Replacement Pi power supplies

As one friend said - this is not Sci-Fi in the future, this is now! And you are absolutely right ... and I thank you for saying that, so that we know there are more of us around, thinking that way.

"B" is Bel or ten Decibel. 30 B = 300 dB = 10^15. Trying to guess, you might mean "billion" here. If so you might refer to either the real and correct billion, 10^12, or T for Tera, or the devalued and wrong American one, 10^9 or G for Giga.

Had you used the correct and well defined SI prefix in place of some own invention, the ambiguity would not have arisen. Due to the prevalence of American abuse it is generally not advisable to use the erstwhile well defined terms billion and trillion any more.

And then in a couple of hundred years when they die and rot away, or get burnt?

You mean: " ... some invention of your own ..."

To say "an own invention" is not English. You should say "my/your/his/her own invention" as appropriate.

That's one of the things it's called. Another name is "capitalism", with the masses enslaved by their screens. Although I usually like to call it "corporate fascism".

Many large corporations believe that the mere fact of their existence entitles them to our money.

Yes, thank you. My English is not as perfect as I kid myself into believing.

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Some years ago I came to a conclusion capitalism does not exist anymore. It has mutated into feudalism. I just watched a discussion with J. Varoufakis. He calls this techno-feudalism. I believe we all think the same. Corporations acting as feudal lords and the people as peasants. Fortunately now everything lasts couple of years or decades. So for some of us it will be amusing to see the end of all this.

If you are wise enough you don't have this question and I hope you are wise enough

The question is, from a purely cynical and unemotional perspective, is whether post modern techno feudalism is temporally persistent or not, or is in fact unstable.

I read a review of a book once in which the reviewer outlined one of the books central theses - namely, that in some economies, techno feudalism was the obvious stable outcome.

The example was a (mythical) African state with deep mineral reserves and an uneducated population.

The simplest and most effective economic model was to use the mineral resource to prop up a corrupt regime, kept in power by a paid mercenary force, who ignore the peasants, or killed them, if they protested.

This is however worse than feudalism. At some level feudalism embodied some kind of social contract: if you as peasants stopped working your lord starved as well. If you failed to fight for him some other lord would take over.

Today neo feudalism implies no such thing. If 85% of the Chinese population died in a modern day equivalent of the Black Death, the remainder - like today's Germans - would be immeasurably better off.

A remote world government of technocrats - which seems to be what the Left broadly advocates - need do no more than exert a Draconian will to suppress any dissent. Having no opposition it has no reason to change. This is the model the European Union is pursuing.

At least consumerism gave people something to do and allowed them to keep some wealth. But it was in the end very wasteful of resources.

Today's cynical exploitation of the masses seems to consist in stripping them of real wealth while doing everything to make them feel good about themselves.

So here in the UK we charge them thousands for a fake University Degree that is useless, but makes them feel smart when they are in fact terminally stupid. It remains to be seen how far the PeePul will let themselves be exploited before a genuine grass roots movement - as opposed to the faux demonstrations of e.g. all the left wing political activists, funded by central corporate money - simply gains enough momentum for a complete program of e.g. civil disobedience and starts trading with itself, instead of via the State.

You forgot another element: feeding the masses on harmful garbage while brainwashing them into thinking that wjat they're eating is good for them.

Yep, the Soviets ran a better education system while the USSR was still a thing: education was free provided you kept passing the exams. This was backed up with an extensive night school system run from the People's Palaces Of Culture that, like the Open University and the adult education system, could let an early dropout get an education while working.

I got my education in a not dissimilar system in NZ, though it never had the night school bit. That said, it worked well. I believe the UK had a similar system once, though you don't hear much about it now.

When I started work, day-release was a common thing - a day a week at a local FE institute (ONC/HNC). Attendance was checked. An alternative was night school (also at local FE inst.) - probably paid for by the employer. I was still taking advantage of this system in 1979.

Same here, oddly enough.

I'd spent much of 76/77 working in NYC (programming a 2903, under contract to ICL) and, while there, used to visit 'The Computer Store' on

so does the now

It depends where you slice the history but in general the Roman law is valid also today: the principle of posession and guilt But as far as I know everything belonged to the church, that appointed the caesers (emperor etc)

this is different now and is a problem

I guess only on the surface because I am not aware of wealthy Amazon employees, which is also ontologically impossible given the wages @Amazon

Well, you are now describing the techno-feudalism and how it differs from middle age feudalism. Also we are still in the beginning or may be middle of the development. Middle ages lasted for about 1000y. The techno-feudalism just started

An excellent summarising rant. Thanks for posting it.

Didn't miss much: just no swipe at the 'woke' mob for typically thoughtless reactions to almost anything they don't like or understand, and not one at the major religions for encouraging population growth regardless of all else when what's needed is a combination of reducing human population to the point where it doesn't blitz all forms of life into extinction and may have a decent shot at running 'civilization' entirely on renewable energy: an essential condition if, as seems likely, we don't get a fusion power source running any time soon or discover a scalable way of leaving Earth, e.g. a practical FTL space drive.

ATM there's a rather good real-life illustration of TNP's predictions available on BBC Sounds, called 'The Comming Storm'. It is worth a listen I think despite its rather slow pace. It describes what looks very much like the beginning of the collapse of the North American State. I wouldn't be surprised if TNP is listening to it or has already heard it.

In an odd sort of way it also ties in with something I read or heard a while back: that Ben Franklin, who had a major hand in writing the US Constitution and was somewhat of an anarchist, almost succeeded in providing the US with an completely unworkable constitution: what they have is sort of usable only because its other authors unpicked his more obvious gotchas and the first amendments removed a few more.

I have found life to improve not listening to the BBC.

Look, viable civilizations and religions are the subset of *viable* life strategies, and what is viable is dictated by the technological and the environmental context.

e.g. Veganism is possible in the context of the Indian subcontinent, but not the arctic tundra. In India it is a religious diktat. In the Inuit it would be a laughable perversion.

A convinced vegan in the arctic circle would simply not survive and pass on their ideas and genes.,

In other words civilisations survive because of a very few taboos that enhance survival, but *in spite of* a thousand social political and religious taboos that do no harm. But civilisations fail when they encounter ones that do.

Currently the most serious taboo that threatens civilisations is EcoBollox™, as evinced by its most dangerous dogmas, 'Renewability' and 'Sustainability' - both words designed to be both emotive and in logical terms utterly meaningless.

Civilisations that chase these principles will not be either renewable or sustainable.

It is simply a matter of time to see which nation jumps off the cliff first. Its a dead heat between California and Germany at the moment, two of the most stupid 'civilisations' in existence.

Hopefully the other societies will stop and look before they leap.

My point really is that in order to see where society will go, you can safely ignore the marketing and moralising and other crap that everyone tells you is so important. What matters is where your food comes from, where your heating comes from and whether or not you can get enough of both to stay alive and have sex.

Civilisation, so called, is just a way to ensure this for the largest number of people

If it fails to do this, it has to change. It is rapidly failing to do this

FSVO "work". Microsoft defines "work" as "make money", while politicians define "work" as "acquire power". By those yardsticks, their ideologies are working perfectly.

No argument there...

Dana Mon, 07 Feb 2022 12:27:40 +0100, Jean-Pierre Kuypers snipped-for-privacy@address.invalid napis'o:

Nitpicking... 3kWh. :)