US Election 2024

These next dozen years or so will tell the tale, but these next 6 months is our national Road To Damascus moment.

The Trump Indictment #2? #3?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxCDVOmGPlo

2024

 So, as announced earlier today, it looks like the 2024 US Presidential election choices will be Trump/? vs Kennedy/?. No matter who gets elected, Americans are gonna be the winners.

Me Quoting Me

As indictment does not equal conviction, neither does prosecution equal guilt. Conviction without guilt may be the greatest tragedy known to humanity, and the ultimate reason sentence should always be filtered through the lens of mercy.

Me

Beating a Silver Lining out of the political clouds

Visiting with my buddy Mike a few minutes ago, in response to my noting the most recent predictions for the mid-terms being House R's 250ish and Senate R's at 54, he asked what they could do to force a policy change from the Biden admin. I suggested a 2 pronged strategy; first, if the new Speaker (presumably McCarthy) and the Senate Maj Leader (McConnell) can dig around deep enough to find the courage to refuse any funding legislation unless and until Pres Biden revokes all of the EO's he signed restricting US domestic oil production and "stop stealing the gas from American fuel tanks", along with initiating impeachment proceedings beginning in January, 2023 against every member of the Biden Admin subject to such actions, would result in a much greater willingness to negotiate honestly within the House and Senate. By initiating 25th amendment proceedings against Biden himself at the same time, the next 2 years should offer an entirely different domestic political discussion if nothing else.

My belief is that it isn't really necessary to "defeat" the Biden Admin so much as it is necessary to force the secondary and tertiary levels of federal government to operate in an unambiguous (which is to say legally attributable) fashion by tying up the Cabinet-level appointees and their immediate subordinates in defending themselves before numerous Congressional committee hearings. This potentially allows the subsequent administration obvious constitutionally sound political grounds for "corrective" legislation starting in 2025 aimed at those levels of government (not to say the Deep State :)) who expose themselves during this period of time.

Surviving the next 2 years if not a single penny more gets shoe horned into the economy will be challenging, so economic hard times are indeed at hand, but the only way to defeat an entrenched opponent is to structure events such that the opponent has no time to design and mount active opposition for long enough to effect substantive change (in classical strategic terms, by changing the ground upon which their efforts are predicated). One immediate tactic to facilitate this future effort would be to organize a letter/email campaign directed at all US Senators to vote "no" on any further monetary legislation during the current term of Congress. At all. No exceptions.

Final note; if the election predictions hold up, there is a plausible possibility for the 2024 election to empower a sufficiently numerous Republican majority at the federal government and state Governor's levels sufficient to impose Constitutional Amendment(s) in 2025/6, but it is necessary to design and organize that effort beginning now.

The Silver Silver Bulls

 The recent discussion of a "silver squeeze" has me smiling. A short prefatory story first:

In 1980, two Texas brothers, Nelson Bunker Hunt, his younger brother Herbert, and several other members of their extended family, managed to buy something like two thirds of all the privately held silver on planet Earth, ultimately driving the 1 ounce spot price to $600+ for at least a short time. While doing so was seemingly not against any laws, they ultimately ended up in court where they argued (unsuccessfully you will no doubt be shocked to discover) that they weren't manipulating the silver markets but rather they were building a hedge fund against the rampant inflation of the US dollar during the 1970's. I can't imagine why the Federal Reserve, not to mention the US Mint, took such extreme exception to this denigration of their collective financial acumen.

The two primary reasons the Hunts failed are that they borrowed against their other assets to fund this buying spree, and there were too few of them to make prosecution unmanageably difficult for the USG.

Back to 2021, and silver spot prices have essentially doubled over recent weeks but there isn't any obvious orchestration of the buying efforts. Given the realities of digital social media, there is an opportunity to be realized from the two examples above.

Social security payments are all directly deposited into the recipients bank account on the Wednesday of the week the recipient was born. I for example was born in the fourth week of October, so I receive my social security payment on the fourth Wednesday of each calendar month. Should enough people (lets assume 1 million buyers on each of the four Wednesdays of payments in any given month) buy $500 of silver coins as part of a tranche of buyers on their Wednesday, and they did this for 10 months in total. It ought to be fairly easy to slowly drive the market spot price up to a value of 5x the spot price 10 months previous.

Now, silver is measured on the imperial scale, so 16 ounces to the pound. If you assume an average of 3 pounds of silver is purchased by each individual buyer in the first month, the rise of the spot price in succeeding months will reduce the amount $500 will purchase. Obviously, the up side of this is that your silver is now worth more than when you bought it; the down side being that your $500 the next month won't buy as much as it did the first month. This being a wildly speculative example of a hypothetical, let's say (for the ease of calculating) that all 4 million senior citizens each end up with 10 pounds (or 160 ounces) of silver on the first day of the 11th month, when the spot price has been above a pre-determined multiple of the starting value for a pre-designated amount of time, at which point everybody descends on their preferred precious metals dealer at opening time of the next regular business day, offering their hoard for sale at that days spot price.

No signal required.

The second thing that will happen is that the next day's spot price will drop to almost the level it was 10 months previous. The first thing to happen is that metal buyers across the US will be desperately trying to figure out where to get that much cash. Since the second thing is a desired result we will concentrate on alleviating the first thing. Instead of accepting a check (because bank deposit records are already reported to government agencies), suggest that the dealer exchange an equivalent amount of gold coins for the majority of the silver, leaving no more than $1,000 in currency needed to complete the transaction. It is simplicity itself to come back every week-or-so to sell a coin.

This would result in 4 million senior citizens increasing the value of $5,000 to (realistically, probably no more than 3x) its original value. Still, as a way to potentially make a little extra money, this seems reasonably easy and minimally risky (barring a home invasion or other type of robbery, obviously). At worst, barring being a crime statistic, people will have accumulated a modest amount of precious metal to hold for a future profitable sales opportunity.

Also, identifying - never mind rounding up - 4 million senior citizens who are individually guilty of nothing more than buying a legal product in a legal transaction seems overly Orwellian even for 2021.

I'm not on reddit either, so don't look to me for ringleader material, but it does make for interesting speculation (and a terrible pun), doesn't it? 

Go Marker

 Donald J. Trump did not kill himself.

Help us, Obi-Won Elon

The Brooking Institute just published an economic analysis of the latest US Presidential election with some interesting findings. Most prominent of these is the division of aggregate wealth (GDP) apportioned over America's 3,142 counties (or county equivalents). Roughly 600-odd counties account for production of 70% of the country's total GDP, with the overwhelming majority of those counties containing the majority of US citizenry and urban development as well. The authors of the article focus on political/electoral analysis, but my interest is on the potential for market growth illustrated by the remaining 30% of current US GDP generated by the other 2,400 or so counties.

As Elon Musk's Starlink project continues through its development beta phase, the financial growth potential in the 2,400 counties identified by the Brookings Institute article linked above strikes me as being most easily realized by a communications network effectively identical to that which Mr. Musk is in the process of building out as you read these words.

As ever, the devil (and the trick) is in the details of how one goes about doing the deed.

