I was a bit nervous about climbing down below the floor again to put in the seals my hot tub guru sent me; beside the fact that it’s cold, dirty, and uncomfortable down there, I was concerned that it would be too difficult and I wouldn’t be able to get the union off without breaking something. But luckily, that wasn’t the case; I had already drained and cleaned the tub, and the union came loose with an amount of pressure even my soft little hands could manage (with the help of Grace’s biggest set of channel-lock pliers). After I let the residual water drain out, the seals went in with a few minutes of fumbling, and though I somehow managed to gash the knuckle of my right forefinger in the process, everything was soon tightened back up and I refilled the tub. After that, everything went as my guru had said it would: I turned on the power, the unit went through its startup routine, and before long I was able to take this picture. I had been warned to recheck the union after the pump ran for a while, and sure enough it was dripping; however, retightening it was easy and I’ve checked a few times since, with no issues. The water level has remained steady now for a couple of weeks and it seems to be running like it’s supposed to, so I’m beginning to feel more sure that I’ve fixed the problem. And if something like that ever happens again, at least I won’t be working completely in the dark.
Posts Tagged ‘STEM’
Annex 99
Posted in Diary, tagged STEM, Sunset on March 10, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Midwinter Tweets
Posted in Miscellaneous, Philosophy, tagged Believe Them, blogging, Canada, consensual crime, cops, dating, ethics, Florida, imaginative fiction, language, politicians, robots, STEM, Tennessee, Texas, Twitter on February 23, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Like something Bill Theiss would design while very drunk. https://t.co/KzYdGrNeut
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) January 24, 2023
Clearly a very important discovery for building solid machines with no electronic parts which can escape from cages as long as there's a mold handy. 🙄
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) January 26, 2023
For "deleted", instead use "memory-holed" for greater precision. Things can be "deleted" for many reasons, but when it's due to political embarrassment "memory-holed" is more specific. https://t.co/rpYkpTDiyB
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) January 27, 2023
Ray Bradbury was one of the great souls of modern times. He will be remembered when every contemporary power-hungry politician has been reduced to a footnote in history texts or a name in a list of fallen, buried, forgotten "rulers". https://t.co/pFIQDdzYv3
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) January 27, 2023
Your regular reminder that "proactive policing" actually means "terrorizing people who haven't committed any crimes, under the pretext that they *might*". https://t.co/wx4Z4lEyil
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) January 28, 2023
Also, about #5: "Not allowed to listen" is a very different thing from "are unable to listen". https://t.co/0ZurrNGJEc
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) January 29, 2023
Amateurs are so cute. https://t.co/DHsG6jTkvi
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) January 30, 2023
Cops acting as though they're in the entertainment business should be a summary firing offense. https://t.co/FVsep5DmoL
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) January 31, 2023
I'm sure she believes that the sailors on the Flying Dutchman are happy because they have job security. And like the Wandering Jew, they get to travel to many lands on a sort of eternal vacation!
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 1, 2023
“I think that people see police as a part of the government”
Yes, that's because they ARE part of the government. The most visible and violent part, the hand of the state that holds the gun, whip, or club. https://t.co/PkPkr3iATP
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 3, 2023
We *do* understand discretion, honey. After all, it's part of why you pay us, remember? https://t.co/oAVtft9K8q
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 4, 2023
The rise of trucks as passenger vehicles in urban areas is largely the result of government fuel efficiency "regulations" which made station wagons and other large (but low) cars illegal.
This is a striking example of the Law of Unintended Consequences at work. https://t.co/uMH85IhtVk
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 5, 2023
…elaborate protections. Near the end of the cycle, even opening a tap results in a flood of disgusting filth spewing out in every direction, coating walls, floor, and ceiling of the bathroom or kitchen and suffusing everyone's house & clothes with an unbearable reek.
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 5, 2023
"Vascular neck restraint" is a scientific-sounding euphemism for "choking somebody to cut off blood flow to the brain so they pass out".
