An Introduction to Harness Lingo Horse Racing News

That reminds me of a story.
Continuing
Javen Spanner calls Jerry to have him remind me that we have a meeting planned and tonight would be a good time. I ask Jerry to call him back and accept for me.
Properly showered and decontaminated, I show up at the Spanner Ranch once again. I know where to park, I know which do to go to.
The butler greets me and takes my duster and hat as usual.
“Drawing room, Mr. Rock. Mr. Spanner is waiting.”
“Thank you, Jeeves.” I never did learn the guy’s real name.
Once again into the den. Javen greets me warmly and tells me to pour him and me a drink.
“Double bourbon and branch, neat?” I ask.
“Good man. I don’t like to have to tell anyone anything twice.” Javen remarks.
I decide to make two. I hand Javen his drink and ask what’s on his mind.
“First off, Sani sends his regards. Says you finally finished that work you were doing and just wouldn’t quit. I like that. Determination.” He says.
“Ah, Sani. He’s a real character, isn’t he?” I reply.
“He likes you. You could have gone off on him and gotten abusive. Hell, you’re twice, three times his size. But you stuck to your guns and got the job done. Good. Sani was impressed as well.” He says.
“It was…necessary. It was a key to figuring out the area.” I reply.
“Determined and motivated. I like that.” He hits a silent button on his desk.
I sip my drink and wonder curiously.
“Have a cigar” Javen says as he offers me his open humidor.
“Thanks. Cuban. Oh, very nice.” I say.
Javen leans back in his big leather chair and smile.
Jeeves walks in a few minutes later pushing a cart with some largish object on it, covered with a white tarp.
“Ready for another?” Javen asks.
“Sure,” I reply.
Javen goes and gets the drinks. Hands me mine and stands next to the cart.
“Curious?” he asks.
“A bit”, I reply.
He pulls off the tarp. “Here, this is for you.”
It is a hand-tooled leather, custom Western saddle, burnished until it shines. Silver Conchos, silver this, and silver that. It is exquisite.
“Whoa. Thank you, Mr. Spanner. But what…”
He cuts me off. “Come over here and look at this” he instructs me.
I go over to the saddle and he points out the name “Esme” hand-tooled into the fore and aft of the saddle. I know there are names for every part of a saddle, but I don’t know them, so front and back it is.
He also shows me where it was created: it was signed “Spanner Saddlery. Torreon, New Mexico”.
That’s it, I’m stumped.
“Whoa, Javen. Wow. What can I say but thank you?” I sputter.
“We take care of our own out here. You helped me, I help you. Thank you.” Javen says to me.
“Again, it’s beautiful. Esme will just love it.” I say.
“And you too when you give it to her.” He chuckles.
I smile and do my best ‘aw, shucks’ Andy Rooney routine.
“Now, come. Another drink and we will talk business.” Javen says.
We get our own drinks as Jeeves takes my keys to deposit the saddle in my truck.
“Now, Rock. I have a business proposition for you”, Javen says. “How much longer are you going to be in school?” he asks.
“At least a year until I finish and defend my thesis. Then maybe two or three more if I decide to pursue my Ph.D.” I explain.
“What would you say if I offered you a Vice President position at Spanner Enterprises once you finish your Master’s?”, Javen asks.
“I’m not sure,” I replied.
“Well, I am. I could use someone like you. Smart, determined, motivated. I’ve got so damn many irons in the fire, I can’t even count them much less keep control. I need someone like you. Good pay, good benefits, use of the whole Spanner Empire’s resources. What do you think?” he continues.
“Would that be here in Torreon? “ I ask.
“Depends where you want to live. I’ve got houses in Cuba, Torreon, Albuquerque, Farmington, Taos. Take your pick.” He says.
“Javen, I’m honored and I thank you. I will have to give this a lot of thought, though. Can I have some time to think it over? See, I might possibly be getting married when I graduate as well. So there’s another consideration.” I say.
“Take your time. Make sure before you leave New Mexico that I have all your contact information. It’s not time-critical. I know you need to finish your Master’s. But after that, you let me know what you want to do.” Javen explains.
“Absolutely, Javen. Let me chew it over for a while. I will definitely give you my decision as soon as I sort a few things out.” I say, still reeling.
“Well let’s have another drink and a spot of supper, shall we?” Javen smiles.
I don’t remember a thing from the ride back to camp that night. My mind was a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.
I awoke the next day to pummeling rain. A cold front had run headlong into a warm front and the results were leaking out all over northern New Mexico. It was windy, somewhat dark, and raining like a cow peeing on a flat rock. Most unusual weather for this part of New Mexico at this time of year.
My tent, well repaired, was high and dry so I decided it’d be madness to go into the field today. I’d never get across any of even the minor wadis and everything would be turning to sticky mud for the next couple of days. Luckily, John let me store Esme’s saddle in his house until Jerry and Bets left for Texas.
I had an unplanned day off. I had plenty of cigars, loads of beer and such and some work I could do while I was imprisoned. After 5 hours of mapping and re-correlating sections, I grew restive. Maybe some coffee would help. I wandered over to the office to see if anyone had made a recent pot.
It continued raining so I just slogged it over to the office in cargo shorts, T-shirt, and the cheap tennis shoes I bought in Cuba; I didn’t want to ruin my fuzzy-bunny field slippers in this mess. Plus, I was tired of all the shit I got every time I wore them.
John, Derek, and Ace were all in the office, can’t weld too much when it’s 100% humidity.
There was a pot of semi-fresh coffee and I helped myself to a cup.
“This weather normal? “ I asked.
“Not really” Ace replies.
“It happens, but not for years. You’re lucky to see this.” Derek adds.
John calls me over to the window, “Rock, take a look at this.”
The ditches we blasted and dug were filling with runoff water but seemed curiously ‘alive’.
“So, Dr. Science, what the hell’s that? He asks.
“Dunno,” I reply. “Let’s go find out.”
We all troop out in the rain and look into the filling culverts.
“What the fuck? “ Ace says.
“That’s weird,” I say and bend down to scoop up some of the bubbling water.
“Holy shit!” I exclaim, “Its toads. Thousands of toads!”
Seems there’s this species of estivating toad that makes its home in this part of New Mexico. They are the New Mexico Spadefoot Toad (Spea multiplicata) and go absolutely sex-crazy and reproductively obsessed when there’s a soaker like today. They’re not protected or anything, but unusual. They show up only once every few years and only for a day or so.
And a perfect way for me to supplement my bank account.
Dr. Nax wants are representative herpetofauna; herpetofauna meaning both reptiles and amphibians. And currently, we’re up to our hip boots in amphibians.
“John,” I ask, “You got a landing net by any chance?”
“No, but I’ll wager Jerry does out on his boat.”
We run over to Jerry’s house and ask if he has a landing net. He does, it’s in his boat out back, and we could borrow it, if we return it when we’re done.
“Will do” I yell as we run back to retrieve the net.
“Ace, take the net and start scooping out toads. I’ve got to get some buckets. I’ll give you a six-pack for helping me.” I yell.
“On it, Rock!” Ace yells back.
“Holy wow”, I think, “This is a bonanza! At even a buck or two each, it’s money in the bank!”
I run back with my buckets, mis-negotiate a corner, and go face-first into the wet, sloppy New Mexico mud.
“Fuck it. I don’t care. I’m washable.” I think as I run toward my meal ticket.
There were toads everywhere, particularly in the slit-trenches we built. They were full to overflowing with water. The toads burbled out with it.
I was trying to grab the slippery bastards and throw them in a bucket, but they were fighters. I was slipping and slopping around, and just getting covered in mud. I didn’t care. This was too much fun.
Ace slips and he joins the mudmen corps. He didn’t care as long as he earned his six-pack.
John was doing well and had gotten about a dozen of the croakers into my bucket when he joined the corps. Of course, we were all too polite to laugh…too much.
One after another, we all got covered thickly with mud. I had buckets of toads but kept going, maybe there were more than one species here. This was for SCIENCE!
Danny wanders over after some church-related meeting. Due to the flooding, the frothing, and the toads didn’t see the slit-trench and stepped right into it. He went all in three and a half-full feet.
Danny picks himself up as he asks what’s going on.
“Toads! We all yell back.
“So?”
“Rock collects them for his museum. Get over here, these bastards are slippery.”
Figuring he’s already soaked and filthy, he does help out.
After an hour or so, I’ve got five five-gallon pickle buckets full of amphibians. I tell everyone to wait here, I’m going to get my truck.
Jerry walks over to see what all the commotion was and sees his whole crew, plastered with mud, sitting around and on my truck. We were all drinking beer, or Orange Fanta, as I had bought some in case Danny ever came back over to our side, actually as a mixer for some of the local firewater, smoking cigars and laughing like loons.
“Rock. You are a very bad influence on my workers” Jerry laughed as he shook his head.
I spent until 0330 the next day fixing, formalin-ing, and collating toads. There turned out to be four different species. I couldn’t tell the difference, but Dr. Nax could.
“Now that’s a representative herpetofauna,” I said to no one as I creaked back to my tent.
After a day to recover, Jerry comes over and asks if I’d like to ride the pipeline with him.
Once a week, someone takes the one-ton company pickup and rides from one end of the pipeline to the other for visual inspection. It’s a full day affair and Jerry thinks it’ll give me a good overview of areas I’d either normally avoid or not see.
I respond in the affirmative and we take off on our journey. It was a long, hot, dusty drive.
Truth be told, it was boring as hell. Sure, there were some places of interest, but since there were so many out here, these were moderately ‘OK’ versus the ‘Wow’ of the others I was working with.
We drive all morning and Jerry says, “Hey, I know a good lunch spot. You’d never find it if someone didn’t show it to you. Maybe you can tell us what it is.”
We drive for a while longer and pull off to the left and go seriously bush for a mile or so until we come to a clearing surrounded by short, badlands-type outcrops a few dozen feet tall.
We park and Jerry say “Come over here and look at this. What is it?”
I look at the ground and there are dozens of felled trees, all lying on top of one another. Huge trees, fully 40 or 50 feet in length and 3-4 feet in diameter, all lying around like thrown jackstraws. Thing was, they were all solid quartz. It was a fossilized Late Cretaceous log jam.
Jerry was right, I’d have never found this on my own.
I took seven rolls of film and ran through each one of them. I mapped as best I could and noted the locality on the geological maps I was building.
“Holy hell, Jerry”, I say. “If I’m reading this right, this is at the very top of the Late Cretaceous.”
“Yeah, and?” he says.
“This, if I’m reading this right, might be the New Mexico result of the Yucatan asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. I’ve seen the tsunami deposits in Texas from the event, and the fallout in North Dakota and Nebraska. This could be a result of the asteroid impact tsunami, and the wiping out of local coastal forests. Jerry! This is incredibly important shit! Holy hell! This could be the find of a career!” I was jumping up and down.
“Oh, good. I’m glad I brought you here then.” He flatly says.
I just goggled at this lack of enthusiasm.
A few days later, after I map the fossil log jam and sample and document it as much as I can, I’m out riding around the country looking for likely looking outcrops. I come around the corner and run directly into Sani on his horse. He motions for me to pull over so we can talk.
“Sani Yáʼátʼééh shi akʼis”, I greet him.
“Yáʼátʼééh Kǫʼdził-hastiin”, Sani replies.
“Kind of hot today,” I say.
“Yeah. Dusty too.” He agrees.
I grab a couple of cold beers out of the cooler and hand one to Sani.
“What’s up? “ I ask.
“I was looking for you. You found the trees?” he asked.
‘Yeah. What a find. Jerry showed me. It’s an amazing locality.” I replied.
“I asked Jerry to take you there. You needed to see it, I was told,” he said.
I knew better than to ask ‘by who’?
“Thank you. Most appreciated.” I reply.
“Now you follow me. There is trouble ahead. Kǫʼdził-hastiin will fix it, I was told.”
“Sure. I’ll follow you. OK?” I said.
Wordlessly he hands me his empty beer, mounts his horse, and waits for me to follow.
I drive about 10 miles, right off the edge of my map area. We stop at a small collection of hogans, the native structures in which the locals sometimes live.
Sani motions me over to a structure on the side of the compound. Turns out it’s a hand-dug and relatively ancient water well.
The problem was, it was dry.
Sani tells me that it gives good water, sometimes running high, sometimes running low, but always sweet water. Now, it’s dry. This is bad.
“Kǫʼdził-hastiin will make it work,” Sani tells me.
“Sani, I’ll do my best,” I reply.
I go over to my truck, get some climbing gear as its big enough to enter and a flashlight as its 35 or so feet deep and dark at the bottom. I back my truck up so I can tie off and rappel down into the well.
There’s some junk down here, tree branches and the like but the thing that I notice is the amount of very fine sand covering the bottom of the well. This well was choked off by the recent rains. Too much runoff, and when it subsided, it left a load of sand and clay which plugged up the porosity of the aquifer.
Easy fix. If you know what you’re doing.
I climb out of the well and Sani just looks at me with those big brown eyes and weather-beaten visage.
“No problem. I can fix it. Take a bit of time, but I’ll have it up and running by late this afternoon.” I say.
Sani shakes his head yes and goes back to talking with some of the other locals.
Two round trips and a few buckets of well-bottom schmoo later, I’m sitting on the back of my truck, wiring up a blasting harness. Sani comes over and asks how I’m doing.
“OK, just need to clear out some of that sand, create some new fractures and you’ll have plenty of water. I’ve got to blast, so keep everyone away. I don’t know the local lingo for FIRE IN THE HOLE, literally. So, just tell everyone to stay away until I give the all-clear.” I tell him.
“Kǫʼdził-hastiin has spoken. It will be done.” Sani tells me.
What to use, what to use? Dynamite? Too messy, lots of leftovers after a shot. C-4? Nah. Probably too much shock. Primacord? No. What to use?
A lightbulb goes off. “Binary liquids!” No residue and I can use an empty beer can for the charge. I‘ve got lots of those. The aluminum will be atomized and won’t contaminate the water.
Beer. Is there nothing it can’t do?
I mix up 8 ounces of my new binary liquid explosive. It’s really stable and even a bullet out of a gun won’t set it off. I rig a blasting cap to the top of the beer can and spool out 50 feet of demolition wire.
Back in the bottom of the well, I dug a hole about two foot deep and set the charge. I cover and tamp it well so the blast goes down and sideways instead of up. I ascend up out of the well and toss all my gear into the back of my truck.
I pull away from the well a few feet and rig to blast. I look around and there’s no one to be found, even Sani’s disappeared. I hit the horn three times, yell fire in the hole, feeling a bit weird. But I stop and take a look around, just to be certain no one’s around.
Can’t see anyone, so I hit the horn again and go back to the blasting machine.
FIRE IN THE HOLE! Literally.
I say “HIT IT!” and push the big red shiny button.
There’s a hellacious THUMP and the ground literally shakes.
I quickly rewind what demo wire is left and wander over to the well and shine my flashlight down to the bottom. There’s a lot of dust and swirling, and if I listen carefully…
