Thursday 31 October 2019

Agh, Shut The Fuck Up The Lot of You, You're All Full of Shit!


You too, Pompeo!


Get on with figuring out how we are going to host this meeting here in Cochabamba within the next 60 days.


I'm going to be working for a respectable software company, and I'm now helping my landlady take out the garbage, ... just like you told me to. See I'm Still Looking for A Job.

I'm Still Looking for A Job

Dianna Cowan, a.k.a. Physics Girl, on programming. At 4 minutes 51 seconds, "Right now, think about what problem you have. I bet you can think of a program or app which can solve that problem." I can. But I can't write that program or app.


It goes back to the first post I made on this blog, about this project: https://code.google.com/archive/p/metaprogramming/:
The idea is simple: instead of writing actual programs, we write programs which write programs. But rather than trying to invent one general purpose meta-language, what we do is design a new programming language for each application. This allows us to abstract from all the tedious detail such as having to decide which particular programming language to use.
It also allows us to solve some hard problems such as the one Ken Thompson identifies in his Turing Award speech On Trusting Trust. This is because a meta-programmed system does not actually have any concrete representation in source code, so is not susceptible to any attack that is based on recognising the source code of the target system.
I wrote some more about it in this essay: Genesis, and a year later I tried to interest the GNU/Free Software community in it with this: GNU Thunder. Now I'm going to try again, by describing the same underlying thing in a way that I hope might interest the decentralise/indieWeb/dWeb people: see Lee Camp on Protests Everywhere.


This is a course called Computer Security 101:



... it's being held in Room 303:


This is from Polyadic Pi-Calculus: A Tutorial:



To see the relevance of Linear Logic and semantics of System-F, see Appendix  B.3 on page 154 of Girard, Lafont & Taylor's "Proofs and Types" :



... and read Dijkstra's The T.H.E. Multiprogramming System and The Mathematics Behind The Banker's Algorithm. To an idea what sort of view a system programmer would have of the system as Dijkstra described it, see The T.H.E. Multiprogramming System Mk II. The programming language of higher-order polyadic Pi calculus provides concise ways to describe these abstractions over processes.

You may also find "Morpheus"s type system interesting: described in This tutorial, and the paper Principal Type Schemes for Functional Programs by Damas and Milner.

To see why we need to be much more careful about the distinction between truth and meaning, see this, from the introduction to The Definition of Standard ML, by Robin Milner, Mads Tofte, Robert Harper and David MacQueen, and it's about language design in very general terms.
The job of a language-definer is twofold. First – as we have already suggested – he must create a world of meanings appropriate for the language, and must find a way of saying what these meanings precisely are. Here, he meets a problem; notation of some kind must be used to denote and describe these meanings – but not a programming language notation, unless he is passing the buck and defining one programming language in terms of another. ...
 ... The second part of the definer’s job is to define evaluation precisely. This means that he must define at least what meaning, M, results from evaluating any phrase P of his language (though he need not explain exactly how the meaning results; that is he need not give the full detail of every computation). This part of his job must be formal to some extent, if only because the phrases P of his language are indeed formal objects. But there is another reason for formality. The task is complex and error-prone, and therefore demands a high level of explicit organisation (which is, largely, the meaning of ‘formality’); moreover, it will be used to specify an equally complex, error-prone and formal construction: an implementation. We shall now explain the keystone of our semantic method. First, we need a slight but important refinement. A phrase P is never evaluated in vacuo to a meaning M, but always against a background; this background – call it B – is itself a semantic object, being a distillation of the meanings preserved from evaluation of earlier phrases (typically variable declarations, procedure declarations, etc.). In fact evaluation is background-dependent – M depends upon B as well as upon P.
The keystone of the method, then, is a certain kind of assertion about evaluation; it takes the form
B |-- P ⇒ M
and may be pronounced: ‘Against the background B, the phrase P evaluates to the meaning M’. The formal purpose of this Definition is no more, and no less, than to decree exactly which assertions of this form are true. [their emphasis, not mine.]
The relevance to security is that it is by subverting the meanings of evaluations that any parts of the system can potentially become hostile agents. So what we are aiming to do by using metaprogramming in this way, is to define many different ways in which these meanings can be rendered independently of their concrete representation in any particular part of the system.