As we approach the final decline of the Old Republic (or alternatively, the growth into the New People's Republic of the United States of America), there remains the presence of Opportunity (a basic strategic premise being that all confrontations inherently present opportunity to those who position themselves to take advantage of same). Opportunity to connect, train, support, and develop a network of individuals creating financial gain for themselves and those new or existing businesses they work with in markets that literally do not exist as of yet being my specific point of interest today.

One market few seem to consider is that of financial support, a credit union (I suggest calling it The Spacers Guild Credit Union) that serves anyone working directly or indirectly in support of off-planet enterprises (and thus all potential members of The Spacers Guild), providing traditional banking services as well as legal representation and continuing education (delivery and certification) for its members (and their families) would be both the most prominent and most basic of these, I think. Such a business, being intended to serve an off-Earth clientele from inception, would seem a natural enough fit to service any Luna, Mars, or Asteroid Belt based market should such develop in future.

In the interim, and given that these underfinanced counties are scattered over all 50 states (and one assumes all 5 US Territories as well), they begin with easy access to the already developed regional networks already centered around existing urban markets to draw upon for potential labor and other networked resources. The lower costs of residing and doing business in rural regions (relative to heavily developed urban environments) are probably not as pronounced as is commonly assumed, but nevertheless are a reality to some degree; it is the previous-to-now lack of connectivity that has been the stopper. Which segues neatly into the next opportunity I spy.

One of Elon Musk's other companies, Tesla, has been straining under the great expense required to achieve the final few percentage points of engineering necessary to achieve device autonomy. I suggest a better financial expenditure (and potential societal, or even civilizational rescue) can be achieved by creating the trained people to operate a semi-autonomous technology, linked together through the Starlink network. These people create businesses analogous to over-the-road drivers, who are organized, trained, and certified through the Spacers Guild. The provision of legal counsel, analogous to that provided to firearms owners by the US Law Shield  legal group, would be one of the benefits available to the membership of the Spacers Guild Credit Union (which, like any other credit union in the US, is a member-owned business, so not a bank).

The jobs Starlink trains these Americans (and, fairly quickly I predict, citizens of other countries too) to perform are as mundane and necessary as the truck drivers I associated them with earlier. One purely space oriented job is that of "orbital garbage collector". When you take into account the huge expense invested in putting all of that now-scrap metal (and other substances and materials) that currently create a hazard to navigation and structural integrity to orbital platforms and satellites, just pushing them into atmospheric burn-up doesn't make sense. Instead, contracting with a (presumably large-ish) number of individuals to capture each object (some of which will require many different operators to coordinate their thrust efforts) and drive it into stable orbit at the L-4 point for eventual re-use seems a much more financially useful alternative (side note: the L-4 La Grange Point is also the logical place to build the infrastructure necessary to converting asteroids into products). Supervising the semi-autonomous fleet of logistical transport and delivery vehicles on the Earth's land and liquid surface would be an even more numerous job opportunity.

Enabling the transition of the digital content creators present day efforts into what I have seen described as a Blog 2.0 structure - that is, a more text-driven melding of the heavily visual presentation technology we currently associate with YouTube and the like - that bypasses the gatekeeping efforts of existing technology providers will be a civilizationally transformative outcome all in itself.

There is apparently a vast pool of money just floating in the air over more than 2,400 largely rural counties in the US today (and no one has any idea how great the potential is elsewhere on the planet). Bringing that down to Earth, and expanding it to the edges of our Solar System, is a challenge we humans simply must succeed at ... or quite literally die not trying.

Building Our Soup Bowl*

Recently, Elon Musk announced that SpaceX will begin building "floating superheavy-class spaceports" for its launch and recovery of spacecraft; IOW VTOL aircraft carriers. One presumes these vessels will include repair and re-condition capabilities for Falcon and Starship vehicles as an initial minimum standard, with all that that includes engineering-wise.

It probably shouldn't go without saying that the usual run of blue-water vessel crewing requirements will also be necessary; Captain, bridge watchstanders, communications and radar operators and maintenance workers, both ship and flight deck engineering and maintenance personnel, culinary and other human support crew ... it's a long list of ship handling and maintenance specialties whose tasks have to be provided for both in personnel and in logistic support, along with all of the financial commitments doing that entails. I presume Mr. Musk will operate these ships under Texas registration and regulations; if so he might want to strongly consider creating a Texas-based security company which employs Level III licensed guards trained to function in a nautical environment (trained EMT's/Paramedics and maybe rescue swimmers combines several potential requirements), particularly in light of the threat potential such a complex investment seems almost certain to attract. (See: Update below)

There is plenty of existing commercial experience to draw upon to develop a shore support effort (all those oil well platforms in the Gulf and elsewhere); and let's face it, aircraft carriers have been in existence for a century now, as has replenishing them logistically underway - hardly cutting edge science there. A lot of additional features to develop of course; making sure your boat doesn't catch fire and explode every landing and launch understandably being high on that list. Mr. Musk and his team will be fully occupied for some years getting all of this underweigh.

A technology I think Mr. Musk should look into is Life Proof Boats (I don't have any connection to the company, I'm just impressed with what I've seen so far) . They don't heavily advertise them, but they do offer a 48' version that at first look seems a useful platform to economically provide logistic support to a vessel operating within a few hundred miles of harbor, as well as fire fighting support and crew escape (one of these could easily tow one or two standard 20 person life rafts) while the carrier is on station. Hanging some Oxe Diesel Outboard Engines off the stern would permit an economy of performance hard to beat, I think (no connection to this company either, but one fuel for all vessels just seems a better option to me). Additionally, I can't help believing that Star Link provides a platform by which much of the work involved with one or a fleet of space launch and recovery ships can be equally well performed remotely by operators on shore.

Additionally, I find myself attracted to the idea that, much like commercial yachts hiring their Captain and Chief Engineer to be involved in the vessel build process, potentially being able to watch the development of the procedures and technologies used to achieve the SpaceX fleet logistics requirements during their development strongly attracts me. In part because I served on a USN carrier back at the tail end of the Vietnam war, in part because I like the challenge of small boat handling (on and off the boat), and in part because I worked 15+ years in some aspect of logistics that didn't involve a desk.

We'll see ... and that's the best part of all.  :)

*Jerry Pournelle famously coined the phrase, "It's raining soup in space, we just need to build a bowl and go get some."

Update 6/21/2020: A security force - importantly, one that works for you - that is trained in repelling, investigating, and documenting (to appropriate legal standard) criminal acts both on and off the high seas isn't a needless cost; see: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/world/americas/gulf-mexico-pirates-ships.html

Chinese Takeout and Delivery

I'm currently re-reading David Hackworth's book About Face (I'm at the part where he is recalling his reaction to the lack of Lessons Learned by the US Army regarding counter-insurgency and anti-guerrilla operational requirements in Vietnam circa early-1966 while assigned as escort officer to S. L. A. Marshall). I'm wondering if we in the US aren't going through something similar right now as regards PRC offensive actions against us (not to mention the rest of the world).

