very bad aground @cadedelbarco - Tumblr Blog

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Bye

nobody is listening. Tumblr - you’re dead.

tobeagenius

relatable

cadedelbarco

sigh . . . the solute molecules don’t pass the semipermeable membrane, only the solvent (water):

Her: the membrane is semipermeable

Me: well YOU come on over and watch the pressure rise!

thehappyatheist

There are people alive today who believe this crap! 😂

call-me-gorgor

There are people alive who don’t understand the concept of a metaphor

thehappyatheist

Care to elaborate for us what exactly these are metaphors of then?

cadedelbarco

let's see, “the Earth is flat”, that is like a metaphor for "ain't no mountain high enough to keep me from you, baby" those biblical dudes were unstoppable. "the earth doesn't move" that is like a dis - you don't do it for me, baby.

“the earth rests on pillars” - could be phallic.

that’s as far as I could get.

asciiheart

The nuclear family is probably the greatest enabler of child abuse, ever.

Putting two people in complete control of another person (who is particularly vulnerable and has few legal rights) and then having no oversight for the whole arrangement is the absolute worst idea.

Families are garbage.

libertarirynn-deactivated202006

Hahaha wtf

yourownpetard

I wouldn’t even know where to start with this. omg.

amal-wa-ahlam

OP, what would you propose as an alternative to families?

asciiheart

communal child raising

less isolated familial structures in general

children being made aware of how they should and shouldn’t be treated

Some form of child protection services that don’t just believe the parents and assume a child is lying when they report abuse

more legal and counselling services made available to children

tracyalexander-deactivated20201

I don’t get people that are like “lol, what? that’s so weird, lets laugh at the very notion that traditional families are abusive”.

itsfridaybutimstillaro-deactiva

communal child raising is the traditional family. 70-100 years ago 4 generations lived together in the same house, having 4 grandparents, 6 aunts and 15 cousins around every day was normal.

queeranarchism

Things that should be mentioned:

- These communities are not necessarily connected by an biological ties. In a lot of these multigenerational ‘families’, including people in the family who are not relatives or married into the family is totally normal. This has always created a lot more space to support people without families, support people who do now want to partner up and to create communities in which couples who can not have children (like some queer couples but not all & other couples too) can be a part of child raising.

- Having a lot more young people around often means young people learn from each other. In many cultures young people form a non-hierarchial group that learns together and can do a great deal without adult supervision.

The nuclear family doesn’t just facilitate abuse, it facilitates hierarchy. It’s a training school for obedience to authority.

Now, which system would push such a training school strongly so it could get docile obedient citizens? Which system whould push the nuclear family.

I’m not saying it’s capitalism but it’s capitalism.

And then there’s the fact that the 2 parent, nuclear family can be most easily pushed into the pattern where one adult works an extremely exhausting job many hours a day that leaves that adult hardly capable of doing anything else, while the other adult takes on all the other things that adult would otherwise have done: care for children, clean the living space, prepare food, prepare clean clothing, etc. for free. What we know as traditional gender roles.

This way capitalism gets one intensely loyal worker who feels ‘responsible’ for ‘supporting a family’ while all the work to keep that worker going is done for free by an unpaid worker in the home.

And, you know, communities need a lot less stuff. A community of 50 can do just fine with one or two hammers. 25 nuclear families need 25 hammers. The nuclear family demands a huge amount of commodity purchasing.

dollsahoy

(hooboy that last point)

cadedelbarco

By similar logic, there should ALWAYS be two teachers in each classroom; yeah, I know it would cost more - but we are all interested in increasing employment, eh? And with two teachers, not only would the “lead” teacher constantly in a frame of mind of peer review and therefore operating at closer-to-peak professionalism, but with two adults in the room, student behavior would be more than twice as good. No more need for teachers with eyes in back of the head! (written by a former teacher)

humanpersonface

So, in my art history class today, my professor was talking about something that is so fuckin awesome.

These are warrior shields from the Wahgi people of Papua New Guinea. The warriors paint them with imagery meant to symbolize animals who have traits they wish to embody in battle. These depictions are intended to give the person using it the powers of what they’re depicting.

Now. Look at this Wahgi shield:

Hmm. That looks a bit different from the others.

That looks VERY different. Why, it looks like

The Phantom… American comic book character by Lee Falk. And that’s because it is.

The Wahgi people were isolated from the rest of the “modern” world until 1933. They came into contact with WWII service men who shared some aspects of western culture with the tribesmen. In particular, they showed them the comic books they read while shipped out. The Wahgi loved them. In particular, the Wahgi adored the stories of the Phantom, who wasn’t even particularly popular in its home of America.

He is so popular that the few Wahgi who can read english will read the comics out loud in the village center and hold out the pages for everyone to see, so the whole tripe can enjoy them and marvel at the Phantom’s might in battle.