"Pass out" is itself euphemized as "slip into unconsciousness". Choking a victim to within minutes of death depicted as a lullaby. https://t.co/CsKD5MJrR3
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 7, 2023
An orbit is a path described by mathematics; it is not a physical object that can be "crashed into".
Please can we at least have SOME science "reporters" who aren't less scientifically literate than the average @BillNye viewer? https://t.co/3N05AUiYbk
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 9, 2023
Many criminals are entrepreneurs; it's just that their business happens to be illegal. https://t.co/nMqBcW3CmK
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 10, 2023
I don't think it would be bragging to say that I probably have more cerebral capacity than most. And yet, I *still* don't have enough space there to allow various public figures to live rent-free in my head as so many otherwise-intelligent people seem wont to do.
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 11, 2023
Cops constantly demonstrate *exactly* what they are; why don't you believe them? https://t.co/Ipnk6dS3Rr
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 12, 2023
Isaac Asimov once described computers as "high-speed morons". He was correct, ad anyone who blathers about artificial "intelligence" is wrong. https://t.co/EzyEU9CdsX
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 14, 2023
And as for "dating apps", I think the less said the better; they concentrate the toxic aspects of both "dating" culture and "looking for relationships" and add a heavy component of superficiality.
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 14, 2023
"From behind" doesn't sound nearly as bad as "in the back".
Journalists need to start using those words, rather than mealy-mouthed softeners. https://t.co/DugFSaRgx6
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 15, 2023
This phrasing sounds so much nicer than "cops abduct drunk woman, rip off her clothes, then take nude pictures without her consent." https://t.co/8knRR6TU2z
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 17, 2023
How much longer will Americans allow cops to use robot guns and cars that go berserk and attack people on their own? https://t.co/pW3gzG4ADO
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 18, 2023
Experts: The Drug War increases deaths by overdose and has been catastrophic to civil liberties.
Economists: The Drug War has cost trillions and had absolutely no positive effects.
Civil libertarians: End the damned drug war already!
Your "leaders": https://t.co/OuV6nM5dfJ— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 19, 2023
Many scientists used to claim that the sci-fi concept of a murderous Frankensteinian computer was impossible. https://t.co/cRidQsQwMu
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 21, 2023
Annex 94
Posted in Diary, tagged STEM, Sunset on January 27, 2023| Leave a Comment »
After that double power outage we had around Christmas, I was rather peeved at the gas company for failing to connect my new heater in November or early December as they were supposed to (not to mention failing to return my calls about the delay). So a month ago today I called again and happened to get the technician himself on the phone. He apologized profusely for mislaying my paperwork, and volunteered to make room in his schedule to get us connected as soon as possible. That was Monday, January 9th, and as you can see it’s now all hooked up and running perfectly. It was a few days before we could switch the water system over to the new heater, but we got it done two weeks ago today and I’m very pleased with it; the temperature range is basically the same as the electric, but the temperature doesn’t fluctuate as much, so one needn’t fiddle with it throughout the duration of the shower. I don’t think I’m going to save any money in the log run; Dr. Quest crunched the numbers for me and it looks too close to call, plus it cost twice as much to have the new line run and connected as the heater itself cost. But it’s going to be worth it to have hot water the next time the power goes out. Once we got it all connected I made an insulated box to go over the works, but I didn’t include it in this picture because it’s pretty featureless (it’s just plywood with a layer of the same styrofoam insulation I used for the bathroom ceiling). Once I install some skirting on the north side, that will help prevent heat loss as well, and next winter the wood-burning stove will keep the atrium at least temperate, if not actually warm.
Links #655
Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged Canada, cops, Never Call the Cops, Rome, STEM, video, West Virginia on January 22, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Please don’t kill my husband. – Shameka Smith
Grace suggested this video to commemorate the passing of guitar legend Jeff Beck; I was unfamiliar with it, but less than 60 seconds in I knew it was the right choice. The inks above the video were provided by Dan Savage, Mama Tush, Clarissa (x2), Mike Siegel, and Cop Crisis (x2), in that order.
