Anyone else?

 Am now extremely bitter at having wasted all that time. From my teenage years, I've had the feeling that something was wrong with the way things are, but somehow I've always found a distraction, some superficial activity that kept my mind on more immediate issues, more fun to be had. My passion for science and technology has been the set of blinkers that allowed me to ignore the feeling at the edge of consciousness that we live in a rotten world. 

Had I spent a little more time, a little more energy scratching the surface I might have realized sooner that there were important things where I could have made a modest contribution. 

Now I sit here, looking at everything around me, wondering how everyone is so desperate to lead a "normal" life again. The more I learn about how things work, the more I get dismayed about humanity in general. Surely I'm not the only person opening my eyes?

Collectively, we are complicit in killing billions of living organisms every day, thoroughly destroying every single habitat on the planet one after the other, just so we can have a shinier phone in our pockets, a faster car in the driveway, one more channel on our television sets. Consume! Consume! It's an order, an imperative. 

Our goals are revolting. 

The way we go about achieving them is even more disgusting. We are soooo righteous about our democracy and freedoms, looking down at the way "other people" live, or attempt to live. We have rights. Us. Not them. They are not like us, so why should they have the same rights as us? They should get their own. But in the meantime, we don't have to listen to them because they don't live like us. They should be grateful we give them jobs, opportunities, cheap booze, freedom and democracy...

It's a free world out there, you can do anything you want. Anything! As long as it fits in with our way of life. Oh, and as long as you pay your way too. Ca-tching! Thank you, would you like a receipt? 

We have to extract hundred million barrels of crude oil per day to keep all of this running, nicely oiled. Hundred. Millions. Per day.

We need to keep the elevators going up and down our shiny glass offices, our trucks delivering the latest shiny toys, our trumpets celebrating the new shiny president. It's all needed to keep things running smoothly. We have important things to do. Export democracy, explore new business opportunities, exploit untapped resources. 

I'm trying to organize my thoughts about feminism, #metoo, BLM and the myriad of movements happening everywhere. All chinks in the shiny image of our society, which is not that shiny if you bother to look close enough. All proofs that what we are told is the best and only way to live and prosper is absolute bullshit.

The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch by Lewis Dartnell

 Right from the start of this book, it made me uneasy. I consider myself a technophile: from a young age, I have strived to understand how things work, what makes them tick. I dismantled countless mechanisms, some of which have never worked again, with an inextinguishable thirst for knowledge. This has led me to study electronics, and then physics and chemistry. Unless you say no to everyone, you end up being called on to attend to a lot of practical problems in the line of work I have followed. All to say I had mixed expectations from the book. On one hand, I was looking forward to learning something new (isn't that the case for every "serious" book I start reading?). On the other hand, I was curious to see if some of my preconceptions on the subject would be challenged.

One quick note about context: I finished reading the book this morning, the month of July 2020 is about to end. Covid19 has been the biggest subject on every media for almost six months. I have been thinking about "the end of the world-as-we-know-it" for a few years now, so I have a few ideas about things I consider important.
Back to the book. I admire Lewis Dartnell for taking on this task. Attempting to define the knowledge needed to bootstrap a civilization is no small feast. Doing it in just over 300 pages is challenging. Making it an entertaining read is an awesome feat.
The main problem I have about the book is the two assumptions Lewis Dartnell makes. One stated in the ending chapters: "The economic situation in Britain had the potential to generate enormous profits for the first industrialists, and it was this that provided the incentive to put up large amounts of capital to invest in machinery."
The other assumption remains unspoken (or unwritten?). It is that our world-as-it-is is the best we can achieve. I guess I should have paid more attention to the title: "how to rebuild OUR world", not a better world, not another world, but "our" world. The one presumably that led us to the end of it.
Nowhere does Lewis Dartnell asks whether our societal or political organisations need to be reviewed or changed. Ethical implications of technological (in the broadest sense of the word) choices never appear in the book. We are condemned to retrace the steps that led us to the wiping out of the majority of Earth's population, and just pick up where we left off.
I regret that the curiosity I felt at the beginning of the book turned to frustration, despite a very readable and entertaining style.
Would I keep the book as a reference for the collapse? Nope. The practical application of a lot of the recipes in the book requires more details, some of the basic principles aren't laid out. As the author himself admits in one of the chapters, "the devil is in the details", and whether is comes to repairing what was salvaged, or rebuilding some technology from scratch, the content of this book is just too scant.