They identify with the Phantom because he came from a jungle territory, like them, wore a mask to fight, like them, and came from a long line of warriors, which the Wahgi, who worshiped their ancestors, deeply respected. Further, despite not really having superpowers, the Phantom is strong, clever, and incredibly fast. He was so fast that his enemies began to believe that he was impervious to bullets and could not be killed.

Therefore, the Wahgi began painting HIM on their shields to invoke HIS abilities in battle. There are TONS of Phantom-Wahgi shields out there.

So, you might think that you’re huge comic book fan, but the Wahgi have taken their Phantom fandom to the next level and have made the Phantom a fucking talisman to carry into battle for strength.

voxiferous-deactivated20171119

More pictures here!

cadedelbarco

The Kuna of northeastern Panama make reverse applique fabric art called “mola”. They used to make nature-inspired designs and simple geometric patterns, but now they often take their inspiration from magazine advertisements. I have seen molas of static-filled TVs with rabbit-ear antennas on top, a variety of beer and liquor bottles, numerous Nike and Adidas logos, cars, airplanes, bicycles, and all sorts of other stuff. Funny in a way - sad in a way.

How Google used artificial intelligence to transform Google Translate, one of its more popular services — and how machine learning is poised to reinvent computing itself.

This is such a fascinating subject. Our minds are becoming less mysterious to us all the time, and the potential of computer systems to emulate their behaviors are exploding. Life on Earth is about to become really, amazingly different in a fundamental way.

#hinton #geoffrey e

politico

By ANDREW HANNA

White House national security adviser Michael Flynn will recommend that President Donald Trump support allowing the small Balkan nation of Montenegro to join NATO, POLITICO has learned — despite strong opposition from Russia.

The move will be a major test of the new administration’s policy toward Moscow, which considers any further eastward expansion of the Western military alliance a provocation.

Other NATO countries and the U.S. Senate widely support granting membership to the nation of 650,000 people, which once was part of the former Yugoslavia. Montenegro’s leaders have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of fomenting instability inside the country to erode support for joining the alliance — including alleged plots by pro-Russian movements last year to attack the parliament and assassinate the prime minister.

But Flynn, one of Trump’s key advisers, “is expected to recommend Montenegro’s accession into NATO to Trump in the coming days,” a senior administration official said Monday in response to questions.

Read more here

cadedelbarco

for the sake of provocation. Bannon wants war to accelerate nationalism. China, Russia, Middle East, even Mexico; the enemy can be anywhere.

pathetic

how it feels to start posting on Tumblr when you have zero followers :( bootstrapping is hard!

my new “tayota” or “christophene” arbor. The green straps were formerly used to tie a bundle of cement blocks - strong and quite UV resistant. There is also some old stainless steel cable looped around the perimeter - hard to see. The posts are “pinon” - a local tree that roots quickly when stuck in the ground a couple of feet. The old arbor collapsed from the weight of tayota vines and a deadfall branch - lots of deadfall in the past year from the 2015 drought that killed many older trees. Life goes on . . .

The president is taking the United States back to the nightmares of the world before the Second World War: closed borders, limited trade, and a go-it-alone national race to the bottom.

perhaps our wise Senators will act to restrain this man in his over-enthusiastic rush to burn it all down. . .

It’s been a while. Time to get back into Tumblr I think. Google+ -- at least what I have followed -- have become too saturated with news about Trump. There, that is the last I will speak on THAT topic.

Dead fish

We have a gray water recirculation system which will eventually evolve into an aquaponics system. But the bugs are still in there - it has had some leaks. I am not a very good plumber or concrete worker. But I keep thinking I have it fixed. When I first put water into the system, I distributed 20 juvenile tilapia among the tanks. The tilapia in the smaller tanks died pretty soon - probably not enough to eat, but also maybe because they are nearer the head tank which might get a little bit anaerobic (especially when the system leaks and the pump quits circulating water). When the sump refills, it pumps again and the septic water in the head tank hits those upper ponds first (they are only about 20 gallons each, with a couple of feet of fall for aeration from one to the next). But a hardy band of six fish have hung on through several bouts of bad water in the lower pond. It is bigger than the others so maybe more resistant to shocks and benefits from more aeration most of the time. But after a 36 hour down-time earlier in the week, this afternoon all six of the lower pond fish died. I guess I should get a pH test kit before I buy any replacement fishes. And let the system circulate a day or two to get good and aerated and make sure the leaks are done. . . it is difficult to create an ecosystem that will treat gray water and sustain fish! Takes some tuning!

