On 31 Oct 2024 02:16:13 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> On Thu, 31 Oct 2024 01:57:05 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> Civilization originated in Mesopotamia. I have a book in my shelf on a
>> generalist introduction to the archaeology of the earliest
>> civilizations, and it has a specific set of features that a society has
>> to have to be classed as a “civilization”:
>>
>> * Urbanization
>> * Division of labour
>> * Metalworking
>> * Writing
>
> Obviously written by an archaeologist who thought western civilization
> was hot shit.

Considering the West was not exactly a hotbed of culture at the time, I
would say not.

On 10/30/24 1:33 PM, D wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, 30 Oct 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> On 30/10/2024 09:59, D wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, 30 Oct 2024, rbowman wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, 29 Oct 2024 21:43:13 +0100, D wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Many centuries left. We'll mine the ocean floors, we'll reach for the
>>>>> stars (or at least asteroids). Eventually we'll expand beyond the
>>>>> earth.
>>>>> The people predicting crashes and famines have been wrong every time,
>>>>> except for when alternatives to capitalism has been tried. Then there
>>>>> have been real famines.
>>>>
>>>> I worked summers for the NYS Dept. of Education and the basement
>>>> corridors
>>>> were filled with pallets of newspapers. (and 5 gallon buckets of water,
>>>> reusable as toilets after the Ruskies attacked) I don't know if they
>>>> were
>>>> waiting to be microfilmed or stacked and forgotten.
>>>>
>>>> I mostly read the funnies and old ads but I found a trove of 1929
>>>> editions. "The fundamentals are sound!" as they took the express route
>>>> down from the 30th floor.
>>>>
>>>> I love a good science fiction yarn but I realize the space travel
>>>> genre is
>>>> mostly fiction. The dystopian worlds run by AI probably aren't.
>>>
>>> Well, it is future, so by design fuzzy around the edges. But looking
>>> at the history of the planet, and the fact that despite being capable
>>> of destroying our planet several times over, we've managed not to do
>>> so (with all the crazy people in power) gives me enormous hope. Yes,
>>> I'm an optimist!
>>
>> Oh we wont destroy the planet. Just our own civilization
>> Read Joseph Tainter.
>
> Doubtful. It will change form and shape. We might have a recession or
> two, but it will hardly be the end of civilization.
>
>> He lays it all oy very plainly. A society finds a better way to
>> exploit nature. It grows, and extends, as it does so it needs rules
>> and regulations laws taxes and competent bureaucrats. Then its
>> resource base starts to get strained, and it needs even more
>> complexity and bureaucracy to keep it going.
>> Eventually the quality of people needed to keep it going also runs out.
>> And it collapses into autonomous fragments.
>
> What I think will happen in the near term is that socialism will
> temporarily destroy a lot of value in the world, in line with what
> Joseph says. This is proven, and a fact, and should not surprise anyone.
>
> But as we've done in the past, we learn the lessons, start again. End of
> civilization? Hardly. A bump in the road, definitely.

Perhaps an overly-insular view ? 'Socialism' rarely does
anything good, but what's often ignored is that various
barbarians ARE at the proverbial gate ... eager to exploit
problems.

In short, The World is NOT all about the USA or even
"The West". We trash it, THEY quickly move in. The
'cycles' you see can be fatal today. 1850 is GONE.

On 10/30/24 10:21 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Oct 2024 01:55:35 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>
>> SQL and flat-file DBs are kind of the all-gobbling monsters.
>>
>> But MV is still the better, saner, way to organize many kinds of
>> data.
>
> The trouble with unnormalized fields is: how do you do updates? You have
> to delete all the values and insert them all again.

Updates CAN be annoying. The MAIN prob is that MV field/subfields
and such can be structured in many ways, many possible paradigms.
The 'solution' was a "data dictionary" which outlined how you
were using/structuring the MV fields. This makes it much easier
to do proper updates.

