Cobb

The Trump Diversion

I don't sufficiently hate Trump. 

That is because I don't believe nearly as much as opponents of Trump that he is running the country. It was 12 years ago that I concluded that populist politics ran the political establishment of the US and therefore deserved my scorn and abandonment. But perhaps it's fair to say that until Jonathan Haidt and the IDW correctly put all of the Culture Wars into fine relief that I may have been playing politics by other names. My hopes (and therefore my writing efforts) are for society to work, but I am convinced that the entire problem with politics and social media are that society has been dumbed down and escalated into conflict through very narrow channels. We have been turned from chimps to T-Rexs and have lost the ability to play piano. We are no longer dextrous. 

My association thus with the IDW and with Stoicism have resulted in me appearing not to give a rats about society. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am a staunch civil libertarian. It is completely consistent. But I think (as one example) the passage of the legalization of gay marriage has given its supporters the false confidence that political activism is the engine of positive social change. It is not. Politics is about government policy, not about social engineering. And yet that is what we've decided as a nation that politics is supposed to be, and for those of good intent on the Left it is the greatest failing of our age, because Trump doesn't give a shit. No, he doesn't. He is not a role model for the kind of decency we Americans want. He is a profound asshole, and a thin skinned bastard. He is caustic and inept. Transparently so. 

I have never thought that Trump's manipulations of those agencies he rules could be so clever and subtle that they couldn't be undone by a reasonable successor. So I have never panicked. And yet the merciless mercenaries that the Democrats have become has left wide open a stable rational response to Trump's haphazard governance, some of which is actually rational, if not diplomatic. At this moment, I can see two things he has done right. He has played hardball with Chinese trade and he has kept the immigration debate alive. Trump's nationalism has given nationalism a ridiculously purple paint job. But nationalism is what America needs. The leader of a national government should make that government work, but that is not the objective of the Progressive Left, which is to make Americans love Americans through political activism. To them, the personal is political. That is wrong. 

If you listen to Eric Weinstein's podcast 'The Portal' and if you listen to Sam Harris as I do, then you will quickly realize that there are very smart Americans who can see that there is a lot left to be desired in America. In the IDW, which both men belong, we are engaged in combatting a crisis of rationality. It is this crisis of rationality and its undermining of confidence in Western civilization that is our greatest problem. It is a problem that is not well defined or described in either the mainstream media, in academic publication, or in political messaging. Some people might call it income inequality. They are vaguely right. Some people might call it the patriarchy. They are vaguely right. Some people might call it godless degeneracy. They are vaguely right. As they politic in the diffuse miasma of social media only those select phrases come through. The simple common denominator is that America is being led poorly. 

Since I am a civil libertarian and champion of a better society, I often say it thusly. The ruling class has failed to fulfill its obligation to society. And to be more concrete about it I find it apt to point out that Donald Trump produced a reality TV show. I pointed this out before.

There was a great moment I saw from the Hoover Institution's You Tube channel when the host asked a reporter who has spent a lot of time with Trump and his team "I don't understand. How did millions of blue collar and poor working class people vote for this billionaire?" The first thing the reporter replied is "Have you watched 'The Apprentice'?" The host says, no I don't watch reality TV. To which the reporter replied, with a polite 'Duh'.

Trump is the billionaire that blue collar workers with no filter want to be. They communicate on the same level, and he has proven it. Everybody who looks down a these working class people and their reality shows is at a complete loss. But the answers are as plain as day. So really, how long are these clueless people going to keep the same media diet, if they truly want to understand the media language and political ambitions of that working class that stood up and elected this president?

So the problem I have with my Facebook friends is that they only know me as this ex-conservative who is not contributing enough to the dogfight whose job it is to shovel enough his own shit on Trump's head to bury him. But I know that's just partisan ammunition for political gain. That is because the Democrats who have failed miserably to produce grownup candidates, resurrect the Clinton gods or beat Bernie Sanders fair and square have been reduced to cataloging 'atrocities' of the President. What they haven't done is Labor. What they haven't done is Anti-Trust. What they have done is outsourced their brains to a mythical Scandinavia. Since I have to say this, because I'm often explaining to binary thinkers, the Republicans have done fuck all for America. They deflated the Tea Party who had every common cause with Occupy Wall Street and have defaulted spectacularly leading to the support of corporate welfare. There is no longer a such thing as a fiscal conservative in America, at least not one in a responsible position of power. They have completely crawled up the ass of big money, especially where political fundraising is concerned, and we are stuck with pretty much everyone who understands money and fiscal responsibility at the economic equivalent of a dog track run by gangsters and underwritten by the Fed. I pay over 17% on my best credit cards. Chase gets their money for 0.1% by the billion and has never paid more than 1% since 2008.

