next_migration | Reading

I suppose that it had to happen sometime.

For years now I have been wearing a hair shirt in protest about the way the internet/computer manufacturer consortium have “ruined the internet”. The hair shirt consisted of used laptops from the local computer recycling organization and buzzed along just fine, but lately the poor old things have been breaking down. My 2012 rebuilt MacBook Air and a 2014 Lenovo are both crippled by hardware issues so I had to go out looking for something new.

When I went to the shop to look for a “quality used car” what I saw was that prices for the newer Macs (they do seem to make good hardware) were not that great. Since my 11 and 13 year old computers were gassing out (I have had them 4+ years) so buying another cheap computer (working 10 year olds run in the $80.00 to $120.00 range) I didn’t want to mess around with hair shirts anymore. I am too old and my decades long protest went unnoticed.

So I went to the least evil of the big retail places (wally world) and they were selling new M1 MacBook Airs for $600.00. Now I suppose that this is Apples gesture to poor folk since a new M4 is more expensive by quite a bit. So I put a crowbar on my wallet and I am pecking away at it now.

I had to make a choice about the “ecosystem” that I wanted to work in. Apple or Google or Microsoft. Essentially, my opinion ended up being Apple as the least scummy of these three. Microsoft is now and has always been “la creme de la scum”. I despise everything that they are. Google is way above MS on the scumometer, but their Chromebook system really isn’t all that useful and is pretty closed and marginal. That left Apple.

It isn’t a super great choice but I suppose that it is something that I can live with. They are a manufacturer of pretty and well built hardware that is on the spendy side but seems to last forever. Their software is pretty much the same as what I have been using except for the annoying decision to keep the window control buttons on the right side rather than the left side, but truthfully, that isn’t that big a deal.

What I am hoping is that this is my last computer. I am hoping that it outlasts me. Apple will try to sell me shit I am not interested in buying, and I think that their intrusive overwatch to get ideas concerning my spending habits will lead them to the logical conclusion that I am not really a part of their market.

So all of this verbiage is my admission that I have been hanging on to a dead idea that the internet isn’t primarily controlled by corporate interests. It is time to look at it as a utility that I spend money on. It has replaced my television for news, it has replaced the post office for mail, it has replaced my newspaper and magazine subscriptions, the connection provided by the funny looking black cube is part of my telephone service.

Nope, this is another aspect of things that I am not particularly thrilled about. The world has changed from my salad days when my opinions and worldview were installed in the meat puppet that carries me around. Most of the promises that were made in the days back then when my e-mail was a PDP-11 on the DARPAnet and I hooked in from home on a 1200 baud modem didn’t pan out. As usual, the world that was promised wasn’t available for delivery.

So my excessive expenditure is the best compromise that I can come up with. It ain’t perfect, the choice limits some choices, but the choice is the best that I can come up with taking into consideration lifespans of both the hardware and the user.

I still don’t like it much. But there is much that I don’t like.

sdi

WAIT A SECOND

When Sphinx asked Oidipous, "What is that which has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed," he answered "man, for as a babe he is four-footed, going on four limbs; as an adult he is two-footed; and as an old man he gets besides a third support in a staff."

This is a myth, and so a mystery teaching; therefore, while Oidipous's answer is "correct," it also hides the true answer, which is man's greater life. The one voice is the soul, which reincarnates in many bodies; the four limbs is when the human soul is originally incarnated in beastly lives, living without virtue; the two limbs is when the human soul is as a "normal" human, living the civic virtues; and the three limbs is when the human soul is initiated (cf. Hesiod receiving a laurel-wood staff from the Mousoi and Teiresias receiving a cornel-wood staff from Athene), living the purificatory virtues. Prior to that, the soul isn't individuated (being a part of the undifferentiated group-soul); after that, it isn't strictly human (or, indeed, strictly individual anymore).

sdi

Oh!

𓃣𓃪𓃧
woof woof woof woof woof woof

There are three canines in the Isis myth: Anoubis, the guard dog; Seth, the dangerous wild dog; Upuat, the tracker, the guide. These are the just same as the three heads of Kerberos, the guardian of Haides, and they represent, collectively, karma in it's three functions: keeping the children safe, keeping the dead in, and showing the living the way back out.

Notice, too, how Anubis is depicted in hieroglyphs lying down; Seth, sitting; and Upuat standing; representing one growing more active as they develop...

degringolade

I've been remarkably passive of late. I just can't seem to work up any angst or curiosity about much of anything. I suppose that I will be accused of "being depressed" because I am not out there "chasing my dream". Truthfully though, It is not depression, it is the simple idea that the world really doesn't give a shit one about how I think things should be run. The world is probably right about this. When I look back at my life and decisions made, there really isn't anything that stands out as being outstanding.