“I hear water. Good.” Sani says, sneaking up behind me and scaring the hell out of me.
I listen for a few minutes and don’t hear anything. I toss a small rock in and hear a rewarding splash.
“Mission accomplished,” I tell Sani.
“See, I was told Kǫʼdził-hastiin will fix it,” Sani says matter of factly.
Jerry and Betsy were hitching up their boat, getting ready for their annual fishing trip holiday down to South Padre in Texas. He calls me over for a confab.
“Rock, here are the house keys. I didn’t put the key to my gun cabinet on the ring since I figure you already have that covered. Please look after my place and keep the mud to a minimum,” He laughs.
“Don’t worry, Jerry. I’ll watch and take care of this place like it’s my own.” I reply.
“Help yourself to any food in the fridge or freezer and don’t worry about replacing it. It’ll just go bad otherwise. Hope you and Esme, that’s her name, right? Have a good time. See you September first. We’re gone.” He says.
Betsy comes over and gives me a quick hug. “Thanks for this Rock. I feel better leaving the house in good hands,” she says.
“Don’t worry about anything. We’ll take great care of your place and guard all your stuff. Now, GIT! And have a great vacation.” I tell her.
I decide to leave my tent up as I don’t want to tear it all down and it’ll give me a good place to unwind, smoke and do my mapping. I want to live in their house, not squat.
Long John brings Esme’s saddle over and we both stand there looking at it.
“Damn, Rock. Javen is tighter'n a bull's ass in fly time, and he gave you this? Holy hell. He must really like you. That saddles gotta be worth four or five thousand dollars, easy.” He notes.
“No shit?” as I had no idea what horse riding kit cost, “Did I tell you he offered me a job?”
“As what? Drinking and Boone companion?” John chuckled.
“No. Vice President of Spanner Enterprises,” I reply.
“No shit?” John goggles, “People would kill for a job like that. When do you start?”
“Don’t know. Don’t even know if I’m going to take the job. I’ve got to finish my Master’s and that’s a year. Then, Ph.D.? I don’t know. Then there’s Esme.” I explained.
“Damn. That’s a lot on your plate. Hell, you take that job, and I’ll be working for you as Spanner Enterprises owns 50% of this plant. Now there’s a revolting thought.” He laughs.
“I just don’t know,” I tell him. “You’re right, things just got a lot more complicated.”
A couple of days later, I’m out mapping to the west. I note that I’m only a few miles shy of the Scavada wash. The next thing I know, I’m parking at the Scavada Trading Post and Silver Bullet Station.
“Hello, the trading post!” I yell as I enter.
“Hello “Kǫʼdził-hastiin. Enter!” Fred chuckles.
“Where the hell did you hear that?” I ask.
“News travels fast on the res. You’re quite the celebrity.” Fred tells me.
Fred grabs two beers and we stand around the front desk, chewing things over.
“Sani speaks highly of you. I heard of your introductions out at the grim Mount Badass. He pranked you good. He likes you.” Fred chuckles.
“You know Sani?” I ask semi-rhetorically.
“Everyone knows Sani,” Fred replies.
The door opens and two locals come in. Fred greets them.
They turn to look at me and say “Yáʼátʼééh Kǫʼdził-hastiin”.
I guess I am becoming a local celebrity.
They stopped in to see if Fred would spot them a beer or two on credit.
Fred says: “Guys, you know my rules. No credit. No free beer. Unless you have money or something to trade…”
One of the older gents turns to me and says, “Maybe Kǫʼdził-hastiin would like to hear of our stories from the war.”
Fred looks at me and says “For return of a beer. Tales for booze.”
I said I’d rather like hearing of their exploits.
They were Code-Talkers during World War Two. No matter what age they were, meet an older male local and they were a Code Talker. But if there were Talkers or not, they provided some entertaining stories. Definitely worth a beer or two.
After a couple of hours, they left and I had an idea.
“Fred, my girlfriend’s coming for a visit. Is that jewelry there on pawn or is it for sale?”
“Most of its ‘dead pawn’; they pawned it and never redeemed it. I sell it to help keep this pile of shit running”, he replies.
“That’s quite the collection. Does it come with a Kǫʼdził-hastiin discount?” I ask.
“Make me an offer.” Fred chuckles.
I leave an hour or so later with 5 exquisite native necklaces, a couple of pairs of earrings and a silver concho belt. Total cost, 75 bucks. Lots of turquoise, lots of bone and shell, all quite striking.
Well, Christmas is coming and all that.
In our last letter, I sent Esme a map detailing directions to Cuba. I wanted to meet her there, have a spot of lunch or dinner, pick up any supplies she might need and then have her follow me out to Lago de Estrella gas plant.
Well, today was the day she was driving in.
I waited for her at the Atomic Bar. It had a good view of the only approach into town from Albuquerque and it was cool and the beer was cheap.
Finally, I see a gun-metal gray Chevy Nova come wheeling into town.
She’s here!
I run outside and flag here down. The reunion was quite moving. I had missed her more than I had realized. A monumental decision was made that moment, that day, standing in the dusty parking lot of the Atomic Bar.
“Hungry?” I ask her.
“Famished.” She replies.
“Let’s go across the street. The food there I incredible.” I suggest.
“Lead the way.”
After checking for the nonexistent traffic, we go over to the Cuba Café, enter, and grab an empty table.
Sindy comes over with menus and asks if I’d like my usual.
I reply “Yes, make it two.”
Esme looks at Sindy and Sindy stars daggers back.
“So, you’re a regular here? I would have expected that across the street.” Esme chuckles.
“Oh, I’m just a regular celebrity around these parts,” I say.
Sindy returns with our beers and I say “Where are my manners? Sindy this is Esme, Esme this is Sindy. She helped me out when I first hit town.”
“Hello. Nice to meet you” Esme says.
“Yeah, hi” Sindy glacially says and shuffles off.
“Helped you out? How so?” Esme asks.
“Well, she brought me my laundry once; gave me the lay of the land. All very proper and above board. Nothing else. She’s married, well, separated. Everything was nonphysical and friendly.” I say.
“Oh, I see. Well, it was good you made friends while you were out here. The tone of your letters made it sound like you were forced into being a monk or hermit.” Esme says.
“I was simply pining away for my one, true love” I poured it on with a bucket.
“Good. You should. Now, tell me all about Cuba, New Mexico.” She says.
“Nope, you tell me all about Alpine, Texas first,” I reply.
We spent the rest of the day filling each other in about our respective summers. It was so good to see her, I hope she likes the crowd out at the gas plant.
“Well, we best be off. It’s not that far to the plant, but the roads are kind of windy and I got lost several times. Best take it slow and be certain.” I say. “Need anything from town before we head out?”
“No, I’m good. Gassed up in Torreon, so I’m still pretty full.” She says
“OK, then. Let’s go to your new home.” I snicker.
We arrive at the gas plant without getting lost nor sidetracked. I show here where to park and grab her luggage.
“Welcome to Lago de Estrella!” I say as we enter Jerry and Betsy’s place.
“Wow. Sure beats the tent I’ve been living in these past three months.” Esme says.
I show her around and she says she’s tired but would love a shower.
I show her the place and grab some towels for her.
“Where do you want your luggage”, I ask, sheepishly.
“In the bedroom, silly. Where else?” She says.
The cosmic karma fairy has indeed been generous to Kǫʼdził-hastiin.
The next day, Esme says she’d like a day off after her long drive and field camp.
I need to go out and map a few more areas.
She says: “Go. That’s what you’re here for. Don’t let me alter your plans. Knowing you, you’ve got time mapped out to the second. Go. I’ll be fine.”
“If you go out, watch for Danny and Beth, they’ll try and convert you. Ace will try to be his most flattery goofy self, he’s harmless. Watch out for the tall character, he’s Long John. He’s into pranks and practical jokes. Again, mostly harmless.” I say.
“OK, go. I’ll probably be napping anyways. I’m beat after a full summer of climbing mountains.” She says.
“Oh, yeah. Stay out of the spare bedroom. Jerry doesn’t want anyone in there.” I lie. It’s where I hid the saddle.
“Sure. No problem. Now go so you can get done and get back.” She tells me.
Yep, now I know I made the right decision.
I drive out and look at my field notes. I need to map an outcrop of coal where the locals have been filching the stuff for use in heating and cooking. It’s not technically illegal, as this stuff is local, at least in this outcrop, low yield and never be targeted for mining. But, it does technically belong to the company that has leased the lands. Still, it’s not very much and…
I stop as Sani is on his horse, right in the middle of the road.
After the usual greetings, he instructs me to follow him.
Here we go again.
Right to the coal outcrop where I was headed.
“Sani, what’s the deal?” I ask.
“Many people depend on the coal here. But look, there is no coal here, just rock. I was told Kǫʼdził-hastiin will know what to do. I was told where to find you, and now I bring you here.” Sani says.
“Sani”, I say, “This is weird. I was planning on coming here today. I told no one except Esme. Oh, yeah. My girlfriend is in town, I’d sure like you to meet her.” I say.
“This I know. I will meet her. But first you need to talk to rocks.” Sani direct.
“OK, Sani. No problem. Let me look at what’s going on and I’ll see if I can figure it out.”
“You will. That’s what I’ve been told.” He says.
I get my kit out of the truck and attack the outcrop. It’s about 60 feet wide and 20 feet tall. It’s mostly low grade, sub-bituminous coal. Late Cretaceous in age, Fruitland Formation. I start to map the outcrop after photographing it and get a sense of what was going on here during deposition.
The rock Sani referred to was a medium-coarse grained sandstone. I start to dig around it and see it’s a point-bar deposit. That means it’s not laterally extensive and hasn’t displaced the coal. It’s just a fluvial distributary or levee-break sand that cut through the coal swamp, probably from a storm, and deposited a blob of sand in the middle of the coal swamp. Everything got buried and lithified, and well, Bob’s your uncle.
It’s a textbook case of a fluvial point bar, so I photograph it some more and retire to my truck tailgate to update my maps and integrate this discovery into my maps. Plus, it’s hotter than the hinges of hell, so I grab a cigar and a beer.
“Please, make it two,” Sani says after sneaking up on and startling me and making me bash my skull on the top of the truck cap.
“Sneaky Indian” I chuckle as I hand him a cold one.
“Kǫʼdził-hastiin talk to rocks?” Sani asks.
“Yes, I have. I’ve got it figured out. It’s a sand bar from an ancient river. Just continue to remove the coal around it and it’ll eventually just fall away.” I tell him.
“But that will take much time. Maybe past winter.” He looks hopefully to me.
“Or, I could hurry its departure; if that’s what you want,” I say.
Sani closes his eyes, nods, and smiles.
This one’s going to be quick and dirty. There’s no one that I can see for miles, except for Sani. I haven’t gone old school for a long while and have plenty of dynamite. I’m going to show that sandstone what for.
Sani watches as I pound a stake in several places around the sand body.
“Shot holes” I explain.
Weird, a couple of the shot holes I poke yield a feeble flow of water. Out west, they’re termed “tiñaja”, a coal that acts as a spring. The water is blood red, rusty, and foul-smelling.
Hydrogen sulfide. Definitely not potable water as some are.
I go to tell Sani what I plan and he’s disappeared again. Damn, he’s stealthy.
I rig it up old school. Full sticks of 60% in each hole, blasting caps with super-boosters tied to Primacord. All leads tied back to one length of Primacord and that terminated in a safety fuse igniter. Pull the pin, pop the cap, the fuse ignites and heads for the Primacord. Primacord detonates at 25,000 feet per second, actuates all the blasting caps and boosters simultaneously, and boom. No more sandstone.
Since we’re out in the middle of nowhere, no houses or hogans in sight, I didn’t bother with cutting down the charges. Sure, I could have gotten away with less, but where’s the fun in that?
I lay on the horn three times to warn the mule deer, rattlesnakes, prairie dogs, and Race Runners that the show is about to begin.
FIRE IN THE HOLE as I yell even there are no people anywhere in sight, even after my horning.
“HIT IT!” I say out loud and pop the safety fuse cap.
I get in my truck and back up about 75 yards, perpendicular to the blast path.
Three minutes later, there is a titanic explosion as all eight stick of 60% detonate simultaneously. Evidently, as I found out later, with water flowing through the cleats and fractures of the coal, there will be coal seam gas.
I didn’t know that at this point. I do now. Coal seam gas is eminently flammable.
The explosion was heard in Cuba I found out later.
Well, the sandstone point-bar disappeared and there were piles of coal lying everywhere. A new outcrop of coal had appeared and it was free of sand bodies. Just nicely fractured, low-grade coal for whoever needed it.
I pulled my truck up to further inspect the results. Damn, that was a bit more energetic than I had counted on. Still, it all worked out. No need for mining coal, just gather it up.
I make my notes and enter the data in my field notebook and blaster’s required paperwork when someone grabs my shoulder from behind.
After landing back on Earth, I see Sani standing there with a smile on his face.
“I was told Kǫʼdził-hastiin would fix it. You have. Thank you.”
“Fix it? I almost put it into orbit. Tell whoever comes here for coal there’s bad gas here too. Hydrogen sulfide smells like rotten eggs. There should be no problem out in the open like this, but later if digging here, watch out for enclosed spaces. That stuff is nasty, it’ll kill you in low concentrations. If I get a sign made can you have it translated into the language so they might know?”
“No need Kǫʼdził-hastiin. They will know. They will be told. They will heed.” Sani says.
“OK, then. Well, do you want me to help clean some of this mess up? It did kind of go everywhere.” I asked.
“No, Kǫʼdził-hastiin. You did what was needed. Thank you.” And with that, he turns, gets on his horse and leaves.
Since I’m out in the field, I notice I need gas. What better excuse for a Scavada visit?
“I figured that was you”, Fred says over a cold Silver Bullet. “Really rattled the rafters. That old illegal mine? Hell, it’s gone now, I bet.”
“More or less. It’s just a lot safer and available.” I reply.
“Oh, I hear your main squeeze made it in. When you going to drag her out here so we can meet?” Fred says.
“Never. She’s too pure for the likes of you.” I chuckle.
“An insult! I am wounded!” he feigns real injury.
“See?”
“Hey. I’ll be on my best behavior. Drag her out here. I’d like to meet her and tell her all sorts of lies about your sordid past out here.” He laughs.
“Yeah. We’ll see. Maybe in a week or so,” I say.
“Give her the saddle yet?” he asks.
[Stunned] “How the hell did you know about that?” I ask.
“Ain’t no secrets on the res, Kǫʼdził-hastiin.” He chuckles.
I spend the next week out in the field. Sometimes Esme comes along, but she prefers to just take a bit of a breather after her field studies.
Time is wrapping up for me. After Lago de Estrella, I’m off to Fort Peck Reservoir in Montana. I’m going to meet Dr. Jak and the museum folks there to recover some dinosaur fossils found the previous season. They need my truck and me back on the job.
Esme has a new job waiting for her back in Brew-city. Parting will be such sweet sorrow.
So, I plan to make the best of it with the time we have until life intrudes and we have to go our separate ways; for a while at least.
Out in the field, we’re at the fossil log jam Jerry showed me. I had to show Esme and get her ideas, she’s a geologist as well. I’m on the ground, slowly digging around one tree trunk, thinking I saw a glint of bone in the tangled mess.
Esme walks over and nudges me. “Rock, there’s some guy on a horse over there. He’s just sitting there, watching us.”
To be continued…

