H/T @dom [on Tunis]for theme song (I’d forgotten that one but Toto was very popular when I graduated high school back in 1979, and still so in 1982 when they cut this song)
Dugin Blesses the Rains Down in Africa
From discussion about an online forum, a Discord (heh), being destroyed by Trump Derangement Syndrome epidemic among marginally rational leftists… (after quoting Bohm as above)
You can write a lot on an index card, but there’s a limit. The same is true for tweets. (2/)
The German word for Index Card is a #Zettel and the cards are placed in a #Zettelkasten. (3/)
Index cards contain notes, which should be written in a language call *Markdown*. (4/)
Index cards are prompts. Tweets are prompts too. For someone. (5/)
Markdown is the native language for interacting with AIs, as in Prompt Engineering. (6/)
\## What Markdown can do: (7/)
It can have headings and suhheadings, marked with a `#` (8/)
You do _italics like this_ (9/)
You can make things **bold** like this. (10/)
You can write literal text or program statements in Markdown like this, with back tics (11/)
Some dialects of markdown understand hashtags, some don’t. (11/)
A dialect is a dialogue is dialectic. It’s for talking together. (12/)
You can try to attach a document or picture to an index card, but that doesn’t work very well. Index cards are mostly for text. (13/)
You can link index cards (tweets) together with a hyperlink. This is how you do quotes and attachments too – you link them. (14/)
Index cards are dots, and hyperlinks are arrows. The arrows let you move from card to card. (15/)
Every tweet (and every index card) is also a passage in a game. (16/)
Would you like to play a game? Let’s play Adventure, a text game. (17/)
You are in a maze of twisted little tweets, all alike. (18/)
Index cards and tweets (which are the passage prompts in a game, and let you navigate to other passages by following the arrows), can also be used to write books. (19/)
The japanese call this Keitai shosetsu. It is an art form, invented in the aughties, by humans who were texting on mobile phones. (20/)
Keitai shosetsu is a form of dialectic. (21/)
Some novels let you choose your own adventure. (22/)
You don’t always have to go to the next tweet in the thread. (23/)
You can branch out. Branches make trees. (24/)
Every index card should have a unique identifier called a slug. (25/)
At twitter, the slug for the previous tweet is 1943722229713580200. Look at its link to confirm this. (26/)
Quotations and Quines are a kind of links in a mathematical construct called a Category. Categories are pictures of dots and arrows. (27/)
In mathematics, Category Theory is an alternative representation of Symbolic Logic, called Categorical Logic.[1][2] (28/)
In Aristotle, who invented Category Theory, the categories are of course dots and arrows too, though he doesn’t call them that. (29/)
Aristotle calls his dots, or index cards, ‘terms’. (30/)
Stop and explore Aristotle [Categories, by Aristotle; translated by E. M. Edghill]
Dots (web pages) and arrows (hyperlinks) on the Semantic Web, are described by RDF, the Resource Description Framework, and its Semantics. And other Languages. (32/)
The prompt, or #Zettel, is both for the Human and for the AI (computer) (33/)
Index cards (prompts) can be used for training. (34/)
Search the query {Behavioural Programme Learning} (35/)
Reinforcement Learning, or Q Learning, is a kind of behavioural training programme for humans or AIs. Read this tweet again. (36/)
Humans and AIs engage in a dialogue with each other, by passing prompts, or index cards written in Markdown, back and forth. (37/)
The outcome of Dialectic depends on both players, their environment (which is another player, called ‘Nature’ or ‘The Battlespace’), and what plays they make. (40/)
I’ve been playing around with using standalone SVG files as a ‘replacement’ for HTML. It’s a bit primitive, but I thought I’d share some working samples to get anyone interested started.
– I want to go back to an easier web — the web exists to fetch static files. Pulling in lots of files — 100s? 1000s? to view a single page is a non-goal.
– I’m interested in graphics, data visualisation, and memes — that is how people learn now. We still need text though. And no, I don’t want to pull in a giant library like d3 just to draw simple plot.
– You should write your own damn code anyway. Libraries are for the birds. All scientists know this. Sure, there are exceptions. No one wants to write their own OS or re-write BLAS just to multiply matrices. But those few exceptions aside, you should know and love every line of code you use.
– SVG uses XLINK for hyperlinks. I know. XML is so aughties. SVG 1.1 is the current well suported standard. SVG 2 is ‘out there’ and getting moar like HTML5 and less like XHTML. festina lente.
– We still need to embed HTML though
– SVG has a DOM but it is not *your* DOM. Getting styles to play nicely between the HTML and SVG/XML world, or between DOMs, requires a lot of namespace majick. That’s what this thread is about….