Interesting (short) articles about the economy

I'm collecting links to articles about the current economic situation, and they usually gather dust in my bookmarks. Recently, a friend asked me to share a few, so I thought it could be useful to put these links out in the open:

http://www.lepoint.fr/economie/emmanuel-todd-annulons-la-dette-du-vieux-monde-13-12-2011-1406951_28.php
(In French) Emmanuel Todd argues about the cancellation of debt in Europe.

http://www.thebaffler.com/odds-and-ends/soak-the-rich - English translation of a discussion between Thomas Piketty and David Graeber in October 2014. The original (in French) is here: http://www.mediapart.fr/journal/culture-idees/041013/un-dialogue-piketty-graeber-comment-sortir-de-la-dette?onglet=full


http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-15/michael-lewis-eight-things-i-wish-for-wall-street - Eight things I wish for Wall Street.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/10/the-financialization-of-life.html - The financialization of Life

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/07/capitalism-rich-poor-2060-populations-technology-human-rights-inequality - Best of capitalism is over in rich countries, it will be over in poor countries by 2060.

http://terrainsdeluttes.ouvaton.org/?p=3369 (In French) Why the people vote to  the right.

https://limpertinent93.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/clouscard-trajectoire-dun-visionnaire-solitaire/ (In French) - Presentation of Clouscard

World War Three ?

My thoughts after watching this video:

I think it's oversimplified and dramatized for effects, leaves out a few key points, but overall pretty accurate. That's the world history since 1945 seen in an American-centric way. A lot of the events he cites are accurate (adoption of the $ as universal trading currency, drop of gold convertibility, 1st invasion of Iraq after the tentative use of Euro and/or gold for trading).

A lot gets left out, as if actions by other world players did not alter what's happening. In particular Asia, Russia, Europe and the greater Palestine area.

I'm not too upset by the fact that some general had plans to "invade seven middle east countries in five years". What else should army generals do? Plan tea parties? That's their job, what they're paid for: plan wars. The fact that these wars get declared is a political decision, so far, not a military one.

It's very difficult to plan events long in advance. But events arise from a context. If you militarize a country, a region, and incite religious division, prevent peaceful settlements, heighten problems and exacerbate tensions, violence is going to inevitably erupt. If you have military forces in place, instead of embassies and grass-root level organizations, your only means of action is war. It's the old saying about every problem being a nail when all you have is a hammer...

The militaro-industrial complex is a good example of what I'm talking about. Aside from a few lunatics, no-one wants war. Yet many people work for the military industry (outside of purely military jobs). The arms manufacturing sector is thriving. If you ask individuals in that branch of the industry whether their goal is to achieve war, they'll probably be offended that you could even think their contribution to that effort is meaningful.

Yet the concerted effort of all involved results in the production of massive amounts of war-mongering machinery that HAS TO be sold in order for all to be gainfully employed. 

Stockpiling weapons does not produce enough demand, so their use is inevitable...

Don't have time to add more, but I welcome the discussion and will reply later.

Sunday breakfast...

Sunday breakfast..., a photo by ParaScubaSailor on Flickr.

... that I wish I'd had on Saturday.

