Category: Thoughts

Coming to terms with the unknowable

April 17th, 2023

Ever think how lost you’d be if you really went inside one of these things? I can barely find my way out of a parking garage.

Just watched a cool documentary on Netflix, A Trip to Infinity, for a second time. I love it because it’s about my favorite subject: how little I know.

The more I learn, the more mysterious the world becomes. That thought gives me the same tingle I get when a song moves me or I really gazed into the sky?

Infinity is difficult for me to grasp – some infinities are bigger than others… Say what? I am attracted to the concept nevertheless. Rudy Rucker’s science fiction novel, White Light was a great exploration of the topic.

Rucker is mostly known for his Ware tetrology (which I loved), but if you’ve never read White Light, you’re missing out. It’s so fun.

White Light follows a man on a trip through infinity. Rucker is actually a mathematician, so he knows what he’s talking about. And I didn’t have to solve for X once.

They move me, those mysteries. And I get the suspicion that certain people touch it, just a little – poets, artists, astrophysicists, quantum physicists, mathematicians. When I think about these topics, feels like there’s a world beyond the world. It may be no more than a feeling, but it’s enough to give me that tingle.

As a young man I was extremely optimistic about what science could discover. I read a lot of sci fi and many of those crazy tales seemed truly possible – someday. Absolute Truth was out there and we’d find it eventually. I didn’t really think it through, I just kind of left it on the table.

Now I understand there are some things beyond the reach of science, where math fails, logic fails, and we’re left to guess, no way to verify. Some things are just unknowable and that’s that.

Conway’s Game of Life helped me to be OK with that. It’s a game with simple rules, that produce extremely complicated effects. If you want to experiment it, you can do it here: https://playgameoflife.com. (It works best on a PC or a laptop.)

You can do some pretty impressive stuff with it. There’s a whole community of hobbiests out there, exploring the possibilities. I’ve managed to create a few gliders by accident. I’ll never do anything on this level:

Hard as that was to grasp at first, the fact that some patterns that leave the screen could last infinitely while others may just last a very long time – but you cannot know.

I was in awe when it finally clicked. If some things are beyond scientists and mathematicians to solve – consciousness for example – there’s always room for a little spooky stuff.

I love pondering those spooky questions. Where is math located? Are there other dimensions of reality and if so can we touch them? Makes me wish I’d had better math teachers in 3rd grade.

That doesn’t mean I believe every tall tale I hear, or make up in my head. One of my most meaningful discoveries has been just how powerful and irrational the human mind can be. I suspect some pretty wild things, but I will never say I know.

However New Agey I might come across sometimes, I should mention that I don’t believe EVERYTHING is possible.

The ground exists, for us puny humans at least. I have to eat food and drink water. That’s why I’m very comfortable stating “I don’t know.”
Editor’s curse: the hole must be filled

April 10th, 2023

I can say that without hesitation that Mark Twain is my favorite writer. I’ve always identified with his melancholy and mischievous nature.

But what really made me fall in love with him was Roughing It, his “autobiographical” book about his time in the West.

Especially the stories about his time as a newspaper reporter in a Nevada mining town. I wrote for small town weeklies, which was close enough.

I put autobiographical in quotes, because he constantly veers off into jokes and tall tales (Loved the apocraphal story about the man who makes an enemy of Joseph Smith by giving a whistle to one of his many sons).

BTW, the entire book is online for free and is searchable.

“It is unspeakable hardship to write editorials. Subjects are the trouble – the dreary lack of them, I mean. Every day, it is drag, drag, drag – think, and worry and suffer – all the world is a dull blank, and yet the editorial columns must be filled.”
Mark Twain

He loved hoaxes and didn’t let truth get in the way of a good story. I wasn’t that kind of journalist, though I loved April Fools Day pranks before they made me stop (some newspaper got sued).

But so much of it rang true. Boredom over beats you had to cover, Chamber of Commerce style propaganda you had to pretend to believe. (His insights into the silver speculation game are extremely relevant. Search Roughing It for the term “salting.”)

But most of all, I can identify with the part about being an editor and having to write editorials (or in my case, columns). I only had to do it once a week and even I ran out of ideas. I can’t imagine having to do one every day.

I didn’t get challenged to any duels (I have a feeling that was an exaggeration), but I pissed off the preachers and my publisher more than once. Other times I came off like an idiot. Those were usually the ones where I was on deadline and had to pull something out of my ass.