I'm taking a break from thinking about how I think. I'll probably take it up again when the weather gets bad in the fall. My current thinking (in place of the thinking about thinking) is about how everyone seems to love the idea of an apocalypse and gets bent out of shape when you point out that the more likely scenario is that everyone will just have to tighten their belts.

I am definitely not doing any in depth study of the current world events. The first reason is that the organizations reporting are parochial in the extreme. I would say that "both sides" are the problem, but truthfully there aren't just two sides. It is an out of control scrum with no referees and rules that I don't in any way understand. Most importantly, I have no way to register my necessarily uninformed opinion and even if I were to do so, the recipient would not care one little bit.

Walked over to the football field and watched the high school football team begin practices. Whew, they are itty-bitty little guys. Thank god that they are in a small district of small schools. It would be awful if they had to play a big regional school of farmboys. Listening to them talk though, it would seem that a call from the NFL will be coming any day now. I really don't remember being all that cocky. Maybe I was, but I certainly don't remember it.

Not much will be happening this weekend. Medical advice was to put a television camera into an orifice that usually goes the other way to see if repairs need to be made. I get to experience laxatives and clear fluids to prepare for such. Forgive me if I am not thrilled.

sdi

I mentioned before that I think Horos is the star Sirius (Greek Σείριος "scorcher," referring to the "heat" it causes in midsummer; cf. Hesiod, Works and Days 585) and Anoubis is the star Canopus (Greek Κάνωβος—probably derived from Anoubis—the name of the pilot of Menelaus's (=Isis's) ship; cf. Conon, Fifty Stories VIII; Strabo, Geography XVII i §17).

I think I've identified a third star: Upuat (𓄋𓈐𓈐𓈐 "opener of ways") is Procyon (Greek Προκύων "before-dog"), the eighth-brightest star in the entire night sky. (You can see it in the star map I posted earlier: it is the bright star to the left of Orion and above-and-to-the-left of Sirius.) Apparently the name comes because it is seen to rise before Sirius, in the same way that Upuat "opens the way" for the rising soul, identified with Horos/Sirius, in the Pyramid Texts. It is also more northerly than Canopus (the three are more or less in a straight line), suggestive of the dogs that led Isis to Anoubis.

degringolade

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/08/questioning-the-corporation.html

This piece is interesting. Naked Capitalism (NC) is a long time read for me, it is a good place to read things written by smart semi-liberals from the professional managerial class.

Yves is pretty smart, but her point of view is that of a successful yuppie who is torn between the pleasures of the wealth she has garnered, the not-complete internalization of how the game was rigged, and the negative effects that the system has on others not in her class. Sometimes when she gets all pearl-clutchy it gets tiresome.

Overall, the discussion of how small groups of people have gotten together to skim wealth from others (the basis of capitalism) is informative. I do strongly believe that capitalism is always going to happen, it is an effective way of concentrating wealth for the purpose of society. When controlled and watched carefully, it has proven itself effective and sometimes, quite beneficial overall (there have been times when the people who get screwed is a LOT smaller than now, and there will always be someone who gets screwed).

Here in 'Murca, we have forgotten that the corporation serves more than the components that comprise it. "Shareholder Value" is a minor (my guess is 30%) component of the responsibilities of the organization.

Even if we start now, it will take decades and a gargantuan effort to effect this poisonous perception that has grown since the days of Reagan, Bush one, and Clinton.

sdi

ὃ δ’ ἀφήμενος οὐκ ἀλεγίζει οὐδ’ ὄθεται
but he sits apart neither heeding nor caring

(Hera speaking of Zeus. Homer, Iliad XV 106b–7a, as translated by yours truly.)

We homeschool my daughter, and the curriculum we are working from is a Christian curriculum—not surprising, I suppose, as most homeschoolers in the USA are so for religious reasons, and so most of the materials on the market cater to that. In any case, the English textbook she is studying had her working with Christian hymns today, and she was complaining about these; so, as a counterpoint, I read her a few bits and pieces from the Homeric Hymns and Orphic Hymns and Porphyry's Hymn to the Intellect, and we discussed what the point of the hymns are, coming to the conclusion that the hymns in her book were about lowering god to the man, while the hymns I showed her were about raising man to the god. This led to a pretty interesting dialogue:

Daughter. But why should we raise ourselves to Zeus (for example)?

Me. Do you care about the cells in your body?

Daughter. What? ... No, not really. I don't even think about them.

Me. But you are like a "cell" in the "body" of Zeus.

Daughter. So Zeus doesn't care about us?

Me. I don't think so. (That's pretty different from what the hymns in your book say, isn't it?) But you still take care of the cells in your body, don't you?

Daughter. I don't try to, but yeah, I guess I kinda do. I mean, if I didn't, I'd get sick and die.

