asciilifeform: decimation: who listened to dijkstra. academics - good joke. programmers - ha.
asciilifeform: why burned cables? i can say right now. copper dealer doesn't pay for rubber - only copper.
asciilifeform: 'in the better-preserved command post the destruction is substantial, and the atmosphere morose - someone tore apart the machinery, and burned the cables right where they lay - from which the walls and ceiling were covered in soot.'
asciilifeform: 'Внутри более сохранившегося командного пункта разрушения изрядные, а обстановка мрачная - кто-то разодрал аппаратуру и жег кабели прямо на месте, отчего стены и потолки покрыты копотью'
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: linked post reveals that rocket is a 'size and mass model' (i.e. dummy.)
asciilifeform: -- lamport's 'The Future of Computing: Logic or Biology?'
asciilifeform: am is a mathematical object that can be understood through logic?'
asciilifeform: f this trend continues, we may soon see homeopathic computer repair. Perhaps it will consist of adding a virus to a program, deleting the virus, and then running the program. You may soon be able to take your laptop to a faith healer, who will lay his hands on the keyboard and pray for the recovery of the operating system. Is this the future of computing? Or can we instead build on the idea that a computer progr
asciilifeform: 'We understand automobiles. There are no homeopathic automobile repair shops, that try to repair your car by putting infinitesimal dilutions of rust in the gas tank. There are no automotive faith healers, who lay their hands on the hood and pray. People reserve such superstitions for things that they don’t understand very well, such as the human body… … Superstitions arise because we don’t understand. I
asciilifeform: i always use the term 'calmed down' for these people. starting from having played 'half life', where there is a scene of an einsteinesque white coated figure who gets an alien 'headcrab' jump on his head. it takes roots, he struggles for a while, then 'calms down' and ambles on as zombie.☟︎
asciilifeform spotted a cicada in garden today, and thought of mircea_popescu's post about parenting
asciilifeform: to stretch the metaphor a bit, sometimes the moribund get a stay of execution, when the horde grows terminally fat before it can reach the capital.
asciilifeform: eventually immune system collapses, the proverbial 'eastern hordes water their horses in the rhine.'
asciilifeform: institutions of every kind decay in well-documented ways.
asciilifeform: RagnarDanneskjol: i don't regard it as a proven fact that there necessarily is a 'root cause.'
asciilifeform: thus far all we know is that civilizations behave like ms-winblows boxes - encrusts with turdolade until grinds to a halt, then reboot.
asciilifeform: (of what? if we knew, there'd be at least a hypothetical pill.)
asciilifeform: there's not a 'ready-canned' answer for why rome bit it
asciilifeform: they just happen to eat corpses, it's in their job description.
asciilifeform: don't blame the murder on the maggots.
asciilifeform: perhaps intelligent roaches or marmosets will carry out 'schwartz's' experiment after we're through.
asciilifeform: there isn't, as far as i understand, a 'fix'.
asciilifeform: it's really a typical death-rattle of the civilization.
asciilifeform: this story concerned more than a quarrel between a weirdo chemist and the whole of usg/nato 'physics'
asciilifeform: and will never be replicated on a 'disinterested' apparatus because this means essentially all practicing 'physicists' get blondlot-ed.
asciilifeform: provenance << isn't about the differing principle of the proposed tester. it's about the fact experiment doesn't count if carried out wholly on apparatus constructed by a 'non-disinterested' party
asciilifeform: I don't know that they can be built << lol, anything that was built, can be built.
asciilifeform: 'free silver' << the fiat camel's nose in the american tent. not sure how to avoid this conclusion.
asciilifeform: (for nontechnical types, klotz's 'diamond dealers and feather merchants' has an excellent basic account.)
asciilifeform: re: provenance & physics thread - anyone unfamiliar with the story of blondlot and 'n-rays' is invited to read about it.
asciilifeform: better version was tried << gurlz pulsating on camera ?
asciilifeform: plain old ruins << re: the ones pictured in linked blog. though surprising quantities of goodies in some.
asciilifeform: someone (mircea_popescu?) suggested that, for so long as fiat long-term credit is available to anyone, this'll be the bullet that keeps killing it until dead.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo, perhaps, is working on the problem of building a hard disk that survives several centuries of exposure in the wilderness
asciilifeform: there is probably a 'perelman' within driving distance of where you (any you) live. but he's almost certainly surrendered and sucking state cock (and perelman no longer) - or is occupied with the minutiae of physical survival
asciilifeform: you get what you optimize for - plus exhaust.
asciilifeform: decimation: reward with status - get usg academics.
asciilifeform: at least, not on a time scale you could put up with.
asciilifeform: all the money in the world won't conjure into existence 'the rabbit out of a hat, unless said rabbit is already in the hat'
asciilifeform: consider if you were to offer $maxint for antigrav device.
