- Thanks. I sympathize with you here and hope to rid myself of all the subscription-based horseshit in favor of things I already own or those that I can easily compartmentalize. The hardest part of regaining control is getting everyone else close to you on board since some may actively use the things that regularly extract but never provide real value for the "service".
- According to that page Texas also requires data brokers to register. As a Texan it seems unlikely that they do this to protect consumers. It feels more like they want to know who their market is as they surveil their citizens and rake in as much moola as possible. Identifying which broker will pay the highest premiums for real-time information about Texans' travel from license plate and traffic cameras, which businesses they visit, etc will allow them to get sweet kickbacks from the industry lobbyists who can openly pass around envelopes of cash on the floor of the legislature.
- I am wrapping up my shift from Windows to Linux. I will have a linux box to replace my Win7Pro/Win10Pro install on an old Dell workstation. I will also be migrating one of my older relative's pc's to an identical linux box to replace their 2008 model ASUS machine running Win10.
Once I have that all comfortably running I am walking away from iOS on the iPhone. I'm a bit tired of lock-in and in a position now where I have free time to manage the various things that interest me and to sort through any issues with data or software compatibility between the old/new OSes.
I've been a pc user since the early 1980's with DOS and my first pc was a 128k MAC which I still have. I won't have any more Microsoft or Apple stuff in a couple of months if all goes well. Wish me luck.
- Thanks for this and the archive link. I've been a Willie fan since the early 1970's and have fond memories of the Fourth of July concerts. I still have my t-shirt from the 1979 festival and just like ol' Trigger, it has some holes and signs that tell the observer that it has been around a while.
- RIP Todd Snider. He was real.
- In reality Microsoft woke up and realized that they were rapidly sliding down the slippery slope towards the sloppy ground of a minimum user install situation and so they are trying to dig in their fingernails to arrest the slide. I predict that they will change their stance after stabilizing their position and advancing a little further back up the user install curve so that they silently move users towards a full data sharing arrangement again hoping to abscond with as much marketable user data as possible before the new terms leak and they find themselves again slip-sliding down towards an install minimum that they should've floundered in years ago.
- You started off with a suggestion that on the surface implies that morals and ethics are unrelated to perceptions or definitions of harm and intent.
>Then again, maybe we should keep ethics and morals away from law and sentencing, and concentrate on harm and intent.
Morals, our value system developed by our own experiences that determine how we as individuals define right and wrong are the foundation of ethical boundaries that we impose on the groups that we form or join. Ethics are tied to morals.
Harm and intent are judgements that we make either as individuals or as group members when we look at actions and consequences (apply our moral and ethical guidelines) so that we can determine whether sanctions are necessary and reasonable based on our own shared value system.
Then you make a statement that appears to suggest that morals and ethics are unrelated when in fact, our individual morals form the foundation of ethical constraints that we impose on the groups in our societies just as they are the foundation for our religious value systems. In your either/or proposition here you apparently separate laws from morals. I disagree because laws, which follow from our own moral values and are just codified statements defining our own ethical framework so that we can all color between the same set of lines.
>Laws can be based on ethics, but moral judgments really should not be involved in their application.
Then you impose the burden of religion or theocracy with your last statement. This statement implies to the casual observer that since you reject morals (in the second statement) as a basis of laws in favor of laws based on ethics that those which are based on morals exist only under a theocratic framework. Since group ethics follow from shared individual mores this does not make sense.
>Unless you want to live in a theocracy, of course.
Morals, ethics, laws are entangled and require no religious framework for their application though as your examples demonstrate, it is possible to create a system where mores shared and recognized by all are subverted to serve a religious doctrine which is itself a permutation of an ethical system used to capture local groups and to impose a specific reward/sanction value system to aid compliance.
EDIT: I think that your use of "Unless" makes it easy for a reader to interpret the second statement as part of an IF/THEN type of statement implying a conclusion that you have defined in your third statement.
You're explicitly allowing ethics to form the basis of laws in the first part of your second statement and then using the "but" to disallow moral judgments as a basis. This is the IF part of the dialog.