- R.I.P. Jeff Beck.
- Tampons make Jesus cry.
- Never underestimate Roman genius.
- R.I.P. Walter Cunningham and Fay Weldon.
- Another cop wantonly murders another kid.
- The message here is, “We know who you are”.
- Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever.
From the Archives
- Wherever there are men making money, there will be sex workers nearby.
- Prohibition turns bodies into “crime scenes” which cops can violate at will.
- Working people all over are done with arbitrary authoritarian “lockdowns”.
- If there’s one thing the US needs, it’s more sadistic rapists in the military.
- This disgusting trash is loaded with copsucking & emotional manipulation.
- Burying government in lawsuits is the only way to slow its depredations.
- The bipartisan war on the internet moves another step toward idiocracy.
- Nothing infuriates violent, self-important busybodies more than privacy.
- Are most people really surprised to find out that cops are habitual liars?
- Remember this when people claim prohibitionists are “well-intentioned”.
- SCOTUS leaves the conflict between the 7th & 10th Circuits unresolved.
- Whores are even less popular with the Establishment than MAGA types.
- He pronounced the wrong magic words in the magic Spell of Forfeiture.
- Even journalists reporting on this insist on referring to it as “correction”.
- Though this is becoming a safe position, we still have a long way to go.
- The machine of authoritarianism is vast, complex, and has many parts.
- Anti-vaping lunacy is reaching “sex trafficking” levels of disinformation.
- Another example of how “lockdowns” cause far more harm than good.
- Pro-decrim article by a sex worker in conservative-leaning newspaper.
- Politicians & the media feign shock over a disaster they helped create.
- Discussing extreme fetishes in writing with any amateur is a bad idea.
- The fashion and beauty industries owe their very existence to whores.
- Some rapist cops take measures to permanently silence their victims.
- An account of Epstein’s crimes that doesn’t devolve into torture porn.
- France becomes the first European country to start this conversation.
- Reporters must learn that “people work to make money” is not news.
- Silly “awareness raising” stunts are now mostly marketing gimmicks.
- Why are people shocked when men paid to behave violently, do so?
- PayPal needs to be buried in similar lawsuits before this will stop.
- PayPal is now actively seeking to rat sex workers out to the pigs.
- The only way to market yourself as I do is to be Maggie McNeill.
- Cops, pigeons, Florida, Siegfried Fischbacher, and much more.
- In mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down.
- Texas cops raid migrant-owned businesses; what a surprise.
- “Tolerance policies” are not equivalent to decriminalization.
- Cops think they can just make up their own pharmacology.
- Cops, nerds, puritanism, Ronnie Spector, and much more.
- Still doubt that politicians are deranged megalomaniacs?
- Another firsthand account of China’s torture of Uighurs.
- All that’s left of the once-popular “gypsy whores” myth.
- A sad regurgitation of all the usual anti-porn nonsense.
- It would be difficult to bury this lede any further down.
- Fascist profiteers sue to force censorship on everyone.
- The recrudescence of the “repressed memory” myth.
- Old-fashioned Stasi-type surveillance isn’t dead yet.
- Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?
- The War on Whores, now showing on YouTube.
- Alabama is trying to make up for its late start.
- We told you so, over and over and over again.
- Brooke Magnanti’s new project, Body of Work.
- Cathy Reisenwitz on the awfulness of Polaris.
- Prohibitionism is a dangerous mental illness.
- Cops, Bach under glass, and much more.
- The Essential Maggie McNeill, Volume I.
- Not concerned yet? You should be.
- Dealing with a constipated pig.
- So helping! Many respectful!
- What an exhausting week!
- Rapist cop of the week.
- A visit with Dr. Quest.
- Fascism in action.
I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one. Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful. But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer. So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets. Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements. Thanks so much!
