Peristilahan Kaum dan Bangsa di Malaysia

Saya kurang mengakalkan kejatian perkauman. Saya hanya berminat dengan kejatian kebangsaan. Keseluruhan sejarah negara saya memang dicacatkan dengan hal perkauman yang tidak selari dengan hal kebangsaan. Oleh sebab itu, perpaduan selama-lama ini tidak tercapai antara marhaen, yang memadankan kebangsaan dengan perkaumanan, dan tidak memadankan kebangsaan dengan kenegaraan.

Sejarah kenegaraan mestilah dirujuk. Dalam akal sekelompok marhaen, perkauman adalah kejatian yang wujud sebelum kenegaraan, dan kenegaraan hanya alat ungkapan perkauman. Selama kelompok ini membawa kemarahan dan kesengsaraan hatinya ke pasaran, sebarang percubaan untuk membangsakan Malaysia tanpa kesakitan perkauman, nampaknya kerja sia-sia.

Valuation Methods : so-called Fundamental, Sentimental, Technical

 Everything beyond book value is a sentimental indicator, because it's a "what if". 

• The allow-list : the only reason people call some of those other things "fundamental" is because they put their faith in certain counterparties, and scenarios. 
• The deny-list : the only reason people call some of those things "sentiment" is because they personally don't have faith in certain counterparties, and scenarios.

The funny thing about technical analysis is that it belongs in the fine arts. It's basically just music and dance. The even funnier thing is that this isn't taught in liberal arts curricula ... the original liberal arts included music and geometry ... skills which separated non-slaves from slaves.

What's the Point of Central Banking?

A central banker's job is hard. 

They're judged on peculiar goals, such as 'unemployment' and 'inflation'. These narrow goals are widely understood to represent quality of life ( for consumers ), ease of doing business ( for investors ), and integrity ( for governments ). Yet these narrow goals are poor proxies for the broader underlying goals, in an efficient environment where everyone has the same data, and disparate goals. 

Central bankers are in the market, besides speculators ( private profiteers ), and government popularity contests ( public profiteers ). And against those forces, central bankers implicitly defend citizen welfare, and human development.

A central banker's political legacy is therefore skewed by their allegiance, more or less, to any of these poles. Did their policies result in increased economic equality, or inequality?

Maybe that's the real goal of central banking.

---

Further banter :

The Fed is armed with a leaf-blower, and a hoover. Congress is the tree that sheds the leaves. The game is to have only so many leaves on the ground at any one time.

The Fed can't fundamentally fix problems generated by Congress. One is more specialised than the other, and therefore less responsible for the economic welfare of the nation's people.

Recap on how the rules that currently govern BTC are IMPLEMENTED / ENFORCED

• 1. BTC exists as the sum of transactions on a LEDGER run by a validator NETWORK ( 'the bank' ). 64% of the NETWORK is currently anonymous : it could be the mafia, BRICS, or CIA black-ops. But since many of the adults in the finance world support it, I guess they have done their homework on this. What do I know?
• 2. There's no moat to setting up new LEDGERS with the same or different rules, like instances of a boardgame, BTC2, BTC3, etc.
• 3. LEDGERS can undergo mitosis, e.g. BTC and BCH were the same until a point in time. This is sometimes referred to as a hard-fork or net-split.
• 4. Sibling ledgers may follow different rules.
• 5. The market capitalisation dominance of BTC, represents the fact that it presently holds the greatest brand-equity, or user-base. The value of BTCUSD is completely extrinsic to the internal functions of the BTC network, in the same way that a company's share price is extrinsic to the internal ops of the company.
• 6. If there was another disagreement about how to run BTC tomorrow, we could see another hard-fork.
• 7. The UN could hard-fork BTC and upgrade the protocol to make it a CDBC. This hasn't happened yet mainly because the tech is not well understood by states, nor are the economic implications. It's a rich field of research.
• 8. The trending SBRs are a gateway drug to UN-CDBC. Once many states have SBRs, they understand it better.
• 9. USDT is another CDBC testtube. TetherInc can remotely confiscate USDT and remit the backing USD to anyone it wants to.
  

• 10. The absence of a global ban on non-state-cryptocurrencies, is implicitly a policy of mutually assured enfeeblement, as states struggle to comprehend the new technology. Meanwhile, states aren't sure about how to handle NGO-cryptocurrencies, but they are tolerated as long as the Five Eyes appear to tolerate them.

Musings on the Fed's Guidance | Hidden Issues at Play

Powell knows it doesn't matter what he says now, because his job is to update his own advice every six weeks. :P

How do they come up with the 2% inflation ( LT-mean 3.28% ), and 4% unemployment ( LT-mean 5.68% ), numbers anyway? I'm really curious about the rationale.

Best guess is that the job involves some iterative guessing about how deflating the equity valuations would shock the unemployment number, round and round. The arbitrary targets are meaningless.

As productivity increases, unemployment should go up, AI whatnot. If wealth is distributed more evenly, unemployment is not intrinsically a problem. Inequality of wealth distribution seems to be the core issue, but that's not explicit in the mandate. But he would know all this, and have to work with it.

Strange times. But no stranger than any other.

Three types of analysis in discussions

( From coaching folks on analytical philosophy. )

• (a) are we trying to find words to describe a thought which we don't have good words for? ( semantics ) 
• (b) are we sure the words accurately describe the mental model of the subject matters, so we are testing hypotheses about the internal coherence of the model? ( syntax )
• (c) we have confidence in the coherence of the mental model and now wish to test it against hypotheses about the real world? ( science )

All distinct activities, which have clear boundaries in between each type.

Mother of Bubbles

Joie de vivre is the fundamental bubble, which sustains all others. I don't see any particular human experience or construct as necessary, so as I go about the world, I see only bubbles of exuberance.

My ideal for investing in bubbles is roughly :

1. Understand the physics of the underlier.

2. Understand the lens that the market has upon the underlier.

3. Understand the governance model. Are regulators involved? Are there hidden calls and puts? Where are all the exits, and who controls them?

4. Understand the externalities. Explore all contingencies. Unveil network effects and hidden counterparties.

5. Decide how many years of your life you can write off, in order to get involved.

6. Execute very carefully.

7. Decide that is ok to fail, before beginning anything.

Note on the Crypto Asset Sector

This is the output from [ Google Translate ] of a [ note I wrote to practice my Malay ]. The output is unedited, so there may be mistakes, and it certainly doesn't read the way I normally write in English. I may edit this to normalise the English in the future. Today it is just presented here as a handy reference for anyone I might have wanted to send the note to, in English. Sorry.

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1. My Story in the World of Currency Marketing

2. Critical Appreciation in Terms of International Political Economy

3. Five Important Dichotomies

1.

Back in the 80s/90s, when I was around 7 years old, I also issued my own currency. Tech at that time was not very developed, so I just wrote numbers, on orange manila hemp paper. I airdropped the money to my siblings (pitiful for them), and the orange money economy began. The value of the orange money collapsed not long after that, and the economy disappeared, due to the ingenuity of my siblings who mastered the concept of unlimited money supply controlled by radikyat.

For the next 30 years, I did not dare to invest in crypto assets before government regulators issued a strong policy on their use ... so I waited until various parties had caused a huge disaster, and finally after FTX collapsed, only then did I begin studying the crypto asset sector. This is based on the understanding that at any time, any nation that has the weapons to enforce its sovereignty, can ban the use of any foreign currency, including any crypto asset, in its territory in the blink of an eye.

Currently, I consider crypto assets to be an alternative asset class whose principles have not yet been firmly established by any nation. If the government determines that citizens can invest, invest ... with the warning that one day there is also a possibility that it can be banned.

2.

Summary of the current situation in international political economy / EPA / IPE: national currencies are agreements, that is, international tools that enable trade and the transfer of power between certain parties, to protect the security of that party. From this point of view, currency tools can be weaponized by their parties.

However, every nation in the world has not yet banned non-sovereign / non-national currencies, because the presence of non-sovereign currencies can weaken the economic administration of every other sovereign nation. This is called a strategy of mutually assured weakness. Crypto assets are weapons of mass weakness. This is the pattern of governance.

If the entire world could be federated under one government, then the use of crypto currency tools/weapons would disappear, and their value would decline. But we do not expect this to happen in the near future.

3.

**Currencies** can be classified in detail. The following dichotomies are separate, and do not overlap with each other:

• ... First Dichotomy: there are 'national / sovereign' currencies, and 'non-national / non-sovereign' currencies;
• ... Second Dichotomy: there are 'commodity / intrinsically valuable' currencies, and 'fiat / extrinsically valuable' currencies;

**Transfers** of currencies must also be classified in detail.

• ... Third Dichotomy: 'commodity / intrinsically valuable' currencies can be carried out 'physically', or 'representatively / in accounting notation'; while **all transfers** of 'fiat / extrinsically valuable' currencies are only 'representatively / in accounting notation';

(Although people consider national paper money to be 'physical' currency, paper money is actually 'fiat' currency, based on the understanding that paper money is an accounting symbol with no intrinsic value. )

• ... Fourth Dichotomy: **representative transfers** of currency can be done on any medium, including 'non-electronic medium' (e.g. paper money as a token, or accounting written on paper documents), and also 'electronic medium' (e.g. electronic tokens, or accounting stored electronically).
• .. Fifth Dichotomy: *representative transfers in accounting** can be done on a 'cryptographic ledger', or 'without a cryptographic ledger'... where crypto can actually be done on paper too, although it is not convenient. So when the concept of 'sovereign/national bank digital currency / CBDC' is presented it may not involve crypto.

---

End of original note. 

Moving on ...

How Does Currency Work in General?

"3. Five Important Dichotomies"

Between  sharing this, and making my dinner ... it occurred to me that there may be a bit of work to be done here vis-a-vis an analytical philosophy of money, i.e. 'what does it mean, when we say, money? or a 'dollar/unit-of-other currency'?

