mum

posts/Thoughts and Essays/ComputersAreOil.md

@@ -1,7 +1,8 @@
 P
-
 # Computers, Oil and Merit
 
+> This has been in draft for a while, Im starting to get somewhere almost good with it so I figured I'd share it :)
+
 ## The first, second, third, fourth, fifth try: then
 I'm slowly building up my understanding of the world, how its developed and its history. I'm doing so messily, reading a lot of biased books and and making a lot of mistakes. At the moment I think I've developed a neat view of some things though.
 
@@ -12,16 +13,15 @@ At some point in this process, those in power have to validate their existence a
 
 The modern western world has an especially sticky memetic right now. A really strong idea thats really good at holding people in places of power. It can spread itself into the minds of a large number of people within the masses and cause all sorts of issues. This memetic is the idea of a meritocracy. In this essay I want to talk about that idea and how I view its development, from my personal experiences. None of what I say will be new, but I feel like I have a nice lens we can use to project it onto the modern day near the end.
 
-### An aside to kill merit
-Firstly, before studying meritocracy, we should probably kill it, save any confusion later.
+> ### [An aside to kill merit]
+> Firstly, before studying meritocracy, we should probably kill it, save any confusion later.
 
-Meritocracies arn't real, as we will explore later, they are lies made to validate peoples existence at the top, and their egos. The classic argument against them is the point that anyone with any power likely was born into a good position to get that power, or got very lucky. The world is a messy place and in its natural state, people with skill and intelligence won't always do well. Whilst this is true, there are many other better points to make.
+> Meritocracies arn't real, as we will explore later, they are lies made to validate peoples existence at the top, and their egos. The classic argument against them is the point that anyone with any power likely was born into a good position to get that power, or got very lucky. The world is a messy place and in its natural state, people with skill and intelligence won't always do well. Whilst this is true, there are many other better points to make.
 
-1. A meritocracy assumes merit is a universally measurable unit. Value, merit and even intelligence, are all pretty subjective concepts that change with time and context. A tech guru would flounder in a farming commune and our "greatest minds" have done more damage to the planet than any Native American collective.
-2. A meritocracy acts as if those with less merit are less deserving of pleasant lives. Everyone deserves to do well.
-3. A meritocracy assumes a specific breed or type of person is well set for power and control. We need a wide array of people of all different skills and background if we want to make good decisions, not just those that standard meritocracy implies are well built for the task.
+> 1. A meritocracy assumes merit is a universally measurable unit. Value, merit and even intelligence, are all pretty subjective concepts that change with time and context. A tech guru would flounder in a farming commune and our "greatest minds" have done more damage to the planet than any Native American collective.
+> 2. A meritocracy acts as if those with less merit are less deserving of pleasant lives. Everyone deserves to do well.
+> 3. A meritocracy assumes a specific breed or type of person is well set for power and control. We need a wide array of people of all different skills and background if we want to make good decisions, not just those that standard meritocracy implies are well built for the task.
 
-### Back to the then
 In my mind, merit as a memetic spawned around the time of the British Empire. It came in a slightly different form then, but it was still around. This was the idea of racial merit, phrenology, slave races and such. This came about as a way of those enacting the slavery, both convincing themselves and others that what they were doing was correct.
 
 This idea danced around a while, but changed as civil rights changed. It separated itself (though only in the most obvious ways) from race and turned towards class. America had started rising, and it shared a symbiotic relationship with merit. The American dream brought tens of thousands over from other countries and gave America its population.
@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ My grandad was a phone line engineer, he slowly moved into computing, found he e
 
 From that he became relatively well off, pretty quick, he soon ended up programming big systems for local councils and phone networks. He still maintained some of them for free in his retirement until only a few years ago.
 
-I imagine he sees himself as someone who earnt his place, started and the bottom and worked his way up. 
+I imagine he sees himself as someone who earnt his place, started at the bottom and worked his way up. 
 
 I love him, dearly and truly, but I see it differently.
 
@@ -51,17 +51,15 @@ He was lucky, he got into the right field at the right time, happened to enjoy i
 
 **Computing is oil.**
 
-We say "data is the new oil", "ai is the new oil". I'm less sure. I think, computers were always the new oil. We've been in that boom from the get go. Now its not even new, its been happening since my Gramps rode [Big Blue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM)'s wave. Now They're are just oil. We're in the depths of the culture now. We're in the depths of the destruction mass compute requires.
+We say "data is the new oil", "ai is the new oil". I'm less sure. I think, computers were always the new oil. We've been in that boom from the get go. Now its not even new, its been happening since my Gramps rode [Big Blue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM)'s wave. Now They're just oil. We're in the depths of the culture now. We're in the depths of the destruction mass compute requires. The depth of the labour displacement white collar work requires.
 
