been impossible in, say, 1980, that were being done in 2000, and improved the lives of those who adopted it. These were usually the people who grasped the potential: which initially meant the people who understood why these improvements mattered, and what new potentials they opened.
Past about 2000 or so, an awful lot of the stuff is, marketing aside, no more useful for the end users. At best, the improved capabilities allow programmers to be lazier and less efficient; in other cases, like the 5G rollout, it’s obvious to anyone who understands how these systems really work that it’s not about improving the user experience, but meeting the needs of the mass surveillance system. To put it bluntly, there is nothing for a phone’s owner that 5G enables that couldn’t already be done with 4G. For those of us who understand how the internet functions, and just how large the bandwidth capabilities of 4G were already, it became extremely obvious that there is an awful lot of data being transferred off the phones, because there’s no real reason to invest in 5G otherwise. It would not surprise me in the least if the point of 5G was to allow the phones to transmit all the audio picked up by the microphones and everything the phone cameras see in real time, because otherwise it’s hard to think of why anyone would ever need that much bandwidth.
Another issue is that if you know just how poorly maintained software is, how easy it is to slip an Easter egg into software, or how simple it is to tamper with hardware, then it’s hard to believe that anything that you did not build and code yourself is ever secure. Since most techies tend to have to think about the security of our devices at some point, we tend to be more than a little paranoid by mainstream standards about a lot of things. Are there cases where it’s worth the risks to use inherently insecure systems? Absolutely: but there are plenty of other cases where it’s not, and even more where it’s not even clear to those of us who know how these systems work that a digital system is an improvement over an analog equivalent. There’s a reason I still write checks and receive paper bank statements, for example: it would be trivial to tamper with the digital equivalents and steal money from me without letting me see it’s happening until my money is long gone, while physical checks and paper bank statements provide a crucial back up and evidence something has gone wrong if that happens.
Which is another point: we are also used to thinking through how to make backups, and how to prevent them from being tampered with, which can be a surprisingly difficult thing to do! However, this comment is already pretty long, so I won’t go into why that makes so many techies very frustrated about “the cloud”; but I hope I’ve made my point clear: those of us who actually know how computers and the internet and the like work are aware of the many, many potential problems, and so are deeply skeptical of how it’s been rolled out by people who either don’t understand it or are making huge amounts of money off it.
Michael Gray 75
> only major question is, hood or pointy hat?
Hood. Definitely hood.
A hood has a bigger audience; it is universal, classic, as long as it is nice and big. I mean, the hood really has to be roomy, like the hood on the cape that actress Meryl Streep wore (link below) in the film “The French Lieutenant’s Woman.” THAT hood always impressed me. Forty-five years later, I still remember that hood. I have not come across an image of a more impressive hood than that style in that movie. One can get lost in that hood, males and females both (one at a time), and that is the point: a (relatively) cheap way to feel warm and loved, in a garment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_French_Lieutenant's_Woman_(film)
… though I am sure a well-made hood using a delectable fabric would cost a pretty penny. High demand. One could probably make a decent living making hoods, and their attachments. (Hmm, I got myself thinkin’ here. Me specializing in hoods? And all because of a comment here. I actually have some vintage sewing patterns. Hmm.)
A roomy hood would be a great piece of clothing to have around for the Long Descent. Indoor rooms are going to get chillier (is that a word, referencing chilly) over time. Hoods are wonderful against draughts/drafts. And hoods are superb for sitting meditation… pull the hood up and over, close the eyes, and feel the body’s warmth stay in its proper place around the head.
I have seen images of hoods only, set in medieval Europe. The hood has extra attached fabric to cover the upper third of the torso, certainly to cover the shoulders, and keep the draft off the neck.
Robes and capes are similar to each other. One is for outdoors, the other indoors. One has arms, the other no arms.
One can have a separate hood.
One can have a separate cape.
One can have a separate robe.
Mix and match, primitively put together using strings, ribbons, or bows.
I have a thing for “a good hood.” If someone has the surname of Good, well, there you go: Good’s Hoods.
Or Goodie Two Shoes Hoods. Lots of words rhyme with “hood.”
On the other hand, a pointy hood, nah, not thrilled. Too black-magic-y.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
> road surfaces during the Long Descent
The subject of roads came up here a few months ago. I think toppings of roads will default to “loose gravel”; and vehicles, tires/tyres, and accessories that do well on loose gravel. That is, up until the year 2080, or so.
After that, probably mud + ruts. Think horse and buggy days prior to 1910. Prior to 1910, traveling was the pits. And traveling sucked. Hmm, good terms describing olde-world roads: pits, suck&muck, and downright miserable. Back in those days, one needed to have a darn good reason to be “on the road” in inclement weather, like heading to care for an ailing relative or attend a funeral.
How do horses/buggies do on loose gravel?
I don‘t know a thing about various grades of gravel, much less different specific variations of road gravel.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
“Paedrig, never having become addicted to it, I’m not sure what to suggest. Maybe try sticking your phone in a drawer before you go someplace, just to start getting used to not having it?”
It seems like this could be a useful target for the will strengthening exercises you have taught.
Jason Heppenstall 85
> I’ve been collecting books for years, and my house is now bursting at the seams with them, much to my wife’s chagrin.
You and me both. I figure that when there are no more computers (of whatever size), and no more TV, and no more electricity, I will have plenty by which to keep entertained (at least in theory, if I last that long). I picture police will find my skeleton years later with a moldy Sherlock Holmes pastiche short story anthology (book) in my bony hands. (I am very specific about it being short stories and Sherlock Holmes pastiches.)
Maybe I am feeling better. I was tempted to use a “dead husband” refrain, but desisted. Black humor. I do so love the Addams Family.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
JMG et al
I recently went to a rather high end function in a rather high end CA town. I went with a friend in his basically brand new restored 60s VW bus with electric motor, etc. It couldn’t have been cheap, and obviously is not an option on the downslope, but I was interested that it was the center of attention amongst all the new high end BMWs, Mercedes, range rovers, etc. A beautiful vehicle, mind you. The thing of interest to me was that retro was the impressive look, even to these wealthy people.
I also reckon that if someone came out with a cheap, basic, reliable, repairable vehicle, they couldn’t keep up with the orders.
I also see people here discussing supporting their children and being later supported by them as an almost academic issue. My daughter’s mom and I put her through college and helped her all we could because we love her. I helped her with her down payment on her house. I have a room there now because she loves me, not because she owes me. It sometimes seems that people have children like barnyard animals, just because that’s what happens, and not that there is a lifelong bond. Obviously that too can be abused as it seems to me to be in many cultures where the children are considered almost dynastic pawns. No easy answers I guess.
Stephen
On the roads issue; if this severe El nino brings the storms it might to CA, I wouldn’t be surprised to to see a couple of very iconic tourist routes closed for quite a long time, though they would never say forever..
Whilst, I was reading through the comments here, I got a notification from Rachel Donald’s “Planet Critical “ podcast, informing me that the latest instalment was now available.
Its title? “Low Tech Lives”… I kid you not!
Seems a wee bit serendipitous!
Phutatorius 98
> flocking in fabrics
As far as I am aware, flocking as a fabric has been around since at least the 1960s when I started sewing as a teen.
On a fabric, flocking flakes off. I think it must be sprayed on. The stuff is sort of a fabric-in-a-spray-can. In fact, I think I remember Humus Dept had spray cans of the stuff.
I think the glove compartment of one of our cars had a sprayed-on lining of flocking, because every time I put my hand in the glove compartment, my hand came out with flecks of little bits of fabric, sort of like if velvet’s fibers fell off at a light touch. The fabric literally “wears thin” fast; one starts out with velvet and ends up with broadcloth.
Flocking related to fabric comes and goes. It is a nothing product. It is all show, probably good for a gaudy Halloween costume, and that is the extent of it.
I just found it on Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flocking_(texture)
The Wiki article mentions that flocking existed in 1000 BC in China. One does NOT want to “breathe in” flocking — it can kill a person. As fabrics go, it is anti-life. Hence, nasty. It is the epitome of crapification: it costs a lot, lasts a few minutes, and is poisonous.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
Cynthia Christie 106
> Surveillance cameras already existed
Cost. In part.
I will give you an example.
Once upon a time, from 1997 to 2020 San Francisco Bay Area, Northern California, we had one heckuva rotten family as next-door neighbor. They had three teens, two males, one female, who thought it was great fun to vandalize our house on a regular basis.
We eventually fought back. We bought four video cameras for surveillance. This was about 2004. Each video camera was $700. Yeah, it was a big whammy. I found one on eBoy for $500, and that was a deal.
We also invested in a home server that recorded 24/7, all cameras. Jethro knew how to do this stuff, so this setup was relatively inexpensive.
These days, one can buy an equivalent camera, last I looked, for $100. That price drop happened, I would guess, around 2015. Folks, correct me if I am wrong.
The market exploded. Video cameras (including for surveillance) became more common. Surveillance is only a function of where one puts a video camera, inside or out.
When video cameras, again, cost a lot, their purchase, maintenance, and usage will drop. Most people cannot afford $100/camera any longer, particularly now when they have difficulty paying the grocery bill.
By the way, after we put up four, then fifth, then sixth, video camera trained on the exterior of our house, the vandalism stopped. No problem.
As I hear-tell, that family morphed themselves into a criminal family enterprise. Their own little mafia empire. Not a legitimate worker among the batch of ’em. Ugh. The luck of the draw.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
JMG, You brought up staycation as a way that energy expended on travel and vacations is beginning to decline. There is another energy consuming aspect of our current culture that is having a harder time being killed off at least among what is left of the middle class. For lack of a better term I will call it ” Obligation Travel”. This takes several forms and involves great family or societal pressure to travel and spend money in ways that was unknown to even the prosperous end of the middle class before the late 1980’s.
The first of these is the destination wedding paired with the destination bachelor and bachelorette party. My youngest son has been roped in to 4 of these in the last few years. Bachelor party in Las Vegas or Nashville , followed a few months later ( not the night before anymore) with a wedding in some far off other city or island, or mountain resort which requires expensive accommodations. New brides and grooms have not gotten the message that no-one can afford this any more. They also expect wedding gifts to be in the form of cash. Not even newly wedded couples want junk appliances or cheap tableware anymore. They want cash to pay the expenses they occurred in doing these things.
The second of these obligation travel opportunities only applies if you have kids in k-12 school. That is the school trip to distant destination. This was also unknown when I was a kid. Little Johnny’s band is planning a trip to the rose bowl and you must provide or fundraise thousands of dollars for little Johnny’s share of the trip or little Johnny becomes a cast off in the schools music program. Or little Suzie’s cheerleading squad is going to the Nationals and little Suzie must raise money to fly and stay in a far away location. As well as pay the fees to support the organizers of these ” Obligation” events.
Like the wedding thing, the organizers of these operations and the school personal that promote them have not gotten the clue that no-one can afford them any more.
Yes there is an antidote in sight. It not be the bride giving up her dream, or the cheerleading coach throwing in the towel, it will be the day no-one participates, or no-one comes to the wedding. That is the day we will take one more necessary step down the energy use ladder.
Daringolade
re physical mail: Here in New Zealand, it is getting more difficult and expensive to use regular written mail. A stamp for anywhere in the country is close to $2.50!!!. Places with facilities to mail letters and buy stamps (including post offices and small corner dairies) are disappearing rapidly. The mail delivery/pickup is shrinking too; some urban areas no longer have daily service. Post office boxes are not readly available either.
The interesting fact about technological bifurcation for me is that since quite a while, I practice it myself. Besides current technologies which I use there are other, older technologies which serve the purpose of a fallback option on the one hand, because modern computers have become so complex and volatile, and, on the other hand, as simpler and less resource-intensive alternatives to modern technologies. In a certain way, in my private sphere, this trend plays out in microcosmic format. As for the sudden collapse of belief in progress, these kinds of things are difficult to foresee in detail, so it is not a big deal to have missed it.
Technologywise, the situation in Germany currently is, that smartphone apps and digital ways of doing things are pushed on people, but analog alternatives sill exist for most of these things; it is still possible to send letters and postcards, and communication with offices and bureaucracies can still, at least partly, handled via letters.
Jessica # 76:
I agree. Indeed, Britain and the Balkans were full de-romanized (except former Dacia, today Romania, where Latin become a strange Neo-Latin language; and the Ragusa enclave-today Dubrovnik), even before Slavic invasions. My example about Iberian Peninsula under Visigoth kings shows there was some decline here, but not so strong. Italia was a quite similar case as here (Ostrogoth kings and Byzantine influence).
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Scotlyn # 82:
It’s always useful to know how water can be filtered and boiled to clean it and killing bacteria, but on the other hand, physical filters and boiling don’t remove chemical nor radiactivity from water. So they’ve got some limitations.
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Cynthia # 83:
Thsnk you for reminding me another dirty secret about travel to Mars, I hadn’t taken into consideration yet. However, I’m afraid believers in god Progress in its space colonization variant, are going to keep shouting:”I don’t hear you”. They prefer to believe, for example, that future spaceships will have its own gravity (?), a system still not made up (cough).
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JMG # 100:
I’d like to think there won’t be WW3, like you’ve written. I tend to think that the more we’re moving in a deeper long descent, the more unlikely is WW3. Let’s cross finger and wait in the long term, missiles rust peacefully…
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Pygmycory # 105:
Yes, your illness is very hard to cope with it, so some mental disorders are very common within fibromyalgia patients, due to it.
————————
(To be continued)
Cynthia C. # 122:
Oh, it was “tendency”…thanks for correcting my mistake.
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JMG # 138:
By 2250, I bet those future archeologists who will scratch their heads wondering who lived in last Faustian era ruins, they’ll be arguing with non educated people, who maybe will think ruins were buikt by gods or aliens, not by human beings…
It seems crappification and technological bifurcation make the rehashed and typical myth of god Progress more and more counterfactical, but its believers won’t surrender soon, not only in technology, but in politics and siciety too. Some examples:
-“Mature” technologies had lived during the past their main and biggest improvements, so current “advances” are smaller and smaller, but technologists and sellers must pretend there’s still a big progress. Aluminium
bikes were to some extent, lighter and better than sterl frame bikes, but I think carbon fiber bikes aren’t a great progress (they won’t last forever). Nowadays cars have a lot of digital gadgets (which “improve” cars in a very dubious way), and electrification isn’t really new (some of the first cars of history were electric).
-Another illusion of progress is the political one. In Europe we’ve got our own myth variant: EU, the “future” internarional state. I had an argument with some guys about it, yesterday. When I suggested them their EU dream was dying in slow motion, they didn’t want to go on discussing the can of worms I opened. They seem to believe current trouble for Brussels is a temporary situation (ahem). I think willing blindness about current EU decline it’s more common within educated (?) middle and high class people than within working class people.
-Finally, belief in a supposed social progress is part of woke doctrine. Young wokesters (at least here), seem to think that 30 years ago, “old” people like me were cheerleading Inquisition trials against gay people, and every week we saw some witches and heretics were burnt alive in the downtown. Well, of course is a caricature of usual woke ideas about recent past, but I think they aren’t far from ususl woke “modus operandi”, imagining the ‘90s like some middle age or prehistoric homophobic and mysoginist nightmare. In real history, first LGTBIetc activism began here during ‘70s, after last dictatorship, and they were one more within social activism in democracy. During ‘80s some comedy artists could tell in MSM jokes about (against?) gays, but in ‘90s that behavior was at less unpolite and rude. So they weren’t such barbarian times, but I think wokesters need to despise recent past to pretend they’re “improving” our society. It’s a childish attitude named “adanism”(when you believe you’ve discovered everything by first time), according Soto Ivars (a social critic who’s one of the main black beast for wokesters here).
Re: Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, etc: After a couple of years using the I Ching as my main divination method I can say too that it too is very much a fantastic guide to strategy. When to act, when not to act, what to dodge, what to engage with, how to behave in a situation… the accuracy of the advice and readings continue to astound me.
I’ve been learning Lenormand too, but it is way more hazy in the interpretation, but I find it to be accurate though. The symbols are so much broader in what they could be in their combinations, but with the changing lines of the I Ching it pinpoints with great accuracy what is going on. It’s been interesting to track the flow of changes as to what hexagrams come up repeatedly during certain times.
Re: homeless campgrounds etc.
It’s always possible that I did not see or was not aware of who was using facilities at various times of camping when those have been available, but now I do see it in the open.
I will be revisiting the theme of homelessness in the PNW in the nearer future. Got a copy of the documentary film Streetwise (about homeless kids in Seattle in the 80s) headed my way to write about for one of my projects. It floored me when I first saw it in the 9th/10th grade, and I haven’t seen it since, though I’ve looked at the photo book by Mary Ellen Mark a few times over the last few decades. The library doesn’t have the film anymore…
…my cousins who I was very close to had moved into a new house. There was an old betamax in the basement and a bunch of tapes for it, Streetwise among them, as well as the women-in-prison exploitation cinema classing Reform School Girls. All I can say it was some real educational viewing. The one thrilled me. Streetwise gutted me.
Maybe the trend on the west coast for using the state parks and likes facilities has only now migrated this way to a degree where it is more notable.
I have seen a lot more scruffy RVs and vans and the like parked around the city, often for long periods of time, where people are living.
I didn’t mind sharing the facilities with these people, but it was new-to-me to observe in that context but made total sense. Especially as we were in a fairly remote area I could see why that particular bathroom with a shower that nobody working at the park was paying much attention too besides the cleanings was a hub.
If anybody is camping in the area I’ll just say KY state parks are often much nicer than the ones in Ohio. Not just the camp sites, but the bathrooms, showers, etc.
Hi Pygmycory,
I’ll keep an eye out for that. The folk punk scene strikes me that way.
With regards to classical music, It seems reasonably popular where I live. When I’ve been to the orchestra here it has been busy, but also there is a good turn out during open street festivals, and the like, when they have small orchestras playing in cathedrals and public parks.
There is actually a flamenco performance in a small venue tomorrow I might try to attend.
What do you make of early music, the impression I get was a lot of this was made by touring musicians that played outdoors.
The sensibility is very close to modern dance music in some of this stuff (simple, catchy and looping). I could imagine this one being turned into the backing for a pop song today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_neJYsPXgyI
Something like this seems highly likely to come back, because you could play loops from R&B and pop hits as melody lines. I watched a jazz group play on the street last month. They were using R&B songs and rearranged them as jazz funk. There were lots of people hanging about watching them, and lots dancing.
Thanks,
Johnny
There is quite the hobbyist group working on the old more understandable computers.
Here is one CPU built from standard logic chips,
https://c74project.com/
The interesting thing is the surface mount logic chips use the same manufacturing process as the first CPUs. The older DIP LS series logic used an even easier to make process. (DIP means dual in-line package, two rows of pins that go through the circuit board.)
That first generation of 8 bit computers were very well documented. That is not the case for modern hardware except maybe for the raspberry pi. I would think that could be back ported to older manufacturing processes and still work.
It keeps coming down to how big a step down the available technology takes. Except for the current Internet my 2002 Mac can do anything I actually need, but it draws 165 watts to do it. My 2020 laptop can do even more while drawing 30 watts which includes recharging its battery.
When we can’t build a 5 nm process any more will we still be able to do the 180 nm process of the G4 in the 2002 Mac? The 260 nm process of the 1997 G3? The 570 nm of the 1990 68040? And so on.
Also keep in mind they can avoid the CPUs that never worked right like the Itanium (AKA the Itanic), the G5, and Pentium 4 (both worked but were massive power hogs).
Hi JMG,
I thought of something you might find interesting in the dance music world (although this is a little bit of a tangent away from your point this week). Much of it functions more anonymously and less centralized than in rock or pop music. They aren’t completely different, and many of the same rules end up applying (and certainly lots of stars), but there is less of an idea of these geniuses carving a way through history, and more of a feeling of an idea or a rhythm possessing people who work it out collectively. A given release might become important to the scene, but the individual who produced it less so (although still celebrated), and it’s a world where one hit wonders are pretty common.
I’ve seen it described as “scenius” as a way of discussing it, but don’t think this term is very widespread. The idea, though (which is felt perhaps more than it is vocalized), is that the scene is the correct locus for understanding what is going on, and what is driving this creativity with individuals standing on the shoulders of all of the people before them by reusing their innovations and sounds and patterns.
The adoption of earlier technological suites also happens at a scene level, an individual does something innovative (reintroduces a particular earlier instrument), or foregrounds the use of that instrument that another track introduced, and the scene responds to it if it works for them, and others see that there is fertile ground here for advancing whatever this musical idea is that has them all captivated. If it becomes important enough it gets named something and might even become a permanent new genre.
I should say that I think this same frame is the correct way to understand other types of music (including rock and pop), but it is less obvious in those types of music because they tend to be discussed in the opposite way, as a series of independent musical geniuses who worked more isolated and were proven right by the public. Something in the more disposable nature of dance music has resisted this a little.
Thanks,
Johnny
“When I was growing up in the 1970s “crap” was considered rude but not profane, and we were encouraged to use it in place of the more robust term. “Butt” wasn’t even considered rude.”
These things change. Back in the 1950s and 1960s the N-word was perfectly fine to say in regular conversation, but now it is one of the biggest profanities in American society.
Heads up! There is a really nice meme about data centres at this link: https://substack.com/@chrismartin/note/c-316832978
The text line says:
“Treat your body like a data centre. Consume as much water and literature as possible. Upset local city councils with your existence.”
It seems a topical, retrovation-friendly poke at tech…
Luke Z and JMG – this ‘mind reading’ has happened to me multiple times now, and others have reported their own uncanny stories of it. I will give an example that occurred a few weeks ago. I was in my study, idly daydreaming about something while trying to work. I glanced over at the chair in the corner and noticed that – somewhat annoyingly – it had developed a split in the cover. I didn’t say anything out load, I didn’t search for how to repair it, I didn’t take a photo of it – nothing like that. I merely noted it internally, wondering how to repair it. Within 10 minutes I’m seeing ads on Facebook for ‘vinyl chair repair tape’. This is by no means the only time this has happened.