The Unless follows and ends up defining the THEN part of the conclusion so that a reader can interpret your statements to conclude that IF ethics can be the foundation for laws THEN a system of laws based on moral judgments must form the basis for a theocratic system, of course.
- Social mores are synonymous with morals and it is our social mores or our moral values that form the basis of our legal systems where we use those mores (moral values) to define the actions that fall into the categories of right versus wrong and help us define how we should treat each other and what an appropriate societal sanction should be when someone steps over the line and does something to violate our social mores or does something that we consider immoral.
By comparison it is pretty obvious that most societies have similar moral values - stealing is wrong, murder is wrong, charity is right, etc. in spite of the differences in religious interpretations that end up preventing so many of us from simply coexisting as equals.
To suggest that morals are tied to religion is simply wrong. Morals are simple rules that humans have developed over generations of interactions that allow them to apply reasonable judgements to fellow humans based on observations of how those fellow humans interact with strangers and kin.
Religions likely have as part of their foundations, an explicit acknowledgement or recognition of the societal mores that governed human interactions before any one of our ancestors invented or postulated out loud about phenomena that they all experienced but did not yet have the science or understanding of the natural world to reliably explain, thus compelling them to invent entities that controlled those phenomena. Those who chose to believe in these inventions could rest easier knowing that something somewhere was either looking out for them or they could be wary of angering that entity to prevent bad things from happening to them or their kin.
In short, morals and ethics exist outside of any religious dogma so the suggestion that they are a constraint imposed on any society through religion is simply inaccurate since it is not necessary for any person to be religious in order to hold another accountable .
- In the same way it will be true that one day most of us will wake up unaware that all of our tomorrows will have become yesterdays except one and that when we lay down to rest on that day, we will only have part of the next day to wrap up any loose ends in our lives. Perhaps treating every day as if it could be our last is not an unreasonable plan.
- Thanks for that link. Before reading I was in the process of migrating all my stuff from a Windows7 machine, deduping archives and identifying software that I may still need to run in a VM somewhere or on a tablet. I had considered flipping to Apple devices since I have an iPhone but have never pulled the trigger on any of that. I was considering iMacs instead of a Linux box for a more seamless interface with the phone.
After reading that article where it is apparent that Apple has intentionally used terms that sound similar to obscure what the customer is actually gaining when they upgrade versus update and they intentionally omit the part about older devices not getting all the security updates that are pushed in the updates. I now have some clarity.
I can focus on moving to Linux and in time will be ditching the iPhone. Should've done this years ago.
- Degenerates. Gambling on situations like this attracts the worst people in society. It would be no surprise to find these people also deeply into crypto scams or scams that rob the elderly or managing businesses that overcharge poor people because those poor people have no other local options but to use that business.
- If he made it all the way he would beat the record set by by Plennie Wingo in 1931-1932 when he walked from Santa Monica, CA to Istanbul, Turkey backwards. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plennie_L._Wingo
It was a challenging walk.
- Very interesting that you suggest corn booze in addition to wine. Chicha was a traditional fermented drink made from corn (maize) and other grain crops. It was fermented in large ceramic vessels according to this source [0]. One of the links I had earlier to the wine making showed ceramic vessels that looked consistently sized and shaped and I think it is possible that they are in a traditional design. I wonder whether anyone has tried fitting a similar modern vessel into one of the holes after excavating to near it's original design.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicha
I did find another recent paper that suggests that the site was part of an Inca tribute collection system where everyone's tributes would be tallied. It is a very interesting paper and offers another plausible use case for the site in the context of what they have already found in the area. [1]
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300501765_The_Stran...
Perhaps tributes were paid in grain, or liquid products. Near the end of the paper they note that:
>In either regard, the line of holes at Monte Sierpe would have provided an ideal place to deposit tribute, where it could be easily recorded by the accountants of the Inca state (quipucamayoc) on site and then transported to Tambo Colorado or wherever the Inca authorities desired.
This valley was an important valley along the ancient Inca road so it makes sense that they would need a place to store things for distribution or to accumulate them for tributes.