It seems not unreasonable to assume that the PLA (along with its subordinate Naval and Air Force components - everyone in the People's Republic of China military is a soldier, whether assigned to an army, navy or air force position) is willing to regard the current coronavirus pandemic as a useful model for determining the various responses to be expected to future, deliberate offensive actions against the US and other countries. It is also well known, if not often commented upon in the US media, that the PRC is active throughout the North and Central American region, whether via the PLA, PLAN, PLAAF, or other PRC agencies.

It occurs to me that now, during the current largely shut down status of so much of US national activity (industrial, commercial, governmental), that an effort by the PLA to develop a guerrilla organizational structure from within the ranks of the existing Mexican smuggling gangs shouldn't be all that out of the question.

The PLA has disrupted Nicaraguan government and societal stability to further the PRC's construction of a canal through that country to rival the Panama Canal, the resulting violence having effect on human migration patterns out of Nicaragua (from there into Guatemala, from there into Mexico, from there …). The PRC is well known to have established relationships with Mexican drug cartels to supply them with drug or drug precursor materials. Mexican "drug cartels" are in actual fact drug and anything else smugglers, so how outlandish an idea is it to suppose the PLA isn't working right now to supply Mexican smuggling gangs with the means to also smuggle a ready-made-to-order guerilla insurgency into the US as well?

The PRC is demonstrably willing to actively work to permit the wide-spread dispersal of this latest coronavirus around the world; why wouldn't they equally be willing to inflict a plausibly deniable physical attack on the US by "Mexican bandits"?

I can offer no evidence for this guerilla warfare scenario other than my willingness to not presume my enemies stupidity. Is that sufficient to justify investigating the current reality on the Mexican ground, before it "just appears out of nowhere" here on US ground?

Whose Lab seems a pertinent question here

The Al Fin Next Level blog is one that I have been following for 6+ years now, largely because the posts there cover a range of topics I often have at least some interest in and the posts themselves present a well-thought-out, balanced, and well sourced approach to the topic du jour. As witness, see: It Wouldn't Be the First Virus to Escape from a Laboratory 

Some Experts Believe the Virus May Have Escaped a Lab

Viruses in the same family as Wuhan Coronavirus are routinely collected and studied at minimal protection levels, making lab accidents and viral leaks more likely.

Ebright thinks that it is possible the COVID-19 pandemic started as an accidental release from a laboratory such as one of the two in Wuhan that are known to have been studying bat coronaviruses.

Except for SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, two deadly viruses that have caused outbreaks in the past, coronaviruses have been studied at laboratories that are labelled as operating at a moderate biosafety level known as BSL-2, Ebright says. And, he says, bat coronaviruses have been studied at such labs in and around Wuhan, China, where the new coronavirus first emerged. “As a result,” Ebright says, “bat coronaviruses at Wuhan [Center for Disease Control] and Wuhan Institute of Virology routinely were collected and studied at BSL-2, which provides only minimal protections against infection of lab workers.” __ TheBulletin

Which, as any blogger strives for, brings us back around to the titular point of the post; precisely whose lab had this particular strain of coronavirus get out into the world?

Which brings this post to the website Veterans Today  Billed as "Serving the Clandestine Community since 2004" may provide some useful framing for the following story:

 https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/03/26/us-athlete-intelligence-officer-in-china-games-named-as-patient-zero-for-covid-debunking-trump-rhetoric-updating/

I can't figure out how to quote from the article directly; it's in English, but not in a coherent fashion, you'll have to go see for yourself.

At first glance, the article at Veterans Today appears to be a mash-up of someone's propaganda, or equally arguably someone's public relations efforts. Not being a professional in either, I decline to speculate. In any case, the article specifically identifies US Army Reserve Staff Sergeant Maatje Benassi as a US "intelligence officer" and "an armed diplomatic driver ... for General James Jones" who is further claimed to be assigned to US Army Intelligence. Given that Fort Meade is publicly acknowledged as the home of the US National Security Agency, a General Jones - a US Army Intelligence Officer specifically - being assigned duties proximate to the NSA doesn't seem particularly noteworthy, unless said General Jones isn't publicly identified to be in that assignment. Some cooberative linkagrey would seem the least effort required to retain even a fleeting grasp on 1st amendment claims. Also, it strikes me that an "armed diplomatic driver" would almost certainly be drawn from the ranks of active duty personnel, not a reservist (unless she were to be on active duty status at the time of posting to the position).

At the very least, this reporting verges uncomfortably close to doxxing absent the links to corroborate such claims.

Adding at least the appearance of legitimacy to all of this is this article from October 25, 2019 by the US Department of Defense: https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/1998827/us-women-place-8th-despite-crash-in-50-mile-cycling-race/

A hit from behind on the final lap may have dashed the U.S. team's hopes for gold in women's cycling, but bruised ribs and a cracked helmet didn't stop Army Sgt. 1st Class Maatje Benassi from crossing the finish line.    Teammates from a trail vehicle rushed to her side to provide aid, but she refused medical care for the moment, jumping right back up on the bike. "My goal was to finish it. … I came this far, I trained this hard, I had to finish it," she said. "I was in a lot of pain, and my bike was rubbing, too. … Nothing went smooth, but I said, 'Forget it, I'm just going to finish.'" Benassi finished last among the 30 competitors from 11 nations who completed the road race.

 "But that's racing", she said. "You win some, you lose some". The Army Reserve noncommissioned officer from the 312th Observer-Controller-Trainer unit at Fort Meade, Maryland, said she won't let the setback keep her down. A few days later, she was back out training.

 It may seem trivial to non-service members, but getting the Sergeant's rank wrong is a prominent red flag regarding the factuality of everything that follows. Beyond that, is SFC Benassi's duty posting, A) correct, B) a matter of public knowledge, or did Jim W. Dean, managing editor of Veterans Today, just break operational security and subject SFC Benatti to career ending scrutiny via his deliberate doxxing of her?

It seems obvious to me that this story about the source of the COVID-19 coronavirus takes a plausible-seeming sports story from last October, associates it with nebulous claims of nefariousness (source of said claims not identified), and aligns the story presentation with known PRC/CCP propaganda that they aren't the source of this pandemic, the US Army is (there are two USAF LTC's and a US Navy Commander also mentioned in the DoD story, if infection was the objectivity why wouldn't they be included in the effort? Is veteranstoday.com officer-class snobbery showing through? Maybe PRC/CCP money is the easiest answer).

What makes this potentially something more than a moderately interesting blog post is the national security questions riddled throughout. Is this an example of PRC/CCP 4G warfare? How about "mere" collusion with a foreign power as an undeclared agent of influence? OTOH did what we know as COVID-19 get out of a lab at Fort Detrick, which is 40-odd miles northwest of Fort Meade? Not impossible, and neither is it seemingly implausible, which makes it all seem more likely as propaganda absent further facts to support such a claim.

US Army Chief of Staff General James C. McConville has the duty to his country and his fellow soldiers to investigate this matter as fully as possible, and to report his findings to the Commander-in-Chief. One direct way of starting such an inquiry is to poll the four women identified in the DoD story from last October (along with the unidentified teammates in the support vehicle) as to their physical health during the months of October and November, 2019, with medical records to support such recollections. A second line of inquiry needs to identify all of the possible means of "cross pollination" between Forts Detrick and Meade. This would be useful whether or not any member of the US team became infected with any disease. Finally, this investigation needs to happen as a matter of considerable urgency. In what I regard as on my Top 5 Worst Case Scenarios list, The USA and the PRC going Def Con 1 with each other is certainly in their somewhere. We absolutely want to know as certainly as we possibly can that we know why while we go all "duck and cover". On a different list is the names of those who get a traitors just rewards.