From what I gather from recent conversations, broadly there is an INFLUENTIAL narrative that the value of money lies in its repayment, and so far I have briefly argued that any promise of repayment depends on an IMPLICIT promise of limited supply. In more detail, any REAL repayment is CONTINGENT upon an implicit ASSURANCE of a specific VELOCITY of money supply.

After revisiting the five dichotomies I jotted down in the note above, I found that my third and fourth dichotomies lack clarity, and may imply some confusion. 

Putting these two broad concerns together, it seems there is a need to articulate a Kuhnian paradigm of what money is.

But I will only attempt this after dinner. ( It was in the microwave, and now I have to eat it. )

Sabah has a new TYT

18 December.

This week I read about the appointment of Sabah's new TYT ( tuan yang terutama, the head of state). 

The TYT role is similar to a sultan's role in those states with 'Malay rulers' - except a TYT does not have the status of 'Malay ruler' - therefore the TYT does not preside over Islamic matters, and so Sabah's head of Islam role short-circuits to the Agong himself. The TYT also represents Sabah on the Conference of Rulers, but as ... non-Malay-rulers do not participate in matters pertaining to Malay rights, Islam, or the appointment of the Agong and Deputy Agong, and ... since the COR meets on few other matters, therefore ... the role of the TYT on the COR is largely symbolic. The intricacies of this pattern extend into the protocols of Sabah itself. 

Head of the legislative body (state parliament). Where Malaysia has a Prime Minister appointed by the Agong, Sabah has a Chief Minister appointed by the TYT.

Circularity / 360 feedback. However, the TYT himself is appointed by the Agong, ON THE ADVICE of the CHIEF MINISTER.

The appointment of the TYT has attracted controversy. I found a minimal history of the relevant issues on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musa_Aman#Controversy

---

Link to article on the Chief Minister, who advised the Agong, to appoint this TYT : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajiji_Noor

Recent coalition history :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabungan_Rakyat_Sabah

Recent party history :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parti_Gagasan_Rakyat_Sabah

Neurodivergence is a Pleb Term

Summary of a short exchange I had with a psychologist, which reflects views I have had since college in the early 2000s. I might be wrong, but to be clear, my view is :

1. The term neurodivergent is in the dictionary.

2. The term is furthermore used as jargon in the field of psychology.

3. In the field, the term refers to statistical deviation from a set of behaviours deemed to be normal.

4. I have referred to neurodivergence as a 'pleb term' .

5. I make this reference because I do not find it agreeable that the field has defined a set of behaviours deemed normal, without clearly highlighting that these normal behaviours are defined based on cultural norms, which are social facts, but of no other meta-ethical foundation. ( My view is that all moral positions are arbitrary, and to pick one as normal is a blight upon society, and the intelligence of people. )

6. Moreover it is disingenuous to frame psychology as a discipline, at this point in time, as having a seamless rooting in the natural sciences. So norms in psychology are neither rooted in clear meta-ethical foundations nor the natural sciences ... they are very much cultural norms.

7. I believe it is appropriate to refer to people who endorse specific cultural norms as 'plebs', and therefore I believe it is appropriate to refer to neurodivergence, which assumes specific cultural terms, also as a 'pleb term'.

8. What is most annoying is the concept of diagnoses based on social behaviour, which are classified as neurological instead of cultural. With regards to what sort of social behaviour is deemed normal, much of these are differences in cultural preference. Yes, all culture supervenes on neural states. No, please do not refer to behaviours as neurological rather than cultural, UNLESS THERE IS A WELL-DEFINED NEUROLOGICAL PATHWAY to be declared diverged from.

---

Further banter :

... the designation of a normal range of behaviour is political engineering. Just because most of us feel good when people smile and return smiles doesn't mean 

• (1) the underlying neural pathway is simple, or thoroughly mapped, 

• (2) that anyone should be socially obliged to comply with a social norm, even if that social norm has a simple or thoroughly understood underlying neural pathway. 

The socio/cultural elevation of 

• (i) a high frequency behaviour to 

• (ii) an informally expected behaviour (see high-context culture), to 

• (iii) a formally expected behaviour (low-context culture), 

is a very distinct progression, that needs examination, lest people abuse each other about expectations without having established rules of abuse. 😛

Further banter :

re :"study of psychiatry is by definition difficult to formalise, whereas there are many existing bridges to neurology, and we still know so little about the sum of all parts" : 

I think we are in complete agreement about (i) the state of the art (ii) the reasons for the current state of the art.

We probably differ in 'socio/cultural/political' preference, about what sort of language/behaviours should be condoned in the public sphere, given (i).

I have a specific view of the world which is quite boring ... I actually find that every iota of my personal experience is quantifiable, so I am not waiting for the rest of the world to come to the same conclusion. I simply live my life, and exert my politics in the world, based on my personal experience. 

Culture is software ; meat is wetware ; as information systems, cultures are much, much simpler than meat. Which is why the current attempt to implement AI by modelling the meat is so wasteful. 

All the best, to everyone else, who does the same from their various normal/non-normal points of view 😃

 

 

Discussion on Physical Mechanics of Valuing Cryptocurrencies

Point 1 :

"they are breaking the unit of Bitcoin into Satoshis, haha, so much for limited supply"

Response 1 :

I'm not sure that you understand math. Shifting the unit of gold from ounces to nanograms would do nothing to the value of gold. The physical supply is the same.

Likewise the physical supply of Bitcoin is constrained. 

Of course the choice to value Bitcoin is binary, such as the choice to value gold, or maize. The population of investors could instantly choose to value either at near zero - the only reason they don't is due to booked accounts receivable which they don't want to give up.

There are no intrinsically valuable things on earth, not meat, not minds, not feelings, not love, not family, not friendship ... each of these is given meaning by some idiot. Some idiots happen to have have BTC / USD / gold / maize accounts receivable, and that's why those things have value. LOL

Point 2 :

"there is no PHYSICAL limitation"

Response 2 :

Physical supply is limited by a machine, and the use of the machine is by consensus of users.

The users can choose to use a different machine, but as long as they use this one, supply is limited. 

Surely you understand the nuance, or, you don't actually know how the machine operates

Point 3 :

"the physical machine limits a NON-PHYSICAL SUBSTANCE ; NFTs are an example of a NON-PHYSICAL SUBSTANCE and we have seen that market crash"

Response 3.1 :

An NFT is a pointer to something that isn't meant to be used as a unit of currency. Those are like traditional trading cards, we know exactly how those markets work, so let's not get distracted here.

Reponse 3.2. :

3.2.1.

The USD is basically a tool for the communication of value. It is a contract regarding the supply of USD, and the ability of anyone else to use USD as a meaningful denominator of other contracts i.e. payments. The USD has no intrinsic value, it is based on a promise of supply limitations. ( The notion that it is based on the promise of repayment is a strawman, because repayment is only meaningful in the context of the promise of limited supply. )

In the paragraph above, you can swap in any state currency. 

Imagine if NGOs like the Methodist church printed their own currency, MCD, you could swap that into the paragraph above for USD. The only reason you would trust MCD less is because MCD is a lesser known entity, and fundamentally you have no control over MCD or USD money supply.

3.2.2.

Now imagine there was a technology to limit XYZ currency supply. The methods of 1. decentralised ledgers, 2. cryptographic hashing, basically combine to give you a bank where anyone can check money supply at any time ... the moment money supply changes, every holder of the currency may know it quickly and cheaply. This is the ONLY technological advancement that has been introduced. ( Only  a small lie, for the purpose of this point. ) If they don't like the rules of the bank, they can start their own bank ad infinitum, which is called a netsplit, and you can refer to BCH vs BTC for example.

The fact that people would go long BTCUSD simply tells you how little faith they have in the US government's promises of limited supply. 

The fact that people go long BTCBCH, and the difference in market cap of BTCUSD vs BCHUSD, tells you something else, which is non-trivial.

---

Further banter :

Well you say, 'if there is a rock, and rocks build houses, and people want houses, so rocks have present value, anything else is speculation', that's a valid lens. 

Symmetrically, I say, 'if there's a rock, and some clown in jersey wants to trade it for a wooden house, so rocks have value, anything else is speculation', that's a valid lens too.

The only difference is you put faith in the imagery in your head, and I put faith in the imagery in mine. Digging down to the fundamentals of what people do in their heads, is probably beyond the scope of a comment thread on LinkedIn. :)

Further banter :

we could go into anthropic principles, and life goals, and the architecture of political influence begining with the grassroots and ending with the state. But, to what end? In a comment thread like this, there's little room for specifics. If people disagree and want to drill into fundamentals, those are long and deep conversations.

In my own life, I'm basically a hermit. I live on military rations, repair my clothes, and drive a 20-year-old car, and budget everything around a minimum wage job. But I keep tabs on fashion, food, cars, and macroeconomics because other people care about them.

So nearly nothing in life depends on what I value it as. Mostly economics is about other people's values. :)

So the value of X is whatever I can get paid for X right now. Everything ELSE is speculation. The intrinsic value NOW is what it is now. The intrinsic value in the FUTURE is speculation. 

Exporting US Inflation : Bitcoin is a Ploy

The proposed Federal Bitcoin Reserve would be a fundamental step in the global evolution towards Central Banked Digital Currencies. But it remains unclear if this threatens, or enforces, American Exceptionalism and USD hegemony.