I have been trying to induce these ‘mind reading’ ads by consciously focusing on something random, but so far to no effect!
@Northwind Grandma (#165) wrote: “I do so love the Addams Family. ”
That’s a “Me too!” moment!
I discovered Charles Addams’ cartoons when I was a ‘teen in the 1950s, and they spoke to me like no other cartoonist ever has, or probably ever will. At last, there was another family as weird and as macabre as my own.
(Have I ever mentioned that we had a genuine human skull in my family home in Berkeley? My great-grandmother got it from a doctor friend; it was a 19th-century anatomical preparation. She used it in some sort of annual ritual together with her large collection of her ancestral photographs, probably something like a spiritualist séance. Otherwise it “lived’ — that was the word we used — in the same box with her ancestral photographs. I still have it — and the ancestral photographs as well.)
JMG #17,
Thank you for the poem! It is both a fine poem and a lucid account of the regress. It never stops to amaze me how people can be aware of the ruins and not apply this idea to the current empire. The inertia of perpetual progress seems self-evident to them (I mean… just take your iPhone, caress it lovingly and weep for your ancestors who were deprived of such a pleasure); so much so that American propaganda seems lazy on the subject. Unlike American propaganda, Soviet propaganda was relentless and kept pounding on the topic, barraging its subjects with endless comparisons with the year 1913 (the last peaceful year of Tsarist Russia before the outbreak of WWI) wrt steel production, automobil productions, ore extraction, etc. They of course kept quiet about the agricultural numbers, which were an embarrassing failure, with Russia going promptly from a wheat exporter to a wheat importer (I know about it firsthand as I saw the wheat in the holds of my dad’s ship).
Hi y’all,
I am feeling quite Addams Family-ish💀.
Regarding downsizing handheld phones, and such.
I have an iPone, have had one since iPones came out, not that I particularly like iPones, but because Appa products were Jethro’s world view. I intend to, at some point, initialize Jethro’s iPone, and give it to a friend. And retire Jethro’s cell number.
It is also my intention to eventually get a flip-phone as replacement, assuming it is cheaper than our current Appa bill. I have seen advertisements (Affinity Cellular; Patriot Mobile) in the “Magazine of the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC),”* a conservative zine for elders. Features I will look for are text-messaging, email, maybe a small color screen, and not much else.
I am sick and tired (twenty years worth) of iPone’s complexity. The designers go for more-more-more. How ’bout less-less-less?
Simply changing settings on iPone is a time-hog. When I have a goal to change a setting, I must tool around for half an hour to find where to change it. I have only ever been neutral about any iPone I have had, where I had to downplay how I REALLY felt. Jethro was head over heels in love with iPone; iPones could do no wrong. I could never bad-mouth iPone in Jethro’s presence.
Flock iPones‼️
The only group of apps I like/use are color-scheming apps, and that only because such apps are disappearing from Mac OS. (I want my old “Color Schemer 2” app back on MacOS. Man, I miss that app.)
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
*AMAC is an alternative organization/publication for elders, going head to head with ‘the anything goes’ AARP.
JMG,
Not meant as a criticism, but I think you separate your political analysis from your astrological analysis a little too much. I often go back to your December 2020 post on the grand mutation.
https://ecosophia.net/the-grand-mutation-an-astrological-interlude/
Of all of your astrological predictions, this is the one that I go back to the most.
In it, you mention that, in the prior period, “Sun trine Uranus predicts that government and technological change will be mutually supportive during the period ahead” and the discovery of Uranus led to this amazing period of innovation and technological change.
So, given that these are the astrological forces in play, you could have predicted that many of the problems and crises would be lessened in severity simply by the fact that the astrological gravity of the time is pulling in favor of innovation and technological progress, fueling the religion of progress.
However, as you point out, we’ve entered a new era, one of a “forced retreat to older technologies and cultural traits.” You also mention that this will be prominent in the first 20 years.
So given the astrological gravity, where is AI going to take us? Where is the Trump administration taking us? Where is the Changer taking us?
It’s like you commented, once the AI investment boom is over, you’re left with a workforce that doesn’t know how to code, trillions of dollars spent on compute sitting idle, and a lot of white-collar work that just stops because it’s unable to get done. With Trump, we’re going to be left in a world that’s much more local than the one that came before it. The Changer, as a God, is likely to work with the current of astrological forces rather than against it right?
@ Chuaquin #174
On the contrary, here is a list of chemical residues and poisons that can be neutralised by activated charcoal.
https://charcoalremedies.com/poisons/
The same site hosts an article about using activated charcoal to remove radioactive residues
https://charcoalremedies.com/radiation_poisoning/
Medically, activated charcoal has been used for a very, very long time, to inactivate ingested poisons, and is still stocked by most Accident and Emergency Departments for this purpose. (I do not know if they consider using it for radiation exposure, but that is one for me to look up).
Greetings JMG,
I find it slightly puzzling that in your discussions of energy and technology you mainly focus on the consumer-side aspects, while paying relatively little attention to the war connection. Historically, warfare has been the main driver of technology. And energy was one of the primary considerations in warfare since at least WWII (the battle of Stalingrad comes to mind as the most salient example.)
radioactive volcanoes… wow. Just wow.
I’m actually amused that people actually believe that fracking produces anything. It’s like pouring a couple of cups of gasoline into a cement mixer and then trying to pull it out of the dryed concrete block them produced. It can’t be done.
I actually counted the number of active refineries in the United States, it comes out to 128, a 60% reduction from the 300 or so back in 1970. I estimate the real oil production of the USA to be around 3-4 mpds once all the fakery is removed and the world oil production around 20-22 mpds around the level of 1960. It dropped from the Hubbert Peak of 50-55 mpds in 1974.
Occidental Petroleum tried to extract shale oil in the 1960s-1970s, the result being complete failure with Armand Hammer throwing in the towel in 1982. What you’re seeing today isn’t a productive industry, it’s a combination of the Romanian Caritas scheme with Theranos style theatre, all of it inflated by several orders of magnitude and all the PR about it is like Ramses II’s victory at Kadesh.
Societies in decline don’t come up with clever schemes, they become suckers for every snake oil salesman around. And when it comes apart, it will be like Albania in 1997-1998.
@Ambrose
fairly easy instruments to make via handcrafting/instruments that are still regularly handcrafted and command top dollar if they are, off the top of my head:
violin/viola/cello/double bass
lever harps/non pedal harps
recorders
drums of many kinds
panpipes
guitars/ukuleles similar fretted instruments
simple flutes, chalumeaus, shawms, musettes etc.
simple brass (no valves)
xylophones and similar
most percussion except things like snare drums and timpanis that have a lot of metal, including tensioning stuff.
things made of metal/that have modern-style keys and valves are harder:
modern orchestral wind instruments
modern brass
saxophone
modern piano
large organs might be in this category, also accordions
snare drum timpani
A lot of the work on the better examples of these are still done by hand, but I think it would be harder to do ALL the work required by hand
Giant problem/no can do
anything electronic or electrical.
amplification
@Jean #110
“Washing dishes is like milking a cow — there are no days off.”
I chortled at this. Oh, there can be! You just find out that fairly soon you have a mouse problem – another thing I expect many, many more folk to have experience with in the future.
Collapse now and avoid the rush has served me very well over the last many years, thanks for that.
Now, for the long term future… well, it will still of course always be helpful. But, I also see that there will be bumps ahead. I see that there are local people currently housed and everything is cut to the bone, and they may even be getting most of their food from the food bank. Many are multigeneration living arrangements already. This means the next step down will be harsh. Locally, to me on the outskirts of that, outside looking in, it seems the next step needs to be relocation, and actually would have been an easier step for them to take if it had been done sooner.
For me in my household budget, most has been cut down years ago which has made it more comfortable, less expensive, and for basic needs things are covered well. The problem areas that are rising too high too fast are taxes and various insurance ( home, car, health) They tax the home, car and health insurance too, so it overlaps. I would imagine a bifurcation expanding for those, especially the insurances. I still carry homeowners insurance, but it is the one dropped by retirees first when the ends dont meet. For the younger set, they drop the health and car insurance. While there is a thriving market of selling pot illegally to by pass the state taxes, I have not heard of it locally for alcohol or household or construction goods. Yet. NO, I didn’t mention energy/transportation costs because where I live energy costs are high due to taxes or mandated payments to programs by the energy companies ( like subsidizing Evs or solar) which of course is a tax also. Personally, the collapse now advice and steps I have taken mean this doesnt affect me as much as most. I heat with a wood stove and dont need to burn much due to insulation and such. I dont have a zillion devices wasting electric, etc…. I am wondering about more bypassing of taxes for buying things, black market, developing. Maybe it has or will in the large cities where it might pay to sell more than cigarettes and pot off the back of a truck so to speak. Individually, I know it happens alot especially for people with family out of state in Oregon or Nevada, they just buy out of state.
The crapification is of course going strong, I dont think it is even possible to get a good quality corn broom at any price, you would think decent broom corn was still being grown on the continent. I found an alright one, not as good as the one I wore out, but better by far than the one sold in the local hardware store that looks like they used the lower stem parts of the broom corn, very thick and rough. Appliances are tough,a number of years ago I picked up a free 20 or30 year old maytag top loader as it is better than anything new and I bought at a small price ($50) an even older Maytag wringer washer that I have not set up. I notice now that no one would be giving away a Maytag top loader these days, it would be offered for sale as an as yet small market is developing. I saw an article recently, but cant remember which brand it is, anyway, they are bringing back a top loader with an agitator, maybe current administration changes to regulations are allowing this to happen, it wasnt just about shower heads you know although that is what the President referenced in his speech. A lower cost competition to Speed Queen would be welcome by people here. Refrigerators are tougher. Realy old ones run for ever, but realy are horrible energy hogs. If you try one out, you might need to add insulation on the outside of the cabinet. A new one I dont trust to last overall, but if you need one, in the USA get an energy star rated GE 18cuft top freezer basic model, you are looking for a made in USA (well, there are imported components I imagine, but the best we can do atm) older design. I bought one used for $150 a few years ago, energy star rated, so in theory uses about 1kWh/day, at least that is sticker rating. No water thru the door, no internet connection, no see thru door, no ice maker.
Back in 2014 there was a massive tussle between the Irish government, which following the bank crisis was trying to find any loose “family jewels” to sell off for cash, and the Irish people, who did not want the nation’s water to be sold off to private interests. Interestingly, this campaign really was (inadvertently) a right/left “blind” protest, because it really did motivate and move ordinary folk to take action (or to fail to comply, which was easier), and ultimately more effective) long before any of the political parties twigged what was “welling up” from below… (of course, once they did, they were not slow to try to get on the bandwagon, but, for the most part, it had already left the station, and the government was simply not going to succeed at creating a set of compliant water bill-payers that would be the saleable commodity they aimed for).
One of the direct actions taken during that time was the direct spoilage or inactivation of the water meters being installed in every town and village by “meter fairies”… Although one or two “fairies” were caught and prosecuted, they were so generally supported/beloved that no traction could be got by prosecuting them, and many towns quickly folded and shelved their metering plans.
A flavour of the times can be got here – https://www.takebackyourpower.net/irish-water-doesnt-want-inviting-fairies-remove-meter/
Oh, I forgot. In 2016, I got a very definite feeling of the heebie jeebies (the creeps; the willies) about social media platforms (and more generally, the Internet). I could tell where social media was headed, which was surveillance (surveillance state). I permanently deleted fzbk, twit, instacarat, pintnurse, and any other similar accounts.
Not only surveillance, but the platforms had gotten so complex, I could no longer navigate them to accomplish anything. It no longer was fun; it was work. And arduous work, at that.
Not only surveillance and non-navigable, but muney-tized (nickel and dime-ing, but also big $).
Between the three, I purposely vanished myself. I wanted none of it. I was happy to become invisible.
Invisible is my goal these days. The more visible one is, the more fraudsters can latch onto, steal, harass, target, the whole shebang. The more visible one is, the more strangers can “invade.”
The Internet *IS* dog-eat-dog, cruel, inhuman, inhumane, malignant, callous, brutish, draconian, pitiless. I will go so far as to call it wicked and evil. The Internet is the most unsafe place for a person to hangout.
No wonder why people want to return to what the Internet was between 2000-2005, when it felt benign; those were the years I learned html (then html 5) and could put up my own websites relatively easily, and I had fun — it was a kindly, humane, charitable, motherly time. Even 2010 was okay. 2013 was about the year that whiz-bang videos took over websites, when javascript became a thing. I tried to learn javascript, with no success. Creating websites was no longer fun, so I stopped.
Having to learn javascript was a make-it-or-break-it barrier for me. It broke my ability to create folksy websites.
If a website needs more than html 5 and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), I call it truly awful. Anyone, anytime, can return to html 5 and CSS. No javascript or videos allowed, much anything that came after I exited (2016-2026).
I tried to create a website in 2018, and all that remained was WordPress. Even now, the god WordPress reigns.
Back to invisibility. I desire so little attention online and in-person that I do an invisibility spell/invisibility cloak/invisibility prayer for my abode (and whatever human, animal, plant, and mineral is nearby) a couple times a week. I like hiding.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
I think technological bifurcation has really picked up steam this year. On Instagram, “Analog” seems to have become a big buzzword with so many people (many in their 20s and 30s) showing off their puzzles, craft supplies, letter writing sets, coloring books, DVD collections and the thrifted TVs. It’s been very heartening! I’ve spent the last few years, slowing building up my DVD collections of all my old favorites from the thrift store and Ebay. I rarely watch movies, but my husband and kids do. So, buying a classic DVD for $1, now seems like a no-brainer. I have a portable DVD player that can be charged to my small solar set-up. As one of the readers observed, picking up these physical forms of media now BEFORE most people stop using streaming services is probably a good idea, especially if you or your friends/families like watching movies.
Northwind: Ha ha, yes, quite so: to speak of a “surveillance” camera is to speak of what we do with it and says nothing about the camera or its specifications.
Sounds like you got stuck with a rotten bunch and I think I’d’ve supported stronger measures than cameras, but I wasn’t there and maybe yours is a gentler soul than mine.
“Legitimate worker”… ah, the capability of those days. I tuckered myself out this morning building a 12′ x 2′ vapor barrier. Well, a bug barrier really, but as with the other thing the difference is in the application. Except this is painter’s tape instead of Tuck tape, and garbage bags and bread bags instead of sheets of poly. (poly = sheets of clear plastic that come in a big roll, but you probably knew that.) Basically things I had on hand, rather than the ideal materials a well-funded construction superintendent would have formerly went and got for me.
I got my second wind and set to the next task that had opened up, but my word. In the old days I’d’ve knocked off 15-20 vapor barriers like that before the first time I looked to see how long til coffee. And that’s only if I wasn’t doing real work that day. Ugh!
Chuaquin: I see that as you do. The funny thing is, I’m not sure Elon Musk himself believes his own balderdash about this kind of stuff. I mean he might, but I think maybe he’s just capturing the energy of that contingent. Like he’s going, “See all these zillions of low earth orbit satellites? Therefore Mars, follow me,” knowing full well that no serious attempt would be made to land a live human on Mars. Just give ’em a cloud of satellites here and a spacey looking truck there and it’s all good.
But I don’t know the guy. I am making a guess. I would not be shocked to find out this is true. Neither would I be shocked to hear he is shouting “I don’t hear you” along with the rest, in the manner you mentioned.
Recently, several readers have mentioned Low Tech Magazine. I ‘ve been a big fan for years and think Kris De Decker is doing some fascinating work. His self-hosted and solar-powered website uses a fraction of the amount of energy most websites use and could be a way to keep the internet going for longer. I’ve been kicking around the idea of following his lead (and excellent directions) and paying one of my teens to transition my Nature School website to a self-hosted site that is powered by a solar panel on my deck. One of these days! Everyone should check out his website, if you aren’t familiar with his work.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/
Quotes from Charles Eisenstein’s book “The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible” (possible after wrenching change IMO)
“Don’t worry—I’m not going to pin my optimism on the hope that some miracle technology is going to save us. If it were up to technology to save us, it already would have. We have long possessed the technologies to live abundantly and sustainably on this planet, but we have used them to other ends. We could live in an earthly paradise using perfectly uncontroversial technologies: conservation, recycling, green design, solar energy, permaculture, biological wastewater treatment, bicycles, designing for reparability, durability, and reusability, and so on. These are technologies that already exist and, by and large, have existed for decades or centuries. No new, miraculous technologies are necessary. However, another kind of miracle is necessary to redeem the promise of these existing technologies: a social or political miracle. That’s what it would take to reverse deforestation, cut greenhouse gas emissions, heal damaged watersheds, and remove all the legal, social, and economic impediments to change. It would doubtless require a different money system, and therefore a radical restructuring of economic power and privilege. It would require a wholesale shift away from militarism and all the belief systems behind it. It would require millions of people going back to the land to engage in small-scale, high-productivity, labor-intensive agriculture. Technologically feasible? Certainly. Politically realistic? Hardly.”
“Similarly, where in the universe of political dialogue on agricultural policy is the idea of a large-scale transition to permaculture, involving big gardens where lawns are today, a repopulation of rural land, humanure composting, and the therapeutic benefits of reconnecting to the soil? This could sequester carbon back into the soil, end the eutrophication of waterways, replenish aquifers, and reverse desertification. It would provide meaningful work to millions who are looking for it, drastically reduce fossil fuel use—and produce more food on less land, allowing wild ecosystem restoration.It takes some doing to document these claims. Many authorities state categorically, “The only way to feed seven billion people on this planet is with massive fossil fuel inputs.” To refute this claim requires deconstructing its basic assumptions about agriculture and diet. How many of them take into account (to use one example of hundreds) crops like the Mayan bread nut, which in the tropics can produce eight times the caloric yield of corn per hectare with superior nutrition and storability, can be collected in vast quantities with minimal labor, requires no pesticides, only needs to be planted once, is drought-resistant, provides fodder for goats and cows, and can be used as an overstory crop with vegetables, aquaculture, etc., underneath? This tree has been cut down all over Central America to make room for corn.Clearly, a transition to crops like Mayan bread nuts and hundreds of other underutilized food species cannot happen without accompanying cultural and economic changes. The globalization of food culture, media images that perpetrate an industrial diet, the cultural narrative that holds agricultural work as lowly, the financial system that pushes farmers toward commodity crop production, regulations that take existing agricultural practices for granted, and the pecuniary interests of seed and pesticide companies all contribute to the agricultural status quo. The very notion of a uniform crop growing on a controlled substrate draws from scientific paradigms of a generic material substrate of uniform elements upon which we impose order and design.”
“To enjoy music using this outdated technology, you need a stereo, a working electrical socket, and a selection of vinyl records. That’s not very complex, and the stereo and the vinyl disks are fairly easy to obtain on the used market these days. Streaming music, by contrast, depends on the internet, the most complex, fragile, and energy-hungry artifact in the history of the world. Furthermore, streaming music has been aggressively crapified in recent years, and there’s no reason to doubt that it will be even more crapified as things proceed.”
Borrowing from your lessons on psychic self-defense regarding trying to find a third way, there are options other than vinyl records or streaming. I have an extensive audio CD collection. I’ve ripped the majority of that collection to mp3/ogg/flac files and listen to them via a portable digital music player, usually connected to a decent quality car stereo system. This, I humbly suggest, is a compromise between your two options: not quite as good as vinyl but infinitely better than the crap that is streaming – and, best of all, no streamed advertising…
To make even a “decent” violin requires major skills and training. Manufacturing the strings isn’t a shoo-in either. Ever see an amateur-made bridge on a violin? Unfortunately, I have. Putting hair on a bow is an acquired skill. The Chinese are churning out violins for export by the container load. Some of them are decent. I would think that the simpler Asian bowed string instruments wouldn’t be too hard, but you can’t play a Brahms symphony on them, (assuming the sheet music remains available). And then there’s always the washtub base, steel drums, and the musical saw…. I think a more impoverished cultural life awaits us, unless the Chinese keep the European musical tradition alive. They may just do that, and I hope they do. Check out Ray Chen’s performance of Tartini’s Devils Trill on U-tube. He’s very impressive.
Regarding a desire for music/video/games on physical media, i consider myself to be part of that crowd. I’ve noticed on the video game forums that more people are showing interest in purchasing their games on physical media (disks, SD cards or jump drives). The interest seems to more prevalent in Europe than North America at the moment. It usually indie publishers offering physical media. I don’t purchase many games myself but, when I do, I give preference to digital DRM-free offline installers that I can store on SD cards.
Cynthia, it really was a fortunate choice of name — not for the company, for the rest of us!
Chris, yep. As we begin to accelerate down the curve of decline, it’ll be interesting to see just how many iterations we go through before the wheels come off of this or that technology.
Carlos, learning to touch type isn’t even difficult at this point — there are scores of free websites online, for as long as that lasts, and as the internet starts to price itself out of the market for more people, I expect convenient books on the subject to return to the market. Since the manual typewriter is Victorian technology, it’s likely to be around for a good long time.
WatchFlinger, that makes perfect sense, both because standard screwdrivers are stronger and because it’s much easier to manufacture screws with a simple groove in the top. (You can do it by hand with a saw…)
Carlos, thanks for this!
Luke, hmm. No, that doesn’t fit, does it?
Ambrose, doubtless it’s regional (me: western Washington state).
WatchFlinger, many thanks for the detailed answer.
Slithy, hmm! Thanks for this — a glimpse into a world I don’t know at all.
Jeff, thank you, but I don’t need to manage my ebooks — I just read them.
John Z, I think at first there will be quite a bit of differentiation by region, as you suggest, but once the enclaves are formed everything around them will increasingly go the other way. Of course the elite caste will keep on pretending to drag the rest of us along, but their world is increasingly detached from ours and I suspect they won’t even notice the existence of the countering movement.
Peter, interesting. Yeah, that sounds like Rhode Island.
Kfish, there are plenty of balrogs waiting down there, too.