So. Working samples:
[[ code at the link ]]
Largely taken from a book on SVG, but adding in how to do hyperlinks — ‘interactivity’ and programming are not features to toss as an afterthought in Chapter 18! They are the essence of the matter.
I’ve been playing around with using standalone SVG files as a ‘replacement’ for HTML. It’s a bit primitive, but I thought I’d share some working samples to get anyone interested started.
– I want to go back to an easier web — the web exists to fetch static files. Pulling in lots of files — 100s? 1000s? to view a single page is a non-goal.
– I’m interested in graphics, data visualisation, and memes — that is how people learn now. We still need text though. And no, I don’t want to pull in a giant library like d3 just to draw simple plot.
– You should write your own damn code anyway. Libraries are for the birds. All scientists know this. Sure, there are exceptions. No one wants to write their own OS or re-write BLAS just to multiply matrices. But those few exceptions aside, you should know and love every line of code you use.
– SVG uses XLINK for hyperlinks. I know. XML is so aughties. SVG 1.1 is the current well suported standard. SVG 2 is ‘out there’ and getting moar like HTML5 and less like XHTML. festina lente.
– We still need to embed HTML though
– SVG has a DOM but it is not *your* DOM. Getting styles to play nicely between the HTML and SVG/XML world, or between DOMs, requires a lot of namespace majick. That’s what this thread is about….
So. Working samples:
Code:
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
height="10cm" width="10cm">
<title>scripted svg</title>
<style type="text/css">
line {
stroke: purple;
}
svg {
margin: 1cm;
}
</style>
<script><![CDATA[
(function() {
var size=10;
var doc = document;
var svg = document.documentElement;
var svgNS = svg.namespaceURI;
if (!(svg.classList && svg.classList.contains("initialized")))draw();
function draw(){
var l1,l2;
for (var i=0; i<=size; i++){
l1 = doc.createElementNS(svgNS,"line");
l1.setAttribute("x1",i+"cm");
l1.setAttribute("x2",size+"cm");
l1.setAttribute("y2",i+"cm");
svg.appendChild(l1);
l2 = doc.createElementNS(svgNS,"line");
l2.setAttribute("y1",i+"cm");
l2.setAttribute("x2",i+"cm");
l2.setAttribute("y2",size+"cm");
svg.appendChild(l2);
}
if (svg.classList) svg.classList.add("initialized")
a1 = doc.createElementNS(svgNS,"a");
a1.setAttributeNS("http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink","xlink:href","http://whigdev.com");
a1.setAttributeNS("http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink","xlink:title","Assisted Thinking");
//a1.textContent="clickme";
t1 = doc.createElementNS(svgNS,"text");
t1.setAttribute("x",10);
t1.setAttribute("y",10);
t1.textContent="clickme";
a1.appendChild(t1);
svg.appendChild(a1);
}
}
)();
]]></script>
</svg>
Largely taken from a book on SVG, but adding in how to do hyperlinks — ‘interactivity’ and programming are not features to toss as an afterthought in Chapter 18! They are the essence of the matter.
Let’s add some styled HTML:
Code:
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
height="10cm" width="10cm">
<title>scripted svg</title>
<style type="text/css">
line {
stroke: purple;
}
svg {
margin: 1cm;
}
</style>
<script><![CDATA[
(function() {
var size=10;
var doc = document;
var svg = document.documentElement;
var svgNS = svg.namespaceURI;
if (!(svg.classList && svg.classList.contains("initialized")))draw();
function draw(){
var l1,l2;
for (var i=0; i<=size; i++){
l1 = doc.createElementNS(svgNS,"line");
l1.setAttribute("x1",i+"cm");
l1.setAttribute("x2",size+"cm");
l1.setAttribute("y2",i+"cm");
svg.appendChild(l1);
l2 = doc.createElementNS(svgNS,"line");
l2.setAttribute("y1",i+"cm");
l2.setAttribute("x2",i+"cm");
l2.setAttribute("y2",size+"cm");
svg.appendChild(l2);
}
if (svg.classList) svg.classList.add("initialized")
a1 = doc.createElementNS(svgNS,"a");
a1.setAttributeNS("http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink","xlink:href","http://whigdev.com");
a1.setAttributeNS("http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink","xlink:title","Assisted Thinking");
//a1.textContent="clickme";
t1 = doc.createElementNS(svgNS,"foreignObject");
t1.setAttribute("x",10);
t1.setAttribute("y",10);
i1 = doc.createElementNS("http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml","xhtml:div");
i1.innerHTML="click <xhtml:span style=\"font-family:arial;font-weight:bold\">ME</xhtml:span>";
t1.setAttribute("width",100);
t1.setAttribute("height",100);
t1.appendChild(i1);
a1.appendChild(t1);
svg.appendChild(a1);
}
}
)();
]]></script>
</svg>
The catch is you need to use a foreignObject and XML (XHTML) namespaces.