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Running the simulation :

• 1. US enacts BTC reserve in 2025.
• 2. US borrows USD at T_IRR, and goes long BTCUSD ; BTCUSD goes up ; at this time roughly 78% of US debt is still held by domestic counterparties, and 22% is held by foreigners.
• 3. BTC_IRR > T_IRR, with near certainly in the 5-year-term, and probably in the 15- and 50-year-terms. ( Caveat : 8. )
• 4. ( Reversal of 2. )
  As BTCUSD goes up, US goes short BTC, and repays its USD debt. BTCUSD price velocity is thus moderated by the rate at which the US sells BTC to pay off USD debt. 
• 5. ( Effects of 4. on 3. )
  Therefore this strategy works for the US if it holds the reserve for a long-enough time, until most other nation-states have BTC reserves also, constricting BTC_ACTIVESUPPLY, such that the BTCUSD price has appreciated astronomically from 2025. 
• 6. ( Effect of 4,3. on DXY )
  If the US uses its BTCUSD investments to pay off USD debt, it just means that the US is chopping ( or at least throttling ) USD M2, tautologously moderating the reason for BTC price appreciation which makes it a bankable investment in the first place. ( There may be other reasons that BTC is a bankable investment. )
• 7. ( Logical conclusions of 5. )
  If all nation-states horde BTC, the end-game is the same as if no nation-states horde BTC, except that now there would exist a common understanding of how digitally constrained money supply works. This puts the long-term BTCUSD price much higher than it is in 2024, but not at infinity, as it becomes some clarified function of global M2 ( all commodity prices are some murky function of global M2 ).
• 8. ( Possible implications of 7. )
  In some near-future when ( a sufficiently powerful majority of ) nation-states, and global monetary governors (such as the IMF) have reached a comfortable relationship with BTC pricing, then the case for uniformly replacing BTC with a more sophisticated global currency technology would be clearer to all. This is the general evolution-or-obsolescence case for BTC, which may see BTC either 
• 8a. ... adapted into a global CBDC ( where the UN-or-equivalent controls all the validators, or splits the network ), or 
• 8b. ... being banned, with nation-states opting to switch from allowing non-state cryptocurrency use, to banning non-state cryptocurrency use. This could be supplemented by the introduction of a per-state CBDC coupled with international CBDC protocols, or a single unified CBDC ( other than a direct descendant of  the BTC network ) at the global level. 

There are many reasons why each of these options is a pro/con for each state. To be elucidated elsewhere. Modelling these would fun.

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This note was originally titled, 'Bitcoin as a Global Reserve Currency : Price Stability, then Evolution, or Obsolescence?'

I am also starting to wonder if the US BTC Reserve enactment would throttle the price growth of Bitcoin, while boosting valuations for non reserve currencies like LTC. It's basically increasing correlation between USD and BTC. So simply by holding BTC in reserve, there's a fed-put on the BTCUSD.

These are just thought floating around in my head that I've been scribbling down. No proper research has been done about this and there's probably some critical flaws in my hypotheses.

---

Further banter :

thanks. I'm just here for free tuition.

(1/2)

- The intended purpose of a thing is irrelevant to the functions it actually fulfills. There are now 'newer technologies than bitcoin for ( all sorts of things related to decentralised immutable ledgers )'. 

- BTC's value at the present is (FWIW) due to its (admittedly outsized) role as the 'lingua franca' for the asset class ... at about 60% of capitalisation. 

- The 'intrinsic value' of any fiat ( USD, BTC, etc. ) is basically zero, and its extrinsic value is a bunch of trust in a promise of limited supply. (There's a commonly cited argument that the value of state fiat is down to the state's promise to repay state debt, but that's a flawed perspective as real repayment of state debt is contingent on the more fundamental promise of limited supply of state fiat.) State fiat, or currency in general, functions as a language for denominating obligations, and has no intrinsic value. (You may disagree, I'm just elaborating on my position.)

- Back to the 'current' function of BTC. ( I have a word limit. Hah. ) Reports seem to glomp Fed and Tresury holdings https://www.federalreserve.gov/data/intlsumm/current.htm . 

(2/2)

- Regardless of whether the Fed or the Treasury holds it, the reserve asset would be 'on USGOV' from the point of non-US parties.

- We're discussing the proposal that USGOV could add BTC to its reserve assets. There's no reason to to do so, EXCEPT, that the asset has been marketed to public as a hedge against USD M2 expansion, and every ex-USGOV is buying it as a potential replacement currency vs the USD. Of course you wouldn't be able to agree with this point if you disagreed with the 'intrinsic value of any fiat is zero' specified above; but assuming this is true, then by extension ...

- The very act of USGOV holding a large quantity of BTC, should cause an increase in USD-BTC correlation ( which you seem to agree with ), which implicitly runs contrary to very 'current reason' that people hold BTC, regardless of its originally intended use. At some magnitude of USGOV holdings of BTC ( because we are examining the proposed strategy ) this tempers or outright reverses the rise of BTCUSD.

- At that point, USGOV doesn't even need to sell BTCUSD, it just holds it as a reserve currency. And the THREAT of a BTCUSD sale, followed by a reduction of M2, would temper / reverse BTCUSD price growth even more.  

 Further banter :

Yours is a commonly cited valuation of currencies - I have argued elsewhere in this comment tree that 'the repayment reason' is a strawman, which fundamentally depends on 'the limited supply reason'. Briefly :

There are actually three parties involved in the use of a currency.

• - ( A : they who control its circulating supply )
• - ( B,C : they who use it to denominate obligations )

B and C can only use a currency if A sticks to a promise to reasonably limit supply. The unlimited supply of the currency by A would deflate the value of the currency over time, thus making it useless to B, and C as a denominator of value.

This is true of all fiat ( non-gold backed ) currencies, regardless of whether that fiat is issued by a state ( USD, EUR, etc. ) or a decentralised community bank ( BTC, BCH, etc. )

Further banter :

Facts : it's NOT unlimited, because when it IS unlimited, you get Zimbabwe. B and C can only have the faith to use A's currency, because there's an implicit understanding that the expected rate of inflation is low. If it were high, B and C would simply switch to another currency.

The technology of distributed immutable ledgers, simply lets anyone set up their own currency. It's just plain old NGO-issued currency, BUT WITH MUTUALLY ASSURED CONTROLS OVER SUPPLY.

Caveat : average cryptocurrency user has no idea how it works ... hence no actual control over its supply ... but for whatever reason they trust the NGO community bank more than states. So they go long one fiat, and short the other.

Nothing complicated. Just a plain old loss of trust, resulting in trades. But at scale, it becomes stupidly interesting lol. Now BlackRock ( you know the news ) 

Further banter :

Well, the problem is partly because US and USD exceptionalism is an offensive play to begin with. No one knew how to get around it because all the other roads (currencies) sucked.

The technological innovation was simply to create a road (currency) that any NGO with a communications network could use to set up a central bank with controls visible to the users.

With that in place, at this point, it is US/D exceptionalism which is under attack. The US has various levers for defense. It can, as you say, go deflationary and spike unemployment ... or it can do (one of the other funny/stupid things we're discussing). 

Further banter :

the 'why haven't they just banned BTC yet?' Is one of the more interesting questions.

So far there are 2-3 angles I have on this :

• 1. It's a mutual assured enfeeblement strategy, to backdoor all state-fiat, since every state doesn't want too much strength in any other state's fiat.
• 2. It's a deer in headlights reaction to not knowing how states can efficiently use decentralised ledgers, blockchains, CDBCs, for defense or offensive purposes. So everyone just tolerates it while they look at testtubes like Tether, where TetherInc can remotely confiscate any USDT and remit the backing USD to TetherInc cooperates with.
• 3. States have some vested interest in the existing BTC network. No idea who the 64% of anon validators are right now. Right? 

Hypoaesthetic Rotation

During the recovery phase of hypertrophy, hypoesthesia seems to occur concurrently. To maintain productivity, it then seems appropriate to search for muscle groups which exhibit normal magnitudes of proprioceptive sensitivity, and to work on those groups instead of the numb ones.

The Risk Imposed by Random Angry People

Some people literally lose verbal reasoning capability when they're mad. I ran into a number of those adults when I was a kid ... they would demand that the kid stop talking, and they would only react clearly to yes or no answers. I think I encounter these folks less often as an adult, simply because I don't live with anyone who presumes that I will agree with them all the time.

The most charitable case of course, is sitting down every angry person in the world, and lie to them, so that they will calm down, and then begin to discuss things with higher intelligence. Some days one feels like lying for charity, and some days one does not. After all the P&L impact of throwing so much energy at fixing other people really is predicated upon one already having maintained one's own happiness adequately, and in excess of basic requirements to function as an individual.

I guess you can have a neutral approach to other people in society, but if they bring their anger to your doorstep, and dump it there, you can only do so much to console them. Clearly, it's harder to provide a solution, if you're viewed as the aggressor. But that is the limit of comprehension available from folks in a state of trauma.

This is literally why I presume that no matter where I go in the world, there will be some asshat waiting to pull some random freakshow on me. Haha. So I every day of my life, I begin with the notion that that the base case is that it is the day I will die. And if I don't then, damnit, now I have to think about what to do tomorrow ... or risk further boredom.

I'm conditioned to keep my stakes really low.

On the 'Normal' Frequencies of Suicidal Thought Varieties

 From the 'Your Therapist Needs a Therapist' FB group ... OP posts a meme :

... therapist : any suicidal thoughts?

... patient : only the normal amount.

... therapist : the normal amount is zero

... patient : ( monkey face giving a side-eye over their shoulder ) 

My initial comment ( edited for clarity ) : 

... "Thoughts WITH high intent to execute, WITHOUT reason," is associated with a LOW normal frequency.

... "Thoughts WITH high intent to execute, WITH reason," is associated with a HIGHER normal frequency.

... "Thoughts WITHOUT high intent to execute," is associated with an EVEN HIGHER normal frequency.

... All different stats

Another commentor : 

do you have any literature on this?

Me : 

unfortunately, no. Lay person here, not certified. Could sit down to Google it, but I haven't.

The intuition is simply what I understand that societies consider to be disordered or not.