And you were lamenting just the other day about the lack of sports stories, weren't you? Personally, I'd rather go back to ignoring Jim Lampley.

A More Perfect Union?

It was bound to happen, given the utter lack of organization amongst the digital content creator class. Someone was going to have the bright idea and, more importantly, the ability to make the essential connections necessary to begin creation (there's that word again) of an effort to counter the often arbitrary (when not outright malicious) seeming behavior of the digital content viewing platforms. Right now it's You Tube under the gun, but Facebook and Twitter to name only two others can expect their turn soon enough. As of now the You Tube Union is mostly vaporware (and with that being so, I hereby suggest that the final name of such an organization be: The Creatives Union - there are more than just creators involved after all). There is a negotiated affiliation with IG Metall, advertised to be the single largest labor union in all of Europe, and there are efforts underway to bring You Tube management to the bargaining table, but beyond that little can be known as little has been accomplished in the copious spare seconds that remain. Yet. Now is the time for we the membership to speculate on what and how those expected accomplishments might take shape.

In traditional form, labor unions have an international level of organization for dealing with labor issues having origin in international agreements and organisations, and a You Tube Union (hereafter: YTU) necessarily would require the same given the (for now at least merely) planetary scope of its potential membership (looking right at you Elon Musk). Below that (or as an integrated component of the international part in a better designed organizational structure) is the national level of union representation of its membership. It has to be acknowledged that national governments are the only entities that have the inherent infrastructure (legal, financial and otherwise) to enforce their declarations at the lawful point of a gun; international agencies and organizations all derive whatever authority they claim as a result of treaties negotiated between nation states delegating such authority to them. This is why I insist that a well organized union considers national and international representation of its members to be one single level of union management, since "international law" is really just a hodge podge of convoluted, and surprisingly often actually contradictory, treaties between nations that are frequently being enforced by a third party (all of whom famously have their own set of priorities to bring to any negotiating table). The primary theater of contention for even the most expansive union has to be structured around successfully representing the individual membership within the constraints of the legal code in force in the jurisdiction of the nation state (levels within levels here) the individual members live and work in; international (and presumably extra-planetary) agreements between nations (and others) are, as a practical matter, enforced within the legal codes of the nations involved.

Beyond the "upper" management level, there is the Local. There are a variety of forms and functions associated with the phrase "the union local", but certainly one of those has to be organization. Any unions primary membership recruitment effort simply has to be centered around the various union Local offices, but now is not too soon to begin developing the necessary standards and practices guidance for stewards along with the membership information necessary for members to understand what they and their union can and can't expect of each other. In a traditional union arrangement, these offices are as close to the membership's place(s) of work as can be arranged; sometimes this is across the street from a factory, sometimes it's a centrally located address within a given geographical setting like a city or county, for instance. For a union serving a membership that "works" in a digital environment (in quotes only because that's where the product of so much labor appears to the critical other half of the membership), there will have to be a blend of the meat space aspect with the cyber space components. So to speak. I suggest a YTU Local might best consist of an online portal that principally provides a means of contact to one or more Stewards living and working in an identified geographical region, along with a business contact for the union office itself (even virtual offices have bills to pay and services to arrange for). Knowing where to identify who "your" Steward is and making contact with him/her (I ain't playing the pronoun game, this is complex enough) (now you know why I was considered a competent but not especially "good" steward myself :)) must be considered of primary importance in the design of any such web page. Advertising links and Local announcements would have their place too. Education is always a part of any good union; once again, now is the time for we the members to begin identifying what we want.

Another activity centered around a union Local office is that of "initial representation". Any member of a union is, by simple dint of membership, entitled to representation at need. This isn't always a union steward or representative jumping into a conflict between a member and some low-level member of company management (upper levels of company management start with the Arbitrators who, if they aren't trained lawyers themselves are accompanied by same, and who are the intervening level between the Stewards and the National/International level of union leadership); indeed, most frequently this involves being available to give advice and specific counsel to a member prior to a conflict arising, thus the common title given to Local union officers of "Steward" - that individual entrusted with the primary duty of providing good stewardship to the membership.

It simply has to be acknowledged here that often as not said good stewardship requires "counselling" said member out of being an idiot - if you can simultaneously convince them this is all their own idea, you're a very good steward.

Union Stewards have to be sufficient in number to assure availability to individual member's need, while not being an unnecessary financial burden on the membership (what? you didn't think this was all paid for by the "good steward fairy" did you? I didn't make a big deal about it above, but the primary duty of international management is to make sure everybody stays "paid in full" on the membership dues front; never think otherwise). The YTU doesn't have sufficient structure to even ask for dues yet, but never doubt that day is approaching as rapidly as can be contrived. And the sooner the better; without the financial means provided by membership dues there can be no legal representation aspect to membership representation during on-going negotiations with You Tube management, for only one example (lawyers are good people too - stop laughing! - but human generosity has its limits and being able to feed one's family is one of the more common and earlier limits known). My daughter has an MBA and my daughter-in-law is an accountant; both of them earn their living counting Other People's Money, and unions need to be able to pay people to do that too - not least in the role of Forensic Accountant of opposition company financial claims. Dues are coming, so now is the time to begin deciding what specifically you want in exchange.

So, examples of how all of this might take place in the future are limited only by the imaginations of You Tube creatives, but here are a couple examples that I as a member of the YTU can think of.

Podcasters don't necessarily also have You Tube channels, but many do and Joe Rogan has to be considered one of the most successful of those who do both. Film and television actor, stand-up comedian, ringside fight commentator for UFC and creator and host of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast and The JRE You Tube channel, the expression "Joe Rogan money" by rights ought to be much more commonly used by others than is actually the case, so it can be fairly said that of all the potential members for a YTU he is seemingly the one least in need of representation - obviously, he's doing alright all on his own. And Well Done to him for it; hard work deserves what it earns. Conversely, he is also the one You Tube creator who is most likely to want to be a member. Joe Rogan has made the point numerous times on the JRE podcast that he goes to considerable lengths to support up-and-comers in the stand-up comedy business - all of whom are arguably his professional competition. He does so "to grow the stand up world, and add to the list of people I can have fun with" or words to that effect. YT creator channels don't provide quite the same degree of spontaneity or personal contact that stand-up comedy seems to, but all of the other elements of professional growth and camaraderie seem to be present. If anyone is institutionally inclined to developing and supporting an organization that develops and supports people much like himself, that person has to be Joe Rogan. I'm not talking money here; yes, Joe Rogan can easily afford any annual dues any other content creator on You Tube can. What he can't do is afford is to fight alone against the mob come the day Kevin Smith and the Hollywood Vegan Mafia come after him at You Tube HQ over his hunting content or some other gaggle of special snowflakes people begin an organized rant about his "violent martial arts" content (and I'm only being slightly facetious here - since recovering from his heart attack last year, what began out of respect for his daughter's vegan beliefs regarding health benefits appears to have lately become something substantially else). Best wishes to Kevin Smith for his continued recovery of health and growth as a digital creator, but it's called "the dark side" for good reason and we're watching. As for Joe Rogan, any serious martial arts student understands the practical utility of allies, and if he is anything Joe Rogan is a martial artist.