On Saturday morning, I met with my cousin and some of her friends for breakfast on the beachfront, She had booked a table at Blue Waters Cafe, and it was a magnificent morning. There were lots of people milling about, as usual on a beautiful Sunday in Port Elizabeth, quite a few divers too.
The view from the balcony or the dining room is stunning. When the waitress gave us the menus, I chose the "Salmon Breakfast". Scrambled eggs and salmon on wholewheat toast with cottage cheese and capers sounded very appetizing.
A few minutes later, we were advised by the kitchen that they had run out of wholewheat bread, would we mind brown bread? What was our choice?
Anyway, the company was good, which was fortunate, as the breakfasts arrived after a looooong wait.
And what a disappointment it was!
A white plate you get in most canteens, with two slices of toast in the middle and a couple of lumpy scrambled eggs speckled with pinkish bits, and a tiny bowl with cheese mixed with bits of capers.
It really looked like nothing. Talk about unmet expectations...
Then, at the end of the meal, the waitress came to us with an iPad to "get our feedback", but the feedback form had no question about the food, it looked designed to catch the service personnel that was not friendly enough.
Wake up!!! How difficult is it to serve something that matches the surroundings?

Nazim

... if I don't burn
if you don't burn
if we don't burn
how will darkness turn to light?

From Fazil Say's oratorio "Nazim".

"Real" democracy.

I made a big discovery this week. After following a few links on YouTube recordings of public interventions and debates of people like Alain Soral, Pierre Jovanovic, François Asselineau and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, I landed on a conference by Étienne Chouard: "Sommes-nous en démocratie ?" (Are we in a democracy?)

This is quite a revelation. I have been saying for quite a while that the representative regime in which we live is a trap: the only freedom the average citizen has is to elect the politicians that are going to fleece him (or her). The fact that the political class is composed of people that are distinct from "the 99%" basically guarantees that these politicians will not try to fundamentally change anything to the current system.

The main thing I learnt from the above conference (and a few others with Étienne Chouard), is that what the Athenians called Democracy was quite different from the regime we call of the same name. The key element that made Democracy work was the random selection of "officials", drawn from the pool of "ordinary" citizens. Mandates were short, and limited to one. This ensured that the rich had very little chance of colluding with people in positions of power. The (real) Democracy lasted for over 200 years in Athens, and while one must be careful not to idealise that regime (they also had their flaws: racism, bigotry and slavery were some of the more salient characteristics we'd better avoid), it did not fail for political reasons, but simply because they lost a war.

Compare this to our government by representation. What has it really achieved for the majority of the people? Do politicians represent the people that elect them, or the moneyed 1% that finance them?

The current politicians get elected on the wrong criteria, more time and energy get spent discussing the merits of the candidates (that are mostly all the same anyway) than the features of propositions, on which there is little chance of the general public weighing in any significant way. The debate then centers around which candidate has the whitest smile, the shiniest suit, or the best hidden extramarital affairs rather than how to improve the situation for all. The candidates make vague promises, and there is no way for the citizens to force their representatives to follow through.

This state of affairs is the same in any modern representative form of government. Etienne Chouard's contention is that the common point to all these regimes is the way the constitution was drafted: mostly by an elite either elected or hoping to be elected. They made sure the constitution absolves them of responsibilities, this being most visible in the European constitution, where most of the power gets given to the commission (short for the commission of ministers), with little counter-powers.

In practice, Chouard proposes to select the constitution commission by a random process. A "short" list gets drawn up by simply having citizens nominating whomever they think could be a member of the commission. They can nominate as many people as they want. People currently in an elected position would be ineligible, as would be professional politicians, syndicate representatives, and TV or media people. A process would then eliminate names that were nominated too few times (less than two or three times?) and people that were nominated too many times (more than a thousand? five thousand?). This would constitute the short list. A totally random process would then draw a hundred (or five hundred? more? less?) names of the people that would then draft the constitution. The members of that commission would be ineligible to any political appointment or government job, other than the one they had before becoming a member of the commission.
This insures total impartiality, and that they will not have any temptation to build mechanisms in the constitution that would favor an elite.

