You have stumbled upon a repository, crafted, not by an algorithm designed to commercialise you, dear reader, but crafted by an individual. This is a human’s weblog.
Why overdr.ink you may ask? Well, essentially, somewhat late to the party, it has become known that when one puts down the bottle, or whatever your addiction may be, you find more time and inspiration in the world.
This site is to chronicle some aspects of my ‘seizing the day’.
Predominately, I presume will be the Journals of Mini.
There will also be commentary on the twin pathologies of SARS-CoVID-2 and The Religion of Woked
My thoughts on humanity’s ignorant obsession with Energy, its implications on, and my ravings about Geopolitics.
Additionally other journal entries covering my somewhat more frivolous endeavours, Entertain.
Journals of Mini
Being a Gen-X technologist, my use of technology precedes the internet, when as a society, not only did we not have ubiquitous mobile information sharing, but few homes had a computer of any sort. Additionally, being a technologist with a keen interest in humanity’s use of tools, I see my household’s use of fixed computing possibly differently to others.
To my youngest child, the computer, phone or tablet, is only a gateway to his activity of interest.
By the time he is my age, fixed household computing generally will not resemble anything we could recognise in the beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century.
Certainly the technology will be distributed and intrinsically linked to ‘the cloud’. For most of the world’s population, they will have little real control of the technology within their walls or in their hands, for the ecosystem of apps and networks that constitutes the household’s ‘computing activity’ will be owned and operated by transnational robber-barons beyond Bruce Sterling’s Cyberpunk imaginations of the 1980’s.
So, Mini, is the second name I chose for my little home computing cluster. Originally I had thought Greta, due to the somewhat OTT nature of the kit, but I settled upon Mini, arcing back to the Minicomputers of the 1970s which preceded my involvement with personal computers by a few years, but which were prevalent in the writings of those I read and the teachers that taught me computing.
Mini is not only a household computing system, but also a laboratory to learn and teach. I will endeavour to use Mini to teach myself and my offspring, how they may manage their own hybrid-cloud workloads throughout their life. Hopefully enabling them to retain some sovereignty in this brave new world
SARS-CoVID-2 (SARS2) that causes COVID-19 aka The CCP Plague
I choose to write and comment on the insidious pathogen and the disease it causes primarily because it illustrates the dangers of debasing science.
The circle-jerk of science funding/reporting and the inter-relationship with normalising the criminal endeavour of the Communist Bandits (共匪) in Beijing, make this an irresistible window for discussion.
The Religion of Woked
SARS2 (SARS-CoVID-2, not the disease COVID-19) wasn’t the only pathogen causing havoc in the world in 2020.The other disease, highly virulent, caused by an unknown weakness in Liberal Western democracies, was the pseudo-religion of ‘woke’.The contagion, particularly nasty in that it is somewhat asymptotically spred, with the social justice warriors barely aware their noble cause was actually a trojan horse for a dark cocktail of Malthusian anti-humanism and the ever deceitful ideology of Marxism.
The Woked, forever fearful of not knowing the latest incantations necessary to prove their faith to their tribe, tend to turn on their own and ally with the enemy of their enemies. It is due to this self destructive characteristic of the pathogen that I believe The Woked pathogen will snuff itself out, but possibly not before heralding in some dreadful forces, similar to those that nearly destroyed the world in the last century. All the while poisoning our youth, discrediting our accomplishments and invalidating our language.
Beware The Woked.
These posts, tagged ‘woke’, will be where I chronicle some of the more amusing and distressing instances I encounter of this sinister pathogen.
Energy
I was obsessed with the concerns of Peak Oil circa 2007. The actual decline in recoverable reseves of regular crude oil, as predicted by Hubbert, genuinely terrified me.
My actions of the day included studying permaculture and establishing an internet community with a focus on encouraging individuals to share stories on their own journeys to self sufficiency. The Live Local Foundation.
What I was not to know, related the other element of Humans and Energy. The humans it seams will use less energy per-capita as their society’s overall wealth increases.
Furthermore, human innovation, has unlocked vast reserves of hydrocarbon gas that no longer necessitate the panic I had thirteen years ago.
Along the way, electrification of cars and stationary residential batteries became an inspiration. No longer were certain transportation options to be doomed.
The spanner in the works though was the corruption of the environmental movement, which has managed to fool the Western world, and me included for a while, that CO2 is a noxious gas of biblical proportions.
The long and the short, is that; If you want to continue to worry about ‘Climate Change’, nuclear power is the only solution. Failure to lift the world out of poverty with plentiful energy will force developing nations to destroy their environment in order to survive. Renewables are an oxymoron. Solar energy is essentially renewable, harvesting it with photovoltaic panels and wind turbines is not.
If you’ve seen the light, and realise that not only is the world heading towards a longer term deficit in CO2, but that historically it was the warming of the planet that preceded the release of CO2, which tends to increase agricultural efficiency, then; The biggest worry you have is that the Malthusian lunatics and the useful idiots that follow, may actually succeed in destroying the world’s economy, and the environment with it.
In this case, enjoy electric cars that are awesomely quick, very calming to drive with near-limitless torque, though restricted to electric grids for charging, and are hideous to the environment to produce and generally are overly expensive.
Batteries and PV solar panels at home will never pay for themselves, unless the authorities continue to manipulate the electrical market in an almost Soviet-planning level of stupid.
Entertain
Circling back to seizing the day from overdr.ink,
My good fortune in life has enabled me with some free time and wealth to devote to leisure and entertainment. (Chronicling what else I do with free time will probably not foster readership of this little weblog).
I’ll journal and document my explorations of, and not limited to;
- modern flight-simulation, and actual recreational aviation
- the visceral joy of a flat-six boxer engine on winding roads
- design and build, with God’s timbre, Earth’s metals and Human’s electronics
- and various watch/recommend