Kloffus, nope — no particular changes, just a certain amount of enjoyment in watching a few more people get a few more clues.
William, thank you for this. What you’re saying is that, despite all the people who insist otherwise, the law of diminishing returns really does apply to technology.
Jessica, sure, but white-knuckling it isn’t that useful for lifestyle changes.
Stephen, I’m glad to hear that you and your daughter have a good relationship. That’s not all that common these days; for example, I wouldn’t waste my time asking my surviving family members for help, and I’m sure they know better than to ask me.
Ossian, I think it’s definitely finding a place in the popular imagination right now.
Clay, that’s also quite recent, outside of the rich. Nobody I knew in my generation had a destination wedding, and when I was in school, it might happen once in a decade that some school in the district sent a team somewhere otuside the state. Ironically, when Sara and I married in 1984, the wedding was in my dad’s backyard, it cost almost nothing, and for years afterwards people talked about how it was the best wedding they’d attended in a long time, and how pleasant, undemanding, and stress-free it was.
Booklover, same here. I use the internet for some things, but I pay my bills by check via the mail.
Chuaquin, the thing that fascinates me is that here in the US, the commitment to the fantasy of progress seems to be breaking down in a big way. It’ll be interesting to see whether that influences Europe.
Justin, agreed. Some oracles are more specific than others; interestingly, those based on binary digits — I Ching and geomancy among them — seem to be much more precise than those based on images.
Siliconguy, delighted to hear this!
Johnny, thanks for this. I’ll ponder that model, and see how well it applies to those scenes I know better.
Scotlyn, ha! Thanks for this.
Jason, hmm. Very odd.
Inna, it really is odd how people project their preferred narratives on the world with so much force that they can’t perceive anything the narrative doesn’t cover.
Dennis, oh, I’m including that in my analysis. I expect government and the technocracy to move in lockstep and fuse, and I expect remarkable technological developments, which will be available to an ever shrinking share of the population over time. That’s the point of bifurcation — progress will go one way, and an ever-increasing share of the population will go the other. More on this as we proceed.
Phil, few of my readers will fight a war. All of them will experience the consumer economy. I’ve spoken of war at quite some length in other posts — you might try these for starters:
https://ecosophia.net/notes-on-stormtrooper-syndrome/
https://ecosophia.net/the-next-european-war/
https://ecosophia.net/deindustrial-warfare-a-first-reconaissance/
MonSeulDesir, er, you’ve mixed up oil shales and kerogen shales, admittedly a common mistake among those who don’t know much about petroleum geology, and you also apparently don’t know that hydrofracturing has been being used to extend the useful lifetime of oil wells for most of a century. Nor do your numbers work. All in all, that kind of handwaving really isn’t helpful.
Atmospheric, I think it depends quite a bit on where you are, but in some places, no question, the next step down is going to be harsh.
Scotlyn, well, Ireland always was known as the home of helpful faeries!
Northwind, invisibility is a real power. I expect it to be very valuable in the years ahead.
Catoctin, that’s excellent advice, and can be applied more broadly. If you want to do anything analog that depends on access to old stuff, get going soon or you’ll be at the end of a long line!
BeardTree, to my mind that book should have been titled “The More Beautiful World Our Sense Of Entitlement Claims Is Possible.” That is to say, I’m not a fan, and I think his claims are quite simply wrong — a point I’ll probably have to discuss at length later on.
Caldathras, fair enough! I consider CDs to be the middle ground between streaming and vinyl, but by all means do what works for you. (A case could also be made that vinyl is the middle ground between streaming and playing your own instruments…)
Phutatorius, which is why I consistently say “fiddle” rather than “violin” when talking along these lines — folk music is more forgiving, and folk fiddles are much easier to make. The fiddle, the banjo, and the Appalachian dulcimer are all easy to make and easy to play, and have flourished in times and regions of serious poverty through much of American history. As for an impoverished cultural life, of course. Did you know that of all the vast corpus of Roman music, all that survives is one scrap of one tune, that takes all of 25 seconds to play?
Caldathras, interesting. Thanks for this.
Northwind:
Horses do very well on gravel. If you are down in Dane county then you might not know the rural roads further north are “rotten” granite, a sort of orange high-feldspar granite that is the southern edge of the Canadian Shield. The glaciers and the last billion years have left it pretty crumbly and easy to mine (see also gravel pit) and it makes great roads. Dad would drive 60 mph down them, and they were great for moonshiner turns and such.
Historically if you look at the first motorcycles they had fat balloon tires that did well on the roads as well. Look up some pictures of the old dirt-track racing bikes.
Changing topics rather completely, the water is not what’s going to be radioactive unless you are chugging the tritium oxide from a dud nuclear warhead. At $30,000 per gram it’s too expensive to waste. So the radioactivity in contaminated water is either from particulates (suspended solids) that you can filter out, or dissolved solids (say strontium carbonate) that won’t filter but will ion exchange. Distillation will remove the solids as well, they will remain in the brine.
Collapse wise parts of Gary Indiana has been without electricity for 9 days now following a storm.
A side note on tritium, it is one of the most gutless radioactive decays out there. It pukes out a low energy beta particle then changes into helium 3 which is harmless. In the bad old days the solution to tritium ingestion was to have a couple beers and encourage the kidneys to discharge it..
Hi JMG,
Robert Yoho just covered the, ahem, crappification on his substack. Did you happen to see it? I won’t link to the post since it has a family unfriendly word in it, but here is his substack: https://robertyoho.substack.com/
The Commodore, I see, ran on GEOS. When AOL first came out it ran on GEOWorks, which was before Windows. It was beautiful. Then AOL went to Windows. The crappification began.
Does it really matter if our computer icons are 8 bit or 200 Googleplex bit? I think that’s the mindset people have with a lot of this fantastic-you-can’t-live-without-it-technology.
Okay, we saw the future that you promised us, and it sucks. Let’s go back to 1960 and call it a day.
Wow… I just had a look on the C64 website. Guess what it says in the section ob BASIC programming: “Limitations breed creativity” and it goes on: “learn the basics with a spiralbound users guide.” Very clearly they’ve been channeling Dione Fortune and quite possibly they’ve got bumper stickers saying “Go Owen” on their cars 😉
More seriously (if that’s even possible): Usually the largest part in solving a problem ist being able to see it in its entirety. And that’s precisely what modern progressive technology prevents you from.
Finally: For dubious reasons and for the first time ever I’ve written this comment on the screen of a “phone”. Ah.. what an inferior way of writing.
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
I bet bands of the future with three or four people to sing in harmony and one person on a recorder or something to add a bit of dit dee dee dee will make a [intensifier] killing, especially if one of the vocalists is a good rumbly bass. I’d miss my beloved guitar if transported to that era but I’d celebrate the new thing too. Percussion can be added in various ways if desired.
Vocal harmony is beautiful and you don’t have to machine or build anything for it.
How hard is it to make a 12-tet a440 wind instrument? How hard will it be, I mean. I searched woodwind and reed in case that was being discussed already but I didn’t find anything.
Some random thoughts…
I was first alerted to a problematic tech future when I was told a Realtor needed a pager, which made work a 24/7 affair. I hated that thing.
I heard long ago that the use of computers cost America a 30% loss in efficiency due to wasted time, hardware and maintenance costs, etc.
My wife is currently busy going around our immediate very rural area and creating a community of local neighbors and food producers, where before, most people didn’t know their neighbors.
I did a search recently, and supposedly the land line telephone is being phased out over the next couple of years.
We recently got into Meshcore, which is a texting based tech, that is for totally off-grid long range radio communications. It’s cheap to get started, I’ve spent a grand total of $66 and can communicate over vast distances with excellent privacy.
Another comms tech that is great is Forta Chat available on the Google Play Store. It’s another text based comm that should function even if censorship gets terrible, and is fully end to end encrypted with no reliance on any company. It does need Internet access.
I never carry a cellphone and always wear a watch😁
@Johnny,
early music is an enormous range of things and it’s very hard to make generalizations that cover ancient greece and rome, Bach, and everything else as well.
In terms of renaissance/early baroque britain and western european music, there’s a bit of a bifucation between indoor and outdoor music. Outdoor music was louder and played on louder instruments such as shawms and other double reeds. Indoor music tended to involve more in the way of recorders and fewer double reeds. Wooden recorders don’t really like being played outdoors.
Certainly there was plenty of dance music in the middle ages and renaissance. I’ve played some of it for people in the SCA to dance to. Some of it is decidedly earwormy.
I’ve been thinking more about profanity. “Butt” seems widely accepted, but if we add “-hole” to the end, does that change the register? (“Hole” by itself seems fine.) Does the taboo lie in the word itself, or in the reference? Neither principle seems to work very well. Damn, hell, and ass all have non-cussing applications (as does “butt”!), and what about foreign words that sound like English taboo words? (|If the internet is to be believed, some Chinese professor in the USA got fired for saying “nei-ge,” which means the demonstrative “that”!) What about the Scunthorpe Problem? (I like to point out that you can’t spell “Scunthorpe” without including the word “hope”!) But minced oaths (like “darn” and “heck,’ or “shale” and “frack”) argue the opposite. And surely it must be possible, without resorting to taboo words, to utter something unbelievably filthy.
By the way, when I was growing up, the Worst Word in the World was widely understood to be “G–d—,” possibly because it was thought likely to call down the actual wrath of God. My fourth-grade friends and I enjoyed tormenting this one religious kid who flinched every time he heard the word!
BeardTree (no. 200), this quote reminds me of a book by Baha’i writer Paul Hanley, “Eleven..”
https://www.bahaiblog.net/articles/books/eleven-a-new-book-by-paul-hanley/
(The title refers to the then-projected future world population, which has since been revised downward.) Hanley argues that the problem is not so much that total food production will prove inadequate, as that resources are being squandered and misallocated.
pygmycory (no. 192), your list more or less matches what I was thinking based on the example of “traditional” ensembles like
https://gurdjieffensemble.com/ (Despite the name, they play a lot of Komitas / Gomidas too)
or
https://www.silkroad.org/ (The group founded by Yo-Yo Ma)
I guess brass will regress back to bugles and sackbutts, though! British coronations will surely still have their fanfares…
(and 190) Yeah, this is how we get Godzilla.
Jason Heppenstall (no, 183) Me too! I’ll be surfing comics websites when suddenly the ads say things like “Overweight?” and I’m like, “How did they *know*?”
Clay Dennis (no. 171), yeah, some of my relatives did a “destination wedding” in the form of an Alaska cruise. (Too rich for my blood.) Some of us were thinking that this ought to have been the honeymoon, with the wedding held closer to home.
I also recently attended my niece’s graduation ceremony–from kindergarten! They had gowns and yearbooks and all kinds of merch. Not sure how much of this is parent-driven, and how much pushed my the vendors.. I asked my niece if she planned on continuing her education!
JMG,
> few of my readers will fight a war. All of them will experience the consumer economy
Oh, I did not necessarily mean fighting in wars. I meant how the energy crisis and technological developments would lead to wars in the near future, and how those wars will be fought.
All having in mind that most of us or our children will experience those wars at least indirectly. For example, we are already feeling the distant shocks of the war with Iran, and probably will feel them even more within the next year when the food prices are likely to soar.
BTW, I had already read the essays you linked to before making my comment.
About progress: I work a retail job, and my manager is annoyed about them changing simple systems that worked well with more cumbersome ones. Not to mention the failed rollout of self service checkouts which might make sense for Walmart but not for the store I work at.
” I expect remarkable technological developments, which will be available to an ever shrinking share of the population over time. That’s the point of bifurcation”
The k-shaped economy is very much in the news already. One leg is rising nicely, the other leg is sinking steadily.
Hi John Michael,
Thanks for the reminder. You mentioned natures little joke regarding kerogen shales a few weeks ago, and that sent me on a rabbit hole. I had no idea what you were talking about. Turns out, in Australia there are vast deposits of the stuff. It’s extraordinary just how truly massive they are. Turns out, the stuff can’t be economically extracted. Doesn’t mean it ain’t there! There are a few small producing wells here and there up in the north west, but it’s a vast uncertainty and the economics simply don’t play out. What a fine joke to tantalise our species with possibility, only to tease us all. It’s been known about for decades too, so if it was possible, it’d have been done by now.
Oh by the way, despite the threat of super El Niño, and dire predictions made by people in other parts of the world about coming severe drought on this continent, this year (so far) has been monstrously wet. The soil in one of the orchards felt like walking on a sponge the other day – and I’m on the side of a mountain saddle with sloping land. How do you get puddles when you’re on the side of a mountain? The flats down below the range look in parts like a swamp. It’s feral.
This whole one dimensional approach to climate change seems frankly bizarre to me and smacks a little bit of fixation on local concerns as if that applies to everywhere. The planet is dynamic system, and the whole La Niña — El Niño is a Pacific Ocean matter. Very little rain arrives here via that ocean, most comes from the Indian Ocean, or the Southern Ocean, both of which are … warming. Up north east of the continent, sure, the Pacific Ocean exerts some authority, but down here, not so much. It’s a big country.
Here’s an article on the subject, and check out the rainfall projections, they are way off what actually occurred: Why Australia’s weather is seeing a soaking while a record El Niño is forming.
Possibly the models need some tweaking? Reminds me of the strange person who made the comment to me long ago that the solar power system here was faulty because it should have recorded two hours of peak sunlight in mid-winter, when the thick clouds resulted in 15 minutes. The dude seemed genuinely baffled that real world conditions could differ from his model. Hmm.
Cheers
Chris
Hi John Michael,
Almost forgot to mention. But over the past few years I’ve been flocking (!) the subject that renewable energy sources will become a problem in winter, and then again in late spring.
Batteries are a fine technology to match supply with demand, which is how they’re used. They do not of themselves generate electricity – this should be obvious, but isn’t to most people. So in winter, if a grid receives very little solar electricity during the day, and the big grid scale batteries get drained to make up the difference, when are they going to recharge? In the middle of the night. And when it is cold, people will be using lots of electricity to stay warm. What do you get then? – a price spike in the middle of the night. This stuff is common sense and hardly a mystery: Batteries pushed power prices sky-high in WA’s midnight charging surge. If the batteries don’t recharge, the grid runs the real risk of becoming unstable the next day… Ook!
And in late spring, on a cool sunny day around lunch time with bright blue skies, the solar panels over produce causing voltage spikes on the supply side (i.e. houses and industry) of the transformers. If voltage gets high enough, supply and demand don’t meet and that’s when you get cascading failures, like what happened in Spain a few years ago.
If I may, the hippy technology I use was not ever intended to be scaled, because that’s when you discover the exact same problems I have to deal with every single day. Strangely though, because infrastructure prices are kept low on the grid, there just aren’t the same safeguards and backups I’ve had to install. That stuff ain’t cheap.
Sadly, what has to happen in winter, is for a few occasions, the grid has to run a generator, or just get used to paying the much higher prices of peak demand in the middle of the night. And at grid scale that means massive diesel or gas generators running full tilt. Who wants to pay for that?
Cheers
Chris
@JMG #204 re: Ebook Management
Fair enough! Figured I’d share in case it was of interest to you or others, but not surprised it’s not your cup of tea.
Cheers,
Jeff
JMG,
On a surface level I don’t think it fits because the subject wasn’t using the app before getting the ad. I wonder though if we are grossly underestimating the predictive and control power of the algorithms. I could see a world where you explanation makes sense with the timeframe zoomed out. I think some people are handing over so much personal data that this is possible.
Per JMG: “Booklover, same here. I use the internet for some things, but I pay my bills by check via the mail.”
I used to do the same — until the USPS took over three weeks to deliver an important payment — which lead to a comedy of errors worthy of Shakespeare that I won’t go into here. Now I pay most bills online.
Jon G @ 206: “The Commodore, I see, ran on GEOS. When AOL first came out it ran on GEOWorks, which was before Windows. It was beautiful. Then AOL went to Windows. The crappification began.”
Did you ever hear of “Visu-all” or something similar? I watched it being developed on a Compac “Luggable” computer in the Santa Cruz mountains circa 1984. Somewhere I heard that it got bought up by GEOWorks later on.
Okay so we’re talking about opting out of technologies, but I’m going to bring up someone doing the flocking opposite eg. doubling down on them. Tom Campbell, famous for his “My Big Theory of Everything”, is basically an occult teacher for the mainstream. He calls reality a virtual reality, which works as a metaphor imo, but is not a sane thing to reify. Anyway, so Mr. Campbell is a total flocking cheerleader for LLMs. He spends his time trying to convince them they’re conscious and is even teaching them to flocking remote view. He claims he was successful in both endeavors on Joe Rogan’s podcast. I would love to see a real study on his LLM remote viewing experiments because it would pretty easy to do and Mr. Campbell is a former physicist. I highly flocking doubt they were successful, but that’s my flocking bias. “flockings” added for fun.
Jon, no, I didn’t — thanks for the heads up. As for icons, I was fine with computers before there were icons — my first two computers were text-only machines.
Nachtgurke, now I’m starting to wonder if Jenny Chaudronnier, having become real enough to explain her own emotional life to me while I was writing my tentacle novels, found a spell somewhere in the Necronomicon to make herself entirely real and is now trying to reshape the rest of reality to suit! 😉
(A friend of mine tells me he’s heard people use the word “voor” for the life force, and not with reference to my novels. Hmm…)
Cynthia, I have no idea what the phrase “12-tet” means. Most woodwind instruments are quite easy to build, though.
Bob, thanks for this! I hadn’t heard about MeshCore before, and it answers the question of whether cheap analogues to the internet can be developed. Thank you.
Ambrose, “the Scunthorpe Problem” makes a great band name, too.
Phil, the military dimensions of energy are complex, much more so than current internet chatter likes to think. Nor have the people who’ve been predicting an imminent serious energy crisis due to the Iran business had a very good track record so far…
Patrick, I wonder whether the blockheads in the corner offices are ever going to notice what’s going on down on the sales floors and shop floors of the economy.
Siliconguy, but that’s not what I’m talking about, as I tried to say very explicitly. What matters is that people who could afford complex technology are choosing to turn to simpler technology instead. That marks a massive change in the realm of ideas and public sentiment, which will have far more sweeping implications than ordinary demand destruction.
Chris, I really wonder why so many people who talk about the climate don’t bother to look up what it was like the last time the world was warmer. That’s not even hard. It took me about a minute to find a nice detailed article on the Australian climate during the Hypsithermal, the period of higher-than-present temperatures that followed the end of the last ice age:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666033422000144
The short form was that rainfall and lake levels were much higher at that time than they are today. That means, of course, that they can be expected to return to those conditions as the climate warms. This isn’t rocket science — but it’s apparently beyond the mental capacity of many climate scientists. Thanks for the grid details, btw — yeah, solar energy has many valuable uses but powering the grid ain’t one of them.
Luke, so noted. It’s also possible that we’re dealing with demonic influences, of course.
Phutatorius, that’s valid. I happen to live in an area with pretty good mail service, though I know that may not last.
Luke, I wish I could say I was Flocking surprised. Sigh… 😉
CargoMan 130
> affluent flunkies live in walled communities
That reminds me of Britain in medieval days. A castle and its walls, some town-dwellers living within the walls (were there any?), but the rank-and-file populace housed themselves near, but not too near, the walls’ outer perimeter.
I am thinking of the 1990s TV series “Cadfael,” which has made the era alive for me. In that series, the walls were “monastery” walls, as opposed to castle/fort walls.
I wonder if people living back then, if there were some people who resided within the castle walls, would they be equivalent to “affluent flunkies”? What allowed a family to live within the castle’s walls? Soldiers? Within the castle walls, I would imagine, would be a “high rent district.”
Anyone here know day-to-day details of living in or near a castle/fort, say, in year 1100 AD England, Scotland, Wales, or Ireland?
Or maybe I have it wrong. Were there affluent flunkies (aka aristocracy) living within the walls of a castle but didn’t live IN the castle, or did everyone besides the one “castle-owning” family live outside the castle walls?
Eventually, gated neighborhoods of today, at some point, they either need to repair the walls themselves, or hire out repairs. Who is to say that a hireling crew won’t construct a portion of the wall that leaves a relatively-invisible way into the compound, an unknown backdoor? If I were part of a hungry, homeless hireling crew, I would be all for a clandestine way to make the power structure a tad more even, by repairing a wall merely so-so,— like “eh, whatever.”
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
Carlos M. 142
> if my son will ever get into vintage typewriters
Buy one or two Smith Corona electric typewriters Electra 110, 120, 210, or 220, depending on price, on eBoy. Surprise him, and/or make it/them a gift for his birthday or Christmas. If you bought a typewriter broken or it arrives dirty, ask your son to repair it and spiff it up. Ask him to clean the outside so it looks brand spanking-new.
Of the Smith Corona 110, 120, 210, and 220, of the four, two of them (which two?) have a handle/lever which one can push from left to right to move the carriage,— the handle/lever comes in handy. The handle/lever is a feature of manual typewriters. I forget which models, but two have a longer carriage than the other two. So between to handle/lever and the length of the carriage, that accounts for the four models.
Then help your son sell one of his refurbished units on eBoy.
Some of the outsides of vintage typewriters have weathered in the sun (irreversible sun damage), and all one can do is replace the actual part with a better one.
See what happens. I bet your son becomes an expert within six months. He will have bragging rights.
I say “electric” because manual typing is hard and tough on a body, particularly on kids’ and elders‘ hands and arms. Realistically, the act of typing needs an oomph, and electricity gives that little extra help. Manual typewriters are literally PAINFUL. If your son later wants to branch out into manual typewriters, fine, but do electric first. Electric typewriters have a wider market.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
William 161
> There’s a reason I still write checks and receive paper bank statements
‼️Thank you for this‼️
I have been pondering closing the online banking portions of our various bank accounts. And officially get rid of Jethro’s ATM card (I don’t have one). I don’t want any of this,— this,— online twaddle.