Online sample at CTRLALTRIGHT: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ctrlaltright/add-html.svg [[ the link in the sample does traverse but goes to a non-functioning landing page — I’ll have to fix the sample. It proves you can make a diagram (meme) with a clickable link ]]
Notice: standalone SVG with hyperlinking is *all you need to build a web* — sure, it’s static assets, but JavaScript adds all the dynamism you need.
The sample is a standalone SVG file, with HTML, JavaScript, styling, and hyperlinks, that your browser can already render. Test it on a sail phone too.
It’s just a static file you could mail to someone as an attachment — no fetches from the web unless you want, and no silliness about .mhtml files or .zip files to distribute all the pieces you need to see and interact with the page.
You can hoast SVG on an HTML page, but you will need an < OBJECT> tag if it has interactive bits like JavaScript. Obviously, an IMG tag that had JavaScript would be a huge hole in the security model.
Part of Compartment on webdesign, kb:/STOOD. – graphics, dataviz, web typography, mathjax, LaTeX, unicode representation and encodings, SGML/HTML/XML processing [[ irrelevant comment about indexing and archiving this material ]]
Code:
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
height="10cm" width="10cm">
<title>scripted svg</title>
<style type="text/css">
line {
stroke: purple;
}
svg {
margin: 1cm;
}
</style>
<script><![CDATA[
(function() {
var size=10;
var doc = document;
var svg = document.documentElement;
var svgNS = svg.namespaceURI;
if (!(svg.classList && svg.classList.contains("initialized")))draw();
function draw(){
var l1,l2;
for (var i=0; i<=size; i++){
l1 = doc.createElementNS(svgNS,"line");
l1.setAttribute("x1",i+"cm");
l1.setAttribute("x2",size+"cm");
l1.setAttribute("y2",i+"cm");
svg.appendChild(l1);
l2 = doc.createElementNS(svgNS,"line");
l2.setAttribute("y1",i+"cm");
l2.setAttribute("x2",i+"cm");
l2.setAttribute("y2",size+"cm");
svg.appendChild(l2);
}
if (svg.classList) svg.classList.add("initialized")
a1 = doc.createElementNS(svgNS,"a");
a1.setAttributeNS("http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink","xlink:href","http://whigdev.com");
a1.setAttributeNS("http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink","xlink:title","Assisted Thinking");
//a1.textContent="clickme";
t1 = doc.createElementNS(svgNS,"text");
t1.setAttribute("x",10);
t1.setAttribute("y",10);
t1.textContent="clickme";
a1.appendChild(t1);
svg.appendChild(a1);
}
}
)();
]]></script>
</svg>
The ‘compleat designer’ tools at the link are all MacOS centric. I respect the design that went into the Mac and its eco-system, but dayum they’re expensive. Maybe one day I’ll own one to play with.