Brain block happens with this blog as well. I’ve realized all I’m really doing is writing the column I used to write, except this time I don’t have the publisher on my ass saying, “Stop writing weird shit!”

Hopefully with weird shit being on the table, I can pull more material out of my brain and less out of my ass. I still cringe when I remember some of those columns.
The me’s I didn’t want to be

April 7th, 2023

Kraftwerk – Hall of Mirrors

I had a dream the other night that I can’t seem to shake.

I had just watched The Edge of Tomorrow and it got the wheels turning. All those versions of Tom Cruise’s character were different people. He started as an asshole. By the end he was not. How about all those in-between Tom Cruises? What kind of men were they?

I started the dream as “The Angel of Verdun,” then immediately became Lt. Col. Cage. Each wanted to save the other, just like in the movie.

But it stopped being about the movie and I was just regular old me, watching from a hill and seeing a flock of Me’s. Me from a million timelines. Everyone I could have been.

Ranks and ranks of me as far as the eye could see. All the men I didn’t want to be, each one in a trap I had somehow avoided. Lonely men who lived alone and became bitter and isolated.

Men marrying into the church, having to lie to himself and others that he still believed, bitter and isolated. Men who never jumped off the runaway conservative train and didn’t know how to get off. Me’s who never escaped.

It felt like one of those dreams Carl Jung talked about. The ones you are supposed to figure out. Dreams that are clearly messages from the unconscious. I’ve had a few of those over the years. I’m still puzzling over a couple of them.

What did this mean?

I think the fact I changed perspectives at the beginning was a clue. Something about connectedness.

Maybe that we should see a bit of ourselves in the people we don’t want to be if we can. If you’re one of those former conservatives who feels like they’ve escaped, there had to be timelines where you didn’t.

What got you into that backward mindset and what got you out? I’ll try to do that with this blog if I can. If it reaches any young version of me and helps them make better choices, I’ll be happy if it’s just one guy.

I’m also hoping the more enlightened folks among us will make room for redemption and be a friend when a friend is needed. Victims of misinformation are still victims. Many thanks to those who helped me out of my mental traps, even if they never got to see it happen.
The machine all of us built together

April 5th, 2023

Bonobo – Cirrus (animation by Cyriak). Cyriak’s video is a great illustration of the machine. Look around. You’re inside it. You’re part of it.

I want to bring up something everyone knows, but may not REALLY know: the “machine” some of us rage against, and other serve willingly, is real. There’s no conspiracy you can uncover, no group you can scapegoat to get at that machine. It’s bigger than all of us.

You can’t see it because you’re inside it. You can’t touch it, but everything you touch is part of it. It has important parts – computers and networks, politicians and oligarchs. And it has little parts like you and me (I’ve heard those referred to as “cogs”).

But none of those parts control the machine. Only the parts to which they’ve been assigned. Some may believe they control it, but they only serve it. The puppet master IS the machine.

Gravity’s Rainbow was a challenging read. A lot of people tell me they couldn’t get through it, which I get. I stuck it out cuz I’m stubborn.

It’s been a few years since I read it, but that’s what I took from it: It’s about that thing we’ve created that controls our lives.

It’s beyond the control of any one government or corporation. And it might as well be a living thing because it acts like one. It eats, it tramples, it defecates.

In Gravity’s Rainbow, World War II, that machine’s cruelty finally got so loud it attracted like-minded entities, “the angels.” Angels that could grant favors, including a “heaven” where members of the group they contacted could live out cherished fantasies, but in exchange they had to be willing to betray, and be betrayed.

And the V2 rocket with the mysterious device that Slothrop never finds? That’s the “thing” we’re all chasing that we’re never going to find. For some it’s Happiness, for some it’s Truth. You can’t get either of those from a machine.

I think Thomas Pynchon was thinking of that machine when he wrote Gravity’s Rainbow. Sci fi nut that I am, I pondered the question before I even had my first PC: Could this complicated high tech civilization be alive?

If so, does it know what its doing, or is it like those creatures I loved to watch through my microscope as a kid? If it’s the latter, is that something we want to change?

Do we really want that machine to have free will? Because once it does, we may not.

Rye Rye (featuring MIA) – Better Than You

With Artificial Intelligence, it appears the human race may be giving that machine (whatever it is – industrial civilization, capitalism, globalism) consciousness. Or, as I suspect, more than one consciousness.