Input from specialists and the general public could (and most likely should) be sought, in a similar way to what happened lately in Iceland.

I first started writing this after clicking on the "Send feedback" button on my Google Plus page, but this is not a bug or problem report, more of a statement of what I would like G+ to feel like, and I'm not sure the "Send feedback" feature is designed for that. It certainly doesn't feel like it. When viewing my Stream, all items are listed chronologically, and since most of the time I'm not watching the Stream continuously, I miss "important" items. Similarly, when scrolling rapidly through the items, the "important" ones don't immediately jump at me. I put "important" in quote marks, as what I define important is different to what most other users define important. My desire and vision on how G+ should work is that there needs to be some measure of "importance" of posts. The first measure would be the circles. Does the author belong to one of my "special" circles? If so, the item should scroll much slower in the Stream (take longer to disappear). In the ideal world (a few years from now?), the Stream would be divided in columns (streams?), corresponding to the circles, and items would fall at different speeds in those columns. If items gathered a lot of +1s, they would be slowed a lot, especially if they were +1d by my circle of friends. The top of the columns would be quite close to me, and their foot would recede in the distance, down below. They'd still be visible, just much smaller, packed more tightly together. I would also like to see less of the items that are reposted in different circles with not much addition. Right now they show up as duplicates in my Stream, because several of my circle-friends are reposting them. I would like to not see that, or to have some aggregation done on my Stream that would show me that one particular item was reposted multiple times. It might at first have slid to the back of its column, and even quite far down, but if enough people repost it, it would climb back up, and be brought more to the front. All this supposes a screen of a decent size, with enough resolution to scale the size of items smoothly between "normal" reading size at the top, to very small at the bottom so as to pack more items. My mobile phone would not be capable to display that, at least not now. In a few years, the mobile phone display will probably be virtual (a projection on a surface away from the phone, or floating in the space in front of my field of vision). Right now, I seldom use my mobile phone to browse the Internet, or even G+, and don't expect doing so for quite a while: when I'm out and about, my attention is far from Internet and Internet-related things.

Working, what for?

There were a few items in the news lately that have coalesced to bring a few issues into focus for me. One of those was fairly discrete, a side item that did not make headlines, but that reflects a general attitude: a gentleman employed by EDF (the historical French National Electricity provider, now privatized) was complaining that his job was going to disappear. His task consists in inspecting the electricity counters to record the consumption of the users. His complaint is that this is a job that could be done by children during school holidays, and people without much education, and these counters are now being replaced by models that can be read, and controlled, remotely. When he soon retires, his post is not going to be filled by a new person. He was also bemoaning people that use automated teller equipment at the supermarket, thereby eliminating the jobs of cashiers. To me, the issue is not one of the maintain of low-level jobs, but of wealth distribution. When suppressing jobs, the additional profits are typically appropriated by the capital owners. This in turn derives from the balance of power between the working class and the capital owners. As long as the power balance remains the way it is now, nothing will fundamentally change. The working class will remain exploited by the owners class. Changing the faces in the political class will not introduce any significant change to the balance of power.

Frustrating dinosaur.

There are fights I'd rather not pick. Mostly because the problem will go away by itself. Unfortunately, it takes time, a lot of time...



This is emblematic of the territorial rights that kings held over their subjects. Why would kings go to war? Mostly to gain more territory, meaning more people to subject to taxation.

We get hammered that globalization is inevitable, and we should just accept it. Except that when we act globally, we get quickly reminded that we shouldn't.

My most recent frustration is with PayPal. I've been purchasing more and more items over the Internet, and even started using Ebay lately (looking for a decently priced oscilloscope). To make things easier, I decided to open an account on PayPal. When trying to enter my address in the US, I realised that was just not possible.

Along the way, I got this priceless language trap:


After an email exchange with one of their support personnel, the solution I was proposed was to open one account per country. Of course, a credit card with a bank in that country is needed...