Welcome to The Matrix:


Now, after six years underground, let's talk about about inclusion and empathy in this working environment:


Google, for fuck's sake, get on board! See Women Programming Computers and Revolution: The Real Deal.


California Wildfires

It looks like hell. See Lori on More Economic Stimulation for California. The solution is argricultural land regeneration. That is also the solution to CA's social and economic problems. But for some reason nobody wants joined-up government there. See Rutger Bregman on Poverty and In Ethiopia's South Omo It Hasn't Rained for Five Years.




Polly Boiko Meets a Honduran Milk Snake

"He would make a fabulous belt!" ๐Ÿ˜‚


Part II:


Randall Munroe on Predicting The Future

Just by talking about it, ... Jesus, this guy is evil! ๐Ÿ˜‚ See On Free Will and Conscious Awareness.


See Randall Munroe On Being Good With The Numbers.

Interesting problem at 15 minutes 33 seconds about an infinite square grid of resistors and the resistance between two points a "knight's move" apart.

Over Seventy People Burned to Death on a Train in Pakistan





Wednesday 30 October 2019

Randall Munroe On Being Good With The Numbers

Randall Munroe going through what people like Elon Musk and Geoff Bezos do to map out the future of humanity, and figure how to make money from it, except he's not worrying about the profitability of the exercise. He points out that it is thought-provoking, however.


But consider what a 1 MWatt Solar Furnace like the one at Odeillo in the French Pyrenees costs. It was built in the seventies. And think about these cooperative projects and others like them: How Not to Deal With Space Junk and Near Earth Asteroid Ideas Shifting ... and ask yourself, well, what is it about the way people like Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey and Geoff Bezos think that makes them such total alpha-males? Is it because they care about the trees? So What's The Difference Between Capitalism and Socialism? and why aren't these sorts of business called socialist? Sorry We Missed You. Come on, this stuff is not rocket science, is it?


See Leonard Cohen - The Goal:


Lori on More Economic Stimulation for California

It's going to be goin' like someone else's house on fire in no time!


What's The Difference Between Capitalism and Socialism

This is really excellent. People in Bolivia will be able to identify Industrial Capitalism as  it is described here, but they will say "why don't we have factories or jobs?"


... and People in China Will Say "Long Live the Communist Party of China!" So we all know what is the difference is between communism, socialism and capitalism now, don't we? Good! And we know where they were invented too: British Empire in China. And democracy? That was invented in London too, on Cheapside, I think. See The Real Hong Kong.

The Real Hong Kong

This is how I remember it! ❤️๐Ÿ’“๐Ÿ’•


... but without the bridge!

Trump Finally Hands Ukraine Back to Russia, Leaving Putin Without A Job

You don't have to believe me, you can get it straight from the horse's mouth:


Hannibal Lecter meets The Pope

Now this looks like fun! ๐Ÿ˜‚❤️๐Ÿ’“๐Ÿ’•


Sorry We Missed You


Afshin Rattansi interviews the director Ken Loach and writer, Paul Laverty:


Jason Bermas on Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, ...

The Economist on Economics



... and poverty in the United States ...



Their problem is the corruption of the justice system, ...


... which means that public education has gone underground.


See Lee Camp on Protests Everywhere.

Grenfell Tower Hand-wringing

The systemic failure is that nobody gives a shit about people so fucking poor that you can't even make a profit out of feeding the cunts! See Argentina.




Don't worry, the women at the FT don't get it either. They still think financial markets mean something.


Maybe open a school for them under Blackfriars Bridge?