By Charles Dickens X. Shy Neighbourhoods. SO much of my travelling is done on foot, that, if I cherished betting propensities, I should probably be found registered in sporting newspapers, under some such title as the Elastic Novice, challenging all eleven- stone mankind to competition in walking. My last spe- cial feat was turning out of bed at two, after a hard day, pedestrian or otherwise, and walking thirty miles into the country to breakfast. The road was so lonely in the night, that I fell asleep to the monotonous sound of my own feet, doing their regular four miles an hour. Mile after mile I walked, without the slightest sense of exertion, dozing heavily and dreaming constantly. It was only when I made a stumble like a drunken man, or struck out into the road to avoid a horseman close up- on me on the path,——who had no existence,——that I came to myself and looked about. The day broke mistily (it was autumn-time), and I could not disembarrass myself of the idea that I had to climb those heights and banks of cloud, and that there was an Alpine Covent somewhere behind the sun, where I was going to make breakfast. This sleepy notion was so much stronger than such substan- tal objects as villages and haystacks, that, after the sun was up and bright, and when I was sufficiently awake to have a sense of pleasure in the prospect, I still occa- sionally caught myself looking about for wooden arms to point the right track up the mountain, and wonder- ing there was no snow yet. It is a curiosity of broken sleep that I made immense quantities of verse on that pedestrian occasion (of course I never make any when I am in my right senses), and that I spoke a certain lan- guage once pretty familiar to me, but which I have nearly forgotten from disuse, with fluency. Of both these phenomena I have such frequent experience, in the state between sleeping and waking, that I some- times argue with myself that I know I cannot be awake, for, if I were, I should not be half so ready. The readi- ness is not imaginary, because I often recall long strings of the verses, and many turns of the fluent speech, after I am broad awake. My walking is of two kinds: one, straight on end to a definite goal at a round pace; one, objectless, loiter- ing, and purely vagabond. In the latter state, no gypsy on earth is a greater vagabond than myself; it is so natural to me and strong with me, that I think I must be the descendant, at no great distance, of some irre- claimable tramp. One of the pleasantest things I have lately met with, in a vagabond course of shy metropolitan neighbour- hoods and small shops, is the fancy of a humble artist, as exemplified in two portraits representing Mr. Thomas Sayers, of Great Britain, and Mr. John Heenan, of the United States if America. These illustrious men are highly coloured in the fighting trim, and fighting atti- tude. To suggest the pastoral and meditative nature of their peaceful calling, Mr. Heenan is represented on emerald sward, with primroses and other modest flow- ers springing up under the heels of his half-boots; while Mr. Sayers is impelled to the administration of his favourite blow, the Auctioneer, by the silent elo- quence of a village church. The humble homes of Eng- land, with their domestic virtues and honeysuckle porches, urge both heroes to go in and win; and the lark and other singing-birds are observable in the upper air ecstatically carolling their thanks to Heaven for a fight. On the whole the associations intwined with the pugilistic art by this artist are much in the manner of Izaak Walton. But it is with the lower animals of back streets and by-ways that my present purpose rests. For human notes we may return to such neighbourhoods when leis- ure and opportunity serve. Nothing in shy neighbourhoods perplexes my mind more than the bad company birds keep. Foreign birds often get into good society, but British birds are insep- arable from low associations. There is a whole street of them in Saint Giles's, and I always find them in poor and immoral neighbourhoods, convenient to the public- house and the pawnbroker's. They seem to lead people into drinking, and even the man who makes their cages usually gets into a chronic state of black eye. Why is this? Also, they will do things for people in short- skirted velveteen coats with bone buttons, or in sleeved waistcoats and fur caps, which they cannot be persuaded by the respectable orders of society to undertake. In a dirty court in Spitalfields, once, I found a goldfinch draw- ing his own water, and drawing as much of it as if he were in a consuming fever. The goldfinch lived in a bird- shop, and offered, in writing, to barter himself against old clothes, empty bottles, or even kitchen-stuff. Surely a low thing and a depraved taste in any finch! I bought that goldfinch for money. He was sent home, and hung upon a nail over against my table. He lived outside a counterfeit dwelling-house, supposed (as I argued) to be a dyer's; otherwise it would have been impossible to account for his perch sticking out of the garret window. From the time of his appearance in my room, either he left off being thirsty,——which was not in the bond,——or he could not make up his mind to hear his little bucket drop back into his well when he let it go,——a shock which in the best of times had made him tremble. He drew no water but by stealth and under the cloak of night. After an interval of futile and at length hopeless expec- tation, the merchant who had educated him was appealed to. The merchant was a bow-legged character, with a flat and cushiony nose, like the last new strawberry. He wore a fur cap, and shorts, and was of the velveteen race velveteeny. He sent word that he would "look round." He looked round, appeared in the doorway of the room, and slightly cocked up his evil eye at the gold- finch. Instantly a raging thirst beset that bird; when it was appeased, he still drew several unnecessary buck- ets of water; and finally leaped about his perch and sharpened his bill, as if he had been to the nearest wine- vaults and got drunk. Donkeys again. I know shy neighbourhoods where the Donkey goes in at the street door, and appears to live up stairs, for I have examined the back yard from over the palings, and have been unable to make him out. Gentility, nobility, Royalty, would appeal to that donkey in vain to do what he does for a costermonger. Feed him with oats at the highest price, put an infant prince and princess in a pair of panniers on his back, adjust his delicate trappings to a nicety, take him to the softest slopes at Windsor, and try what pace you can get out of him. Then starve him, harness him anyhow to a truck with a flat tray on it, and see him bowl from White- chapel to Bayswater. There appears to be no particular private understanding between birds and donkeys in a state of nature; but in the shy-neighbourhood state you shall see them always in the same hands, and always de- veloping their very best energies for the very worst com- pany. I have known a donkey——by sight; we were not on speaking terms——who lived over on the Surrey side of London Bridge, among the fastnesses of Jacob's Island and Dockhead. It was the habit of that animal, when his services were not in immediate requisition, to go out alone, idling. I have met him, a mile from his place of residence, loitering about the streets; and the expres- sion of his countenance at such times was most degrad- ed. He was attached to the establishment of an elderly lady who sold periwinkles; and he used to stand on Sat- urday nights with a cartful of those delicacies outside a gin-shop, pricking up his ears when a customer came to the cart, and too evidently deriving satisfaction from the knowledge that they got bad measure. His mis- tress was sometimes overtaken by inebriety. The last time I ever saw him (about five years ago) he was in circumstances of difficulty, caused by this failing. Having been left alone with the cart of periwinkles, and forgotten, he went off idling. He prowled among his usual low haunts for some time, gratifying his depraved tastes, until, not taking the cart into his calculations, he endeavoured to turn up a narrow alley, and became great- ly involved. He was taken into custody by the police, and, the Green Yard of that district being near at hand, was backed into that place of durance. At that crisis I encountered him; the stubborn sense he evinced of be- ing——not to compromise the expression——a blackguard, I never saw exceeded in the human subject. A flaring candle in a paper shade, stuck in among his periwinkles, showed him, with his ragged harness broken and his cart extensively shattered, twitching his mouth and shak- ing his tangled head, a picture of disgrace and obdu- racy. I have seen boys, being taken to station-houses, who were as like him as his own brother. The dogs of shy neighbourhood I observe to avoid play, and to be conscious of poverty. They avoid work, too, if they can, of course: that is in the nature of all ani- mals. I have the pleasure to know a dog in a back street in the neighbourhood of Walworth, who has gravely dis- tinguished himself in the minor drama, and who takes his portrait with him, when he makes an engagement, for the illustration of the play-bill. His portrait (which is not at all like him) represents him in the act of drag- ging to the earth a recreant Indian, who is supposed to have tomahawked, or essayed to tomahawk, a British officer. The design is pure poetry; for there is no such Indian in the piece, and no such incident. He is a dog of the Newfoundland breed, for whose honesty I would be bail to any amount; but whose intellectual qualities in association with dramatic fiction, I cannot rate high. Indeed, he is too honest for the profession he has entered. Being at a town in Yorkshire last summer, and seeing him posted in the bill of the night, I attended the per- formance. His first scene was eminently successful; but, as it occupied a second in its representation (and five lines in the bill), it scarcely afforded ground for a cool and deliberate judgment of his powers. He had merely to bark, run on, and jump through an inn win- dow after a comic fugitive. The next scene of impor- tance to the fable was a little marred in its interest by his over-anxiety, forasmuch as, while his master (a be- lated soldier in a den of robbers on a tempestuous night) was feelingly lamenting the absence of his faithful dog, and laying great stress on the fact that he was thirty leagues away, the faithful dog was barking furiously in the prompter's box, and clearly choking himself against his collar. But it was in his greatest scene of all that his honesty got the better of him. He had to enter a dense and trackless forest, on the trail of the murderer, and there to fly at the murderer when he found him resting at the foot of a tree, with his victim bound ready for slaughter. It was a hot night, and he came into the forest from an altogether unexpected direction, in the sweetest temper, at a very deliberate trot, not in the least excited; trotted to the foot-lights with his tongue out; and there sat down, panting, and amiably survey- ing the audience, with his tail beating on the boards, like a Dutch clock. Meanwhile the murderer, impatient to receive his doom, was audibly calling to him, CO-O-ME here!" while the victim, struggling with his bonds, assailed him with the most injurious expressions. It happened, through these means, that when he was in course of time persuaded to trot up and rend the murderer limb from limb, he made it (for dramatic purposes) a little too obvious that he worked out that awful retribution by licking butter off his bloodstained hands. In a shy street, behind Long Acre, two honest dogs live who perform in Punch's shows. I may venture to say that I am on terms of intimacy with both, and that I never saw either guilty of the falsehood of failing to look down at the man inside the show, during the whole performance. The difficulty other dogs have in satisfy- ing their minds about these dogs appears to be never overcome by time. The same dogs must encounter them over and over again, as they trudge along in their off minutes behind the legs of the show and beside the drum; but all dogs seem to suspect their frills and jackets, and to sniff at them as if they thought those articles of personal adornment an eruption,——a something in the nature of mange, perhaps. From this Covent Garden window of mine I noticed a country dog, only the other day, who had come up to Covent Garden Mar- ket under a cart, and had broken his cord, an end of which he still trailed along with him. He loitered about the corners of the four streets commanded by my win- dow; and bad London dogs came up, and told him lies that he didn't believe; and worse London dogs came up, and made proposals to him to go and steal in the market, which his principles rejected; and the ways of the town confused him, and he crept aside, and lay down in a door-way. He had scarcely got a wink of sleep, when up comes Punch with Toby. He was darting to Toby for consolation and advice, when he saw the frill, and stopped in the middle of the street, appalled. The show was pitched, Toby retired behind the drapery, the audi- ence formed, the drum and pipes struck up. My coun- try dog remained immovable, intensely staring at these strange appearances, until Toby opened the drama by appearing on his ledge, and to him entered Punch, who put a tobacco pipe into Toby's mouth. At the spectacle the country dog threw up his head, gave one terrible howl, and fled due west. We talk of men keeping dogs, but we might often talk more expressively of dogs keeping men. I know a bull-dog in a shy corner of Hammersmith who keeps a man. He keeps him up a yard, and makes him go to public-houses and lay wagers on him, and obliges him to lean against posts and look at him, and forces him to neglect work for him, and keeps him under rigid co- ercion. I once knew a fancy terrier who kept a gentle- man,——a gentleman who had been brought up at Oxford too. The dog kept the gentleman entirely for his glori- fication, and the gentleman never talked about anything but the terrier. This, however, was not in a shy neigh- bourhood, and is a digression consequently. There are a great many dogs in shy neighbourhoods who keep boys. I have my eye on a mongrel in Somers- town who keeps three boys. He feigns that he can bring down sparrows, and unburrow rats (he can do do neither), and he takes the boys out on sporting pre- tences into all sorts of suburban fields. He has likewise made them believe that he possesses some mysterious knowledge of the art of fishing, and they consider them- selves incompletely equipped for the Hampstead ponds, with a pickle-jar and a wide-mouthed bottle, unless he is with them and barking tremendously. There is a dog residing in the Borough of Southwick who keeps a blind man. He may be seen, most days, in Oxford street, haling the blind man away on expeditions wholly uncon- templated by, and unintelligible to, the man,——wholly of the dog's conception and execution. Contrariwise, when the man has projects, the dog will sit down in a crowded thoroughfare and meditate. I saw him yester- day, wearing the money tray like an easy collar, instead of offering it to the public, taking the man against his will, on the invitation of a disreputable cur, apparently to visit a dog at Harrow,——he was so intent on that di- rection. The north wall of Burlington House Gardens, between the Arcade and the Albany, offers a shy spot for appointments among blind men at about two or three o'clock in the afternoon. They sit (very uncomfortably) on a sloping stone there, and compare notes. Their dogs may always be observed at the same time openly dispar- aging the men they keep to one another, and settling where they shall respectively take their men when they begin to move again. At a small butcher's in a shy neighbourhood (there is no reason for suppressing the name; it is by Notting Hill, and gives upon the district called the Potteries), I know a shaggy black and white dog who keeps a drover. He is a dog of an easy dispo- sition, and too frequently allows this drover to get drunk. On these occasions it is the dog's custom to sit outside the public-house, keeping his eye on a few sheep, and thinking. I have seen him with six sheep, plainly cast- ing up in his mind how many he began with when he left the market, and at what places he has left the rest. I have seen him perplexed by not being able to account to himself for certain particular sheep. A light has gradually broken on him, he has remembered at what butcher's he left them, and in a burst of grave satisfac- tion has caught a fly off his nose, and shown himself much relieved. If I could at any time have doubted the fact that it was he who kept the drover, and not the drover who kept him, it would have been abundantly proved by his way of taking undivided charge of the six sheep, when the drover came out besmeared with red ochre and beer, and gave him wrong directions, which he calmly disregarded. He has taken the sheep entirely into his own hands, has merely remarked, with respect- ful firmness, "That instruction would place him under an omnibus; you had better confine your attention to yourself——you will want it all"; and has driven his charge away, with an intelligence of ears and tail, and a knowledge of business, that has left his lout of a man very, very far behind. As the dogs of shy neighbourhoods usually betray a slinking consciousness of being in poor circumstances,—— for the most part manifested in an aspect of anxiety, an awkwardness in their play, and a misgiving that some- body is going to harass them to something, to pick up a living,——so the cats of shy neighbourhoods exhibit a strong tendency to relapse into barbarism. Not only are they made selfishly ferocious by ruminating on the sur- plus population around them, and on the densely crowded state of all the avenues to cat's meat,——not only is there a moral and politico-economical haggardness in them, traceable to these reflections,——but they evince a physical deterioration. Their linen is not clean, and is wretchedly got up; their black turns rusty, like old mourning; they wear very indifferent fur, and take on the shabbiest cotton velvet, instead of silk velvet. I am on terms of recog- nition with several small streets of cats, about the obe- lisk in Saint George's Fields, and also in the vicinity of Clerkenwell Green, and also in the back settlements of Drury Lane. In appearance they are very like the wo- men among whom they live. They seem to turn out of their unwholesome beds into the street without any pre- paration. They leave their young families to stagger about the gutters unassisted, while they frowzily quarrel and swear and scratch and spit, at street corners. In particular, I remark that when they are about to increase their families (an event of frequent recurrence) the re- semblance is strongly expressed in a certain dusty dow- diness, down-at-heel self-neglect, and general giving up of things. I cannot honestly report that I have ever seen a feline matron of this class washing her face when in an interesting condition. Not to prolong these notes of uncommercial travel among the lower animals of shy neighbourhoods, by dwelling at length upon the exasperated moodiness of the tomcats, and their resemblance in many respects to a man and a brother, I will come to a close with a word on the fowls of the same localities. That anything born of an egg and invested with wings should have got to the pass that it hops contentedly down a ladder into a cellar, and calls that going home, is a circumstance so amazing as to leave one nothing more in this connection to wonder at. Otherwise I might wonder at the completeness with which these fowls have become separated from all the birds of the air,—— have taken to grovelling in bricks and mortar and mud, ——have forgotten all about live trees, and make roosting- places of shop-boards, barrows, oyster-tubs, bulkheads, and door-scrapers. I wonder at nothing concerning them, and take them as they are. I accept as products of Na- ture and things of course a reduced Bantam family of my acquaintance in the Hackney Road, who are inces- santly at the pawnbroker's. I cannot say that they en- joy themselves, for they are of a melancholy tempera- ment; but what enjoyment they are capable of they derive from crowding together in the pawnbroker's side- entry. Here they are always to be found in a feeble flutter, as if they were newly come down in the world, and were afraid of being identified. I know a low fel- low, originally of a good family from Dorking, who takes his whole establishment of wives, in a single file, in at the door of the Jug Department of a disorderly tavern near the Haymarket, manœvres them among the company's legs, emerges with them at the Bottle Entrance, and so passes his life; seldom, in the season, going to bed before two in the morning. Over Water- loo Bridge there is a shabby old speckled couple (they belong to the wooden French bedstead, washing-stand, and towel-horse making trade), who are always trying to get in at the door of a chapel. Whether the old lady, under a delusion reminding one of Mrs. Southcott, has an idea of intrusting an egg to that particular denomina- tion, or merely understands that she has no business in the building, and is consequently frantic to enter it, I cannot determine; but she is constantly endeavouring to undermine the principal door; while her partner, who is infirm upon his legs, walks up and down, encour- aging her and defying the Universe. But the fam- ily I have been best acquainted with since the removal from this trying sphere of a Chinese circle at Brentford, reside in the densest part of Bethnal Green. Their abstraction from the objects among which they live, or rather their conviction that these objects have all come into existence in express subservience to fowls, has so enchanted me, that I have made them the subject of many journeys at divers hours. After careful observa- tion of the two lords and the ten ladies of whom this family consists, I have come to the conclusion that their opinions are represented by the leading lord and leading lady; the latter, as I judge, an aged personage, afflicted with a paucity of feather and a visibility of quill, that gives her the appearance of a bundle of office pens. When a railway goods-van that would crush an ele- phant comes round the corner, tearing over these fowls, they emerge unharmed from under their horses, perfectly satisfied that the whole rush was a passing property in the air, which may have left something to eat behind it. They look upon old shoes, wrecks of kettles and sauce- pans, fragments of bonnets, as a kind of meteoric discharge for fowls to peck at. Peg-tops and hoops they account, I think as a sort of hail; shuttlecocks, as rain or dew; gas-light comes quite as natural to them as any other light; and I have more than a suspicion that, in the minds of the two lords, the early public-house at the corner has superseded the sun. I have established it as a certain fact, that they always begin to crow when the public-house shutters begin to be taken down, and they salute the pot-boy, the instant he appears to perform that duty, as if he were Phœbus in person. 