What happened to FaceBook came to my mind: a few weeks ago, they were the biggest, no one could imagine another company taking over that social market. PayPal is in that category, and we're getting tired of the "too big to fail" not failing.

Climate change and energy companies.

Very interesting article on Good that looks at how the companies that were (and some are still publicly) denying climate change are planning for... climate change!

In parallel to that, there was a report of an oil pipeline burst in the Yellowstone river, in Montana. Trust them, they are operating for the public good!

Getting ready for the plesidential erection.

A few days ago, while at the public library, my gaze fell upon a most interesting book title: "How to shovel manure - and other life lessons for the country woman".

Everybody wants to live in the great outdoors, it seems, and on hearing the BS spewed by politicians on the approach of the plesidential erection, I thought this book certainly would have many an advice for the immediate future.

Politicians (May the fleas of a thousand camels infest their genitals and their fingers turn to fish-hooks) are positioning themselves for this race, and advertising, media and other propaganda executives rub their hands in delight.

The amounts spent during the campaign get little attention beyond the sensational magnitude. Who pays these costs?
But more importantly, what is the use of the campaign? Impartial electorate information ?

Pah!

Que se vayan todos!

Préparation à l'érection plésidentielle...

En passant dans une bibliothèque, il y a quelques jours, mon regard a été attiré par le titre de ce livre:

Pour ceux qui ne parlent pas en Glais, je traduirais ce titre par "Comment peller le fumier - et autres leçons de vie pour la campagnarde".
Il est de notoriété publique que le provincial moyen veut habiter à la campagne, ainsi, les préceptes de ce manuel pratique me semblent-ils tout à fait adaptés en vue de l'érection plésidentielle qui approche à grand pas.
Les hommes politiques (Que les morpions d'un millier de chameaux leur envahissent le pubis, et leurs doigts se changent en hameçons) se positionnent pour cette course Ò combien illustre, et les publicitaires, journaleux et autres industries de propagande se frottent les mains.
On entend parler ici et là du prix, sans cesse augmentant, des campagnes politiques. Qui paie ces coûts?
Bien plus important: à quoi sert la campagne? A informer de façon impartiale l'électorat?
Pah!
Que se vayan todos!

About the Wunch of Bankers...

I wanted to keep track of a couple of articles...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/mar/01/mervyn-king-blames-banks-cuts?intcmp=239

and

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/mar/05/mervyn-king-bankers-bonuses

Damn them all!

Overall, has capitalism made the world a better place?

One of the websites I frequent had this question. My (short) answer was:

No. The world has become a better place DESPITE capitalism. People make the world a better place, not a political system. Name ONE thing capitalism invented that made a positive impact in the world (sub-prime loans? hedge funds? credit default swaps?)

This is none of the subjects that get me fired-up quite regularly, and there was no space to expand on it on that website, so I thought I would write about it here.



First of all, how can we reasonably evaluate what contribution capitalism had to the world current state?
I suggest to limit the scope of this discussion, first of all in time, to the "beginning" of capitalism: the generalisation of private ownership of the means of production, around the fourteenth century. Second, the geographic scope of the discussion. Far from wanting to limit it to England or Europe, I would like to observe the effects of capitalism on the whole world.
Here are my justifications for doing so:
- On the time frame: ownership of the means production (mostly land) was largely distributed between Royalty, Church and Commons before that time. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw the development of the castes of merchants, artisans and industrial producers. The ownership of human labour (in the form of slaves at first), became widespread as money started circulating and enabled the owner's class to purchase labour power.
- On the geographic frame: a lot of simplifications are made, treating uncomfortable consequences as "externalities", but as has been demonstrated amply lately, globalisation makes the whole world the stage for our antics.

Ma Révolution de Nouvel An.