Argentina

Stupid is Boring

... and I am so fucking bored! What is the point of my posting this shit when nobody gives a fuck? And quick as a flash, Jason comes up with one answer, ... Jason Bermas on Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, ... something about boring and stupid I think, ... and here's Brussian Polly Boiko answering more questions:


Corbett on Something Big Loosed by Trump

2 minutes 41 seconds "He died after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and screaming, ..." Gee, Mr President, what a terrible way to end your career! ๐Ÿ˜‚



Global Organised Crime

A.K.A. Central Banks, ...


See also Martin North On the Bullshit Bullion Market.

Shopping Mall on Fire in Santiago, Chile

Those water-cannon look like they could have put out the fire much quicker than the fire tenders, which look feeble by comparison.


Pensioners living on equivalent of US$180 per month in Chile: that is less than I get begging on the street here in Bolivia.


The US Prison System

In a civilized country, you would have an Inspector of Prisons who was responsible for maintaining standards in prisons and ensuring the rights of prisoners are not violated. Britain used to have a such an office, but in the case of prisoners of the United States, such as Julian Assange, that office apparently doesn't exist. It was called H.M. Inspector of Prisons or something, indicating that it was something to do with The Crown, or Sovereignty, or some outdated tradition like that.


ICYMI on GQ's New Masculinity

Tuesday 29 October 2019

Leonard Cohen - The Goal

Al Jazeera Panel on Cyber Security

At 3 minutes 51 seconds, a computer and network security lecturer from a UK University says "If you have great security and a weak password, then your security will be defenceless. So as well as working on defences we are trying to raise people's awareness of the passwords." Sounds to me like the problem is education! ๐Ÿ˜‚ This guy is a fucking joke, fire him!


Lori With Some Really Good Advice

Don't try to legislate political correctness, for fuck's sake!


Polly Boiko with Selfie Advice

This  is funny, and it's also very aesthetically pleasing to watch! ❤️๐Ÿ’“๐Ÿ’•


European Pharmaceutical Companies Conducting Illegal Drug Trials on Patients in Romania


Max Blumenthal Arrested in Washington DC



I am not at all convinced by Max Blumenthal. The stuff I see going on here in Bolivia is eerily similar to stuff I saw going on another Bolivarian Republic, ... see Bolivian Vice President Approves Further Blockades... and Lee Camp on Protests Everywhere.

Lee Camp on Protests Everywhere

... and even in the USA, ...


I am still trying to believe in this sort of direct action, underground, ... the trouble is that it's off all of the media radar, ...


These are the only kinds of forms of protest that I think will actually work.


The history of these kinds of "underground architecture" movements in the United States goes back to the sixties. The fact that after one year these two videos have achieved a total of fewer than 100 views says it all, ...


But around here, this is the sort of thing that counts as society. A bunch of guys with sticks ripping down banners of people peacefully protesting a corrupt government.


This talk at 1 min 39 seconds by Leo, shows that there is a global decentralised network of interoperating groups, and that some people are thinking about how to increase intercommunication amongst these groups.


28 minutes 41 seconds: Social media platform independence is almost a reality now: see https://indieweb.org/2019/Berlin2 and https://indieweb.org/2019/SF but the idea of keying the whole thing off a DNS name is a showstopper.

It's a bit depressing that it has taken six years and we still haven't got people to realise the problem with concrete representation of data. See Amy Zegart on Cyberwar and the first post I made on this blog. For more details, see I'm Still Looking for A Job.


Update: see The Wachowski's Revolutions.

5G Wireless Has Health Issues

This is funny. Well, why should I give a shit about it? But I think that Antonio Guterres ought to carry a spare pair of pants everywhere he goes.


Monday 28 October 2019

Microsoft Fog of War® -- Cost: US$10 billion

Fot the Pentagon, that's dirt-cheap, for a cover-up. I mean, look at what Afghanistan has cost so far, ....


Lori on Snowden and the CIA and Aliens, ....

... to me they're all pretty much the same thing; Snowden, the CIA and Aliens, I mean, ...


... and here's a really excellent little op-doc Laura Poitras made on the NSA whilsteblower William Binney, for the NYT no less, in August 2012, almost a year before Snowden hi-tailed to Singapore, ...


... but I wonder if the CIA believe in Atlantis?