I know that nuclear power generation of electricity will not prevent global warming. But I also know it's at least 50 times better than wind, solar and all other renewables. Yet it is an article of faith that nuclear power is not politically acceptable in America. It's scientifically green but it's not Green. This is thus my situation. I have no patience with that which doesn't present honestly. I cannot afford to waste my breath contributing to a political dogfight that is not building ammunition to fight anyone but the opposition party and its constituents. So I'm out here stuck with the nuclear power engineers without a job. I'm stuck out here with the data engineers who traffic in flight schedules and aircraft maintenance, unlike Facebook who has all of the billions trafficking in the stolen personal data of consumers. I refuse to jump up and down and say with arrogant moral certitude that it's Trump's fault. It's the fault of American populist politics and its attendant media totems who refuse to surface the problems Americans are positioned, but not funded to solve. If one party cannot take sole credit at the expense of the other party, it will not be raised as a matter of concern to the Federal government. 

How foolish do we have to be to expect that a President elected from this environment can and will solve every other kind of problem Americans need solved? Perhaps we are being saved by the pandemic. Perhaps we will realize that there are more things between heaven and earth than are dreamt in our political philosophy.  

Yet I don't believe in political solutions to people's problems. When I explain this, people don't get it or don't believe me. Perhaps I should say that in the way that people who are atheist might understand. I have no faith in the god of Democrats. I have no faith in the god of Republicans. I can get to whatever people need without attending either church. Trump is, by all rights, the devil incarnate to those who believe in the god of Democrats. Indeed he may even be the devil incarnate to those who believe in the god of democracy itself. I have my doubts about democracy, and I certainly don't worship it. I didn't major in political science but computer science. I'm on the side of the engineers, and I don't believe in social engineering. In fact, I despise it.

So let me close with a couple other complaints around the matters of social engineering. As all Californians know, we are done with the drought. It has been around for a decade or more since El Nino drenched us and sent mudslides down our fancy slopes. And in those many years there have been no new reservoirs built. California political leaders have socially engineered a solution by jawboning us to conserve water. Don't care for your lawn, they said. Don't have a real shower, they said. Today, during the SARS-nCOV-2 aka COVID-19 pandemic, there was no strategic investment by either party in government policy involving our supply chain for medical equipment or funding for handling epidemics by pathogens that attack time and time again. No strategic investment, therefore no strategic reserve and obviously no strategy. Now that there is a crisis, the government is telling us to trust them and once again jawboning 'solutions'. They are socially engineering at the very limit of their capacity. And the people who know better, Americans who are actual experts are essentially left out in the cold. There are massive failures that are obvious to people who give it a day's thought can see. With everything that was debated and legislated about healthcare in the past 30 years, we simply find that we don't have enough hospital beds per capita. 

I don't sufficiently hate Trump. I don't see how doing so will get water or hospital beds to the people who need them. 

Pops on Corona

"CORONIC CHAOS"

The CoronaVirus Pandemic rules today as it did yesterday...a seemingly powerful phenomenon heading back too many taken for granted weeks,  Corona now even reeks havoc throughout the once restful night.  And doing this with what is hard to keep up with greed and measureless fury.  Sadly this and similar attitudes have become all too familiar.  We all weep, shake our ever-reeling heads, have over-taxed feelings and a general drooped and miserable outlook.  There is so much, too much to take...with no apparent sign of a break.  Whew.  When will it all end?  When will we get back to what was once lived and experienced as the good life...or if not, the normal pattern of living?

Well, what follows was put together during a couple of badly needed "breaks" from the sane, sensible and thoughtful therapeutics that already address what is noted above.  It is not intended to replace what folks already do and what already works.  Please know and understand that I did not and do not have the esteemed FACEBOOK in mind as a "recipient".  Whew.

So, here we go with some suggestions to remove ourselves from the Corona Virus Emotional Overload Speeding Roller Coaster:

# Being completely informed is a super-abundance of knowledge, but is likewise a replacement of wisdom.  A once an hour 3-5 minute update will suffice.  

# Listening to music always works.  From much calmer times we learned what specific styles of music and what specific composers/artists are at the top.  Now is their time for reconnecting with us. 

# Think about someone you are not now going to call or write but whose long time ago memory causes a smile, a laugh, a few tears or all 3.  Some time later, make the call.

# Take a slow walk through your house or apartment or wherever and look at something you never paid any serious attention to...and think what it might say.....if only it could talk.

# Hold in your hand a leaf from a branch in your garden or an indoor plant, close your eyes, smile and see what happens to you.

# Spell out your full name on a piece of paper...no spaces.  Then think of an adjective for each letter to describe yourself...actually or ideally.  Review the list in 24 hours.

# If you have a house pet, talk to that pet or pets whatever it/they might be.  This includes dogs, cats, hamsters, goldfish, turtles, frogs, caged birds, etc.

# Sit in the bathtub for no less than 20 minutes.  Hum softly with your eyes closed.....open.....closed......

# Make up a song and sing it in front of the mirror.  When finished tell the mirror image exactly how you felt while singing.  If you have a small portable recorder, use it.

# Go to your in-house library and, closing your eyes, select a book.  Flip through it, stopping at any page.  Read a few lines and in your mind draw a parallel with what the day has been like for you.    

# Take a shirt and cap out of your closet and put both items on backwards.  Craft a silly explanation you would give either of your living or deceased parents if either or both of them should suddenly appear.

# While safely riding on your bike, ride with one hand for a short distance.  With the other hand pat yourself on the head for being so skilled and confident and silly

# Take a swig of your favorite fruit juice, briefly gargle same before swallowing and then either smile or laugh outright.