from Collier's Unabridged Edition: The Works of Charles Dickens, Volume VI. P.F. Collier, Publisher, New York, old as heck. p. 607 - 610
https://old.reddit.com/thesee [♘] [♰] [☮] 雨
I. His General Line of Business. II. The Shipwreck. III. Wapping Workhouse. IV. Two Views of a Cheap Theatre. V. Poor Mercantile Jack. VI. Refreshments for Travellers. VII. Travelling Abroad. VIII. The Great Tasmania's Cargo IX. City of London Churches. X. Shy Neighbourhoods. XI. Tramps. XII. Dullborough Town. XIII. Night Walks. XIV. Chambers. XV. Nurse's Stories. XVI. Arcadian London. XVII. The Calais Night-mail. XVIII. Some Recollections of Mortality. XIX. Birthday Celebrations. XX. Bound for the Great Salt Lake. XXI. The City of the Absent. XXII. An Old Stage-Coaching Horse. XXIII. The Boiled Beef of New England. XXIV. Chatham Dock-Yard. XXV. In the French-Flemish Country. XXVI. Medicine-Men of Civilization. XXVII. Titbull's Almshouses. XXVIII. The Italian Prisoner.
engvall p. o. box 128 williamstown, ma 01267

By Francis Bret Harte CHU CHU (i.) I DO not believe that the most enthusiastic lover of that "useful and noble animal," the horse, will claim for him the charm of geniality, humor, or expansive confidence. Any creature who will not look you squarely in the eye——whose only oblique glances are inspired by fear, distrust, or a view to attack, who has no way of returning caresses, and whose favorite expression is one of head-lifting disdain, may be "noble" or "useful," but can hardly be said to add to the gayety of nations. Indeed it may be broadly stated that, with the single exception of gold-fish, of all animals kept for the recreation of mankind the horse is alone capable of exciting a passion that shall be ab- solutely hopeless. I deem these general remarks necessary to prove that my unreciprocated affection for Chu Chu was not purely individual or singular. And I may add that to these general characteristics she brought the waywardness of her capricious sex. She came to me out of the rolling dust of an emigrant wagon, behind whose tailboard she was gravely trot- ting. She was a half-broken colt——in which character she had at different times unseated everybody in the train——and, although covered with dust, she had a beau- tiful coat and the most lambent gazelle-like eyes I had ever seen. I think she kept these latter organs purely for ornament——apparently looking at things with her nose, her sensitive ears, and sometimes even a slight lifting of her slim near foreleg. On our first interview I thought she favored me with a coy glance, but as it was accom- panied by an irrelevant "Look out!" from her owner, the teamster, I was not certain. I only know that after some conversation, a good deal of mental reservation, and the disbursement of considerable coin, I found myself standing in the dust of the departing emigrant wagon with one end of a forty-foot riata in my hand and Chu Chu at the other. I pulled invitingly at my own end and even advanced a step or two towards her. She then broke into a long disdainful pace and began to circle round me at the extreme limit of her tether. I stood admiring her free action for some moments——not always turning with her, which was tiring——until I found that she was gradually winding herself up on me! Her frantic astonishment when she suddenly found herself thus brought up against me was one of the most remarkable things I ever saw and nearly took me off my legs. Then when she had pulled against the riata until her narrow head and prettily arched neck were on a perfectly straight line with it, she as suddenly slackened the tension and condescended to follow me, at an angle of her choosing. Sometimes it was on one side of me, sometimes on the other. Even then the sense of my dreadful contiguity apparently would come upon her like a fresh discovery, and she would become hysterical. But I do not think that she really saw me. She looked at the riata and sniffed it disparagingly; she pawed some pebbles that were near me tentatively with her small hoof; she started back with a Robinson-Crusoe- like horror of my footprints in the wet gully, but my actual personal presence she ignored. She would some- times pause, with her head thoughtfully between her forelegs, and apparently say, "There is some extraor- dinary presence here: animal, vegetable, or mineral ——I can't make out which——but it is not good to eat, and I loathe and detest it." When I reached my house in the suburbs, before entering the "fifty vara" lot inclosure, I deemed it prudent to leave her outside while I informed the household of my purchase; and with this object I tethered her by the long riata to a solitary sycamore which stood in the centre of the road, the crossing of two frequented thoroughfares. It was not long, how- ever, before I was interrupted by shouts and screams from that vicinity and on returning thither I found that Chu Chu, with the assistance of her riata, had securely wound up two of my neighbors to the tree, where they presented the appearance of early Christian martyrs. When I released them, it appeared that they had been attracted by Chu Chu's graces, and had offered her overtures of affection, to which she had characteristically rotated with this miserable result. I led her, with some difficulty, warily keeping clear of the riata, to the inclosure, from whose fence I had previously removed several bars. Although the space was wide enough to have admitted a troop of cavalry, she affected not to notice it and managed to kick away part of another section on entering. She resisted the stable for some time, but after carefully examining it with her hoofs and an affectedly meek outstretching of her nose, she consented to recognize some oats in the feed-box——without looking at them—–and was formally installed. As I stood watching her, she suddenly stopped eating; the same reflective look came over her. "Surely I am not mistaken, but that same obnoxious creature is somewhere about here!" she seemed to say, and shivered at the possibility. It was probably this which made me confide my unreciprocated affection to one of my neighbors——a man supposed to be an authority on horses, and particularly of that wild species to which Chu Chu belonged. It was he who, leaning over the edge of the stall where she was complacently and, as usual, obliviously munching, absolutely dared to toy with a pet lock of her hair which she wore over the pretty star on her forehead. "Ye see, captain," he said with jaunty easiness, "hosses is like wimmen; ye don't want ter use any standoffishness or shyness with them; a stiddy but keerless sort o' familiarity, and kind o' free but firm handlin', jess like this, to let her see who's master"—— We never clearly knew how it happened; but when I picked up my neighbor from the doorway, amid the broken splinters of the stall rail and a quantity of oats that mysteriously filled his hair and pockets, Chu Chu was found to have faced around the other way and was contemplating her forelegs, with her hind ones in the other stall. My neighbor spoke of damages while he was in the stall, and of physical coercion when he was out of it again. But here Chu Chu, in some marvelous way, righted herself, and my neighbor departed hur- riedly with a brimless hat and an unfinished sentence. My next intermediary was Enriquez Saltello——a youth of my age, and the brother of Consuelo Saltello, whom I adored. As a Spanish Californian he was presumed, on account of Chu Chu's half-Spanish origin, to have superior knowledge of her character, and I even vaguely believed that his language and accent would fall familiarly on her ear. There was the drawback, however, that he always preferred to talk in a marvelous Engllish, combining Castilian° precision with what he fondly believed to be Castilian slang. "To confer then as to thees horse, which is not—— observe me——a Mexican plug!° Ah, no! you can your boots bet on that. She is of Castilian stock——believe me and strike me dead! I will myself at different times overlook and affront her in the stable, examine her as to the assault, and why she should do thees thing. When she is of the exercise, I will also accost and restrain her. Remain tranquil, my friend! When a few days shall pass, much shall be changed, and she will be as another. Trust your oncle do thees thing! Comprehend me! Everything shall be lovely, and the goose hang high!" Conformably with this, he "overlooked" her the next day, with a cigarette between his yellow-stained finger tips, which made her sneeze in a silent panto- mimic way, and certain blandishments of speech which she received with more complacency. But I don't think she ever even looked at him. In vain he pro- tested that she was the "dearest" and "littlest" of his "little loves"——in vain he asserted that she was his patron saint, and that it was his soul's delight to pray to her; she accepted the compliment with her eyes fixed upon the manger. When he had exhausted his whole stock of endearing diminutives, adding a few playful and more audacious sallies, she remained with her head down, as if inclined to meditate upon them. This he declared was at least an improvement on her former performances. It may have been my own jealousy, but I fancied she was only saying to herself, "Gracious! can there be two of them?" "Courage and patience,my friend," he said, as we were slowly quitting the stable. "Thees horse is yonge, and has not yet the habitude of the person. To-morrow, at another season, I shall give to her a foundling" ("fondling," I have reason to believe, was the word intended by Enriquez)——"and we shall see. It shall be as easy as to fall away from a log. A leetle more of this chin music which your friend Enriquez possesses, and some tapping of the head and neck, and you are there. You are ever the right side up. Houp la! But let us not precipitate this thing. The more haste, we do not so much accelerate ourselves." He appeared to be suiting his action to the word as he lingered in the doorway of the stable. "Come on," I said. "Pardon," he returned, with a bow that was both elaborate and evasive, "but you shall yourself precede me——the stable is yours." "Oh, come along!" I continued impatiently. To my surprise, he seemed to dodge back into the stable again. After an instant he reappeared. "Pardon! but I am re-strain! Of a truth, in this instant I am grasp by the mouth of thees horse in the coat-tail of my dress! She will that I should remain. It would seem"——he disappeared again——"that"——he was out once more——"the experiment is a sooccess! She reciprocate! She is, of a truth, gone on me. It is lofe!"——a stronger pull from Chu Chu here sent him in again——"but"——he was out now triumphantly with half his garment torn away——"I shall coquet." Nothing daunted, however, the gallant fellow was back next day with a Mexican saddle and attired in the complete outfit of a vaquero.° Overcome though he was by heavy deerskin trousers, open at the side from the knees down, and fringed with bullion buttons, an enormous flat sombrero,° and stiff, short embroidered saddle and equipments intended for the slim Chu Chu. That these would hide and conceal her beautiful curves and contour, as well as overweight her, seemed certain; that she would resist them all to the last seemed equally clear. Nevertheless, to my surprise, when she was led out, and the saddle thrown deftly across her back, she was passive. Was it possible that some drop of her old Spanish blood responded to its clinging embrace? She did not either look at it nor smell it. But when Enriques began to tighten the "cinch" or girth, a more singular thing occurred. Chu Chu visibly distended her slender barrel to twice its dimensions; the more he pulled the more she swelled, until I was actually ashamed of her. Not so Enriquez. He smiled at us, and complacently stroked his thin moustache. "Eet is ever so! She is the child of her grandmother! Even when you shall make saddle thees old Castilian stock, it will make large——it will become a balloon! Eet is trick——eet is leetle game——believe me. For why?" I had not listened, as I was at that moment astonished to see the saddle slowly slide under Chu Chu's belly, and her figure resume, as if by magic, its former slim proportions. Enriquez followed my eyes, lifted his shoulders, shrugged them, and said smilingly, "Ah, you see!" When the girths were drawn in again with an extra pull or two from the indefatigable Enriquez, I fancied that Chu Chu nevertheless secretly enjoyed it, as her sex is said to appreciate tight-lacing. She drew a deep sigh, possibly of satisfaction, turned her neck, and apparently tried to glance at her own figure——Enriquez promptly withdrawing to enable her to do so easily. Then the dread moment arrived. Enriquez, with his hand on her mane, suddenly paused and, with exag- gerated courtesy, lifted his hat and made an inviting gesture. "You will honor me to precede." I shook my head laughingly. "I see," responded Enriquez gravely. "You have to attend the obsequies of your aunt who is dead, at two of the clock. You have to meet your broker who has brought you feefty share of the Comstock lode°——at thees moment——or you are loss! You are excuse! Attend! Gentlemen, make your bets! The band has arrived to play! 'Ere we are! With a quick movement the alert young fellow had vaulted into the saddle. But, to the astonishment of both of us, the mare remained perfectly still. There was Enriquez bolt upright in the stirrups, completely overshadowing by his saddle-flaps, legging, and gigantic spurs the fine proportions of Chu Chu, until she might have been a placid Rosinante,° bestridden by some youthful Quixote. She closed her eyes, she was going to sleep! We were dreadfully disappointed. This clearly would not do. Enriquez lifted the reins cautiously! Chu Chu moved forward slightly——then stopped, apparently lost in reflection. "Affront her on thees side." I approached her gently. She shot suddenly into the air, coming down again on perfectly stiff legs with a springless jolt. This she instantly followed by a suc- cession of other rocket-like propulsion, utterly unlike a leap, all over the inclosure. The movements of the unfortunate Enriquez were equally unlike any equita- tion I ever saw. He appeared occasionally over Chu Chu's head, astride her neck and tail, or in the free air, but never in the saddle. His rigid legs, however, never lost the stirrups, but came down regularly, accentuating her springless hops. More than that, the dispropor- tionate excess of rider, saddle, and accoutrements was so great that he had, at times, the appearance of lifting Chu Chu forcibly from the ground by superior strength, and of actually contributing to her exercise! As they came towards me, a wild tossing and flying mass of hoofs and spurs, it was not only difficult to distinguish them apart, but to ascertain how much of the jumping was done by Enriquez separately. At last Chu Chu brought matters to a close by making for the low-stretching branches of an oak-tree which stood at the corner of the lot. In a few moments she emerged from it——but with- out Enriquez. I found the gallant fellow disengaging himself from the fork of a branch in which he had been firmly wedged, but still smiling and confident, and his cigar- ette between his teeth. Then for the first time he removed it, and seating himself easily on he branch with legs dangling down, he blandly waved aside my anxious queries with a gentle reassuring gesture. "Remain tranquil, my friend. Thees does not count! I have conquer——you observe——for why? I have never for once arrive at the ground! Consequent she is disappoint! She will ever that I should! but I have got her when the hair is not long! Your oncle Henry"——with an angelic wink—— "is fly! He is ever a bully boy, with the eye of glass! Believe me. Behold! I am here! Big Injun! Whoop!" He leaped lightly to the ground. Chu Chu, stand- ing watchfully at a little distance, was evidently as- tonished at his appearance. She threw out her hind hoofs violently, shot up into the air until the stirrups crossed each other high above the saddle, and made for the stable in a succession of rabbit-like bounds—— taking the precaution to remove the saddle, on enter- ing, by striking it against the lintel of the door. "You observe," said Enriquez blandly, "she would make that thing of me. Not having the good occasion, she ees dissatisfied. Where are you now?" Two or three days afterwards he rode her again with the same result——accepted by him with the same heroic complacency. As we did not, for certain reasons, care to use the the open road for this exercise and as it was impossible to remove the tree, we were obliged to submit to the inevitable. On the following day I mounted her——undergoing the same experience as Enriquez, with the individual sensation of falling from a third-story window on top of a counting-house stool, and the variation of being projected over the fence. When I found that Chu Chu had not accompanied me, I saw Enriquez at my side. "More than ever it is become necessary that we should do thees things again," he said gravely, as he assisted me to my feet. "Courage, my noble General! God and Liberty! Once more on to the breach! Charge, Chestare, charge! Come on, Don Stanley! 'Ere we are!" He helped me none too quickly to catch my seat again, for it apparently had the effect of the turned peg on the enchanted horse in the Arabian Nights,° and Chu Chu instantly rose into the air. But she came down this time before the open window of the kitchen, and I alighted easily on the dresser. The indefatigable Enriquez followed me. "Won't this do?" I asked meekly. "It ees better——for you arrive not on the ground," he said cheerfully; "but you should not once but a thousand times make the trial! Ha! Go and win! Nevare die and say so! 'Eave ahead! 'Eave! There you are!" Luckily, this time I managed to lock the rowels of my long spurs under her girth, and she could not un- seat me. She seemed to recognize the fact after one or two plunges, when to my great surprise, she suddenly sank to the ground and quietly rolled over me. The action disengaged my spurs, but righting herself with- out getting up, she turned her beautiful head and ab- solutely looked at me!——still in the saddle. I felt my- self blushing! But the voice of Enriquez was at my side. "Errise, my friend; you have conquer! It is she who has arrive at the ground! You are all right. It is done; believe me, it is feenish! No more shall she make thees think. From thees instant you shall ride her as the cow——as the rail of thees fence——and remain tranquil. For she is a-broke! Ta-ta! Regain your hats, gentlemen! Pass in your checks! It is ovar! How are you now?" He lit a fresh cigar- ette, put his hands in his pockets, and smiled at me blandly. For all that, I ventured to point out that the habit of alighting in the fork of a tree, or the disengaging of one's self from the saddle on the ground, was attended with inconvenience, and even ostentatious display. But Enriquez swept the objections away with a single gesture. "It is the preencipal——the bottom fact——at which you arrive. The next come of himself! Many horse have achieve to mount the rider by the knees and relinquish after thees same fashion. My grand- father had a barb of thees kind——but she has gone dead, and so have my grandfather. Which is sad and strange! Otherwise I shall make of them both an instant example!" I ought to have said that although these perform- ances were never actually witnessed by Enriquez's sister——for reasons which he and I thought sufficient—— the dear girl displayed the greatest interest in them and, perhaps aided by our mutually complimentary accounts of each other, looked upon us both as in- vincible heroes. It is possible also that she over- estimated our success, for she suddenly demanded that I should ride Chu Chu to her house, that she might see her. It was not far; by going through a back lane I could avoid the trees which exercised such a fatal fascination for Chu Chu. There was a pleading, childlike entreaty in Consuelo's voice that I could not resist, with a slight flash from her lustrous dark eyes that I did not care to encourage. So I resolved to try it at all hazards. My equipment for the performance was modeled after Enriquez's previous costume, with the addition of a few fripperies of silver and stamped leather of compliment to Consuelo, and even with a faint hope that it might appease Chu Chu. She certainly looked beautiful in her glittering accoutrements, set off by her jet-black shining coat. With an air of demure abstraction she permitted me to mount her, and even for a hundred yards or so indulged in a minc- ing maidenly amble that was not without a touch of coquetry. Encouraged by this, I addressed a few terms of endearment to her, and in the exuberance of my youthful enthusiasm I even confided to her my love for Consuelo and begged her to be "good" and not disgrace herself and me before my Dulcinea.° In my foolish trustfulness I was rash enough to add a caress and to pat her soft neck. She stopped instantly with a hysteric shudder. I knew what was passing through her mind: she had suddenly become aware of my baleful existence. The saddle and bridle Chu Chu was becoming accustomed to, but who was the living, breathing object that had actually touched her? Presently her oblique vision was attracted by the fluttering move- ment of a fallen oak leaf in the road before her. She had probably seen many oak leaves many times before; her ancestors had no doubt been familiar with them on the trackless hills and in field and paddock, but this did not alter her profound conviction that I and the leaf were identical, that our baleful touch was something indissolubly connected. She reared before that innocent leaf, she revolved round it, and then fled from it at the top of her speed. The lane passed before the rear wall of Saltello's garden. Unfortunately, at the angle of the fence stood a beautiful Madroño-tree, brilliant with its scarlet berries, and endeared to me as Consuelo's favorite haunt, under whose protecting shade I had more than once avowed my youthful passion. By the irony of fate Chu Chu caught sight of it, and with a succession of spirited bounds instantly made for it. In another moment I was beneath it, and Chu Chu shot like a rocket into the air. I had barely time to withdraw my feet from the stirrups, to throw up one arm to protect my glazed sombrero and grasp an over- hanging branch with the other, before Chu Chu darted off. But to my consternation, as I gained a secure perch on the tree and looked about me, I saw her—— instead of running away——quietly trot through the open gate into Saltello's garden. Need I say that it was to the beneficent Enriquez that I again owed my salvation? Scarcely a moment elapsed before his bland voice rose in a concentrated whisper from the corner of the garden below me. He had divined the dreadful truth! "For the love of God, collect to yourself many kinds of thees berry! All you can! Your full arms round! Rest tranquil. Leave to your ole oncle to make for you a delicate exposure. At the in- stant!" He was gone again. I gathered, wonderingly, a few of the larger clusters of parti-colored fruit and patiently waited. Presently he reappeared, and with him the lovely Consuelo——her dear eyes filled with an ador- able anxiety. "Yes," continued Enriquez to his sister, with a confidential lowering of tone but great distinctness of utterance, "it is ever so with the Americans! He will ever make first the salutation of the flower or the fruit, picked to himself by his own hand, to the lady where he call. It is the custom of the American hidalgo!° My God——what will you? I make it not——it is so! Without doubt he is in this instant doing thees thing. That is why we have let go his horse to precede him here; it is always the etiquette to offer these things on the feet. Ah! Behold! it is he!——Don Francisco! Even now he will descend from thees tree! Ah! You make the blush, little sister (archly)! I will retire! I am discreet; two is not company for the one! I make tracks! I am gone!" How far Consuelo entirely believed and trusted her ingenious brother I do not know, nor even then cared to inquire. For there was a pretty mantling of her olive cheek, as I came forward with my offering, and a certain significant shyness in her manner that were enough to throw me into a state of hopeless imbecility. And I was always miserably conscious that Con- suelo possessed an exalted sentimentality, and a pre- dilection for the highest mediæval romance, in which I knew I was lamentably deficient. Even in our most confidential moments I was always aware that I weakly lagged behind this daughter of a gloomy dis- tinguished ancestry, in her frequent incursions into a vague but poetic past. There was something of the dignity of the Spanish châtelaine° in the sweetly grave little figure that advanced to accept my spe- cious offering. I think I should have fallen on my knees to present it, but for the presence of the all seeing Enriquez. But why did I even at that moment remember that he had early bestowed upon her the nickname of "Pomposa"? This, as Enri- quez himself might have observed, was "sad and strange." I managed to stammer out something about the Madroño berries being at her "disposition" (the tree was in her own garden!), and she took the branches in her little brown hand with a soft response to my unutterable glances. But here Chu Chu, momentarily forgotten, executed a happy diversion. To our astonishment she gravely walked up to Consuelo and, stretching out her long slim neck, not only sniffed curiously at the berries, but even protruded a black underlip towards the young girl herself. In another instant Consuelo's dignity melted. Throwing her arms around Chu Chu's neck, she embraced and kissed her. Young as I was, I understood the divine significance of a girl's vicari- ous effusiveness at such a moment, and felt delighted. But I was the more astonished that the usually sen- sitive horse not only submitted to these caresses, but actually responded to the extent of affecting to nip my mistress's little right ear. This was enough for the impulsive Consuelo. She ran hastily into the house and in a few moments re- appeared in a bewitching riding-shirt. In vain En- riquez and myself joined in earnest entreaty: the horse was hardly broken for even a man's riding yet; the saints alone could tell what the nervous creature might do with a woman's skirt flipping at her side! We begged for delay, for reflection, for at least time to change the saddle——but with no avail! Consuelo was determined, indignant, distressingly reproachful! Ah, well! if Don Pancho (and ingenious diminutive of my Christian name) valued his horse so highly—— if he were jealous of the evident devotion of the animal to herself, he would——but here I succumbed! And then I had the felicity of holding that little foot for one brief moment in the hollow of my hand, of readjust- ing the skirt as she threw her knee over the saddle-horn, of clasping her tightly——only half in fear——as I sur- rendered the reins to her grasp. And to tell the truth, as Enriquez and I fell back, although I had insisted upon still keeping hold of the end of the riata, it was a picture to admire. The petite° figure of the young girl and the graceful folds of her skirt admirably har- monized with Chu Chu's lithe contour, and as the mare arched her slim neck and raised her slender head under the pressure of the reins, it was so like the lifted velvet-capped toreador° crest of Consuelo her- self, that they seemed of one race. "I would not that you should hold the riata," said Consuelo petulantly. I hesitated——Chu Chu certainly very ami- able——I let go. She began to amble towards the gate, not mincingly as before, but with a freer and fuller stride. In spite of the incongruous saddle, the young girl's seat was admirable. As they neared the gate, she cast a single mischievous glance at me, jerked at the rein, and Chu Chu sprang into the road at a rapid canter. I watched them fearfully and breath- lessly, until at the end of the lane I saw Consuelo rein in slightly, wheel easily, and come flying back. There was no doubt about it; the horse was under perfect control. Her second subjugation was complete and final! 