Links #654
Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged animals, Arizona, cops, France, Hawaii, holidays, I can't breathe, Italy, Louisiana, Never Call the Cops, New York, paganism, STEM, video on January 15, 2023| Leave a Comment »
They’re trying to kill me, they’re trying to kill me. – Akeem Terrell
I’m sure most of y’all are already very familiar with most of The Pointer Sisters’ hits, but were you aware that they had recorded this one for Sesame Street? The links above the video were provided by Jesse Walker (x3), Cop Crisis (x3), and Mike Siegel, in that order.
- Christmas witches from the sea.
- Music no one alive has ever heard.
- R.I.P. Anita Pointer and Adolfo Kaminsky.
- Cops never get tired of suffocating people.
- Cops are a clear and present danger to society.
- Cop logic: cop beats up little girl to “stop a fight”.
- “How many times has Mommy told you not to do that?“
From the Archives
- When migration control disguised as “sex trafficking” law is very apparent.
- Stop denying the agency of women you don’t know just to “pwn the cops”.
- Sleeping with a cop is one of the most dangerous things a woman can do.
- The bipartisan war on the internet takes us another step toward idiocracy.
- “The pimps who sell sex” may be one of the most clueless headlines ever.
- The numbers are so low, fetishists want cops to manufacture larger ones.
- They’re not only giving cops your info, but selling it to companies as well.
- AirBnB “invest[s] in new technology” to discriminate against sex workers.
- The public believes anything it sees on billboards, no matter how absurd.
- Useful idiots destroy any possibility that this djinni can ever be rebottled.
- More on the prohibitionist shitshow New York calls “sex trafficking court”.
- 41% of cops admit to beating their wives. Some don’t stop with beating.
- The only ones who still believe these tales are cops, politicians & the AP.
- Hey, female cops; how’s that collaboration with the police state working?
- I predicted this when politicians started belching about “contact tracing”.
- The only thing this “documents” is Sarah Jones’ creepy sexual fantasies.
- The scheme to deny sex workers healthcare adds intrusive surveillance.
- The writer of this article appears to understand very little about politics.
- Cops arbitrarily group unrelated arrests & call it a “sex trafficking sting”.
- Innocent people accused of “sex trafficking” by attention-hungry loons.
- Florida prosecutors have apparently realized how desperate they look.
- Dutch authorities pretend registration is intended to help sex workers.
- Cops, war, metaphors, Buck Henry, Michael Jackson, and much more.
- Philippine cops “rescue” Chinese women from lucrative employment.
- I have never enjoyed a conference as much as I enjoyed Hereticon.
- Cops will continue to do this until there are criminal penalties for it.
- When a headline asks a question, the answer is nearly always “no”.
- Amateurs’ fantasies about “sex traffickers” are growing ever sillier.
- A deep dive on the history of the current US pro-censorship cabal.
- Why wasn’t it “a step too far” when they started doing it in 2016?
- Straight-up anti-sex propaganda repeated by a delusional parrot.
- After a long slump, “King of the Hill” claims are again increasing.
- I guess 5 years is longer than most Americans’ attention spans.
- A very brave woman working to expose a colossal abomination.
- “Sex work under ‘legalisation’ is still…conceived of as a crime“.
- In mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down.
- In which the UN throws away what little credibility it had left.
- It usually starts with sex workers, but it never stops with us.
- Everything cops and other “justice” officials tell you is a lie.
- It won’t be long until this spreads into the greater internet.
- More weak-minded panic over ordinary social interactions.
- Send not to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
- Cops, mass surveillance, Sidney Poitier, and much more.
- Despite appearances, I’m really quite the homebody.
- It’s best not to upset useful idiots at a time like this.
- Cops, irony, hysteria, Beowulf, and much more.
- This is just the “Facebook pimps” myth again.
- How can a new client get his first references?
- A conversation with Matisse and Carol Leigh.
- Copmala’s psychotic hatred of sex workers.
