Haha, we should start an analog all-mechanical band! Has anyone else ever noticed the interesting harmonics that develop when like 3 chainsaws are all going at the same time? I always smile when I hear a “chainsaw symphony,” partly just because of how much wood is getting cut 
3 Likes
I have found starting a chainsaw is the quickest way to get people to leave you alone. I don’t know if I have ever seen more than one running at a time.
4 Likes
Wife has an extremly talkative cousin. A few years back she visited and stayed at our place for a few days. This was in the middle of my wood prepping season.
While wife was at work she followed me everywhere, constantly jabbering. Even when I started the chainsaw she tried to howl it down. I reved a bit more than usual and she finally gave up 
7 Likes
Wandering in my thoughts a little but I noticed this sign recently.
It a protest symbol like the peace sign of the 60s only this is purely environmental and against this great mass extinction we have unleashed on the world.
I just come in from some riding and tuning on the DT.
I have no ridden a bike in a very long time and shows.
It has been in the back of my mind that in oil injected 2 stroke might be neat on charcoal gas
3 Likes
whole car load of church ladies . I also said "Thank you please leave " I had a tree across my drive way at the time .
2 Likes
Throwing split pieces of wood into a pile sometimes makes sounds like a marimba. TomC
3 Likes
I looked at those videos and those machines look like they are computer generated animation.
This fellow seems to have built something that works, and it looks like its good for the cardio just turning that crank.
4 Likes
I was interested in this music marble machine and google gave me the option of this bell labs film from 1968.
Does Google remember I like Orson Welles films ( and in particular the sound track to The Third Man )?
Did it guess I like 2001 a space Odyssey and select this film knowing i would recognize the significance of bicycle built for two sung by a computer?
And all these things seem to relate back to the subject of the thread convergence.
Are these just flukes?
I doubt it…
5 Likes
Matt,
I find the Boston Dynamics mechanical man / animals instinctively creepy. Miss-used by a corrupt government, could be extremely destructive and deadly. Like the A-10 Warthog ground-assault aircraft and their helicopter parallels, I am glad they are on our side. Hope it stays that way. 
3 Likes
Carl, l have heard the chainsaw songs many times. Its wery interasting, l think it has to do with soundwawes interfeering and thus forming new ones.
3 Likes
The sound of a chainsaw always brings me back to a simpler time when Red Green had all the answers…
4 Likes
big tree rotten inside split in half and fell from my property across county road . Pickup truck came up , I started up chain saw waved it in air , he went around the other way . Later Guy driving milk tanker shows up . He gets out , I tell him He should go around . He shows me parts of the tree he wants cut , then drives through and just blows by coming back the other way .
2 Likes
The Industrial Revolution is working it’s way up the ability ladder. First, it displaced draft animals and horse transportation. Then, it replaced heavy labor. Then, it replaced drudgery labor. We no longer pick cotton by hand. It didn’t stop there. It gradually replaced a lot of blue collar jobs. Now, it is working at white collar jobs. Nobody wants to go to law school anymore.
Jack Ma said it is “blessed to work from 9am to 9 pm” That is a 1/2 shift for a robot. Man is competitive and, there is no escaping efficiency. As the demand for private sector workers diminishes, the State tries to make up the difference. Over 22 million work for the government in America. They dig holes and shuffle papers. They dream up new regulations and, new fees & taxes. Government debt is growing faster than exponential. The overlay of the EU on existing bureaucracies reduced the GDP of Europe by 20%.
Nobody will buy southern European bonds. The ECB is the only entity buying Italian debt.
The world financial system can ONLY work if debt grows. Japan shows us what happens if you try to grow debt with a shrinking population. At one time, children could be put work. No longer. There is no financial advantage to having children. Birth rates are crashing worldwide except fo sub-Sahara Africa. The Japanese have even given up on sex.
There is a slowly emerging realization that and economy consists of people, NOT financial instrument. The Central Banker of South Korea said, “we can’t print babies”
In Colossus, The Forbin Project American defense is turned over to a super computer. It discovers that there is Russian equivalent. It forces a connection. The 2 decide that they much protect man from himself.
Besides Big Blue Martin Armstrong has a program, Socrates, with all the financial history of the world. it also has all the rest of history that is relevant to finance. How long before these programs are tasked with running the world?
Power corrupts and, attracts the already corrupted. 25% of the people in Great Britain want AI to run the Government and, get rid of politicians.
Cesar Hidalgo shows how it can be done.
The current system can NOT deal with a population crash at the same time that the credit / debt bubble is growing out of control. There is NO possibility of saving the system. Regulatory capture has pushed all the wealth to the upper loop where it does no good. If it can’t circulate, there is no “velocity of money” and, no consumption. The corporatocracy is completely focused on production. They get rid of human producers and then, go looking for a consumer who has money.
Emerging socialism is attractive because of the predations of the corporations. Crony capitalism keeps us working by stealing the buying power of our wages. Socialism would distribute the largess of hyper-productivity to everyone. We would stop working. Socialism kills motivation.
The reason that there is NO escape from our current menu of problems is, human nature.
3 Likes
Not surprising, all the real legal work is done by bots.
Rindert
nssm 200 written by Henry Kissinger made policy by Gerald Ford . Made public by Jimmy Carter . Given kibosh by Vatican because it mentioned Birth control .
Lt Commander Bennie Davis took the nuclear button away from Ronald Reagan and Ronnie did not care… He just wanted funding for " Star Wars " .
What Me Worry ?
1 Like
Down the rabbit whole we go ( and I put the spade to the ground first ).
Marx predicted our current predicament.
But I think it might be a little too much to ask of a man dead so long to postulate a solution to problems we face today.