In short it's super-easy to WRITE MV records, but reading
and editing, you need a guide. Even to the end of my career
I very often stored data as MV records, easy to build-up
on the fly. Usually went the PICK way, various ASCII
chars as delimiters.

Creating all new records to deal with what should be MV data,
I'm not sure this is a calculation or storage advantage all
in all. It's just, well, stupid and simple so many just
went that way.

MV DBs still persist - commercial/share-licenced/free(?)
At least SOME understand the reasoning.

On Thu, 31 Oct 2024 01:35:23 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> On 10/30/24 10:21 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 30 Oct 2024 01:55:35 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>>
>>> SQL and flat-file DBs are kind of the all-gobbling monsters.
>>>
>>> But MV is still the better, saner, way to organize many kinds of
>>> data.
>>
>> The trouble with unnormalized fields is: how do you do updates? You have
>> to delete all the values and insert them all again.
>
> Updates CAN be annoying.

Easy way to remove the annoyance: normalize your field values.

On 30/10/2024 20:39, D wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, 30 Oct 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> On 30/10/2024 17:33, D wrote:
>>>
>> And it collapses into autonomous fragments.
>>>
>>> What I think will happen in the near term is that socialism will
>>> temporarily destroy a lot of value in the world, in line with what
>>> Joseph says. This is proven, and a fact, and should not surprise anyone.
>>>
>>> But as we've done in the past, we learn the lessons, start again. End
>>> of civilization? Hardly. A bump in the road, definitely.
>>
>> Well end of THIS civilisation, then.
>> Tainter didn't say that all civilisations end simultaneously.
>>
>> We will descend into near barbarism under Islam, or the chinese will
>> wander in.
>
> I agree to disagree. Hopefully we will never know the answer in case he
> is right, and hopefully we will, if I am! =)

I won't be around to see it.

--
No Apple devices were knowingly used in the preparation of this post.

On 31/10/2024 00:06, rbowman wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Oct 2024 18:33:25 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> But as we've done in the past, we learn the lessons, start again. End of
>> civilization? Hardly. A bump in the road, definitely.
>
> I haven't read Tainter but I have visited most the the Chaco culture sites
> in the US SW. Chaco Canyon is particularly impressive, in the size of the
> primary site and the network of roads to the outliers. The roads are
> enigmatic. There is no evidence the Ansazi used the wheel although there
> are children's pull toys that show they understood the concept.
>
I wasn't aware of this culture. Amazing and thanks for pointing it out,
irrespective of the context of this thread.
> The culture is gone. The same can be said for the Mound Builders in the
> eastern US. You might say civilization was alive and well in contemporary
> Europe, but it was vanishing in the Americas about a millennium ago.
>
Yes. The usual explanation is climate change.

Horses are a sort of 4x4 I supposes. So it was emissions from horses
asses what done it, presumably.

> He was a one trick pony but Miller's 'A Canticle for Leibowitz' os the
> more likely account of the future.

I read it amongst several thousand others, but have forgotten the
plot...googles frantically. Ah yes. akin to the dark ages preservation
of Classical knowledge in monasteries.

I was thinking of that period. Rome's rule over NW Europe became
unsustainable as the communications lines of both products and political
decisions simply got too long. The NW European states were simply
uneconomic to maintain, same as the USA was to Britain. Although it
didn't descend *quite* as far into barbarism...

It took 500 years to begin to re-emerge and 1000 to escape the legacy of
the Graeco Roman culture and start its own - the Renaissance.

And that lasted about 500 years and now the new Dark Ages are upon us,
ruled by superstition, fear and local war lords.

--
“A leader is best When people barely know he exists. Of a good leader,
who talks little,When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,They will say,
“We did this ourselves.”

― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

On Thu, 31 Oct 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Wed, 30 Oct 2024 18:33:25 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> But as we've done in the past, we learn the lessons, start again. End of
>> civilization? Hardly. A bump in the road, definitely.
>
> I haven't read Tainter but I have visited most the the Chaco culture sites
> in the US SW. Chaco Canyon is particularly impressive, in the size of the
> primary site and the network of roads to the outliers. The roads are
> enigmatic. There is no evidence the Ansazi used the wheel although there
> are children's pull toys that show they understood the concept.
>
> The culture is gone. The same can be said for the Mound Builders in the
> eastern US. You might say civilization was alive and well in contemporary
> Europe, but it was vanishing in the Americas about a millennium ago.
>
> He was a one trick pony but Miller's 'A Canticle for Leibowitz' os the
> more likely account of the future.
>

Besides the difficulty of pinning down culture, yes, end of human
civilization, no.

On 31/10/2024 00:16, rbowman wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Oct 2024 21:02:08 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 30 Oct 2024 18:33:03 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>>> We will descend into near barbarism under Islam ...
>>
>> Just a note that Islam played its part in propagating the culture of
>> learning inherited from the ancient Greeks, back when the Christians’
>> idea of “learning” was making elaborately-illuminated copies of their
>> holy books.
>
> Spengler saw the Abbasid Caliphate as the late phase of the Arabian
> culture before it devolved into the Seljuk empire. Al-Andalus is long gone
> to be replaced by fellaheen with suicide vasts.

The Islam of a 1000 years ago was dominated by Persian intellectuals who
had only just been subjugated and forcibly converted to Islam - Omar
Khayaam writes of drinking wine. Hardly fundamentalist.

Once Islam was thrown out of Europe, it became just another middle
eastern death cult
Unfortunately it is one of the few sections of humanity still breeding
beyond replacement rate and looking for new homes. And has the perfect
ideology - the infidel deserves no respect, no honor, and no life.

It is the new Nazism, only this time its not just the Jews, its that
'aryans' as well.

--
Labour - a bunch of rich people convincing poor people to vote for rich
people by telling poor people that "other" rich people are the reason
they are poor.

Peter Thompson

On Thu, 31 Oct 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Wed, 30 Oct 2024 12:43:03 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> Oh but they are. Today they are called mexicans, italians, greek,
>> arabians etc. and from a material and quality of life point of view,
>> they've never had it better.
>
> Tell that to a mestizo picking lettuce in central California.
>

Round them up, and I will tell.

On Thu, 31 Oct 2024, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> On 10/30/24 1:33 PM, D wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Wed, 30 Oct 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>>> On 30/10/2024 09:59, D wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, 30 Oct 2024, rbowman wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, 29 Oct 2024 21:43:13 +0100, D wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Many centuries left. We'll mine the ocean floors, we'll reach for the
>>>>>> stars (or at least asteroids). Eventually we'll expand beyond the
>>>>>> earth.
>>>>>> The people predicting crashes and famines have been wrong every time,
>>>>>> except for when alternatives to capitalism has been tried. Then there
>>>>>> have been real famines.
>>>>>
>>>>> I worked summers for the NYS Dept. of Education and the basement
>>>>> corridors
>>>>> were filled with pallets of newspapers. (and 5 gallon buckets of water,
>>>>> reusable as toilets after the Ruskies attacked) I don't know if they
>>>>> were
>>>>> waiting to be microfilmed or stacked and forgotten.
>>>>>
>>>>> I mostly read the funnies and old ads but I found a trove of 1929
>>>>> editions. "The fundamentals are sound!" as they took the express route
>>>>> down from the 30th floor.
>>>>>
>>>>> I love a good science fiction yarn but I realize the space travel genre
>>>>> is
>>>>> mostly fiction. The dystopian worlds run by AI probably aren't.
>>>>
>>>> Well, it is future, so by design fuzzy around the edges. But looking at
>>>> the history of the planet, and the fact that despite being capable of
>>>> destroying our planet several times over, we've managed not to do so
>>>> (with all the crazy people in power) gives me enormous hope. Yes, I'm an
>>>> optimist!
>>>
>>> Oh we wont destroy the planet. Just our own civilization
>>> Read Joseph Tainter.
>>
>> Doubtful. It will change form and shape. We might have a recession or two,
>> but it will hardly be the end of civilization.
>>
>>> He lays it all oy very plainly. A society finds a better way to exploit
>>> nature. It grows, and extends, as it does so it needs rules and
>>> regulations laws taxes and competent bureaucrats. Then its resource base
>>> starts to get strained, and it needs even more complexity and bureaucracy
>>> to keep it going.
>>> Eventually the quality of people needed to keep it going also runs out.
>>> And it collapses into autonomous fragments.
>>
>> What I think will happen in the near term is that socialism will
>> temporarily destroy a lot of value in the world, in line with what Joseph
>> says. This is proven, and a fact, and should not surprise anyone.
>>
>> But as we've done in the past, we learn the lessons, start again. End of
>> civilization? Hardly. A bump in the road, definitely.
>
>
> Perhaps an overly-insular view ? 'Socialism' rarely does
> anything good, but what's often ignored is that various
> barbarians ARE at the proverbial gate ... eager to exploit
> problems.
>
> In short, The World is NOT all about the USA or even
> "The West". We trash it, THEY quickly move in. The
> 'cycles' you see can be fatal today. 1850 is GONE.
>