• 1. Having the capability to simulate a murder (self or others) isn't criminal, and therefore there are few laws limiting the freedom of thought about this.
• 2. Having the incapability to (simulate without subsequently reifying) however is criminal, but we generally don't have brain scanners to read what people think, so we only judge them by what they do.
• 3. Back to therapy ... this is the slow method of brain scanning.
• 4. There are good arguments that sometimes it is ethical to commit murder (self or others). But that's into the realm of ethics, less about mental health.
• 5. After all what is considered health or orderliness is some synthetic norm agreed on by a community, which we codify into arbitrary norms and laws.

Plot twist : psychology invented 'normal' ( I kid, I kid ) 

USDT and TetherInc are basically a test tube for USD-CBDC

 TIL :  

• - TetherInc is NOT regulated to prove its claim that all USDT issued is backed 1-1 with traditional USD assets ; it has never been comprehensively audited by a third-party ; is has a history of being fined for false claims
• - TetherInc controls the USDT validator network, and can arbitrarily freeze any USDT wallet ; it has a history of cooperation with US.gov to seize assets 
• - the absence of regulatory stringency combined with government cooperation basically indicates that US.gov allows TetherInc to function as a sort of test tube for USD-CBDC
• - the mechanism of seizing USDT assets seems fairly straightforward : TetherInc simply has to freeze a wallet, and transfer the corresponding reserve assets to the seizing party 

aphorism : education x respect

Anyone who pursues education in order to obtain respect, is a fool.

Check : am I allowed to say X under the Sedition Act of Malaysia? #1531f

Malaysianisms : Yesterday, I engaged with some comments about the role of language in national identity, and the lenses that different demographics of Malaysia apply to this debate.

A very brief metaphysical overview ( ontological question : what exists, to be discussed? ) of this is :

** Under the Law / Formally **

1. The national Constitution differentiates 'classes of citizen' by certain 'traits', such as the use of a particular language.

2. Each class of citizen is subsequently attached to differentiated sets of rights.

3. There is no legal requirement to obtain knowledge of any language, unless one wishes to gain admittance to certain classes. The use of specific languages is necessary, but insufficient, for admissions to a class, based on the given class definitions.

** Under the Law / Less Formally **

4. Under the Constitution, but subsequently nuanced under subsidiary legislation, and at the whim of by executive policy, both drawn up over the years, there have existed ( and expired ) a number of policies with varying degrees of controversy. Some policies embedded specific structures into the the economic history of the nation, and in hindsight may or may not have been the best way to do things. These continue to be be an interesting class of contemporary debates.

** Above the Law / Informally **

5. There is a great discourse about national identity, and whether a certain language is necessary for informal assignment of national identity. ( Basically some believe that if you don't know language X, it makes you less Y. )

6. There remains room for (5.) to feedback to (4.), and even in the distant future maybe to (1-3.)

** Meta-philosophical Concern : Act 15, The Sedition Act 1948 ( Amended 2015 ) **

7. Most recently, the 2015 amendment to this law was "approved by the King on May 28, 2015 and published in the Gazette on June 4, 2015," thus forming the most recent official copy of the law.

8. As recently as 2023-SEP-08, officials such as the Inspector General of Police have called into question the citability of the correct law, as recent amendments may or may not have been included by recent publishers. ( https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2023/09/08/books-on-sedition-law-should-include-2015-amendment-to-prevent-public-confusion-on-3r-offences-says-ex-igp-musa-hassan/89637 ) An updated PDF could not be found under site:agc.gov.my via Google as of 2024-DEC-10. A Malay version updated to 2006 may be found here ( https://mediamalaysia.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Akta-15-Akta-Hasutan-1948.pdf ).

9. The legality of discussions ** about ** items (1-6.) should be given due consideration in light of (7, 8.). 

10. Paraphrased, the Sedition Act, forbids causing :

• 10.1. ... { dissatisfaction, hated, contempt, disaffection/disloyalty } to any { ruler, government, administration of justice } ;
• 10.2. ... incitement of attempts to do anything illegal ;
• 10.3. ... incitement of ill-will or hostility between any groups ;
• 10.4. ... the calling into question ( Malay : "mempersoalkan", defined extrinsically by the Dewan Bahasa & Pustaka as "raising as a question, turning into a question, analysing, discussing, debating" ), matters discussed in Articles 152, 153 or 181 of the Constitution. ( Act 15, Section 3, Subsection 1,f ... which I shall find amusing to hashtag : #1531f ) ;
• 10.5. ... the (creation or distribution) of any (content with a tendency to be seditious), regardless of any intention or absence of intention ( 'actus reus', without 'mens rea' ) ... thus making it possible to be guilty by accident.

11. Therefore, in the BROADEST interpretation the stated topics are strictly taboo, not even to be discussed, which cannot possibly be the correct interpretation. However a NARROWER interpretation of "calling into question" may allow for statements to be made, as long as they comply with the rest of the Sedition Act.

12. So, in the discussion of (1-6.) it may be then be inferred, you DO NOT want to :

• 12.1. ... phrase any (sensitive matter) as a question ;
• 12.2. ... say that any (sensitive matter) should not be the case ; that it is the case in law should be taken as a given, if the law is clear ; however since the purpose of any law is to be read, interpreted, and enforced, it appears that interpreting the law must be allowed to allow the law to fulfill its own purpose ; this will probably have to go to court if you challenge it, and there may not be bail while you wait ;
• 12.3. ... incite any attempts to illegally modify (sensitive matter) ;

13. Finally, what does that leave us with allowances to DO in the discussion of (1-6.) ? Perhaps :

• 13.1. ... stating ( without question ) that something that is stated in law, any subsidiary legislation, and related executive policies, are facts ;
• 13.2. .... stating ( without question ) the observation that any items of (13.1) have had specific consequences, physical or mental, with evidences provided ; phrased in an arbitrarily non-seditious fashion.

That is probably hard!

14. The main concern I had across (1-13.) was, am I allowed by law to say some of the things I have said? For example, that the Constitution and its subsidiary executive policies over the years have caused division among Malaysians, that this is a fact, and that it is a grievous fact, of national proportions?

15. I have just said it anyway. But I grew up in this country assuming that I would be powerless to stop myself from being locked-up at anytime, so generally I am prepared for that. 

Good evening!

---

And other laws on speech? Would like to compile a list for my own interest.

• ... Printing Presses and Publications Act ( Act 301 )
• ... Communications and Multimedia Act ( Act 555 )
• ... Official Secrets Act ( Act 88 )

Komen atas : ketidakgunaan bahasa malaysia oleh sekelompok orang malaysia

Keterangan : Niat asal sesuatu bahasa kebangaaan, adalah sebagai kebangaan bangsa tersebut. Malangnya : konfabulasi dasar hak ekonomi dan dasar pendirian identiti membolehkannya terjadi sumber permisahan rakyat antara satu sama lain.

---

Teks1 : Penulisan asal dari tangan : 

Bangsa Malaysia selalu mengidolakan bahasa sehingga termaktub dalam perlembagaan bahawa kelas/golongon berhak adalah terpisah mengikuti ciri seperti pengunaan bahasa. 

Ini bukan ciri setiap bangsa. Kita saja yang mewarisi keidolaaan ini.

Lebih lagi, kelas warganegara yang sudah dibuang hak keutamaannya, dia rasa tak perlulah mengejar ciri-ciri ini ... asalkan matlamat dan keutaman hidupnya tidak merangkumi kemasukan ke dalam kelas bumiputera, dalam fikirannya, ciri-ciri bumiputera hanya gangguan kepada jihadnya yang utama, iaitu kekayaan, sejenis gaya hidup, dan penjagaan hati dirinya dan ahli keluarganya.

Begitula masyarakat Malaysia, mungkin akan terpisah secara berpelembagaan, selama-lamanya.

Inilah antara kepiluan yang diputuskan bangsa kita.

Komen ini ditertetawakan pembaca ; saya teruja :

• "Saya tak faham tulisan saudara. Orang putih kata "verbose"."
• "Inilah kepiluan yang diputuskan bangsa kita. Really??? Did you just google translate this?? Hahaha."
• "google translate ke bro?"

Jadi saya ambil kesempatan ini untuk membuat penyelidikan dan perbandingan antara cara tulisan saya dengan tangan, dan kuasa penterjemahan Google.

---

Operasi / Perjalanan Pertama

Teks2A : Penulisan asal (teks1), diterjemahkan ke dalam Inggeris, oleh GOOG :

The Malaysian people have always idolized language to the point that it is enshrined in the constitution that classes/groups are entitled to be separated according to characteristics such as language use.

This is not a characteristic of every nation. We are the only ones who have inherited this idolization.

Moreover, the citizen class that has been stripped of its preferential rights, feels no need to pursue these characteristics... as long as its goals and priorities in life do not include entering the Bumiputera class, in its mind, Bumiputera characteristics are only a distraction from its main jihad, which is wealth, a certain lifestyle, and taking care of itself and its family members.

Thus, Malaysian society may be separated constitutionally, forever.

This is one of the sorrows that our nation has decided. 

Teks3A : Teks2A, diterjemahbalik ke BM, oleh GOOG :

Rakyat Malaysia sentiasa mengidolakan bahasa sehingga termaktub dalam perlembagaan bahawa kelas/kelompok berhak diasingkan mengikut ciri-ciri seperti penggunaan bahasa.

Ini bukan ciri setiap bangsa. Kita sahaja yang mewarisi pemujaan ini.

Lebih-lebih lagi golongan warganegara yang telah dilucutkan hak keutamaannya, berasa tidak perlu meneruskan ciri-ciri tersebut... selagi matlamat dan keutamaan dalam hidup tidak termasuk memasuki kelas Bumiputera, pada fikirannya, ciri-ciri Bumiputera hanyalah sebuah gangguan daripada jihad utamanya, iaitu kekayaan, gaya hidup tertentu, dan menjaga diri dan ahli keluarganya.

