(from Wikipedia Brittanica, 89th Ed., published 3615)

(For historical reasons, this article refers to the first global collapse of civilization on Earth in 2018.  For subsequent collapses, or for the 2416 implosion of Mars from overmining, refer to “Great Global Collapse (disambiguation).”)

By the turn of the twenty-first century, most of the Earth had developed primitive, post-tribal civilizations¹.  These civilizations were oligarchical, with hereditary ruling castes that distinguished themselves with claims of wealth, or divine or popular mandate². These civilizations were primarily guided by mysticism; at the time of the first collapse, the two predominant forms were bibliomancy³ and economics⁴.

The Economists in particular supported and fought for increasingly opulent acts of worship, which resulted in a sharp rise in the consumption of natural resources and the emission of pollutants.  It also caused a worldwide reduction in well-being, which the clergy excused with claims that those who traded piously, in the name of  Growth and Profit, would be provided for after death⁵.

Some evidence survives that suggests a small but significant number of dissenters argued that this worship would cause the destruction of the earth, the destruction of the biosphere, the end of human civilization, among other things⁶.  Evidence also survives suggesting that many of these dissenters were followers of a cult of “Scientists” who worshipped observation, statistics⁷ and repeatability.  We also know that their religion was heavily ridiculed by both the bibliomancers and the economists⁸, who waged a decades-long propaganda war against it⁹ (it is noteworthy that, at the time, the average human lifespan was less than one century) on a scale not seen for several hundred years after the collapse¹⁰. It eventually erupted into violence, leading to the burning at the stake of several thousands of Scientists in “witch trials,” most famously at Salem, where Albert Einstein¹¹ was executed.

Records show that the collapse began in earnest in 2012. By this point, its inevitability was widely known and even admitted by the leading mystics, who suggested only renewed faith in their ideals would solve their problems. For reasons that are not now understood, they refused to expand their ability to generate electricity, and the power distribution system in north America failed completely after a July hurricane forced several power stations offline¹². As an emergency measure, the grid was broken into smaller regional sections and hundreds of dirty coal generating stations were brought to account for the shortfall of local supply.

The resulting rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is attributed to the unexpected collapse of the Greenland ice shelf later that fall, which spilled into the northern Atlantic ocean and stopped the mid-Atlantic conveyor current. Without the temperature balancing influence of the current, Europe suffered the coldest winter since the previous ice age¹³, leading to energy rationing and thousands of deaths, and the equatorial regions and southern hemisphere faced record heat. Previously fertile regions were flooded by savage tropical storms or seared with drought, resulting in massive crop failures in South America, and Asia.

In the resulting famine, the North American meat farming industry struggled to feed their stock, and decided to feed it to itself, mixed with effluent from the deforestation industry¹⁴. This, combined with widespread misuse of medicines and bizarre farming methods are widely attributed to the appearance of the Delinquent Bovine Pellucidum Influenza. Marked by visible symptoms similar to leprosy and causing extreme aggression in the week prior to death, this highly contagious disease would claim an estimated five billion victims by 2050.

The reactions to these combined crises are difficult to ascertain, as the information surviving this period was largely stored on delicate wafers of magnetic material or on reflective discs that were vulnerable to oxidation¹⁵.  The bibliomancers suggested inaction and prayer, in the belief that the arrival of a saviour was imminent.  Excavations in the 25th century¹⁶ discovered recordings of hymns that identify this saviour as the “Funk Soul Brother.”  Accounts of what the Funk Soul Brother was supposed to do are not clear, but the belief in his timely arrival was widespread.  The Economists suggested that the ruling parties “continue to aggressively infuse capital to promote growth in key industries.”  No records clarifying the meaning of this phrase survive.  In the meantime, surviving evidence suggests that the ruling elite in north America staged fights between donkeys and elephants for the distraction of the public¹⁷.  Exactly why this happened before any preventative action is unknown.  Other responses are even more inexplicable: one group called “The Church of the Black Star” suggested that plenty would be restored directly from the lower digestive tract of the north American emperor, Hope Obama.