# If you on your treadmill for any length of time, make a strange and original sound every few minutes.  The sound shouldn't make sense.

# Try tying a sneaker or shoe with one (either left or right) hand. Note: If you can do this without laughing at yourself, you are probably cheating!

# The next time you feel inclined to tell someone to "Have a nice day", say instead, "Have a rice day" and see if they catch it.

  ENUF!!

There is nothing wrong with the ever-unfolding protocols which are being advised to make and keep us safe and sane during the crisis.  I am pretty sure the harshness of the day can be eased by trying these or countless other innovative behaviors.  What is suggested above is not intended to replace whatever anyone is now doing to get through the day or night!  That which is serious is NOT compromised by our taking complementary steps to lighten the load.  Just crafting the above has given even me a badly needed and joyful break.

So...try any part of it.  You may like it and be inclined to come up with your own list of activities.  Or you might just laugh at the very thought of taking these suggestions seriously.  But just think about it. LAUGHING IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL!!

and...when you get tired of laughing...

WASH YOUR HANDS!!!!!!!!!!!

Sympathy for Suffering

Dostoevsky writes:

And an undoubtedly genuine grief can sometimes turn even a phenomenally light-minded man into somebody solid and resolute – at least for a while. More than that: real, genuine grief can sometimes make even fools seem more intelligent – also, of course, for a while. Grief can do this to people.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Devils: New Translation (Alma Classics) (p. 193). Alma Classics. Kindle Edition.

If you live a life that is mostly successful, you often wonder how it is that people let up their discipline and get sidetracked into dissolution. You exercise discipline over your life and you wonder how it is that people say ‘whatever’.  I was like that.

Then life threw me a series of curveballs. And I had to deal with them because they were my responsibility. I did. I John Wayned right through them. Then I became exhausted. I started to realize that the focus I could apply when I was on top of everything, I simply couldn’t muster after having dealt with tragedy.

For me it got to the point at which I was on call for events that could go sideways without notice - and nobody else could handle them. It got to the point where I purposefully refused to focus because breaking that focus would piss me off and these were situations in which being pissed off made things worse. So I had to live in a constant state of vigilance in preparation for fast, random work. Literally day to day.

At some point I joined a group of people coping with similar situations. What was weird about it was that some of these folks had long given up attempting to John Wayne anything. They knew all the kinds of things that could go wrong, but they didn’t say ‘whatever’. Some of them had the 1000 yard stare.

Then it kind of clicked for me.

If you’ve ever watched bag handlers, boxers, racquetball players or roofers. You’ll notice that the old pros have an economy of motion. They don’t move quickly and they don’t huff and puff, but they can do it all day. I realized that’s what happens when you have heavy lifting to do. You get used to the deliberate pace, you get to the right spot at the right time and you execute.

What you never do is say “If my daughter lost her legs in a car accident, I’d handle it without raising an eyebrow.” But if it happens to you, you eventually get to that point. You suffer through the pain, the burden, the work, the frustration and you get through it. You don’t get over it. You get through it.

That’s what happens when life breaks you and forces you to change. After a time you do get to the point at which you are committed to reacting well and adapting well instead of planning well. Then you recognize it in others, the people who have been through the pain and don't pretend they can John Wayne through it all and go back to business as usual. 

Feeling Good. Feeling Bad.

I had a bad dream last night. It was bad in many ways and as I was barely sleeping parts of it were based upon reality. I was waiting both in the dream and in life for something to happen and it didn't. In the dream I was made extremely angry by a dog. I was on the street of a residential neighborhood and a large dog kept rushing me barking loudly and then backing off. I had a switch and I swatted the dog on his nose each time. But he growled and took one less step back each time. A crowd gathered to watch this dramatic standoff between myself and the dog. I asked one family who knew the dog if they would please get the owner to pull his dog away. An old woman, obviously the matriarch of the family who owned the dog went through a list of children and grandchildren in her squeaky croaky voice. "Pooter, is this here your dog? Where's Jimbo? Dat Jimbo's dog? What about Cash? Ain't this Cash' dog?" I was two seconds from pulling out my pistol and blowing the dog into swiss cheese, but I kept asking politely. Will you please call your dog off? Nobody did. I kept swatting it on the nose. I couldn't take my eyes off of it for a moment.

I woke up, dead tired, angry. I told my wife that I had a horrible dream. I could hear the sleep in my voice mumble up my words. They conveyed nothing of the sheer awfulness of the dreamt experience. I was still boiling inside, still waiting for us to go watch the next episode of The Witcher together. Still staring at the back of her head as she patiently did her work from home. Still fiercely angry at everything that went on inside my head and of very little of consequence in the real world. I wanted to communicate how miserable I felt, how much I needed some tender and kind affection at this moment, wanting both to demand it in a scream and be quietly accepting that it wasn't going to happen. My mind went to the end. I'm going to die alone. We all are going to die alone. 

