Some small changes

I've quit Twitter, at least for some time. A minor eyelid infection did the trick. After 10 days, I find my attention slowly fills up with things I'd half-forgotten.

It feels like lifting the needle of an old record player.

I'm digitising old tapes. Stuff I recorded using guitars when I was half my current age. Hours and hours of crappy sound, repetitions and some not-too-bad stuff. Some i-didn't-know-this-at-all stuff. Stuff I will soon be able to refer to with simple coordinates: t12m34s56 will be tape 12 and a specific moment within that (digitised) tape. After that's ready, I'll be able to access that memory, select some, build on it. And maybe I'll feel free to start new stuff too.

I may also do mindmaps on video. Mini-worldviews and mind-models and landscape-summaries. It's also about making content available. Nothing that will change the world, but I'll put it out there, and maybe become a child again. Maybe.

A cork in the Niagara falls. Such a fine feeling. Relaxed and, who knows, maybe a bit more ready for whatever comes next.

Will I think about emergency permaculture, learn stuff, build with my hands, create some music for the fun of it? Again, maybe.

Nothing big. Not soon, any way.

Understanding for change

This may be dangerous, but not going may be dangerous too, so here I go.

There's understanding systems, and there's changing them.

To understand a system, we'd need to know it's elements and the relationships between them; the levels, flows and delays; the units and numbers and how they relate to units and numbers we know; the feedback loops and the overall mode of behaviour, growth and failure; and maybe other things I don't know about.

To change a system (both to improve and protect it, and to guide it in the direction of becoming something else), we'd need to know its strengths and vulnerabilities; our strengths and vulnerabilities; our allies and counter-allies; and maybe other things I don't know about.

We could crowdsource the understanding part using some sort of wiki: ask the questions, look for the answers, link to the answers, make the pages known for others to double-or-triple check, tag the answers as (non-)checked, etc. If different models exist, then fork the page (maybe keeping most links).

Similarly, once sufficient understanding emerges, we might ant-ize the movement. Possible actions are wikified, each ant decides what's in our power to do, and we do it.

Imagine this for (renewable) energy.

Is this silly?

How I did this song

Song at the bottom. Just click on the white triangle. No need to read this!

I wrote the lyrics 2+ years ago, and did a very rough recording of the chords using a small guitar. I remember I placed the audio recorder too close to the guitar, so the sound was rather rough. Also, the chords came out as they did, so ... well, it sounded terrible.

But I got some encouragement from a friend, who said the song needed some work. He could have said it needed some amnesia, but he didn't. :shrug:

The intro-outro part is very, very old. Don't ask. Old. Very.

Anyway, some time later I recorded it as one track, then two and three. Reversed part of the instrumental-only part in the middle just to see how that sounded. Again, not good except for my all-forgiving ears.

I published an instrumental version on archive.org - so that makes it two tunes I have there so far. Added the lyrics to that post, but it was clear no-one could sing it without a sing-able melody somewhere.

Finally, here's the version where I stop. Not the finished version. Just the version where I stop.

Because I need to do other things. Like, do some personal nanowrimo stuff, writing not one song in 3 years but say 10-15 songs in a month?

It's recorded with Ardour 2. I used Hydrogen with the "tap, tap, tap" keyboard trick to know what the speed is (I'll re-dig it for you if interested; I need it for other songs anyway).

Using a very basic hard-soft-soft-soft rhythm, I added the rhythm chords with a guitarlele, effectively transposing the key by a fifth, which apparently didn't make it less singable by me. I realised later that I had done something strange to the chords when the final third or so begins. I would find it hard to reproduce it, but I think it enriches the song somehow.

It's all first takes, and it always comes out different anyway.

So. Then I added the melody, using the guitarlele again. Would I be able to re-play it like I did? Nope.

Then I (ugh) sung. Not very loud, as there were neighbours around.

Then I muted the hydrogen track, which had sort of served its purpose. I know people who have natural (and trained!) rhythm. Not my case.

Months later, yesterday really, I recorded the bass guitar. Could be trickier if I managed it, but no more patience. I'll see the proper brain-to-tape software yet! Maybe I should just do a song with all tracks hummed.

I had already added some echo stuff to the voice so that it doesn't sound so "me", and some panning. Not professional, but I think it helps you listen to each instrument separately or something.

So, here it is. See (and hear) below.

If you hate it, stop listening. Basically, it's all about protecting yourself. Life's too short to hear crap you can just turn off.

If you like it, good. Hey, even if you don't deeply dislike it, I call that a success!

If you can improve on it somehow, I can share the four tracks so that you may substitute, say, the voice. :-? Or add some proper something. I even have a video of how to play the basic chords, but I'm not publishing that anytime soon I think. (That video is where I took the picture from. Summer 2013.)

Anyway, here it is:

Asked about Collapse of Industrial Civilization ...

