Degringolade

So: We have five senses (some people would argue that we have more, but let's not go there for the sake of this argument). These senses aren't particularly good at taking in the inputs and thus generate a pretty impressive error rate.

Somewhere in the multitasking hunk of meat that we carry about, we take the data being generated by these senses into some kind of processing unit somewhere in the hunk o' meat and process the suspect incoming data using a system that is notoriously opaque and appears to be quite variable between individuals. The processing unit (wherever) then takes this suspect data and through some unknown (and probably again quite variable) process generates a very suspect mental model that we take to be the truth of the matter at a particular moment. Right now I am looking out at a not-quite-bucolic scene of a little courtyard that constitutes the view out of my window. Oops that sense-impression is already obsolete.

But then I have to look at very concept of sense-impression. My "reality" is composed of innumerable "slices" of these sense-impressions (which, I cannot state strongly enough are suspect) which are tossed into a mosh-pit of an astonishingly flawed memory where they rub up against each other and a weird, almost nonsensical consensus is achieved through the good offices of a process that is poorly understood and is unusually variable between individuals.

All of these profoundly inconsistent processes occur at once and every once in a while we make the quite-uninformed decision to try and explain what the sense-impression was. Then we need to talk about language. Right now you are reading this using English. Which is a language that is particularly well suited to misdirection and misunderstanding (why do you think lawyers are needed? They are there because they are quite good at black=white).

So you are looking at a minimum of four processes that allow you to communicate your thoughts to others. Each of these processes have a absurdly high failure rate. That is why I tend to think that the idea of understanding other humans is so fraught with peril and goes wrong routinely.

I think that I am done philosophizing today. It is a pretty outside, the big oak tree's leaves are starting to change and it isn't raining. Time for shoes and socks and a walk.

Maybe later I will eat a gummi and drink a beer.

So: here in Portland we had a pretty large showing for the No Kings march. This was no surprise. There are discussions about crowd size, but that kind of thing is like comparing sizes in other venues, the people doing the estimates have a vested interest in either under or over-estimation.

I will be generous and give the range of 30,000 to 50,000 the benefit of the doubt.

The Portland metro area is officially defined as thePortland–Vancouver–Hillsboro Metropolitan Statistical Areaand includes seven counties: Clackamas, Columbia, Multnomah, Washington, and Yamhill in Oregon, and Clark and Skamania in Washington

So the overall population of the area is between 2.4 and 2.7 million. Now despite the long-term "blue" nature of the area, there is a couple of things to consider: 1) the reds aren't voiceless, they do probably constitute around 40%, so we can safely assume they will have a smaller relative need to attend. So of the 2.55 million, we can safely reduce the total for the area population to around 1.5 million that would be interested in the march.

Then there is the nature of the outlying areas. Clark and Skamania can be safely pulled out. They really don't like to be thought of as part of Portland so their contribution can be minimal. I am pulling around 300K from the total of "interested" to yield around 1.2 million. Yamhill and Columbia only add around 150K so that will pull out another 100K to yield a total population of potential interested parties to around 1.1 million.

I will use the official estimate of 40,000 for the next step. 40,000/1,100,000 yields around 3.6% of the target population that feel they need to demonstrate.

Tell you the truth, being a long term resident of the area, that feels about right.

Now onto the next completely personal observation with little or no "scientific validation". I felt that there was a very large contingent of grey hair. Portland is a pretty young city. Best numbers I can come up with is only around 18% being over 60. But I might be wrong here, but my feel of what I observed was upwards of 40% (a straight scientific wild ass guess) was grey hairs.

Now I am not at all certain what his means, I am just presenting my observations.

I will wait a couple of days to see if the march has any effect.

I am agnostic on this.

Now, let's be completely honest.

• I don't have good sources for what I think that I understand about the clusterfuck that is going on in the Pontic Steppes. I do read folks who state (A) is completely true and will result in a particular result. Then I read another "expert" who categorically states that (A) is completely false and will yield the opposite result.
• My military experience is forty years stale and while I have tried to stay abreast of the issues, my training is from long ago and far away and forged by fighting a different kind of war.

Now that my bona fides had been (dis)established, I can pull anything out of my ass as analysis and you will hopefully not consider anything that I write here as expert testimony. It is just the best I can do with the meager resources that I can bring to bear. My history of prognostications is spotty in the extreme and while I treasure my occasional correct prophecy, lets not for a moment think that that flavor is all that common.

