Nelson Lowhim's Blog, page 44

GOAT 🐐

I mean, yeah, Ronaldo will be 🐐 if he wins the Euros again, but still... I'm talking of the Cadillac and 2 goats problem. Read this take on it. I either vaguely remember it from college or am mixing it up with something else. But the idea is this: 3 doors. 2 hold goats, one holds a car. You, ostensibly want the car. You pick a door and the host shows you another door with the goat behind it. Should you switch?
See, the thing is, that you should switch even though intuitively, it doesn't seem like it should matter. If you do write out the decision tree for each door you've chosen, then it turns out that if you switch you get the car 2/3 of the time and if you don't, you get it 1/3 of the time. So you switch. 
Now, I get that, but my intuition is pushing me to say no! 
Why isn't each door viewed as 1/3 a chance of winning a car, and if a door exposes the goat, then you have two doors with 1/2 a chance of winning a car? Or, worse yet, that the decision tree, on the line where you pick the car on your first choice, doesn't it have 2 choices within that branch (host has a choice of either to open in that case, and in that case, maybe you can see the ease with which said host opens the door since they don't have to be careful)?
Yeah, I know, I'm not right, but still... there goes my brain, I suppose. 
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Nice Job

Looks like the FBI has quite the sting. They made up a fake encryption app and rolled up some criminals. Nice, and I'm all for that, but still all for Signal and using it so we aren't tracked. Now I wonder about people in power in this country who have have killed, *checks notes* hundreds of thousands of Americans... all because they thought it would hit blue states and darker people more.. huh. 
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Hey You Interesting Readers

Ok, so this book looks super interesting. Korean on the streets of the Bronx? Looks like a gem I've never heard of. Do any of you readers know about it, and why/how?
Oh, and how's the analytical class doing over there in the blue check marked seats of power? Not well, bob, not well. 
So it seems, that in addition to murders being up, ODs being up, car fatalities are also up. But that first thing on the list is usually blamed on BLM and ACAB. Not Covid. Riiiight. Let's see how that goes, though I'm sure listening to lies spun up by police unions will keep on going on. 
I mean, I'm guessing this will all be hard to parse. In that it could be covid, could be the idea of a virus (could be the virus itself for all we know, though I'll put that as unlikely), or it could be the idea of the pandemic piqued everyone's we're in end world stages right now, and everyone's fevered dream of an apocalypse, whether religious or not was on high... so YOLO. 
Sounds implausible. Maybe. But about as concrete as BLM caused murders, reeeeee! No, actually, it's probably more concrete. 
Be safe out there. 
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

On the Arguing Zeitgeist.

Good stuff here by Doctorow (here's a non twitter one[1])on the laws we have for computer crimes (and the one that was misused to go after and drive Aaron Swartz to his suicide. 
So, I love Baldwin's work, but "Everyone's Protest Novel" is an essay I'm still grappling with. So this comes up on the twittering machine and I'm not only reminded of that essay, but wonder why some of these discussions never attempt to define the thing they're talking about. 
In other words, I can see some of the point that a novel shouldn't be a propaganda piece, but to say it shouldn't have any politics seems superfluous. Having one without any mention of the world, or power structures, or, well politics seems close to impossible, but yeah when you write that shouldn't be on your mind though it's probably in your mind, like it or not (saying a book has no moral take is a kind of moral take).
And there are also different societal takes on what is art and who gets to enjoy it. And when that's taken into consideration, then it all seems like a very different thing to argue about. 
And also there are hamfisted takes and there are some that are well done. Seems that the argument is against the former? If so, I agree. 
And sometimes novels are a Trojan horse where you don't outright state some moral take, you let the reader look it over, or you plant it in some wooden horse within the story so the idea hatches later. 
That being said, being read and someone telling you (not giving a take, but telling) what they see (and this is usually in the form of an accusation) is pretty annoying. 
Guess I haven't touch to say, but that no one is giving definitions of the thing they want to argue about is another thing that should be changed about the internet, but I'm guessing that much thought will end the discussion for most people and the site that does it will die. 
And finally, a map of Germany that shows how non-religious a place like East Germany still is. 