In the hunt for votes, modern socialism has abandoned the working class,
since through the marvels of capitalism, they have gotten it too good to
be easily roused to hatred by the socialist demagogues. Instead they open
the gates to the barbarians, in the hope of creating a new under-class.

This is currently massively backfiring in europe, and has led to the
extreme left and extreme right making great progress.

On 31/10/2024 00:25, rbowman wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Oct 2024 12:43:03 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> Oh but they are. Today they are called mexicans, italians, greek,
>> arabians etc. and from a material and quality of life point of view,
>> they've never had it better.
>
> Tell that to a mestizo picking lettuce in central California.

In fact it probably is true. I remember looking at little huts and a few
square yards hacked out of the jungle in the Quintana Roo, with a pig or
two and some chickens, and some sweetcorn growing and thinking. "Ah, the
relics of the Mayan civilisation"

Those people come to the USA because it IS a better life, just as in S
Africa millions flooded into 'black townships' under a racist regime
because life was, even so, better than where they came from.

Like people fled in from Britain's countryside to live in apparent
squalor and poverty in the industrial towns, because it was after all
better than slaving in the fields.

The Rural Idyll supported at best 6 million populations. That grew
rapidly once industrialisation happened...

--
"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow witted
man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest
thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly
persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid
before him."

- Leo Tolstoy

On 31/10/2024 02:16, rbowman wrote:
> On Thu, 31 Oct 2024 01:57:05 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> On 31 Oct 2024 00:06:33 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>>
>>> You might say civilization was alive and well in contemporary Europe,
>>> but it was vanishing in the Americas about a millennium ago.
>>
>> Civilization originated in Mesopotamia. I have a book in my shelf on a
>> generalist introduction to the archaeology of the earliest
>> civilizations,
>> and it has a specific set of features that a society has to have to be
>> classed as a “civilization”:
>>
>> * Urbanization * Division of labour * Metalworking * Writing
>
> Obviously written by an archaeologist who thought western civilization was
> hot shit. Spengler puts civilization as the late stage of a culture before
> its decline.

I don't see how we can judge a civilisation - or any other form of
social organisation, belief system or whatever, except by its ability
to support a large gene pool and its longevity.

Western shit hasn't done badly in that respect. So far

--
You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a
kind word alone.