- If it’s too wet for pigs, ponies and llamas…
- Cops want their hysteria to trump reality.
- “Smart” devices are not, part umpteen.
- Public masturbation on the gravy train.
- The “swimming pool of iniquity”.
- The Fourth Tower of Inverness.
- On course for semi-retirement.
- In Miami Beach for Hereticon.
- More of my Twitter musings.
- I’m sure you feel safer now.
- Rapist cops of the week.
- R.I.P. Margo St. James.
I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one. Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful. But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer. So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets. Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements. Thanks so much!
Links #652
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged Alabama, Arizona, Believe Them, cell phones, comics, Connecticut, cops, language, lawyers, Minnesota, Never Call the Cops, New York, racism, STEM, Stop faking!, video on January 3, 2023| 3 Comments »
Stop, please. – Ryan Marzi
I wanted to commemorate the passing of the co-creator of the Moog synthesizer with a selection from 1968’s Switched-On Bach, but apparently the copyright holder must be aggressively censorious because no videos are to be found on YouTube or Vimeo. So here’s one from Daily Motion which has a stupid function that continues to play videos whether you like it or not; I don’t know HTML well enough to know which code to remove to stop it, so you’ll need to close it entirely. The links above the video were provided by Scott Greenfield, Cop Crisis (x2), Jesse Walker, Stephen Lemons, and Cop Crisis (x2 again), in that order.
- Stop faking!
- Instant karma.
- In their own words.
- R.I.P. Herbert Deutsch.
- I see Monty Python contributed to this season’s script.
- So many words to pretend a murder wasn’t really a murder.
- Not the first time cops have claimed harassment “builds rapport”.
From the Archives
- Prohibition turns bodies into “crime scenes” which cops can violate at will.
- In case you thought screws restricted their petty sadism to the prisoners.
- More cops raping sex workers (excuse me, “rescuing trafficking victims”).
- Cops wait a year to arrest a dangerous, violent serial rapist. Guess why?
- A study trashes the justifications for ruinous authoritarian “lockdowns”.
- I recently gave an interview for the 30th anniversary of Pretty Woman.
- Imprisonment doesn’t magically become “care” for prisoners under 18.
- Nobody will be safe until this odious practice is ruled unconstitutional.
- When will the US abandon “re-education” for sex workers and clients?
- A Nigerian vice gang allowed to do anything to terrorize sex workers.
- Just another lying politician who wants to police others’ private lives.
- It’s good to see this lurid narrative turned against cops for a change.
- The State finally “finds” what thousands have told them for decades.
- Even the yellow press can no longer ignore this megalomaniac’s lies.
- Even I am impressed with the speed this is happening in New York.
- What about authors who aren’t violent, genocidal megalomaniacs?
- “Give me your huddled masses, so I can torture and deport them”.
- Americans will believe basically any scaremongering about teens.
- Cops, games, Bach, Pierre Cardin, Dawn Wells, and much more.
- Opportunists produce “studies” to “find” what is already known.
- A new level of public support for sex workers from a politician.
- In mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down.
- A long-overdue move by Mexico to throw off US domination.
- A “national leader in the field of sex offender management”.
- Previous columns for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
- It usually starts with us, but it never, ever stops with us.
- The 20th anniversary of my becoming a full-time escort.
- The rising costs of promoting “sex trafficking” hysteria.
- Horrifyingly-abusive nuns are not restricted to Ireland.
- An important victory in the fight for sex worker rights.
- Fascist corporations are eager to assist in a genocide.
- A retrospective of my blogging from December 2011.
- Useful idiots claim you don’t need anonymity online.
- Cops regularly demonstrate exactly what they are.
- Cops, roadkill, Sally Ann Howes, and much more.
- Congress won’t stop until it controls the internet.
- There is nothing as contagious as a bad idea.
- Beginning the remodeling project at Sunset.
- Cops, fantasy, love in Iran, and much more.
- A video about China’s genocide of Uighurs.