Along with membership dues, YTU membership ought to provide organization, and not just in the Saul Alinsky model (although some of that will be involved too). There are several You Tube channels I watch regularly, among them the following three (four? not sure how to count this one): SRKCycles along with their second channel Bikes and Beards, Dr. Brent Binder's channel Chiropractic Medicine, and a really innovative channel featuring The Philadelphia Barber Co.'s Andy Fischer (among others) Beardbrand.

SRK Cycles buys and sells used motorcycles, and all the partners wear beards and still have full heads of hair. Now unlike driving a car, you have to ride a motorcycle and this involves using - and occasionally overusing -  its own set of muscles. Dr. Brent Binders office in Harrisburg PA seemingly isn't far from the SRK location, so arranging for both to create videos involving each other's respective audiences in their mutual experience of each other areas of expertise would seem a natural benefit for a YTU Steward to organize. If some is good, more is better amirite? Andy Fischer's barber chair is in Philadelphia, only a short drive down the highway from both of the other two PA-based You Tubers. The SRK guys need haircuts and beard trims periodically, Andy clearly needs to get away from that damn train; admittedly, Dr. Brent is going to pose a professional challenge for her, but he usually does wear a beard, so there is that for her to work with. Now our YTU steward has organized three distinct audiences into mutual appreciation (or at least awareness) of channels involving activities they might not otherwise ever come in contact with. YTU can further assist by providing the means to track distinct audience participation in cross-over channel efforts. By providing each channel with a code to include when audience members buying anything off any of the other participating channels, a percentage of the proceeds can be applied to the originating channel's coffers (with maybe a small taste to the YTU's as-yet hypothetical deep pockets?). This is a sale that couldn't otherwise be expected, and there may be advantages to be had through each channel's marketing budget come tax time (the sort of advice and counsel unions famously offer as member benefits - usually in the form of links to businesses like Turbo Tax, but you get the idea) (is there a tax preparation website for businesses like digital content creators? No idea).

There is a particular digital content creative market that I want to suggest we begin work to recruit into our union, Porn Hub (and you're going to have to provide your own link here :)). If there is any single player in the digital content creation market that is more secure from outside attacks to inhibit (never mind remove) it's individual content creators product than Porn Hub is, I can't think of it. It would be necessary to make sure that Porn Hub's more usual content isn't available to the YTU general membership (except in the established way, of course), but a partnership with Porn Hub would provide YTU content creators with a product outlet immune to the types of attacks and censorship those makers of icky gun content, hunting content, violent content, and quilting!?! content find themselves subjected to on You Tube currently. Members of a Creatives Union would probably always find it useful to continue publishing their content on You Tube, along with the other alternative sites, but having a fundamentally secure site like Porn Hub can provide is seemingly an option any union worth the name ought to vigorously investigate.

There are so many possibilities before us and now is the time for we members of the nascent You Tube Union to make our hopes and desires known and otherwise become involved in growing and developing our union. Will you join me in campaigning to ultimately change the name to The Creatives Union? What do you want to see from your union membership? I'm pretty sure it still works, so feel free to comment below.

How 2 Feed A Planet

While the number of humans known to exist in the universe doesn't seem likely to increase by more than 10% over the next decade (if even that much), it is already well past apparent that we humans need to develop the means to increase our food supply by as much as a doubling of the total quantity of food we can presently draw upon. Preferably without further damaging our only home in the process. What follows are two possible means to achieving this goal.

Water covers about 2/3 of the Earth's surface, and the sea has been a source of human sustenance for as long as we have records of human civilization (and almost certainly longer than that). But not an inexhaustible source. After at least two decades of watching their salmon catch quality and total numbers dwindle, the Haida First Nations tribe in the British Colombia region of Canada funded an effort to "seed" the areas of the northern Pacific in which the salmon fishery they depended upon for their survival grew into adulthood. This E&E News article published Wednesday, November 12, 2014, seems evenhanded enough in its reporting on the events:

"For the past 100 years, the Haida First Nations tribe in Canada has watched the salmon runs that provided its main food source decline. Both the quantity and quality of its members' catch in the group of islands they call home, off the coast of British Columbia, continued to drop.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, they became determined to do something about it. They built a hatchery, fixed watersheds damaged by past logging practices and sent more fish into the ocean for their multiyear migrations.

But the larger influx of fish that went out didn't return, and the search for better solutions for the small village of Old Massett on the north end of Graham Island in British Columbia eventually led the Haida down a path that culminated in the largest ocean fertilization project of its kind ever attempted.

In the summer of 2012, the Haida Salmon Restoration Council (HSRC) joined forces with a California businessman, Russ George, and dribbled 100 tons of iron sulfate into Canadian and international waters in the Pacific Ocean off the back of a ship.

......

But for the past two years, salmon have flowed into rivers along parts of the Pacific Northwest in sometimes record numbers, and questions remain unanswered about the possible success, failure or effects of the experiment.

"I can't stand up and give you a rock-solid statement that says A equals B," said Jason McNamee about whether the experiment had something to do with the massive sockeye and pink salmon runs for the past two years. McNamee is a former director and operations officer of HSRC and still sometimes acts as spokesman for the corporation. But, he said, "the iron sulfide bloom is a likely factor contributing to those runs."

End quote.

It seems inescapably obvious to me that what we need is an actual controlled experiment to address the question of whether or not fish populations in our oceans can be sustainably increased by increasing the amount of the food supply available to them during their immature stage of development.

What I am proposing here specifically is that the fifty year average of fish population(s) along the US Atlantic seaboard be calculated (annual fish population survey numbers from the US Fisheries, by species, be totaled, and that number divided by 50, resulting in the "average" fish population for the period 1960 through 2010) along with the recorded catch numbers for the same period (and the same method for averaging be applied). The specific question to be addressed by this experiment is: 

Is it possible to elevate the average number of fish in any given species by a factor of two or more over a predetermined period (5 years?) such that the average number of caught fish, by species, can sustainably be as much as doubled thereafter?

The only issue this experiment is concerned with is testing a specific method for increasing the fish populations humans rely on in part to feed us all. I submit that one yacht of a specific design could be outfitted and operated in the Caribbean and along the Atlantic seaboard for the duration of the experiment for as little as $20 million. This seems a reasonable enough expense, given the potential returns such an answer might provide.

There is another string to this particular bow.

This CNET article from 2012 gives a decent introductory look at the state of the molecular assembly of proteins and amino acids science of 7 years ago. I have no idea what Mr. Thiel thinks today, but it seems apparent that the technology isn't quite ready for market as of yet (recent stories about 3d printed human hearts notwithstanding). 