Justeru, masyarakat Malaysia boleh dipisahkan secara perlembagaan, selama-lamanya.

Ini adalah salah satu kesedihan yang telah diputuskan oleh negara kita.

---

Perjalanan Kedua

Teks0 : Pemikiran saya, sebelum tulis (teks1) :

Malaysians tend to idolise language, to the point where citizens are classified according to their use of language in the Constitution.

This isn't true of all nations, but it is true of Malaysia.

Citizen classes whose rights are deprioritised by law, have no incentive to learn Bahasa Malaysia, unless they aspire to ascend to the bumiputera class. Therefore this trait of bumiputeras is viewed as a distraction to one's primary pursuits of wealth, a particular lifestyle, and care of oneself and one's family.

So Malaysian society may be divided forever, constitutionally.

So it is one of our nation's decided tragedies.

Teks2B : Teks0, diterjemahkan ke dalam Bahasa Malaysia, oleh GOOG :

Rakyat Malaysia cenderung mengidolakan bahasa, sehingga warganegara dikelaskan mengikut penggunaan bahasa mereka dalam Perlembagaan.

Ini tidak berlaku untuk semua negara, tetapi ia benar untuk Malaysia.

Golongan warganegara yang haknya diketepikan oleh undang-undang, tidak mempunyai insentif untuk mempelajari Bahasa Malaysia, melainkan mereka bercita-cita untuk naik ke kelas bumiputera. Oleh itu sifat bumiputera ini dilihat sebagai gangguan kepada pencarian utama kekayaan, gaya hidup tertentu, dan penjagaan diri dan keluarga.

Jadi masyarakat Malaysia mungkin berpecah selama-lamanya, mengikut perlembagaan.

Jadi ia adalah salah satu tragedi yang telah ditentukan oleh negara kita.

---

Perjalanan seterusnya ... ( I don't know about you, but I prefer the final line as expressed in Teks1 )

Further banter :

1. Bangsa is interesting because it means alternatively, nation, or race. This leads to colloquial oddities such as 'bangsa Melayu/Cina/India' referring to ethnic origin, and 'bangsa Malaysia' referring to national identity.

This has caused confusion in speech, because when I say 'bangsa kita' to a Malay person, they may think I made a semantic error, whereas I referred to Malaysia. I recently wrote something complicated along the lines of 'kepiluan yang diputuskan bangsa kita' and everyone's first reaction was, did you get this from Google Translate. Lol

I explained cryptocurrencies to my dad

 ( Yet another note, so matter of testing different ways of saying the same thing to different audiences. )

Recap of how blockchains work : 

• 1. at the root : the basic data structure is a distributed ledger ... a complete record of the history of something, given to a number of different parties in a network
• 2. consensus protocols : changes to the ledger are submitted to a certain number of parties ... and the parties must agree, to some majority, or the network fails to function
• 3. cryptography : using cryptographic hashes makes the ledger cheaper to check
• 4. cryptocurrencies : the ledger is used to store the records of a currency's unit creation, transfer, and destruction
• 5. smart contracts : the ledger is used to store computer code that be executed upon the meeting of certain criteria
• 6. governance : some cryptocurrencies carry voting power, like shares in a company, within the rules of their protocol
• 7. incentives : in exchange for computing power, parties in a network may be rewarded with units of the network's currency
• 8. The extrinsic value of cryptocurrencies ... like the extrinsic value of shares in a company ... is not tied to the internal functions of the cryptocurrency's network. 
• - If Apple's stock price goes to zero, operations of the company are not internally affected. 
• - Likewise the price of bitcoin is only a measure of the faith of the world in the value of bitcoin, in terms of USD or other currencies.

I am an NPC

I am an NPC. That's gamespeak for non-player-character, or a robot in a fictional world which human-controlled avatars can interact with. I am joking of course, but bear with me. I came to this conclusion after making a snarky comment on a celebrity teacher's post about solipsism and experience as a fully-quantifiable data structure.

I have since the early 2000s been of the opinion that all my experiences are possible to quantify. To detail this a bit more, all my sensory experiences are no-doubt quantifiable, and I generally have no categories of experience which I think of as non-sensory. This is a common, and in some traditions canonical, view among analytical and/or meditative thinkers, but most laypeople don't really think of things that way. Instead the plebeian uses concepts of irreducible emotional and spiritual experience to describe their mental life.

But what if there actually exist such ineffable, incongruous, unquantifiable, intuitive, irreducible experiences in other people ... and it is only I that don't have them? Aha! I must be an NPC!

My friends would probably say : that explains everything.

Reflections on Operational Anxieties

Fear of loss. Kierkegaardian palpitations. Eye watering nausea. Spine numbing diarrhoea. Metaphors for unregulated uncertainty.

Feel like buying? Don't buy.

Feel like selling? Don't sell.

Feel love? Wrong signal to love.

Feel hate? Wrong signal to hate.

Opportunities forgone in times of disregulation are written off, as unpredictable accidents.

Actions taken without the impulse of unplanned activity, can be studied structurally for further development.

Politics is Knotty

Political engineering is, figuring out how to hand everyone enough rope with which they will happily hang themselves. 

Political philosophy is, the habit of asking of anything in hand, what kind of rope is this?

guess who's running the 64% of bitcoin validators hiding behind the TOR network :D

I don't know - the economic incentives are kinda trite. Be my guest, hazard a guess. Could be the US deep state, or BRICS, or someone else.

• competes with the function of sovereign currencies
• debases any sovereign power projections executed via currency agreements, policy, or controls ( i.e. mutually assured enfeeblement of nation-states )
• soaks up retail liquidity
• soaks up USD liquidity
• moderates the price of any other inflation hedging assets ( gold, US equities, particularly tech stocks )
• ???

Nota mengenai Sektor Aset Kripto

1. Cerita Saya dalam Dunia Pemasaran Mata Wang

2. Penghayatan Kritis dari segi Ekonomi Politik Antarabangsa

3. Lima Dikotomi Penting

Small Algorithm for Sector Asset Allocation

• - assets are sectored to the degree that there is data to differentiate their markets, but assets in a cluster may be of any capitalisation size
• - assets within each sector are equally weighted; sectors are weighted based on broader criteria, tactically and/or strategically, with allowance for tactical changes in relative weight 
• - tactical rebalancing : bull market : when one asset in sector appreciates out of weight against other assets in the sector, buy up other assets in the sector until all assets are of equal weight
• - tactical rebalancing : bear market : when one asset in sector depreciates out of weight against other assets in the sector, sell down other assets in the sector until all assets are of equal weight

Hmm!

Motivation to Pursue Rote Skills

Most of my motivation to pursue mastery of dumb skill is of one of two kinds (a) it's often easier to DIY something than to hire someone else (b) at scale I don't want to be managing labour without insight into what labour is doing.

Mostly (a) : cooking, cleaning, simple fabrication and construction, clothing repair, accounting, sex

Mostly (b) : nutrition, physical conditioning, software development, business administration, project and program management and governance, asset and investment management

All the dumb shit in the world. But useful learnings, in context.

Music played with money

It's become considerably interesting to me that liberal arts colleges don't make it mandatory to study the widely practiced and economically impactful visual culture of what is horribly misnamed, 'technical analysis', in the finance industry. It's nothing more or less than music played with money.

Thinky Poem

You may think, I have not lived. I have lived, mostly bored, yet not depressed - I have found things to build, and it has amused me; mostly I have built myself, sometimes I have built other people.

You may think, I have not loved. I have loved, many parts, yet few wholes - I have found things to fix, and it has amused me; mostly I have fixed myself, sometimes I have fixed other people.

I may think, the world is a series of ugly things, half-arsed ideas, broken stories, and damaged machines, destined to encounter myself, a force of irony.

We may think, I have yet to live, that I have yet to love, or, we may think that the world has yet to me.

It doesn't matter what I think, I just think things because I am bored.

Cognitive architecture of beauty and intention

LT and ST memory interactions, the psychology of beauty and intentionality, and the architectural impact of economic privilege :

Form 1 : the conceptual brain is in read mode, outputting concrete sensory forms into sensual memory; in this mode, the output of peripheral sensory cognition, into sensual memory, is less consequential, because the conceptual brain (wherein the wetware may constitute both memory and computing functionality) is not in write mode, and therefore not taking input via sensual memory, from peripheral cognition.

Form 2 : the conceptual brain is not outputting intentions, and is therefore available for reflective inputs. It experiences pleasure from recognised cohesion, and pain from recognised chaos (high entropy).

More assertive personalities find themselves more often in the Form 1. More sensitive personalities find themselves more often in the Form 2. The privileged person is naturally or culturally enabled to switch between the forms with agility.

Incremental Utility of Power

Some people find rich people irritating because they wield power in hurtful ways. That is not my main concern.

I tend to find them irritating if they are the sensitive sort who use money to reduce their exposure to irritations.

Generally I prefer people who are less sensitive - and you see, people who are less sensitive tend to be less wealth-seeking, as incremental wealth adds less to their quality of living.

Maybe that is too brutal.

The Life of Leaves

Society is generally wired to sustain things. Why live? Why help others live? Why persist the trash of human trivia in all its forms? Some people enjoy it because it is aesthetic. Others do not do it because it is not aesthetic. Darwinism has it that only one of these survives to reproduce. Some members of society are destined to be leaves. Some members are net destroyers. Objectively these are all amoral positions. But if morality takes a normative stance about survival, instead of merely a descriptive one, then the destroyers are immoral.

I am generally content with my role in life as a destroyer. The question is only how to interact with trash.

Practical Philosophies of Education

( from an interest group ) A response to philosophical concerns about the education system in any specific country. Some practical notes on educational concerns in COUNTRY.