[1] As for the hypocrisy of me being off twitter, talking it down, but still referring to it here on this blog (run by google), well, yeah, I get it. But I do think that a lot of conversations do happen there (and it matters, whether I like it or not) and I do think engaging with it in an off hand way (rather than being hooked in to the algorithm) works for my thinking. 
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Day of What, exactly?

Writing has been getting better. A couple stories up at Patreon. Will have a few more. Thinking about the prevalence of vampires and immortals in the lit I've seen. A stand in for the inequality seen everywhere these days (though too many times they look up to the CEO/Vampire bossman. Of course, if I write anything like that, it won't be in that vein. 
And if you read me, you know I like tipping over the shit out of some sacred cows. In fact, in many ways, the more I think about it, it's what makes Black Leopard Red Wolf keep rising in stature as the filter of time is applied to it, I sense that it has at least bothered to tip over some tropes associated with the fantasy genre. 
Well, you saw my previous piece on the Qatar World Cup and the current odd chorus to boycott it. Then I read something like this, in Al Jazeera. Now, ofc, AJ is funded by Qatar. Here it's claiming that the UAE (a current enemy, along with the Saudis, though I'm still not sure why exactly... something MBS wanted to have happen or perhaps the others getting angry?) is pushing this narrative (on African journalists in this case). 
One can easily see how many would dismiss this as Qatar propaganda. Is it? Does that matter? Let's assume it has some modicum of truth to it and a group of African journalists have indeed decided to protest UAE's pressure. What then? Maybe the UAE actually is using a real problem (migrant workers in Qatar, though I'm guessing it's also a problem in the UAE & KSA, but in geo politics that doesn't matter, you scream, pay others to scream about one thing, then if someone points out the hypocrisy, it's whataboutism, or so that seems about the crux of the situations I've been observing) and we should pay attention to it. 
I still stand by my earlier statements. Let's see what that leads to. 
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Cardano et al

Quick point for those asking to buy book for art, I will soon be accepting Cardano, a blockchain that isn't meant to be a pump and dump or ransomware thingie. I also have to learn more about it, but we'll soon see. Email me for more info. 
Spent a good amount of time yesterday evening talking about the current china scare. Friends also think it's some top down (nevermind the grassroots racism among the masses) attempt to distract from bad times. 

That's my bet. Remember, we need to work and move away from the nationalistic framework if we're to have any hope of defeating the real issues of nukes, climate change and inequality (mainly working to make sure there aren't any places for corporations etc to hide their money from the people). Any move away from that is beyond silly. But liberals (over at LGM etc) are all in on hating on the Asians (even if they may only claim to save it for the CCP). Guess in many ways what trump dug up lives on. That Shakespeare quote of the good we do being interred with our bones but the bad lives long after is damn true .
Speaking of the bad, here's some reasons to be scared of the war coming home, if it hasn't already Remember about 5-6 years ago, and it still is a theme with much of racist America, is that many people see cops "fighting" a war in the cities against minorities as a just war, similar to the one in Afghanistan. Where one ends and the other starts is hard to make a call on. 
Here's a good breakdown of some of the reasons for our current rural/urban divide. Sundown towns. [1] So once again, that racial aspect and the past never being past still ring true. It's true, of course, even in cities like mine, Seattle, wrt to redlining etc. And there are neighborhoods in Seattle and in NYC where black people and other races aren't allowed to go without that threat looming over them. 
Quick side note in that yesterday I said I would look over what I said before and see where I stand now. Let's look 5 years back. That fateful year. There's this piece. Being that I was one of the first people who said Trump had a good chance to win and I was also screaming at how the MSM and dems (the elites therein) were trying to cut him down. In all the wrong ways and in all the ways that would help him. But the piece itself is a little cryptic IMO.
 I do agree that the whole "status quo is great" was a stupid way of attacking trump, but I also think that I could have framed it better. Indeed a change was needed, and with Biden we might get a more leftward shift that before, but could I have been more specific? Yeah. 
Then in the aftermath of my novel, Labyrinth of Souls , I have this post on AI. Seems a bit too bullish on how much AI (or exactly how this tool) would be used. Part of how much the internet was buzzing with such talk? Huh, I suppose in many ways, my view on automated warfare was a better bet, tbf.  Though it has some interesting points, with La Sagrada familia finally being built only because of computers, and well, I do get some things right:

But this seems to show the weakness of my initial position. Why do I think that artificial intelligence will be better than humans in making higher end decisions? Is it simply a matter of eliminating heuristics that will make them better? Or will they, like many other tools, simply be used to exacerbate existing iniquities? Unfortunately, given that the powerful own the tools, this latter scenario is very likely. We must be careful, then, as we move forward down this route. 