- I hit the wall over the last month. The last version of Firefox that works on my Win7 workstation where I do almost everything is too old for some banking websites to work so I have been using a Win10 tablet for a couple of sites. That is the straw that shifted the pile from Windows to Linux for me. I have had to sort through family member's issues when they upgraded, intentionally or otherwise, to Win11 and from that I know that I have reached the end of the trail that began with PC-DOS 3.0 a long time ago.
- Agreed that GPR could be a useful tool for tracking the full extent at the valley floor. It is likely that sedimentation and agricultural activity have combined to help bury that end in sediment.
The head of the serpent is interesting as you note. The pattern breaks at the neck and there is the second short line of holes to the east that does not have a matching set on the west side of the line unless it is completely buried. A lidar or GPR survey may help understand that slope.
I found this serpent amulet on Etsy [0] that implies that the word Amaru means serpent in Quechua so I looked that up and found a nice description that may help explain breaking the pattern at the head. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaru_(mythology)
The Amaru serpent could manifest with several different heads so the people who made this example may have used the natural bowl to show their local version of the Amaru that they believed would provide their desired results - rain, crops, etc.
[0] https://www.etsy.com/listing/1487839343/peruvian-hand-carved...
Another thing that I have not seen considered is that these holes may have been used to hold vessels for storing wine or brandy made from grapes that grew in the region. Evidently Pisco is a type of wine produced in the Nazca region in pre-Columbian times. [2] The vessels in the photo which store the wine may be a design passed down since ancient times. If you have a series of holes in the ground of a consistent size and you produce lots of vessels for storing something that you produce locally and those vessels are size to fit the holes in the Band of Holes then maybe this was their wine storage site.
[2] https://www.exploorperu.com/blog/peru/pisco-culture/
As another possible explanation, though it does seem possible it also seems a bit far-fetched and would definitely require some drone study I found this site [3] which claims to see pictograph symbols in the chain of holes when viewing the site from Google Earth satellite view taken on a specific date.
[3] https://www.ancient-origins.net/opinion/mysterious-holes-per...
It's interesting whatever they were doing.
- Previous discussion:
- Apple has been waiting for the opportunity to use their next moniker - iNose.
- Very interesting! This would tie in nicely with the long tradition of geoglyphs across coastal Peru. I agree that the pattern of holes could be interpreted as scales on a snake the way they interlock. I wonder whether the tail end at the valley floor extends into the agricultural fields or whether it simply ends at the pylon and, with that in mind, it seems likely that the engineers could've slid that pylon footing 10 m further east so that it wasn't on the band of holes. There is a road across them now at the pylon. It likely began as a foot trail a long time ago and each generation of farmer used it in turn as the flood plain filled with rich soil from each successive crop.
I considered storage as the most likely use case because it is convenient to the fields at the widest part of the worked area along the river and it is elevated above the flood plain far enough and in an arid area so that the likelihood of seed loss to mold or moisture is minimized. Being there spread along the ridge offers insulation from many of the common problems related to seed storage if you consider that each hole could hold a basket tightly woven from reeds gathered along the river. Each basket could have a colorful lid such that patterns could be made along the ridge that are visible from surrounding countryside so that their snake would appear to be moving up the mountain.
It's hard for us to know how it was used but I like the multi-use possibility that you have described based on incorporation of their own myths. These people had an intimate relationship with their landscape and used durable symbols to help manage their lives and customs. Thanks for that link!
- I read the article and decided to do a little looking around the area to see how everything stacked up so that I could decide for myself how the site was used. I used Google Earth and Street View to lay everything in the proper context geographically so that the reader can understand how it fits with the local cultural context.