My current hunch is that “true” artificial intelligence will happen more than once, and that there will be numerous AIs with different personalities motives inherited from the people and societies that made them.

Passing the Turing Test isn’t enough to prove to me something is conscious. But once AIs do, we’ll be in the dark. As they keep getting smarter, they might become truly conscious. All we can do is guess.

Self-aware AIs might develop politics and make treaties to decide the machine’s fate – and ours. Call me old fashioned, but I believe that should be up to us.

Johnny Rebeck, a campfire song I learned from my dad. Except the version I learned he was Johnny Verbeck. It’s one of those funny, not-funny songs. Somehow I think it fits.
Uploading my brain to the Internet

April 1st, 2023

Lorn – Anvil. From the description: “The year 2100. In an effort to combat overpopulation, the postmortem social network “Anvil” is released. A fusion of both Japanese and Belgian comics inspirations and sensibilities, such as Ghost in the Shell, Akira or Peeters & Schuiten’s work. “Anvil” invites us on a journey through the eyes of a young woman in her final moments on earth.“

Back in the 90s, when I was reading a lot of cyberpunk, I used to say I wanted to be uploaded to the Internet when I died.

I changed my mind after watching the White Christmas episode of Black Mirror. Being made to live for thousands of years in seconds as punishment? Talk about poor working conditions.

Kenji Kawai Cinema Symphony Ghost In The Shell OST YouTube. (Gorgeous version of that opening song. Loved the animation, movie was CGI bullshit.)

Or God, what if I had to work in sales? Having to meet a quota for some crotch deodorant company on YouTube? Count me out.

Or work for scammers. Human scammers are losing their jobs to AIs already. Poor career choice for in-the-flesh humans and AIs.

Is this thing working?

And now I just realized I’m doing it anyway. What else is this blog but an old man trying to upload his brain to the Internet before the vehicle breaks down?

How else to explain this blog? Subjects all over the place, music videos from every genre I like, which is most of them, no idea who my audience might be?

Welcome to the contents of my brain.

Hopefully the internet will have gotten its shit together before I really have to consider if I want to be AI-Me.
I remember you Avery, hope you got to wear that dress

March 31st, 2023

When I was around 7 or 8, there was a little kid I used to see in the nursery of our Southern Baptist church. I’ll call him Avery. Avery was about 4.

This was the early 70s in a small Texas town, typical Baptist church. Avery’s parents were decent and very active. I think the father was a former preacher.

When adults asked Avery what he wanted to be when he grew up, Avery would say, “I’m going to be a princess and have a pretty dress like Cinderella.”

You could tell it bothered them. “No you’re not. You’re going to be a handsome young man and have beautiful children.”

Avery would argue back. “No, I’m going to have a pretty dress like Cinderella.” As long as I knew Avery, the answer never changed.

I’m not one of those people who calls himself an “ally.” What the hell do I know about trans issues? I’m old. I used to be on the “wrong” side of politics. I use the wrong pronouns half the time.

But I know being transgender is not made-up, or sinister. I remember Avery and I know what I saw. I’ve since met other trans people – and they’re people, with hobbies and interests. They just want to live.

When I see all the cruelty directed toward trans kids and their families, I think of Avery and wonder if they’ve had a happy life. I’ll never know, but I hope Avery got to wear that dress and feel like a princess if that’s what Avery wanted.
Focusing on the absurd

March 30th, 2023

My wife just read me the New York Times article about Donald Trump getting indicted in New York. More dark clouds on the horizon it looks like. Maybe another street fight or two.

But there was something about that article that hit me funny…

How arresting the former Commander in Chief might work – he’d have Secret Service protection while he was being arrested.

How he will probably be fingerprinted but might not have to wear handcuffs, and if he does, whether they would cuff him in front or in back.

What a bind it would put primary opponent Ron DeSantis in if Trump defies the court and stays in Florida.

It just struck me how absurd all this is. It’s like a satire, like something Kurt Vonnegut would write. As much as Cat’s Cradle freaked me out, I love Kurt Vonnegut. Galapagos is also amazing.

It’s the way I deal, same way Vonnegut did when he wrote those two apocalypse stories. When shit goes bad, there’s almost always something funny about it too.