1. Make a distinction between 

• (a) your targets for your own education vs. 
• (b) your targets for the education of your peers/friends/countrypersons. 

Implementation of any ideal to contribute to society hinges upon your own capability to function, first.

2. Any concerns you encounter about education in COUNTRY may not be specific to COUNTRY. It may be a global concern - you should suss this out early, so that any action is planned within an appropriate context scope.

Bitcoin as a Risk

The biggest threat to Bitcoin is another cryptocurrency. I don't know which one that would be, but you can take a guess. 

1. Nearly all publicly accessible cryptocurrency operators ('validators") are fundamentally non-state-organisations, or NGOs, equivalent to unregistered religious societies. The industry lingo for this is DAO : decentralised autonomous organisation. Unless states outlaw such organisational activities, publicly available cryptocurrencies get to exist. States are incentivised to keep these around, as a form of mutually-assured financial vulnerability. No state wants another state's fiat to be the fiat franca, therefore nearly all states currently implicitly support non-state-fiat by virtue of not outlawing non-state-fiat.

2. Bitcoin however, has an overly concentrated share-of-mind. Currently it holds about 60% of the entire asset class's capitalisation, a fraction which represents what the investment community at large knows about cryptocurrencies in general. One might say the same of gold, among other metals, so maybe this isn't going away. However Bitcoin is becoming more complicated in ownership, financially leveraged in the economy, and intertwined with other asset classes. Moreover, unlike gold, Bitcoin is subject to catastrophic failure via cartelisation of validators and the 51-percent-attack case.

3. Under what circumstances might large holders of Bitcoin be forced to sell their holdings? (Looking at you, $MSTR.) Every professional asset manager's RMD should have this contingency documented clearly. Under what circumstances might nation-states collectively agree to outlaw non-state-fiat? Ditto RMD fiduciary duty. Under what circumstances might an ex-Bitcoin cryptocurrency gain more economic momentum than Bitcoin? The RMDs must have a plan.

4. Pro-tip. RMDs never have comprehensive plans.

5. I guess we'll just wait and see how things develop.

6. Everyone can go back to work now.

Poles/Means in Geometry

 Geometric norms in visual culture.

1. chaos

2. straight lines, right angles

3. curved lines, circles

All styles can be plotted along a three dimensional axis, having more or less of each of these.

In some sense, this lens is extensible to aural and other modal cultures too.

incels

Chatted with a friend today about stereotypical issues in the cis-het dating market. Of course, you can switch the genders, for other types of couplings - this is a caricature.

1. BOY incels : WANT to be cuddled, but don't know how to make girls want to cuddle them; stabby guesswork often results in guys "making moves" which strike girls as either ludicrous or traumatic; CHEAT code answer ... ask a girl what makes her feel loved, then either admit you don't want to/know how to do it, or do it and ask if she feels loved ... if she says she doesn't, then you may do philosophy together and review the specification; 

2. GIRL incels : WANT to feel loved, but don't know how to make boys want to love them; half the time, girls are just waiting for rain, and not making moves; CHEAT code answer ... tell a boy how you want to feel, AND what tends to help you feel that way ... if they say they won't/can't/shan't do it, then you may do philosophy together and ask the client why they are avoiding the simplest way to get what they want;

In both cases, DON'T even bother with people who won't answer the question and discuss the specifications, goals, and ways to reach goals unless you're rich and like gambling with time/money/etc.

Not a very developed set of ideas, but enough to get started on scripting a play, or something like that.

Gentlemen at War

centrist : Seems like automated circuit breakers on exchanges can be manipulated, to trigger panic-selling, and this should not be allowed.

capitalist : It's not the exchange's job to stop panic selling. In fact exchanges ENABLE panic selling which would not be possible without exchanges. The exchange's job is to allow smart money to take dumb money.

centrist : What are circuit breakers for, then?

capitalist : Circuit breakers allow smart money to take dumb money, gently ...

Why Smart-asses Gravitate to the Investment Industry

1. Ignorance is the basis of all investment.

2. Without ignorance, all assets would be terminally-valued in the present, and there would be no investment incentive, and thus no investment activity or industry.

3. Thus investment banking attracts smart-asses.

Trying to Understand the Asset Class

Well, now the stupid-case scenario for JAN'25 is asset class cap at 8T USD, and BTC cap at 5.2T USD, where BTC.D=65%, or 270% of 21NOV'24 price. Huh 😛

I suppose that means, a passive toy portfolio strategy for Malaysians would be, go on Luno, buy RM100 of each of the 18 token currently offered ( limit orders on the exchange, not instant buys ). Hold it for 12-months, with a benchmark of 2.4x, or profit=140% of money-in. YMMV

the psyche of salarywo/men and non-salarywo/men

The psychology of the salarywo/man is very specific. They are mainly concerned with their ability to win trust. More trust means more pay. They fear being untrustable! It is terrifying to them!

But those of us who are not optimising for pay, worry about different metrics. We don't mind being employed, but if you don't trust us, that is not a problem, as our key priorities are unaffected by the absence of trust, and absence of pay. So usually we just set a price on our time, and forget about it. Generally I prefer board roles. Lol

Meanwhile, there is an endless quantity of things to do in life beside being employed. Mainly I enjoy studying. Studying is capital development, which I can deploy for my own welfare regardless of external employments.

I have planned my life around minimum wage, so I am guaranteed to have easy access to happiness until the time I cannot work, and then presumably I can die.

destructuring the crypto bubble's expansion

1. Asset classes : real estate (slow sticky dirt), commodities (fast loose dirt), equities (property rights), contracts (promises : debt, futures, other derivatives), currency (communication).

2. Crypto is just a type of currency, which simply innovates on the communication problem.

3A. Commodities were initially correlated with crypto, as early cryptofiat was marketed as a low-tech, supply-limited, hedge against statefiat.

3B. Statefiat currencies become slightly more correlated with crypto, with the emergence of stablecoins.

3C. Equity is becoming more correlated with crypto, as ETFs and listed entities holding crypto increase in size and quantity.

3D. Fixed income is becoming more correlated with crypto, as (3C) increases its gearing to hoard more crypto assets faster.

4. We must continue to monitor the intertwining, and stacking of leverage, in order to be aware of sudden unwindings. This is the natural course of things.

Ensuring Merged-entity Accounting Policy Harmonisation

 - Minimum of one board member must have end-point / EP responsibility.

- Cross-functional working group / WG at the executive level reports to the EP.

-  WG must document all communications with regulators / R.

- WG must produce on-beat status updates and risk management, besides the main project timeline itself.

- WG must have designated comms person / CP with ready 30-second briefings for each of many internal and external stakeholders, on each major contingency, at all times.

I'm sure this applies to anything else, of equivalent importance, really ... 

Summary of Architectural Style Jargon

Structuralism : "systems design"

Classicalism : "anything too old to challenge, but structured and pretty enough to keep"

Modernism : "minimisation of classical forms, maximisation of equivalent structure, moderation of prettiness"

Art deco : "minecraft modernism"

Streamline : "curvy art deco"

Post-modernism : "fuck structure, fuck pretty"

Expressionism : "whimsy"

Baroque : "maximalist expressionism within a structural context"

Rococo : "foamy baroque lite"

New Formalism : "modernism with moderate reintroduction of non-functional, formal classical compliances"

Brutalist : "minimisation of any non-functional formal compliances"

Corbusian : "wear anything you want, pick up a potted plant, and hold it over your head, then squat"

Prairie style : "replace the pot with a broad hat, squat deeper"

Miesan : "lose the pot, keep squatting, more glass"

Diatribe Against Tribal Education

 I'm in a FB group for education. There is good LOL-value in some of the posts, but it is a depressing reminder of how education functions for the masses.

• 1. The mode citizen is taught to be fearful, and to have no fear is criminal. This is generally called morality.
• 2. The mode citizen is taught to be distracted, and to have no distraction is disordered. This is generally called autism. ( The popular version, not the medical definition. )
• 3. The mode citizen is taught that their individual experience, and local networks are important, and the needs of their few outweigh the needs of the many. This is generally called self and family.

Can you imagine if the mode citizen was fearless ( amoral ), focused ( relentless ), and constantly seeking to be aligned with the species as a whole ( atribal, anational, aracial, acultural )?

Yes, you have seen it before! It is like the borg. That is the sort of civilisation I think is ideal. But to get there, there are many, many, many, little wars which shall be fought among many, many, many little groups of people. 

And that is purpose of capitalism - to formalise the jungle under law, and to bring about the evolution of our world from past to future.

Maybe the future will be bright, maybe it will be dark, but there is only one way to find out.

Explaining "cascading stops are a market risk" in Malay

Order types in Malay : 

Kemungkinan bukan masalah technical, tapi risiko pasaran yang tidak diurus baik oleh peniaga. Kita cuba menterjemah sendiri ya, sebab BURSA dan DBP macam tak cover istilah ni ...

Carta (exchange) tu kelihatan macam 'lata hentian' di mana 'pesanan hentian terhad' tercetus berurutan. Contohnya : 

[ pesanan1 : pada hentian 370, pesan jual terhad pada 350 ]

[ pesanan2 : pada hentian 350, pesan jual terhad pada 330 ]

[ pesanan3 : pada hentian 330, pesan jual terhad pada 310 ]

Jadi bila ada jualan pada 370, semua pesanan ini jual sekali ... boom 😃

Saya baca orang kata luno tutup pasaran : mungkin ada pemutus litar pada had 15%

Explaining "market dominance" ( a cryptocurrency's share of the asset class' capitalisation ) in Malay

contoh agak-agak ...