I haven't decided whether or not I'm going to pay my rent. I haven't decided whether or not I'm going to max out my credit cards. I haven't decided whether or not I even care. I'm not unhappy with my life with all of its shortcomings. And I thought about what would make me the most happy would be driving a convertible sports car up Pacific Coast Highway at 100 miles per hour. I can do that now because it's very Omega Man out there. I quit my gym. I can't remember the last time I went. But I do my morning walks alone. I did my 10,000 steps alone yesterday and I only took one picture and I don't really think it's worth sharing. I have worked from home for a decade and my solitude is second nature. I am socially distanced. When I post to communicate, I only get feedback on the stupid stuff I really don't care about. I am accustomed to dying alone. This blog has over 9000 posts. I have been writing it steadily since September of 2002. Even I don't read it any longer. In a way, I don't fear death. I am angry about not getting a chance to do what's next. Death is worse than derailment. It's the situation that you never get to address or correct. Death is the complete deterioration of the self; no matter how small your self may have been in life it is completely eradicated by the obliviousness of death.

I remember looking at my grey self in the mirror. I handed out my calling card at a meetup and somebody remarked, "That's not you." It's 4 years old when I was less grey. When I was in Bogota people kept mistaking me for Morgan Freeman. There's not much room even in my own imagination for whom that old black man in the mirror might actually be. I dress like a gardener, in Dickies tactical pants and nondescript black shoes. I'm putting on only the subtlest of shows, and I don't need to show off. My joie de vivre is what it is, but I've heard most of the jokes out there. 

So I sat on the edge of the bed waiting to watch The Witcher with my wife, because I want to do it together, but I might be dead next month.  She still has work to type into her laptop. I'm probably going to fall asleep while we watch. She probably will too. I have been playing the video game of The Witcher most of the afternoon. In the villages people starve and cough. They are surrounded by Imperial troops, wolves and monsters. I can kill them all, but sometimes I die. I have no savings. I spend all of my money on the best swords and armor because ultimately I am a monster slayer and that's what I'm needed for. It's a sword and sorcery classic and the narrative gets pushed along by me killing my way through the evil, solving the mysteries, negotiating with unsavory characters, resisting the temptation to treat the sorceresses as if they owe me affection as my deeds push the plot forward. I am a mortal enabler. A freak of nature. I am heartless and honorable and I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. Everyone dies alone except heroes and martyrs. I don't want to pick a hill to die on. I don't want to succumb to the forces of nature or destiny, but all I can do is live another day. It's obvious, but nobody seems to figure it out. We're caught up in the moment.

The dead live in the tales of the living. I only ever knew one song by Elvis Presley. "In the Ghetto". People got worked up about it, I recall. I sang it. It was a good song. I didn't care that it was Elvis. What a depressing song. But there it is. You don't even have to type 'Elvis' into Google, just 'in the ghetto'. People living in one room shacks. That's what they sang about. 

I once wrote that I figured out the reason for war. It was to remind mankind of their limits. War destroys memory and truth and it becomes the reason for everything. It has an irresistible gravitational pull on history and the Jungian collective consciousness. Now we are met on a new battlefield and I can't help thinking that these might be the last blogs I ever write. These videos may be the last time my face will be seen in its animated state. My voice, now clear, will be its last true self before the cytokine storm reduces me to rib-cracking coughs. Or I might just stay right where I am behind these two monitors and this keyboard and survive it all. Laying low. Risking nothing. Moving nowhere. 

I walked 10,000 steps yesterday. On my way back home I walked past a fire station. The men were playing paddle tennis in the side yard. You could hear the ball echoing across the empty streets and parking lots. I wanted to ask them questions about how I could use my old ICS training to help in an emergency. It was my instinct. But I didn't stop. I kept on walking past the sleeper on the sidewalk, past the old man digging in the trashcan. I held my breath each time. I didn't stop. The sleeper had a full canteen of water. The old man had a rough and ready coat on. Yeah. It's about that time. As I finished the steps, I finished the Sam Harris podcast with Nicholas Christakis. Now I'm informed. I should say that 'we' are the informed. Social isolation is all we've ever had, because we expect our knowledge to make a difference. We keep changing our behavior challenging common sense. We want uncommon insight.

We want uncommon insight because we're logical and disciplined. We want our minds to save us, and we get angry because everybody else doesn't work as hard to come to the same conclusions. They know whose dog it is, but they like the drama of not calling it off. Just because you want it.. you've already hitting it right on the nose, Mr Smarty Pants. But they don't see my gun. In my mind I'm justified. I could take the screaming action and everybody would get it. But maybe I'll just die a little bit today and hold my peace. it's not my war. It's not what I want to become known for. I'm just trying to be civilized, even if I have to do it on the DL. 

I have another meeting today. I need to confirm the time. I need to fill in the hours from last week. But my company could go broke and I could be dead next month. There's a book on the periphery of my list that I might move up in the queue. It's about 10% less democracy and why you should trust the elites more than you do. They're probably looking at us like, so why didn't you just do it? 50 Cent has a new show on TV, because he was ready to die trying to do that. I'm the writer. The writer writes. And here it all is.  This is what I wanted. This is what I got. I just need to keep it all going. I thought, in Episode 001 that I could just catch this and get it over with, because we'e all going to catch the bug, right? No. Delay death as long as possible. Keep everything going. Use your mind and take the extra edge. Minute by minute. Play the barbell curve. Be prepared for extreme negatives and extreme positives. My creditors could all be dead next month. My enemies, my doubters, all of the unknown unknowns could disappear. All of the decadent hubris could get the smackdown. Yes people are starting to scream. 