After the collapse, there are no surviving records except for those kept by a group who referred to themselves as “The Foundation.”¹⁸ After nearly a century of violence, most of the population had reverted to subsistence farming.  At this point, the Foundation spread out from its headquarters in the Nelson valley in the former state of Canada in an attempt to restore technological civilization.

(more…)

Something has fundamentally changed in my computing experience in the last few years, and I don’t really like it.

Now, back in, say, 2002, people were amazed that a version of windows was available that could usually run for a few hours without crashing (XP).  OS X was at Jaguar, and it was pretty slick, but also limiting, in a strange way.  In the Linux world, GNOME’s window manager wasn’t doing a good job with Xinerama hints (so windows would pop up right in the middle of those two 17″ CRTs heating your computer area) and running KDE smoothly required a whopping 256MB of RAM.  Only OS X could do antialiased text without serious tweaking, and getting 3D acceleration on Linux required some pretty serious wizardry: recompiling kernels with DRI, adding poorly documented sections to /etc/X11/XF86Config, waving chickens over the monitor, and so on.

Roughly, it was the bloody dark ages.  Since then, those of us who escaped to a Mac have seen successive waves of improvement, to the point where almost no grievance has been left untouched; meanwhile, GNOME and KDE have become beautiful, tightly integrated and intensely productive environments.  It’s hard not to look back with astonishment that we ever actually got anything done¹.

But amidst that barbarism, there were some things that had an aura of magic to them.  If you could spend a couple of days tweaking your environment, reading documentation and adding the appropriate cantrips and sigils to configuration files, you could get to the point where your entire workflow—including goofing off—was effortless.  There was a lot of strangely fun stuff like writing a quick perl script to rip through a text file full of lab results, crunch them and spit out a LaTeX table to include in the report.

That doesn’t really seem to happen anymore.  The process of serious work seems to be: start web browser, start Outlook, start crappy custom software.  I’m getting pretty fluent at window juggling in XP, which is painful once there are twenty or so windows up, but there’s no magic here.  Even at home, with my lovely Mac, everything’s pretty inane.

The change is twofold, really.  One is in user interfaces and interoperability.  As usability issues are addressed, one way of doing things is becoming dominant.  This is actually a pretty good thing for the most part, but I have to admit that I occasionally miss rolling my own custom-fitted workflow.  The other part, and definitely the bigger of the two, is the nature of what I do on computers.  Back then, it was “here’s a problem, here are some tools, solve the problem.”  Now, it’s “here’s a problem, here’s the solution, now do it nine hundred times.”

Sigh.

1) I suppose people running windows don’t feel much different now than they did then.

I’m back in Alberta.  Edmonton generally, Fort Saskatchewan at this very instant.  It’s a very odd readjustment.

I had to drive today, and I will again tomorrow.  This will be the first and second time in over two years.  The contrast between Vancouver driving and Edmonton driving is stunning.  Vancouver driving requires alertness.  The other drivers on the road are more assertive, sometimes to the point of aggression or lunacy.  Edmonton driving requires diligence, because it’s entirely possible for absolutely nothing to happen for minutes at a time, and you have to force yourself to keep paying attention.  The sheer open space pulls your head towards the clouds and your foot toward the ground.  Cars float around; nobody really feels the width of what they’re driving—cycling last night, the four cars that passed me all gave me a full lane of room (which was very pleasant but disorienting).  Traffic consistently forms lines of evenly spaced vehicles: just barely too close to turn between them, as though they need to have room to stop if the car in front were to suddenly hit a force field.

There’s something here that I don’t quite understand just yet.  People are louder but less intense.  Friendlier but less open (or is that backwards?).  More outwardly fun-loving but far, far less adventurous.

Everything feels empty and sparse.  I remember a Chinese friend back in grad school talking about going to West Edmonton Mall all the time when he first arrived because it was the only place he could find that was crowded enough for him to feel comfortable.  I know what he meant now.