John Maynard Keynes said ( in a round about way ) that the increasing productivity of the worker in industrial countries would increase so much we would work 10 hours a week and define ourselves not by what we do for a living but by what we do with our free time.
Well we did get those huge leaps in productivity but we did not get the dividend of free time.
FDR wanted to draft a billl of rights that included to freedom from fear and hunger, basic rights to useful employment and security in old age.
What we have today is fear, hunger, anger, unemployment they are after pensions too…
We are at a turning point in history not just economic systems and political forms but the whole biosphere hangs on what conditions we are prepared to tolerate and how will divide the spoils.
Does a man exists to serve the economy or does the economy exists for any reason other than to serve the hole of society.
Excerpt from Chaplin’s speech at the end of the great dictator reminds me of a familiar path traveled once before.
And we were warned
"Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost….
To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. …… "
Colossus, The Forbin Project, great film
4 Likes
Under Obama, the United States Has Sold More Than $115 Billion in Weapons to Saudi Arabia
And that includes cluster bombs, an explosive that’s been outlawed by 119 countries.
$115 billion total in military sales the United States has offered Saudi Arabia since President Obama took power in 2009.
We do not have a society we have an economy. You need money . Humans are social animals. We lived without money most of our existence. The interest of Money could end our existence. Health care industry, emergence of disease it is not profitable to treat ? Do you want an example ? Blocking safe treatment for a disease that would lead to a loss of profit and allow a treatment that would cut your market share ?
4 Likes
Hey folks, let’s go easy on the social commentary. It easily veers off into politics.
There are more appropriate forums to hold this type of discussion.
6 Likes
You won’t hear any politics from me.
Mankind faces his greatest challenge since the Black Death… APATHY
Death is the end of life. Boredom is the opposite of life. If you remember The Jetsons, cartoon show, George Jetson worked 2 days a week for 1 hour a day. He pushed a couple of buttons at the Sprocket Company. What did he do the rest of the time?
Look around you. You will see hordes of people who are glued to their smart phones.
it all started with pinball machines. We were mesmerised by flashing lights and ringing bells. This progressed to modern video games. Social interaction is gone. Everybody is in their own private world that is FAR more interesting than the real world. The real world is so depressing that escapism rules the day. There LOTS of vids on Youtube where people put on their VR goggles and don’t take them off for a day, a week.
Much of the drug epidemic is related by people who just want to escape from their local reality. Part of the drug epidemic is by people who are too chicken to commit fast suicide so, they commit slow suicide.
In the Movie, Brazil, by Terry Giliam, the vast majority of people are
not needed in the labor force. They sit in their apartments all day and watch the boob tube. Now, of course, VR has taken over where the boob tube falls flat.
You’ve all watched Star Trek. What do all those people DO all day? If you watch, Flight of the Navigator, it is centered on an autonomous space craft that goes around exploring the galaxy with no crew.
In Star Trek, they have the Holodeck where they can immerse themselves in the ultimate diversion.
The world is getting dreary in so many ways that people just don’t want to be part of it.
Japan has the highest number of robots AND, the lowest number of babies. The Japanese have given up on sex, on partners, on babies. Much of the world is becoming apathetic and despondent.
The Japanese government has started a dating service to try to get more babies. The girls are all looking for a “farm boy”. Apparently, the city boys just aren’t interested.
Several nations are paying a “baby bonus”.
Much of the world wants to escape reality. They certainly don’t want the reality / burden of raising children. Even the Chinese fertility rate is below replacement. The suicide rate has gone way up.
All of these problems are far more visible in the cities.
Anthropologists claim that the human tree has had 10 branches. NINE of them have died out. Most recently, the Neanderthals.
The enemy is human nature. We are programmed to strive and to work. Everywhere that men are allowed to just sit all day, they turn to alcohol. The little voice in their heads tells them that they are worthless. They try to drown out this voice. How are we going to survive when everything is done by our betters? Will the robots cover the country with golf courses and driving ranges? How will we find some kind of personal value in life.?
This is NOT a lead-in to some kind of political discussion. Man’s very nature is competitive. His machines allow him to compete even better.
2 Likes
Little children are very insecure because they know that they can not support themselves. There was never anyone more happy or secure than the small-hold farmer who had his crops and a few cows. Man is a part of the natural world and feels most content when his food supply is right at hand. Even a horse in a corral is more calm when it can see pasture or a pile of alfalfa bales.
As man moved into cities, he became more specialized and no longer produced his food directly. Since he used money as an intermediary exchange for his labor, he left himself open to having the value of his labor stolen by those who control money. The “surround laws” in Great Britain are a good example of how the public are prevented from living on public lands. Same in America. You can’t just wander off into the wilds and start farming.
Everyone is forced to pay the State if they want to do anything at all. The government claims that you owe it taxes even when you barter. Could it be any more clear?
Here is a vid about the web of control that surrounds us.
The vid clearly explains that the PEOPLE are the nation. Well, the people are getting quite tired of the manipulation and robbery.They / we are refusing to procreate. So, what do the PTB have to say about this?
Chamber of Commerce president warns US is ‘out of people,’ needs more immigration
NO, this still isn’t political. I’m writing about things that affect humanity in general.
What about mental health. We are so divorced from nature that we are going crazy from insecurity.
James Howard Kunstler, "How to account for Americans being the most anxious, fearful, and stressed-out people among the supposedly advanced nations? Do we not live in the world’s greatest democratic utopia where dreams come true?
What if the dreaming part is actually driving us insane? What if we have engineered a society in which fantasy has so grotesquely over-run reality that coping with daily life is nearly impossible. "
Man has had a Very unhappy divorce from Mother Nature. I hear from a lot of people who are hoping for an economic collapse, just to escape the control & robbery structure.
3 Likes