UNFINISHED THOUGHTS

Later today I'll probably let loose the first stage of my Gopher 
currency converter service. This was one of a number of Gopher 
services that I mused about earlier in the ideas section. 
Unfortunately the Gophernicus Gopher server software turns out not 
to support passing submitted search query strings on to other 
programs, in spite of various suggestions to the contrary in its 
documentation and source code. Fosslinux is working on adding that, 
but for now I've just got my Bash script to generate a list of 
currency rates complete with ISO standard Engligh names and rate 
changes since the last update. It should be pretty trivial to add 
the option for instead generating a gophermap and 
directories/scripts for each currency to be converted.

The currency conversions themselves will be done by GNU Units, and 
the currency list/gophermap are generated from Units' currency data 
file (currency.units) which is updated by the Python script 
units_cur. All the same, by the time it has processed and matched 
up all of the data from the currency.units file, it has all the 
info for doing a conversion itself anyway. So I added a conversion 
function just for fun - _way_ slower than Units (which is written 
in C) of course, but hey maybe useful to someone who can't run 
install Units for some reason?

Next was going to be the Australian weather forecast service. 
Though the one that would be really genuinely useful would be the 
Gopher TV guide because I don't know any Australian TV guide 
website that allows programme descriptions to be viewed without 
running Javascript. That combined with HTTPS issues makes it quite 
a pain to view on the old PCs and OSs that I like. I suspect 
setting a Gopher TV guide up would be a lot more work though, 
especially if I want to have volunteers fetch the data directly 
using USB digital TV receivers.

So seeing as I was going to be logging in to aussies.space later 
anyway, I figured I might as well write a post to upload at the 
same time (don't know when I'll get back to trying to compile an 
aussies.space compatible SSH client for this PC - I just don't like 
battling with configure scripts). Short of any genunine motivation, 
I thought I'd piece together some of the topics that I jotted down 
to write up for the phlog later, but can't remember well enough now 
to do a good job of it:

AI

I wrote something about Artificial Intelligence, I think. Ah, yeah 
I can't discuss the extra thing that I wanted to because I've 
talked about it before non-anonymously on the internet. Oh well, 
never mind.

MEDIA BIAS

Just a thought that with so much content online through social 
media, there's likely to be many examples for whatever point that a 
journalist wants to make. By showing them selectively, they can 
craft a biased view of reality far more easily and convincingly 
than before. It's just the odds. With everyone sharing their 
stories, photos, anger, even a one in a thousand event occouring to 
an individual can build up a healthy stock of examples for anyone 
trying to report it as a more common problem or success.

Possibly obvious, especially to people who view social media 
directly. Still, it's a significant change that's affecting the 
media as a whole, even the media relied on by social media avoiders 
like me.

RISE OF THE FAR RIGHT

Going straight to the idea of racial supremacy. The trouble with 
the arguments against it is that they assume a pre-determined 
morality. "It's wrong to discriminate." "Why?" "because it's not 
fair." "what's fair in having to serve people inferior to us?" 
"Because they're not inferior, we're all equal." "we're not all 
equal, they're look different and act differently." "we should 
embrace that." "why?"... and so it goes on. The arguments against 
racial supremacy never tackle the root of the thinking: that 
inferior people limit the ability of society to achieve what it can 
conceive for itself. In fact people always conceive of greater 
abilites than they posess, dream greater dreams than they can ever 
achieve. The truth is that we are all vastly inferior to our own 
conception of ourselves and our society. The solution is not to 
blame individual groups for overall social failings. But nor is it 
for us all to work together selflessly in a spirit of pure 
altruism. There is in fact no solution. We're just unfortunate 
enough to be lumbered with brains that posess imagination, and a 
misplaced trust that they're accurate enough to actually model our 
own reality.

CLINGING ON TO YESTERDAY'S DESTINY

Attitudes to technology have changed a lot over the years. It's 
facinating to read magazines and watch technical films from around 
the 50s and bask in the post-war enthusiasm. There is still lots of 
enthusiasm for new technology today of course, but it's a nervous 
enthusiasm, and at heart rather than hoping that it will provide a 
better future, we just hope it serves to prevent one that's worse. 
The driving forces though, the systems that develop the technology 
itself, haven't changed. Still they drive us in the direction of a 
50s utopia, even as we see a dystopian nightmare on the road ahead.

But I can't personally say that I have any idea where we'll 
actually arrive.

- The Free Thinker