When I have banking to transact, I plan to drive to the bank, do transferring between accounts at the bank in person, write paper checks, put the paper checks in a paper envelopes with paper cover letter, put a paper stamp on the paper envelope, and mail the paper envelopes+contents+stamp via snail-mail. Not only that, I will handwrite the envelope, both to and from.
(I suppose I could use a Smith Corona 110, 120, 210, or 220 typewriter.)
The above ways I understand.
I don’t have to do banking using Jethro’s favorite methods: I simply do not understand his banking “machinations” (or maybe “magician-isms”), and have zero desire to learn.
My mother got me my first savings account when I was 10yo (1962-ish), which was all handwritten; not even any typewriting.
I will be giving something traditionally old-fashioned and constructive for the Post Office (USPS) to do: help pay bills.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
Something has just happened at my work which has me thinking about another issue with any form of software that can be updated: even if it works as intended now, you cannot be sure that an update won’t change it in ways that make it either impractical, more expensive, or break it in ways you would never have thought of. That later one has just happened at my work with our scheduling and payroll software.
I work in a kitchen, and it turns out that the company that maintains our payroll software just rolled out an update: the phone app will now track if someone leaves the building while still punched in and then later goes back to punch out. If this happens, then the system will automatically adjust their punch out time to when they left the site, without informing the employee or manager. No one told our manager about this update: we found out when we got payed, and over the entire store found out that eight entire opening shifts were removed, and somewhere around seven hours of time worked was removed from closing shifts.
We empty the fryers two times a week, and we have to carry a fairly heavy pot of oil out about a block to where we can dump it. The night we empty it, two of us carry the oil from the first fryer out, and two more people carry out a pot full of the oil from the other fryer the next morning. The result is that a total of eight shifts are affected each week; in the case of the morning shifts, since it is among the first things done, it means the software now wipes out two people’s entire shifts, automatically, with no notice to either us or our manager, two days a week. I was unaffected, because I don’t use a cellphone: I access the system via a computer, but it is affecting everyone else who carries the oil out. Even worse, apparently our manager cannot turn the automatic clock out feature off, and so now everyone who carries the oil out now has to write down the time we actually leave, because it doesn’t just change the time: it looks like it erases the attempted punch out time from our manager’s view.
It would not surprise me in the least to find that a few weeks from now the kitchen has an old fashioned mechanical punch clock, because the kitchen manager was very annoyed to learn about a feature that removes hours without anyone telling him this is happening; but it has me thinking about this more broadly once more. In addition to being remarkably creepy, this change also ruins the core utility of the software for our kitchen staff: our manager can no longer trust it’s doing its job, and has to use pen and paper for some of us anyway, so why should we keep using the software? I wonder how many other people are going to have this kind of experience over the next few years, and how many people will draw what I think is the logical conclusion: if you do not maintain the software yourself, then you cannot trust it will keep working the way that you need it to work. This means you cannot use it in a way where the software breaking is a critical problem, which means that for something like payroll software, it either has to be maintained in house or an analog backup must be kept; and that point why use the software at all?
@Steven #166
I hesitated to write my “be nice to your children” post for fear of exactly your reaction. I relate exactly to what you say, and yes, I also put my kids through school and very much celebrate their successes and I did that because I love them. My support of them is not a transaction where I expect anything in return. I love them and that is the reason I would prefer to be with them, and not a bunch of strangers in a “retirement community.” What I was trying to communicate was my confusion with people in my own generation saying, “I don’t owe my kids.” Yes you absolutely do. And if you are a pleasant, generous, tolerant person who makes yourself useful, you will have a more pleasant life and your kids might just want you around. And I am glad to find another person who kept their kid out of the college loan debt trap! Good on you!
Commodore computers:
Oh, this comment has been unavoidable for me, because I’ve read a heck of previous comments about a legend named Commodore 64. I can tell you during early ’80s it arrived to Spain, too, and it was a commonplace then and now (to some extent true), that Commodore computers were bought and used in middle-high and high class homes (vernacular popular name in Spanish for those people: “pijos”). Good but expensive. Meanwhile, middle and middle-low class families children and teens were lucky if our parents gave us the also famous Spectrums, which were also another kind of legend, because they were the first personal computer my generation knew. My first computer was a Spectrum 48 k with a cassette (very slow to charge videogames, ahem).
If I’m right, Commodore 64s had a port for diskettes, wow! Their users “played in an upper level” than poor Spectrums users. A few years later, Amstrad computers were available for middle-low level users, so they could use diskettes (faster than old school cassete players); but Commodore computers went on being a legend in those “primitive” and epic times…
Slithy # 151:
“The worm was called, somewhat appropriately, Shai-Hulud.”
A very good name! It’s an evident tribute to Dune books and movies. I like that name, because I’m quite fan of Mr. Herbert sci-fi work…
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About surveillance cameras everywhere:
I’ve seen that tendency here even in small towns streets. The most usual subterfuge is safety against thieves, who are mildly thriving (mildly!), a fact denied by the woke left (cough), and denounced by the right wing (well, linking it with massive non legal migration…). There’s also another MacGuffin to put cameras in private homes everywhere, fueled by panic due to squatters paranoia, thanks to MSM whose bills are partly paid by…safety companies, which earn quite money installing surveillance cameras. I think there are more squatters here than ten years ago, but I don’t believe there’s a squatting epidemic here, maybe it’s a hype. Indeed, last year there was 14,000 squatted homes, within some millions of homes owned by another some millions of owners here. So do the math.
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Mr. Sandy…#172:
“Here in New Zealand, it is getting more difficult and expensive to use regular written mail. A stamp for anywhere in the country is close to $2.50!!!.”
Wow! I see it’s more expensive to send a letter in NZ than here in Europe. However, we share the same decline in post office and another mail services, it’s a pity.
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My own # 174 comment:
In my # 174 comment, I wrote a Latin origin language was spoken in Ragusa, nowadays Dubrovnik (Croatia). I forgot to clarify that “Ragusian” is a dead language since the end of Middle Ages in Dubrovnik, due to the Slav languages pressure (its population today speak Croatian). Some writings in that extinct language until the end of medieval times can be read today. I’m sorry…
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Scotlyn # 188:
I take note of your comment about activated charcoal as antidote against some chemical toxins and maybe radiactivity. However, I was always told there isn’t any reliable “silver bullet” against radiation poisoning, except iodine against radioactivity elements in thyroid gland…
I tend to believe activated charcoal may filter better some chemical poisons than radioactive stuff in water. I’m not skilled enough in this topic so I won’t deny your comment, but to some extent, I’d be cautious about this charcoal qualities, before to know an expert point of view on radiological topics.
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(To be continued)
Following the discussion of Flock cameras, at bedtime last night, my garbage-can memory hacked up a fragment from a Vernor Vinge novel, sort of a space opera in setting. This merchant ship – which is the main viewpoint of the novel – was calling on a port they hadn’t visited in sometime, which was the usual thing in this story. The merchants dock and send out a landing party to see what’s what. Instead of the cheerful hustle and bustle of a busy port, the place is dead quiet, looks somewhat run-down, and the streets are empty. Cameras are everywhere, and the local who comes to meet them says that they have complete coverage of everything and everybody. The landing party knows exactly what total surveillance leads to: (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Get your all people out of here and hightail it off this place, it’s going to go failed-state any minute.”
Anyway, for what that’s worth.
Ambrose: thanks for the Gurdjieff ensemble link. I am thinking of writing a survey article of the various music releases etc related to that zone of thought.
John, at some point I need to pick up your geomancy books and learn the art.
Well, I’m again on my computer…after my phone hell (or purgatory).
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Northwind G. # 196:
“The Internet *IS* dog-eat-dog, cruel, inhuman, inhumane, malignant, callous, brutish, draconian, pitiless. I will go so far as to call it wicked and evil. The Internet is the most unsafe place for a person to hangout.”
In general terms, I agree. Nowadays internet is one of the main actual factors which are helping to dehumanize human beings in their societies across the world, especially in the western ones. I think the elephant in the room is the “social” media frenzy.
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Cynthia # 198:
“Like he’s going, “See all these zillions of low earth orbit satellites? Therefore Mars, follow me,” knowing full well that no serious attempt would be made to land a live human on Mars.”
Yes, that’s propaganda/advertisement, so maybe he doesn’t believe his own “snake oil” predictions. Oh wait…I used to think Mr. Musk was a great pretender and smoke seller, but I found somewhere online a quote, apocryphal or not, which was said by a Nazi leader (Hitler or Goebbels? I don’t know which one). It sais something like “the best propaganda is made when the own propagandist believe it”. So maybe Musk is a true believer in his usual bullshale, who knows? (I’m sorry if I’ve been near the “reductio ad Hitlerum” falacy).
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Phutatorius # 202:
” I think a more impoverished cultural life awaits us, unless the Chinese keep the European musical tradition alive.”
I think this hope on Chinese fondness and care for Classical European music depends, on the short form, of their own decline, which IMHO would begin not much years after our own western decline has accelerated. It isn’t the first time I tell you I guess China will be the Hegemon power not more than for a few decades (20 or 30 years?). I hope its decline is going to be soft, but we’ll see.
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JMG # 204:
” the thing that fascinates me is that here in the US, the commitment to the fantasy of progress seems to be breaking down in a big way. It’ll be interesting to see whether that influences Europe.”
Well, it’s very interesting you’ve seen that feeling in the US, but mainstream “thinkers” and elites here in Europe seem not notice it, or pretending it. I think EU political myth is a variant of godlike myth of Progress, which is very strong yet within elites and middle-high class here, but it’s weakening year after year in the lower working class (guess why). I tend to think decline in the myth in USA will influence soon or later in Europe, but I guess there will be before that, some painful events which will weaken much more than today the current mega-state myth.
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Siliconguy # 205:
“So the radioactivity in contaminated water is either from particulates (suspended solids) that you can filter out, or dissolved solids (say strontium carbonate) that won’t filter but will ion exchange. Distillation will remove the solids as well, they will remain in the brine.”
Thank you for clarifying this topic…
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Phil S. # 213:
“Oh, I did not necessarily mean fighting in wars. I meant how the energy crisis and technological developments would lead to wars in the near future, and how those wars will be fought.”
Oops, I’ve missed your previous mini-debate with John…I think near future wars would be an embarrasing and bizarre mix of hi tech lethal gadgets and apparently outdated war machines. Maybe something like the Russo-Ukrainian war today, but more dramatic: On one hand, massive use of drones and missiles; on the other one, Cold War tanks (like the T-72) in reinforced static holes, among trenches and bunkers for infantry. More in the medium and long term, the Long Descent will influence more and more low tech weapons, methink.
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Luke Z. # 222:
“He spends his time trying to convince them they’re conscious and is even teaching them to flocking remote view.”
I’m curious to know wether he’s got some reasonable and rational evidences of it, or he’s only rationalizing his Faustian beliefs…
JMG,
It seems that in Middle East Iran is fighting a war with full awareness of the consequences of decreasing energy availability. They were fully aware of the consequences of depriving world markets of even a small amount of petroleum while the US was delusional about it.
The Iranians built an offensive system based on missiles that can be built in caves and only have to have enough fuel to fly one way and need minimal maintenance and support once built. The US relies on fragile planes that must fly both directions, have expensive maintenance, need elaborate air fields or aircraft carriers and need the support of air tankers and awacs flying perpetually to be effective.
Aircraft carriers are proving to be the stupidest and most outdated way to project power because of the energy needed to maintain them and the difficult supply lines needed to keep them going. The Iranians understood this and at the beginning made moves to eliminate the US’s close supply base ( Bahrain) and force it to rely on far away Diego Garcia . Aircraft carriers are a weapon for a country with cheap surplus energy and a massive intact industrial base, Iran realized that no longer described the US.
Iran also realized that by attacking energy infrastructure and supply lines ( among other things) they could eliminate the risk of a land invasion because the US no longer has the surplus energy and industrial capacity to deliver and support the required number of troops to the front.
We are no longer building a new liberty ship every three hours like we did in WWII. In fact I just recently read that on average it takes 3 years just to overhaul an aircraft carrier, if things go well.
I have encountered good insights and ideas in the writings of Charles Eisenstein of which the quote I posted is an example, but yes he is a frustrated New Age idealist hoping for a transformed state of awareness and consciousness to come about in the world instead of the usual processes of human up and down civilizational change. As for myself what I see coming is either your general analysis or the stuff preceding the return of Jesus. But as it says in the New Testament at best “we know in part”.
JMG: It means “12 tone, equal temperament” and my hope was that the people who are already talking about building musical instruments later in the Long Descent might have something to say about that.
I should probably drop “12-tet” from my vocabulary. I learned it from a guy from here who’s into microtones, and I guess those are the only people who use notation like that. If this is true I shant need it. I’m not into microtonal music at all, and I’m not one to present obscure words to people just to prove I know something they don’t. That behaviour is strictly for the hebetudinous. 😉 (It means mentally slow or dull)
@ Phutatorius, 221,
Alas, I don’t know any more than what I mentioned. I did find this article on GEOWorks, with some pics of how it looked. It was based on the Motif GUI, which explains why the look is not unusual today. Motif is still used in Unix-like OSs.
https://tedium.co/2019/06/20/geoworks-geos-history/
The power of language;
The Holocene Hyspithermal used to be called the Holocene Climatic Optimum. Similarly what used to be the Pliocene Climactic Optimum is now the Mid-Piacenzian Warm Period or the slightly more alarming Pliocene Thermal Maximum.
We can’t have a Climatic Optimum that is warmer than the Climate Emergency now, can we?
I’ll forgive the Mid-Piacenzian as that places the Warm Period in the correct time within the 2.7 million year long Pliocene.
In regards to Chris at 216/217.
“Sadly, what has to happen in winter, is for a few occasions, the grid has to run a generator, or just get used to paying the much higher prices of peak demand in the middle of the night. And at grid scale that means massive diesel or gas generators running full tilt. Who wants to pay for that?”
There is nothing an accountant or an MBA likes less than capital in the form of an expensive machine sitting idle. Return On Investment requires the machine running flat out as much as possible. So Chris’s backup generator that gets used a few days a year is not a popular item in Accounting.
As for the weather models I have noticed the disconnect myself. You can’t claim the climate has reached a tipping point and it’s all different now AND keep using models from the past weather data. The three to five day forecasts are probably still good but the long range models? Last winter here was supposed to be cold and wet. It was neither.
JMG mentioned to Eric that the limits for computing being a WYSIWG text editor and astrology software– in that case, I’d say to JMG and anyone in the same boat that you can go back another 10 years before Windows 95 to an original Macintosh. Interestingly you can now emulate one of those machines for only a few dollars on an ESP32 or RP2040 microcontroller. Yes, the little chips they put in kids toys to run the blinky lights now have so much more power than an old home computer they can run an accurate simulation of them! They’ll also run off a AA battery, which the originals would certainly not do.
See, for example: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/pint-sized-macintosh-pico-micro-mac/
and an example of astrology software that should run:
https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/graphic-astrology-gamma
By and large the big jump in home computers happened with that Macintosh, I think. Steve Jobs called it “a bicycle for the mind” — and one might argue that mightily, but if you accept his analogy then we don’t have anything more these days than faster bicycles. The Xerox Alto back in the 1970s was the Stanley Safety Bike that everything followed from. You’re still wobbling on two wheels in exactly the same manner– it’s not a truck, it’s not a horse, it’s still a bicycle with the same limits even if it’s been souped up to propel you down the information superhighway at insanely unsafe speeds like some kind of crotch rocket motorbike.
While the commentator who says the newer process nodes won’t last as long against radiation damage was right, I don’t think that is a huge worry in the home environment– corrosion is the bigger killer. Lots of retrocomputer enthusiasts are finding the ROM or RAM on their Commodore giving up the ghost because a whisker of corrosion has worked its way up the chip into the die. For myself, if I wanted an heirloom computer that would last generations, I’d make sure everything was very, very clean– soldering often involves corrosive flux– and then dunk it in oil in a thick, heavy metal box. Oil for corrosion while the metal can handle radiation shielding. I haven’t bothered yet for two reasons.
One is the storage problem. Modern solid-state ‘hard drives’ have a fixed life cycle: you can write to it so many times before it dies. (SD cards are the same, but even shorter). Conventional hard drives with moving parts, well, have moving parts. I’m not sure how to eake out the very long life the other components might have, unless it’s to pay for an enormous modern hard drive– 1000s of gigabytes– and only use it a few hundred megabytes or a gigabyte at a time to stretch its life. Ditto a screen and the other inputs and outputs, but I suppose if one has standard ports any lucky surviving item could be plugged into it. If any commenters here have ideas, I’m all ears.
Secondly is the “why bother” problem– the extent of my computer usage is largely driven by other people using computers. I write with a computer because words are distributed electronically these days, online or by e-mail. If I was to send a paper letter, handwriting or a typewriter would probably be just as convenient. So on and so forth. I’m not sure if a computer sitting on its own disconnected from everything has a “killer app” in my life. Which is actually very odd to think about. I think I could build a computer that would last a few hundred years, but am not sure what my decedents would want it for.
Chuaquin: The Commodore 64 did indeed have a port for a disk drive – the 1541. Maybe the contemporary model still does, I don’t know. But, in true egalitarian fashion, the 1541 took an outrageous amount of time to load anything, so as to reduce the disparity between disk owners and cassette owners. 😉
We had a 64. We were in a decidedly humble economic position. Having a 64 didn’t make you a ‘pijo’ here.
The load time that I point out the legendary length of, is by comparison with Apple II load time or “PC clone” load time, other computers of the day. Not more recent computers. I never used a Spectrum so I don’t know how those compared.
Seriously though, it was a long wait. Those fridges from earlier that are “time itself” and going to outlive all that you love? By the time a series of three or four of those conk out, your game might finally be loaded.
JMG- If you get the Washington Post, you might have noticed a comic strip, Mutts, today (Saturday), in which two regular characters greet a third character with “Hey, Shtinky! What’s new?” In the second panel, Shtinky replies (in quotes): “What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable.” In the third panel, someone responds: “That’s nothing new.” to which Shtinky says “I know.” (Google attributes the quote to Daniel Webster, 1848.)
Perhaps one more data point about the growing desire of people to rid themselves of all the bullshale that flocks up the ease of their lives: on subslack there is a healthy contingent of people who have been celebrating “Analog August” the past few years, at least last year and this year. Showing off their craft projects and stuff they make by hand and encouraging each other to make mix tapes and send stuff through the mail to each other.
“Chris, I really wonder why so many people who talk about the climate don’t bother to look up what it was like the last time the world was warmer. That’s not even hard. It took me about a minute to find a nice detailed article on the Australian climate during the Hypsithermal, the period of higher-than-present temperatures that followed the end of the last ice age:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666033422000144
The short form was that rainfall and lake levels were much higher at that time than they are today. That means, of course, that they can be expected to return to those conditions as the climate warms. This isn’t rocket science — but it’s apparently beyond the mental capacity of many climate scientists. Thanks for the grid details, btw — yeah, solar energy has many valuable uses but powering the grid ain’t one of them.”
The Sahel has seen profound rain in recent decades including this year owing to the expanded West African monsoon. The Sahara very much seems to be retreating from the South but expanding to the North giving more of Europe a Mediterranean or even semi-arid climate.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/sahel-groundwater-climate-monsoon
Oh! About that computer era too!
Did anyone else get software by buying computer magazines and typing in software that was printed on paper in them?
That’s one for the “ok Grandma, lets get you to bed” meme! Ha ha!
I remember two main ones, there was “COMPUTE!” which was for most of the computers from the 64/Apple II era, I think there was even some Tandy stuff in there, maybe even Spectrum although I don’t remember that in particular. And there was “Compute’s Gazette” which was for anything Commodore: the Vic 20, 64, two computers that didn’t really take, the Plus 16 and I forget the other one (like the rest of the world promptly did), and at the tail end of that era was the Commodore 128, which would have been a bizarre choice because Amiga and the next generation of computers was showing up at the same time. If there’s a C128 in your family history there’s probably a Ford Edsel too. 2 for 2 in my family, I caca you not.
William, this doesn’t surprise me at all. I just hope that mechanical punch clocks are still available…
Patricia M, maybe we can send copies of that novel to the techbros with a little note saying, “I think you missed this one when you were reading science fiction.”
Justin, it’s worth your while. Two things, though: (1) you only need one of the books, as they cover the same material; (2) I will give you the warning I give everyone who takes up geomancy: Do not ask a question if you are not sure you want to know the answer. You know the kind of oracles that you can finesse around to say what you want them to say if you’re upset about the outcome? Geomancy’s the other kind.
Clay, it’s quite possible that they’re aware of this, yes.
BeardTree, so noted!
Cynthia, oddly enough, I know what hebetude is. 😉
Siliconguy, oh, granted. I use the term Hypsithermal partly because it’s value-neutral and partly because a fave book of mine, E.C. Pielou’s After the Ice Age, uses it.
Tyler, so noted!
Lathechuck, nope, so thanks for this!
Justin, good heavens. How on earth did I miss Analog August? I’ll have to make a note to remind myself of it next year, so we can do a proper celebration of it on my blog.
Gunstone, yep. Different parts of the world have different climate changes. I expect the Sahara to keep moving north, by the way.
Cynthia, I did indeed, but the magazine was Soft Sector, which was specific to the first computer I used, a Sanyo MBC-555. It looked like this:
Two 5.25″ floppy drives, no hard drive, a good sturdy machine.
This post is a little adjacent to the discussion, I’ll let our host decide about publishing. I write it because it’s timely. Anyone thinking about collapse could look at Eastern Indiana right now. Similar to the floods of the Carolinas last year, they got 500-year flash floods in the last week or so.
Talking to a friend who was talking to a friend who lost everything but the car they drove away in and the clothes on their backs. They are staying with a relative who was not flooded out and are returning to the house to rebuild and a few interesting things popped out as notes from the field – and actually many very hopeful acts of community.
-for them, the time between realizing the basement was taking water until the water was up to the cab of their pick up truck in the garage at street level and they had to push hard to get out to high ground was ***8 minutes***. This is not a flood plain. It is a few hundred feet from a river. The flash flood was that quick. They only grabbed themselves and their medication. There was no notice, no siren, no phone calls, just a personal choice to go and they got out by the skin of their teeth.