Me. I think that's how it is with Zeus, too. He doesn't care of us but that doesn't mean he doesn't take care of us. (That's what angels are for, after all!) So to raise yourself to Zeus is to harmonize with Zeus: it's like your cell trying to harmonize with your body. Wouldn't your body work better if all your cells tried to be as aware of the whole as possible?

She went away very contemplative...

sdi

One of my prized possessions, back in the day, was an over-the-top, folio-sized copy of Manly P. Hall's The Secret Teachings of All Ages. (It didn't survive the trip when we fled our old home, alas; but just as well, since it wasn't the direction I needed.)

The highlight of that book, I think, was it's extravagant full-page illustrations by John Augustus Knapp. I had occasion to be looking back over these today, and what do I see in the painting accompanying Hall's essay on Hermetism?

woof woof

Why, it's our old and faithful friend Upuat, waiting to guide us into the ruins of ancient wisdom! Hey there, buddy! Who's a good boy?

degringolade

The Donald is doing something terrible. The Donald is raising taxes. Oh, he is pretending that he is lowering taxes, but really, that just doesn't seem the way things are going from my point of view.

I have never seen the contrived difference between taxes and tariffs. The Donald is raising tariffs because that is where the money is for corporations and rich folk. 15% tariff on manufactured goods from Europe, well buckaroos, no one here in corporate land is going to absorb that (despite the ravings of the Orange), that cost will be passed on to consumers. So what is going to happen is that some PMC types will start paying more for their BMW or Mercedes. I can't say that I am depressed.

Now, I am certain that us lowlifes will be discomfited. Apparently food is included, so my 3,000 mile salads (Made in Mexico) are going to be more expensive in January . But truthfully, they really are a bit of a luxury so I guess I can deal with that. The truth being that I eat less salads in the cold weather anyway.

Nope, from what I see, the tariff will bite primarily to those folks who are either buying status or cheap plastic shit.

I guess that folks will set me right if they disagree. But tariffs are just taxes. For the most part, I can live with how these are being assessed. They might well price some of my luxury items out of my reach, but I can live with that.

Donald is still as dumb as a doorknob though, but I have no problem with tariffs or taxes. Budgets have to be balanced and you have to either raise taxes or lower spending.

degringolade

It is amazing how uninterested I am in just about everything right now. I’m just drinking tea and looking out at the trees. That’s it. I’m content.

degringolade

Lovely Lillies

Les Gens heureux n'ont pas d'histoire

Camus hated that phrase, but then again, Camus was an asshole. But the phrase has some merit when the words are changed a little. Swap out “content” for “happy” and you might get something useful.

I got an email from a friend in Germany the other day, asking what seems to be a fairly simple question:

how capable the leading people of the action-arm of America might be.

Now that is quite the question. Because there are a bunch of action arms here in the US of A. They are quite geographically dispersed and ideologically diverse. We see hints of their presence protesting ICE raids and on January 6th. They surface wearing pussy hats and adorn their lifted pickup trucks with huge American flags.

But I am thinking that taken as a whole, they are not so much an assemblage that have the ability to effect an action, they are too set in the mold of "opposing the other side" than actually trying to accomplish their stated goals.

No, I think that the action arms here in America are pretty sad creatures. They drift along pretty aimlessly until someone/something rouses them from their torpor. But when awakened their activity is to stop the "other side". By having so many competing flavors of these "arms" they manage to cancel each other out when it comes to change of any type so the ship just drifts with the tide.

This isn't saying that there aren't individuals or groups out there who don't have decent goals or who aren't competent, but the overall effect is that no one seems to want to begin the decades long process of making change happen to a large, inertia ridden system that for all the bitching, seems to work well enough overall.

So, here in America, what we have is disparate sets of activists more bent on frustrating the opposition than actually making the effort to put together a sufficiently cohesive and focused coalition to move goals forward (opposition is not a positive forward movement). You can see this happening most noticeably in the Democratic Party where the Democratic Socialists (the folks who seem to have a positive plan) are trying to split away from the main Democratic party. The question that remains is will they shut up and actually get to work or will they turn out to be just a bunch of whiners like the party that calved them.

I think that the trouble that my country and Europe are having is simply the non-problem of sufficiency and projection. The problems seem to stem from the odd situation that there is enough to go around. Hell, I don’t know how it is in Europe, but poor people here in America are probably fatter than the well off. The immigrant problem is because the folks here are unwilling to do the shitty jobs that no one in America wants to do. Taxes are absurdly low (look at the difference between rates in our two countries). Colleges pump out degrees at an alarming rate (this one will probably cause a crisis when the graduates finally figure out that there aren’t dream jobs for everyone).

I think that the “action arms” in both countries will have the same level of competence as they always have had. The percentage of people who are actually capable of accomplishing something (as always, a distressingly small percentage) are going to remain fractured and unfocused, which will mean that they will be ineffective. What is holding them back is that things really aren’t that god-awful and the ideas they peddle to “fix” the “problems” just move the problems around a little and change the order of the queue waiting for seconds at the table.

