One could take a title like that in a number of directions. OS = Operating System, if you didn’t know.

What this essay is about is: “time management” and the realization that pondering your own time management problems, and those of an operating system, is a way to develop a head for computer systems, often a useful end goal in itself, in a civilization wherein computer fluency is becoming ubiquitous (because computers are).

An operating system has the job of task switching. You know how onerous that can be, from experience. You’re deeply immersed in such and such a task…

As some of my readers already know, a represent a network of secluded boarding schools, doubling as Transcendentalist communities, hearkening back to experiments in community in New England, pre the USA Civil War. You may remember studying these folk in high school, as Emerson and Thoreau, Walt Whitman, serve to anchor this literary period.

The German language philosopher Nietzsche found lots to like in Emerson, looking back, and decided to use this diamond in the rough, this rustic American, as a model for his Zarathustra character. Did Nietzsche ever read Whitman? My search engine brings up comparisons only.

These boarding…

Me to CJ (SNEC etc.), on Facebook:

Yes, I appreciate your weaving the Bucky stuff with other thinkers. I’ve been doing that too, focusing to start with on some of his close collaborators. Kiyoshi branches out to the whole civil rights movement, while Applewhite connects me to the world of crystallographers (Ed had a lot of respect for Bernal). Then comes the Wittgenstein bit, and meaning as use, not as pointing to “stuff out there”.

I think I’ve done a great job, along with Koski, getting the concentric hierarchy put back on its pedestal, as a core piece of statuary…

More political analysis. Vis-a-vis Neera Tanden, I’m seeing a lot of sharp lines separating what I call NPR Liberals (includes Clintonistas), and ex Air America Radio Lefties (Chris Hedges, Ralph Nader), a lot of ’em on RT nowadays (even Larry King ended up there, bless his heart).

Different places on the radio dial.

NPR Liberals aren’t about to stand up to their pet Biden Administration on matters of foreign policy, because hey, Daddy CIA (British accent) is protecting us from Evil Russia and we all like to sound intelligent, as in “intelligence community”.

Questioning Empire is just too exhausting and…

Once upon a time, a seafaring tribe, the Trims, were into fishing, sailing, and weaving nets.

They had a specific way of multiplying, passed down from one generation to the next.

“Three by five” would mean the surface area between two edges of length three and five, with a sixty degree angle between them. The resulting area: fifteen triangular units.

Or take “six by two” as shown below. The units of area are the small triangles at any corner. They tile the entire surface.

The green triangle consists of an area equal to twelve of these units. The two edges…

[ side chatter regarding an essay and related video presentation ]

CJ: Unlike the essay, in my closing remarks in the video I compare Pólya to Bucky. In regards to the Inductive Attitude: should we be more like Bucky or more like Pólya?

Any other thoughts on either the video or the essay it riffed off of? https://www.cjfearnley.com/.../the-inductive-attitude-a.../

Me: I’ll take a look.

You earlier opened my eyes to Pólya’s intuitionism, another way of saying inductionism.

Mathematics can’t start out by simply proving stuff, as first we need to figure out what’s even worth proving i.e. where to invest our…

My take is covid forced the hand of many states in ways I barely understand, to approve mail in voting. People are scared and didn’t fancy standing at the polls. I live in Oregon and we’ve been doing vote-by-mail for decades. There’s tight integration of voter rolls and DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles).

I expressed skepticism as the election drew nigh that other states would experience smooth sailing. I predicted real logistical problems becoming more like Oregon on short notice. …

Embedding source code in your Medium stories is pretty easy. Here’s the end result:

You’re looking at the Python computer language. The code above defines a “type of object” in this case a Python. The three indented methods, each with a strange “__rib__” looking name, define python behaviors: birth, eating, representing.

For more about Python, see my previous story here on Medium.

More advanced Python looks like this (explanation below):

Like in the Python example, the code defines a new type and its several behaviors. “Rat” means not the animal, but “rational number” i.e…