Exploring the Planet with Google Maps

I have been looking at Google maps.  I started because the folks at Anarchapulco owe me money and have offered free registration for the event to pay some of it off.  Acapulco is about 2/3 the way to a building I own on The Cacao Farm in Nicaragua.  I began zooming out and exploring Google's map and found places where the borders are all screwy, like west of China where a bunch of "-stans" are located.

The border between Uzbekistan, Kyrgistan, and Tajikistan looks like a corkscrew, and that's probably just a best-guess approximation by people at Google because those countries argue about who owns what.  And constantly on my mind is what that means - for a bordered region to have a name and a border which is screwy and contentious.  Why is that so?  Because authorities want to do stuff there that other authorities don't want them to do.  It's like children laying down duct tape in a public park...  But they kill each other.

Then I moved over China and examined the east coast of Eurasia.  I saw Nagasaki and my heart fell.  I had to enter "Hiroshima" into the search box to find it.  I thought about how all the people here in America felt in August of 1945.  The 70th anniversary just passed, unnoticed by most, I guess.  I dwell on it as it makes tears well up in my head.  I let the grief overtake me.

We have this instinct as children to blindly trust whoever gets us a nipple or picks us up, and it's justified because as adults we have this instinct to care for and love tiny versions of ourelves.  But somewhere between those two instincts, one is supposed to give way to the other.  The human brain is magnificent, but when something causes it to stop caring about other creatures of the same species - to stop so much that killing hundreds, thousands, or millions seems like a reasonable policy decision - that magnificence putrefies into a malevolence.

It would be ok if the rest of us recognized the means through which such a malevolence could magnify the suffering it causes.  If we recognized its source as ourselves, we could cease to be its source.  But income taxes in the 30s were small and everyone knew they didn't apply to very many people.  On the other hand, the public schools had been under the control of human farmers for decades, so it wasn't too hard to use WWII as a pretext to make the tax more widespread and publicize that horrible lie that connects death and taxes.

So I've been sitting here pondering the borders, the laws, the governments, and the severe shortage of well-developed consciences these things have produced.  I cried a couple times.  I'm getting old and I will die in the next several decades, but I see hope for the human race to get out of this mess.  It starts with people like you and me if we can recognize that we ought not to blindly trust someone who seems to succor us, and that if we are to do right by what children we might have, we have to teach them to grow up as well.

Polylang: Identical page names in different languages

The problem: The links in a menu on a translated WordPress page should point to the translated destination.  PolyLang accomplishes this by adding a language specifier to the URL.  In our case, the URL uses directory names to specify stuff (like the language), so, for example, adding /es after the domain name would provide the Spanish version of a page.  The problem was that our menu items would add the "/es" twice.  This seemed to be a result of using both PolyLang and Enhanced Custom Permalinks.

WP appends a dash and a number (-#) to any slug that is already in use by a page in the same "sub" so that when it is used to build a permalink, it is different for each page in that "sub".  I put sub in quotes because whatever appears to be a subfolder in the URL helps make the URL distinct, but the language specifier doesn't count as one.  WP code wasn't written with the foresight that the same page might get multiple (distinct) URLs from some plugin (like PolyLang), so it enforces the rule that every page in the same "sub" (or in the root) must have a unique slug - even if there's already a unique language specifier in the URL.

But what if you want to preserve old URLs that would require the same slug?  For example, if you had different languages specified by having a language identifier in the URL, you won't want to add the -# (and you don't need to - because there is a language identifier already in the URL).

A client of mine ran into this problem which I've worked on solving using three methods.

The first method was an edit to the PolyLang file called links-directory.php so that the last line of add_language_to_link in links-directory.php massages the incoming $url.  Note that PolyLang code uses "$slug" to mean the language identifier.  My change replaces any existing occurrence of "/$slug" or "$slug/" with just a slash:
return str_replace($this->home . '/' . $this->root, $this->home . '/' . $this->root . $slug, str_replace(array($slug.'/','/'.$slug),'/',$url) );

 This seems to have fixed some of the problems but the menu items still had "/es/es" in them.