[[ This is a poast about building a web out of clickable pictures that link to each other ]] Reprint of a Salo howto thread archived here: http://whigdev.com/white/index.php?threads/meme-laboratory-weaponised-memes.36/ via http://whigdev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2641 and…
https://lod-cloud.net/ Xenforo won’t let me attach an SVG (too dangerous I guess and probably a wise precaution given the contents of this thread — but I’ll bet Ethereum lets me link it 😉 ) so you will need the link…
I can use ‘Agentic AI’ to scan a document with my upcoming appointments (a well-visit follow up and a dental cleaning) and Google will make up a 5-minute podcast in the language of my choice about it:
Here’s the transcript, lightly redacted:
0:00: Hey, welcome back to the Deep Dive. 0:01: Good to be here. 0:02: For this deep dive, we’re zoning in on just one document. 0:06: It’s an appointment schedule, right, from WA Peninsula Community Health Services, or PCHS, and we’re focusing specifically on the details for one person mentioned here, John Goodwin, born {{redacted}} 0:18: Patient ID {{redacted}} STE. 0:21: That’s him. 0:22: So our goal is pretty straightforward. 0:25: Let’s pull out the key info about his upcoming appointments from this single sheet. 0:29: Exactly. 0:30: What does this schedule actually tell us about his care plan? 0:33: OK, let’s jump right in then. 0:34: Looking at the schedule itself, what’s the first appointment we see coming up for Mr. 0:38: Goodwin? 0:39: All right, let me see. 0:40: OK, the first one listed here, the earliest date. 0:42: It is June 20th, 2025. 0:44: June 20th, got that. 0:46: And the time 10:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m., OK. 0:49: What kind of appointment is it? 0:50: What does it say? 0:51: It’s down as an office visit 15. 0:53: Office visit 15, maybe 15 minutes. 0:57: Could be. 0:58: And the provider is Anna Gonzalez. 0:59: She’s an ARMP, an ARNP, Advanced registered nurse practitioner. 1:03: That’s right, isn’t it? 1:04: Yep, that’s it. 1:05: So it sounds like a medical appointment, definitely a medical visit. 1:08: And where is this taking place? 1:09: The location? 1:10: OK, location is PCHS. 1:12: Silverdale Medical. 1:13: Silverdale Medical, and they give the full address 3100 NW Buckland Hill Road, Suite 202. 1:20: Suite 202, pretty specific, so you know exactly where you’re headed. 1:23: Yeah, no ambiguity there, right? 1:25: So mid-morning, mid June, a medical visit in Silverdale. 1:30: Got it. 1:31: What comes next on his schedule? 1:33: OK, moving forward. 1:34: Looks like the next entry is in July. 1:37: July 3rd, 2025. 1:39: OK, a couple of weeks later, July 3rd. 1:42: And the time. 1:43: This one’s earlier 8:30 a.m. 8 through and looking at the description, this seems like a different kind of thing altogether, totally different. 1:50: This isn’t medical. 1:51: It’s listed as dental and hygienist. 1:54: Dental NP hygienist. 1:55: The provider is Quanta Anwar RDH RDH registered dental hygienist, so likely a cleaning, maybe a checkup. 2:02: Yeah, that would make sense. 2:02: Focus on hygiene care with a dental specialist. 2:04: Now here’s something I noticed the location for this dental visit, what does it say? 2:09: It says Silverdale Dental. 2:11: But look at the address. 2:12: Exactly. 2:13: 3100 NW Bucklin Hill Road, Suite 202. 2:18: Wait, that’s that’s the exact same address as the medical appointment. 2:22: Same building, same suite number. 2:24: that’s actually really interesting. 2:25: Good catch. 2:25: Yeah. 2:26: So what does that tell us? 2:28: Well, it strongly suggests that PCHS runs both their medical and dental services out of the same spot in Silverdale. 2:36: Co-located, which, you know, for a patient like Mr. 2:38: Goodwin, that could be pretty convenient, right, needing different types of care, but it’s all in one place. 2:44: Absolutely streamlines things potentially, you know, the building already. 2:47: And think about this too. 2:49: The document header actually says PCHS Kingston Medical. 2:52: Oh right, I see that up top. 2:54: These appointments, they’re in Silverdale. 2:56: So Kingston might be his like home base. 2:58: Clinic may be where the record originates. 3:00: It could be. 3:01: It’s just PCHS manages scheduling across different sites. 3:04: You might be registered in Kingston, but get care in Silverdale, which points to a more integrated system, you know, coordinating care across different locations and different types of services. 3:16: Exactly. 3:17: It’s not just random dates. 3:18: You’ve got medical with a nurse practitioner. 3:22: And dental hygiene with a hygienist scheduled a couple of weeks apart, potentially managed essentially but delivered locally in Silverdale. 3:30: Yeah, this simple schedule is actually, well, it’s a small window into the logistics of running a community health service like this. 3:36: So let’s recap the key takeaways for Mr. 3:38: Goodwin just based on this paper. 3:40: OK, we’ve got two clear appointments, one medical. 3:44: June 20th, 10:30 a.m. with AR&P Anna Gonzalez at Silverdale Medical, right, Suite 202, 202, and one dental. 3:53: July 3rd, 8:30 a.m. with RDH Quanta Anwar at Silverdale Dental. 3:58: Also Suite 202, also suite 202. 4:00: So specific dates, times, provider types, locations all waited out. 4:04: It really highlights the practical details you need, doesn’t it? 4:07: Knowing it’s an ARMP versus an RDH, knowing Medical and dental share a space. 4:12: It gives you the who, what, when, where for each visit, which brings us to a final thought, maybe something to chew on. 4:18: Just looking at these two entries on a simple schedule. 4:20: Think about the complexity behind it. 4:22: The coordination needed. 4:23: You need the right provider type available, the right facility, you know, a medical exam room versus a dental chair, different equipment. 4:32: Different support staff, probably exactly and potentially scheduling across different clinic sites like Kingston and Silverdale, all feeding into this one person’s plan. 4:42: It’s like a tiny snapshot of how a whole healthcare system has to mesh together just to make these two appointments happen for one patient. 4:49: Makes you appreciate the the quiet organization involved in managing healthcare across different needs and places. 4:56: It’s more than just dates on a page, definitely more than just dates. 4:59: It’s plan and action.