Al Capone

On 31/10/2024 04:25, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
> On 10/30/24 1:33 PM, D wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Wed, 30 Oct 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>>> On 30/10/2024 09:59, D wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, 30 Oct 2024, rbowman wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, 29 Oct 2024 21:43:13 +0100, D wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Many centuries left. We'll mine the ocean floors, we'll reach for the
>>>>>> stars (or at least asteroids). Eventually we'll expand beyond the
>>>>>> earth.
>>>>>> The people predicting crashes and famines have been wrong every time,
>>>>>> except for when alternatives to capitalism has been tried. Then there
>>>>>> have been real famines.
>>>>>
>>>>> I worked summers for the NYS Dept. of Education and the basement
>>>>> corridors
>>>>> were filled with pallets of newspapers. (and 5 gallon buckets of
>>>>> water,
>>>>> reusable as toilets after the Ruskies attacked) I don't know if
>>>>> they were
>>>>> waiting to be microfilmed or stacked and forgotten.
>>>>>
>>>>> I mostly read the funnies and old ads but I found a trove of 1929
>>>>> editions. "The fundamentals are sound!" as they took the express route
>>>>> down from the 30th floor.
>>>>>
>>>>> I love a good science fiction yarn but I realize the space travel
>>>>> genre is
>>>>> mostly fiction. The dystopian worlds run by AI probably aren't.
>>>>
>>>> Well, it is future, so by design fuzzy around the edges. But looking
>>>> at the history of the planet, and the fact that despite being
>>>> capable of destroying our planet several times over, we've managed
>>>> not to do so (with all the crazy people in power) gives me enormous
>>>> hope. Yes, I'm an optimist!
>>>
>>> Oh we wont destroy the planet. Just our own civilization
>>> Read Joseph Tainter.
>>
>> Doubtful. It will change form and shape. We might have a recession or
>> two, but it will hardly be the end of civilization.
>>
>>> He lays it all oy very plainly. A society finds a better way to
>>> exploit nature. It grows, and extends, as it does so it needs rules
>>> and regulations laws taxes and competent bureaucrats. Then its
>>> resource base starts to get strained, and it needs even more
>>> complexity and bureaucracy to keep it going.
>>> Eventually the quality of people needed to keep it going also runs out.
>>> And it collapses into autonomous fragments.
>>
>> What I think will happen in the near term is that socialism will
>> temporarily destroy a lot of value in the world, in line with what
>> Joseph says. This is proven, and a fact, and should not surprise anyone.
>>
>> But as we've done in the past, we learn the lessons, start again. End
>> of civilization? Hardly. A bump in the road, definitely.
>
>
>   Perhaps an overly-insular view ? 'Socialism' rarely does
>   anything good, but what's often ignored is that various
>   barbarians ARE at the proverbial gate ... eager to exploit
>   problems.
>
Yup. They are. And unlike the Western cultures they seek to replace,
they have no dounts at all.
They are better, we are shit and we need to be genocidally excised.
Women raped and turned into sex slaves in time honored fashion.

>   In short, The World is NOT all about the USA or even
>   "The West". We trash it, THEY quickly move in. The
>   'cycles' you see can be fatal today. 1850 is GONE.

We haven't trashed it yet, but they will.

In the dying years of apartheid I worked alongside a really cool Zulu
guy from Soweto. We were, insofar as it was possible, friends.

He used to get the propaganda from the Cuban Communists at the weekend
and ask me about it the next week:

"How come the white man rules over us?"
"Because they, and I, know how to build a rifle, and you do not"

"Why do I have to speak English instead of Zulu"

"What's the name of this (picking up a cross head screwdriver) in Zulu"
"We don't have a name for it".

And so on.

The problem is without that core of knowledge and the right worldview
science and technology comes to a halt with (fundamental) Islam. And
indeed the peoples of - say - Zimbabwe under a Russian style genocidally
racist totalitarian black regime.

If you think that Allah decides what happens, instead of the laws of
nature, what is the point in even trying to make stuff different?
Insh'allah.

If you reject 'white mans' knowledge on racist grounds, well bye bye hi
tech.

And I suspect that is what will happen. If the chinese dont take over,
the barbarians will. And will be welcomed by those who have been taught
to hate their own culture and fear science.

--
In todays liberal progressive conflict-free education system, everyone
gets full Marx.