What do humans need to build a commercial farm to grow and package for transport the necessary proteins and amino acids required to assemble such molecular constructs?  Being able to assemble such food products on-site will prove a useful capability in future disaster response efforts at the very least, but the commercial application I see as most applicable to existing market processes available on our planet today is to grow the individual components, possibly only one of the components per farm, package the harvest, and have it delivered to a specialized manufacturing factory for further distribution to retail food stores after assembly into analogs of the various forms "meat" is currently marketed in, followed - or quite possibly preceded - by other non-meat foods.

Here I suggest America's military veteran community be called upon once again to provide the human power necessary to populate a variety of prototype farms to begin the development process of such a zero-to-one effort. Since this type of food production has never been attempted in known human history, the lack of specific skill sets our existing veterans possess is immaterial. What we do have is a well-developed ability to confront the unknown, and only then figure out how to live through the process while we gain some understanding of what "success" looks like in this particular given circumstance.

At this point in this narrative, I should confess that this isn't exactly an original idea on my part; Robert A. Heinlein examined many of the developmental issues involved in this proposal in his 1950 novel Farmer In The Sky (which 12 year old me avidly read some 15 years later). This specific proposal is necessarily Earth-bound, but it too involves artificial habitats within which crops are grown; habitats composed of partially underground green houses similar in concept to this example (sorry about the auto-start; it's YouTube, what're ya gonna do?). While a more substantial structure would no doubt be desirable for a permanent operation, the basic features such a structure would contain are all featured in the linked video, and an experimental development effort could make do with virtually identical structures (if only for the potential ease and reduced expense required for modification of the process).

The crop I visualize would consist of essentially algae being grown in aquarium tanks. Very particular strain(s) of algae, in very large aquarium tanks. Tanks that have rigorously controllable lighting and other inputs to regulate the growth process, and a means of removing the algae from the growth tank into a shipment container that keeps the algae uncontaminated during the transfer. I'm thinking nitrogen gas will play an important part in this "uncontaminated transfer" process for instance.

While it will undoubtedly be necessary for on-site operators in the early development stages (and quite possibly well beyond), one of the important secondary developments of this effort should be that of remote operation of such farms. It won't happen soon, but having a multitude of "food component" farms operated largely by people who live in cities close and far away, and food assembly factories staffed similarly, should be understood as also being a stated objective of this proposal. The whole idea of "robots are taking away our jobs" is both silly and the diametric opposite of the coming reality. Robots will not be autonomous, they will need human operators to approve and initiate actions taken, particularly in remote settings like those being described here. Robotic devices can be semi-autonomous in rigorously controlled environments like warehouses or assembly lines, but even there the limits imposed by programming functionality demonstrate just how little decision-making capability can be programmed into a device (for an extremely well-informed opinion on the topic of programming robot autonomy and the intrinsic limitations of programming generally, one can usefully begin here). A potential use for the US Department of Education in future might be to organize and coordinate funding and human on-site staffing of local farms and assembly plants of this nature, along with the equipment to teach school children (not to mention old vets like me) how to operate and maintain the technology necessary to operate farms and factories remotely. We're not always going to be dirt-bound farmers and factory workers (he says hopefully).

We must be able to feed ourselves in whatever environment we place ourselves. Reducing the strain our species imposes upon our only currently available planet seems a useful way of developing the means for us to do so on (or off) any planet at all. My intent with this document is to stimulate conversation regarding how we might successfully achieve that level of capability within my lifetime. I'm 65, but no pressure.

Update 4/23/19: Chris Byrne has helpfully pointed out that food production isn't really inadequate to existing and projected human population requirements. Rather, that our nutritional failures are more the result of distribution inadequacies, which makes my current framing of the network of issues involved in this also necessarily inadequate.

So, to better frame the intent of what I propose, the fish population experiment has the dual purposes of developing reliable data upon which to base decisions regarding how fish populations might be supported both locally/regionally and planet-wide. Secondarily, by developing the techniques to do so in a controllable way, we effectively achieve the means to manage what can be regarded as a self-distributing resource.

The farming idea provides a product that is easily transportable and storeable within the constraints of existing distribution, warehousing, and manufacturing infrastructure as part of its harvesting process. No new technology needs to be developed to accommodate this additional source of nutrition becoming part of the existing matrix of options humanity already has to satisfy its nutritional requirements. What this addition adds to what has to be acknowledged as our already adequate food supply is the added versatility it brings to human society being able to respond to disruptions of societal infrastructure from catastrophic events, along with the ability to easily and economically incorporate remote operations technology into our existing societal infrastructure.

The US military, for only one example, has made no secret in recent years of its inability to recruit a sufficient number of personnel capable of operating weapon (and other) systems remotely. By creating an industry that incorporates teaching people the technology used in remote operations systems and devices, this and other more general applications can more economically be incorporated into our ever evolving societal structures, on and - in not too many more years - off our planet. For only one near-term new employment option for people literally around the world, orbital manufacturing and mining operations can be much more economically performed by people on the surface of the Earth, rather than physically in orbit themselves. Taking the requirements necessary to compensate for transmission time lag, this can easily be expanded to include lunar operations as well. Potentially millions of jobs that don't exist partially because potential investors have no reason to think workers can be economically trained. Hundreds of people can be trained as a by-product of the farming technology I suggest here. They in turn can provide the nucleus of the work force needed to meet the anticipated needs of the gradually expanding requirement for remote equipment operators in orbital facilities developed to refine the resources literally being delivered to Earth through the natural processes of our Solar System (ever given any thought to what the annual meteor showers imply as a delivery mechanism for mineable material in Earth orbit?).

I hope this added framing of my proposal proves useful in developing further refinements and improvements to the basic concepts presented here.

What Do You Mean By "Fight"?

I've recently had occasion to think about two apparent dichotomies; words mean things, and word usage changes over place and time. Word definitions don't really change in the usual meaning of the word change. They tend to acquire added meanings that can supplant the historical meaning, but the earlier definition remains a valid usage depending on the context within which it is used. English english and American english being probably the most obvious example of usage change over place and time I can think of off hand.

The inspiration for the above came from my thinking about the word "fight", both in the limited martial arts context and in the more general strategy application. Specifically, is it better to "fight to win", or is it better to "fight not to lose"?

Fighting not to lose is the only consideration that gives the concept of "Just War" any practical meaning at all. Note that I said meaning, not justification. You can justify literally any conduct or action by simply declaring, "Deus vult!" (or the equivalent in your alternative language of choice), or you can circle around the question(s) endless epistemological expositions instead, but understanding meaning, definitionally and contextually, is what is required to actually make an informed decision - in this case, whether and how to fight.

Fighting to win requires one to accept from the moment of deciding to engage in active conflict that there are neither restrictions nor constraints imposed upon the choices you make during the coming combat, so long as the end result is your indisputable defeat of your opponent. Indeed, allowing any consideration or circumstance to interfere in achieving that outcome must be regarded as an act of treason in any fight to win conflict. Why so many people seem so willing to forget the same applies equally to all involved in such a fight mystifies me.