Not too shabby a view, though, again, it perhaps needs to be more specific rather than so broad.
And finally, from that time period, this piece on the state of lit today. Let's see, first I'm peddling my email, and then there's the hope about the increasing diversity of the lit world. Interesting stuff indeed. Hopeful for my own writing but since I'm still standing on the fringes I'm not sure what else to say 5 years on. You?


[1] full text below. James Loewen, who wrote the book, remarks on that page: "When I began this research, I expected to find about 10 sundown towns in Illinois (my home state) and perhaps 50 across the country. Instead, I have found about 507 in Illinois and thousands across the United States." 2/9:45 PM · Jun 1, 2021·Twitter Web App37 Retweets3 Quote Tweets142 Likes John Holbo@jholbo1·14hReplying to @jholbo1There are a lot of small to mid-sized towns and cities in the US with nearly all-white populations. Loewen expected to find they were a mix: some 'sundown towns' where African-Americans were excluded by law and threat of violence, but some all-white by chance. 3/1363 John Holbo@jholbo1·14hWhat he found was the latter is nearly the null-set. There basically aren't white-to-this-day towns, to which blacks didn't happen to migrate, as it so happened. (Obviously there may be exceptions, and you have to prove it. That's why Loewen's project exists.) 4/1355 John Holbo@jholbo1·14hExample: I remember learning in high school that Grants Pass, where grandma and grandpa lived and mom grew up, was an especially notorious sundown town in the 50's, when mom was a girl. True fact. 5/ 2447 John Holbo@jholbo1·14hBut I only learned last year the liberal university town Eugene, where I grew up - in which I lived when I learned this stupefying fact that Grants Pass was a sundown town - was also a sundown town until ... the 40's? The 50's? Unclear. 6/ 2956 John Holbo@jholbo1·14hIt's vampire fiction, if you are black - only it's all historical fact. Wherever you were surrounded by all white folks, the whites turn into hateful predators after the sun went down. (I haven't watched "Lovecraft Country" but ...) 7/2566 John Holbo@jholbo1·14hBut, aside from the nightmare fuel quality of it, and the recency of it, and the collective amnesia about it, it feeds into one of the most salient dynamics in contemporary politics, the urban-rural 'density' divide. 8/ (@willwilkinson) [image error] The Density Divide: Urbanization, Polarization, and Populist Backlash - Niskanen CenterIn this new paper, I weave recent research in political science, economics, psychology and more into an account of political polarization and the rise of populist nationalism as a surprising and...niskanencenter.org1865 John Holbo@jholbo1·14hI basically buy Will's thesis but there's more to it (as Will would agree, I'm sure - can't talk about everything at once.) Terrible but true, the 'pull' of the urban center is partly a function of the 'push' of bucolic-but-naw-too-many-vampires-for-me, for African-Americans. Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Wuhan Lab Leak Theory

So you heard it here, more or less first (not talking about RW crazies) but the Wuhan Lab leak theory now has more backing out there in the intersphere of hive mind thinking. Of course, like many other things, the hive mind is now going all in on it and I'm not sure why. It's still a viable theory, but it's a low likelihood one. And, mind that there are a lot of other low probability theories (none being helped by the current Chinese obfuscation, but let's be honest, not like our gov/govs haven't been obfuscating about covid in other ways here in the US, yet none are given this kind of air time. Thing is, even liberals are jumping in on the "hate everything China" train, because it would seem that our elites are trying to get them angry about it right now. And that is only to deflect from themselves. 
And I don't want to carry anyone's water right now, but it feels suspicious to me and reminds me of the worthlessness of the hive mind on the internets, and the flow of anger over the past 6 years (when it truly became a weaponized force). Not much to say except that stay critical and vigilant. 
Also, this is a good way for me to see how well my gut instinct (this is all a bs charade but elites to either steal more from us and this nation, or to make sure they aren't blamed for anything bad) will go over time. 
That being said, there's a pretty good description over on medium by Doctorow about what a blog means to him. 