The cycling, as predicted, is generally great and specifically harsh.  Edmonton seems to have an abnormally high incidence of bike fatalities, and although I mostly blame it on the generally low level of alertness, it’s also clear that there just aren’t many people here who cycle regularly or seriously.  The terrain is very odd, too.  It’s mostly flat, but what elevation changes there are tend to be very steep and involve gorges cut out by streams and rivers.  Between stretches of effortless 30km/h riding are 100m hills that I can barely mash my way up.  I suspect that there are even some that I just flat out won’t be able to.

I can also tell that I’m going to be very productive at something here.  I’ll have to be.

Getting on the plane feels like being unplugged and inserted in another life. There’s enough detail in both places that a life is plausible: close friends, awkward crushes, unfulfilled desires and a social life.

But on the other end, everyone has made different choices. Communities instead of careers. Love instead of wealth. On both sides there are cracks, and efforts don’t always move you where you think you’re aiming, but the difference is profound. Where I visit I’m greeted with hugs; not polite shoulder tapping ones but full-on squeezing down to the belly button ones. There’s a closeness here, and I feel involved. The illusion lasts most of the trip—and it cannot be more than illusion: I don’t live there, I’m not really involved—and only comes apart at the last moment. A handful of difficult hours pass as I wait, patience wearing thin, not enough time to maintain the illusion.

I’m afraid I’ve overstayed my welcome, and I have no way to tell with fatigue and four days of unprocessed stimuli ricocheting inside my skull. I’m hard pressed to think of some aspect of myself or my life that hasn’t been cast in a light that I don’t entirely like, and although I understand the problem—assuming it is one, which might even be part of the problem—I am confused and agitated. There’s loud jazz and reggae. It’s too fast and I can’t concentrate.

I won’t forget the feeling; longing and confusion bubbling up from absolute terror, nervous energy building an unbearable pressure that I desperately want to release but can’t find an opportunity to. It builds until I’m almost shaking and finally, past airport security, I sit in the departure lounge and write down what I can extract coherently and listen to something more calming, a song given to me earlier that day. I don’t restrain tears but control my breathing.

Suddenly something shifts, and the terror dissolves; a warm feeling, like scotch or peeing yourself—a bottle-rocket to buddhahood. There’s a sensation that I haven’t felt in at least a decade, a lightness, something beyond words. I feel softer and stronger. A song jumps to mind. Today is the greatest. I’m smiling until I’m unplugged again.

Back in my life it becomes apparent that something significant has shifted. Everyone looks overdressed. Everything looks like it’s for show. Nobody makes eye contact with anyone else. On an evening bus carrying five people, four people are busily pretending that nobody else is there. It doesn’t feel like I’ve come home. It feels like a summary: “Now that you’ve seen what’s possible, here is what you have. Are you ok with this?”

When it comes to spelling and grammar, I’m a jerk. I’m going to explain why.

Remember that meme about how all the brain needs are the first and last letters of a word to be in the right place? Predictably, it’s wrong in a great number of complex ways. Significantly:

“Regardless of semantic, syntactic, or orthographic predictability, the eye seems to process individual letters … Disruptions in adult readers’ eye movements indicate that the visual system tends to catch the slightest misspelling.”¹

Those disruptions cause slowdowns, which I personally find frustrating. Grammatical mistakes do the same. I like to read ideas, opinions and information, not words.

Earlier today I discovered this link; apparently there’s an almighty (but probably positive) shitstorm brewing in the Vancouver progressive-left community. Ivan Drury’s letter and many of the responses—Messrs Boxall, Ages and Beeching and Mmes Elise and Stephanie—are absolute pleasures to read. They’re insightful and clear, not just conveying ideas but also emotions.

On the other hand, we see flamebait comments from individuals like “Yours Truely.” It’s notable that the most angry comments and those with the least to contribute are also the ones with the poorest spelling, grammar and punctuation. One wonders why spell-checkers don’t exist for the angry.