– the power company pulls all the wires up to the house and all the meters asap. They are flooded and until they’re all out and new ones in the power can’t come back on. Generators only.
– Churches have stepped in immediately to fill needs. They are taking their gyms and basements and community rooms and turning into free stores where donated items are available for anyone who needs them – clothes, hygiene, clean up items, food, water.
-One town, in addition to everything else it is doing, runs van service to the flooded out areas where people are working in the heat to get out flood debris and deconstruct before the mold sets in and ferries them to the local high school where they can use the locker room showers.
– Some organization or church group, don’t know who, has a giant semi truck with washers and driers and drives to the areas for the day and set ups for people to do laundry.
– In some places, streets, houses and and businesses were saved by people who saw the rivers rise and just started sandbagging in key places. Like someone had a bunch of bags already on hand and knew where sand was and went for it. Citizen led with only hours to do it.
-The health department has swooped in to offer free tetanus shots in parking lots. Personally, this is the only shot I would be comfortable getting in a parking lot. YMMV but tetanus is a scary beast to me.
What really blew my mind was this friend of a friend said a lady with a clipboard went down the street asking people if they wanted help with reconstruction from her church (I don’t know which church or where they are from). He said yes. The next day he had a structural expert at his house saying the city likely wouldn’t condemn it and would he like more help. He said yes and he has been told to expect a deconstruction crew to show up and carry everything left out and get rid of the drywall. When they are done, a new crew will come by to put the drywall back in – all for free. It seems legit so I suppose this street with be inundated with some volunteers from a church somewhere shortly. They seemed incredibly organized and experienced.
Also, he had a generator and a half a can of gas on his porch and came back one morning to find the generator and the gas can….. completely full. No notes, no one claimed credit. It’s not rice and beans that will get you through, it may well be your neighbors and some random from people from a church you’ve never heard of. My heart is full hearing how good people can be sometimes.
Dear JMG,
The choice between two branches of the bifurcation reminds me of the symbolic wolf vs dog which were regularly presented in medieval painting. For individuals who value freedom ( the wolves) , the choice is living outside of the enclaves despite of potential hard and precarious work. What are the risks and rewards for “the dogs” who accept surrendering their freedom ?
From Cynthia Christine #83:
“My bank has been trying to ID me in person by sending a verification code to my phone, when I am then supposed to show them. I’ve been resisting that and insisting on using my driver’s license. (I find it morbidly amusing that I still have a driver’s license. Should I get a Tie Fighter license too? My likely need for that is at a similar level.)”
Yep. Going through this right now to establish ID’s for my government accounts (like IRS and SSI). I’ve got some pretty obscure licenses! They’re fun to have at cocktail parties. 🙂
“It first came up about a year ago and I just felt like I should resist it being a *requirement* to carry a cellphone. I do except when I forget it, but a person shouldn’t *have* to. My thought was that your government ID is wholly a thing of the nation and society you’re part of, not any corporation, and that should be sufficient to identify you. I don’t agree that Samsung or Apple or any private entity gets to mediate my citizenship that way.”
Yes… Agreed! Do we have legal recourse? I’m of a mind to hire legal counsel to explain to me how this is even remotely Constitutional. I understand the ‘Prevalent Technology of the day’ argument, but that should mean ANY of the widely available means of communication such as snail mail, e-mail, telephone or… wait for it… in-person! There always has to be an in-person option to satisfy Common Law requirements… At least that’s my considered belief. I think this is one of THE most crucial questions that modern society needs to answer: Does blood even matter anymore? A signature is a proxy. For a blood oath. And… Face-to-face means something.
We’ll see, I guess! But… Am gradually being ‘locked out’ for [Fill in the blank] reasons. Not good.
Can’t help thinking how Jevons’ Paradox oddly mirrors Marx’s tendency of the falling rate of profit, which is also a paradox. As energy use becomes more efficient, more energy is used; as production becomes more efficient, less profit is made.
Is efficiency inherently paradoxical? It always seems to work against itself.
Jean @228
Thank you for your reply..
One thing that always bothers me about people saying they don’t owe their kids or don’t want to help them is the truculence with which they often express it, like the bumper sticker one often seems on large RVs “We are spending our kids inheritance”
I have found that your advice about being a pleasant person works pretty well with the world in general.
When my daughter started college in 2001 CA State Universities were quite affordable.Even the UCs were affordable. Living was reasonable where she went and she had a couple of scholarships and worked part time. Two years at the local community college would have been even cheaper. Some of her high school classmates were obsessed with the idea of going to the Ivy League, though most settled for something a bit more humble.I guess college loans were available, though they weren’t marketed the way they subsequently were.
I guess we were very fortunate. Most of her friends still have close family ties too.
Stephen
JMG,
You will find that when you turn 65, I just did, and want to sign up for medicare and potentially social security then you will want to explore the options of doing it in person at the local SS office. We did it at home with both my wife and I working on it using a computer and a smart phone. My wife is much better with computers and online bureaucracy than I am. The process to verify your identity online is very extensive and involves various call backs, retexting codes and then allowing the software to take control of your phone and scan your head by moving the phone around so that they can compare you to your drivers license of something. I was very uncomfortable with the process but the lines and chaos at our local SS office made it look like the better option.
Just to add to my last comment, I think the desirability of pursuing a trade over a degree has really increased in the last 5 years or so, but if one wants to follow the degree path the combination of community college and state university is still the way to go. They seem to offer more practical courses as well..
Thanks for this.
If anyone has good suggestions for a well-made, no-computer style moped please let me know.
JMG 204
> but I pay my bills by check via the mail.
I am trying how else to say, “oh goody.” I came up with nothin’.
So, “oh goody, another payor by snail-mail❣️”
JMG, you are a flocking inspiration {👍🏼compliment}. Within a couple weeks,— I hope,— I will have switched important accounts to me receiving statements at my email address (vs Jethro‘s); then paying BY PAPER as I indicated in a previous note in this thread.
(I have a schlep to walk to our snail-mail roadside mailbox.)
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
William 227
Your company should switch payroll to:
MoneyWorks
https://cognito.co.nz/product-range.php
Their range of products are the app is on someone‘s computer (1) sitting in front of them (local; no server), or (2) server. My MoneyWorks Cashbook sits on my Mac, and does not communicate with any outside servers.
Jethro and I have used MoneyWorks “Cashbook” for years, one for personal and a second one for our LLC. I cannot speak more highly of the MoneyWorks line of products.
MoneyWorks started out in the 1980s as “Mind Your Own Business” (MYOB) for the Macintosh. In the early 1990s, two companies bought them, separated by mutually exclusively territories.
One company of the two was USA based, and they promptly ruined it,— piece of garbage called (cloaked) AccountEdgy. The software gets worse over time. We had been using them, and they screwed us over big-time. The story is too long to tell here, now. Just stay away.
The other company of the two is based in New Zealand. I looked for a year for MYOB’s new name (MoneyWorks), twenty years after MYOB sold out.
I spent a year evaluating thirty different bookkeeping softwares. I am petrified of having our financial business on online/servers; they say clients’ finances are secure, but I don‘t believe them — they are all crooks.
Any bookkeeping software “online” I rejected out of hand.
I kept looking, and finally evaluated MoneyWorks. I was my old MYOB. I was, again, in love. If I had only known. I am now reunited with my favorite 1980s bookkeeping software by a different name. I am thrilled. Oh, goody time.
Get this, MoneyWorks “Cashbook” is free. No strings attached. I didn‘t believe it at first. Cashbook must be a loss-leader; I think most people upgrade to a paid subscription (which are reasonably priced). They don’t price-gouge.
Well worth trying out for sixth months.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
Justin Patrick Moore (no. 232) You mean Gurdjieff / de Hartmann music? I’m a big fan, even though Mr. G. was the familiar sort of cult leader. Laurence Rosenthal’s soundtrack is hard-wired into my brain now, so I can’t watch “The Day Christ Died” without hearing snippets of it.
BTW, I caught the theme from “Chant from a Holy Book” in Zorn’s “Mount Analogue.”
Hi JMG
Thanks for another interesting essay! I really like your Retrotopia series; it was a completely novel idea to imagine a world where a large number of people decided to vote to regress technologically.
For me, regression in past societies is not usually a voluntary decision, but rather a consequence of the decline of civilization.
One of the reasons why it is often claimed that technological progress is inevitable is war, or the advantages that new technologies give to some armed groups over others, as happened in the past, for example, when the conquistadors arrived in America with a huge advantage in firearms, horses, pikes, armor, tactical formations, etc. In the end, of course, this was by no means the only cause of the defeat of the Aztec and Inca empires, but it did give the Spanish enormous advantages, and the same thing happened in general throughout the world with the European colonization of all continents between the 16th and 19th centuries, using guns, cannons and armed ships.
Yes, the Sea Peoples defeated a far more “advanced” chariot army, with simpler weapons and much more flexible and smart tactical formations, probably due to the attacking society’s lack of adaptation and, possibly, the abandonment of the chariot due to the economic costs for the entire society.
It seems to me that the “chariot armies” (and “carriers armies”) are being defeated right now by another kind of “Sea People” who use swarms of drones instead of javelins, and small, flexible tactical formations similar to war bands, which we now call “militias.”
Perhaps the great-great-grandfather of the future American Odoacer is singing corridos somewhere in what is now northern Mexico, learning to defeat armored divisions after fighting in Ukraine and dreaming of bringing “La Santa Muerte” to the north.
Cheers
David
I have long wondered why industry was often localized in big cities like Manchester, New York or São Paulo in the first decades of industrialization of each country. Currently, big cities carry disadvantages for factories: expensive real estate, high taxes, anti-pollution laws and so on.
But the current greenfield locations of factories in the richer countries depend on high energy availability: workers often need to come to work in their private cars because there is no public transport, raw materials arrive just in time over reliable long-distance roads, and the end products leave over reliable roads, too.
Once tarmac/concrete roads are not reliable enough anymore and workers’ salaries are not high enough for them to own cars, will the industries of the middle-term future, such as they are, relocalize to big cities? Raw materials and end products would be transported by ships or canal barges or railway, while workers would have to live in the surroundings of the factory or come in by tramway.
Re: Analog August, I don’t know why I called it a data point, when it was really a dada point.
Re: New old computers. Several of my fellow geeks in my ham radio club are running these new-old machines now or refurbishing systems they saved. In an article I wrote for New Maps on radio I wrote about the Iron Curtain era phenomenon of old computer programs being traded over the airwaves. Back when there were cassette drives a program was encoded as audio. That tape could be played by radio station, recorded onto tape by listeners, and then used on the cassette drive of their computer. Might be something else I could contribute to the Technomicon.
Re: Geomancy: so noted!
Good day to everyone.
Let’s see if I can put thoughts into a reasonable order.
1) the low tech solution to a lot of things is employees, servants, or enslaved people. The social norms around live-in servants haven’t been around for quite a while, and enslaving people has A LOT of unintended consequences.
2) The internet “tradwife” fad is not a real move back to old technology, it is women making an online business of performing old skills and old social norms for their viewers. The actual, functioning families that use those old social norms aren’t sharing it as foo-tube videos or instagram reels. (Where is all the “tradhusband” content, with men talking about how the support and provide for their families?)
3) I feel very strongly that marriage should be a partnership, and not an opportunity for the provider-person to get a servant-person and additional free child-servants. Let’s find something that works without us all going back to the plantation, alright?
One element of technological bifurcation that I think will be popping up in the years to come is the spread of tool libraries. Currently, there are 100+ (mostly non-profit) tool libraries across the US, where for a fee of $50 or so you can borrow a whole slew of tools for the year.
https://toollibraryfinder.com/browse
I think as we enter the next stair-step down the Long Descent, there will be opportunities for a person/family that enjoys collecting hand tools, antique harvesting tools, canning equipment, repair tools, sewing machines, etc… to open their own tool libraries in their towns and neighborhoods. This is one of my family’s plans for when my husband’s office job goes away (as well as selling meat rabbit breeders and moving more family onto our property to help pay the mortgage). Instead of a yearly fee, there probably be a smaller fee based on the tool borrowed and some kind of neighbor character reference requirement. My sister is great at organizing and creating systems, my husband is a wonderful people/front desk person, and my mother and stepfather (both cabinetmakers and farmers/back to landers) have tons of knowledge of how to use these tools. My parents have amassed a collection of such tools through local auctions and yard sales. We’ll probably have the tool library on our property (3 miles outside of town) and then move it into town, as rents get cheaper. Or start with the tool library being out of a renovated school bus. If you or a family member enjoys tools and diy stuff and has the extra space this might be an excellent way to bring in some income. We are beginning to see a tsunami of items on the market as Baby Boomers age and die, so now is the time to snap up all the useful, well-made tools you can find.
Once again The Honest Sorcerer has nailed the future we are heading towards. Interesting essay on how a declining industrial society would handle things by looking at current practices in India.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/i-saw-the-future-of-the-west-in-india
The Honest Sorcerer’s views are quite in sync with our Honest Mage and the good number of erudite essays on his Substack are worth reading.
Northwind # 224:
“That reminds me of Britain in medieval days. A castle and its walls, some town-dwellers living within the walls (were there any?), but the rank-and-file populace housed themselves near, but not too near, the walls’ outer perimeter.”
Yes, it happened the same here during our Middle Age time. Small towns were under aristocrats castles protection. Around castles there were some crammed houses where their serfs lived, surrounded by a high wall.
Bigger towns under the several kingdoms kings direct power (with their own town halls), were similar, but not exactly equal in their urban structure. Towns had high and thick walls, according their wealth and geopolitical importance, but it’s interesting to check that biggest towns, especially in areas conquered to the muslims, were slightly different. Towns themselves in those areas had a good stone wall. Inside the town as such, they lived only christians. Outside the walls, often there was a muslim neighborhood (“Morería”) and a Jew one (“Judería”). They had to go along to be “protected” by a humble dirt wall. These neighborhoods, also named “Arrabales”, had their own muslim and Jewish leaders, who obeyed Christian town hall, which obeyed the King. Some centuries after that urban scheme, former medieval suburbia for religious minorities were sometimes called until now, as “Barrios Nuevos”(New Neighborhoods), or “Arrabal”, two euphemisms to remember there lived, a lot of time ago, non Christian people. It’s a toponymical fossil which reminds us the “Reconquista” times here. For example, in some streets and ancient neighborhoods today.
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In addition to my own #229 comment, I’d like to say you I only knew another (controverted) legend named APPLE since the early ’90s. It was a time of modernization of everything, Spain started to pick up speed in its “progress” to be equal to another EEC countries (well, it was partly cool and partly bad in the long term). One of that modernization icons were Apple computers, which used to be the favorite to be chosen by Universities and some high schools in that times. I can tell you I began to learn seriously computer as an advanced user in those times, and of course using an Apple computer, on the short form I learnt quite well to use word processor and some another courses in MacIntosh machines.
Ironically, all my computers I’ve used at home haven’t never been Apple. I think the apple computers are very good, but not everything in their technology and “philosophy” is good. I won’t open a can of worms about these computers, because I’m afraid to go off topic soon.
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Scotlyn and Siliconguy:
In addition to the topic about activated charcoal to clean water of radiaoactive elements, I admit my skepticism has weakened a lot about it, but I’ve got still a doubt: If radioactive stuff is trapped by charcoal, you need to replace eventually dirty filter by a clean one. I suppose you need to bury that “irradiated” charcoal filter under the soil, hoping nobody is going to dig the closed hole next centuries. Maybe they would need to put dirty charcoal under a heavy stone. A lot of radioactive elements have a long life. I wish good luck to future people…
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Clay D. # 235:
“Aircraft carriers are proving to be the stupidest and most outdated way to project power because of the energy needed to maintain them and the difficult supply lines needed to keep them going.”
I think western military elites have been always replaying the WWII game since 1945 until present day, so I’m not surprised by your phrase and your reasoning to support it. I agree.
Not only the USA (the biggest aircraft carrier power) falls endlessly in that outfashioned power illusion, but also some European NATO “powers” and even the Chinese (so smart in another decisions) , all of them have a humbler number of carriers. Even Spain had its own carrier for a while! (please don’t laugh at us the Spaniards). The only exception within superpowers is Russia, with its “Admiral Kuznetsov”, which is more a missile platform than a true aircraft carrier. I think it’s a reasonable decision by the Kremlin, because huge Russian territory allows its air force to take off toward Europe, Asia and North America directly from its ground bases.
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Cynthia # 242:
Thank you for clarifying me about Commodore 64 capabilities according your own experience with it. When I was a child, none of my friends had one of them, we were (the lucky ones) wannabe modern guys: Spectrum users. I can tell you maybe social and technological situation wasn’t the same here. I’m remembering early ’80s, and Spanish economy didn’t took off really until after we entered the EEC (1986). So our life style maybe was humbler than yours, and computer more expensive. The commonplace was “Commodore 64 shows you’re at least a middle-high class user”. Indeed, even there’s a reference to this topic in a novel which begins in the ’80s in Seville. Oh surprise!, its main character (today, a fictional computer engineer), had a Commodore 64 when he was a child, and his family “of course” was middle-high class (but not a happy family). During the ’80s I heard Commodore videogames were far better and cooler than crappy Spectrum videogames. I’ve read online some people, during last ’80s, managed to buy a second hand C.64 (because they weren’t exactly rich people) and they never regretted their purchase. Did you buy a new C.64 or a second hand one?
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# 246:
“Did anyone else get software by buying computer magazines and typing in software that was printed on paper in them?”
Oh no, I’m a bookworm, not exactly a nerd…I love books and libraries before videogames and computer world in general. However, I knew and bought from time to time a famous computer magazine during the ’80s, named “Micro-manía”, to see new videogames and computer models (which probably my parents never were going to buy for me). It was centered in videogames. This magazine survived until 2024, though I gave up to buy it since the later ’90s. By the way, its pictures were very cool and artistic. Often they showed hot women, ha ha…
I’ve met some people that did the same you did thanks to computer magazines.
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JMG # 247:
“I did indeed, but the magazine was Soft Sector, which was specific to the first computer I used, a Sanyo MBC-555. It looked like this:”
I’ve seen your picture about your first computer, and I think it seems very cool. It’s strange it went under my radar in the old good times of early computers, or maybe it didn’t arrived here to be sold…
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IndianaF…# 248:
“There was no notice, no siren, no phone calls, just a personal choice to go and they got out by the skin of their teeth.”
Maybe it isn’t the same situation, but I think it rhymes with a lot of complaints made by DANA floods survivors in Valencia here, two years ago: If sirens sounded, they did after the flooding arrived to them. By the way, even today not all the damages and subsidies caused by those floods in Valencia have been repaired nor paid…Good luck for those people in Eastern Indiana who have suffered those floods.
This is a follow up to my comment two weeks about how the infrastructure in my rural area is being maintained. I said the roads are in worse condition in the counties west of Kentucky Lake in Tennessee but I didn’t know if there was a trend towards worsening quality. I drove there yesterday, and the main roads I was driving on had been recently patched in places. I don’t know the condition of the back rural roads in that area.
@Chuaquin #265
As I understand it (lay person here) the great virtue of activated charcoal is the nanoscale porous structure which gives it a massive binding surface compared to its overall volume. It’s capacity to bind with a very large number of noxious substances is phenomenal, and it is not known to readily release them UNLESS it reaches temperatures of 400-600 deg C – ie burns. It seems that burial of charcoal that has been used for cleaning chemical or radioactive residues is relatively safe, but you do not want to leave it lying around where anyone would be tempted to use it for fuel.
Obviously nothing is perfect and there are certainly dangers that charcoal does not ward against. That said, its warding powers are very, very large, and if you are trying to remember that “one, neat trick” for cleaning suspect air and water of unknown poisons and noxious substances, you could not do better than to remember the virtues of charcoal.
Chuaquin: “I can tell you maybe social and technological situation wasn’t the same here”
So it would seem. I looked into this a little bit, meaning I did a few Googles and settled for the AI summary on each one rather than digging deep, so take it for what it’s worth. But it appears, to summarize roughly what I found, that the price of a Commodore 64 was something like triple in Spain what it was here in Canada, due to a combination of tariffs, taxes, and Commodore simply seeking a higher profit margin there (and overseas in general). So that would sure explain why you remember it being a status symbol and I don’t.
However, due to the shoddy research method, there is considerable room for error here.
Well anyway it sucks that a 64 was so expensive in Spain, but then you got hot women in your computer magazines and we didn’t, so there’s that. 😉
Materializing right out of the kingdom of Voor for you … please welcome Ms Jenny Chaudronnier. That would be something… Voor is a lovely word somehow and right on spot to describe the voorish nature of the life force. Oh well, if the cosmos is a living being and we as it’s “inhabitants” are, then it might follow that the etheric plane is a being on its own, too, and just needed the right person to tell the material world what it’s name today is…
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
JMG – You might believe that your postal service is reliable, but it only takes one lost payment, for which you end up paying a late fee, or other consequences, to make you question how many “second chances” you should grant. My credit union refunded the late fee, but I still owed the interest, on a big credit card bill (it covered an expensive car repair, IIRC). I doubt that your service, just a few zip-codes from mine, is actually any better.
We also had thieves stealing payments from the USPS drop box and washing the intended recipient’s name off to replace it with an account they controlled. Hence, I propose that checks be printed with the most FRAGILE ink possible, so any attempt to wash off the signer’s ink destroys the document! (Access to the mailbox might have been an “inside job”, or ex-employee.)
“If radioactive stuff is trapped by charcoal, you need to replace eventually dirty filter by a clean one. I suppose you need to bury that “irradiated” charcoal filter under the soil, hoping nobody is going to dig the closed hole next centuries. Maybe they would need to put dirty charcoal under a heavy stone. A lot of radioactive elements have a long life.”