So, in answer to your question. The folks who constitute the “action arms” are just dandy, thank you very much. Their problem is that there isn’t a decent idea for them to coalesce around.

sdi

Okay, you guys, it's driving me nuts how everyone says "evil livers" and I need to get to the bottom of it. Murray's translation of Sallustios XIX reads,

[...] which is seen about graves, especially the graves of evil livers.

In the original, this is,

ὃ περὶ τοὺς τάφους καὶ μάλιστα τῶν κακῶς ζησάντων ὁρᾶται.

All of these are genitive case, hence "of." τῶν is the definite article. κακῶς is the adjective "bad" or "evil." ζησάντων is the past-tense active participle of ζῶ "to live," therefore... shit.

SALLUSTIOS HIMSELF SAYS "EVIL LIVERS."

degringolade

I think that one of the big reasons that I really can't get all up and huffy about the state of the world is that I do have a pretty good memory and most people really don't.

Having a good memory complicates things. Spending time reading different histories complicates things even more.

Memories are an amalgam of long term storage in a suspect biological matrix that is processed through a set of cultural programming that tries (usually unsuccessfully) to force a set of explanations through an ever shifting set of constructed and self-serving "values".

The human world is what we live in. It is a shifting competition for resources and the power needed to control access to those resources. We here in the West are comfortable at being top dog and intend to stay there. Here in the West, the algorithm has shifted from the workers and soldiers being in a position of greater relative power to one where the priesthood (control of symbols) is fighting to stay on top.

Same as it ever was. The balance is being fought out at the interface between the different groups within our local tribe and our contact points with other tribes.

Get over it, this is the way the world works

sdi

Plotinos says (Enneads III ix §3) that "Soul is Matter to the Intellectual-Principle."

That is, the Intellect is matter to the One; Soul is matter to the Intellect; and Matter is matter to Nature. Conversely, Soul is spirit to Nature; the Intellect is spirit to Soul; and the One is spirit to the Intellect (insofar as the One is anything at all).

To put it another way, we say that the spirit is potential and matter is actualization; our soul is, in potential, what our body becomes in actuality. So it is that while dead, we see but do not act, and while alive, we act but do not see.

But this is only true from the perspective of the material life: the soul itself is the actualization of its potential in the Intellect. So what do souls do when free from all body? They live, just as we do, in the manner peculiar to their sphere...

degringolade

One of the reasons I have been somewhat silent lately is that I have been thinking pretty hard about Voltaire's “Oui, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.”

As a culture, we have moved about as far from this simple suggestion as possible. Everything that happens and every person around me seems to want to draw my attention from my garden to what is perceived by others as problems that I should care about. Events a continent away are parsed in detail to attract my attention and draw my ire. Yet when I look at the "problem", it is really someone else's problem that they attempt to make mine by creating an imaginary linkage between their problem and my life. I would estimate that 99% of the time the linkage does not truly exist.

I have spent nearly ten years now stripping away problems from my own life (which is tending my garden). I have a small garden, bounded by a small retirement, a wee bit of savings, and social security. My garden is currently well kept and the small harvest is sufficient. I am content.

But the electrons that constitute the "news and commentary" spend a great deal of rhetorical energy trying to convince me that the problems in gardens thousands of miles away from me are my problems. I no longer believe this is the case. People killing people 7,000 miles away is not a weed in my garden. The possibility of plastic shit I don't need costing more at the Wal-Mart because the government want to tax plastic shit I don't need isn't my problem. Someone somewhere is not invited to a function because of they have different or different ways of utilizing their genitalia is not my problem. Opinions about others relative poverty or wealth are not my problem.

I suppose that I could construct a chain of potential for all of these problems that would lead me to think somehow these problems are my problems, but I just don't have the inclination or the energy, and the case made by these chains would be weak at best. At the end of the day, I think that it is important to realize that gardens have good and bad years. Weeds happen. Droughts are unwelcome. Pests are annoying.

Now don't get me wrong. I will still bitch about things, but it will be like watching the a storm front come in. I will wonder if the gust front will play itself out across the valley or will it knock down my plants with its squall of hail. But the storm is part of taking care of the garden. I don't have the ability to change the storm, all I can do is deal with the effects.

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Page generated Aug. 9th, 2025 07:56 pm

Planning the Next Great Migration

Reading

Diary: Hair Shirts

Sphinx's Riddle

Dogs Again

Diary: Chillaxing (Also mail to M)

More Dogs

Diary: when you have time (also an email to J)

On Providence

Retracing Old Ground

Diary: Chances are, this will piss you off

Not into it

Essay: Action Arms

On Digestive Organs

Diary: SNAFU

Spirit and Matter

Diary: Cui Bono?

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January 2023

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