(I was in a hurry so excuse the conciseness.)

Bumpy slide, or cliff? Everywhere at once, or patchy? So far it's already (for a billion or two humans) bumpy and patchy, and conceivably a big one (severe influenza pandemic, severe sun storm, etc) could turn it into a sudden cliff, or of course cheap solar & permaculture could go big if several things click together.

It's all scenarios, with no certain probabilities (imho). It's our first time as a species, as far as I know. :-?

What to do? 7 years ago, at a flu conference, I heard a World Health Organisation official say he wasn't in the prediction department but in the preparedness department. I was glad to hear it. One less worry! :-)

Any bad enough scenario (BES) will be felt locally. In a BES, your food or your "property" (I hear that word a lot in some places, and I feel it wouldn't mean much in a BES) won't "save" you. If not "save", then what will "help"? (The following is numbered for reference, not for prioritisation.)

1) Skills, knowledge, friends, having something to give to others that they will value so they will keep you alive.

2) Having ways to speed up recovery for all (or at least as many as possible) in a certain area. Think "emergency permaculture": quick and dirty, using climate analogs and helpful databases + applications some are envisioning, maybe allowing for calorie crops in a few months (while you eat what's there), then something better later.

3) Scarcity governability. (I wrote tinyurl.com/fluscim specifically for a BES-flu-pandemic, but could be applied to SG more generally, fwiw.)

4) Luck.

Anything else?

I'm working towards 1 and 2.

3 is still maturing - maybe there's a lot missing and I'd appreciate comments.

2 and 3 could conceivably be combined.

"Explosive" (in a good way) seeds need slow work!

pcd

i'm doing a distance pdc for a number of weeks

so excuse if i'm pretty silent while i work

don't want to rush it - it's only the end of the world as we know it (as usual)

i'm keeping a shirt-pocket sized moleskine notebook

i may write about other things, or about the pdc - but most misteriously

i'm old, so we'll see what happens if i try to, you know, learn

c ya!

Ethics

I just had a look at permaculture ethics. The planet, people and surpluses are mentioned. It's easy to look them up in detail.

I don't know if it's the same for others, but it kind of rubs me the wrong way when people - not just permaculturists, but anyone - talk about ethics. It's a bit as if they wanted to impose theirs on me.

This speaks more of my sensitivity than of whatever it is that those others may really want to do. I guess. :-P (We people are varied.)

That said, I don't exactly dislike the notion of hacker ethics. Based, you know, on initiative, cooperation, sharing and play. (I'm people too.)

All of which leaves me ruminating ... two things (which end up being three, as usual):

(1) Could there be an intersection, or maybe an edge, among both ethics? An intersection would be acceptable for me personally. An edge, as between ecosystems (a beach is land and sea together), would mean more riches.

(2) In any case, what are ethics? I think each is an array of weights for our decision functions. We decide among options based on factors, and those factors are more or less important depending on our values.

"Values" are nothing special: just the elements and features a specific person considers desirable in a specific situation. (Desirability that's usually relative to other elements and features.)

So a "value set" or an "ethic", in my simplification, is the array of weights we apply to the array of factors in the subjective cognitive function that takes specific factors in and outputs a specific decision.

If you're deciding, say, on starting a business installing solar panels, you may give different weights to being lazy, to earning money, to your wish to leave the campsite better than you found it, or to whatever other factors you're considering.

Finally, in my ruminations, the very notion that a decision is "a function with weighted factors we use to choose between options" makes me wonder (3) whether there might be a meta-ethics which would give lots of value to thinking: the (sometimes cooperative) activity of including more factors, generating further alternatives, etc.

So there you go! :-)

Almost done

I've been working on the same subject for more than eight (8) years.

Learning from the many and from the best. Going out on a limb to suggest obvious innovations in approaches, and also hiding in partial annonimity to be able to ask dumb questions and pose inappropriately silly worries -- in it for the learning. Annoying friends, allies and even a taxi driver or two as I re-worded the threat and the possible actions, again and again and again. New angles became not-so-new, and I was lucky to keep (most of) my friends.

Now the work of offering my understanding back to whoever cares to look into it is almost finished. At around eighty (80) pages, it's a meagre ten pages per year, and yet not exactly E=m*c^2-concise either. Most of my (fingers and toes-countable, if I'm lucky) readers will stop after quickly reading the 6-page summary, the 2.5 index pages, or maybe looking at the pictures. I know that.

But at long last it's (almost) over, and different conversations may (or may not) emerge. Like a music band that creates a new album, I don't know if going on tour will bring further conversations or if it will be a flop, best brushed under the carpet, nice try and ain't you glad it's over.

My attention is now fully uncommitted, if that makes sense. It was a load of work, and whether others like it or not I'm (almost) free.

I've met exquisitely good people, as well as, you know, the others. We'll all be glad we can change the subject. :-)