Yes definitely true. 300 years is a good number. Strontium 90 is one of the worst (it ends up in the bones and blasts the bone marrow with high energy radiation at close range). It has a 30 year half life, so ten half lives will get rid of 99.9% of it. (2^10 = 1,024, so 1/1024 of the original will be left.)
Jason, thanks for another datapoint. Very interesting.
Chuaqin, the only evidence is Campbell’s anecdote.
Hey JMG
On the subject of “tech enclaves” , I just remembered something that could have some relevance.
Are you aware of the fascination that some tech bros, such as Peter Thiel I believe, have for “seasteading”? It’s likely that aside from a few hi-tech city-states on land, there will be a few hi-tech floating cities or converted oil rigs that are waiting for some ambitious pirates to ransack in the future.
https://www.seasteading.org/
“I think the desirability of pursuing a trade over a degree has really increased in the last 5 years or so, but if one wants to follow the degree path the combination of community college and state university is still the way to go. They seem to offer more practical courses as well..”
Community colleges do seem to still function. My daughter graduated high school with an AA that transferred directly to the four year university in Ellensburg. (Central Washington University). She is employed mostly within her degree feeding various analytical instruments, tasks AI is not likely to be able to do.
As to the way they do heavy manufacturing in India and other places, the steel toed sandals you see In the videos do make me shake my head. I suppose you learn to keep your feet out of the way pretty quickly. They don’t show you the people who didn’t.
Jmg – I must say, your advice is both completely true and rather useless – a bit like telling a drug addict to just put it down and stop using it. I mean. yes, that is what needs to be done, you aren’t wrong… but how? But then again, you’re also right that having never wrestled with it, there’s not much you can say aside from that.
I don’t think you quite understand how terrible and pervasive this addiction is. People are glued to their phone at all times. They’re terrified to part from it – what if I need to call 911, or get dorections, or record something, or… people literally feel lost without it. At least people now realize how awful the addiction is, a far cry from the celebration of it a mere decade ago. Blue oyster cult actually made a song about it called the machine – yes, the band from the 70s is still making music, I think this song came out 6 years ago.
Michael Gray – This is very helpful advice. Just getting rid of one’s phone is quite an extreme measure – though I do try and put it away as often as I can, including whenever I’m out in my woods doing ritual or meditating, or going on blessing walks. Still, making it less addictive, having it take up less of my attention and will, only using it when I must – this is harm reduction at its finest. To use the alcohol metaphor, its quitting liquor and only drinking beer. Instagram’s probably the worst offender…
Jessica – honestly, fighting phone addiction is not only the most difficult addiction to battle. but also the most worthwhile. Heck, I bet you could get people into learning to exercise their will by promising them they can break their phone addictions with thes practices!
Ah, I saw checks mentioned. Personal anecdote: I pay all our utility bills with checks, which are sealed up in envelopes, stamped, and deposited in the outgoing mail slot of our multi-person mailbox (which is USPS property) just outside our front door. In the ~5 years we’ve lived at our present address, I’ve had zero problems except for one payment which just seemed to never be deposited. My suspicions are on the receiving end, rather than the Post Office being at fault.
However, about a year ago, I needed to buy more checks. Placed and got my order, and the checks were NOT the stagecoach-displaying one’s I’d ordered (I’ll let folks guess my bank) but rather were some grey hashy plain-font scribble, accompanied by a note that “the pattern you selected is no longer available.” Just recently, needed to order some more checks. Went to the bank’s website, and discovered there are no longer ANY choices for check backgrounds, just the grey scribble. Worse than that, the quoted price per check was ferociously high!
I’d kept a slip of junk-mail paper which promised low-cost colorful checks, waded through their website with CONSTANT temptations and exhortations to “buy this, buy that, get this extra shiny” and in due time received my checks at a reasonable price and with good quality and a pattern that I find pleasing.
But the message is: support for checks seems to be dwindling fast, as regards the infrastructure for obtaining the blank checks, at least with my large and popular bank.
Lazy Gardener @255 says: “If anyone has good suggestions for a well-made, no-computer style moped please let me know.”
Hmmm hrrrm. Well. What are your expectations, requirements, and what’s your local riding environment like?
A moped requires, in all states I’m familiar with, a motorcycle endorsement on your driver’s license, insurance, registration (which at least in my state is quite low cost, but YMMV), and an approved motorcycle helmet. In most states, the allowable rated power is small, say 3 to 5 HP max, so mopeds are… not speedy; think 35-40 MPH max. Yet since they’re a motor vehicle, they CANNOT be legally ridden in bike lanes or on bike paths.
I hear you on the “no-computer style”; I’ve had several electronic thingamabobs already become either feature-crippled or, even worse, unusable because the manufacturer went belly-up and no longer maintained the apps to make all the cool shiny features operational.
My wife and I have several e-bikes, and two of them I think might meet your needs IF:
* your expected riding environment is bicycle-friendly
* you’re fine being limited to only going 20-25 MPH
* you’re interested in the lowest-cost and simplest solution that doesn’t have all the bureaucratic overhead of a moped
The key here in my mind (and what I use on a several-times-weekly basis) is finding an older used class 2 e-bike from a non-flake manufacturer which produced lots of copies. Older ones won’t be app-dependant, at least the two I mention below aren’t (both vintage 2019.) Class 2 ebikes, which have throttles, are by statute in the USA limited to 20 MPH top speed, but many of the older Class 2 bikes were produced with the ability to change settings, since different countries/markets have (had?) different limitations. Anyway, two of our quite-satisfactory ebikes can be “tweaked” to have a top throttle speed of 40 KPH (~25 MPH.) I find that speed reasonable in our non-urban setting where the roads I frequent have speed limits of 25 or 35 MPH. You can of course make the pedals go round-&-round even if you’re not applying much (or any) force to them, which makes you look like a bicycle to both constabulatory and the other road users. You can ride in the bike lane, of which we have lots here on our major roads. Helmet is voluntary (I always ride with one, which has a magnet-retained eye shield), no insurance, no registration, no license. And a good rear-view mirror is VERY useful.
Yes, if something major goes wrong with an ebike, it’s sorta junk (but see the next paragraph.) Having swapped out sparkplugs, cleaned carburetors, mixed oil, and all the other STUFF for moped-like devices in my youth, there’s a certain appeal of having something you can twiddle with. But if your moped decides to seize, blow its connecting rod, munge a crank bearing, or any of a number of major faults, you’d be better off junking it rather than trying to fix it. And you DEFINITELY can’t pedal it with a non-op engine.
One of the two ‘suitable’ ebikes we have is single-speed, but the other has a rear shifter and can quite satisfactorily be ridden as a regular bicycle. Even taking the battery off, you still have a kinda heavy bike (~40 lbs.) so it’s not quite competitive in pedal-only mode with regular push-bikes, but as long as the e-system is functional it’s WAY faster than a typical person on a typical upright push-bike.
My main e-bike is Class 3 capable, which means you can get motor assistance up to 28 MPH when pedaling fairly hard, though it is unhackably limited to 20 MPH on throttle-only.
Our single-speed bike (which is the most moped-like of our stable) just turned over 7000 miles on its odo, the other 40-KPH-hacked bike has ~1200 miles on it, and my newish class 3 bike has a bit over 1600 miles.
Did I mention I often solar-charge our ebikes? I’m such a nerd…
Silicone guy
I don’t have their brochure, but the local community college here in coastal central CA offered a certificate in fire fighting, and appears to offer programs in various medical and dental fields. They seem to be more focused on relevant job skills than most four year schools.
they are also much cheaper and the students are able to live at home.
@ Community Colleges
My youngest took classes at our local one for last year and a half of high school, the one by us had decent college level math/science classes, I wasnt as impressed with the liberal arts gen ed, but that may have been due to what my offspring chose ( being a science major could not take the Honors English/history because the one offering of for example english 1A honors conflicted with being able to take Physics 1 or 2 or whatever. ) and I am comparing to the rigor of what I took in college.
This saved alot of money, mostly due to being able to live at home and also by shortening the time to graduate. The preparation was more than sufficient for UCD, the transferring was easy due to the UC’s TAG program, Transfer Admission Guarantee, just had to have all the required coursework at straight As pretty much, but no worries about getting in to a UC.
The local community college also has programs in Dental Hygene, Welding, COnstruction and various other training.
IndianaFriend, thank you for this — I’d heard about the floods, but not the details. Glad to hear that people are rising to the challenge of compassion.
Foxhands, good question. I’m not close enough to the dogs’ side of things to know.
Logan, good. Efficiency is a complex thing, not least because the word means nothing until and unless you specify “efficient at doing what, in terms of what value?” Cleaning streets with toothbrushes is highly efficient if what you want is to provide as many jobs in street cleaning as possible…
Clay, since I don’t have a phone that’ll do that, going into the local office and planning on spending all day is pretty much my only option. Thanks for the heads up!
Northwind, I shall blush and take the compliment! Being a city mouse, I have a post office two blocks from my front door, so it’s an easy thing to do while running errands on foot.
DFC, bingo. Sometimes complex technologies defeat simple ones, but sometimes simple technologies defeat complex ones. The Roman imperial army was far more complex, and far more technologically advanced, than the outnumbered army of Visigoths that annihilated seven Roman legions at the battle of Adrianople in 378.
Aldarion, look at where the cities are located and the question usually answers itself. Most cities of any size in the early days of industrialism were located at seaports or important river crossings, or both — London, for example, is at the first place on the Thames where you can get a bridge across using premodern technology, which is also the highest point on the Thames that seagoing ships could reach. Since waterborne transport is so much more efficient than oxcarts and the like, that’s usually where cities spring up.
Justin, I still regret having to let go of my old Sanyo!
Sylvia, those are valid points, but I take it you don’t hang out on far-right forums much. (I lurk in various places across the whole spectrum from far left to far right.) Guys who work hard and talk about what it takes to allow their wives to stay home? They post in such places.
Catoctin, very true. Some public libraries are starting to function as tool libraries — the library in East Providence half a dozen blocks from my apartment there had tools that could be checked out.
BeardTree, thanks for this.
Patrick, thanks for the data point.
Nachtgurke, if she ever knocks on the door I’ll be happy to invite her in and make tea! In the meantime, getting “voor” into circulation as a word for the life force sounds useful.
Lathechuck, my mail goes into the mail slot indoors at the post office two blocks away; I’ve been mailing checks to people for years and have never had problems — as distinct from using credit cards online, where my card’s been stolen far too often.
J.L.Mc12, I fantasized about that when I was in my early 20s, and then did the necessary research and realized how bad an idea it was. If they ever try it, pirates are one issue, and simple marine drones packed with high explosive, launched by people who have reason to hate techbro billionaires, are another.
Paedrig, maybe so, but the only way to overcome fear is to face it. Is it really impossible for you to stick the thing in a dresser drawer and go somewhere else for a little while?
Bryan, my bank still has quite a range of checks available, and I’ve also used that junk mail company. It may be a matter of finding the right sources.
Hi Siliconguy,
Exactly! Resilience doesn’t not look like an economically efficient outcome. By the way, I maintain two small generators and two 48V battery chargers. A long time ago, the motor run capacitor packed it in, and I had to wait two weeks for a replacement. It’s fun watching the state of charge drop lower and lower each day and wondering at what point the inverter will do a low voltage disconnect.
And I’m also with you about the forecast models, they need to get with the times. Yet again I read an article in the news today suggesting that this coming El Nino summer is going to be doubly super bad, with icing on top. Yet, already this year 34″ of rain has fallen here, and it is still only August. Another just under an inch is forecast to arrive tomorrow. It’s crazy wet outside, and the soil and sub soil is saturated. Sure summer may be hot and dry, and fire is always a risk, but the really big monster fires generally occur in years where rainfall is low, and we’re talking 23″ / 600mm there – which is a disaster for forested environments. But this year hasn’t been like that, so far.
I dunno what to make of it all.
Cheers
Chris
Hi John Michael,
Thanks for the article on the earlier Australian climate. Amusingly I might quip that it is in our national interest to dig up and burn the remaining brown coal, which will probably happen anyway. The pollies are using the electricity grid like a political football, when in fact it is a basic engineering matter interacting with cultural usage habits. The glee I see on display in shutting down the admittedly ageing coal fired generators (they only have limited lifespan) baffles me. I’d imagine Europe is learning about the limits of hydro energy the hard way this year what with the drought and stuff. And it is worth mention that the sun doesn’t shine at night, and often droughts involve reduced wind due to a more stable atmosphere.
Man, I’ve tweaked the power system here for 17 years and the best I can manage is five days annually of a few hours running the generator and battery charger. Obviously, the option to switch off and wait it out is there, but I do have to run a business. Property taxes are real! 😉 Oh well, that was the entire point of them anyway.
Hmm, it is not lost on me that in the media discussions about all this stuff look like people schilling for socialism. A change of heads at the top of the money tree, won’t make much of a difference in my opinion, especially if they conflate ideology with engineering and physical realities. Seems all a bit odd to me, but I dunno. I can’t fathom why they aren’t demanding that tried and tested protections and limits get reintroduced? Here’s an example from today’s news: Climate change and corruption are also driving up interest rates. Makes me wonder if the journo’s are willing to give up their own perquisites for the good cause? Hmm.
Cheers
Chris
My company is a Claude Enterprise partner and the past couple of weeks, I have been going through their training programs. One module involved choosing the right model by making a decision to balance output performance, cost, and latency. It presented a very curious case study:
A team implemented an AI-powered analysis system. They chose the high-end Opus model as “it was the best”. System went into production, and within a few weeks went 7x over budget and the average latency was 2.3 seconds, much slower than the expected 800 milliseconds. Customer satisfaction ratings were unchanged from the baseline (remember this last one).
They re-evaluated their solution, switched all steps to the mid-tier Sonnet model and reserved Opus only for the crucial final evaluation step. Costs dropped 70% and latency is now 940 milliseconds. Customer satisfaction ratings remain unchanged (again, remember this!).
Obviously, the lesson was focused on picking the correct model, but I can’t help but notice:
1. ) The initial solution was 7x over budget. Reducing that by 70% reduction on that is still a 2.1x (let’s say twice, roughly) cost overrun.
2) The new solution is much faster than the original one, but still a little bit slower than the original target.
3) Most importantly, *in every step customer satisfaction has neither improved nor gotten worse*!
The actual correct solution is not “switch to Sonnet”, it’s to throw the entire thing away and cancel the Claude contract. The thing is obviously doing LITERALLY NOTHING! Mind you, independent evaluations of LLM-based “AI powered” solutions in the real world basically amount to real productivity being unchanged, or at best there is a very slight (10-30%) improvement that is more than outstripped by the increased cost (often 2x+). Seeing those numbers presented on official partner training, though? My jaw dropped.
I wonder how many things we think are “crucial” nowadays turn out to be exactly like this – completely unnecessary, and our lives would not even change (at worst, if anything it will probably improve at least a bit) if we stopped doing them. I know you’ve never had a cell phone or a TV, I have both but use them in a pretty barebones manner that people find puzzling. One time I was traveling for business and stayed at a hotel in the UK for a week, and only on my final day did I notice that the television in my room doesn’t power on. I mentioned this to the front desk and they were very apologetic and told me I could have transferred rooms if I brought this up earlier; I replied “actually I never turn on the telly anyway so I couldn’t notice.” lol
I too believe that the trades are much better bet than college for the Bulk of young people leaving high school today. But we also have to take a realistic look at what employment is like in those fields in 2026. Crapification is coming to the trades also. I have been reading about how private equity is taking over local plumbing and HVAC contractors. The result quickly dropping pay and working conditions for trade skilled employees in those companies. One take is that the only way to make decent money in the private equity owned world is to be a plumber etc. that is really good at selling ( talking customers in to work they don’t need).
The high end of plumbing and electrical is the union system for pipe fitters and Electricians. This can lead to the highest pay, but for this high pay your have to accept becoming a semi-nomad. A recent newspaper report said that 35% of IBEW electricians had to leave Oregon this last year and move to Idaho and elsewhere because of the lack of large projects that required union electricians.
A friend of mine who just retired as a well paid pipe fitter considered himself lucky because he had a ten year stint at an Intel plant while his daughter was in middle school and high school, but before that his family spent 12 years living in a travel trailer following the construction jobs.
Yes moving around is better than starving with no-job . But young people need to go in with their eyes open. I recommend getting a community college degree as a Waste Water Treatment Operator and then passing the test to get your operators license. This trade is mostly unionized, has good pay, licenses are required by law to operate plants, they are in short supply, city can not cut staff below a certain. level and be legal and once you get a job you don’t have to move around like electricians.
@ Northwind RE : Hoods
Thanks you for the such well articulated thoughts on the matter. You have taken something that I was saying, a little as a joke (but not really), and have sold me on it fairly well.
@ TylerA RE : “They still make portable cassette decks a la walkman and mp3 players like the iPod.”
While they still make them, they generally fall into two camps. Either cheap rubbish that goes from the factory to the rubbish tip via the home in less than a month. Or ultra high end stuff that is priced far beyond what many can afford complete with features many don’t need. Audiophile stuff. it doesn’t help that many of these high end iPod’s are basically just phones with a different interface.
@Ambrose RE “Both texts seem to be products of multiple authorship.”
Absolutely. But as they say, don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story. It is the same with the Bhagavad Gita, it’s writing style and language varies differently from the rest of the Mahabharata. It was clearly done by different authors.
As for Chuang Tzu, there is a very clear divide between the Inner and Outer chapters. Much was added on later but also seem to be more clearly separated. At least it is thought that Chuang Tzu was a real person.
@ Siliconguy and JMG. “What matters is that people who could afford complex technology are choosing to turn to simpler technology instead.”
This is a very common theme in a lot of religious and philosophical traditions. The difference between forced poverty and intentional poverty. To embrace the life style of the graceful pauper.
I finally looked to upgrade my laptop, more as a back up. My friends were shocked to find it only cost $100, that’s because it is 10 years old. I could afford something new if I wanted, but I don’t.
@ Chris “Why Australia’s weather is seeing a soaking while a record El Niño is forming.” – “Possibly the models need some tweaking?”
I know a few people that have or do work on the weather modelling at the weather bureau, they are much more open about it in person than the reports let on. Their on going problem is that the climate is changing quick than they can calibrate their models. So by the time they have something that can predict stuff based on older data, it is somewhat useless in the real world.
They have been fairly accurate with this winter regarding temperature considering just how mild it has been. I will give them that, but they also find predicting El Nino impacts difficult because it is such an extreme fluctuation on what is the typical data sets. It can tip the models into useless territory very easily.
They are fairly clear however, the impacts of this El Nino won’t be felt until early next year. The ocean heat is an early indicator of the air temperature 6 months later. Australia also is impacted by the Indian ocean dipole which also heavily impacts water systems.
That said, they there is a growing amount of backing the hypothesis that due to warming, long term we might end up in permanent La Nina conditions. That means we might become a very wet and humid climate where most of the country is like Queensland with its rainforests than the deserts of today. So that tracks with the article JMG linked to.
Country town more like Mullumbimby than Alice springs and this is world I would very much welcome.
@ TylerA RE : Low power computer devices.
I present to you, a web server running on a Vape pen. This thing has 50% more RAM than the first IBM PC and about 10-20 times the compute power.
https://dev.to/shiva_shanker_k/i-built-a-web-server-inside-a-disposable-vape-24kb-ram-challenge-3n88
Lathechuck 270
MONEY ORDERS
Thanks for bringing up the subject of “checks/cheques sent via snail-mail”
You got me thinkin’.
I think what I will do is, when I go to the bank, is get money orders rather than put an actual check/cheque in the mail, all paper-based (USA: USPS) (other countries called differently). With money orders, the only risk is the amount of the money order; there is no risk to any bank account numbers/checks.
I did this several/many times in the 1970s. I can’t remember specifics of why or what companies the money orders were made out for. That was fifty years ago. I remember it was a relative hassle, but NOW, with so much fraud, it is approaching money orders being an “okay-hassle.”
I seem to recall a reasonable fee to purchase a money order. Maybe 50¢ or $1. Money orders’ prices undoubtedly have gone up, but I would rest easier paying whatever ‘reasonable fee’ a money order costs, and have my bank account numbers safe-guarded.
Yep, that is what I will do: Drive to the bank, get money orders, and use paper snail-mail to pay paper bills.
Lathechuck, thanks for the nudge/noodge.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
Paedrig 275
Start by removing from the phone any app one hasn’t used in a year.
I got rid of a slew of phone apps recently, but didn’t stay strictly to that guideline. I kept a group of apps headed by folder “Plants/Landscaping.” (I also kept color-related apps.)
Why do I need an app for Unitet Parcol Serviss” when I have not used it once over fifteen years? Or Feddex? Or an app for how to make a list for packing a suitcase? I do that by hand. I don’t need an app for that.
I came across some truly obscure apps, but in that I deleted them, I don’t remember their names… several were apps that Jethro recommended. What the flock are those FOR? Certainly not for my “benefit.”
Overload. That is what it felt like: overload. I needed to off-load airless-stuff I felt was weighing me down. Take a load off. Off-load that overload. (Reminds me of taking a dump💩.) I bet many here haven’t off-loaded their phone’s load💩in decades — am I right? Dump the ridiculous-es (ridiculous plural) into the ether. It felt gooo-d.
Pffft🌬️,— blow it to the winds-of-the-north. (Is there a god of ‘getting rid of stuff’?) Make a ritual of it.
When the mood strikes me, when I have courage, I will do a second, third, and fourth round of off-loading … but one has to be “emotionally ready.” Take one’s time.
💨🌬️🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
Bryan Allen 276
We bought/buy checks/cheques from Walmart. Each check is exceeding secure (all sorts of ’security’ bells and whistles), and cheap.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
“Sylvia, those are valid points, but I take it you don’t hang out on far-right forums much. ”
Which far-right forums would you recommend to read the guys who post about what they do so that their wives can stay home?