Maybe we should just be what we be. It's a bit weird to be a Stoic at this moment. There's so much to explain in that. It's a consequence of living a particular life of the particular mind. Being reconciled with triumph and disaster and treating those two imposters just the same is a kind of manhood for which few strive. It's not comfortable but it's necessary. That's why there is no panic here. There is also no resignation. You could call this a moment of dealing with emotions, of concretely wrestling with the logical implications of what I have already felt without making any hard decisions yet. I don't want to be singing depressing songs. I don't want to be angry in my dreams and then with my wife. I don't want to fear death or fear loneliness. I don't want to be overcome by the futility that often accompanies deep contemplation. This meditation thus is a public expression of my will. That's how Stoicism works for me. I don't mind being corrected. I don't care who is right, I care what is right. 

I didn't shoot the dog, but I did fall asleep during The Witcher. 

Surviving COVID - Episode 4 - Shopping While I Can

I was able to get about 90% of the items I wanted on my shopping. I was a bit surprised at what was available and not surprised at what was not available.

Obligatory Seriousness on the Chinese Disease

People are upset that the President of the United States has called COVID-19 'Chinese'. By the way, the novel coronavirus discovered in Wuhan is also known as SARS-CoV-2. Technically speaking, I understand that to be the name of the virus and COVID-19 the name of the illness. But does it matter what you call it when it is rather obvious we are talking about the same thing? People who are outraged at this use of the term find it racist and just another purposeful attempt of Trump to be xenophobic. I haven't looked, but I haven't heard anyone of that contingent suggest that the 1918 Spanish Flu was racist. My great grandparents died in that. I never thought to blame Spain for orphaning my grandfather and great uncles. The historical fact is that it was so named because Spain's government did not censor its existence. So while it was plentiful on the frontlines in WW1 combatants from France, Germany and England, those governments hushed up about it. 

Syphilis, an age-old scourge caused by the Treponema pallidum bacteria, is one of those ailments no group wanted to claim and all groups wanted to blame on some other. After an invasion by the French in the late 1400s, Neapolitans labeled it “the French disease.” The French, on the other hand, called it “the disease of Naples.” The Russians called it “the Polish disease,” while the Polish and Persians called it “the Turkish disease.” The Turks called it “the Christian disease,” the Tahitians called it “the British disease,” the Indians called it “the Portuguese disease,” the Japanese called it “the Chinese pox,” and so on and so on.

Osterholm, Michael T.. Deadliest Enemy (p. 74). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

Considering how many Americans think this thing is similar to the flu, what you call it has nothing to do with how you treat it. Some people actually believe that you can kill the virus by pointing a hair dryer up your nose. I swear to god, and I'm not linking there. So does it matter what you call it? No it matters how you deal with it, medically. Jumping on this particularly simple-minded partisan political bandwagon is to be expected. I'm glad my mind is not infected by such worthless jabber. You have read the disinfectant. Go in peace. 

Who Wants to Kill Some Camels?

Our collective ability, internationally, to deal with pandemics is negligible. All of this social engineering is not a solution, it's like squeezing Japanese commuters onto the subway and giving them discount tokens instead of building another subway line.

 

To deal with the inevitability of epidemics and pandemics of the more lethal pathogens that we already know exist will require way more strategic thought and invention. For what it's worth, if you'd like to spin it with your global warming fascinations, just think about what becomes tropical which is now merely temperate. That means mosquitoes - which means Dengue, Malaria, Zika, Chikengunya and yes, Ebola, all of which are mutating all of the time.

 

Everyone who has noticed that the administration has cut the budget of the NSC Office of National Health Security and Bioterrorism needs to understand that its budget was under $400 million in 2018, 1/3rd of which was lefteover from Ebola funding. That office would have made no material difference if Congress was not considering spending tens of billions for the kinds of strategic reserves and extensive wargaming required for dealing with pathogens *that we already know exist*.

 

Take MERS for example. We already know that it will inevitably spread from Saudi Arabia to the rest of the world. We also already know that it lives in the camel populations of the Arabian peninsula and East Africa. So what would it take for the Congress to compensate the Middle East for the destruction of its camel population in order to eradicate the MERS we already know? Who has been talking about that, my pedigree chums?

 

What does this mean for the future of MERS? Well, I fear that MERS is only beginning to show its ugly head. There are more than 1.2 million dromedary camels in the Arabian Peninsula, and 78 percent of them are found in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Bactrian camels, the two-humped variety, reside primarily in China and Mongolia. Africa has an estimated 24 million camels, most of which are in the countries in the Horn of Africa, including Somalia (7 million), Sudan (4.9 million), and Kenya (3.2 million).

Osterholm, Michael T.. Deadliest Enemy (p. 170). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

 

Camels are, in the Middle East, tantamount to what cows are in India. Their meat and their milk are consumed. Camels are bred for beauty contests and thoroughbred racing. You want to talk about science vs culture? Are you prepared to kill the sacred camel? Probably not. So please stop pretending you want anything more than your $1000 paycheck from the government, OK? 