Fighting not to lose, on the other hand, is the underlying factor inherent to the very concept of civilization. A "no holds barred" fight is one without rules (even a knife fight, Butch :)) and therefore an unreliably predictable outcome, whether between two outlaws having nothing but the clothes they stand in or two civilizations possessed of grandeur and glory. Laws of War, Code Duello, Lines In The Sand, Street Justice, all are mechanisms to impose fighting not to lose on all combatants, such that all may have some reason to think they have an understanding of what (more importantly, how much) they risk by fighting (or not).

These are the meanings of the words we use to decide the acceptable-to-us answers to the classic 6 questions (who, what, when, where, why, how) as they apply to our routine and extraordinary competitions with one another. Our shared civilization is built upon our mutual expectation that we will all cooperate with the constraints imposed by fighting not to lose, witness our outrage and condemnation when one combatant fails to do so (or only plausibly can be made to appear to so fail). Deliberate obfuscation of the previously agreed to meanings of these words may well be the single greatest act of betrayal of trust any human can inflict upon another.

Thoughts? Disputations? I have been known to be full of shit before this; based on my track record to date, that's not that risky a proposition bet to be honest. Nevertheless, this is my ante ... fight to win is the choice of a fool, fight not to lose is the only way to position yourself to outlast your attackers.

It's also the only way to keep your world civilized while you're winning (or not) and most especially after. Update: I don't know why the long paragraph breaks; I cut-and-paste from my FB page where I first composed this. It be what it be ...

Who 'da Man 2

The Verge has an interview with Yann LeCun, identified as "Facebook's AI chief ", that ties in well with my own understanding of AI, both as to function and the rate and direction of development efforts. Having read the article, I am more convinced than before that "robots" will quickly come to mean "human-controlled mechanistic devices" and "AI" will mean "non-human controlled systems". Robots will be the machines doing things (under direct - more or less - control of human operators). AI's will be complex constructions controlling devices that semi-autonomously operate systems like vehicle traffic control systems, or shipping/receiving/warehousing systems.

I keep repeating this whenever I talk to the public: we’re very far from building truly intelligent machines. All you’re seeing now — all these feats of AI like self-driving cars, interpreting medical images, beating the world champion at Go and so on — these are very narrow intelligences, and they’re really trained for a particular purpose. They’re situations where we can collect a lot of data.

So for example, and I don’t want to minimize at all the engineering and research work done on AlphaGo by our friends at DeepMind, but when [people interpret the development of AlphaGo] as significant process towards general intelligence, it’s wrong. It just isn’t. it’s not because there’s a machine that can beat people at Go, there’ll be intelligent robots running round the streets. It doesn’t even help with that problem, it’s completely separate. Others may claim otherwise, but that’s my personal opinion.

“THERE’S NO DANGER IN THE IMMEDIATE OR EVEN MEDIUM TERM.”

We’re very far from having machines that can learn the most basic things about the world in the way humans and animals can do. Like, yes, in particular areas machines have superhuman performance, but in terms of general intelligence we’re not even close to a rat. This makes a lot of questions people are asking themselves premature. . That’s not to say we shouldn’t think about them, but there’s no danger in the immediate or even medium term. There are real dangers in the department of AI, real risks, but they’re not Terminator scenarios.

Vehicles in the near-term future will undoubtedly have some form of semi-autonomous "AI" that will operate the vehicle without continuous direct human operator input (in limited applications, at least), but the more likely scenario will be AI semi-autonomous operation of a traffic control system allowing vehicle access to highways, stop light timing, variance of traffic speed limits to conform with road conditions (changing weather or traffic load for instance). The vehicles themselves would still require operator input to function, but the AI traffic control system would have direct access to the vehicles internal control system "AI" to limit the operator's choices (presumably with an emergency override function - factory installed or otherwise :)).

I am also pleased that Mr. LeCun agrees that the virtual assistant application is the most likely near-term market that will most broadly interact with the most people (what I called a "data orchestra")
here.

 I think virtual assistants really are going to be the big thing. Current assistants are entirely scripted, with a tree of possible things they can tell you. So that makes the creation of bots really tedious, expensive, and brittle, though they work in certain situations like customer care. The next step will be systems that have a little more learning in them, and that’s one of the things we’re working on at Facebook. Where you have a machine that reads a long text and then answers any questions related to it — that’d be useful as a function.

Having a virtual assistant that you can verbally (and presumably textually or pictorially too) interact with, one that has internal data bases of reference sources, would be an exponential improvement of the education and skills development (training) activities that are central to achieving any success in a technologic society (education is mathematics, history, languages, art; skills development is the construction/maintenance trades, martial arts/physical fitness, ultimately engineering generally). A personal device that can provide you with immediate access to information, when and where you need it, would drastically alter the way and extent of human learning and personal capability.

One that could also call emergency services (or your lawyer) semi-autonomously would no doubt prove useful too.

Someone is going to arrive at the decision to make a business of improving humanity's individual ability to provide for itself, simply as a means to increase his/her customer base in both total numbers as well as in total market range of participation. Maybe that will be Jeff Bezos, but it obviously doesn't have to be. What it continues to seem more and more we can be certain of is that it will be.

Who 'da man?

On August 3rd of this year, I wrote about my then-recent appearance on the podcast The World Transformed, in which I discussed my contribution (finally titled, "Ask Jeff Bezos To Hire Humanity") to Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon's book Visions for a World Transformed. In that interview I mentioned that one of the ways that Jeff Bezos could make money from hiring humanity was to create a means whereby people could learn how to remotely operate robotic devices (for a modest fee) and, not incidentally, create a place from which they could subsequently do so and earn themselves a living in this brave new robotic world (less another modest fee to him, of course).

Proving that opportunity is also fleeting, I read with interest this article in IEEE Spectrum magazine by Ben Wolff (CEO of SARCOS Robotics) about a company building robotic devices intended to be controlled by human operators:

Imagine a machine that is your personal proxy, controlled by you, leveraging your intelligence, knowledge, instincts, intuition, and judgment while able to physically perform in the same manner as your own body, but safely, and with super-human strength, endurance, and precision. This vision is at the core of the Guardian robot systems concept developed at my company, Sarcos Robotics, based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

It doesn't take any special visionary powers to foresee the likely results of peoples openly discussed development efforts, whether for robotics or for human education or employment. It does take a willingness to test your level of confidence in your personal vision to allow for incorporation of other's vision therein. There is a telling turn-of-phrase from the athletics world, "Comes the hour, comes the man". That hour is steadily approaching; it remains to be seen if Jeff Bezos has it within himself to be that man.

Someone does.

Have You Ever Heard The Phrase "Tit For Tat"?

From Peter over at Bayou Renaissance Man comes notice of the latest display of terminal stupidity by the 21st century's version of The New Soviet Man (that would be the clown posse styling themselves as Antifa). Not content to swan about in black gym clothes with diapers over their faces, now they've gone and challenged the denizens of 4chan directly.

As ought to have been predicted by even this collective of dubious intellects, 4chan immediately demonstrated their willingness to bring all of the Tat in response to Antifa's latest display of Tit. If you have ever wondered about whether or not someone of your acquaintance (heaven forfend you might actually share DNA) really is as stupid as you've long thought, now you can look up his/her/zir name. Helpfully listed in alphabetical order.

I suppose it would be too much to ask for the nice people at 8chan to reorganize the list by locality?