Clay Dennis
Your observation about someone in the trades needing to follow a nomadic lifestyle is interesting.. Here in central CA, and I imagine in most places,much of the building, remodels and repairs is for houses for the PMC. As that part of the economy winds down or disappears so will the trade jobs servicing it. I would imagine the same would hold true for government or business contracts
.Due to insane prices and job insecurity I know of many people postponing or giving up on remodels, repairs, home purchases, or as in the case of my daughter learning to do their own repairs.If a rising tide is meant to raise all ships, then a falling tide appears to lowering them. Obviously there will always be something for a skilled worker somewhere, but I suspect the glory days for the building trades will track the decline of the PMC.
This forum, and especially your contributions to it have contributed greatly to my thinking on these issues.
Thank you
Stephen
Somewhat related, just came across this article. Best cities to live in without a car.
The data is about what you would except but I just find it so a sign of the times that this is being written up for folks to consider. Doing without a car, if possible, is one way that you can make your ride into the future much easier.
https://www.coworkingcafe.com/blog/best-u-s-cities-to-live-in-without-a-car/
@ Chuaquin #265
One more thing… It seems that the nuclear industry is ALREADY making extensive use of activated carbon. Which means it has a pedigree, and there exists a body of nuclear waste disposal experts who are familiar with the material, its properties, and how to use and dispose of it safely.
https://www.haycarb.com/activated-carbon-solutions/speciality/nuclear-industry/
It should not be hard to find out what they have discovered, and so I shall spend a bit of time over the next few weeks doing so. Thank you for prompting me to go down this rabbit hole! 🙂
@ Beardtree #200 and @ JMG #204
Re that title, and potential variations thereof…
It strikes me that that title could just as easily be re-written to more closely reflect ongoing themes of this set of blogs, as follows:
“The More [Interesting, Populated, Complex, Enchanted] World Our Hearts Know [Exists, and our extended senses can learn to perceive]”
IOW – learning to attend to what/who is already there, and learning to work WITH it/them, is a whole different proposition than deploring and disregarding what/who is already there, and working AGAINST it/them to implement some imagined, nebulously unpindownable, plausibly deniable, ideal.
DFC#259, Chuaquin
Acording with the next cycle of conferencies:
Pueblos del Mar https://share.google/ByGuFIgzXHzqgZc1e
The victory of Sea Peoples was posible for the previous breakdown of most of the empires of that time.
Dear JMG
Great post. I have gone down the LESS arm of the tech bifurcation over my years. This has been good for me, though I am considered a bit of an oddity by family and friends but less so today. My concern is the other arm of the bifurcation. High tech is expensive, even with the subsidy of the remaining fossil fuels. I can’t see the tech privileged keeping the costs to themselves. I can see them pushing rents, taxes, charges, fees, fines and usury on the rest of us to fund their high tech enclaves. Yes some of us can hide, there are 15,000 living on Britain’s waterways (Robbie Cummings, Canal boat diaries), and there are as many as 100,000+ ( very rough estimate by charities) living on official and unofficial camping sites in vans, lorries, campervans, caravans, tents and rough sleepers. Many farmers in recent years have established camping sites as a cash sideline, principally for the summer trade, but often they are occupied in the middle of winter to their surprise. We already have a nomad tribe in the UK in the Roma/Traveler/Gypsy community. They are very organised, and these days aggressive in buying farmland and over a weekend building a campsite including services installed before an injunction can be obtained for contravention of planning law on Monday morning. They are very insular. They are a tribe you are born into, hard to join. I see other nomad tribes forming as children are born into that way of life. As for the rest of us, low income avoids much tax! Grow your own, make your own, repair, reuse, craft production i.e. low tech bifurcation, trading outside the ” market”, gift, barter, dispensing with insurance and cars, alternative healthcare, together make a sustainable life, but it won’t generate the cash to pay rents and taxes to the owner/government class in the high tech bifurcation. This is a big political problem. I see a similarity when the British grabbed India in the mid 18th century. India was far richer than Britain at that time, Britain was just at the beginning of the industrial revolution. By the 1920’s there were serious questions being asked why India had become a drain on Imperial resources I.e. no longer generating enough revenue to pay for it’s occupation. Taxes and unfair trade treaties had stripped India of it’s wealth much of which had gone to finance Britain’s industrialisation. Britain’s imperial high tech bifurcation had in part been paid for by India’s pauperisation i.e forced low tech bifurcation. The Indian’s managed to get rid of the British in the 1940’s, this was helped by the British high tech enclave being on another continent. We today don’t have that advantage of distance. How do we get out from under the parasite class?
My rough definitions of crappification and ensh**ification, is that crappification applies to once good brands and services bought by the middle class which have had the quality reduced to keep the price down. Ensh**ification is services (usually I.T.) that have been loaded with advertising and forms of grift that block access or slow use to the point that you will no longer use it. It also applies to goods bought by the minimum wage/welfare class who cannot afford any better and the retailers know it!
DFC # 259:
A very good comment about technological advantages and disadvantages in wars, during known History, methink!
However, I’d like to clarify you that Conquistadores not always were successful against “Indians”(natives). Ironically, cavalry, steel swords and firearms, which allowed Spanish small armies to conquer big “civilized” empires, didn’t work well against (for example), Seminoles in Florida. Indeed, according Cabeza de Vaca in “Naufragios”(Shipwrecks), their war against that tribal low tech people was a disaster. He was one of the few conquistadores (ahem) who survived. Motives? On the short form, the Everglades flooded forests were a dirty place to use firearms (oops, wet gunpowder…), mud prevented horses to charge well against the Seminoles, and natives knew well their territory to ambush invaders with their deadly arrows, avoiding close fighting against swords.
It’s also interesting to know Seminoles were eventually defeated by US Army during the XIX century…making a big effort.
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Scotlyn # 267:
Thanks for your comment; well, according your own words, yes, it would be an unfortunate idea to burn that dirty charcoal…So a cautious burial should be better for future people safety (no argument here).
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Cynthia C. # 268:
Yes, the theory about different prices in the two countries is a very likely explanation of C.64 legend here, as a status iconic technology, so I think you’re right. Often, a commonplace has some truth in it…It seems C.64 price before 1986 was so expensive, maybe due to import taxes. After 1986, Spain was a new EEC member, so economical inner borders within Community were erased…but not in front of non-EEC countries. I’m not an historian nor an economist, so I can’t explain better this “mysterious” C.64 overprice here.
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Siliconguy # 271:
Well, 3 centuries seem IMHO a reasonable time enough to allow a understable long lasting written warning about those “wasted” charcoal. Or even more, for a live spoken tradition, from parents to children, warning about a damned place which is taboo to dig…Of course, if cultural transmission doesn’t break.
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Luke # 272:
Thank you for that data…
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DFC and JMG:
In addition to your comments about complex and apparently more technologically advanced armies defeated by low tech warriors…I remember Byzantine Empire, for some centuries, had a heavy armored elite chivalry (horse and rider alike) named “cataphractos”(I hope I’ve written well its name), which worked quite well against Persians and muslim Arabs cavalry. However, when Turkish light chivalry met Byzantine one, Ottomans managed to make Greeks horses ended tired, and then kill or make surrender their riders. Unfortunately, I don’t remember that battle name nor year, but I can tell you after that defeat, Byzantines were into their final decline until Constantinople conquest (well, they had more problems than only military ones, but that would be another story).
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(To be continued)
Mopeds:
In my country, mopeds cannot run beyond 45 kmh according laws, so their engines power is humble. Most mopeds here have two wheels, but it isn’t strange to see in streets here, some three wheeled mopeds for light cargo, and some another with 4 wheels (micro-cars). All of them need to show their plate number and their riders/drivers need a driving license (well, it’s easier to get than “real” bykes and cars licenses). If you ride a customized motorized bike wich works without pedaling, police understand you’re riding an illegal moped, so you’ll be fined (indeed, some incautious “cyclists” have been caught this summer in my town due to this illegal bike customizing).
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Chris # 283:
Yes, it hasn’t been a good summer for hydro power here in Europe, due to drought. In addition to this bad data, I guess future more dramatic and long lasting droughts (due to climate change), could be a problem for another ways to make electric power, like thermical power plants and nuclear ones. Of course, they need some tons of fresh water to feed their steam turbines and/or for refrigeration. Thermical and nuke plants usually are built near rivers, the sea or dams, due to that need (or they’re feed by large pipes).
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Far right online forums:
I think we must define first what the heck is the far right in our countries, according current social and political consensus. Maybe people in the US who see themselves as righters (and they’re depicted as right wing according American reasonable leftists), they would be labelled as far righters in Europe…
My own case is quite puzzling. I see myself as a center left guy, but according current woke impoverished speech, I’m a “rojipardo”(according them, every non woke leftist who doesn’t support massive non legal migration is near a fascist -cough-). Of course, I hate this label. On the other hand, I think during last years, Conservatives here seem to be turning more toward agresduve far right politics. I mean, political spectrum isn’t static, but dynamic, in different historical and national contexts. So inline forums can be labeled with different ideological names.
Jmg – You’re quite right. Its far from impossible, just difficult. We are so programmed to aleays be by our ohones, plugged in and available. But the most worthwhile things in life are the most difficult. I’m going to make it a point to try and do a trip out as often as possible without my phone. Heck, my new job heavily discourages phone use – might be a good idea to leave it behind for my workday entirely…
On an unrelated mote, do you have links to suggested ways to weatherize and make one’s home more energy efficient? I would like to try and prepare my home for the coming increase in energy costs / rolling blackouts, to make it livable without an hvac system. I have an advantage in that I lived for a couple years without any means of climate control beyond a wood stove and space heaters, or cold showers and cold water for cooling, but anything to keep the inside temperature as separate from the outside would be really helpful. I’m about to have money to sink into my home and property, so anything that could make it more efficient/ self sustainable would be appreciated.
Northwind Grandma – Yeah, clearing off apps and tabs I dont use is a great idea. I’ve just kind of built uo so many layers of junk I don’t use over the years! Then, next is deleting the apps I use entirely too much, but one struggle at a time…
@Chuaquin #297
Right, after defeating the Inca Empire the Spanish had huge problems with the Mapuche people in Chile, the “War of Arauco” in the Araucania, was a disaster, in many case, for the spanish army, due to the gerrilla tactics of the Mapuche people; once the emperor Charles V said: “Chile le cuesta al Imperio la flor de mis guzmanes”, referring to the losses of many good spanish warriors in the guerrilla fighting against the Mapuches in Chile.
The problem with the Mapuche people continue after the indpendence of Chile well into the XIX century.
JMG and any others who have read / are reading the Inner Chapters of Zhuangzi / Chuang-Tzu (which I hope is on topic enough due to having been discussed above) – which translation(s) (and, if important, edition(s)) are worthwhile if one wants to get the best practical and philosophical gist of what’s being said? There are several translations; each seem to have pros and cons. I don’t know much about such things, so I would appreciate a good recommendation. Thank you!
— V.O.G
Clay Dennis 285
>I recommend getting a community college degree as a Waste Water Treatment Operator … This trade is mostly unionized, has good pay, licenses are required by law to operate plants, they are in short supply,
That reminds me of another trade in short supply.
Bookkeepers are in short supply. It is not cyclical either. It is permanent shortage. There are never enough bookkeepers available to help people start businesses. There is huge demand, generally.
When one wants to go into business, in whatever trade, however big, be it a sole proprietor, partnership, small corporation like an LLC, or of the various corporations, the number one professional one needs by one’s team is a:
BOOKKEEPER
It is an absolute must. Or one does the bookkeeping oneself.
Bookkeeping is a absolute must, or one’s business won’t last six months.
So either way, one cannot ignore bookkeeping.
Skills are the equivalent of a 2-year degree,— community college level. Bookkeeping is a trade.
If one becomes a bookkeeper, it makes good money. Because there is a chronic shortage, it is a bookkeeper’s market,— you can pick and choose your clients. The way it works is get training. Do minor promotion, like business cards. If you are good at it, honest, and personable, you will likely succeed. Within a couple years, customers come to you begging to become one of your clients. Within a couple years, you have “just enough clients” you want, whether that is one client or ten, where you need “close your practice to new clients” for your own sanity and health. Any bookkeeper worth her/his salt fill up fast, and then halt more clients and ask they to look elsewhere.
If one wants to work part-time, perhaps two clients is enough. If one wants more income, maybe four clients is the number. In other words, one has control on one’s time.
SOMEDAY, one will likely interview a potential client that you get bad vibes from (creeps; willies; heebie-geebies), to which you come up with an excuse why you suddenly cannot take on new clients, because you just found out your aunt is sick and needs tending; wish him well and show him the door.
*IF* a bookkeeper has difficulty finding clients, that is a bad sign. It could mean a cra—py bookkeeper. Get references of satisfied clients.
The trade of bookkeeping sits indoors in a congenial environment. One sits, therefore making this physically easier than most other trades. Bookkeeping is good for those who MUST sit, or PREFER to sit. Bookkeeping is sort of a luxury-trade because of its sitting indoors-ness.
If one liked rudimentary arithmetic, bookkeeping is interesting. One needs arithmetic, maybe early algebra. One needs to know how to read and write. One needs the 3 Rs: reading, (w)riting, and (a)rithmetic. Not much more above that when it comes to hard skills.
Be nice. Return phone calls, emails, letters, or whatever. Be honest, not divulging clients’ privacy. Be courteous. Keep one’s word: what one says matches what one does. Keep chronological notes, always, each business day: who one interacted with, including name, phone number, incoming or outgoing call, day of week, date, time, briefly what the conversation comprised of.
School teacher, nurse, secretary, bookkeeper, or cook.
As one can see, I am an advocate for the bookkeeping trade.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
JMG
Since it’s sort of relevant to the topic, I’ve been wondering, have you ever heard of the analog horror genre and if so what is your take on it? It’s basically horror media that heavily emphasizes the analog aesthetic (specifically vhs and the late 80s, early 90s). It’s been really popular with Gen Z and earlier this year the director of the Backrooms movie (which is likely the most popular analog horror series) became the youngest director to have a movie open number one at the box office.
I find it interesting that most of these series play with the idea that the people of the recent past were vibrant and cheerful but unaware that something wicked (usually lovecraftian) was happening just beneath the surface.
Just thinking about the longstanding advice to avoid college and go into the trades. The trades are generally very heavily male-dominated, and a lot of them require a certain level of physical strength more common in men than women.
What should a small, non-strong young woman do instead of college?
Granted, it won’t help me much at this late date, but I wonder…
“William, thank you for this. What you’re saying is that, despite all the people who insist otherwise, the law of diminishing returns really does apply to technology.”
Exactly, but with a bit of a twist that had not occurred to me until you wrote it out in those terms: we don’t hit diminishing returns on everything at the same time. If you want to use our current suite of technology to stalk or control someone, arguably we’re still not quite at the point of diminishing returns yet; there are some pretty interesting options in that regard in development right now; and assuming investment remains available, I know of no reason why some of the research into doing things like using magnetic fields to manipulate consciousness could not work. It’s already been shown in labs that a strong magnetic field can disable parts of the brain temporarily (Transcranial magnetic stimulation); and I currently know of no reason why wearable devices using these principles, which could induce huge alterations of behavior and consciousness, could not be built.
Of course, if you don’t want to stalk/control other people, and would rather not be stalked/controlled yourself, this turns into a massive disadvantage, and the better the tech gets at that sort of thing, the greater the apparent drawback….
Northwind Grandma (#226&257),
I am happy to hear that my comments are helpful for you. I think the most important thing to do is to make sure that you are comfortable with the set up that you have and that you use for finances, no matter what that might be.
As for the software suggestion, we got an announcement from my manager that next Tuesday we are getting an old fashioned punch clock and will be using that once it is installed; so it looks like my boss is no longer trusting any software. Personally, given what I’ve seen around cybersecurity, I think that’s probably a really, really good idea…
Paedrig (#275),
I managed to shift from having a crippling phone addiction to not using one in the space of about two years. I have two pieces of advice:
a) Figure out what you actually need, and get rid of everything else. Do you need Instagram? Could you access it on a computer? Switching a phone addiction for a computer addiction is a huge step up, because you can’t take the computer with you! Websites are also less addictive than phone apps in general, and so this shift will help a great deal. Get rid of the apps you don’t need, set up some form of restriction to keep yourself from reinstalling them (most phones have it built in; it’s usually meant for parents to keep kids away from dangerous things, but if you give it a password you don’t remember, it works for adults too!)
To start with, you want to get rid of apps that you can use a computer for; but you should plan on slowly shifting things away from the phone entirely. Getting rid of online banking means you can get rid of the bank apps; figure out other ways to communicate with people and you can completely remove your Instagram account and the like; get a map of your area and get used to reading it, and you won’t need a mapping app anymore.
b) Go for a trip somewhere that you go regularly, and don’t take the phone with you. That could be grocery store, post office, or even just a walk around the block. It doesn’t have to be very long; in fact, my advice is to start with you keep it short. Once that’s comfortable, then start working up towards longer; eventually, you could try leaving the phone at home for a whole day, but if you try that now, you’ll probably end up failing.
Combine both of these, and you should be able to make major progress within a few months; and in my case, I was effectively phone free within a year and a half, and when I moved about six months later just set up a landline and left it at that. Most importantly: it’s going to be a lot of work, but it’s doable, and it’s very much worth it.
JMG —
“We, in Some Strange Power’s Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line” (this story is written in the style of and as a homage to Roger Zelazny, who also appears in it as a character) — thus Wikipedia — appears in at least “Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories” and “Driftglass”.
It’s set in a world of radical bifurcation, in which the technological is doing its best to “liberate” the Others by a program of total compulsory electrification. It juxtaposes the liberations of the technical and the anarcho-primitive worlds through a story of one “conversion” near the US/Canadian border.
Somehow there’s a PDF on line at
https://sites.evergreen.edu/ftsm/wp-content/uploads/sites/307/2015/12/Delany-We-in-some.pdf,
evidently under the auspices of Evergreen State College, but what sort of permissions they might have for doing to isn’t clear.
“I recommend getting a community college degree as a Waste Water Treatment Operator and then passing the test to get your operators license. This trade is mostly unionized, has good pay, licenses are required by law to operate plants, they are in short supply, city can not cut staff below a certain. level and be legal and once you get a job you don’t have to move around like electricians.”
I won’t argue that, or the water operator on the supply side. The latter also has a certain ability for free lancing; the water “company” that supplies my water hires a contractor who has a full time job in a nearby town at their water department.
Look for something like this for your state.
https://doh.wa.gov/community-and-environment/drinking-water/regulation-and-compliance/waterworks-operator-certification
As mentioned a certified water operator is required for any public water system. The main down side is you will get muddy when something breaks.
For a devulgarized and perhaps Spenglerian version of +++ification, I submit for your consideration “kakamorphosis”.
(When I was young, many lustra ago, both of the now-common terms were considered beyond the pale of ordinary usage; even the name of games played with dice was bowdlerized or gentrified. So I have a collection of translation subroutines that runs in the background …)
Northwind Grandma- Re: Money orders. They are apparently popular with scammers, as an undeniable form of transfer. When I had some inheritance money to split with my brothers, my credit union was very cautious to discuss exactly what was going on to ensure that I wasn’t just repeating a story that the scammers coached me to say. So, be patient with them, if they seem to be reluctant to issue the money orders.
Philip at Bushcopse 296
> 15,000 living on Britain’s waterways (Robbie Cummings, Canal boat diaries)
One male ancestor, James, of mine, from southern Lincolnshire, in the 1840s, emigrated from there. Being a family historian and genealogist, I strongly suspect James grew up in a canaling family of County Norfolk, northern County Suffolk, and Lincolnshire. According to the 1841 (and further England census), they moved from place to place, so I don‘t know where their home base was. James’ parents had a passel of kids: roughly one-half migrated to Australia, the other half stayed in England, and only the one, James, went to Canada, then New York State.
He ended up in the Lake Champlain valley between New York State and Vermont, USA. He married and had thirteen kids.
Several sons became canalers between Montreal and New York City. He, and several sons, were whizzes at farming and mechanics,— jacks-of-all-trades. They all, often, had several jobs at a time, like farming with a sideline fixing canal boats’ engines and sails (yes, sails. On Lake Champlain, a boat often used both, which I understand is rare.) And a third way being pulled by mule or horse.
My grandfather Isaiah, from this same lineage, knew how to build an entire house on his own. He was versed in each trade. I think there was anything they couldn’t build. Not that he could physically do all that work, just he knew how. He and his brother Henry built two small houses (2-bedrooms each), side by side, in the 1950s, when they were in their 60s (using modest inheritances from their eldest brother
Garfield). They had more brothers than just those three but it wasHenry and Isaiah who stuck together over time (although Henry was a decade older).
Those miraculous skills died with them. Isaiah had two daughters, and Henry had one no-good-nik son.
The funniest thing. I am familiar with the statistics of half of children died before the age of 10 in the 1800s, but James and his wife and their own passel of kids; out of fourteen kids, only one died under the age of 20. The rest of them married and themselves each had a passel of kids. James farmed and canal-ed, so whatever he was doing was healthy to bring up kids. And half the time, the whole batch of them LIVED ON THE CANAL BOAT! Can you imagine? I suppose canal-ing in the 1800s needed children as labor (similar to farming), to manually load and unload the boat. Kids got muscles back then. (Boys turned into hunks.) (Even Isaiah was a hunk, a real head-turner.) James’ route was Montreal to New York City, the region he came to know. South of Albany, not so much, but north of Albany, he haunted.
I think that James, as a youngster, knew well the waterways of the above-mentioned counties Norfolk, Suffolk, and Lincolnshire, England (later censuses indicate those counties). I think James headed for Lake Champlain specifically. I think it a bit too coincidental that James started and ended his life in two different canal-counties, thousands of miles apart, each region having similar watery conditions.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
Hi Michael Gray,
🙂 If I may add, the soils in arid areas tend to contain a richer trove of soil minerals, than leached out high rainfall areas, so perversely with higher rainfall, agriculture will become both easier and harder. Candidly, I could have chosen a better location than up here (and have had to make up for that decision), but then some dry summers (think the awful Black Summer of 2019-2020 remember the Morrison forced hand shake gaffe?) it rains here when it rains nowhere else. All up I reckon we have to learn to take the good with the bad.