 

Surviving COVID-19 - Episode 003 - Lockdown & Mythbusting

• Pandemic Czar
• Skid Row
• 231 & 2
• State of local neighborhood
• Florida beaches
• Sauna Rumor
• Food stocks
• Zika SARS MERS
• Global Health Security Bioterror budget
• Stoics & IDW

Surviving COVID19 - Episode 002 - LA County, Stoicism, EDC

My COVID Resource page is up. I hope you can find it useful. http://bit.ly/covid-mdcbowen

Suviving COVID19 - Episode 001 - The First Week Video

This week it's about Osterholm and his book, and my general attitude about it. 

How To Survive Outside of the Box

“A situation becomes a crisis when it overwhelms the government’s ability to respond.”
-- Vinay Gupta

 

This is hard to explain, but should be impossible to ignore. So let me get into it a moment. One of the most important things I have learned in my 50s came from a dude named Nassim Taleb. This irascible character pisses off everyone like that kid who pointed out the emperor's transparency. He has reinvented the entire idea of risk management through complicated mathematics that I still cannot decipher. But he also wrote his logic syllogistically and put it in books accessible to me. You may know him as the author of The Black Swan. His magnum opus is The Incerto, and I would say that it is as fundamentally significant to the future as Knuth's Art of Computer Programming is to the digital world today. From him and from Dan Ariely and somewhat from Robin Hanson I have been instructed in ways that help me understand how deeply flawed and somewhat predictably flawed is the process of human decision making. I remind you that it has been my career to try to combine human thought with digital systems to think better together. So I have come to understand the strengths and weaknesses of both sides of that synergy.

 

One of the consequences of this education is my now somewhat advanced comprehension of the consequences of these flawed processes. Sometimes they crash and burn. Sometimes they limp along. Sometimes they create edifices of artifice that remain afloat buoyed by systems of blatant self-dealing, mass hysteria, pure stupidity, wishful thinking, co-dependence, petty vengeance, suspended disbelief or combinations of those plus damned statistics, lies, likes and retweets.

 

The most unnerving consequence is my logical decision to distrust democratic politics and institutions. That was somewhat easy given the absurdities of identity politics we suffer in these iterations of Culture War. But it has been difficult to reconcile with my civil libertarianism, Lockean views and dedication to public squawking. So, leaning back on my philosophical tendencies, I have engaged as a 'wry stoic & tactical epistemologist'. I mock what needs mocking from an historical perspective (though I'm no Churchill) and I spend a lot of time parsing arguments and providing disconfirmatory findings of fact, or at least of logic. The younger me would not like me, but he was living in the Infinite Library of Borges. (The truth is in there somewhere.)

 

Now that I'm unofficially a member of the Intellectual Dark Web, or like to consider myself that and two degrees of separation from Eric Weinstein, I have been a collector of arcane knowledge I feel is worth passing on. I feel this rather than think this because I truly cannot be held responsible for my inability to communicate it well. I can tell you it works (logically) for me, but so fucking what? We're still all going to watch Netflix as the apocalypse draws near. I want to chuckle as much as the next guy. But in the meantime, there's this bit of profundity from Vinay Gupta that I still have yet to fully decipher. But before I drop to the reveal, let me regale you with a piece of rap I wrote 28 years ago. 

 

the problem i have is this - food in a box
as an urban dweller, skill seller
im marketable, size 10 in my socks
i can find anywhere anyplace to sell and be sold to

clothes off the rack fit
i got enough snaps to pick it up if i so desire
i say wrap it up homes, flash the card
get certified
(the hangers are wood, not wire)

so i step to the pad
quite happy - having hunted and gathered
new duds for the hoe down
so i go downtown and across the bridge
to my flat with the empty fridge

 

It was about my patent inability to cook, but to make more than enough money to run a household. In recognition of my urban dilemma, I went through stanza after stanza of exemplifying all of the things I could buy but not make. Clothes, food, companionship, and for the purposes of this discussion, politics.

 

i guess the problem i have is this - food in a box
sometimes if im critical i get political
and all riled up about an issue as old has the hills
i wait for the next senate bill
and hope my choice with a pipsqueak voice
call in to oprah and wait on the line
like this is democracy, dont worry be happy
got no ability to sway the senate my way
'cept once every six for two out of a hundred
did my mission get funded?
no tell me what to do till they pass the ballot box again

And to reiterate for the n'th time. My moral position on politics is The Abstention Principle. To wit. 

 

A simple moral principle:
When a future change is framed as a problem which we might hope our political system to solve, then the only acceptable reason to talk about the consequences of failing to solve that problem is to scare folks into trying harder to solve it. If you instead assume that politics will fail to solve the problem, and analyze the consequences of that in more detail, not to scare people but to work out how to live in that scenario, you are seen as expressing disloyalty to the system and hostility toward those who will suffer from that failure.

 

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This works us directly into the first square in Vinay's presentation which is the quote which begins this post. “A situation becomes a crisis when it overwhelms the government’s ability to respond”. I assume that politics will fail to solve the problem, therefore I must analyze the consequences of that in more detail. Since I am on a Stoic track, I would learn to live without the illusion that I can change the world through democratic politics. Not that I would shutup. 