Clay Shirky has described the process of reading blogs as the inverse of reading traditional sources of news and opinion. In the traditional world, an editor selects (from among pitches from writers for things that might interest a readership), and then publishes (the selected pieces).

But for blog readers, the process is inverted: bloggers publish (everything that seems significant to them) and then readers select (which of those publications are worthy of their interests). There are advantages and disadvantages to both select-then-publish and publish-then-select, and while the latter may require more of the unrewarding work of deciding to ignore uninteresting writing, it also has more of the rewarding delight of discovering something that’s both totally unexpected and utterly wonderful.

An interesting take for sure. One that I've thought of, but not in that way, exactly. I've seen this blog as a way to get together my thoughts and, sometimes, my stories, but has it helped the longer forms lately? Perhaps I've been misusing this tool. 

That’s not the only inversion that blogging entails. When it comes to a (my) blogging method for writing longer, more synthetic work, the traditional relationship between research and writing is reversed. Traditionally, a writer identifies a subject of interest and researches it, then writes about it. In the (my) blogging method, the writer blogs about everything that seems interesting, until a subject gels out of all of those disparate, short pieces.

So he seems to have a good process. 

For more than a decade, I’ve revisited “this day in history” from my own blogging archive, looking back one year, five years, ten years (and then, eventually, 15 years and 20 years). Every day, I roll back my blog archives to this day in years gone past, pull out the most interesting headlines and publish a quick blog post linking back to them

And this is the work he does. Good idea here. Think I'll start at it, though I sense I'll be quite scared to stare at this mirror of past self. Be prepared, dear reader. That being said, I'm sure he has a better community than what we have going here, but I'm sure it's also the work of looking back and reading that helps him. Your thoughts?
One thing I want to look back on is this:
There's a current scream (not only on the right, which always screams about everything) about rising murder (I think crime in general is not rising) and I have to ask why are people just screaming and not asking questions? Cops (NYPD specifically) have gone on to say that it's defunding the police that's doing it, when their (this was NYC) place did not defund (begging the question of, well if an increase in $ increases crime, then what's the deal?) police. 
See screenshot for refutation, of course, that won't get the traction it should. But I do have to ask, given the semi-lockdowns we've been having, what are the breakdowns of gang violence, random stranger violence and DV violence. Because I sense, given how us apes act, that the latter is the biggest spike. Thoughts? Or is it some derivative in the people from seeing how little society valued them (in the sense of Trump basically not caring that covid would run rampant through all these communities)? Or of the virus itself in survivors? Certainly this might play a role, though I would say a low amount and at an already low probability.




Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Fog of War

You start out all rooks and pawns, but also wondering where exactly their pawns and rooks are (damn this really is like fighting the army of the dead in the dead of night(, but you're not seeing them at all... then it all ends up... Rooks traded out of nowhere, but still, trying to recollect where exactly his pawns went. 
But you still are trying to make sure you don't put a foot wrong. Then it all falls apart. The funny thing is I think the best players at this back just march pawns and come out guns blazing. 
So a friend told to read A Little Hatred . Fantasy with, apparently, a tilt towards the realistic, while also undoing previous fantasy tropes. But not enough (not yet at least) and not with the kind of tip a sacred cow feel I tend towards (some fantasy and other status quo tropes ring a little too strong for me). But it's a damn good page turner and that might be worth your time, IMO. 


Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Olympics and the World Cup

Pretty good breakdown of the Olympics and the disaster that they essentially are, in terms of cost and human rights violations (poor people kicked out of their homes for stadiums that will be used for a couple months then tossed to the side). Tbf, I only know of the Olympics through highlights (Usain Bolt) and other ways that, ultimately, don't really watch anything. So I have to wonder how it manages to churn out so much money. 
Nevertheless, this does bring me to the World Cup. Something I certainly enjoy watching. A whole bunch of people are calling for a boycott on Qatar (article says there are many deaths, though not necessarily from the WC construction alone... but that still makes Qatar look very bad [1]) and I'm, well, hesitant to say the least. Unlike normally, where a whole bunch of hypocritical middle Americans (and Euros) are screaming about Qatar (never mind the connections we have with them, never mind our own treatment of migrant workers or "funnel them to the desert where they'll die more" policy since Clinton, or Europe's "let them fill their lungs with Med Sea" immigration policy), I'm hearing this from many people who are actually aware of all the wrong done by the US/EU. 
So am I in the wrong for thinking this is all a bit too much. Much like other shouts about other countries, I have to ask: why this, why now? Why not focus on your own sins first (this is the biggest part), and if we want to deal with migrant worker mistreatment, an international problem for sure, then I sense a boycott would be a part of it, but it would need other aspects to the strategy, wouldn't it?
Then I think: does it make sense to focus on this one thing, assuming it's the one horrific thing we should focus on?
 Thoughts?
meanwhile in the us, the cops are doing less and getting paid more. And they sure as fuck aren't reforming. That's why many takes from the Matty Ygelsiases of the world don't make sense but on paper. Sure, reform might happen with more training (and $) but what about the institutional aspects? And that, my friends, is the answer they don't or won't have. 
[1] That article is kinda nuts. Many deaths, especially compared to other countries (and Qatar does mistreat those workers very badly), but there is this, are they better off not working or living in a poor ass country:

"But the Indian Government says in a press release: "Considering the large size of our community, the number of deaths is quite normal."

The point officials are making is that there are about half a million Indian workers in Qatar, and about 250 deaths per year - and this, in their view, is not a cause for concern. In fact, Indian government data suggests that back home in India you would expect a far higher proportion to die each year - not 250, but 1,000 in any group of 500,000 25-30-year-old men. Even in the UK, an average of 300 for every half a million men in this age group die each year."

Sure, but isn't this the argument used by many here (oligarchs usually) who want to mistreat immigrant workers? 

Then this guardian article also doesn't help that much. 

The Qatar government says that the number of deaths – which it does not dispute – is proportionate to the size of the migrant workforce and that the figures include white-collar workers who have died naturally after living in Qatar for many years. It also says that only 20 per cent of expatriates from the countries in question are employed in construction, and that work-related deaths in this sector accounted for fewer than 10 percent of fatalities within this group.

Not sure what to make of this, as a few thousand dead out of 2 million actually does need to be statistically compared to a similar population to see if the numbers make sense (in the BBC article, they mentioned the health tests done and which mean this number is higher than normal, but no one has the numbers, wtf?)

That being said, the data is hard to come by and proves that it's better to just hide and obfuscate rather than shed light. At least the powerful across the world seem to abide by this. 

Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Showa

I still can't get over many aspects of Showa and how good it is at doing its job of speaking of history as well as the personal. In that sense the story of him (at this moment he's a child) the story of his family, and the story on the streets, all combine with the gears of history and present quite the picture of humanity and time. 
That being said, I always read with an eye to improve it, or, simply (and maybe this is a little less of a cocky statement) how would I write something like this? I'm not sure I've lived through completely tumultuous times (I sense, though, that we are on the cusp of dangerous times, and that, despite the ousting of Trump, several Chekovian guns lie waiting in our national narrative) to be able to write something, and I certainly don't have the skill to create a graphic novel about it, but I do want to create a mixture between a textual narrative, and visual, about us, about me. 
To that end, I sense that explaining things like the finance behind certain crashes would be more interesting, but also what people thought of charts and news presented to them. This, is mainly an issue with our current constant stream of info that is the internet, but I can still think to pre-internet days and think of times when the constant discussion and theories of the world that people had kept clashing or being amended in a kind of swirl not much different from the internet. 
This, friends, is what I would write and draw, but it would not be as linear (and thus as good, or as pleasing) as what Showa is. 
Does that make sense? I mean, after all, not everything is known or ever known, and that that's part of the mess that we have to grow up with and learn to wrestle with. 
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.