 I'd go as far as to say computing was worse than oil, oil required baseless claims to maintain, there's no skill to finding oil, no skill to selling or maintaining it. Not any skills that have a positive influence on the world anyway. That's a hard lie to maintain.
 
-Computing is different, it requires a specific type of thinking. The engineers thought. There's your base, your argument. Your merit. Build an entire industry on it. Take oils lie, act as its proof and build entire landscapes on it.
+Computing is different, it requires an small amount of encapsulated problem solving. There's your base, your argument, your merit. Build an entire industry on it. Take oils lie, in carved into your brain anyway, act as its proof and build entire landscapes on it.
 
-Merit is an odd thing, especially our modern version that focuses on "intelligence", engineering skill and logical thinking. It values one very specific thing, one thing that gets more vague the more you look into it. One thing we now intricately tie out self-worth too.
+Technology has done what it did to my Gramps to many many others, on an incomprehensibly larger scale. Facebook, Netflix, Google, Amazon. Most of them didn't intend to start what they have now. They happened upon something useful. 
 
-Technology has done what it did to my Gramps to many many others, on an unbelievably larger scale. Facebook, Netflix, Google, Amazon. Most of them didn't intend to start what have now. They happened upon something useful. 
-
-The people that run those companies argue on merit, they only hire the best of the best to maintain that air. But they didn't get there on merit, they got there on luck.
+The people that run those companies argue on merit, they play with the asthetic, only hire "the best of the best" to maintain that air. But they didn't get there on merit and even if they did, they shouldn't have the power they do.
 
 We need to stop calling them tech gurus, tech bros, tech ceos. We need to name them what they are. Tech Barons. Like those before them, they got where they are through luck more than anything else, and they know no better how things should be than the rest of us. They've manipulated and built an entire culture just to validate their egos. Unlike oil barons,  I don't think they even fully realise they're doing it, not the full depth of it at least. They just think its reality, truth, and they're just pushing for it. 
 
@@ -69,4 +67,4 @@ Merit runs on organs that maintain themselves.
 
 They fell for the old lie, fit themselves into it and are propagating it.
 
-These people shouldn't be idolised, they shouldn't be trusted. Call them barons, that's what they are. And whatever you do, don't trust them, don't fit them into your worldviews. Anyone who confidently knows how the world should work is lying. [They don't deserve optimism, they've earnt skeptisism.](https://coryd.dev/posts/2024/the-tech-industry-doesnt-deserve-optimism-it-has-earned-skepticism)
+These people shouldn't be idolised, they shouldn't be trusted. Call them barons, that's what they are. And whatever you do, don't trust them to visualise our future, don't fit them into your worldviews. Anyone who confidently knows how the world should work is lying. [They don't deserve optimism, they've earnt skeptisism.](https://coryd.dev/posts/2024/the-tech-industry-doesnt-deserve-optimism-it-has-earned-skepticism)

posts/Thoughts and Essays/obituaryforlivingmum.md

@@ -1,24 +1,23 @@
-P
 
 # An Obituary For My Living Mother
 
-My Mum is amazing, and I have things I want to say about her, and I want to say them now. People wait too long to say these things and only good things can come from sharing pleasant thoughts about people. So I'm saying them here
+My Mum is amazing, and I have things I want to say about her, and I want to say them now. People wait too long to say these things and only good things can come from sharing pleasant thoughts about people. Im a firm believer that I don't share your love for someone at their funeral, I'll share it in every birthday card I give them and I'll interrupt conversations to just flat out tell them. So, once again, I'm saying what I want to say now, and here.
 
-We all have the same amount of time here, we're all always learning. We all develop the same quantity of knowledge over time. Its just the matter of how we recognise and value that knowledge. Someone with severe disabilities is still learning just as much, they're just learning how to work in their own bodies in a world that doesn't teach them. You get put in their body, you'd take years to become as talented as them without the knowledge they've developed.
+We all live the human experience. We're all always learning. We all develop the same quantity of knowledge over time. Its just the matter of how we recognise and value that knowledge. Someone with severe disabilities is still learning just as much, they're just learning how to work in their own bodies in a world that doesn't teach them. You get put in their body, you'd take years to become as talented as them without the knowledge they've developed.
 
 At my Nanna and Taid's (welsh grandparent)'s funerals, my mother gave talks. Both each to the same tune of "my parents didn't do anything massively recognised or that changed the world, but they cared for their own, and that was massive". Or in a similar vein "they werent the most skilled at anything in particular, but they were handy, cared for us, repaired our cars and dedicated themselves to raising us". 
 
-People talk abut this in a weird way, like, its deserving of recognition, but we have to cede that there are greater people.
+People talk about this in a weird way, like, its deserving of recognition, but we have to cede that there are greater people.
 