The second thing I did was to add some code from a post at Wordpress.org of the same name as this blog entry.  This didn't seem to have any effect, but I left it in place.

The last thing I did was because I noticed that one item in the menu didn't have this problem and I wondered why.  The reason was that the slug for the default language was misspelled (acapluco instead of acapulco).  Since it didn't match the slug for the Spanish version (correctly spelled, acapulco), the default permalink for that version contained the correctly-spelled slug and no -# (unlike all the other pages which did have -#).  The permalink for the default language had been manually corrected, so it was non-default.

When the permalink matches the slug, it's grey to indicate that it's the default permalink on the page-edit page (as if disabled, but you can still click it to change it).  Also when they match, the permalink code doesn't bother altering the URL and therefore doesn't trigger PolyLang to alter it (again) by adding a second "/es" which would otherwise break the URL.

Since the English version did have a non-default permalink, the code did massage the URL to add the language specifier (twice, I imagine), but since it was the default language, the specifier was the empty string and you can add that all you want without changing anything.  So the default language version can use any slug and a manually entered permalink and the changes that Enhanced Custom Permalink and PolyLang make to it don't matter.

That's pretty complicated, so here is the fix in simple steps that you have to perform on each page:

1. Edit the default language version of the page.
2. Change the slug to something you don't want to use (for example, change "contactus" to "contacus").
3. Change the permalink so that it uses the slug you DO want to use (when you change the slug to "contacus" it will use that misspelling in the default permalink, so fix it back to "contactus").
4. Click the pencil by each (non-default) language to edit those versions.
5. Change the slug to what you DO want to use. (I think this will only work if you have ONLY one non-default language because when you change the slug for the second non-default language, it's going to match the first non-default language, so WP will add the -#.  I think)
6. Change the permalink so that it matches the slug (and make sure you add the trailing slash).
7. After clicking update, verify that the permalink is grey (indicating that it matches the slug).

At this point, all your internal links should point to the translated URL for the destination (with the /es or /ru or whatever) in it.

Some evidence of Norton's link to the NSA

A question on Norton's website asks "Is Norton/Symantec doing NSA things??".  The thread is locked so that no one can contribute an answer.  The question points to another issue in which the same question is posed.  One of the answers to the new question (asked because the earlier version was also locked) points out that threads get locked automatically when there is no activity for a while.  This seems reasonable.  The last reply to the new version of the question was made over six months ago in November of 2014 and it has been locked.

I had the same question, so I was using Google to search Norton NSA and found this other post, also on Norton's community forum.  It is not locked, and it's last reply is from over 18 months ago.  How old does the activity have to be for the thread to get locked?

The second "Is Norton/Symantec doing NSA things??" thread was locked when its last activity was at least eight months younger than the last activity of the still-not-locked "NSA's Malware Methods Outed in Latest Leak" thread. The replies from SendOfJive and Nikhil_CV in no way deny that Norton is "doing NSA things". To me, this strongly suggests that Norton/Symantec is doing NSA things.

It may be the case that the Rootkit found by orangedog using Avast! was just enough of Norton's legitimate "debris Norton files," to trigger a false detection, but if they put it there, why can't they remove it?  Has Norton mentioned any efforts it is making to clean up the mess it makes when it gets uninstalled so that other security software doesn't get false alarms?  Why are the threads locked?

My strategy for dealing with all the spying is to assume that they are collecting what I write.  This causes me to hide significant portions of myself, making myself far less knowable to them than they want.  This is apparently tolerable to them, for they wish to control me and don't realize that what they lose by snooping is worth far more than what they gain by it.  Some clue in, switch sides, and have started helping the cause of liberty.  If you're one of them, well done!