 

What do you do, what happens to your citizenship if you find yourself facing a situation that overwhelms your government? That is the subject of Vinay's publication that I will link to here. So the quick answer is: The failure of the state to do risk management returns risk to us. What if we could use (X, Y, Z) instead of the state for managing our risk? There are 175 slides. One day I'll find the accompanying narrative. Stay tuned. 

How To Hide 1Kg of Diamonds

So let’s start with giving an evaluation. A parcel of stones at VVG1 to VVG2 at an average size of .35 carats with F-G color will net out to about $3250 per carat. 1kg of such stones will be about 14,285 stones worth about 46.5 million dollars US. So really the question is how would you hide about 15,000 little things worth 45 million bucks. Your ability to hide them depends largely upon one thing, which is your ability to sell them.

If you have no ability to sell any of the stones, then you can only use conventional means, IE something anybody could think up on a middle class salary. In which case you might as well just throw them in the ocean because you’re going to get yourself killed or jailed the moment one person finds out. So there’s a Clean Approach and a Dirty Approach.

Clean Approach
So the first thing a smart guy will do is to approach someone with moolah and someone you can trust with your life. So for me, I happen to know a couple such people as I am fortunate in that regard. One of them is a Wall Street broker. He would know someone who deals with that level of investment with whom I would partner. I convert a fraction of my diamonds to cash, essentially 2 million worth, and give the other people the impression that this is the extent of my cache. I then set up an entity through which I can employ my own skills and improve them. This would include a cursory understanding of the diamond trade and a couple of trips to such traders and producers. The aim of these trips is to determine how far I can get away with selling diamonds legitimately without being a known quantity in the business. In other words, I’m setting up a diamond laundering business, but I can remain overground and live fairly large.

Dirty Approach
The other way to go is go underground, which means I live low rather like a card sharp. I produce the occasional rock in card games, to used car dealers, to pawn shops all at a level that people will immediately be able to handle and not talk about. In this case I have to do a lot of low rent stashing and have a 5 year plan to raise about 200k per year.

OK so either approach gets me to the point at which I can use sophisticated means to hide my stash. It costs money to hide money.

The Stashes

One - The Big Pentagram
I’m thinking undeveloped land in New Zealand would be the best thing for buried treasure. It’s not hard to get there. It’s not a dodgy place. I’d keep the biggest fraction there, roughly half, in five plots underground in a pattern. How about a pentagram 100 meters across? Uncleared woods. GPS tracked. Iron rebar markers with RFID tags. On a hill. (25 million)

Two - Obvious
I’m going to make a mistake. So it might as well be a stupid mistake. So I’m going to seed the stupid mistake ahead of time so the over-confident detective gets to talk shit. Which means I’m going to put the stash under my mother’s grave, or in a mausoleum niche having bribed a groundskeeper at a cemetery in my town. I will be observed making regular trips. (2 million)

Three - Attorney Client Privilege
This is the first technically challenging one to place. I troll around to find an attorney like Go Call Saul from Breaking Bad. Living in LA with its drug trade, I’m sure I can find a gang attorney relatively easily. I will put it into this attorney’s hands. I don’t know or don’t care where the attorney puts it, but he only gets his cut as trustee based on his ability to sell the diamonds himself. This is the one I plan to live from. (7 million)

Four - Charity
I use geocaching to place a handful of random stones into that game. Once a year I travel out of the state and place a rock into a geocache. I drop a rock off into the coffers of various churches in my travels. (<1 million)

Five - Rich Bitches
I develop a rapport with douchebags of all sorts who can fence this kind of stuff on their own. I develop a reputation and then flame out quickly. It will cost me getting my ass kicked but among that crowd I will clearly appear broke and flamed out. Kills suspicion. (1 million)

Six - Other Hidey Holes
Smaller versions of the pentagram. All self-service all visited during peak tourist season.

1. Black River National Forest: Michigan
2. Mount Washington: New Hampshire
3. Hot Springs: Arkansas
4. Sturgis: South Dakota
5. Gifford Woods State Park: Vermont

And I periodically check Quora, detective novels and CIA spycraft legends just to make sure I’m up on the best ideas. After all, I’ve got nothing else to do.

The New Pandemic Normal

"The sun warms a graveyard in December."

So mentally, I'm prepared for this. Financially, I will probably be ruined. Emotionally, I'm certain to get through it. Healthwise, I say I'm in better shape than most people my age, but you never know. I'm not the Omega Man. What's 3 or 4 Greek letters backwards from Omega? Upsilon? I'd rather be the Tau Man, so I can associate it with the Tao.

The aim here is to make use of some basic skills I have and do my part sitting at home and rapidly parsing through a mental landscape of data / information / knowledge / wisdom and present it with some common language commentary. I don't have many more than a couple thousand followers all told, but I do what I can. I hope I can keep my head when about me are losing theirs. I know I can't just data dump. So I'll do some fraction of a daily thing and interpret what it means to me, giving a sense of what I believe to be actionable and that which is just good to know. I kind of do this for a living - which is to boil down desires, aims and goals into systems that use data / information  to help people turn it into knowledge. I can't get paid for assisting people with the wisdom part. 