- The loveliest Christmas in years.
- The “security” system that isn’t.
- The future is rooted in the past.
- What a lovely Christmas I had!
- All prohibitionism is the same.
- “Pastors” are as bad as cops.
- So progress! Much Seattle!
- My official semi-retirement.
I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one. Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful. But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer. So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets. Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements. Thanks so much!
Learning What They’re Taught
Posted in Miscellaneous, Words, tagged language, psychology, STEM, teachers on September 12, 2022| 4 Comments »
Last week I was involved in an online discussion about writing ability, and whether it is actually less common among people who majored in STEM fields vs those who majored in the humanities; I explained that, in my experience as a writer, editor, and former teacher and librarian, it isn’t common in either group, but is slightly less uncommon in the humanities. I used to edit technical papers as a side gig, and they were often so unintelligible I had to get on the phone to the author to ask what in God’s name he was trying to say.
Of course, the problem is a bit more complex than a simple “which group is better”; certain subgroups of humanities majors, most notably those in the “Ideological Studies” ghetto, are taught to write such convoluted, cumbersome gibberish that after graduation most of them can’t stop doing it even when explicitly told not to. I was once in a working group trying to draft a press release; despite everyone being told we wanted to keep the language concise, simple, and straightforward for the general public, the draft modifications one group came up with were absolutely larded with academic and identity-politics jargon. We had to ignore nearly all their contributions in the final draft because the additions, prevarications, disclaimers, lists, and semantically-empty garbage they wanted to insert would’ve tripled the length while crippling the meaning. It’s important to recognize that this was not truly their fault; for their entire academic careers these participants were repeatedly rewarded for crafting ugly, clunky, unreadable rubbish interchangeable with every other statement of its type, the literary equivalent of an East German institutional building. Writing ability develops with practice; unfortunately, many students of the past several decades have been taught practices that make their writing worse instead of better. So, I guess the best summary of the situation is: Most students start as bad writers. STEM students tend not to improve. Humanities majors in traditional fields usually improve at least some. And “ideological studies” majors improve at writing committee-approved ideological garbage. People learn what they’re taught. If they’re taught to write properly, they’ll learn that. If they’re taught to write improperly, they’ll learn that instead. And if they aren’t taught to write at all, they will learn whatever they are taught.
The Limits of Resolution
Posted in Philosophy, tagged imaginative fiction, STEM on December 16, 2021| 2 Comments »
My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose…I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. – J.B.S. Haldane, “Possible Worlds” (1927)
If you’re anything like me, you were already tired of the “We’re living in a simulation” nonsense before it even got as widespread as it is now. The idea that what we perceive as reality might not actually be real goes back at least to Plato’s cave and the Hindu concept that the universe is the dream of Brahma, but for the genesis of its current popularity we must turn from the sublime to the ridiculous, namely the movie The Matrix (which stole both its name and its central concept from a 1976 episode of Doctor Who and many of its details from the works of Philip K. Dick, most notably Ubik, but does justice to neither). This currently-popular version of the philosophical exercise postulates a creation with the grandeur and inescapability of what we might call the “primordial simulation” models (wherein the “simulation” is either the natural state of the universe or was created by an eternal demiurge far beyond the comprehension of any being within the simulation), yet residing within some physical realm at least resembling the “simulated” universe in which we are imagined to exist. Expressed more succinctly, the modern “simulation” fantasy as typically conceived imagines a simulacrum of a universe created by some finite being or beings for some definable purpose and existing within some physical instrumentality. And such a model is, due to those arbitrary limitations, pure claptrap.