For more advice on interpreting flood stories, see Revolution: The Real Deal. And if you don't know where Cochabamba is, or what it is called, ... see this beer commercial ๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿคฆ, ... or Problemas en el corazรณn de la Madre Tierra, and What is Socialist Economic Development? Then see Bolivian Vice President Approves Further Blockades by MAS. And on the effects of concentration camps, ...


... and what does this have to do with The Matrix? Well, it's about self-sufficiency in the Third World, ... you need others to help you, ...


... otherwise, well, you end up spending all your time dodging bullets, I guess, ...


... and surveillance, ... well, be careful what you say about people on the phone! ๐Ÿ˜‚


... see You Whores Are All Fucked, and remember, context is everything in the semantics of connected independent processes. For example, ...


Just check the replies to this youtube comment, which would make even Stagger Lee blanch, ...


Now, hands up those who think that there is any risk that Lori will misinterpret what I'm proposing in this post. I don't. And now, hands up those who think that "code talk" is a suitable medium for making contracts, or covenants? I do. But it quite severely restricts the kind of contracts and covenants you can make. See Revolution: The Real Deal. So you see, we have the upper hand, siempre!

Is John Redwood Right About the UK Parliament?

It all depends upon from whom the people have the choice of the new parliament. Sadly, it is not clear to me that there are any better alternatives; and that is not to be taken as being a tacit approval of the present Parliament! See The Role of Parliament in British Military Action Overseas.


See Revolution: The Real Deal.

Lebanese Protestors form 170km Long Human Chain

See Al Jazeera on the Media Coverage of Protests in Lebanon.


DW report on Lebanese unity:


Bolivian Vice President Approves Further Blockades by MAS

In response to calls for a recount in the disputed general election of a week ago ,Vice President รlvaro Garcรญa Linera today justified the blockade by campesinos and cocaleros of the main road between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz de la Sierra and called for the closure of other roads in the country by affiliates of the ruling party MAS. From Garcรญa Linera justifica bloqueos por afines al MAS y arremete contra Mesa.
El vicepresidente, รlvaro Garcรญa Linera, justificรณ hoy el bloqueo de campesinos y cocaleros en la carretera que une Cochabamba con Santa Cruz y el llamado a cerrar otras carreteras del paรญs por afines al Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS).

That tells you pretty much all you need to know about what kind of a government this is! What they are trying to prevent is the kind of unity being shown in Chile and Lebanon. See Lebanese Protestors form 170km Long Human Chain and DemocracyNow! on Friday's Massive Peaceful Protests in Chile.

This is a "divide and conquer" maneuver: see More Violent Protests.

Two Interesting Stories About the US in Syria Today

Story number one: the US has funded 21 of the 28 different groups spearheading the"Turkish invasion" of Northern Syria:


Story number two: Syrian oil is a "US National Interest", says some deluded guy who thinks he the President of a sovereign state of some kind:


DemocracyNow! on Friday's Massive Peaceful Protests in Chile


Cรฉdric Villani on Problem Solving, Abstraction and Creativity in Mathematics

Maria Butina Interviewed

If I were an American, I would feel deeply ashamed about it, and I would seriously consider going to live in New Zealand!


Al Jazeera on the Media Coverage of Protests in Lebanon

It's really interesting to see how easily one can identify the genuine reportage from the spin-doctoring.


Leila Howe on Activism and Journalism Today

Carrie Lam and Xi Jinping on Living Life Backwards

I can hardly believe I am hearing this! To placate HK ptotestors, she's offering them a 90% mortgage on a million dollar apartment. That's probably 300 sq meters at the most, bought from a property tycoon. See SCMP's Yonden Lhatoo on Hong Kong Housing Crisis.


See also this FT piece Wanted: a Hong Kong chief executive to achieve the impossible for an insight into Hong Kong's relationship with the CCP:
The deep political crisis created by the unrest has led Beijing to begin drawing up plans to replace Ms Lam by as early as March, less than three years into her five-year term. As embarrassing as that would be for President Xi Jinping, people briefed on Communist party deliberations in Beijing say senior Chinese officials realise that Hong Kong needs a new beginning if it is to restore public confidence in the government.