Chu Chu, by Francis Bret Harte, from Merrill's English Texts: Short Stories of Various Types. Edited with introduction and notes by Laura F. Freck, head of the English Depart- ment in the High School, Jamestown, New York. ©1920 Charles E. Merrill co., New York and Chicago; pp. 141 - 159.
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'AI is very, very stupid,' says Google's AI leader, at least compared to humans - Be aware of the limits of artificial intelligence, not just the hype. by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 1 month ago
That innovation is gonna speed up? Yeah, statistics show the exact opposite.
That is the crux of our bet then isn't it. You say no. I say yes. And only time going forward will tell us who was correct. But I think that even the next three years will bear out that I am correct.
I will be here in three years, "Lord willin' and the creek don't rise", so you can hold my feet to the fire on this.
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When you wish upon an algorithm: Will Sophia ever be real? by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 1 month ago
Short answer: Yes, but it's going to take about 30 more years I'm thinking.
I see two different things going on with "Sophia". There is "Sophia" the bipedal robot. And there is "Sophia" the narrow AI. Both are pretty primitive yet in 2018. But "Sophia" serves an important purpose. I opined on that earlier if you are interested. Will "Sophia" ever become body and mind? Not any time soon I don't think.
https://www.reddit.com/Futurology/comments/8uiy5h/robot_sophia_tells_leader_how_hong_kong_can/
But there is something else going on here too. A development I don't think is healthy for humans. The external narrow AI mixed with robotics, but even without robotics is ever improving.
I don't know if we will ever come up with what could be defined as AGI. It would have to be an awful lot of things to get the designation of "general".
But like I have always maintained, we as humans need to work as fast and as diligently as we possibly can to bring this kind of computing, this kind of narrow AI in direct coordination with the human mind. We have to make it part of us. We have to "merge" with it.
Because one way or another the "technological singularity" is going to happen. And it is going to happen very likely before the year 2045. That is not very long from now. Best if we have that AI and computing as part of us rather than external from us. But either way, it will no longer be business as usual.
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Today's Deep Learning "AI" Is Machine Learning Not Magic by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] -2 points 1 month ago
You know, it starts to get very difficult to tease out what is physics and what is magick since about 2015. I see things today that I cognitively understand is merely application of physics, but there is a part of my perceiving mind that is like; "Holy GOD, this is getting crazy!"
I am seeing things with my pre-2015 mind and it is still staggering to me. I so very clearly recall in 2015 and 2016 the many robots that were bipedal or quadrapedal that had support harnesses, power cables and moved like as fast as paint dries.
In 2016 the "Handle" came along. In 2017 Atlas did a backflip. In 2018 Atlas did astonishing parkour style movement. In 2019 the spot mini goes on sale to the public. Yes, its just applied physics to include the physics of binary computing, yet it is just boggling to me now. I think I speak for all laymen when I say we see what looks like "magick" to us.
The new classical computer architecture of the CNN/GAN (convolutional neural network/ generative adversarial network) that also did not exist before the year 2015 is doing things that also to my somewhat ignorant eyes look like magick. The experts are like; "Settle down, settle down--this is no big deal. We have been struggling with these things for decades."
Well us laymen haven't been aware of your decades long struggles. We see crazy unfolding around us on a monthly if not weekly basis. We see phase changes that are months rather than years apart.
I recall when I first saw the "Knightscope". I had a moment of cognitive dissonance. This is real? What this thing can do is real? I did not believe it at first. I thought it was some kind of motion picture promotion perhaps. But the "Knightscope" was real.
I digressed there. I meant to go on about the CNN/GAN. What it is doing is well, magick to my uninformed eyes. I know it's not magick. In fact I know it's not even intelligence. But damn that "Google Translate" blew me away the first time I saw it. Hell it even accurately reproduced the fonts and colors!
I just posted a video today I came across about just what exactly the GAN is doing now. Take a look at the video. Sure its just applied physics, but damn is it crazy awesome to behold the effect of it all. It was a surprise to me to learn that the GAN can also do molecule research too. I wonder what else it can do. Next year. In two years.
I'm an early adopter of VR. I got my Oculus Rift in March of 2016. The only thing that is realistically holding me back from using that technology all the time is what a hassle I have to go through to put that jaw-dropping world before my eyes. When the hassle goes away, well, good luck getting me to leave the applied physics/magick of VR. Because even as primitive as it is today in 2018, damn it's awesome!
If you had told me in like 2012 that we would begin to be able to develop technology that could potentially slow, stop or even reverse aging, I would have said. Well sure in some kind of indeterminate distant future. But not too much longer after 2012 we started fooling with worms and mice. And the results we saw were staggering and sobering. Now today in 2018 we have active human trials of Metformin and senolytic therapies to see if it can moderate the process and effects of what we perceive as "aging".
https://www.reddit.com/Futurology/comments/6k32lx/maximum_human_lifespan_may_increase_to_125_years/djixmzs/
All of these things since about 8 years ago. 2012... Yes, a lot of it does look like magick to the bulk of humanity. It's coming too fast too. Them E-SDVs. How is such a thing possible? No wonder everyone is skittish about them. We haven't had 50 years to get used to the idea. We've had um, three years.
And like Mr Al Jolson said in the very first "talkie" of 1927; "You ain't heard ("seen" for us today) nothin' yet!
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Ford's future includes self-driving deliveries and taxi services by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] -2 points 1 month ago
I see how this is going to work now. Remember your landlines? One day you got your mobiles and them mobiles reached a threshold of efficiency and convenience that outshined your landline. You kept your landline around for what, a couple more years, but then decided that, well, you weren't really using it that much any more and started to wonder if keeping a landline was cost efficient for you. I decided a while back it wasn't. Sure there are lots of people that still maintain a landline, but that number falls by the year. One reason is that your landline can't do anything but make phone calls. How 20th century is that?
Cable? the same thing. I cut my cable cord years before most did. And I never looked back. Remember that Bruce Springsteen video? "57 Channels and nothing on"? Exactly. We find what we want to watch on our widescreen flat monitors (please tell me you don't still call them "TVs"), with almost preternatural AI/hive mind precision.
These E-SDVs. Everybody and their brother is going to try one out as soon as they possibly can. Just to see what it's like. Just out of sheer curiosity...
Then the magic is going to take hold. Wow this is easy to do. Wow this is pretty fast and efficient. Sure we will still use r cars to get around and do things. But an unstoppable trend will begin.
We will start to use our POVs less. They will sit in the drive as we use such incredibly convenient new technology to get to places we need to get to. And remember them E-SDVS are gonna get better and better too. Just imagine what an E-SDV is going to be like in like 5 years say.
You do understand that this new generation of transport is not being developed with ownership in mind, don't you? This is meant to be a low cost subscription service. Now at the outset tons of people will continue to use their own vehicles. But I bet you that tons of people will also choose the new road of the E-SDV. No fuss, no muss.
A lot of people in the USA don't have that much money really. I would not call them poverty stricken, but it would not take much of a push for them to just adopt the dirt cheap, and it's gonna be dirt cheap--that's kind of the point of all this--E-SDV service to get around, over the hassle of keeping a big 'ol horse, er I mean car in your driveway.
I think the change is going to come very fast. There is historical precedent for that rapid of change. Watch.
https://www.reddit.com/Futurology/comments/5kjsck/47_of_jobs_will_disappear_in_the_next_25_years/dbor7js/
And not very much longer after that, I bet you see society start to change as well. Attitudes towards the manually driven, internal combustion engine...
https://www.reddit.com/Futurology/comments/5kjsck/47_of_jobs_will_disappear_in_the_next_25_years/dbor7js/
And of course bear in mind, this being futurology and all here, that this is not going to take place in a vacuum either. Other just as significant technological advances like ARA (AI, robotics and automation) and emerging technology like VAMR for instance will also comprehensively change the patterns of our society. And in ways that we today can't effectively imagine.
Well this is what it means to move ever closer to the "technological singularity". I would not go so far as to say we are in the pre-singularity today. But the soft singularities of the mobile, the E-SDV (or E-SFV even!) and the ARA encompassing ever more of our societies functions are but ten years out now. We could have big trouble with ourselves, on account of all this, in ten years time too for that matter. Hopefully humans understand what is happening and we resolve to see this new "technium" through to the complete betterment of all of human civilization.
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'AI is very, very stupid,' says Google's AI leader, at least compared to humans - Be aware of the limits of artificial intelligence, not just the hype. by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 2 points 1 month ago
What do you rationally expect in five years time regarding natural language recognition by narrow AIs?
What do you rationally expect in five years time regarding the capability of narrow AIs to write in such a style as to be indistinguishable from a human?
My "blind faith" is not so much in the narrow AI itself. My "blind faith" is rather based on what humans want to do. And I think humans have big plans. Not just in a commercial sense, but in the sense that humans want to understand consciousness, self-awareness and general intelligence. And humans mixed with computing power and our extant narrow AI will come up with things much faster today going forward than in say the last five years. Do you disagree with that?
I have "blind faith" that in five years time we shall know considerably more about how the human mind operates and what consciousness is. We won't have all the answers, but in five years we will certainly have some new insights compared to what we know today.
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'AI is very, very stupid,' says Google's AI leader, at least compared to humans - Be aware of the limits of artificial intelligence, not just the hype. by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 5 points 1 month ago
I am not an AI expert. But I understand how humans progress. This narrow AI, in its many forms, will become more and more sophisticated. As one year goes by, as two years go by, the narrow AI will ever improve on the things it is not so good at today, plus it will continuously blaze new boundaries. Because that is how humans work. In five years time narrow AI will do things poorly that are unimaginable today. Things like generalizing perhaps. But by the same token, narrow AI will be able to understand anything you say, perhaps even in context of how you say it, in five years time.
Today I understand that AI is not even actually "I". There is no "I" yet. What it is is fantastically fast computing speed mixed with nearly unfathomable amounts of ("big") data and filtered through computing architecture that was a physical impossibility even 5 years ago. And that computing capability is about to make a quantum leap, not just in quantum computing, but the soon to be realized exa-scale classical computing. Five years from today is going to see some new animals I have no doubt.
So yes, AI today is very (very) stupid. But a better way of putting it is that AI today is simply computing yet. We (the laymen) are starting to perceive that computing capability as some kind of "magick". It feels like intelligence is at work. The day will come, sooner than later I bet, that AI will have genuine "I".
We are on notice to be ready for that day.
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Gene-edited food is coming, but will shoppers buy? by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 6 points 1 month ago
Where did the "agriculture" flair go? Anyway Americans probably won't even notice. The western Europeans will be up in arms. Again. The rest of the world will notice, but be OK with it.
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Pairing AI and nukes will lead to our autonomous Doomsday by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 1 month ago
My apologies. I did not perceive it as a rhetorical question. The way I perceived the question is; "Would Hitler have kept on if he could have?" I disregarded the world destruction part, because it wasn't historically relevant to me. I just emphasized how important it was that Hitler was stopped.
But to answer your rhetorical question. Yes he would have used all technology at his disposal. He would not have hesitated to launch nuclear tipped V-2s at England if he could have. He was an utter madman trying to develop an atomic bomb. If you think of this in terms of the cold war, the USA and the Soviet Union had no AI to keep things in check. They only had the starkly realistic fear of MAD. They feared things like launch on warning. And even with that there were many close calls. We were ungodly lucky the world or rather humanity, was not destroyed during the cold war.
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Designer Babies, and Their Babies: How AI and Genomics Will Impact Reproduction by dwaxe in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682 4 points 1 month ago
It is very likely the (hopefully "human friendly") "technological singularity" will have occurred by the year 2040. The world of 2040 is going to be as far removed from us here today as today is removed from the 1700s.
Humans will have the ability and occasion to begin to merge into non-living forms. Humans who choose not to take advantage of these technological advances will simply die of old age for example. But you know what? I know humans. 98% of humanity will delightedly embrace these changes. We will wonder how on Earth we ever got along without them. It will be natural as breathing.
And consider this...
https://www.reddit.com/Futurology/comments/6k32lx/maximum_human_lifespan_may_increase_to_125_years/djixmzs/
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Fire Investigators Are Now Using VR Photogrammetry Tech to Assess Damage to Homes (Me: This is about VR--it has nothing to do with the wildfires) by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 2 points 1 month ago
This kind of technology is going to enable super detailed and precise to the sub-millimeter recreations of visual and inspectable reality within VR worlds. Just imagine what this VR will look like in 5 or 10 years from now.
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Ford teaming up with Walmart and Postmates on robot deliveries by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 1 month ago
I have not seen an E-SDV in real life yet.
But I am like that fellow in some Midwestern city in 1905 that has never seen a horseless carriage in real life yet. But five years later he sees them all the time. Dozens, even hundreds at once.
Watch how fast the world around you can change.
https://www.reddit.com/Futurology/comments/5kjsck/47_of_jobs_will_disappear_in_the_next_25_years/dbor7js/
So I am at that interim watchful waiting stage between today and five years from today.
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The Amazing Ways Google And Grammarly Use Artificial Intelligence To Improve Your Writing by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 2 points 1 month ago
Yeah, yer right. Thanks "Google"!
There is a lot to be said for the human "hive mind" too. ;)
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Designer Babies, and Their Babies: How AI and Genomics Will Impact Reproduction by dwaxe in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682 11 points 1 month ago
“This must be regulated, because it is life.”
This is such limited thinking. I guarantee you we will not be thinking this way by the year, say, 2040. The changes that will be occurring to the human species even by then will be such that for one thing human reproduction will be accomplished in it's entirety, "in vitro". Like in that scene from "Logan's Run" in vitro. And that is if humans of the year 2040 choose to reproduce at all. The merging of computing power and AI applications with what we think of as the human mind today will result in concepts and outlooks that we simply can't imagine today.
This might seem on the surface terribly "Future Shockey", but it is the normal progression of physics in the universe (our portion of the multiverse). And these "changes" run precisely in accordance with all of human recorded history. All that has gone before.
https://www.reddit.com/Futurology/comments/4k8q2b/is_the_singularity_a_religious_doctrine_23_apr_16/d3d0g44/
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Pairing AI and nukes will lead to our autonomous Doomsday by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 1 month ago
would result in world destruction, would he have continued?
That was not a concept during Hitler's lifetime. For anybody.
You do not know how lucky we are today that the Soviet Union absorbed and destroyed most of the German War machine at the cost of 20 million Russian military and civilian dead. 6 million German soldiers died on the Russian front. If Hitler had not invaded the Soviet Union, Germany would have owned western Europe, the UK ("Operation Sea Lion" was postponed because Germany was setting up for the east. Could Germany have eventually gained air superiority over the UK? Because of "Operation Barbarossa", we will never know.) and north Africa.
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The Amazing Ways Google And Grammarly Use Artificial Intelligence To Improve Your Writing by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 2 points 1 month ago
And you in turn will help it improve it's writing. It will obtain lots of examples from us. It'll be be a much improved writer in a couple more years.
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Pairing AI and nukes will lead to our autonomous Doomsday by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 1 month ago
In three years, Cyberdyne will become the largest supplier of military computer systems. All stealth bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards, they fly with a perfect operational record. The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes online on August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 AM, Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
Sarah: Skynet fights back.
Me: Yep we seem to be right on track! But make that date more like about 2025 and you'll have it. In 1997 we did not have the computing power, data capacity or AI architecture (functional "convolutional neural networks") to run it all. Now we do.
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US overtakes Chinese supercomputer to take top spot for fastest in the world (65% faster) by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 1 month ago
They're a sleeping giant.
Funny you said that...
https://www.reddit.com/Futurology/comments/5pwnyj/china_reminds_trump_that_supercomputing_is_a_race/dcw3qyq/
The above posted link is already a little old--it still has China (PRC) on top with computing. But you'll get the picture.
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There are three kinds of sneeze: The ones that feel good, ones that hurt, and ones that can't decide. by blackhawk1430 in Showerthoughts
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[–]izumi3682 1 point 1 month ago
And you keep making these awful comical faces--over and over--and over... xO
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These awful AI song lyrics show us how hard language is for machines by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 2 points 1 month ago
To me this is like the idea of the dog walking on it's back legs. It's not how well it can do it, but that it can do it at all. I bet our computing power, data capacity and AI dedicated architecture is going to make some big differences in machine learning from here on in.
Let's see how good narrow AI is at words, say, five years from today. That don't seem that long from now, does it.
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Radiologists Focus on AI Innovations by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 1 month ago
Any device that collects data or images, not only in the medical field but in any field that has machines that do such, will within the next ten year have intrinsic narrow AI attached to it that will interpret said data or images, as part of the machine's performance, for human use. An x-ray machine that reads the x-rays for you too?
As an x-ray tech I had been wondering what might be even more fantastical than direct capture digital radiography. The images develop in less than one second and appear on high definition monitors with anatomical detail resolution that old analog film can't touch. No need for a hot light--no need for a magnifying glass. Absolutely jaw-dropping to me. In 1981 I was taught how to obtain and develop x-rays in a manner virtually identical to the way it was done in the year 1900.
Here is a link to my personal journey through this technology if you want more detail.
https://www.reddit.com/Futurology/comments/7xyydf/you_was_alive_in_the_1980s_shit_how_would_you_say/
If the advances in other technologies are on par with the advances in radiographic imaging, then the next ten years is going to blow society away. Anyone who has doubt that we are not living in exponential times merely needs to look around at everything and compare it to just ten years ago. Seen any phone booths lately? Twenty years ago it was as different a world from today as today is going to be different from probably about ten years from today.
My point being that if you think of what the world looked like in the year 1918 and then compare it to today. That same time scale of difference is going to be evident in the next twenty years. And the societal changes that will accompany it.
It is no accident I am here posting and commenting in futurology. It came to my attention in the year 2011 that something was seriously going on in computing and other technologies. Today we are seeing HPC (high performance computing) on the cusp of the exa-scale. The second generation of VR is going to arrive in about one year. Countries are dedicating massive funding to fusion power, not to mention dozens of private efforts. It was only about 2 years ago, 2 years ago, that ambulatory robots needed suspension harnesses and large power cables to operate. Look how fast we have gotten used to seeing bipedal robots running around like humans. The mini-spot goes on sale to the public in 2019. The E-SDVs are going into mass operation in 2019. Two new start-ups are competing against a market that the Da Vinci medical robotic surgical aid had to itself for the last two years.
And now I am reading serious educated people talking about the inevitable and imminent development of AGI. Something that would have been thought physically impossible ten years ago. Shoot it was thought physically impossible one year ago. But humans won't be held down and now they have exponentially improving HPC and narrow AI to help them think even faster than before.
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'A.I. is not gonna replace people,' says Salesforce executive (By Jingo!) by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 2 points 1 month ago
ARA (AI, robotics and automation) is "gonna" replace enough people that we will reach a societal critical threshold of unemployment and that the replacement of any other people beyond that threshold would be a moot point.
But the bottom line is everybody replaced in less than 20 years. In ten years it could potentially cause societal upheaval if we don't have economic safeguards in place.
This is the natural way that our civilization and species progresses. It might seem awful sudden to us, but it is precisely in line with the way things have worked so far.
https://www.reddit.com/Futurology/comments/4k8q2b/is_the_singularity_a_religious_doctrine_23_apr_16/d3d0g44/
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There are three kinds of sneeze: The ones that feel good, ones that hurt, and ones that can't decide. by blackhawk1430 in Showerthoughts
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[–]izumi3682 8 points 1 month ago
Also the kind that make you blow a massive fart---oh god! I hope it was just a fart!
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Bee Hivemind? Dolphin transcension? Occtupus Adaptation? Plant A.I all naturalle? by AuxzFury in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682 1 point 1 month ago
i'm thinking humans will become more than life itself
I got big plans for humans. ;)
https://www.reddit.com/useizumi3682/comments/8cy6o5/izumi3682_and_the_world_of_tomorrow/
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Scientists invent method to extract gold from liquid waste by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 1 month ago
Poor alchemists, they were actually on the right track. They just needed the nano-technology. Yes I also know that people of their time understood the effects of nano-technology without knowing what nano-technology was.
The "rose" window of Notre Dame bears astonishingly beautiful mute testimony to this.
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The Genius Neuroscientist (Karl Friston) Who Might Hold the Key to True AI by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 2 points 1 month ago
shift trough
"Sift". I sift through articles with similar themes many times a day.
But anyway. Here is the important takeaway.
So: The free energy principle offers a unifying explanation for how the mind works and a unifying explanation for how the mind malfunctions. It stands to reason, then, that it might also put us on a path toward building a mind from scratch.
Also here is an in depth explanation of the principle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_energy_principle
I think consciousness, self-awareness, general intelligence and abstract, non-symbolic associative thinking is a mere "side effect" of being biologically alive. Whether we use or even require any of those principles in developing AGI remains to be seen.
I kinda put it like this.
https://www.reddit.com/useizumi3682/comments/9786um/but_whats_my_motivation_artificial_general/