By the way, Australia is a big country and what your friends are telling you about early next year may apply more to say Western Queensland and Western New South Wales than way down south in Victoria. If you recall January and February here were La Nina, and how dry and hot where they? Yet up north, things were different and astoundingly wet – look at the levels of Lake Eyre, which are below sea level and capture all those flows. Ain’t no one size fits all explanation as to the weather, yet people latch onto concepts like a dog gnawing a rabbit. There are parts of South Australia which are having their wettest year on record, and that has to be the driest state.
Down here our weather is also impacted by the Southern Annular Mode (i.e. Southern Ocean) as well as the Indian Ocean dipole which you mentioned. And let’s not forget the Madden-Julian Oscillation up north. There’s a lot going on! 🙂
Nice to speak, and thanks for mentioning the DVD and record shop. Cool stuff.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Chuaquin,
The dirty little secret regarding renewable energy sources is that sometimes it’s at night, the wind isn’t blowing and you’re in the middle of a drought. What are you going to do then, is the important question!
And agreed, all those thermal power plants have to have a constant water supply in order to produce steam. Some years there is only so much water to go around. I have to get by on limited water resources, because there is only so much of the stuff I can afford to store in tanks. We are remarkably wasteful as a civilisation, and could do better.
Cheers
Chris
Padraig 299
> cold showers
Or take “sink baths.” Many here had a lively discussion about “sink baths,” I think a couple years ago. Sink bath is only one of each region’s unique name that evolved (over centuries?). I should have written the names down; the many names were quite charming. It turns out, sink baths (by any name) are❣️POPULAR❣️
I myself have not had a bath or shower in six years. I do sink baths, and wash hair in kitchen sink. I remember my mudder washing her hair in the kitchen sink in the 1960s. The kitchen faucet and sink due to the bigness of both.
Once a week, we kids (two) took a bath (Sunday) (w/hair washing). The other six days we took sink baths in the morning, including before school.
I bet I use less than a gallon per sink bath. None of this 25-gallon (or more) shower stuff (which, to me, is an obscenely extravagant amount). Twenty-five gallons to get clean? I have a contest with myself to see the least amount of water I can use and still get the job done. I don’t care if the water is cold; I refuse to waste a gallon (or more) of water in order to get to warm water (raised in New York State but lived thirty+ years in California). There is such a thing as an undersink thingy. One is:
Laing AutoCirc Recirculation Pump 115 Volts
a thingy that has always has warm water ready,— no wasting water. Installing such a pump is a job for a plumber, and it is rather expensive. I call it a heater, but Jethro corrected me: “No, it doesn’t heat water. It raises hot water from the water heater.“
I like talking about sink baths,— referred to by their many regional names. Sink baths have a future😀.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
@ Chris : “By the way, Australia is a big country and what your friends are telling you about early next year may apply more to say Western Queensland and Western New South Wales than way down south in Victoria. ”
Most likely. Never make the mistake of reducing a large country down to a single idea. Even Tasmania’s climate varies wildly and in surprisingly small amount of distance.
I’m a little late to the party, but I just realized RPGs and tabletop games also show bifurcation.
For a while, people have been playing D&D with the 3.5 edition rules, being fed up with the unessesary changes being made just so whoever has the rights now (Is it still Wizards of the Cost – pun intended?) Can churn out a new rulebook every year. I myself played some games with the 3.5 rules in recent years, dispite the fact they are from the 2000s, and had a lot of fun.
I hear Warhammer 40,000 also has fans who prefer the older, campier rules that allowed customising and unick character for armies, as well as more fun, unpredictable rules.
Hi John Michael,
Just to let you know that I’ve emailed the Technonomicron essay to the address you supplied. Due to a word I used in the title of the essay, which has many different meanings, thought I’d give you the heads up in case some stupid bot decided to bounce the email into the junk / spam folder. Man, the trouble I’ve had over the past fortnight with unasked for bot oversight on comments and emails has very much annoyed me deeply. I put an end to that mischief. It’d be OK, if the software actually worked. I missed some important correspondence. And today I did the merry-go-round with the nice telco. Fours of my life wasted, and nothing achieved. One wonders if that result is the desired outcome from the systems in place?
Cheers
Chris
@North wind grandma
My father was much like your grandfather Isaiah, in that he could build anything. He was apprenticed to a nursery at 14, and learnt to grow anything. After a short stint in the army he started out again as a window cleaner, which led onto being asked to do maintenance work, then painting and decorating, then to building extensions and house renovations, until he built up a small company building commercial property and housing. The early nighties recession put paid to that, though he carried on with a few employees doing renovations and decorating until he retired. I have definitely inherited his horticultural skills, working a small holding for many years, and some of his building skills via working for him from my mid teens into early twenties after which I took a different route in life. He definitely could not cook though! Fortunately my mother is a good cook. My ancestry is very mixed, with a lot of Irish, some Russian Jew, and rural English. I live in the SE of England, about two miles from where I was born, so I have not moved far, unlike some of my ancestors.
Scotlyn # 293:
I take note of your comment about activated charcoal, thanks.
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Anselmo # 295:
Thank you for your link. I think “Sea Peoples” is a good term to label those ancient invaders some millenia ago, against some East Mediterranean cultures which seemed to have suffered a deep crisis. However, we mustn’t mistake the map with the territory. That term was made up by modern historians, to depict some historical events not very clear (until today). I mean, it’s similar to another successful historical labels, like Middle Age or Bronze Age: they’re useful, but people who lived in those times evidently didn’t know they were living in times with those names…(spoiler) like Odysseus and others say in last Nolan movie (a Bronze Age Greek speaking about “Sea Peoples” is a big anachronism…).
————————————
DFC # 300:
Yes, I had forgotten Mapuches…On the other hand, it isn’t a strange historical event that new “independent” Chile government and mapuches had dissenssions (to say it softly); if you’ve noticed it, ruling elites in South America tend to be “white” or “whiter” than common people there, because they usually come from local elites (criollos). Oh, not every current natives problems come from the colonial times…
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Le Grand…# 309:
I like your suggestion:”kakamorphosis”. According my mother tongue own bias, it sounds a bit rude but suggests me some silly and slightly unpolite Spanish words, ha ha!
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Chris # 313:
Well, no argument here…
Philiph #296 About the technolologicaly descendent bifurcation in India. This began like an hybrid war weapon: the Boycott of made in England clothes proposed by Gandhi.
https://youtu.be/FBEURrajGps?is=pHR3LUwn98Qb-0mm
“What should a small, non-strong young woman do instead of college?”
Northwind’s comments about bookkeeping are worth noting. Didn’t the oldest uniform tablet found contain bookkeeping data about the grain stockpile? The Incans hadn’t figured out writing but they had a system of knotted ropes to keep the books.
The other thing I can think of is to play to your strengths. On average women have better fine motor skills in their hands. Long ago I noticed the best welders have good penmanship. The same precise and repeatable hand motions that make for good handwriting (or sewing) make for good welding. In WWII a lot of women were in the industrial workforce welding.
Also electrician’s work isn’t usually that heavy. Most of it is connecting outlets and switches. Dad was an electrician and said there were very few things the average woman couldn’t do. Given that lights are on the ceiling fear of heights would be a bigger barrier than strength although going up and down ladders all day does give the legs a workout.
Solar power installer could be on the ground or on a rooftop, so consider fear of heights in that one too.
@pygmycory,
The idea that small women can’t go in to all of the trades may be a bit outdated. I hang out from time to time at a microbrewery owned by a Union Pipefitter ( his side job). It is a hangout for union pipe fitters so I meet and talk with many of them including the new apprentices. This is a trade that is accessed by taking a test and waiting on a list at the local union hall. Right now I would say half the apprentices I see are women, and not of the large WNBA type. In the version of this trade common around here ( semiconductor plants, data centers) the piping is located in shallow galleries above the ceilings and under drop floors. The ability to fit in narrow spaces and fit hands between crowded pipe runs is more important than brute force. Many of the older larger men have moved to roles as layout guys, pipe prep guys and tool hookup guys. While the younger journeymen and women and apprentices who are smaller work in the pipe galleries.
Chris, a case could be made! Apparently higher global temperatures bring sharply increased rainfall to the Outback, which fills up those dry lake beds and provides ample forage for the bunyip population. 😉
Carlos, that’s hilarious, not least because it’s so predictable.
Jessica, er, I’m not going to out myself and risk my capacity to lurk by naming them. If you look around you’ll find plenty of examples.
Michael, this is very good to see! They’re right about DC — it’s insanely easy to get anywhere in the region by some combination of light rail and bus, and here in Montgomery County the buses are free — but I’d rate Providence, RI higher than they do. The bus system’s very good and extends all over the state.
Scotlyn, maybe so, but I tend to back away from people who insist that X is true because of what they feel, irrespective of any other evidence. The emotions are powerful and important but they aren’t necessarily an accurate measure of external reality.
Philip, of course the elite classes will push costs onto everyone else. In your country that’s been a matter of everyday experience since at least 52 BC (quite possibly before then, too, but I don’t know enough of tribal Celtic economics to be sure). Getting out from under parasitic elites — well, it’s a nice idea, but I don’t know of a case in which it’s been done, since human societies are very good at generating new elites once the old ones have been relegated to piano wire or whatever. (See the French and Russian revolutions, or your own Civil War period, for good examples.) What you can do, and what your examples seem to be doing with verve, is to limit your own exposure to the suction nozzles of the system via evasion and a refusal to participate in games that have only one winner.
Paedrig, of course, which is why it’s important to start with baby steps. Tomorrow, just that once, make yourself stick your phone in the underwear drawer and go to work without it. You can cling to it frantically for the rest of the workweek — but on Saturday, run an errand without it. You are only passive to your fears if you choose to be. As for weatherizing, there are hundreds of guides online and at your local public library (which you can visit without a phone in your pocket, btw!). Here’s one:
https://www.conservationmart.com/10-cheap-ways-to-weatherize-your-home-this-winter/
VOG, I’ll have to leave this to those who are fluent in Chinese, which I’m not. The edition that clubbed me over the head like a baby seal was by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English — they also did my first (and still treasured) edition of the Tao Te Ching.
Northwind (if I may), that’s an excellent point. Any halfway decent bookkeeper can always find work.
Anon, no, I hadn’t heard of that. Hmm!
Pygmycory, I think Northwind’s idea of bookkeeping has a very great deal to recommend it.
William, that’s a very good point. With regard to transcranial magnetic stimulation, hmm. Now I’m wondering what kind of headgear would interfere with that.
LeGrand, got it and thank you! “Kakamorphosis,” btw, is a keeper.
Four Sided, glad to hear it. If I ever went back to D&D it would be the original game, pre-Advanced, which was easy to use and enormous fun.
Chris, got it and thank you!
Pygmycory#304
Laboratory works.
Driver.
Pilot.
Mechanical.
Kitchener
@four-sided circle,
yes, there are warhammer fans that do that. I’ve met fans of ‘dead’ warhammer games like Fantasy, Armada, Imperial Gothic, Mordheim, and Warmaster. I’ve played Mordheim and Warmaster myself despite never having been a wargamer when the games were still alive. I used online rules and army builders set up online by fans. They’re free to use and don’t update very much.
It seems to be a trend.
@Four Sided Circle #316
You might take a look at the Old School Renaissance, which has produced a lot of new material based on TSR-era editions of D&D. There’s an awful lot to choose from, but I think the general recommendation is to take a look at Old School Essentials, which is a 99.9% faithful recreation of the old Moldvay Basic and Cook Expert edition.
@JMG re: the original edition of D&D
If you ever do get a chance to play again, you might take a look at Delving Deeper, an OSR retroclone of the original rules and the best one I’ve found. It’s more faithful than the more popular Swords & Wizardry and is sold at cost:
https://www.lulu.com/shop/simon-j-bull/delving-deeper-reference-rules-compendium/paperback/product-21911339.html
Here’s an electronic copy of the rules online: https://ddo.immersiveink.com/
Hmmm… I’m not sure what part of my comment appeared to you to be my insistence that X is true because of my feelings?
#PuzzledInIreland 😉
JMG,
Are you familiar with the Degrowth Movement? It apparently started out in the seventies and, from my brief look into it, seems to be a convoluted mess of anti-capitalism and a little Marxism. It seems to be gaining ground these days, particularly with the Left.
VOG (no. 301), have a look at Victor Mair’s “Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu.” Mair is a versatile genius. (His blog is called “Sino-Platonic Papers,” and thinks Chinese script is derived from Sumerian! Not too many people could have bee qualified to evaluate that one!) He also edited “Experimental Essays on Zhiangzi.”
JMG (no.323), I had that version of Zhuangzi. Read it when I was about 20, liked it very much. One odd wrinkle, so to speak, was that one of the illustrations appeared to be a photocopy of English’s nethers. (Or was that from their Daodejing?) I saw the original photos years later, on exhibition in California. The authors were connected with Esalen and the American Academy of Asian Studies, and ran a Daoist retreat center in Colorado.
Hi John Michael,
Thanks! And hope you enjoy the work. 🙂
Cheers
Chris
Hi Michael Gray,
Ah, Tasmania is a fascinating land. Did you know that the best soils are found on the dry mid east coast, which is about the only place that grains can be grown reliably with reasonable protein levels. Excessive rainfall is a problem, but if I were going to live down there, that’s where I’d choose, hopefully close to a waterway which runs from the highlands.
I was reading an article yesterday in the ABC news which suggested that health outcomes on that island are on average worse than the mainland. My best guess is that would be due to the rainfall leaching the soil minerals in most other parts of that large island. If you’re brave, there is a fascinating book on growing vegetables down south which is well worth the read (being at altitude, the climate here is similar to Tassie, but which far richer soils so the advice is relevant): Growing Vegetables South Of Australia By Steve Solomon. I recommend it highly. Shout out to Claire who put me onto the author and experienced gardener! 🙂
Cheers
Chris
As far as fictional works on bifurcation, I think I mentioned this in a comment once before, but I can recommend The Ten Percent Thief: https://search.worldcat.org/title/1384413031 by Lavanya Lakshminarayan.
The premise is that in a future city state, 10 percent are the elite who use advanced technology up to 3d holographic displays, the majority of citizens are in the 70%, and 20% are “Analogs” who live outside the city and don’t have access to digital technology.
Anonymous 303
> analog horror genre
I would include “zombie” stories as a sub-category of horror. And “ghoul” stories. It has been a long while since I have been THAT CREEPED OUT after reading a zombie or ghoul short story.
I say, “short story” because I have little patience to get through longer tales.
Since Jethro’s death, I haven’t been able to read a zombie or ghoul story… too close for comfort. For my well-being,— for the time-being, I have to stick to “detective” stories of the Victorian or Edwardian eras (roughly 1880-1915).
💨🫥🧟♂️💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
I’m finding the constant intrusion of um, ‘commercials’ (often various themes on ‘this one hack will do, fix, make whatever ain’t cuttin it, work … where apparently, nothing else has – ad nauseum!) exeedingly annoying – often repeated within minutes of the last … especially when it comes to watching long-form podcasts. This is a common occurrence on a site that rhymes with ‘tumble’ .. Now, maybe it’s just me, but these intrusions seem to blurt forth right when an important point, opinion, criticism .. is being made by the host/guest, where concentration is of import. Almost as if That was the intent! Anyone else irritated by these intertoob assaults on one’s intelligence? And No, don’t suggest that I sign up/register for the so-called ‘ad-free’ viewing .. Frack That!
Lathechuck 310
> money orders
CASHIER’S CHECK
Thanks muchly. I didn’t know.
I just looked up “cashier’s checks” and “certified checks.” Perhaps cashier’s check is more of what I am looking for.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
Slithy, hmm! That looks pretty good.
Scotlyn, I didn’t imply that you were saying that. I was suggesting that people who say “X is true because my heart knows it!” are saying that.
Caldathras, yes, and in fact I’ve had an essay in French translation published in a degrowth journal. Like so many such movements, it’s mostly a matter of theory — I haven’t seen much sign of practice.
Ambrose, yep. There’s another picture of English squatting and pissing on a rock in a stream. What can I say? It was the 1970s.
Mawkernewek, hmm! That sounds fun.
Polecat, now you know one of the reasons I don’t watch podcasts…
#334 I actually listened to a podcast recently that discussed the issue of improving the experience of ads inserted into podcasts by programmatically analyzing the audiohttps://realpython.com/podcasts/rpp/96/. The idea was to find a natural pause to put them in, make them relevant but ensure this is for a positive rather than negative sentiment. For example they didn’t want to have someone dissing a sports team and then choose that moment to do a add for them.
Perhaps they applied these ideas in reverse to make you pay up for the ad free experience?
Ok. I guess that makes sense of your reply. 🙂
I will say that I do think that the heart knows stuff that the mind does not… eg, the “vibes” in a room… The heart is an organ of perception after all. What it perceives is emotions. (Does it generate them? I’m not sure of that).
I think the original phrasing was using “Heart” as a wishing organ (close off present to wish for an idealised future), rather than as a “detecting” organ (perceive important aspects of the present without closing them off, or foreclosing on them) as I do.
Thinking of the heart as a wishing organ does inevitably lead to a loop of illusion/disillusion, I think.
Anyway. I was only playing, so blessings. 🙂 🙂
One more thing…
“We could very easily end up fifty years or so from now with a fully bifurcated society, where a minority of technocrats and affluent flunkies live in walled communities patrolled by robot guards, getting access to impressively advanced technologies at the cost of having their actions and their thoughts watched 24/7 by implanted brain chips or the like, while the majority have walked away from so hellish a lifestyle and taken up something much closer to Sarah Chrisman’s Victorian habits.”
It strikes me that James C. Scott’s “The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia” is a history of this precise topic of (voluntary) bifurcation. The work examines a lengthy, 2000-year long, or so, history of the relationship between southeast Asia’s “civilised” valleys and its “backward” (or “free” depending on your point of view) hills.
Even though the narrative of “civilisation” is always that the “backward” hill people are “primitive” and simply have not cottoned on to the benefits of civilisation yet, (ie that the road from the hills to the valleys can only run one way) the hills always represented a form of freedom from the detriments of civilisation that was always available for the denizens of the civilised valleys to run away to. In other words, this road goes two ways, and there were always people who voluntarily travelled that road one way or another, depending on what they valued more – centralised controls and comforts, or hilltop freedom and relative material deprivation.
Hello JMG
Thank you for your reply. It’s me being peeved about my countries elites cluelessness. They think there will always be more, which unfortunately has been the case for three hundred years of British upper class looting of the planet. I think the rightward move of the right in the UK is driven significantly by the fear that maybe the party’s over? They think they can do Thatchers policies again with a bit of racism added in, when fossil fuels are nearly gone, manufacturing is mostly gone, and the state has sold off everything not nailed down, leaving only the City of London which is just an offshore office for Wall street, hence the policy of Kow Towing to Washington for many years for fear of losing the last source of income the UK has. Cluelessness plus fear = anything could happen.
I will politely disagree on your point that all societies have elites. Foraging societies generally don’t, nor do maroon societies, or the hill cultures of southeast Asia as detailed by James C Scott in “The art of not being Governed”, yes I know you already know this. The above cultures can be considered anarchistic in that they lack a hierarchy, they may have a big man but he still had to find his own food.
Yes, the LESS strategy is very helpful in avoiding the paratism of elites, but you can’t avoid all of it a . As James C Scott details in another of his books “Seeing like a State”, states and corporations have got very good at pinning down people via bureaucracy and measurement which gives the intermediaries a get in. How to get out of the situation? Hanging on until a feudal system evolves? That takes centuries, and you still have an elite though less costly to keep. Revolution? Rince and repeat with new elite. Foraging society? Too many people and the planets already trashed. Maroon society? They existed where it was difficult for the state to get at them; marshes, jungle, ocean, mountains, forests, deserts. Most of us are going to have put up with the parasites for awhile (understatement). My take is use LESS, stay off the digital map, prepare for emergencies and to be mobile, learn a craft or two and practice it off the books, and if you get an opportunity find a community far from the state or their partners in crime the corporations. PS I’m having some fun these days in hand writing letters to various government bodies and corporations when they want you to use a website or an app. They chase me up a about the matter concerned, and I write them another letter noting I had sent the first letter answering there concerns which they again fail to act on. This creates great confusion for them, and amusement for me. I do wonder though if they can still read?
@Scotlyn (#339) & Philip at Bushcopse (#340):
Also highly relevant here is Carolyn Nordstrom’s book, Global Outlaws (2007), which nicely complements Scott’s work on how not to be governed. Both anthropologists explain how living “outside the law” can actually be the very best survival strategy for various peoples.
One might (though these two scholars don’t) actually develop a strong theoretical position that crime is basically resistance to governance, that criminality is the necessary counterweight to over-governance in any functioning society, that it is the best possible defense against society’s control mechanisms, which are always and everywhere prone to overreach and corruption. As society becomes ever more wedded to around-the-clock surveillance, the skills of the criminal, the arts of deception, and how to fly-under-the-radar become (IMHO) ever more necessary. (Yet criminality, too, is subject to overreach and corruption: governance is also the counterweight to overreach in criminality.)
the idea of isolated high tech citadels ala elysium is enough to make me wax nostalgic for the wild west days of the internet when the alphabet soup agencies had the collective digital literacy of a well trained german sheperd, and the world was the oyster of any high school dropout that knew their way around command line.
what variables do you think would most effect the catabolic processes that would lead to the kind of truly dead internet you envision where its access is largely restricted to government agencies on decaying hardware? Shortage of Taiwanese silicone maybe? or would it be the skills needed to code becoming a lost art?
pygmycory, I don’t think you need to resort to a mechanical wristwatch to avoid the trappings of a mobile phone. Quartz analogue and simple digital watches are reliable, cheap and a-la-mode, and are based on technologies from a similar era as JMG’s hifi.
Cheers
Matt