On Thu, 31 Oct 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 30/10/2024 20:39, D wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Wed, 30 Oct 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>>> On 30/10/2024 17:33, D wrote:
>>>>
>>> And it collapses into autonomous fragments.
>>>>
>>>> What I think will happen in the near term is that socialism will
>>>> temporarily destroy a lot of value in the world, in line with what Joseph
>>>> says. This is proven, and a fact, and should not surprise anyone.
>>>>
>>>> But as we've done in the past, we learn the lessons, start again. End of
>>>> civilization? Hardly. A bump in the road, definitely.
>>>
>>> Well end of THIS civilisation, then.
>>> Tainter didn't say that all civilisations end simultaneously.
>>>
>>> We will descend into near barbarism under Islam, or the chinese will
>>> wander in.
>>
>> I agree to disagree. Hopefully we will never know the answer in case he is
>> right, and hopefully we will, if I am! =)
>
> I won't be around to see it.

I'm sorry to hear that. =(

On Thu, 31 Oct 2024 09:16:32 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

>> The culture is gone. The same can be said for the Mound Builders in the
>> eastern US. You might say civilization was alive and well in
>> contemporary Europe, but it was vanishing in the Americas about a
>> millennium ago.
>>
> Yes. The usual explanation is climate change.
>
> Horses are a sort of 4x4 I supposes. So it was emissions from horses
> asses what done it, presumably.

Can't blame the horses; they came with Cortes in 15 something. A Hohokam
site like Casa Grande was abandoned around 1450. It was a ruin by the time
Father Kino got there in 1694.

The explanation for that one is the irrigation ditches silted in and the
Gila changed course, as rivers will, making the site untenable. The
mysterious part is they didn't pack up and move to a more favorable
location. The culture apparently disappeared.

When I visited Chaco I talked to a Navajo (Dine) ranger. The Navajo
themselves were late arrivals and didn't have a clue. When he took the job
at Chaco his family was upset since they considered the site bad juju.

The east is the same. Some of the mounds had intrusive burials by later
cultures. They didn't know what had went before but figured the mounds
were an appropriate place to plant the dead.

On 2024-10-31, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> If you reject 'white mans' knowledge on racist grounds, well bye bye hi
> tech.
>
> And I suspect that is what will happen. If the chinese dont take over,
> the barbarians will. And will be welcomed by those who have been taught
> to hate their own culture and fear science.

It's odd, though, how these barbarians, however anti-tech they may be,
manage to hold on to enough technology to create weapons.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey

On 31/10/2024 18:17, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2024-10-31, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> If you reject 'white mans' knowledge on racist grounds, well bye bye hi
>> tech.
>>
>> And I suspect that is what will happen. If the chinese dont take over,
>> the barbarians will. And will be welcomed by those who have been taught
>> to hate their own culture and fear science.
>
> It's odd, though, how these barbarians, however anti-tech they may be,
> manage to hold on to enough technology to create weapons.
>
Or are they simply paying someone else?
Only the Iranians have any technological nous.
Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Morocco, Algeria..,Somalia...

Not exactly putting men on the moon are they?

--
“when things get difficult you just have to lie”

― Jean Claud Jüncker

On Thu, 31 Oct 2024 09:43:57 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> "What's the name of this (picking up a cross head screwdriver) in Zulu"
> "We don't have a name for it".

I suppose “AK-47” is not a term that needs translating. ;)

On Thu, 31 Oct 2024 09:28:20 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> Those people come to the USA because it IS a better life ...

Part of what makes life so miserable in Mexico, Central America, Haiti and
such is the gangs with the guns. Where do they get so many guns, so
cheaply, from? Smuggled from the USA, of course.

The USA makes a big deal of wanting to close its borders to illegal
migrants coming in, but when it comes to stopping illegal guns getting
out, suddenly they’re not so keen.