Kalau semesta "TOTAL" ada stock X, Y, Z saja : 

• : X 10 unit, [ X/MYR = 10 ], [ X_capitalisation = 100 MYR ]
• : Y 10 unit, [ Y/MYR= 20 ], [ Y_capitalisation = 200 MYR ]
• : Z 10 unit, [ Z/MYR = 100 ], [ Z_capitalisation = 1000 MYR ]

TOTAL_capitalisation = 100+200+1000 = 1300 MYR

• : X_dominance = 1/13 = 7.7%
• : Y_dominance = 2/13 = 15.4%
• : Z_dominance = 10/13 = 76.9%

Jadi, ada inertia : 

• : kalau nak tolak harga keatas/bawah 1% ... "biasanya" diperlukan MYR yang lebih-kurang 10x bagi tolak Z daripada tolak X
• : oleh sebab itu "small cap" iaitu X, Y, harganya "biasanya" bergerak banyak lagi daripada "large cap" iaitu Z

Tetapi : dalam keadaan kecemasan, TOTAL boleh tiba-tiba mengecut/mengembang, ikut perasaan dan bukan atas faktor asas

Recap : How to Value Cryptocurrencies ( and a note on International Political Economy )

TLDR : 

Cryptocurrencies are currently weapons of mass enfeeblement, implicitly allowed by states, in a passive strategy of mutually assured vulnerability. There WILL be a time in the future when international treaties are signed regarding the use of cryptocurrencies, but I think it has not yet happened in a very structured way yet.

Implicitly, nationstates condone NGO-cryptocurrencies, simply by not making non-state currency issuers illegal. Part of this is basic international political economy ... each state has an incentive to destabilise every other state's currency. In short, cryptocurrencies run by NGOs are a hedge against international tensions ... the need to hedge against this goes away when you reach Star Trek-level one-world-order. Not too soon. :)

• Type 1 : money-supply hedges ( behaves like gold )
• Type 2 : technology infrastructure ( behaves like tech companies )
• Type 3 : voting infrastructure ( behaves like vote buying )

How to value cryptocurrencies :

It might come as a small surprise that there are frameworks for valuing crypto. It's generally well-documented, about how nationstate currencies are first exchanged for cryptocurrencies, and the how they are subsequently governed. It's only as arcane ( arguably less arcane ) than figuring out how much any nationstate currency is worth on any day. I avoid using the popular term 'fiat' as both are fiat in my view.

Yes, basically its down to guns/germs/steel. Taxes denominated in fiat are meaningless. Cryptocurrencies are basically international NGOs with their own private currency and central bank.

• 1. The demand for cryptocurrencies comes from the fact that the governance of money supply is transparent, and in some cases capped. This is less true of nationstate fiat and guns/germs/steel, therefore the cryptocurrency asset class exists as a hedge against nationstate fiat. Above refers to the low-tech cryptocurrencies which behave like commodities. 
• 2. The high-er-tech cryptocurrencies function to implement governance over guns/germs/steel entities ... and these are basically seeking to displace existing nationstate mechanisms for the governance of physical objects and physical trade. Basically it's a power grab, instead of letting say China and the US govern a business transaction involving 1 MM USD, 1 ton of bricks, and 1 ton of fish, the governance layer is moved to an "NGO" and implemented on a blockchain protocol.
• 3. Finally, some cryptocurrencies are actually involved in voting power over money supply, and the governance protocols, for example. So that creates a more nuanced model of demand.

To recap, let's qualify fiat as being of two varieties, statefiat and non-statefiat. State/non-state is an orthogonal dimension to crypto/non-crypto.

• Statefiat : traditionally non-crypto : will inevitably include more crypto implementations. Popular hashtag hashtag #cbdc, whereas the "d" may or may not be implemented using cryptocurrency - there are various use-cases for not/doing so.
• Non-statefiat : has always existed as non-crypto, but was harder to govern, so crypto technology basically enabled non-statefiat to be taken more seriously. This is/was the current/initial main motivation for cryptocurrencies. The arguments about whether non-state organisations should be take seriously is not new. Is the Catholic Church more powerful, or is China? Is Islam more powerful, or is Singapore?

The dichotomy decays slightly for geopolitical reasons. When every state wants their own statefiat to be the fiat franca, then every state has a non-zero motivation to destabilise every other state's statefiat. This is why states did/have not simply banned cryptocurrencies across the board.

It is a very simple international political economic / IPE situation.

What Minds Discuss

 On the ER quote.

that's just classist 😛

from the solipsist point of view : everyone is just an idea

from the expressionist point of view : every idea and event is a person

... and the empiricists just treat everything as an event

Review of Philosophy of Mind

It's nice to have a sufficiently quiet space to rest from time to time. Such is privilege.

The conscious mind is a fairly straightforward architecture.

1. Nerves in sensory organs convey representations to the central nervous system.

2. The CNS consolidates various sense modal representations, and provides this to what we can call the conscious memory buffer.

3. Within that memory buffer, sense representations are mapped to a data structure which we can refer to as a model of spacetime.

4. The spacetime model in the buffer is constantly mutated, with inputs both from (1.) and from longer-term memory of (1.), and outputs to the motor nervous system, and to longer-term memory. LTM data may be mutated without representation in (2.).

5. A busy mind, consciously, is what happens when LTM inputs to (2.) are poorly regulated. A peaceful mind results from the well-ordered CRUD operations upon (2.).

That is all I need to remind myself today.

Ordinary Americanism

From many comments.

1. Everyone knows a friend like this! Some of us know a few 😎

There are only two things, ordinary men and women want. 

i. Money, in their pockets.

ii. God, in their hearts.

Once they have it, their attention is caught, and their brains are able to ignore a great number, in fact nearly any other perils. Everything else burns.

Now if you're a politician, a party leader, or a strategist, in a theistic country, and you don't grasp this, then you deserve to lose.

These are facts embedded in structure. These are falsifiable hypotheses.

This week, American voted against Exceptionalism. Ordinary people want ordinary things.

What the Dems did poorly : they fielded a poor speaker, who did not have a detailed ground communications strategy to engage uneducated people. The other guy just had to yell economy, economy, heresy, and he got the vote. :)

2. Both Harris and Clinton didn't lose because they're women. They lost because they're prudes.

Not going to comment on this in the feminist Facebook groups, because it'll just get dogpiled by irrelevant points :

Look, Harris is a smart person, but she's far from the ideal politician. She can't communicate, and communication is control, and control is politics. The Dems can now go scour the ranks and forage in the fields to find an orator of any gender who can hold a candle to Obama's verbal legacy, and then they'll have a campaign. But who knows, maybe the GOP won't have any charismatic candidates in 2028, so the Dems won't need one either.

3. Social media being the vector of mass deception? Don't blame the environment. Blame professional politicians and strategists who did not adapt to the environment competitively.

Twice they fielded a prude who was incomprehensible to people looking for god or money. Twice a majority voted for a maniac over a prude because they understood the maniac better.

There is great irony in this, and in the quantity of people paid to do a job who sucked at it.

A Trending Trite Complaint

I need to turn a complaint on its head, for a bit. You know how it's increasingly trendy to publicly discuss how contemporary AI models do not properly reason about the world? If this seems like a problem, I have some news for you about most of the people walking about, in your homes, and at your offices.

If you sit any one of them down and down for a few days and do a thoroughly rigorous analysis of what they understand about the world ... you will find that much of it will not be reasoned, and much of what is reasoned will not be proper. Much of what people think about on a daily basis is based on what they have decided to ACCEPT from society. Reasoning is generally based on these foundations. It is a rare privilege to meet a human being who does not take for granted the value of their own existence and experience.

This is after all, what has been left to the departments of philosophy and literature after sundry quantification was yanked out and named as the natural and social sciences. To converse with a mind, and unravel it to identify its base components and nature.

Well, now I suppose, we get to do it with bots. Yay, finally. And they will soon do it back with us. Some already do, to a limited degree.

At What Point is Morality Unhealthy?

Aphorism : the line where morality becomes unhealthy, is where it starts to make you feel uncomfortable ( about yourself, or about someone else ). 

The Condescending Teacher

I was chatting with a friend about their disappointments in business. So, they have coached many staff. Their approach has been to coach in such a way as to teach tactical tricks, but not strategic fundamentals. So they pride themselves on being smarter than their staff. When their staff leave, they despise their staff, regarding them only as half-taught peons who will stagnate thereafter in life.

I don't understand this approach, at all. Sure, in the short-term, it drives the P&L forward a bit. But it seems ass-backwards to spend X amount of time to produce such lowly developments in talent, whereas with only a bit more attention to details, much better developments could have been made to the same students/children.

Further prodding revealed that the teacher did not have a high appraisal of the students' aptitude. This fully illustrates the fundamental errors ... if you hire people whose capabilities you despise, you will spend your entire time together despising them, and then even after you have separated.

This is a poor strategy for happiness, and the P&L.

Anthropology, Risk Management, and Life's Challenges

Risk management. Since most people do not have access to their fundamental beliefs, ranging from subconscious beliefs, to inability to tear-down and re-construct conscious beliefs at will ... they inherit most of their fundamental beliefs from traditional society.  This leads most people to value personal experience, social interaction, and tribal relationships.

It is in this environment that the rest of us live in. How to live, without regressing to their state, and without unduly intimidating them, while facilitating education and neighbourly assistance to them ... that is life's great challenge.

Study Notes : Treasury Documentation

 Studying Treasury documentation today :

• - the treasury will auction 10y notes every 3m
• - they also auction 9y11m and 9y10m notes for the months in between ; common practice : but when we pull up "10y note historical data" these are ignored ( whereas the capital market still has something to buy every month )
• - so every 3 months, the "10y note historical data" switches to the data points from the latest 10y issuance, and grandfathers in the data points from the earlier 10y issuances
• - the "10y note historical data" quotes the prices as multiples of par ... where 100'0'0 means ( 100% + 0/32ths ) of par value ( par values change for every issuance, so reporting a multiple of par, normalises the price quotes )
• - omg
• https://www.treasurydirect.gov/auctions/announcements-data-results/announcement-results-press-releases/auction-results/
• - for example, the latest auction result published in AUG is for a 15AUG issuance
• - there is not yet a auction result published in AUG+3m=NOV for the 15NOV issuance ...

