Fragments

I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.

And so it is with written words; you might think they spoke as if they had intelligence, but if you question anything that has been said because you want to learn more, it continues to signify just that very same thing forever. When it has once been written down, every discourse rolls about everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it, and it doesn't know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not. And when it is faulted and attacked unfairly, it always needs its father's support; alone, it can neither defend itself nor come to its own support.

via THE HOMEBOUND SYMPHONY

Because for many thousands of years it was thought that things (nature, tools, property of all kinds) were also alive and animate, with the power to cause harm and to evade human purposes, the feeling of impotence has been much greater and much more common among men than it would otherwise have been: for one needed to secure oneself against things, just as against men and animals, by force, constraint, flattering, treaties, sacrifices - and here is the origin of most superstitious practices, that is to say, of a considerable, perhaps preponderant and yet wasted and useless constituent of all the activity hitherto pursued by man! - But because the feeling of impotence and fear was in a state of almost continuous stimulation so strongly and for so long, the feeling of power has evolved to such a degree of subtlety that in this respect man is now a match for the most delicate gold-balance. It has become his strongest propensity; the means discovered for creating this feeling almost constitute the history of culture.

– Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality Friedrich Nietzsche

Secret conversational extract

we aren't making any progress at all. it always looks terrible. rethink the entire approach of how you are drawing to the screen, and make sure that you are updating the display correctly. none of the changes that you are making have any effect, think hard and do something different

Good morning!

Coined in 1987, the term Knowledge Navigator described a future computing system and how people might use it to navigate worlds of knowledge. In a sense, the user is actually the “Knowledge Navigator,” though the term often refers to the system’s primary interface, a tablet computer. That part (i.e., the tablet) often stands for the whole system. – WikiPedia

I love that Le Mistral is in Le France and you can Essayez notre API to use Le Chat.

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson The Conduct of Life (1860) ‘Worship’

Hit my usage limits twice in one day.

Update

Mounted the starlink mini onto the roof of one car. Drove around into a zillion different previously dead zones.

Review: just bought a second starlink for the other car.

Read this in the local paper about the local ski mountain, and the birth of snow making.

In Mohawk’s second season, Mohawk did not get any snow and resorted to ordering several tons of ice blocks, crushing them and spreading them on the slopes. This process was time consuming, costly and overall a worse experience than real snow. From this season, Shoenknecht got the idea to look into snowmaking. Shoenknecht enlisted the help of the TEY Manufacturing company, run by Wayne Pierce, Dave Richey and Art Hunt. The three engineers used the research of Ray Ringer to build the first snow making machines. These machines were brought to Mohawk and are the first documented case of a trial run of the snow making machine.

Examining Mohawk Mountain’s rich history - The Lakeville Journal

This winter has been a real one – so much better than last year, there's actual snow on the ground for the last few weeks. The ponds are frozen over, ready for ice skating.

In the years following his major breakthroughs with microwaves, thinking there might be a sort of electrical life to everything, Bose began experiments on vegetables. He attached electric probes to various vegetables, and claimed to record a "death spasm" in the form of a spike in electrical activity. He hooked a cabbage to a voltmeter in front of the playwright George Bernard Shaw, who was reportedly horrified to witness the electrical "convulsion" of the cabbage as it was dropped in boiling water. Shaw, it must be said, was a vegetarian.

– The Light Eaters