Life, The Universe, and Everything

[Doug Coulter]

Yeah, that was pretty cool. Things of course have gotten a lot more sophisticated, but maybe not a ton better - "guided missiles" still sometimes "go ballistic" even without countermeasures in use, for example. I am also reminded of that Star Trek movie where they steal the old Enterprise and sabotage the new one so it can't chase them. There was a line like "the fancier they get, the easier it is to stop up the plumbing" - a lesson not yet learned by the military industrial complex. They're not as much in it to win it as they are in it to redistribute money and power to themselves in the near term.

I have all sorts of interesting/arcane knowledge of such things, but am unsure what I'm allowed to share - the "intelligence community" makes you sign some really scary stuff when you quit.
My brother was in a Navy P3 Orion right next to flight 007, for example. I think they might have been shooting at his plane.

On the other hand, before too long if they want to harass me, they'll have to get a shovel...bad news at the doctors today.

Lung, bone, colon, prostate cancer, all spreading. A couple other minor issues with the heart. "Get your affairs in order".

I'm goin down...
https://youtu.be/DVc4RSjnb00

[Doug Coulter]

Not all tears need be for sorrow. This wouldn't embed with the start time I show here (long intro in a language that isn't even her native one), but....

Just go here.
https://youtu.be/PF3Hk6CR0rU?t=140

Or here and skip out to the time. For those who didn't know, Candy is the one who did the unbelievably good solo at the end of Pink Floyd's "Shine on you crazy diamond" in a live performance where everyone hit it just exactly right - you can see them looking at each other going wow - and which they pull off youtube every time someone re uploads it for reasons I don't understand - they leave stuff that sucks by comparison up there. Maybe I'll risk putting it up here as a download in our data section. The best sax player I ever worked with - and his teacher - both said it was the best sax of all time. This is only really super good...and the guitar "I've waited all my life for this moment" kinda stuff.


Goodnight before I get sloppy..."the ones mother gives you" now do things.

[Donovan Ready]

Well, damn, Doug.

[Bob Reite]

Crap Doug. Looks like your warranty has expired. But I know one guy who was stage 4 ten years ago and Cleveland clinic told him to "get your affairs in order." He got a hold of Fox Chase in Philly, and they have kept hm going so far, albeit by throwing money at the problem.

[Doug Coulter]

Thanks guys. My fingers are firmly crossed...

I just got referred to a chemo outfit. Bill tells me the platinum based chemo is horrible, and I should go elsewhere, and look for clinical trials, which sounds right, but according to the people I'm already working with, time is crucial here, so the trick will be surviving long enough to get to the good treatments - this is past "what's best, in theory".

Out here in the boonies, what the bigger world thinks is obsolete might be the latest greatest thing available, we'll see.

For me, getting to some strange town early in the AM for an appt is a huge struggle when I have what amounts to narcolepsy on top of it all, and need a few hours to be really ambulatory once I wake up the first time in a day. Getting them to accommodate that has been an issue. To prep for that day in the hospital took around 4 days of fasting and drugged sleep trying to temporarily sync my clock to humans normal - for example, it's 11 pm here, I simply passed out at 7 pm - I had no say in it - and slept that long. That cycle repeats over and over, dunno why, it's a relatively new thing, some gremlin is tweaking all my settings behind my back. The medical biz is like "well, do it our way on our time or die, sucker", more or less, and project everyone has a life and support system just like theirs. Nope. I am the youngster in my 'hood that helps other people. They're all 80+ and in the hospital themselves a lot. No kids (under 60) within miles - they all left town long ago...But it's real hard to move what I've built here. It wasn't like this when I moved here - there were tons of semi-employed 'necks who would all help each other do anything, maybe for a 6 pack. All gone...or victims of "hey, y'all, watch this!".

[johnf]

Bugger
not the news I wanted to hear Doug.
Keep your options open and listen to Bill

[Doug Coulter]

They are still stringing me along. The doc says he can't tell from existing test data which is pretty extensive...
whether I have several cancers (lung, colon, bladder, bone, prostate [at least]) or one cancer that has spread to all that - in which (more likely he says) case, that's it, it's untreatable, say bye.
Which leads to questions like, well, what is it, how long, and who's going to take over all these goodies I've collected, vs just letting someone auction it all off and donate to charity ~
Hopefully some of this stuff can find a good home....

[Bob Reite]

It also looks like the secret of "Gonzo Mode" is going to be buried with you.

[Doug Coulter]

I'm happy to share what I know, and how I was going to go about measuring the needful to reliably reproduce it and stick real math to this - it's an area not handled well at present.
Not sure how to get it across - what must have been happening seems clear in my head, but to grok the dynamics that had to be at play is tricky without some audio-visual aids I lack the skill and time to put together.
And maybe I'm wrong, of course. I doubt it, but that's me - "I was there", but I recognize that no one else was.
Perhaps I'll have another go at it soon - for now, I'm going to get anti-sober tonight.

I feel more like the first part of the quote, but gheez.

“What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack in the ground underneath a giant boulder you can't move, with no hope of rescue. Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won't be troubling you much longer.”

― Douglas Adams, The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts

[Doug Coulter]

For people interested in fission - good or bad, I recently discovered a big dump by Argonne on early developments. The channel is worth looking at, historically if nothing else.
A real gem if you like some of this: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_zL6N ... XXfKCUFrBw

Even blowing up a reactor on purpose. They can't explode(?) - well watch the video for a refutation of that propaganda line.
They have no idea how lucky they were that the inertia of the water didn't hold it liquid just a tiny bit longer...billions of joules in a few milliseconds as it was.
And now, we do pwr. In vessels that would hold it a lot longer...

And of course, this was fresh fuel they spread over a good fraction of a square mile, not stuff loaded with fission products....
Good movies of blowups but you have to get past halfway to get to them. Worth it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBb2oga4RWE


I'm not saying it can't be pretty safe, but human nature and the low failure rate tends to breed unqualified and complacent operators, and that's not even safe with petroleum.
It's why I've wanted fusion - at least you can turn it off clean and quick.

Speaking of BS narratives - and I don't even have to get into partisan politics here (the idea that all things are red-blue binary is itself a BS narrative, there are no wader boots deep enough),
here are a couple of already sanitized documents from the intelligence community I used to work for showing a little of how they think inside.
How to sabotage, and the remarkable resemblance to the trajectory we've been on for quite some time: (see below, download to read)

How to tell lies that will be believed: (see below)

The previous admistration signed an EO that made telling lies to the public legal, and shortly thereafter, DARPA started letting contracts
to private contractors to help them learn now to tell them better, now euphemized as "controlling the narrative". Look around at the censorship and
cancelling going on and see what you think of all that. https://phys.org/news/2011-10-darpa-mas ... works.html
They didn't even try to hide it. Of course, as they used to say, publish something in some obscure journal and it might as well be top secret...

Got these from Bruce Schneier's website on security when he made them available over the years. It seems that sometime after the Snowden release he
was privy to, he's gone over to the "official narrative", probably to stay out of jail. Yes, just reading "secrets" is a serious crime if they weren't officially handed to you.

Anyone who wants to collect a ton of goodies, or help me find someone to take over my estate (stuff, and this board) and not just burn it down (I don't have anyone to leave it to at present), let me know.