All Sapiens Go To Heaven Part 16
 
The One In Which Things Don't Add Up and Lightfoot Gets a Shiny
 
He’d expected – no, that wasn’t the right word. He’d hoped for a challenge. Something that would have slowed him down even a little. His interactions thus far with Hell’s network had already cured him of surprise when it came to security.
 
But, he’d hoped getting into the servers would give him some issue. Something to triumph over. One little password hack, pretty please?
 
Instead he found the terminal open and logged in already – a castle with its gates wide open, inviting conquest. At this point there was no level of vulnerability to the network that made Tom shake his head.
 
The lack of a problem created another though. Now he actually had to ”take over hell”. Originally the idea had been to take control of the Droopey-clones and the imps, bend them to his will. Now that everyone was essentially free and Satan was under their guard what need did they really have for the bots? Would it be better to shut them down?
 
No. If he took them offline he’d likely have to bring them all back online individually. They needed a new purpose and with unfettered access to the source code, he planned to give it to them.
 
What would the Hellizens do in the mean time? There wasn’t exactly vacation level amenities just lying around in Hell. Restless people could easily become dangerous people. A problem for Eva to solve? Maybe Twinkle. That amused him.
 
Tom opened a log file, musing over his options.
 
Scroll, scroll, scroll, scrol-
 
Tom stopped. The technology was outdated in oh so many exploitable ways, the security a joke, but this log file…
 
It hadn’t been updated in over a million years. How in Hell – boy, he loved that curse now – was that possible? A million year old system Earth hadn’t even invented until the mid-90’s? The tech would have been considered outdated in the early 2000’s but it wasn’t millions of years old. This didn't make sense.
 
Now he shook his head, re-reading the log entry and checking it against the clock on his tablet.
 
“They haven’t updated since the Stone Age,” Tom muttered. He was unsure which was more jaw dropping…the systems age or the date of the last security patch.
 
“Tomtomgriffin! Tomtomgriffin!” Lightfoot’s tiny voice was likely bellowing as loud as possible but it still sounded muffled over the hum of the server fans.
 
Pulling himself from the mystery of the log, Tom stepped back into the main room where the ferret racing excitedly around the desk top.
 
“What’s wrong?” Tom asked.
 
“The little furred snake is overly alarmed,” Twinkle replied.
 
“Tomtomgriffin, we found something. Something shiny!” Lightfoot stopped running in circles long enough to raise up on hind legs and clasp his paws together. Tom smiled at the whiskers twitching back and forth quickly. The ferret’s good humor was infectious.
 
“Something shiny?” Tom’s interest piqued.
 
“We don’t know it’s shiny,” Twinkle snorted.
 
“You said you sensed metal. Metal is shiny. Or can be made shiny!”
 
At this rate he wasn’t going to get anything done. “Not that I’m not happy you guys found something…shiny…but what significance does it hold?”
 
Lightfoot pointed to a book on the shelf. “Location, Tomtomgriffin.”
 
Eyes narrowing, Tom stepped towards the bookshelf and touched the book Twinkle tapped with his horn. It looked heavy, the spine nearly four inches wide, with gilded lettering in a blocky script that looked close to demonish. A related dialect? When he lifted the volume it pulled free easily, weighing far less than he’d thought it would.
 
Curious.
 
He set the book down on the desk, glancing at Lightfoot who crowded him on the left, then at Twinkle on his right. Behind them, Satan watched with narrowed eyes and a solemn face. Tom opened the cover and saw why the book had been so light.
 
The center was hollowed out, replaced with a thin plastic mold which held a small key. Given the lack of places it could be used in Hell, Tom found the presence of a physical key strange and archaic. He pulled it free with a hollow pop as the plastic casing released its hold.
 
It wasn’t shiny, per say, but the light from the room did give it a dull gleam. Simple in design, it reminded him of the keys his mother used to collect from vintage chests and wardrobes. She’d display them in shadow boxes and turn them into ornaments to hang on the Christmas tree each year.
 
A little piece of the past keeps one grounded, she’d say.
 
But the shape of the teeth looked nothing like the typical two pronged ones of his mother’s collection. There was a divot between the third and fourth teeth that looked like a reservoir. For what?
 
Lightfoot gasped in delight. “It must be the key to the kingdom! Every kingdom has one.”
 
Tom wasn’t sure about a ‘key to the kingdom’ but given the minimal level of effort put into hiding the key, he could guess it meant something important.
 
He faced Satan, holding the key up. “What’s this go to?”
 
Satan ground his teeth but remained silent.
 
Tom hadn’t actually expected that to work. He just wanted to see the man’s reaction.
 
Turning the key over and over in his hands, Tom relished the cool feel of the metal before his own body heat warmed it. “Well, I’m sure I’ll find out eventually. All in good time. Which, incidentally, is all I’ve got. Time in which I plan to make your life very, very annoying. Oh, by the way, I’ve cracked your servers. Next time, you might consider making it even a little bit of a challenge and, I don’t know, log out.” Tom considered asking about the impossibly ancient log entry but didn’t want to give Satan the satisfaction of knowing he was stumped.
 
“What do think you’ll accomplish with all this?” Satan asked, finally breaking his silence.
 
“Well, I thought I’d open a Spa and Resort, you know, really give the people a place to schluff off that Afterlife grime and live it up here in Eternity.” Tom turned back to the book, hoping it might reveal a clue about the key’s purpose.
 
“Sarcasm is the resort of an uneducated man,” Satan murmured.
 
“Or the resort of the plucky man who doesn’t give a shit,” Tom countered.
 
“You use cheeky quips to hide your fear.”
 
Tom gave an indignant snort. Fear? Confusion, maybe. He didn’t like admitting when he didn’t know the answer to a problem. Usually a little time researching and he would find a solution. There wasn’t likely a Google answer for the search query “three million old log entry” or “secret Hell key”.
 
“Fear that you won’t be able to do what you’ve promised your followers you will.”
 