The problem with this version of the idea lies in the very concept of a “simulation” as a thing that requires a “simulator”, rather than recognizing it a state intrinsic to the mathematical structure of the cosmos itself (a la Plato) or else as a product of a form of existence as far beyond our comprehension as the totality of the universe is beyond any given individual who might ponder their state of existence (as in Hindu cosmology). But the Matrix-style simulation fans aren’t imagining an open-ended, intrinsically unknowable system; quite the opposite. Instead, they postulate a very complex but still finite formal system, resident within something like a supercomputer (albeit an immense and very advanced one). However, no formal system can adequately describe itself*, which means it also cannot adequately model itself; any simulation of this sort must therefore be of dramatically smaller scope and lower resolution than the world in which its simulating mechanism resides, just as no fictional world or electronic simulation within our world can ever be as large or complex as our world. If our universe were truly a finite simulation within a knowable, physical system, there would be some point, probably but not necessarily on the scale of the infinitesimal, that we would be able to perceive the limits of granularity. Sooner or later, our instruments would reach a point at which the resolution of our universe was no longer sufficient to allow us to subdivide structures into still-smaller parts, and given that our theoretical models already extend down to phenomena smaller than a billionth the size of the smallest particles we can detect, which are themselves far tinier than the electrons whose movements define the contents of our own computers, I think it’s safe to say that isn’t likely to happen.
*If you’ve never studied Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, here’s a very accessible book which might help you to understand both its narrow implications for mathematical modeling of phenomena and its philosophical implications for the universe as a whole.
Bathhouse 39
Posted in Diary, tagged STEM, Sunset on August 6, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Before we get to the part where I need to MIG weld the roof structure, Grace is stick-welding everything she can reach from the deck or the lower steps of a ladder (I won’t let her get above the third step, and I’m not really comfortable when she’s above the second). In this picture, you can see where steel uprights have been welded to the roof brackets, and the transverse beam above the shop roof (held by clamps in earlier pictures) are now done as well. My job while she’s welding is to repeatedly spray the nearby wooden surfaces with a hose to keep sparks from igniting anything; about 6 last evening it started drizzling, and we’re supposed to get more rain over the next few days, so that will help too by keeping everything too damp to catch. Unfortunately, we were just about to lift this crossbeam into place, so I had to content myself with this shot and letting your imaginations do the rest until next time. The thing I’m standing on is the wellhouse; once the roof is in place, that shitty old roof will come off and we’ll put a flat top on it, because as it turns out it’s just the right height for a bar.
Diary #579
Posted in Diary, tagged STEM, Sunset on August 3, 2021| 1 Comment »
Just once, I’d like to return from a trip without having to deal with some kind of problem before I can even get settled in. After returning from Freedom Fest on the 24th I spent a few days in Seattle, then returned home to Sunset on Wednesday. While refilling the dogs’ water bowl, I noticed the water pressure was extremely low, so I went around to make sure nobody had left anything running. Nobody had, and within another hour there was no water at all. At first Grace thought the pressure switch had gone bad, but when she bypassed it to check the pump we still had no water. Fortunately, we had already purchased a new pump when we first moved here, since there was no way to know just how old the one that came with the property might be; unfortunately…have you ever changed a well pump? It’s not hard, but it’s strenuous and time-consuming and absolutely fucking filthy. There was also no way to know how deep the well was, so I just had to keep pulling the hose up (with Grace guiding it out of the well casing) until we found the pump; since the water table is pretty high here I knew it wouldn’t be too deep, but that still meant I had to pull up 14 meters of water-filled irrigation pipe with a waterlogged pump at the bottom. Then I had to dash to town to get about $30 worth of fittings while Grace switched out the pumps, and when I returned (about 5 PM) we still had to wire up the new pump and carefully lower it back down the shaft, then reconnect it to the water system. We finished a little after 8, at which point we discovered the damned thing still wouldn’t work due to an overloaded control box. Still, that meant we could hot-wire the pump to fill up the pressure tank so we could take showers and have water overnight, and we replaced the faulty control the next day. As you can see, the old pump was a Sears model which (according to the serial number) was built in 1992; I’m definitely not complaining, because nearly 30 years is a pretty good operational life for any mechanical device run as hard as a well pump is. But all the same, I’d have been happier if it had held on for just a few extra days.