Background:
I'm going to start with helping you understand my perspective. So last year I suffered through what seemed my worst year in about the last 20. I'm 58 years old, and can write both essays and software. I took a salary cut and burned through 75% of my savings. I got kicked out of my apartment and started renting in a newer more expensive place. My son was hospitalized twice for mental illness. My mother suffered blood clots that could have killed her. I was diagnosed with depression, and I basically blew my top at a big family gathering. I gained about 17 pounds and I'm sure there were other things I can't think of at the moment that made it a miserable year. 

On the other hand, about four years ago, my younger brother dropped dead (of a blood clot) and then my mother suffered a stroke. I then went through the agonizing processes of dealing with my son's mental illness, and the shaky financial position of my employer. So I had a couple years of tragedy and sorrow to prepare me for 2019. So things haven't been normal for me since 2016 or so. But even prior to that I was prompted to approach Stoicism. You shouldn't call Stoicism the hero of my story, but it is a nominee for best supporting actor. So if you wonder how it is that I've managed to John Wayne through a lot of this, part of it is my personality, part of it is Stoicism and part of it is that I've had a lifetime of ups and downs. Back in 1989 I studied the Tao. It helped me to understand how to live in the present. That's a part too. It's not about me. This just helps you know who I think I am not being a medical expert trying to be helpful. 

Now:
I have a wife and two adult children who live with me and I suspect my wife will be the hardest hit if it comes to us getting infected and sick. So I am concerned for her. My father is 83 years old and has survived cancer, but is starting to be frail and forgetful. His wife has also had some serious medical issues over the past few years. I worry that they may not make it. I have an uncle who is the oldest of our family, and a couple aunts for whom I am concerned. I also have a cousin who lives abroad where things might not be so tightly wrapped. So a number of my family members are at risk, as are all of my friends who are around my age. I have watched my father see all of his dearest friends die (and one of his sons) over the past several years. I see what it's like to look backwards and not forwards in life.  

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This week:
I have Evernote and I started using it to keep track of this and that for years. This week I started taking notes about COVID-19 and now I have enough to make some kind of presentation. It started with the big reveal on Joe Rogan's podcast with Michael Osterholm. This is some of the best straight talk I've heard and it is my ground zero. Last Friday I purchased 200 nitrile gloves and sent an email to my local CERT alumni coordinator. That was the moment I started dealing with the fact that I'm going to have to deal with this. But the interview really kicked it off for me and straightened things out. I expect now that washing my hands will give me a 5% better chance of resisting infection, and adding gloves to that will add another percent or two. It's really about breathing. 

 

Here is the tweet that got me a few bits of rec.

@mtosterholm @CIDRAP And see his interview here.bit.ly/3aNVOMI and his book is here: amzn.to/2TQpxNW 

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So I'm going to close this first post by making a parallel between Osterholm and the man who tried to warn us about 9/11. So if we know nothing at all, we know that there are people who know what they are talking about, who are working on the problem and have mastered the details enough to be able to see the big picture. I'm all about the big picture. All of everything I've written here in this blog over the past 17-odd years may add up to nothing during my life, but I took no money to say what I had to say. This is an unexpected turn, but I can do it. More people are going to die from this than from that terror attack. And we survived. We survive a lot. So much that most of us don't have to think about survival. I do, because I've had to deal with death, something I'm now mature enough to reckon with - even my own. So I'm keeping my head up and my eyes open. You can too. 

More later. I want to expose more of my thinking, but this is enough for now. (It's about thinking through it, not just knowing stuff.)

Kafka on the Shore

Well, this book deserves a longer review than I'm going to give it. Perhaps I'll make the effort in the Dreamtime and so it will be done, if not written.

Murakami gives us a world of mystery, ultimately the mystery of the self and of the many interactions we make with the world based on our interpretations of what it may want from us and what we want to give it all while figuring ourselves out (or not) day by day. He creates a platter of characters some of whom have purpose none of whom quite understand it and it becomes a delicious marvel.

For me to have been gorged with the plot driven and the diet of the autodidact, this was something of an adjustment. But the characters were so lovely that the entire snack expanded in my stomach filling me up and causing me to belch up flavors that are surprisingly fragrant. In all the time reading it, jumping in and jumping out as I have over the past month, there was no telling where the lightning storms, missing persons, talking cats and animated American mascots were going to end up. There were so many lovely references to music and literature and language - so much plain talk and simple actions swooping gracefully through a web of curious reflection and occasional profundity and confusion - so much to taste and consider. It has a quiet and subtle majesty. I found myself thinking so many times how this clearly Japanese author had such a facility with the English tongue. I can read about him now, but I just wanted to read more of the story.

Murakami's book has a gentle absurdity that never becomes hateful. Even the bloody murders seem to evoke the lightest kind of obligation, the kind that is never questioned from characters who are incapable of stepping outside of themselves and offering special opprobrium. What is taken must be replaced. What is opened must be closed. Over generations if it must be. Time is not so important here, but what is unspoken remains inevitably true. All theory is followed lightly, logically and we live in the margins of certainty until we don't.

Ah Nakata. You are our simple selves. We knew you when we saw you, but never before, only knowing someone was out there to know. Now we know.