Mathematician Cรฉdric Villani en Marche

"I'll vote for you, ... I'm interested in Astronomy and the Big Bang." ๐Ÿ˜‚


Villani at the Royal Institution in London:


Comey Will Move to New Zealand if Trump is Re-elected

What fuck did New Zealand do to deserve that?! ๐Ÿ˜‚


Ask the wandstrassewolf.

Sunday 27 October 2019

Revolution: The Real Deal

All you need to know to navigate your way through the sea of lies is just one thing, which is this: how the story ends.






See Indila - Parle ร  ta Tรชte.

Bullshit Theater

Norman Wildberger would get on well with Joseph Shitman.




See Martin North on the Bullshit Bullion Market.

On Fast Growing Hierarchies

See A Concrete Way to See What Computable Functions Actually Are and The Skeleton in the Closet.


See also Rado on Well-defined Non-computable Numbers. In my first attempt to write a book, I had a bit on syntactic definitions of sequences like this. That was in 2011 and it ended with this episode:  On Psychobotanics and Neurology, and on being pushed about:




Diana on Wine, and Whiskey.



Martin North on the Bullshit Bullion Market

The gold bullion market is nonsense too.


I haven't bothered watching this. This team tree bullshit is depressing enough, ... Jesus Fucking Christ, here we go again, ...


... and if you think the gold market is a con-job, you ain't seen nothin' yet:


Saturday 26 October 2019

Daughter of Albion on Complexities of English National Identity

Well, when half of the ruling class are of French descent, and you include the Scots, the Welsh and good many Irish, what can you expect? See Absolute Nonsense. I'd stick with the lady wearing a Barbour jacket and Wellington boots, myself! ๐Ÿ˜‚ ❤️๐Ÿ’“๐Ÿ’•


The thing that really cracked me up was this comment:


See Interesting Fragment of Early History of the West German Intelligence Agency.


Chala Madre - No Me Dejes


Emily Quinn on the Difference Between Men With Balls and Women With Balls

There is yet hope for the human race!! .๐Ÿ˜‚ ❤️๐Ÿ’“๐Ÿ’• Her stories about genital exams remind me of a joke I once told about two gay gynecologists. But I think it in poor taste to repeat one's own jokes, so if you didn't hear it the first time, then you'll have to wait 'til someone else tells it to you.


See Iman Amrani on Masculinity 2.0.

Children in Bosnia

Just in case you thought everything is rosy, .... it isn't. That was just ignorance, ...


Derek Muller on Trees

... and there's some campaign to plant 20 million trees. But that is nothing compared to the trees in the Boreal Forests that are at risk.


See Russian Government is Clearly NOT Taking Climate Change SeriouslyWhy Climate Scientists Shouldn't Set Policy and America is Falling in Love ...

Maltese Professor Mifsud Under Criminal Investigation

Mifsud had many connections with British intelligence and senior members of the British government, for example Teresa May, as Julian Assange tweeted, the day before the Ecuadorian Embassy took away his Internet access, ...




See Roger Waters on Assange. And just in case those tweets go away:



Jason Bermas on Twitter

This shows that what you see ain't necessarily what other people get on Twitter. The same applies to any social media, and even e-mail. So don't assume people have actually seen anything you think you have sent. This is why I try to get people, like my daughter, for example, to confirm or respond to things in a way which shows that they have actually seen them. But nobody does do this, so I have no idea who reads what I write, or what they read that they think I wrote, but didn't. We need secure communications, people!



See also this:


... and this:


... and this:


... but for why "make these things public utilities" is a fuck-brained argument, see Nobody in the US Understands the Problem with Big Tech.

Jimmy Dore is doing a stand-up/sit-down whatever comedy tour in the US in November.