Taking After the Psych(ologists & iatrists)os

I recommend the whole 18 and a quarter hour long Episode 88 of the Peace Revolution Podcast, but at hour 18, we find a gem inside of an Adam Curtis film. Apparently, some psychiatrists "found" that half the population has mental disorders by testing their system.  Mr. Curtis does not understand what he is describing.  He expresses no consternation or amazement that, although the test of the system returned "astonishing results," while it was being tested, its results were taken as accurate.

At 38:30 in "The Trap 1 Fuck you Buddy! Adam Curtis" an experiment is described which led to a test that seems to have failed to find solid evidence that their theory was BS, so they moved forward as if their theory were rock solid. This is how coercive authorities wreak havoc with our world. Adam Curtis does not realize what he is describing from 43:15 through 43:54. After you listen, listen again to what he said at 43:21, "to TEST the system." He completely misses the implication of TESTING less than 30 seconds later when he, and the people filmed in his documentary make gross logical errors. We still live in the world which pathologizes normal human experience.

Sadly, the official interpretation of the obviously broken system caused a large number of people to use the test as a list of recommendations they could follow in order to avoid "mental disorders."  While this is discouraging to those of us with working brains, it provides a strategy that might be effective.

I developed the following test which should help determine whether or not the person taking it has a quality as undesirable as a mental disorder, the quality of destructive self-deception, by which I mean those who need some kind of counseling.  Counseling is appropriate if their lives are to proceed normally rather than getting worse and worse, ultimately leading to premature curtailment of what could otherwise be a long and joyful life.

Self-Deception Test

1. Do you generally question the validity of what authority figures tell you?
2. Do you find that parts of your understanding of the world may not be accurate?
3. When you test a system and its results astonish you, do you look for flaws in the system?
4. Are you curious about things that disturb or upset you?
5. Does your conscience ever tell you that obeying someone is wrong?
6. Do you follow your conscience even when it tells you to defy an authority figure?
7. For the questions so far to which you answered yes, were they easy?
8. Have you ever deceived yourself?

SCORING:
You get one point for each question you answered YES.
0 points: Please avoid me, and good luck!
1 - 2 points: You are honest sometimes, which gives me hope.
3 - 6 points: You are like most people, most likely asleep or in denial and in danger because of it.
7 - 8 points: Welcome to the club.  Please help more people get in.

If you scored anywhere from 1 to 6, please contact me for counseling and let me know which questions you had to answer with a NO.  If you got a 7 or an 8, please offer your counseling services to others.  You may copy and paste this post as your own, or else rewrite it as you see fit.  If you scored a zero, well, your suicide cannot come soon enough for me.

Disavow the Use of Coercion

We have been relying on coercion for millennia and suffering the natural consequences.  I sensed this several months ago and it had shut me down.  I want to be involved in lots of things, but bitcoin development and dealing is the only one I've been comfortable with since that realization.  It was not a conscious decision.  It was simply withdrawal and a lack of interest which I now can pinpoint to the reliance on coercion.

Oracle owns Java.  I love Java, but I kind of abandoned it because Oracle is a corporation which will use the full weight of the (unfortunately acceptable) coercive power of the governments in whose jurisdictions it operates to prevent people from doing whatever it doesn't like.  Fortunately (and I just learned this while researching this post), Sun committed to making Java open source, so Oracle can't do much along the lines of using coercion with regard to it.

I've been using PHP and HTML.  In June of 1995, Rasmus Lerdorf released the source code for PHP Tools to the public.  Tim Berners-Lee (the CERN employee who developed the http protocol and html, albeit from earlier ideas) encouraged others to build upon his ideas and to design further software for displaying HTML, and for setting up their own HTML documents ready for access.  I see in my own past that when I sensed coercion in the maintenance of something, that thing became less attractive to me.

This post comes from a deep place within me.  I publish it to urge everyone to encourage Oracle, Google, Apple, and every other company, group, or institution to disavow the use of coercion.