• It seems the Russians are rolling back the Ukranians and look to be continuing doing so in the none too distant future. I really can see how Ukraine can keep anything east of the Dnieper if they continue this tomfoolery.

• The Russians have a positive kill ratio. The numbers that I trust the most lets me think that they have a 3:1 advantage.

• The Russian population is not against the war, the conscriptions and the voluntary enlistments will more than make up for their combat losses. I don't think that Ukraine will be able to truthfully make that same claim.
• Europe has spent the last thirty years becoming a petting zoo. Their militaries are too small and their populations too comfortable. They have relied on the American umbrella for too long. Their leaders might well want to fight, but the populations probably don't have it in them
• We have an established history of messing around overseas and then cutting our losses and heading back home with a couple of nice oceans between us and the problems.

Look, Donald Trump doesn't have any good choices left to him. All of the choices are bad. Even if he were smart enough to discover an available "good choice" (which he isn't) the fact that such an option is not available to him anyway makes the whole process academic.

I think that the powers in congress and the courts and in industry are trying to minimize the impact to their individual fiefdoms. That is to be expected. But the overall governance is going to be who actually manages to keep getting more than their fair share and everyone else who will suck it.

I figure that I can squeak by, but it might well be a close race.

Next post will be all about making a virtue of necessity.

I love me some hippies, as a rule, they are super easy to get along with and they are low stress friends. I have a lot of good things to say about them.

But, in my mind, they do have some myopias that, while harmless, send them into passive/aggresive defenses of just why their choices are the only way to look at things. Yesterday I stopped by JMG's joint for the Frugal Friday discussion (it is getting to be my favorite weekly there) and had the temerity to mention that you should use half of the sugar required in any American recipe for sweets and maybe swap in some molasses. I suppose that I should have stopped there.

Then I mentioned the unmentionable fact that honey is (1) not something poor people can afford except as a luxury and (2) If you can afford it, it probably is not unadultrated and has a very high percentage of "not honey" in it. Now granted, I probably used wrongspeech to convey that sad little factoid, so I have to take my licks for that.

But most of the comments centered around how honey is needed and is essential for proper hippy living. I suppose that is totally acceptable, but it is beside the point. My contention is that honey is for rich folks.

I think that my point is that a simple sugar (chemical term, not advertising, but a chemical desription) is part of diets since god only knows when. Commercial white sugar, made from cane is no better or worse for you than honey. What is bad for you is simply eating too much of it. Molasses is a by product of the process of making the white sugar. Brown sugar that you buy in stores is just white sugar with a dab of molasses mixed in to make you think that it is less refined.

I am back to using sugar in my tea. A teaspoon in my 16 ounce insulated adult sippy cup weighs 4 grams. That is not going to kill me. What will kill me is a 12 ounce Coca Cola slipping me 39 grams.

Sugar is just a form a fuel. You engine can use it just fine. That is of course, providing you don't overdo it. A long time ago and far away, I needed to take courses in Clinical and Analytical toxicology for grad school requirements. One of the mantras back then was "the only difference between a medicine and a poison is dosage".

So here in Portlandia, folks are trying to whip up some meaningful protest against what they see as the "government repression". This time though it appears to be pretty weak sauce. The hullaballoo just seems to have lost it's mojo here.

I have a sneaking hunch that the folks who were the rank and file of the prior protests don't really see all that much of a problem. Either that or they are just too worried about paying the rent and keeping their day-to-day going to spend a lot of effort on things that don't really impact them directly. The usual suspects who push their way into the viewfinder of the television cameras are still there, but when I listen to them, I don't think that they convey the same intensity as they had back in the early 20's.

Nope, this time seems a little different. Not better, not worse, just different. The mojo just isn't there. Five years ago, if you claimed either opposition or indifference, you were immediately castigated and labels as a fascist too. Now the folks there can't quite seem to work up that same level of passion.

It is too early to tell, but it doesn't look like things are going to go too apeshit here in Portlandia this time around. Granted, there will be some tomfoolery, but I don't think that it will rise anywhere close to 2020 levels. Of course, I could be wrong, I frequently am wrong, but I just don't feel it.