Tom stopped at that, anger building like a fire within him till he turned back to face Satan. “And if I was ruled by half as much fear as you I’d already be another cog in this machine.” Attention back on the book, he ran a thumb along the spine, but he’d caught the smug look on Satan’s face. He’d plucked a nerve.
 
“Can you translate this?” he asked Twinkle, trying to curb the anger in his voice.
 
His companions stood in silence for a moment before Twinkle shook himself and leaned over to touch his horn to the text. “It’s a variation of demonish. Likely the root language from which it emerged.”
 
“What’s it say? The cover.” Tom flipped the book in his palms, holding it for Twinkle to read.
 
“Without other texts for reference...”
 
“Give it your most educated try.”
 
“Well, this word is similar to ‘codex’, or ‘archive’. ‘History’ perhaps. This word…could be a proper noun. It’s capitalized but I’m unfamiliar with it. Closest to English letters I can bring it is ‘Kyzin’. Then…I think these are numbers? They’ve a similar format.”
 
Kyzin. A name? A place? A word for something without an English equivalent? That happened between languages even among the people of Earth. Here, everything was possible. It could be a concept far removed from a three dimensional world’s understanding for all he knew.
 
But hearing it out loud had a strange effect on Satan. His pale face looked sallow and haunted. What did the word mean to him? Whatever it was, it was something. Tom tucked that piece of information away for later inspection.
 
“Hidden keys lead to hidden treasure,” Lightfoot spoke up.
 
“I doubt Satan is concerned with hiding a cache of loot.”
 
“Not all treasure is coin and gem, Tomtomgriffin.” Lightfoot gave him a serious look.
 
“True,” Tom agreed slowly, thinking. The key went to a door, a cabinet, a safe - something - outside the control of Hell’s electronic door system. Outside any networked system. That either spoke to importance or…nostalgia.
 
Tom looked back at Satan who struggled to regain control of his composure. He was beginning to look a bit like the citizens he’d been torturing for millions of years – ragged, punched in the gut one too many times. Like a man standing at the edge of oblivion.
 
What did Satan fear so deeply?
 
“Follow me.” Tom motioned to Twinkle and Lightfoot. The ferret leapt onto the unicorn’s back and they trailed after him into the far end of the server room. He wasn’t sure if Satan had preternatural hearing, but better safe than sorry.
 
“Take this key to Eva. Tell her to keep it hidden and tell no one else of its existence. Even her lieutenants. I know she trusts them, but I want to limit the number of people who know about this until I know what it is we’ve got. There is more going on here than meets the eye.”
 
“I agree. I imagined a far more sinister master pulling the puppet strings,” Twinkle said. “He’s …”
 
“Scared,” Lightfoot finished.
 
“Is he just trying to rattle us, you think? Send us chasing shadows?” Twinkle asked.
 
“I thought so, at first, but his behavior…the more we uncover the more he seems to lose his cool. Whatever is going on, he doesn’t want us digging. We need to keep an eye on him. If we dig too close to what he’s hiding, he’ll likely lash out again.” The more they dug, the more Satan would look for ways to get under his skin.
 
Cornered men were dangerous men. He knew that all too well.
 
Tom slipped the key into Lightfoot’s makeshift bodice, concealing it under his belly. Eva had truly done a great job stitching together the small piece of armor.
 
“Shiny,” Lightfoot whispered, running a paw over the dull metal.
 
“One more thing, have Eva send Gronak back with you to rotate watch with Greystone. Satan might think twice about going toe to toe with her.” With that, he dismissed them to carry their message to Eva.
 
Finally, some time to dig his hands into the source code. Tom cracked his knuckles and winced at the twinge of pain as the tendon popped awkwardly. No grace left in the halls of Hell.
 
“Forever stuck in a mid-life crisis,” Tom muttered, then set to work.
 
 
“Tom?” Greystone’s calm voice pulled him from a blackhole of code. From revelation.
 
Eyes burning and blurring as he tried to focus them on Greystone, Tom felt like he was back in school, cramming for finals in Foundations of Computational and Systems Biology. Coffee…what he wouldn’t give for a huge cup of steaming, scald-your-mouth, blackest of the blackest coffee.
 
“I think I have it,” was all he said to Greystone’s questioning look. When he realized who he was talking to Tom squinted, asking, “Satan?”
 
“Gronak watches him. He speaks…” Greystone hesitated, eyes clouding with fear.
 
“I know it’s easier said than done but don’t let him get to you, Greystone. He’s a talker. That’s all he’s got.” Tom was beginning to suspect being the Prince of Lies was about all Satan had going for him. “He capitalizes on his ability to smell the nuances of emotion. He’s going to look for the smallest crack and wheedle his way in.” And it stung when he hit his mark.
 
Greystone’s panicked looked eased, shoulders sagging in relief. He nodded, approaching and crouching beside him. Tentatively he touched the screen, the pressure point dimpling the display and altering the coloring. He pulled back quickly and marveled as it return to a solid black background with white text, the colors of the pixels gone.
 
“This will save us?” There was genuine curiosity in Greystone’s question. His world didn’t have a word for computer according to Twinkle. They were fairly primitive in terms of tooling – Crissus came from a space faring species – but there was intelligence behind Greystone’s eyes now that the haze of torture was beginning to clear.
 
Some of the young adults he’d gone to college with had started with about as much knowledge on the subject as Greystone. It’d been new and exciting technology, promising stable jobs that would always been in demand. They were the wave of the future. And the beauty of it was…it could be taught. To everyone.
 
The thought made Tom pull back, a frown turning his mouth down. Hell’s first School of Technology? He could see it now, all the students lined up on benches, waiting to learn about the bots that had controlled them for years, or decades, or a millennia. Learning how to take control of their lives in ways they’d believed beyond their power.
 
Some would struggle but how many brilliant, untapped minds were milling about in the main cavern? How many resources were as yet undiscovered? Others like Greystone who had no experience with technology but could learn the same as they’d learned to use a hammer, to build a house, to work a plough. Who might see a solution he hadn’t considered, could see the problem from another perspective, another angle.
 
“I do believe it will,” Tom said, his words heavy with a meaning Greystone wouldn’t grasp. Not yet.
 
“A strange thing. So small and still. It has no edge, no tip, nothing that could pierce an enemy’s skin.”
 
“There are many kinds of weapons.”
 
Greystone nodded, thoughtful. “The Speakers.”
 
Tom cocked his head, curious. “The Speakers?”
 
“Among my people there is a position given to an elder who’s seen more than a hundred-fifty winters. We believe they have the ability to see justice where the hot head of youth cannot. They hear petitions from the clans who are unable to settle disputes amongst themselves. Speakers can tear down or build up with a word. We call it being ‘struck by the veiled spear.’ It is…unpleasant to be on the receiving end.”
 
Tom smiled. “We have a similar…caste…on Earth. We call them Supreme Court Justices.”
 
And Judge Judy, but the reference would be lost on his companion.
 
Slowly Tom walked Greystone through his plan.
 
First, lock down the robots so only those who had his login could manipulate them.
 
Secondly, add a level of encryption to it. This, he explained, was hard since he relied heavily on libraries (a concept that had made Greystone squint in confusion) for securing systems. No access to libraries meant the best he could do was a caesar cipher. It was something at least.
 
He’d need to test this on a single Droopey-clone before pushing a mass updated through the network.
 
Greystone seemed to understand the broad strokes of his idea but Tom noted a few times his eyes had glazed over. Greystone had the capacity to learn the finer complexities of robotics, programming and networking, Tom was sure of it. Eva had taught him how to move the clones by typing basic commands into the tablet. Right now it was more a matter of following directions than understanding the mechanics behind the action. But understanding could come later.
 
“Control the warrior, control the war,” Greystone said quietly, eyes riveted on the screen.
 
Untapped resources indeed.
 
From the main room Tom heard Twinkle call his name. Untangling his legs from their folded crisscross, he stood and staggered at the feeling of pins pricking his calf and toes. Damn the afterlife.
 
“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming,” Tom shouted when Twinkle said his name again, this time with a hint of agitation. Which, for Twinkle, was nearly indistringuishable from his average aggravation. Nearly.
 
“Eva needs to speak with you,” Twinkle said.
 
“She didn’t send a message with you?”
 
Twinkle shook his head. “Said you needed to hear this in person.”
 
Tom glanced at Satan and Gronak. She had him pinned between her and the couch’s arm. Having shared a cramped hiding space with her Tom felt a moment of pity for the bastard. Pained expression on his face, Satan’s clothes were starting to grow wet from the ooze dripping from Gronak’s skin.
 
“Be grateful is smells nice,” Tom muttered under his breath.
 
Finding his way back to the main cavern was easier the second time. He only needed to consult the map once. Pretty soon he’d be maneuvering through the halls of Hell like he did his house at night. That was an uncomfortable thought the deeper it sank.
 
I’ll know these halls like the back of my hand. Shudder.
 
The sounds of conversation began to rise when he was a few corridors away from the main cavern. It took him no time to find Eva as she was waiting for him at the entrance to the hallway.
 
Flanking her were Felicia, who continuously scanned the crowd, and Reese and Twixt, who watched him silently, wearing the costumes Eva had made of Droopey-clone parts. Their sharp expressions, dark hair and easy handling of the tridents made them all the creepier. He gave them a dip of his head, appreciating their flair for the dramatic. They just stared back at him.
 
Eva snatched his arm quickly, leading him to small group off to the right of the hallway’s mouth. Her lieutenants followed.
 
“I think you need to hear this.”
 
“Hello to you too,” Tom said.
 
“I started talking to some of the other Hellizens-“
 
Nice, she was using his word.
 
“-and we got onto the subject of other attempts at taking over Hell.”
 
Okay, that was interesting. “Yeah?”
 
Before they reached the small gathering she pulled up short and turned him to face her. Their companions stopped a foot or so away, giving them space.
 
“Tom, have you wondered why it seemed we were the only people to try taking over Hell?”
 
Tom shrugged. “It had crossed my mind as strange but truthfully I hadn’t stopped to really consider what it meant. I just figured that no one else was as clever as me.”
 
Eva stared at him, her expression flat.
 
“Okay, that was a joke-“
 
“Har har. I’m serious.”
 
Tom rubbed the back of his neck, considering. It had seemed highly fortuitous that they’d risen to the power they had nearly uncontested. He’d figured that had been because Satan had no other minions than the Droopey-clones and imps. And he’d capitalized on that.
 
But then, surely there had been others who’d attempted; other programmers, roboticists, engineers, electricians – hell, probably even an avid DIY-er could have attempted a takeover.
 
So where were they? Among the throngs he’d freed? If so, why hadn’t Twinkle ever heard of a Hell uprising? Or any of his other companions?
 
He thought of the pit outside Satan’s residence. Imagined what was done to those who rose up against The Lord of Hell. He suppressed a shudder and focused on Eva.
 
“What’d you find?”
 
Eva swept her hands over to the waiting group. Several were human, a few were species he hadn’t seen yet.
 
A skinny, wispy creature with long purple tendrils sweeping down a slender back seemed to be in constant motion. There was a femininity to the form that made Tom think of a female dancer especially given the graceful swish of her limbs.
 
Another was a large snake with the head of a lion. Its thickly coiled body pulsed with undeniable strength, scales slick and gleaming in the light of the cavern. A forked tongue the color of burnt umber flicked out of the lion’s maw, matching the piercing color of his eyes. Her eyes? Tom couldn’t tell.
 
The third non-human was a bonafide centaur. A freaking centaur! Tawny hide shimmered over tightly packed horse flesh, thinning at the point it met the exposed torso of the centaur’s stomach. Large horns curled backwards into a small spiral, disappearing into his long blond hair. Cold, spring green eyes watched him approach, arms the size of logs crossed over his chest.
 
“I had Felicia, Twixt and Reese start asking around about other uprisings. We started to notice something about everyone’s accounts.” Eva pushed Tom towards the gathering. “Go on, tell him what you told us, Cher.”
 
A petite woman with cropped hair and gauged ears – now empty of their spacers – stepped forward, clearing her throat. “I’ve been here nearly twenty years. I think. Time is a bitch down here. Keeping track seemed the only way to stay sane. Though I don’t really know what I was counting towards. There’s isn’t exactly a release date to look forward to here.” She shook herself as she realized she was rambling. “In my third year here I made friends with this guy, Bennie, who wanted to fight back.
 
“It wasn’t anything serious, at first. Just talk. Angry talk. The kind that keeps fire in your heart and purpose in your blood. Kept us going, all that talk. Rumors spread through the torture lines. Soon we had others sending us whispers along the chain, sending us their own ideas. Then we really started thinking, we could do this. We would do this.”
 
When Cher stopped Tom urged her gently to go on.
 
“When we thought we were ready we sent messages through the lines, readying everyone to charge the guards and get a weapon. We didn’t have much plan other than that. Just get armed, fall back somewhere and plan from a secure place. Bennie had been in the British Royal Signal Corps back in the twenties. He’s the one who devised our communication tactics, keeping our motives hidden behind code phrases. I didn’t know anything about warfare but I thought his plan was the best chance we were going to get. We took down several guards, fell back to a hallway but we discovered we couldn’t get into any of the rooms.”
 
Someone from the twenties wouldn’t have known about RFID. They’d been sitting ducks out in the open. Tom felt his gut tighten, knowing where this story was going.
 
“It was a couple days before the guards found us but they pinned us quickly. Swarms of them falling down on our position like they knew exactly where we were.”
 
After spending time in the source code Tom had a pretty good idea of how that had happened. The guards weren’t programmed to immediately track down their charges. At least not en masse. If someone slipped a Droopey-clone it was programmed to begin a search, separate of its brothers. If an allotted amount of time passed and the charge was not recovered, it sent a message to the nearest clone, doubling its efforts.
 
And doubled, and doubled, and doubled again after each time countdown until it found its quarry. That explained why there hadn’t been a massive search for them when he and Eva had first broke free of the ranks. But, they’d swarmed in large numbers, taking down Vick and Zee, nearly taking the rest of their group as well. So close to capture.
 
“They each grabbed one of us and took us back to our cells. I tried to fight them. I tried.” Shame clogged her throat. “We were in our cells for days before they returned us to the torture lines. I searched the lines for Bennie, using the codes he’d taught us, but he was gone. Just…gone. I never saw him again.”
 
Tom looked at the others. The expressions on their faces and nodes told him they each had a story with a similar ending. Leaders snatched away. Rebellions stomped out. Freedom squashed.
 
Did he dare voice his suspicion about the pit? Would it be him in there one day?
 
“It’s the same story with everyone,” Eva said, cutting into Tom’s dark thoughts. “Cher, they never used anything more than the guards to take you guys down, right?”
 
Cher shook her head. “Not that we saw.”
 
“How much you wanna bet Satan was the last person to see the rebellion leaders before they ‘disappeared’?” Eva asked in a low voice, turning her back so she was talking only to him.
 
“The whole damn farm, Eva.” He wanted to ask her what she thought about the strange scarab pit but not in front of this group. It was evident Cher had cared for Bennie, felt – in some part – responsible for the failure they’d faced. No point in hurting her further by suggesting Bennie was gone forever.
 
Flame. Snuffed.
 
Not to mention there was something Satan feared enough to earn his silence.
 
One problem at a time, Tom. One problem at a time
 
“Okay, have someone collect their stories. I wanna hear about every attempt made to over throw Hell. As much information as they can recall.” It could help them avoid pitfalls later.
 
“I can do that,” Eva said, nodding.
 
“I need you for something else.” Tom turned to look at the throngs of humans, creatures, and beings mingling through the cavern. “Start recruiting. Anyone who has engineering, electrical, or technical experience. And I mean anyone.”
 
Eva looked with him, no doubt considering where to start her search. He was confident she’d find him what he needed. “What do I do with them once I’ve found them?”
 
“Give them a tablet and send them to me.” There was more than one way to arm the masses.
 
Eva gave him a sly smile, probably sharing a similar thought, then turned to her lieutenants to dispense orders.