I am just starting out on a journey to develop apps for the Android OS, which is a creation of Google, based on Linux, which was released to the public by Linus Torvalds.  In this effort, I find that in order to run the Android Studio, I need the Java SDK from Oracle.  This realization brought to the surface my own disavowal of the use of coercion.  Disavow it.  Ask others to disavow it.  Hurting people, punishing them, or making them suffer for doing what we do not like is not the way forward.

If you use PHP or HTML or Java or Linux, you have no obligation to Lerdorf or Berners-Lee or Torvalds or Sun, but it's nice to remember how they have helped you.  As the webmaster for voluntaryist.com, I am working on a new section (under the direction of the site's owner, Carl Watner) that addresses the disavowal of coercion with respect to ideas, which are often called "Intellectual Property" and used to justify the use of coercion in defending them.

Camping on Water, and a dream I had...

I am going to Lake Powell to live on a boat for a week with my brother, his wife, a friend of his, and my dad.  There might be some other people too.  I decided it would be clever to google search some terms that might give me ideas, so I tried "living on Lake Powell" and then "camping on water".  While looking through the images for "camping on water," I was reminded of a dream I had yesterday morning.

I was climbing on some boxes and tables and chairs in a smallish room.  The room had white paint on the walls (I only just now realized that might be significant), and it was much longer than it was wide, like maybe a closet.  Actually I think it's more like a lot of kitchens.  I was high in the room, not drug high, but physically high, because I had some stuff under me.  A crate, a table, some boxes.  Oddly, some of them were cardboard boxes.  Cardboard boxes usually can't support you unless you're dreaming, so I was lucky there.

I don't know why I was on the boxes.  I think I was trying to get down, but going backwards didn't cross my mind.  Forwards meant up.  I reached the ceiling.  I was not comfortable at all.  The moment I worried that I might fall, I realized I was dreaming and so the worry disappeared.  Then it was just a challenge to climb myself out of what I perceived as a kind of mess.

Actually, it was more like a corner I was stuck in.  My feet and butt were supported by ... well, that's kind of fuzzy.  But I decided to remove some stuff that was in my way (and which was also supporting me somewhat).  I pushed against the walls to brace myself, felt stable, and kicked a box out of the way.  Then I kicked another box out of the way.  Then I could climb down.  And there was an apple pie down there, that I could get to on the way down.  I thought of American Pie and woke up.

I think this dream is about stress.  I developed a model of understanding when I took an independent college course at UCSD for Cognitive Science.  In my model, we have a foundation like bedrock, which is our need and ability to fill the need for food, love, shelter, comfort, etc.  On this foundation we add concepts which are fastened to the foundation generally by gravity.  School, I had discovered while tutoring math, tends to give us concepts that float; they are not attached to anything that is grounded, and they float away over time.

The more you build out your concepts, the higher your cognition gets.  If you add things near the top (think elliptic curve cryptography, on top of advanced math on top of math on top of counting), they are only as stable as all the things under them.  So my dream tells me that some of my understanding might be shaky.  In any case, I was above the pie.  But pie is delicious, so I had to climb down.  That's why I woke up.  I wish more people would wake up.

Coercion Perverts Authority

I've crafted this little re-statement of Lord Acton's "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.": "Authority is good and helpful right up until you think it's ok for authority to use coercion. Then it putrefies into a harmful and addictive drug that creates and intoxicates psychopaths." Or, more simply, coercion perverts authority.

I await input before explaining more, both in the interest of compacting helpful truths into sound-byte-sized chunks appropriate for consumption by the brain-damaged masses (not our fault!) whose attention spans have been systematically shrunk on purpose by those who would control us-  systematically, I say, through the use of coercion, aka "compulsion" as in "compulsory schooling."  John Taylor Gatto, winner of "Teacher of the Year" award on more than one occasion and at both the city and state levels, provides lots of great material for anyone who wants to understand that systematization.