I didn't really do squat this last weekend. Sunday was especially bad. I am not really ashamed or anything, but the inability to let go of the idea that I must be doing something useful every day is sometimes annoying.

This weekend was a little odd in term of social contact. A call from a relative got sidetracked into a right wing rant. When I agreed with the description of symptoms everything was fine. When I pointed out that a lot of the symptoms were self-inflicted and that we need to spend some time cleaning up our own mess, I was pretty much accused of being Antifa. Strange and odd world. Apparently (and I apologize for missing this) we are a God-fearing country who only does the best that we can do and any criticism must be silenced.

So, after the call I relaxed. I did manage to talk myself out of drinking, as that would definitely not made anything better. So as I was relaxing, I got yet another call. This time an old friend who spent the entire time smugly telling me about just how perfect his life seems to be. This one was less an onerous duty, as it seems he is convincing himself as much as he is convincing me. I did listen and compliment, but I did realize that definitions of success vary widely, even among people who know each other well.

I think that I could have been more relaxed if I only received one of these calls a day. But back to back, it got a little hard to take. All involved are boomers, early and middle flavor and it seems that they are trying on different participation trophies to see which one looks shiniest on their mantles. I suppose that I do the same, but since my achievements are less physical and my physical assets are meager, it is more difficult to fully participate in the seeming important dick-matching that passes for bragging here in boomerland.

A lot of my readers will probably find this post offensive. Not because I am talking about politics or sex or the usual offenses against good taste, but instead I will talk about a means of wasting time that I have episodically used to shield myself from the vagaries of a world that I no longer understand.

World of Warcraft has been around for over 20 years now. I first began playing it when I was the last man standing in a failing biotech firm. The powers that were spend their time scraping together rent and the nickels for my salary without bothering to actually spend money to produce product. So for three months, I went into the lab and spent time playing WOW. Got paid for it. Life was pretty good in an odd way.

I was deeply into "winning" back then. I actually had a character that the other players were impressed with. But that was then. Now I am playing an hour or two every day split up over two or three sessions (my chair and the table that serves as a combined kitchen table/desk are not ergonomic and I need to get up and move around between).

I still play what is referred to as "classic". It is the same old, non-improved game that I played 20+ years ago. I have a sneaking hunch that a fair number the folks there are like me in that they are older and not interested in bells and whistles, and don't want to go to the effort of Dungeons and Dragons. A lot of folks seem to noodle around in the game without taking it seriously and trying to "win".

I believe that I will try not to do that. It is possible as a "strategy" to just be lower-middle class in the game, wandering about, making some coin when you can, and not get into the digital dick matching of winning. In a sense, you can just play the game without needing to "win". I have been doing this mindless thing for a couple of days now and I find that the frame of mind I play in actually relaxes me and fills up part of the day of a retired old man.

Now, I kinda feel like I have to keep quiet about this around my friends. I have a set of "successful" friends who feel like their means of filling the day are superior to mine. If they find out that I am not filling my days with meaningful activity that advances me in some way, they will spend time trying to "set me straight". I don't want any of that flavor, thank you very much.

I have been a frugal prepper doomer for a while now. If you have the poor time management skills required to go back to my blogger account and the older posts here on Dreamwidth, you will see an amazing assortment of predictions concerning how the whole damn thing was going to blow up.

I am pleased to announce that while it still looks shaky, it is still holding together somehow. Granted, it doesn't resemble anything that I would call stable, but truthfully I don't see any difference in intensity, just a dance of the political flavors of the faction that is currently predicting doom.

Right now I am approaching the end of the slide from upper middle class affluence to working class adequacy to retirement frugality. I have enough. My income exceeds my outgo by a touch and there is room to cut costs even more. I have a feeling that a lot more people will be joining me on this path and if they manage their expectations, they will find out that they are probably just as happy.

The "doom" that is coming isn't armageddon, and even if it was there isn't a damn thing anyone can do about it. Nope the doom will be the reconfiguration of expectations. In our keep up with the Joneses and status/money seeking society, this will be painful for a great number of folks.

I am sorta sick of the shenanigans currently going on in the "land o' the free".

I am ignoring it and concentrating my limited mental resources on playing World of Warcraft and pretending the world out there doesn't matter to me.

That's all. I am not ashamed.