The site is located on a low ridge that is oriented roughly N-S on the north side of the Pisco River, an intermittent river in western Peru that drains from the mountains into the Pacific Ocean. The first screenshot shows the general geographical context. [0]
[0] [Band-of-Holes-General-Geographical-Setting.png](https://postimg.cc/XpQ65nRJ)
The Pisco River valley is located between the well-known Nazca Plain with it's geopglyphs and the less well-known Chincha Valley with it's geoglyphs. I found a nice paper detailing the thoughts about the origin and age of the geopglyphs in the Chincha Valley. It is a short paper that is interesting reading. [1]
[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1406501111
To get an idea of the local setting for the Band of Holes or Huella de la Serpiente as they are known locally which translates as Serpent Footprint I have another Google Earth screenshot that illustrates the location and it's proximity to a wide agricultural plain on either bank of the Pisco River. The Pisco River is an intermittent river, in fact in the Google Earth views there is no water behind the dam. It looks barren and a great place to avoid if there are flash floods in the forecast. The detailed view of the site is in this screenshot [2].
[2] [Band-of-Holes-Detailed-Geographical-Setting.png](https://postimg.cc/qgGsH7hx)
So that one can conclude as I did that the site was unlikely to have been used as a defensive feature and that it makes more sense for it to have been a local granary for the region's farmers I have a series of slides showing the site in map view and in street view. The first slide is zoomed into the site. [3] One can see the dark line of holes to the right of the thin yellow trace. At the southern end (the screenshot and most others are oriented N-S), we see a semicircular ridge that can be used to locate the site from a street level view. The locals call this the Huella de la Serpiente, probably because it looks a lot like the trace that a snake would leave across the open ground as it slithers.
[3] [Huella-de-la-serpiente-Google-Earth-annotated.png](https://postimg.cc/rz5h0cdR)
At the south end of the serpent track there is a feature that can assist locating the site in Google Street View, a high tension power line pylon. It is visible just below center just to the right of the end of the Band of Holes. It's shadow extends across the ground roughly towards the pickup truck parked near the irrigation canal. [4] This is probably the serpent's tail.
[4] [Huella-de-la-serpiente-Google-Earth-detail-annotated.png](https://postimg.cc/MfGbFkD0)
Looking up slope on Google Earth we can locate the serpent's head at the oval erosional feature. [5] The width of the Band of Holes is approximately 17 m (55.7 ft) from top to bottom though it does vary in places.
[5] [Huella-de-la-serpiente-Head-Google-Earth-detail-annotated.png](https://postimg.cc/qz4dg17c)
One can get an idea of the positioning of the Band of Holes along the ridge in the next Google Earth screenshot that is taken near the middle of the Huella de la Serpiente. You can see how it hugs the highest part of the low ridge on the western side of the divide where water would naturally flow into the channels either side of the ridge. [6]
[6] [Huella-de-la-serpiente-line-Google-Earth-detail-annotated.png](https://postimg.cc/xcJFfHvM)
It may be difficult to understand the context of the site until you see it from ground level. That is what the next set of screenshots will provide, a Google Street View display taken from a location along the road just north of the river looking out across the agricultural fields on the valley floor. The first slide shows the ground level view from the road. [7]
[7] [Huella-de-la-serpiente-street-view.png](https://postimg.cc/G4zD6g4q)
Since you may not auto-orient and instantly recognize the site from ground level without a bit of assistance I have labeled and noted relevant features for you. [8]
[8] [Huella-de-la-serpiente-street-view-annotated.png](https://postimg.cc/PvkNC1Lx)
The final slide has been zoomed into the site so that it is easier to correlate the features noted in Google Earth Map View with things that are visible in Street View. [9]
[9] [Huella-de-la-serpiente-street-view-detail-annotated.png](https://postimg.cc/Ln9LvMX8)
After seeing all of it in Street View it seems most likely that the site was a large granary where the farmers stored their grain for consumption and for next season's crops. It is likely that the grain and other products were stored in woven baskets that were sized to fit the holes along the ridge which seem to be consistently sized. With appropriate covers it could all be weather proof and durable while being protected from scavengers. That low ridge appears to me to serve no useful purpose as a defensive feature since it is one of many similar ridges in that valley. The ridge is not tall enough nor is it steep enough to be a hazard to climb and if it was used for storage, everything would be convenient to the fields across the Pisco River Valley. The fact that it is located in a wide spot in the valley makes it even more likely to have been used as a granary. I'm sure someone could come up with a volume of seed that could be stored in this collection of holes along the Huella de la Serpiente. That would help others understand how many people the site could feed or how many acres of seed crop could be planted.
