asciilifeform: ThickAsThieves: reamde was, imho, total garbage. i was about to lose respect for neal s, but then heard that it was actually written by a chum of his

asciilifeform: (stephenson's 'anathem' not penrose's rtr)

asciilifeform: if you folks only ever read one book i mentioned, read that one.

asciilifeform: where people compute using song

asciilifeform: i should note that the idea is lifted from neal stephenson's mega-backbreaker 'anathem'

asciilifeform: sorta like atomic submarine was engineering problem for old jules verne

asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: either too much vodka, or not enough

asciilifeform: lol

asciilifeform: kakobrekla: also only a moron - or someone trying to shift blame - leaves readable strings in a trojan.

asciilifeform: kakobrekla: old news

asciilifeform: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=502952.0

asciilifeform: wait - it's a civil complaint?

asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: two pounds of shit, one-pound bag.

asciilifeform: RIP.

asciilifeform: there are so many blanks for imagination to fill in, you'll mostly be reading the contents of the blanks.

asciilifeform: you can try to read this stuff and make sense of it, but more often than not you'll just be 'rorschaching' your own mind.

asciilifeform: after all, he was writing for his own self

asciilifeform: more or less unreadable - as they tend to be, using 1000s of terms known only to the dead man

asciilifeform: that some lost soul printed up

asciilifeform: that was his coffin notebook

asciilifeform: if you don't believe this, get thee to a dusty book store and buy bucky fuller's 'synergetics' I and II

asciilifeform: if you dive into the binders, you're almost certainly doomed to be lost in the noise

asciilifeform: how? see mp's little piece about 'art'

asciilifeform: the most one can hope for is to get one or two major ideas 'out'

asciilifeform: because that's simply how it works.

asciilifeform: the greatest heroes who ever lived, who none of us are fit even to be beheaded by, had terrible signal-to-noise ratios

asciilifeform: re: invention, for the impatient:

asciilifeform: (and coughed up terms like 'impedence')

asciilifeform: heaviside, the fellow who turned maxwell's equations from 23 in about that many unknowns, into the 4 that we learn in school.

asciilifeform: oliver heaviside's notebooks, it is said, stoked a furnace for many years.

asciilifeform: and tend to end badly.

asciilifeform: they just publish everything

asciilifeform: some 'idea people' don't have these 'coffin liner' binders

asciilifeform: because the real demented folks inevitably pick it up and add flourishes of their own

asciilifeform: hard to find good material about an inventor's 'dwarf star' phase

asciilifeform: cazalla: e.g. http://anengineersaspect.blogspot.com/2013/02/life-after-death-according-to-nikola.html

asciilifeform: but it also had a good bit of crap.

asciilifeform: e.g. karl friedrich gauss had a big fat binder that contained, among other things, both types of non-euclidean geometry.

asciilifeform: when these get published posthumously, quite a bit of strange is revealed

asciilifeform: people who regularly have ideas usually have fat notebooks full of strange ☟︎☟︎

asciilifeform: another similar, but distinct phenomenon is

asciilifeform: 'this ghost telegraph! it'll be what i'm remembered for! just needs a little tweaking.'

asciilifeform: the mechanism in their heads that is needed to dis-invest in an unproductive line of inquiry breaks. ☟︎

asciilifeform: when they become anxious to carry out a 'last hurrah,'

asciilifeform: another thing about aging inventors

asciilifeform: sometimes, with interesting results, more often - with none

asciilifeform: if you're unable to interact with an actual community of your peers, you tend to go way off in some strange direction

asciilifeform: rather, this is more like the folks who send binders full of crackpot proofs to maths profs today

asciilifeform: kakobrekla: i don't think this is it at all

asciilifeform: e.g. tesla's 'ghost telegraph'

asciilifeform: end up flying off untethered into strange

asciilifeform: the 'time microscope' thing is typical of aging inventors who, by virtue of being cut off from competent peers (either by having none alive, or being on the wrong side of a jail of one kind or another) ☟︎☟︎☟︎

asciilifeform: *they are

asciilifeform: useful idiots do not need to know who they soldiers for. ☟︎

asciilifeform: gox, flexcoin, bitcoinica, etc. are what lenin called 'useful idiots'

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu, others: if you think that the enemy is foolish, and has no plan, this is a dangerous mistake: he is clever and knows the ancient chinese formula 'Yi yi zhi yi' (以夷治夷 ?) - 'control the barbarians using barbarians.'

asciilifeform: he's #2 on my list of folks who probably had the waveguide motor. (after the obvious candidate nick t.)

asciilifeform: at least, with regards to invention

asciilifeform: no one alive today is even fit to suck his decomposed cocke

asciilifeform: lev termen was a true inventor

asciilifeform: eventually i will deal with this subject in writing, unless mp takes up this chore in my place.

asciilifeform: re: phone: zimmerman was 'lowered into pederasty'

asciilifeform: kakobrekla: good intro.

asciilifeform: which one of you people spoke of reading landau in french? was it mp?

asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: this tome will not be burying Landau, but it's an acceptable bait to whet an amateur's interest, i'd imagine.

asciilifeform: yeah might've been that one

asciilifeform: ahaha

asciilifeform: (might've been penrose, now that i think about it)

asciilifeform: a physicist (forget which) who took to writing 'general interest' books, was told by his publisher 'every equation you throw in will cut sales in half'

asciilifeform: no one bothers to laugh at chinese moto-rickshaw, because it doesn't pretend to be a car

asciilifeform: sorta like an automotive altcoin

asciilifeform: rather, because it was a car for people who can't afford car.

asciilifeform: it wasn't simply because it was a plywood jalopy with a grass cutter engine.

asciilifeform: people seriously misunderstand why trabant was a laugh

asciilifeform: Trambo, short.

asciilifeform: ye heard it here phurst.

asciilifeform: *Problem

asciilifeform: trabant engine, plastic body

asciilifeform: mike_c: new product to address this Great Product: TrabamBourghini

asciilifeform: in the link

asciilifeform: kakobrekla: wait what's the new piece ?

asciilifeform: 'harrison bergeron' (k. vonnegut) ☟︎

asciilifeform: 'Experts say SAT scores have long been strongly correlated to family income, a dynamic the College Board hopes to shake up.'

asciilifeform: '....college admission test.... a major overhaul intended to open doors to higher education for students who are now shut out.'

asciilifeform: aahaaa http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/sat-to-drop-essay-requirement-and-return-to-top-score-of-1600-in-redesign-of-admission-test/2014/03/05/2aa9eee4-a46a-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9_story.html

asciilifeform: he'll be plugged with a mistletoe arrow ?

asciilifeform: (if i could sing it to you, this would be an engineering project rather than a flight of imagination.)

asciilifeform: not as good as the 'anthem', where if one bit of result is off, it no longer rhymes.

asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: what next, arithmometers?

asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: cardanos? you clearly didn't read the intro carefully.

asciilifeform: ahaha

asciilifeform: wonder what the author of 'delivered' would answer to that.

asciilifeform: lessee who laughs then

asciilifeform: see, people laugh, but i intend to make that universe happen.

asciilifeform: me neither

asciilifeform: (starting 2017, aha)

asciilifeform: merely a way to multiply bignums using your 'language cortex', every child knows it

asciilifeform: benkay: what, Modified Karatsuba Anthem?

asciilifeform: entirely logical premise, just like 'Delivered'

asciilifeform: comparison with pynchon et al is unwarranted