Priscillia Ludosky on the European Commission

This is the 50th Act. Casualties so far: 11 dead, 25 people who have lost an eye and five who have lost a hand, and over 2,000 other injuries. The EC say that the French police have the right to use these LBD weapons and that the French police cannot investigate the actions of members of their own force, but there is no EC authority that can investigate police actions either.


At 2 minutes 34 seconds a referendum on a citizens' initiative to debate EC austerity measures is anti-democratic. This is because it is a condition of the Maastricht Treaty that EC Member States are not allowed to critique decisions made by the European Central Bank. See this, from 1 hour 25 minutes. "The ECB is an international organization that is above and outside the laws and jurisdiction of any individual nation."


The ECB colludes with the US Federal Reserve: see Nick Hanauer on Neo-liberal Economics and Serious Psychological Problems.

I am surprrised that Gilets Jaunes can effectively use Twitter to organise protests, given the degree of control Twitter are prepared to use to suppress certain information. See Jason Bermas on Twitter.

Roger Waters on Assange


See Pink Floyd - Yet Another Movie.

"We haven't got a problem, you have a problem."


"This is not the film I thought I was making. I thought I could ignore the contradictions, ..."


See Maltese Professor Mifsud Under Criminal Investigation.

Friday 25 October 2019

Iman Amrani on Masculinity 2.0

The Guardian are doing another series on this. But I think that it's as Che Guevara said: we have to reinvent men and women at the same time, otherwise nothing is going to make sense to anybody!


See Pink Floyd - Yet Another Movie.


... and:


... and no, I don't mean all men have to be effeminate and hang out with dykes!! ๐Ÿ˜‚❤️๐Ÿ’•๐Ÿ’“ But it sounds just fine to me!


Lori on Stupid Joe


Please evrybody, send this sorry stupid son-of-a-bitch 5 bucks just so that he finds out where this link came from, ...

Say it ain't so, Joe, ... 

Leonard Cohen - Happens to the Heart

This new song is as good as anything he has ever done! It's beautiful!!!


See also Pink Floyd - Yet Another Movie.


Pink Floyd - Yet Another Movie

Great song, but I never had the faintest fucking clue what it was about! ๐Ÿ˜‚ Somebody says it is a connection to the Wish You Were Here cover art, that burning guy at Pinewood, ...


Any band who has a record label called "Hypgnosis" should be treated with much respect! I mean, you let them fill your head with shit like this and you can hardly complain when your life starts to look like some fucking demented high-school science project gone badly wrong! ๐Ÿ˜‚❤️๐Ÿ’•๐Ÿ’“





... or a hard-core Guiness commercial, ...


These "little projects" are good for the whole soul, ...


... but they're unethical as buggery, so we need some real science going on behind it.


See Let's Start Talking and Why is Telecommunications Security Important?





Nobody in the US Understands the Problem with Big Tech

What they don't understand is the dependency the United States' economy has on this "big tech" monopoly. So they try to treat it as a national problem that can be solved to the benefit of the US, ... and of course it can't, because the US earns vast amounts of foreign income from this monopoly, without which it would collapse overnight. Now the rest of the world could help America sort this out, if only we weren't so busy trying to stop America from fucking us in the ass all the time.


California, Home to 12% of the US Population, And 50% of the US Homeless

And Silicon Valley and Hollywood have nothing to do with this, ...


See While The World Protests Agaist Inequality and Injustice, ...

Protestors in Guinea Object to President's Third Term Bid


Protests in La Paz Yesterday


Lori on Rachel Maddow

Now I have more respect for Rachel Maddow. I always wondered why she did a fucking awful job of everything, but those assholes just carried on paying her to do it!!! ๐Ÿ˜‚❤️๐Ÿ’“๐Ÿ’•


What Can Evo Morales Learn from Lenin Moreno?

Moreno was blackmailed by the CIA to sell-out his country and Julian Assange, because they knew that he had an illegal secret offshore account.


See Evo Morales Claims There is A Coup in Progress. At 7 minutes 16 seconds, "... Assange got involved in Vatican issues, ..." was one of the reasons Moreno gave for withdrawing his asylum status.