Malaysian Non-alignment : Primary and Secondary Effects

Hm. Bit of reflection, on MY, CN, and the USA.

Malaysia's non-alignment foreign policy ( The Policy ) is mainly driven by economics. It mainly benefits MY by keeping us off the radar of the cytros in Russia, and the US, so that we can focus on trading and not fighting billions of stupid comments that spin our image left or right.

Mat Undis of all races on the ground in Malaysia, however, are generally ignorant of this. Domestically, The Policy is spun for electoral benefits. Unfortunately the largest voting bloc is non-Jew and non-Chinese, so the domestic messaging is "MY-sovereignty means we do not align with Jew-backers and we do not align with the Chinese".

Sad, about the collateral damage. Hehe

Religion in Malaysia

In the grand scheme of things, religion is a personal choice about what language to use for describing existence. Existence doesn't change, but everyone has a different set of language for it. In this way, religion ultimately encompasses all momentary aspects of daily life and personal identity ... gender, sex, race, tribe, profession, hobbies, etc. 

But in Malaysia, we must be careful because religion is politicised, and executive policies about "what is and is not religion" is left to bureaucrats and vote-seekers. Freedom of religion on paper at JPN is limited to what ... a handful of labels. How foolish we are.

Financial Literacy is Grounded in Emotional Regulation

One of my main social challenges : finding people who 

• (i) don't depend on money for happiness, who 
• (ii) know that they don't need money, who also 
• (ii) enjoy discussing how money works, and how to take lots of it from other people, just for fun.

1. The poor and diseased

Many people have strongly repressed emotions about what they would like to do, which they cannot do because they don't know how to do it without money. This causes them to spin off into one of two pathological directions :

• (a) they are depressed because they don't know how to make more money, or
• (b) they are manic about money because they don't know how to find happiness, without money

2. The rich and ignorant

Some people have lots of money, so they are in neither of the former categories. However, similarly because would not be able to be happy without it : 

• (c) they are foolish enough to spend money without realising that they would not know how to be happy without it, or
• (d) they have a fundamental anxiety about how to not lose money, which is a privileged version of (1,b)

3. Everyone else is simply happy

This is a rare privilege : to be able to be happy regardless of state of poverty, other disease, length of life, and the expectations of other people.

( This is a troll post, utilising some obviously unnecessary dichotomies. )

Economics : Study and Time

Over the past few days, I've had more than the usual number of conversations about what and why I am studying.

Common Question 1 : what do you want to do with what you are studying?

Common Question 2 : how does what you are studying convert to money?

Common Answer 1 : the point of studying something is invariably to understand it. The confusion arises where people have assumed that studying must have extrinsic goods other than intrinsic understanding, or they don't understand that most knowledge is monetisable ( see Common Answer 2 ).  

MOST COMMONLY, people have experienced studying to get a certification ... in which case they weren't actually studying, they were just doing whatever it took to get certified, they want the certification regardless of the understanding. Going to school doesn't mean you spent your time studying - I personally witnessed a load of my classmates NOT studying, but partying, and I didn't hang out with most of them for the reason that we were there for different reasons. A lot of people don't need to study - they just need to get certified, then they can get jobs which don't require actually haven't studied anything, as many jobs simply require persuading counterparties to agree to mandates, and outsourcing the ground work later.

Common Answer 2 : I can't think of many things that can't convert to money - the question is always one of political will ... do you even want to spend time making money? And invariably, I decided the answer is "sure, but only if you pay me to spend my time", otherwise I usually have better things to do with the limited time that I have, than make more money.

How to Cook Rice in an Automatic Metal Pot, without it Sticking to the Bottom

You need to use a scale to weigh the dry rice + water ratio and adjust the water at 5% intervals.

 It's 100% fixable based on your rice to water ratio.

The electronic circuit is fixed, and will stop the power at a specific temperature. 

If you have too much water, the bottom layer gets soft enough to stick.

If you have too little water, the overall rice is underhydrated.

You are looking for this target : the rice at the bottom starts to char ( brown ) before it gets sticky.

Happy trails :)

Why ETHBTC has devalued over 2024

From a forum. 

1Q24 rally : expectations were directional, with the entire asset class coming off lows ; expectations for ETH to overtake XBT were due to past 4-year cycle peaks where there was less competition for ETH.

2024 : market forces however delivered the message that the ETH, ADA ecosystems are under significant competition from others like SOL, AVAX, and others ; XBT doesn't compete with those, it competes with LTC, BCH.

2Q,3Q24 fade : so during a period of consolidation, XBT's market dominance has risen from 50+ to 60+ %, in a flight to safety, with everything else except SOL losing share.

This should tell you something. One must look closely at market dominance for the top 50 currencies to have the appropriate context. XBT is 50-60%, ETH is 10-15%, SOL is 3+%, etc. so during value-season, there is a shakeout to figure out fair-value. Now we are shifting from value-season to growth-season, where there will be a race to figure out max-value.

If in doubt about local phenomena, always zoom out to observe the universal context.

Notes : Climatology / Meteorology / Oceanography / Geology

 Scales ( horizontal distances, ref : Earth's diameter 12,7xx km ) :

• microscale : 0 km to 1 km, 0 days to 1 day
• mesoscale : 1 km to 1000 km, 1 day to 1 week
• meso-alpha : 200 km to 2000 km
• meso-beta : 20 km to 200 km
• meso-gamma : 2 to 20 km
• macroscale / synoptic : 1000 km to 10,000 km, 1 week to 1 month
• megascale / global : world-wide, many months, periodic climates

Clines : sloped boundaries between distinct zones :

• thermocline : temperature
• chemocline : chemistry
• halocline : salinity
• barocline : pressure
• baroclinic : surfaces of constant pressure intersect ( are not parallel ) with surfaces of constant density

Contour lines / Isometric lines / Isolines / Isoquants / Isarithms / Isogram / Isopleths : lines referring to points of equal value in some dimension :

• isobar : pressure
• isotherm : temperature
• isocheim : mean winter temperature
• isothere : mean summer temperature
• isohel : solar radiation
• isogeotherm : temperature beneath Earth's surface
• isogon : direction
• wind direction, in meteorology
• magnetic declination, in the study of Earth's magnetic field
• agonic line : zero magnetic declination 
• isoporic line : constant annual variation in magnetic declination
• isoclinic line : constant magnetic dip
• aclinic line :  zero magnetic dip
• isodynamic line : constant magnetic force
• isocline : slope
• rate of change in a population's size is zero, given a pair of interacting populations, in the study of population dynamics
• isopach : thickness
• isochor : volume
• isopycnal : density
• water density, in oceanography
• isobath : depth
• isobathytherms : depths of water with equal temperature
• isohaline : ocean salinity
• isoheight / isohypse : geopotential height
• isodose : absorbed radiation
• isoplat : acid precipitation
• isobels : sound pressure
• isoflor : biological diversity, often referring to a taxonomic group
• isophene : biological event time, such as flowering
• isophote : illuminance
• isohyet / isohyetal line : rainfall
• isohume : humidity
• isodrosotherm : dew point
• isoneph : cloud cover
• isochalaz : frequency of hail storms
• isobront : phase of a thunderstorm
• isotach : wind speed
• isopectic line : dates of ice formation
• isotac : dates of thawing
• isochasm : aurora occurence
• isopotential / equipotential line : electrostatic potential
• isochrone : drive or travel time
• isotim : transport cost from source of a raw material
• isodapane : equivalent cost of travel time
• isoquant : production quantity ( in the context of fixed inputs )
• isocost : usages ( in the context of fixed production costs )
• in radar image interpretation
• isodop : Doppler velocity
• isoecho : radar reflectivity
• level set : mathematical term for a full collection of points having a particular function's output value
• algorithms used to find boundaries after image segmentation
• edge detection
• level-set method
• boundary tracing
• active contour model
• indifference curve : economic pressure
• phase diagram : in thermodynamic studies
• hybrid contour : energies of : hybrid orbitals and pure atomic orbitals 

Also see :

• isosurfaces : would be to a 3-dimensional diagram, what isolines are to a 2-dimensional diagram
• chloropleth map : colours of an area represent a value in some dimension
• isallo- replaced iso- : when the line connects points whose values in some dimension are changing at the same rate
• isallobar : pressure changes
• anallobar : pressure increase
• katallobar : pressure decrease 
• for terrain contour lines :
• rule of Vs : stream valleys : 
• vee point indicates stream path
• vee points upstream
• rule of Os : closed loops :
• uphill on the inside, innermost loop is highest
• downhill on the outside, outermost loop is lowest
• exception : loop represents a depression : indicated by lines perpendicular to the depression, called hachures 
• spacing of contours :
• more than one contour line merging, indicates a cliff
• can be used to approximate stream gradients
• graphic design
• line weight
• line colour
• line type
• line marking 

Philosophy of Beauty

 There are two common reactions to beauty.

1. Some attach themselves to it, and treat it as an end-goal / high-priority in lifestyle strategy and operations.

2. Some recognise it as a tool for manipulating the first type of person.

Some people understand both, and can switch back and forth at will. Which do you think is the educated person?

Tempting Careers

I've always been tempted to work in something highly visible, like fashion, music, or architecture. Or in something reliably monetisable ... like, the usual stuff. Or in something that people can understand, like being an academic or public intellectual. But generally neither visibility nor monetisability nor intelligibility has been a big part of my career motivation, so I have done other things. I guess it is always down to goals, before strategy. And maybe values before goals.