Tous les ans, j'entends des gens se plaindre déjà à la deuxième semaine de l'année de n'avoir pu tenir leur promesse d'aller à la salle de gym, ou de manger moins. J'étais sûr que c'étaient donc des sujets à éviter. En fin de compte, c'était assez facile de déterminer quelle devait être mon but pour l'année, particulièrement parce que c'est un processus que j'ai amorcé à la fin de 2010. En septembre, plus exactement. Septembre, en France, est le mois où les impôts sur le revenu doivent être payés.
J'ai seulement versé 75% de ce que le gouvernement dit que je leur dois. Mon raisonnement est qu'ils gaspillent déjà bien trop de NOTRE argent, si on continue à leur donner ce qu'ils veulent, ils ne changeront jamais rien de fondamental.

Nous avons besoin de progrès. De réformes. Sur les impôts de l'an dernier, j'ai retenu 25% du montant. Cette année, je vais retenir 50%, l'an prochain 75% et je laisse les mathématiciens calculer ce que je ferai l'année d'après.


Si vous voulez en savoir plus sur ce qui m'a motivé, lisez ma lettre aux Ministre du Budget, Ministre des Finance et Percepteur de Thonon-les-Bains ...

My New Year Revolution.

Every year, people complain on the second week of January about having failed to keep up with going to the gym, or eating less. So I knew those were subjects to be avoided. In the end, it was fairly easy do decide what my goal for the year would be, especially since it was something I started at the end of 2010. In September, more exactly. September, in France, is the month where income tax payments have to be made.
I only paid 75% of what the gummint said I owed them. My reasoning is that they waste far too much of OUR money as it is, if we keep giving them what they want, they'll never change anything fundamental.

We need progress. On last year's taxes, I withdrew 25% of the amount, this year I'm going to withdraw 50%, next year 75%, and I'll let the mathematically inclined figure out the amount for the year after that.



If you want to know more about this, you might want to read my letter to the Budget Minister, Finance Minister and Tax collector. It's in French, but if I have enough requests, I'll translate it.

WikiLeaks...

Yup, the web is abuzz these days with the release of the diplomatic "secrets". There are a lot of reports about the DNS failure of the WikiLeaks.org domain, soon replaced by the wikileaks.ch, and wikileaks.xx and wikileaks.info and mirrors popping up all over the place.
That prompted me to make a small donation to Julian Asanje's defense fund:
From my gesture, you can conclude I support open gummint, accountability to citizens and control of the demos.
I'm quite pleased that the French gummint is trying to kick WikiLeaks from the servers that host it (those servers are on French soil), as it shows they have something to fear from the revelations. So far, most publications have covered fairly innocuous comments regarding our national midget. Nothing new there. I particularly look forward to cables pertaining to the Terrorist sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in 1985, perpetrated by the French gummint, and the Terrorist attacks on French citizens in Pakistan when France stopped paying back-handers that were financing political parties for the 1995 election campaign...

Wasn't aware of this argument, until now...

While randomly browsing xkcd, I came across a very convincing argument against kooky phenomenons of all sorts (mostly religious):

Les pôvres sont-ils cons parcequ'ils sont pôvres, ou les cons sont-ils pôvres parcequ'ils sont cons?

Question un peu provocatrice, mais née de la frustration de constater que malgré les actions de notre nabot national, suivant ses promesses électorales, une portion non négligeable de l'électorat Français se prépare à voter pour l'extrême droite aux prochaines élections présidentielles de 2012.
Est-il utile de continuer à lutter pour une amélioration de la société Française, si ceux pour lesquels l'amélioration souhaitée se laissent convaincre si facilement de voter pour la droite (extrême, au premier tour, puis "modérée" au deuxième)?
La peur des cocos est-elle si forte, la lutte des classes si oubliée que la majorité de la classe ouvrière vote pour le parti qui va les exploiter, ou les livrer aux exploiteurs?
Il me semble évident qu'une des raisons de la désaffection avec la gôche vient de la réalisation que les politiciens de tous bords appartiennent à la klasse politike: tous se nourrissent à la même auge, remplie par la klasse possédante.