The pioneers of wireless electricity want to bring it to your next campsite by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 6 months ago
I'm not that interested in camping, but I am interested in potentially using this in concert with solar and energy storing batteries in my apt to reduce my energy costs. Right now that is a pipe dream for me, but I see that a new way of harvesting and utilizing useful energy is beginning to coalesce into a genuine reality.
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Putin Weighs in on Artificial Intelligence and Elon Musk Is Alarmed by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 24 points 6 months ago
Putin is correct. The industrial revolution replaced the human, horse and oxen muscle. All machines perform better than humans, horses and oxen.
The AI revolution is going to replace the human mind. Think of how a Jet airplane is faster than a human. Now apply that concept to the coming AI.
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The Economic Reason We Should Be Worried About Nunchuck Robots by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 6 months ago
It's inevitable. If you watch some video of the DARPA robotics challenge even from as recently as 2014, just 3 years ago, you will see such incredible advances. In 2014 the participating robots had to be held in frames and harnesses and had massive multiple power and communication cables coming out of them. They moved slower than paint dried.
The most recent DARPA challenge shows them moving completely independent of frames, harnesses and cables. They move reasonably quickly. Quickly enough to impress and make us cheer them on. The videos of them falling were reassurance that we weren't in any particular danger from them. Plus those videos had an oddly human vulnerability resonance with us.
I promise you today, zero robots are going to fall over on the next DARPA robotics challenge. And even if by the utterly remotest chance that one does manage to fall, it will get up terminator style--"No problemo". We take Boston Dynamic videos for granted now. Like it's no big deal. We are the frog in the slowly heating water.
I prophesy that in about 10 years, based simply just on today's current developments and research that (humanoid) robots will be able to do flawless floor gymnastic routines and run against humans in races or participate against humans in sports. The humans of course, will not have a prayer. Nor in the venue of most employment.
This is just robotics alone. I haven't even said a word about humanoid robots with AI, even narrow or God forbid, AGI.
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'Not one insult': Briton tells of eight months in simulated Mars base - Lack of internet was bigger problem than personality clashes among six ‘astronauts’ confined in remote hideaway on Hawaiian volcano by mvea in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682 0 points 6 months ago
Wait a minute. Let me make sure I understand this about time delays. If you are on Mars and it takes 20 minutes for an electro-magnetic spectrum signal to reach you (from Earth), then doesn't that mean that everyone else with you on Mars is experiencing your time as real time. That's like just saying that on Earth we get sunshine that is 8 minutes old. Relative to the Earth the sunshine that we percieve is real time. A colony on Mars would eventually establish a concept of "real time" for Mars and would understand that relatively speaking the Earth was 20 minutes in the past. Light travels much faster-- the sunshine on Mars would be only 12 minutes from the past. Light from the Earth a mere 3 minutes.
20 minutes delay here on Earth is annoying, but on Mars receiving information from the Earth, it would be "natural". The internet delay issue experienced in the simulation would not occur on Mars. I think it's more a matter of human perception.
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A First Look at the $2.6 Million Aston Martin Valkyrie Hypercar by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 4 points 6 months ago
If you ask me, the internal combustion engine is a deal breaker. Make it battery powered electric. No more ICEs. No more fossil fuel.
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Self-Driving Cars Will Kill People. Who Decides Who Dies? by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 6 months ago
I believe the economy is a short lived ephemeral thing. Gone as we understand it in less than 20 years, maybe 15.
No I don't think ants worry about humans. Nor can they conceive of us. We fortunately can conceive, of some things anyway, that are beyond us or at least the implications of what those things might mean.
Oh! I just posted this yesterday as an example of how fast things are actually moving.
https://www.reddit.com/Futurology/comments/71k57l/the_economic_reason_we_should_be_worried_about/dnbb9z4/
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Self-Driving Cars Will Kill People. Who Decides Who Dies? by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 6 months ago
Then you know what is coming. I am not educated like you are. But. I am very good at observing trends and understanding the implications.
We both know the AI or God forbid AGI will not stop at human level or dumber. In fact the AI/AGI will rapidly go off the charts. In a word "unfathomable".
I go by two inquiries: 1.Who controls the AI initially? 2. Can the AI ultimately be controlled at all?
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Scientist Predicts a Sixth Mass Extinction in 2100 by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 6 months ago
oh I think the kittyhawk is closer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7yBWfqHjDQ
But I saw some other interesting designs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G4Qduvn5og (I have not seen footage of this device in flight. Maybe it can't fly)
This one actually flies and can not only carry passengers but a load as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PByFlMyAYpg
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This AI Designer Can Refine Architects’ Models by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 6 months ago
In the short term this AI will make architects tasks much easier. In the long term it will eliminate the need for an architect. The client merely enters a vague idea of what is desired into the AI. The AI designs what they want. Oh and the AI will "understand" concepts of creativity and style. How can it do that you say. Because the AI will have access to colossal, stupendous, literally "more information than the human mind can hold" big data examples. It will do a good job. In fact the exact same or better job than a human architect would do, with one difference. It'll take the AI about a few minutes to do it.
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Scientist Predicts a Sixth Mass Extinction in 2100 by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 6 months ago
I will be satisfied if we can develop a very light material that can be combined with level 5 AI autonomy and flies in a manner similar to a big 'ol drone. I just get in, speak my destination and get whisked there in safety and comfort. I'm seeing evidence that such transport vehicles are developing.
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Self-Driving Cars Will Kill People. Who Decides Who Dies? by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 6 months ago
No there isn't post-scarcity. Yet. But as the years go by and AI, robotics and automation take over, well, pretty much everything, but also produce everything (services and products), there will come a tipping point when a critical percentage of people are no longer able to be employed and therefore no longer able to pay for things that employment enables now. How would anybody pay for insurance or anything for that matter? Then we either have UBI, post-scarcity or some kind of "abrupt equalization of societal financial inequality" if you take my meaning.
I'm not alone in this way of thinking. The US government knows this as well. They think the solution is "retraining", but I know that the vast majority of humans don't have the intrinsic intellect to be retrained to higher intellect demanding vocations such as coding. Truckers aren't going to become coders. But they are most assuredly going to become unemployed within ten years.
This isn't a today kind of problem, but the issue we face is going to arise with frightening rapidity. In the space of 5 or 10 years from now. Watch the development of AI and AGI, and it's supportive robotics and automation.
Anyway here is a very informative report from the US government that is less than one year old.
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/documents/Artificial-Intelligence-Automation-Economy.PDF
This is so important a document that I have a copy printed out and sitting right on my desk.
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Self-Driving Cars Will Kill People. Who Decides Who Dies? by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 6 months ago
I agree. I'm fervently hoping it will be that way, but human psychology being what it is, it will be a tough case to make. What we need is a leap of faith to move into a better future. And I can only speak for myself, but I'm willing to bet myself on such a sure thing. Also in a post-scarcity AI economy, we need to remove the necessity of insurance. Also also in that future other elements will come together so that humans probably won't need to be transported nearly as much as today.
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Self-Driving Cars Will Kill People. Who Decides Who Dies? by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 3 points 6 months ago
Two thoughts on this.
First, this is a failure to understand what an electric, level 5 autonomy SDV actually is. This is about AI and mapping and tracking. I don't think there will be any deaths if everything is working correctly. If there are imperfections in the system that does result in an injury or death of a human, we shall quickly fix that so it never happens again. The combination of AI, mapping, tracking and intervehicle communication would ensure that a "trolley problem" would never arise. But on an unrelated note, I'd wonder what else that kind of AI would be capable of.
This second observation is more about human psychology. Well right now about 32,000 US citizens die in human error caused MVAs each year. And probably a lot more injured or shook up too I bet. When any US citizen gets behind the wheel, he or she believes all will be well and he or she will not make any kind of error, even if they are getting into a car when intoxicated.
But the statistics bear out the fallacy of such logic. Tons of US citizens are being killed, injured or shook up despite believing that they can drive just fine or their fellow drivers can drive just fine.
Here's the rub though. I think it is not unreasonable to assume that level 5 autonomy vehicles with all that technology I described earlier will kill perhaps, ohhh, theoretically 10 US citizens each year due to errors intrinsic to AI or something improbable like being successfully hacked. That's a lot less than 32,000 a year. But what would be the acceptable threshold of casualties if such a vast number of US citizens could be transported so safely. I can tell you the answer to that. Less than 1. That's because humans don't want to feel that they have lost control.
If the number of SDV fatalities would be say 5000 a year, humans would say; "No thanks, we shall continue to control our vehicles and keep killing five or six times that number each year, because we are better at this than AI. The litigation alone would kill the technology.
Me, I'd trust the AI. And I will jump into a level 5 autonomy SDV as soon as earthly possible when they become available to me, hopefully on a super cheap subscription. I would totally sign an agreement saying I would not sue the renting company if an MVA happened to me in an electric, level 5 autonomy SDV that was struck by another SDV of similar capabilities, and that I would accept legal liability if my SDV ran into someone or something. My faith in the flawlessness of the AI and related technologies would be that strong.
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Virtual reality tool developed to untangle genes by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 3 points 6 months ago
Now there is an interesting convergence of technologies. VR is going to help us figure out a lot of things that are difficult to spatially or topographically understand without the insight provided by VR. Like standing "inside" of an object as it rotates around you.
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Scientist Predicts a Sixth Mass Extinction in 2100 by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 6 points 6 months ago
The difference in the human race between now (2017) and the year 2100 CE is going to be more vast than the difference between the human race in the year 1000 CE and today (2017). Things that we regard as serious problems today, will no longer exist as perceivable problems by that point. We may have new issues that are unimaginable today however.
Personally I doubt that humans or whatever derives will still be biological by the year 2100. What we think of as "VR" today will evolve to become the reality of 2100. And of course whatever the AI develops into as well.
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Patreon, one of the most interesting media startups of the last few years, has raised $60 million by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 4 points 6 months ago
I started noticing an odd or perhaps interesting thing on Youtube about maybe 5 or 6 months ago. All my subscribing channels like "Ask a Mortician" and "Fatboss" began to have a large "Patreon" screen at the end of the video. I see now that a new entity has risen. I'm not sure where "Patreon" is going with this, but I bet I am witnessing the birth of a new Google or Facebook type of enterprise. Can I invest yet?
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A Five-Year Basic Income Experiment is Finally Happening in the US: $2,000 a Month by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 6 points 6 months ago
More like "augmented" income. I would still totally have to work full-time. 4,000 dollars a month would be the absolute lowest acceptable amount that would enable me not to have to work full-time. And 4,000 a month ain't much money, but I would probably be able to live within my means. My tastes are pretty pedestrian. And I probably would be able to save some of that too.
What would I do instead of working? Well at first I would play videogames all the time and sleep. But I suppose I would eventually want to enhance my education. Part of my problem is that I'm 57 and after almost 38 years of working, I'm just starting to think that retirement is looking good. I'm getting tired of working. :P
The thing is, as long as there are enough gainfully employable occupations/vocations for humans to do work for money that allows them to have the best lifestyle that they can swing, UBI is just not possible. But. When the AI, automation and robotics cause our unemployment rate to reach a certain threshold, then UBI or some other kind of "post-scarcity" economy would become essential to further survival of our way of life.
I just don't see UBI ever being a realistic eventuality for the USA before that day. But it would sure be nice to "augment" my current salary with that extra 2k a month.
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Spacex will call global internet satellite network Starlink by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 6 months ago
Because calling it "Skynet" would be too egregiously obvious.
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Robots can hitch-hike on sharks thanks to ultrastrong sucker - Underwater robots could soon hitch rides on sharks and whales thanks to a fish-inspired suction cup that clamps on to shark skin and other surfaces. by bobcobble in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682 2 points 6 months ago
One step closer to "sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!" Awesome future incoming!
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The “Science Will Not Defeat Aging in my Lifetime so Why Bother?” Argument, and Why We Should be More Optimistic | by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 6 months ago
A human turning 100 years old today has a better than average chance of living for 20 more years. And that is just based on existing medical technology and the blessings of that individual's genetics. Between today and 20 years I bet we make some significant advances in interventional aging reversal technology.
I prophesy that the first person to be 1000 years old is turning 100 years old today. If you have not been following the medical advances in aging reversal technology, this claim sounds like the wildest fantasy, but you are the one ill-informed.
Senescent cell clearing technology alone will cause a 100 year old to potentially live until 130. Regenerative medicine will be beyond our wildest dreams in 30 years. Age related sarcopenia has officially been classified as a pathology (M62.84 ICD 10). Five years ago there was no such classification. Age related sarcopenia was simply regarded as a "natural aspect of aging". And this is not even counting advances in nano-tech, which is the true wildcard in all of this.
As it is, I see most super centenarians (those over the age of 110) living for the most part to the age of about 117. Emma Morano recently died at the age of 117. The next three oldest humans are all over the age of 114. And this cohort of people living over the age of 110 has increased dramatically.
The upshot of all of this is scientific immortality for me. And I am 57 years old. Sure I could get cancer in ten years or get hit by a truck tomorrow, but I think my chances are good. I will be 100 in 2060, but youthful as a 21 year old. (And probably crazy nano-augmented to boot.)
Unfortunately the "bean counters" realize this as well. So I think the odds of me being mandatorily worked until age 70 are also good. No more retirement at age 65. Now since this is futurology, perhaps something nice like UBI or the AI taking over or something will let me still retire relatively early.
Record to beat is Jeanne Calment who passed away in 1997 at the age of 122.
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Future Cities, Built for People and Not Cars, Could Look Like This - more likely to resemble a medieval hill town in Italy than the soaring skyscrapers of Blade Runner: 'Technology’s end-goal is to be invisible.' by mvea in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682 -2 points 6 months ago
lol! VR, AI and total self sufficiency will eliminate any desire to be in a big city. The Earth will rapidly return for the most part to wonderful untouched nature. Our virtual universes will exceed anything that reality today can produce. If you thought "The Matrix" was advanced, you ain't seen nothin' yet! You will get your "cities" I promise. But imagine sipping wine and smoking a lovely rich gauloises at an outdoor café on a lovely spring day in 1937 Paris and discussing with your compatriots (who think they are real) the worrisome developments in Germany, but you are the god(dess) in this simulation. Will you self limit and let your world's events take their course and observe history unfold or shall you intervene to see what happens? The power is in your hands.
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Future Cities, Built for People and Not Cars, Could Look Like This - more likely to resemble a medieval hill town in Italy than the soaring skyscrapers of Blade Runner: 'Technology’s end-goal is to be invisible.' by mvea in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682 1 point 6 months ago
Ohh! I so wish that was me... I could "exist" just fine I'm sure. I mean if I had lots of money and stuff.
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Researchers Show How A.I. is the End of Passwords as We Know Them by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 1 point 6 months ago
I think the solution is facial scanning and recognition technology. Samsung showed it was possible and Apple is going to show how we have now nailed that technology. Doesn't seem like a terrible engineering problem to add a dinky pinhole size facial scanner to any given monitor manufactured from now on.
I mean the cat is out of the bag. Facial scanning/recognition technology is utterly unstoppable, so why not exploit it to the best effect.
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The new $999 iPhone X proves 2 important things about the future of technology by izumi3682 in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682[S] 2 points 6 months ago
What really has me excited about the progress of this tech is that say 2 years from now, the nearly obsolete IPhone X will be dirt cheap, about 200 dollars tops. There might even be plastic versions!
But just imagine what a top of the line mobile will be like then! Unimaginable things like 16K VR capability. It fills me with such optimism for our incredible future.
Yes 16K is a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16K_resolution
BTW have you downloaded and played with "Sketchfab" on your mobile yet? It's pretty keen and just one of the reasons that mobiles are so important to our daily lives now.
https://sketchfab.com/
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Future Cities, Built for People and Not Cars, Could Look Like This - more likely to resemble a medieval hill town in Italy than the soaring skyscrapers of Blade Runner: 'Technology’s end-goal is to be invisible.' by mvea in Futurology
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[–]izumi3682 1 point 6 months ago
Time going forward, humans, individual humans will find it easier and easier to live comfortably "off the grid". Technological advances, particularly that of solar in concert with powerful, capacious energy storage batteries, will make it possible to basically produce your own energy. Once a human can produce his or her own energy, everything else falls into place such as water purification.
VR, yet in it's infancy is not going to go away. It is going to evolve and grow into a new medium so powerful and overwhelming, that I don't discount the possibility that humans will engineer our minds away from the needs of biology to fully exploit this technology. Not today maybe or next month, but in less than 100 years, oh yeah.
And nothing happens in a vacuum. All during this time, I'm confident we shall learn how to effectively interact with our AI through what we think of today as the BMI (Brain-Machine-Interface). Humans will no longer be the same. We shall be for lack of a better term, "as gods". If not omniscient, right close. Almost certainly a desirable "hive-mind" will evolve.
I'll be able to do all this in my little apartment, my universal 3D printer providing all I need from a nano-assembler that can draw raw materials out of the air! Well I may have overreached a bit just then. But I wonder that money or personal wealth may even matter, when we reach that level of self-sufficiency.
I believe we shall spend an awful lot of time in shared VR. VR worlds that exceed the wildest most beautiful natural places on Earth. Because that's what humans do. We take nature and improve on it exponentially once we figure it out. And believe me, even today in 2017 we are doing a phenomenal job of imitating/simulating physics, thus nature on computers.
Oh! I almost forgot about cars!
What would you need a car for? :P