Do go read Peter's post and follow the links he provides. How does that saying go; "When your enemies are making a mistake, never get in their way"? Well played, 4chan, well played indeed.

On AI

I recently participated in a podcast  in which the concept of Artificial Intelligence came up. Basically, there are two fundamental categories of AI: Weak AI and Strong AI.

To dismiss the latter first, Strong AI exhibits all of the intellectual capabilities of a human being and does so at an exponentially faster speed and more accurately than any human is capable of. This all hinges on the (so far) handwavium of designing and building a machine that is capable of human-type imagination or cognitive leaps of intuition. The difficulty here is, we don't now how we humans do this, so the question then becomes: how do we build a machine that possesses a capability we can neither fully describe the function of nor replicate within ourselves? Unless and until we can fully describe and replicate the electro-chemical neurological processes that transpire in the human brain when we individually experience imagining a concept that is not contained within the disparate data sources we link together to inspire that intuitive leap, there simply isn't the possibility of including that capability into a device we construct.

Weak AI, however, I believe is essentially within our existing technological grasp. If you network 7 distinct Alexa units into what I term a "data orchestra", you can replicate the appearance of a Jarvis-like (from the first two Ironman films) entity. The primary unit is the Director which contains within its internal hard drive and memory the contents of a dictionary, thesaurus, and literary style guide. This unit coordinates the input from the remaining units. Each of the remaining six units has the entire contents of an encyclopedia downloaded to internal memory and one sixth of that in as great a level of detail as the data record allows. A sufficiently capable data search and retrieval system, with a robust prioritization function for assigning "relevance values" to disparate data returns, would permit the primary unit to conduct a "conversation" between the six sections of the orchestra and the inquiring human. By providing a range and depth of pre-programmed decision trees allowing the combined unit to semi-autonomously manage certain functions independent of direct human management, we begin to approach a functional emulation of what I regard as a true - if limited - Weak Artificial Intelligence.

Data security from external sources (particularly during the necessarily frequent content updates required to keep such a device current) is a critical matter to be addressed before such a device might be safely marketed, but that too is within current technology capabilities. No doubt there will be other concerns not considered here, but this does demonstrate what is possible today, I believe.

De-bugging Gold

I've discussed the concept of money here before, but one aspect of money I've given some thought to lately is the concept of "fiat currency".

Fiat currency is any currency that doesn't have a fixed metric of independent valuation. The refined metal gold has long been regarded as a desirable basis for such a metric. For so long, in fact, that the metal itself has become synonymous with the concept of currency/money. This despite the well documented short-comings historically associated with using the metal in that capacity.

I'm going to suggest that there exists a more universal, less tamperable metric available.

A single molecule of hydrogen can be theoretically converted into a known quantity of energy. That energy release can be quantified in units of electrical energy. A given nations ability to generate electrical energy is also quantifiable. By pegging a given currency at some arbitrary unit of electrical energy, and quantifying the issuing country's total electrical generation capacity in the same unit of measure, it becomes a fairly straight-forward calculation to valuate any currency in relation to a fixed metric as well as relative to any other currency.

The notion of fiat currency disappears into the mists of history, and economics takes a serious step into the realms of science.

Where this becomes acutely urgent is the day Elon Musk's Mars colony begins to issue its own currency (which will be necessary in order for the colonists to develop and utilize the local economy that assuredly will develop right along with the colony itself). Any Earth currency could be used, of course, if the colonists wished to have their lives and fortunes held hostage to someone else's political quirks and whims.

Can we all agree on the unlikeliness of this being accepted for very long based on humanity's history of colonization?

Changing to such a valuation system will be disruptive in ways large and small (any wagers being offered on how few countries currency will prove not to have been fraudulently manipulated by its own government?), but for the human species to be able to successfully migrate off of the planet and into the solar system, we must have a currency valuation metric in place that applies equally reliably (not to mention transparently) throughout the solar system. Having such an inflationary resistant system in place would greatly increase the viability of concepts like Universal Basic Income and multi-century financial planning for only two other examples.

We're going to have to do this (or something indistinguishably like it) at some point, so why not do it via talk-talk now, rather than by some future strongman regime the way Germany's economic (and basically every other) system got imposed upon it post-WW II?

Much Ado About "How Much ... ?"

8 years ago I wrote a post that linked to another post I had written some 2 1/2 years previously on the strategy of money. In recent weeks, the good people at Extra Credits on YouTube have addressed the same concept as a straightforward history lesson in a series of videos (the 6th, and presumably final, video still forthcoming as I write this). At the end of video #5 we are at the point of paper money abandoning commodity currency (refined gold and silver generally). This prompted me to make an effort to at least outline what I regard as the necessary final step to completing the strategy of money into the traditional closed loop of thought that Sun Tzu actually practiced.


I postulate that "money" is a purely intellectual concept, having no basis in physical goods or commodities. Indeed, that commodities serve to distort the money concept and inject malignant influences on its function. That being said, there still is needed a mechanism whereby transactional value can be derived against an immutable quantity (the function refined metals are supposed to fulfill).


Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe (as far as human science can determine), and as such the possibility of "cornering the market" or any other type of currency valuation manipulation becomes effectively impossible. This aspect alone makes hydrogen a very suitable candidate for determining the relative value of a given currency. Consider ...


A single molecule of hydrogen can theoretically be converted to a known quantity of energy, which can in turn be expressed in a number of practical values depending upon how the released energy is expressed. A 21st century currency issuing entity (not necessarily a single country) is comprised, in part, of electrical generation capabilities, all of which consist of identical calibration metrics regardless of nationality, ideology or any other political or societal influence (Ohm's Law being just as universal - and effectively untamperable with - as hydrogen, as far as we can tell). The electricity generated, powers in turn a host of economic "value added" activities, if only the direct sale of electricity to another currency issuing source.


I propose that some measure of electricity (the erg perhaps?) be established as the baseline metric whereby any currency can be valued by any user. The issuing source (alright, this is becoming tedious - country hereafter) has a measurable quantity of electrical production as part of its domestic economy. This provides an independently measurable metric to determine a value for that country's domestic economy as a whole, against which the influence of domestic or international government meddling can be measured, and from which a unitary value can be derived for that currency against a known and fixed standard of measure. When this process is applied to other currencies, it makes comparative currency valuation a reasonably impartial (and importantly, more difficult to tamper with) process.


This resolves the intangible aspects of paper and digital money by pegging them to a known and hopefully immutable reference source, along with making manipulation of a country's currency much more detectable and thus defensible against.


Adopting such a system of currency valuation in the United States would seemingly not require a Constitutional amendment (see, Art 1, Sec 8, US Constitution, which explicitly charges Congress with the authority to  "coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures") (which also, BTW, effectively prohibits the dis-continuation of physical currency, whether coinage or paper, absent a Constitutional amendment IMO). As the United States dollar remains the planetary reserve currency, it can be expected that other countries would adopt this standard as their domestic political process allows.


Being my idea, I hope no one will be surprised at my enthusiasm for it. I'm also self-aware enough to know that there are undoubtedly a number of potential objections to the basic concept itself, whether theoretical or practical in nature. I hope to read and reply to those as I can.