This pattern is highly pronounced here, but it exists everywhere, and I suspect that it boils down to two fundamental points: passion for your ideas and respect for your audience. Those who believe they have something to say and are adequately cluestruck are more likely to care about communicating clearly, and are also more likely to know how to form sentences as well as understand the impact of bad writing on communication. Those who have respect for their audience are more likely to take the time to make their reading experience pleasant, while those who believe they are coming down from the mountain to share their wisdom with the unwashed peasants are probably not going to read like Zarathustra.

Everyone on the internet has an opinion, and anyone who wants to express theirs should consider that nobody is begging to hear it. Tell it clearly and respectfully, or don’t expect anyone to care.

I also have some thoughts on progressive leftism to bring up (respectfully), but they haven’t congealed into something easily slingable yet.

1) from Adams, M. J. (1990) Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 101

Blogging can be a pain in the ass. Every few weeks I start feeling guilty about not posting, so I come up with some topic—usually whatever is on my mind at the moment, or something marginally neat from the internet—and I write something about it and click Publish. After that I don’t think about the blog for a few weeks.

But earlier this week, I started reading On Writing Well, and now I’m thinking about the whole endeavour in a different light. I want to make this blog into a practice ground for improving my writing. In the absolutely ideal sense, it would become a portfolio. Premonitions are creeping up on me, and I suspect that I will need one sooner than I’d like to admit.

Here’s the new plan: start posting at least once a week, start proof-reading properly. By knowing in advance that I’ll have to publish something, hopefully I’ll be urged to come up with a topic in advance, and hopefully by the time publishing day comes around—I’m going to say Friday—I’ll have typed and edited it. The almost daunting goal is to make the blog interesting, which is good for all of us.

I should finish my laundry. Wait, I need to pick up dryer sheets for that. I should go get some. Wait, I should do the dishes before I go, and just get them out of the way. Ugh, but I’m itchy. I should have a shower before I do the dishes so I’ll be more comfortable. Wait, if I have a shower now, my coffee will get cold, so I should drink my coffee first. Ok, this works. I’ll drink my coffee. And while I’m drinking my coffee, I’ll play AisleRiot freecell.

I got half way to the computer before I realised that I’d just put everything off with an excuse to waste time, and thought it was so funny that I should write a post about it, because that’s not a waste of time like playing freecell is.

Well, I finally got around to it. Here’s the new theme for the blog. In the spirit of the design of the main page, which still needs to be updated, it’s primarily typographical. Man, yesterday was productive.

In the mounting insanity surrounding my imminent move out of Yaletown to a quieter, cooler part of Vancouver, it struck me that I should spend a while walking around and taking pictures, focusing on what I like about the place and what I absolutely will not miss. I got tired of this after about six blocks, as the process solidified my understanding of what I already knew.

Because I was looking specifically to separate out what I did and did not like about the neighbourhood, I fairly quickly noticed that it’s actually really pretty. On a Saturday afternoon it looks vibrant; the buildings are well-maintained and everything is colourful and varied. Even the little bits of park, with the grass overgrown and gardens gone wild from the strike, look good.

For the stuff I didn’t like, I snapped pictures of the overflowing dumpsters (ones that are hauled by private firms, so this has nothing to do with the strike), creepy dog fashion stores, smeared dog shit and litter on the sidewalks. The observation that arose from this is that the problem with Yaletown is not really the place itself so much as a lot of the people it attracts. There are poorly dressed people pulling along the toy dogs that they don’t clean up after, strutting “Wimbledon thugs” shouting about “bitches” into their cell phones, party-going women who at first glance and often first inspection are indistinguishable from the “service industry” workers a couple blocks over (hint: one of the two is generally quieter). There are 50 year-old shriveling boomers still dressing in tight shirts and getting hammered at clubs. Not only is a Saturday afternoon not the likeliest time to find these types around, taking pictures of people randomly doesn’t tend to do well, and getting people’s permission to take a picture usually leads to a crappier, posed picture. Finally, Saturday afternoon is one of the few times where the construction is stopped and the sun is out.

The pictures wound up coming out in favour of the place, but I still can’t really imagine myself missing it.