On Thu, 31 Oct 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 31/10/2024 18:17, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>> On 2024-10-31, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> If you reject 'white mans' knowledge on racist grounds, well bye bye hi
>>> tech.
>>>
>>> And I suspect that is what will happen. If the chinese dont take over,
>>> the barbarians will. And will be welcomed by those who have been taught
>>> to hate their own culture and fear science.
>>
>> It's odd, though, how these barbarians, however anti-tech they may be,
>> manage to hold on to enough technology to create weapons.
>>
> Or are they simply paying someone else?
> Only the Iranians have any technological nous.
> Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Morocco, Algeria..,Somalia...
>
> Not exactly putting men on the moon are they?

Wouldn't those countries mostly just buy AK-47:s from russia?

In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> On 31/10/2024 18:17, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>> On 2024-10-31, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>> If you reject 'white mans' knowledge on racist grounds, well bye bye hi
>>> tech.
>>>
>>> And I suspect that is what will happen. If the chinese dont take over,
>>> the barbarians will. And will be welcomed by those who have been taught
>>> to hate their own culture and fear science.
>>
>> It's odd, though, how these barbarians, however anti-tech they may be,
>> manage to hold on to enough technology to create weapons.
>>
> Or are they simply paying someone else?
> Only the Iranians have any technological nous.
> Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Morocco, Algeria..,Somalia...
>
> Not exactly putting men on the moon are they?

Well you could argue that the USA paid Germans to put them on the
moon.

Videos on YouTube of how they make things in some of those
countries are facinatingly backwards in terms of tech, though often
clever in their own way.

Smartphones seem to be universal though. Somehow the one piece of
tech I choose to live without is the only luxury that people in the
poorest countries appear to always seek out.

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not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) writes:
>In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> On 31/10/2024 18:17, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>> On 2024-10-31, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>> If you reject 'white mans' knowledge on racist grounds, well bye bye hi
>>>> tech.
>>>>
>>>> And I suspect that is what will happen. If the chinese dont take over,
>>>> the barbarians will. And will be welcomed by those who have been taught
>>>> to hate their own culture and fear science.
>>>
>>> It's odd, though, how these barbarians, however anti-tech they may be,
>>> manage to hold on to enough technology to create weapons.
>>>
>> Or are they simply paying someone else?
>> Only the Iranians have any technological nous.
>> Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Morocco, Algeria..,Somalia...
>>
>> Not exactly putting men on the moon are they?
>
>Well you could argue that the USA paid Germans to put them on the
>moon.
>
>Videos on YouTube of how they make things in some of those
>countries are facinatingly backwards in terms of tech, though often
>clever in their own way.
>
>Smartphones seem to be universal though. Somehow the one piece of
>tech I choose to live without is the only luxury that people in the
>poorest countries appear to always seek out.

In the poorest countries, it is the phone that matters, not the
'smart' part. Landline service is spotty at best.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
> Part of what makes life so miserable in Mexico, Central America, Haiti and
> such is the gangs with the guns. Where do they get so many guns, so
> cheaply, from? Smuggled from the USA, of course.
>
> The USA makes a big deal of wanting to close its borders to illegal
> migrants coming in, but when it comes to stopping illegal guns getting
> out, suddenly they’re not so keen.

after "too-big-to-fail" were determined "too-big-to-prosecute" and
"too-big-to-jail" for their major role in economic mess after the turn
of the century ... they were also found to have been "money laundering"
for drug cartels (which was enabling cartels to acquire military grade
equipment and responsible for big uptic in violance on both sides of the
border) ... and settled with (repeated) cases of "deferred prosecution"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_prosecution

in theory they promise to stop doing it ... but if they were found to
continue ... they would be prosecuted ... but in fact, several TBTF
multiple money laudering cases were settled with repeated "deferred
prosecution" (as if previous cases had never existed).