Whatever happens, you have to admit it’s a gripping story. If it was a movie it would be a blockbuster. I’d damn sure watch it. I’m already on the edge of my seat.

I bet Vonnegut is laughing bitterly at America right now, wherever he is. Not as funny as the ending of Galapagos, but pretty good.
Maybe I can paint over that

March 29th, 2023

Guy Clark – Maybe I Can Paint Over That (fan-made video)

What I wouldn’t give for a proofreader some days. I’ve already made a few screw-ups on on this blog, though luckily you can fix those quickly now once you’re wife catches them.

it was hard on the soul when I made a bad one in the paper business. Write enough articles and you’re going to make a tone of mistakes. Especially when you’re chief cook and bottle washer and have to proof my your own copy

Word had a spell checker but there were so many other ways to mess up. Copy/paste mistakes really pissed me off cuz they were hard to explain. Lack of sleep was the best excuse I had.

You had to walk around with your head hanging low for a whole week. It really stung when you messed up a story you were proud of. you were proud of.

There were time4s when I was too exhausted to be embarrassed. I was like, oh well, I need to fill up a news hole on page 3. a correction will fill up this news hole on page 3. They’ll forgive me in a week. Maybe.

The tech we have gtoday would’ve helped if I’d had it back then. But then again I probably would’ve been laid off with the proofreading staff instead of sticking around till I felt like the Omega Man.
Deja vu all over again

March 28th, 2023

Sting – Russians (This one came out in ’85, one year after I didn’t get Raptured)

A friend just texted me a story about something the Chinese government said and commented “scary.” I wasn’t scared. Not scared of getting nuked by China or Russia. If you’re my age, you’ve heard it all before.

Those regimes don’t want to get Mutually Assured Destructioned any more than the US does. If it happens, it happens, but I’m not going to spend my time fretting over it.

I did enough of that as a kid. Movies and TV shows were full of nuclear apocalypses. I used to have nightmares about seeing mushroom clouds outside my window.

Being a Southern Baptist, those fears got mixed up with the other thing they taught us to fear and/or look forward to: The Rapture, followed by the Time of Tribulation (or the other way round, depending on who you asked).

In any case, I tried to mentally prepare myself for both.

Content warning: Upsetting imagery. The Christian Nightmares Tribulation Band covering the 1969 “classic” Rapture song I heard who knows how many times, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready.” (The films weren’t this bad, but I got a steady diet of this kind of messaging in the ’80s.)

I would get Raptured if possible. If not, I’d go through the whole Left Behind thing (same plot, but this was before the book series). If it was nukes, I’d wonder about who might want to restart the human race with me and where I might find a good cave to hide in.

It was an obsession when I was a teenager. I was like, can we get this over with so I can make the Rapture? I feel some sinning coming on and I can only hold it back for so long.

But there came a point where I had quit dwelling on it and live. So I did. As traumatic as recent developments have been, I still have to live as long as I’m alive. Sing While You May.

Strangely enough, I’m borderline obsessed with The Legendary Pink Dots and their singer Edward Ka Spel, who sing about all sorts of apocalypses. I find it cathartic. Exposure therapy I suppose.

Edward Ka Spel – Dotzsong
Which version gets to be me?

March 27th, 2023

David Bowie – Changes

I’ve lost most of last night’s dream, which felt like quite an adventure. I was with a team of people and we were on a mission.

Some were NPCs (learned that one recently from gamers) who were there for me to talk to, some were me, trying to make plans. Sometimes I forgot which was which – you know how you sometimes swap characters in dreams.

Our mission was to stop whoever was manipulating our timelines, changing our consciousness, making us over. We all wanted the identities WE chose.

Just before I woke up, someone who both was and wasn’t me said, “These aren’t the clothes I was wearing when I went to bed.”

I’d changed, and no memory of that change. Which sounds rather like a message from my unconscious mind, doesn’t it? Seeing as how my unconscious mind in charge of which dream characters wear what.

I’ve been some very different people over the course of my life. That’s why I believe in redemption and why I refuse to believe people can’t change. People don’t change all at once, but we DO change.

Sometimes it makes my head swim, remembering some of the beliefs I once held. Like, how could that have been me? Yet he was. I have the memories to prove it.

But just like in my dream, all those identities you used to be are in there somewhere, tugging at your sleeve, telling you what to do. But you’re in charge, not them. You get to pick which ones you listen to.