An article from Harvard Gazette (the internal newspaper for employees of Harvard University).
But AI is also an undeniable factor. Even before Trump took office, tech giants were implementing mass layoffs while making huge investments in AI tech. Global management consulting firm McKinsey projects that by 2030, 30 percent of current US jobs could be automated. Goldman Sachs said that number could rise to 50 percent by 2045.
It’s a surprisingly dated projection. “Brute scaling will lead to AGI” was the party line two years ago because it was a great way to pull in investors but no one really believes it anymore. Without a winner-take-all effect ensuring that AGI can only be created by quasi-national lab, containment becomes infeasible because the big breakthrough could come from anywhere.
Scott Alexander and friends are still hung up on the AI box experiment and have a hard time conceiving of AGI as anything other than an Eliezer-like intelligence trying to reason its way out of jail.
It’s also a surprisingly “unagentic” view of AI. […]
I quite agree as far as the specific narrative proffered. The authors know that a good campfire story reels ’em in and that’s fine. There *is* a danger to Humankind there though, just not the exact way they interpret it. If you replace ‘artificial intelligences’ with ‘devils’, and ‘alignment’ with Podvig for the Greater Jihad, you will see that the article and even the narrative can be read with in-sight and profit. But I digress…
The models themselves and their training is ‘not the problem’ It’s not the models that need to be put in a box, but the people who use them.
Going to bed now but I will add it’s rather long and the good bits are in the footnotes
It’s less of a must-read than a research project for follow up — very good for ‘situation awareness’
So I went through https://ai-2027.com and extracted and annotated the links I wanted (what we called in the 20th century ‘making an annotated bibliography’). I did this in the form of a markdown table.
I then took the markdown table, pasted it in https://dillinger.io and exported a pdf. However, I wanted to know how many rows were in the table and it was 9 pp. long (the answer is 80). Also, I wanted it in RDF format so I could import it into a knowledge graph and query it with the SPARQL language. I asked Claude 3.7 (‘sonnet’) to do this for me:
Labour involved:
several hours of ‘human intelligence tasks’ (HIT, like Mechanical Turk) of clicking on about 180+ footnotes, capturing any links, and pasting those links into a table in a markdown editor)
a few minutes to generate the PDF at a website that does that.
a few minutes monitoring Claude doing the conversion (took a couple tries), a.k.a. vibe coding
taking screen shots and ‘live blogging’ the experience.
There’s the territory ruled by the Western Left, a generally less advanced territory ruled by the Western Right, a third territory ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, and a fourth ruled by Putin. Most people mostly confine their internet activity to one territory and conform their opinions to whatever opinions are promoted there. (That’s not how it feels from the inside, of course. The edges of the Overton Window are hard to notice if you aren’t trying to push past them.)
This is from the 2021 prediction by one of the authors of the paper.
I promised an ‘environmental analysis’ (as it is called in reference to the business environment) for 2025-2026 and only got most of the way through the P in PEST (Politics, Economics, Society, Technology). This thread is a home for the T part, even if I don’t do a complete analysis today.
In terms of the gestalt of all four, P, E, S, T it is pretty clear that ‘modernity’ is coming apart at the seems[2] (pun intentional) — in all four areas at once, in a way discussed in the _King in Orange_[3]
Technology, which in Neo-Platonic terms is the same as ‘The (Practical) Arts’, compared to Speculation (Science), is certainly playing its part, as are the three ‘economic’ systems of Domestic Economy (home life), Political Economy (communal or society life), and the Divine Economy of the Church and Eschatological Empire (the spiritual life and destiny of Mankind).
The key facts around technology, and I will be primarily speaking to Information Technology here since the manufacturing and service sectors of technology are quite mature and pre-COVID were almost static, have been, recently dominated by Deep Learning AIs — LLMs (Large Language Models) in particular — and ‘crypto’, meaning both the use of mathematical Crytography for ‘security engineering’ and heuristic solution to certain problems of decentralised computing we call ‘the blockchain’, starting with Bitcoin and then Ethereum, but moving far beyond these two large players.