How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs
Are some banks too big to jail?
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-20757032
Banks Financing Mexico Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-06-29/banks-financing-mexico-s-drug-cartels-admitted-in-wells-fargo-s-u-s-deal
Wall Street Is Laundering Drug Money And Getting Away With It
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zach-carter/megabanks-are-laundering_b_645885.html?show_comment_id=53702542
Money Laundering and the Global Drug Trade are Fueled by the
Capitalist Elites
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2010/07/23/money-laundering-and-the-global-drug-trade-are-fueled-by-the-capitalist-elites-by-tom-burghardt/
Money Laundering and the Global Drug Trade are Fueled by the
Capitalist Elites
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20210
The Banksters Laundered Mexican Cartel Drug Money
http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/banksters-laundered-mexican-cartel-drug-money

.... a couple more gone 404, but still at wayback machine:

Too Big to Jail - How Big Banks Are Turning Mexico Into Colombia
https://web.archive.org/web/20100808141220/http://www.taipanpublishinggroup.com/tpg/taipan-daily/taipan-daily-080410.html
Banks Financing Mexico Drug Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal
https://web.archive.org/web/20100701122035/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/06/28/bloomberg1376-L4QPS90UQVI901-6UNA840IM91QJGPBLBFL79TRP1.DTL

.... and has continued

HSBC moved vast sums of dirty money after paying record laundering
fine. FinCEN Files probe reveals Europe's biggest bank aided
massive Ponzi scheme while on probation over ties to drug kingpins.
https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/hsbc-moved-vast-sums-of-dirty-money-after-paying-record-laundering-fine/
Global banks defy U.S. crackdowns by serving oligarchs, criminals and
terrorists. The FinCEN Files show trillions in tainted dollars flow
freely through major banks, swamping a broken enforcement system.
https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/global-banks-defy-u-s-crackdowns-by-serving-oligarchs-criminals-and-terrorists/

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

On 2024-10-31, Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:

> In comp.os.linux.misc The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 31/10/2024 18:17, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> On 2024-10-31, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> If you reject 'white mans' knowledge on racist grounds, well bye bye hi
>>>> tech.
>>>>
>>>> And I suspect that is what will happen. If the chinese dont take over,
>>>> the barbarians will. And will be welcomed by those who have been taught
>>>> to hate their own culture and fear science.
>>>
>>> It's odd, though, how these barbarians, however anti-tech they may be,
>>> manage to hold on to enough technology to create weapons.
>>>
>> Or are they simply paying someone else?
>> Only the Iranians have any technological nous.
>> Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Morocco, Algeria..,Somalia...
>>
>> Not exactly putting men on the moon are they?

Good point. There are plenty of people who will eagerly use
(acquired) technology to destroy the societies that created it.
Then they can happily slip back into the dark ages.

> Well you could argue that the USA paid Germans to put them on the
> moon.
>
> Videos on YouTube of how they make things in some of those
> countries are facinatingly backwards in terms of tech, though often
> clever in their own way.

Yes, I recently saw a video of someone on the street in India
rebuilding a starter motor. Primitive but effective. Meanwhile,
others in the background were overhauling heavy equipment.
You do what you gotta do.

> Smartphones seem to be universal though. Somehow the one piece of
> tech I choose to live without is the only luxury that people in the
> poorest countries appear to always seek out.

I guess that's true of any addictive drug. Even here in North America
people who can't afford a decent meal manage to find money for booze
and cigarettes.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey

In comp.os.linux.misc Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
> not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) writes:
>>Videos on YouTube of how they make things in some of those
>>countries are facinatingly backwards in terms of tech, though often
>>clever in their own way.
>>
>>Smartphones seem to be universal though. Somehow the one piece of
>>tech I choose to live without is the only luxury that people in the
>>poorest countries appear to always seek out.
>
> In the poorest countries, it is the phone that matters, not the
> 'smart' part.

I'm not sure. Documentaries show people in shacks tapping away on
social media. Indeed sandal-wearing workers in dusty factories
upload those "how we make x" videos to YouTube.

> Landline service is spotty at best.

Landline service isn't so hot here in rural Australia either these
days. Nor mobile coverage now that 3G is being turned off.

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