Life as Art

I used to really like this quote from Socrates "the uninspected life is not worth living", but it has come to sound clinical and uninspiring to me over the years. I still get it, but now I think of life more as a form of art. The Canadian author Kathleen Arnason said "Every moment is a dot in the painting of our lives. Each dot a circle that is never-ending, surrounding the gift of creation." a little more cumbersome but more poetic perhaps. We are each given one life and it is up to us what to make of the moments: we can make it ugly or beautiful, drab or colorful. Our life will probably not become famous while we live, and may never be "discovered" but it is still art. Some of my thought on this were crystallized a bit further this Thanksgiving when I talked with a lady who was visiting her step-daughter here in the Dominican Republic. She has had a rich life and I am sure she has many undiscovered stories to share. In recent years she lost her husband and this tragedy casts a pall over her life. A shadow like this can create great beauty in a life-painting -- depending on how the rest of her story unfolds. Of course, it is up to her. Irving Berlin said "life is 10 percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it". Like most lives, I think mine is less like a Dutch Masterwork and more filled with "happy accidents" of color a la Jackson Pollock. It is reasonable to ask "is it art?" but I hope it will be found to have a certain aesthetic by posterity. At least I can say with sincerity that I like it! That is perhaps all any of us can aspire to achieve.

Living room shelves about done. Time to buy some "real" chairs.

Economics

I have had the flu for a couple of days which gave me a lot of time to read. I have been studying about how our current economic model, known as neoclassical economics is defective. We need to replace it SOON with a better and more sustainable economic model because the current system drives continuous growth (whether or not it is sustainable) because the system is based on the false assumptions that resources are limitless (or have no intrinsic worth unless extracted), and that hidden costs (such as environmental degradation in particular) can be ignored.

I would like to think here on the farm that I am becoming more "sustainable" but I know that is still far from true: I buy concrete and lumber and batteries, and all manner of other stuff that derives from rapacious consumption of fossil fuels. It cannot go on much longer, and indeed the world may soon come to a spend-it-or-lose-it situation. I mean in the coming decade. We have to find a way to account for the value of depleting natural resource reserves. It means the cost of "luxury" goods must soar as the new cost accounting comes into place.

We hope for a technological singularity that will give rise to superintelligent computers which can solve our problem for us, but within the current system it is hard to see how there can be a solution. The "haves" do not want to give away their lifestyle for the sake of the drowning or starving "have-nots" and yet the drowning or starving may number in the millions, nay, hundreds of millions a decade hence.

Profile of the Author

Hey, tumblr blogs appear to have no author profiles - how can you tell whether or not you want to follow someone without sifting thru all their posts? Well, here is where I am coming from (short version):

Raised in Atlanta, Georgia. Parents had a couple of quirky rules that turned me into a bookworm as a kid, but I sort of outgrew it. Chemical Engineer, ramblin wreck from Georgia Tech - 1983. I built some recks for homecoming parades in Delta Upsilon Fraternity, but now when I play Kingdom of Loathing, I am more sympathetic to the hippies than the frat boys.

Lisa and I have been married 30 years now (since the day I graduated). We lived in Kingsport, TN for a short time then moved to north Atlanta. A few years later we bought a sailboat on Lake Lanier and got into it. Meanwhile we were working in chemistry related fields - me in Environmental consulting, her in lab equipment sales. But we decided the sailing was more important, so we moved to Tampa in 1990. We kept up the work thing a while longer (10 years!), but we were working on our sailing skills the whole time.

We bought the big boat in 1996 and left the real world in 2001. We cruised for a decade. Mixed in there were some stints teaching school - two years in Maracaibo and two in the US Virgin Islands. It was a lot harder than it looked, but fun. We spent most of it in the western Caribbean.

Now we have "swallowed the anchor" and settled into a small coffee farm with our friends, the Zemans. We converted the boat into a cottage, and we are putting the final touches on our retirement house. We are off-grid and learning all about subsistence farming (by choice, which is an important distinction I think - we can afford to screw up from time to time! We are free to experiment).

I like chess, movies, Colbert, science fiction, astronomy, birdwatching, beer, rum, Calamata olives, reggae, blues, and Excel. I think the singularity will occur by 2045 and humanity will merge into the coming machine civilization later this century - and I hope to survive it. If not, a remote mountainside in the northern Caribbean is a good place to lay low and watch it play out.

Mountain Animals 1

The neighbor's burro lives with us sometimes. We have a nice grassy road on our property and the burro keeps it mowed for us in exchange, for getting to mow it. Some of our neighbors are quite poor and have relatively few resources at their command. Francisco has some small farmland parcels nearby and he gains some income and food from them, but for the most part he is dependent on family working in the USA. He and his wife and some extended family raise several of their grandkids. For heavy hauling when avocadoes are harvested, he depends on his burro. He has to keep it fed, but like many Dominicans he despises undergrowth on his property, so his donkey has nothing to eat. In the area where we live, many people keep their donkeys and mules tied to a fence along the road. The right-of-way is not otherwise maintained so the animals do community service while they browse. I am tempted to launch into an essay on local attitudes to animals, dogs are for guard duty, roosters are for chicken-fighting, burros must be beaten to be motivated, animals (and plants) which do not have a vital use are not named, except generically (all grass is grama; all other small plants with no use are hierbas), and anything that might be a nuisance or a danger to something vital is immediately killed. But I may be viewing matters naively and will continue to study the matter further (for a year or two) before I reach any firm conclusions.

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very bad aground