If you do this though, please do not list the volume in terms of Olympic sized swimming pools. Use something that would be more universally understood.
- https://Spaceweather.com has a link to some photos taken in El Salvador at 13N Lat. Last night was a great show for sure.
I enjoyed it for about 5 hours out here west of DFW. I hope the actual X5.1 event due to arrive in the next 3-5 hours will persist into the evening so I get another show.
- A lot of elite athletes already select their partners from their peer group. NFL football has examples of second and third generation players trying to make it big in the league since the financial incentives are so huge. It's a lot like antique royalty marrying distant cousins in order to avoid marrying down into the "commoner" ranks. Controlling the bloodlines in order to have kids who can meet or exceed their parents' accomplishments.
- I agree. I could see an opportunity for a future entertainment network or sporting competition where the only participants allowed to compete are those who can document their own genetics. One set of games for ordinary people and another for those people whose parents chose to try to engineer a result. All of this is so new that it may not happen in my lifetime but I'm not prepared to say that it can't.
- >In sport, are such super-humans allowd to play with normal people.
There are already prohibitions on allowing transgender people to participate in some sports. It seems unlikely that the children of ordinary people will be allowed to participate in sports with children who are known to be genetically enhanced so that they are more powerful, etc. It is an interesting question though.
- I stepped into this post unsure about what I would find. I am not an expert on Unicode, foreign languages, etc. but I've seen a lot of typefaces used on signage so I decided to see what this post offered as far as new knowledge.
I really enjoyed the depth of coverage. All the things that go into making a font that represents a language or culture and allows those who use that language to understand how to parse the characters into legible words.
I think the one thing missing here is to link some of the Unicode characters to spoken words so that the reader can understand how the character or sequence of letters is pronounced in normal conversation amongst native speakers. That would help clarify some of the differences between placement of diacriticals or other marks.
A long time ago (around 20 years) there was a radio program where one could tune in over the internet and listen to a short series called "Native Word of the Day". [0] A listener could hear native speakers pronounce words and use them in sentences so that the context of the exchange made sense. The website had a collection of words or phrases in quite a few indigenous languages and the reader could select a word from a list and hear similar content - the word itself, an example of how it is used in a sentence.
There were several west coast languages, Iroquoian languages, Alaska Native languages, southwestern tribes, etc so one could get a feel for how each group saw the world based on the words they used.
I used the site as a tool for teaching my kids how to pronounce unfamiliar words and to help them understand that there are many ways to look at the world. Seeing things through the lens of a foreign language can help bridge many gaps.
I still remember one of the words (maybe actually a phrase) that I became fond of though I would need to dig through old notebooks to find the source language. It is pronounced kinda like this - new-ahna-go-wab-me though I don't remember the exact spelling or source language. That's probably a crappy pronunciation example so good luck. Maybe someone can find it somewhere.
[0] https://www.knba.org/knba/2014-05-07/knba-re-introduces-nati...
One may find an online station using this list:[1]
[1] https://www.nativeamericacalling.com/station-affiliates/
Anyway, Thanks OP for jogging my memory.
Funny enough, my workstation here that I am ditching is a 2006 Xeon dual core with 32 - 8 GB of RAM and a nice NVidia GPU (can't remember which one). The "-8" is because a couple of RAM slots are dead, LOL. It has three dead caps that I can see but still boots if you're extremely patient and lucky. The main HD also has some boot sector issues that nearly prevent a Win7Pro boot but with the right combo of disk repair tools I can boot on the 10th or 12th attempt. That's the main reason I am moving on. I have a brand new NZXT machine with PopOS that I bought several years ago that is just sitting here waiting for someone to power it up and I bought a high spec mini-pc to see what that world offers.
I ditched MSFT stock a few years ago in favor of AMD. That's worked out pretty good so far. I'm no fan of AI. I'm sure there's a legitimate use case but today most of the players seem to be on a cash grab and I hate thieves and liars so I have a natural disinclination to support that shit.