 Nah
 
-We all develop our knowledge as we go and my mum is an expert. All mothers are. The act of raising a child is an insane one, it destroys your life for years and leaves it permanently altered for the rest. You must leave it with such a different view on the world. I've met so many mothers, especially in admin roles at tech companies, who undervalue themselves because they're surrounded by people posturing and permanently conversing like they're giving a TedTalk. They say things like "its so exciting to be surrounded by such intelligent people"
+We all develop our knowledge as we go and my mum is an expert. All mothers are. The act of raising a child is an insane one, it destroys your life for years and leaves it permanently altered for the rest. You must leave it with such a different view on the world. I've met so many mothers, especially in admin roles at tech companies, who undervalue themselves because they're surrounded by people posturing and permanently communicating like they're giving a TedTalk. They say things like "its so exciting to be surrounded by such intelligent people" and "I wish I could be half as clever as the rest of you". WHAT!! NO!!!! I want to grab them by the shoulders and say "What! You dedicated a quarter of your life __minimum__ to helping raise others!! You've seen and supported them as they've gone through god knows what, whilst going through god knows what yourself! You have 200x the social and practical skills than any of them! You're so god damn cool!! __Value yourself__!!! __You're amazing!!__"
 
 My mum has just as much expertise and skill as any engineer, professor or politician. We just don't value what she's put her expertise into.
 
 Mother knows best for sure, there's so many times in my life she's given me advice, I've ignored it then later gone "ah, shit, mum was right". And she's still there to help me despite it.
 
-stop valuing tech barons, politicians and engineers. Value my mum, someone who's:
+Stop valuing tech barons, politicians and engineers. Value my mum, someone who's:
 
 - Started a local [scouting explorers](https://www.scouts.org.uk/explorers) group, which she still helps run to this day
 - Started and maintained a local childrens choir for 4 years
@@ -29,6 +28,7 @@ stop valuing tech barons, politicians and engineers. Value my mum, someone who's
 - Worked with kids for most of her life
 - Can play any tune she heard just by ear
 
-We are all the best at living our lives.
 
-Even if this isn't true, the truth of an idea doesn't always correlate to its usefulness.
+We are all the best at living our lives and we need to start realising and respecting that.
+
+Even if this isn't true, the usefulness of an idea doesn't always correlate to its truth.

posts/Useful Notes/Quotes.md

@@ -40,4 +40,5 @@ because while you will invariably conclude that it sucks, your reasons for think
 
 ## Things Friends Have Said
 - "Brains are just machines that have thoughts, we don't really have much of a choice there, what we do have a choice about is what the body does with those thoughts. We exist in the interface between a thinking machine and the physical world" - Bob Vaughan-Williams
+- "And its not just you, we both have hundreds of these incredible people, and a whole fucking lifetime to love them in. Like oh my god it is literal heaven." - William Neilson
 - "Everyone thinks they're a good person" - One of the last things Snake said to me

posts/Useful Notes/ScribbledLine.md

@@ -29,6 +29,7 @@ This is my scribbled line, its a collection of things I find interesting or want
 - [The reckless, infinite scope of web browsers](https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope.html)
 - [Fucking webmaster](https://justinjackson.ca/webmaster/)
 - [Machines of Loving Grace by Reagan Bird](https://www.clunyjournal.com/p/machines-of-loving-grace) - The utter evisceration of one of my core beliefs through empathetic story-telling
+- [Programming is forgetting](http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/programming-forgetting-new-hacker-ethic/) A really amazing critique/rethinking of hacker culture
 
 ### The value of community
 - [Transcender manifesto](https://digital-anthropology.me/2019/03/13/a-transcender-manifesto-for-a-world-beyond-capitalism-a-seed/)
@@ -61,6 +62,7 @@ ____
 - [Internet archiologist](http://art.teleportacia.org/olia.html)
 - [Bikeshedding](https://bikeshed.com/)
 - [OurPaint - FOSS Node based painting software](https://www.wellobserve.com/index.php?post=20221222155743)
+- [Egotistical but funny rant about low level programming](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf)
 
 ### Stories where programs defy reality
 - [Email wont go further than 500 miles](500-miles.txt)

posts/Useful Notes/UsenetPosts.md

@@ -15,3 +15,5 @@ A post I got completely obsessed with for a few weeks back in March of 2024, it
 
 A description of an advanced form of garbage collection used in military equipment. Funny but also obvious when you think about it.
 
+## [The Usenet Cookbook](https://www.ty-penguin.org.uk/~auj/Usenet.Cookbook/)
+Not deeply related but a useful list of interesting recipes a friend of a friend maintains. Also see [his smaller list](https://www.ty-penguin.org.uk/~auj/Usenet.Cookbook/).