Lev Lafayette's journal

The past few days, after eResearch, I've spent with Victoria S., in a Christchurch suburb. It's a decided change of pace, affording me plenty of opportunity to be both reflective and beaver away at various projects related to work and academic pursuits. It also provided the opportunity to compose a few words on the return of Trump to the presidency and the rise of the far-right in the Western world, much of which has already been confirmed by actual events. For obvious reasons, I am particularly concerned about the upcoming German elections and the capture of the Liberal Party in Australia by the hard right. Yesterday was also the anniversary of the extinction of the Bramble Cay Melomys, an initiative inspired by Guardian cartoonist "First Dog on the Moon", and an issue that I will continue to bring up each and every year. The Anthropocene Extinction is a reality, with extinction rates two to three orders of magnitude greater than the background rate. Wildlife has been pushed into a corner by human activities, and if politics isn't worrying enough the future of the environment is even worse.

These grim reflections stand in stark contrast to my experiences of the past several days. Victoria has been a superb host and has catered wonderfully to their international visitor. The peacefulness of their home was complemented with visits to the Christchurch art gallery (which had an excellent display of lino-cuts), museum (a "pop-up" version as the main one is being refurbished), and the port town of Lyttleton. Work-wise I have been concentrating on integrating various lessons from the Software and Data Carpentries teams as examples in a high performance computing environment, as well as extending the contacts I made at eResearch New Zealand, especially among the bioinformaticians. Attending that conference made me remember how much I enjoy being in the community of scholars; the earnestness of nerds on important topics is certainly my preferred company. Speaking of which, an artistic confession: my increasing interest in the fine arts has led me to take up, and dive quite deeply, into two not-for-degree studies, specifically "Fundamentals of Music Theory" from the University of Edinburgh and "Modern & Contemporary American Poetry" from the University of Pennsylvania. While climatology is my love and deepest concern, if I can find some small escape of happiness in this world, it will be through the arts.

It is more than several days since I've added a journal entry, but not for want of activity. Quite the contrary, there has been a great deal of finger-to-keyboard activity, not the least being a reiteration of the "zero state solution" in a recent article on the Isocracy Network, "Universal Rights from the River to the Sea". Plus my summary of the Environmental conference in China made it its way to the ACFS Newsletter at the end of last month, with a copy made publically available by yours truly. Further, there was the matter of Spartan finally making it in the Top500 world supercomputers after being eligible for many years but for actually conducting the necessary test, meaning that it was deserving of a summary write-up of its story. I have also been writing a great deal on Python performance issues, but these are yet to be released to the public, so that will have to wait for the next entry.

There have been many events in the past several days concerning interstate and international visitors. Liana F., had a birthday gathering last Friday which continued on today for all intents and purposes, with the consumption of a setting-appropriate kirstorte. The Friday gathering ended up at the Creature Bar and consisted of a gathering of four - Liana, myself, Simon S., and Julie A. We are all friends from more than 30 years ago in Perth, so it was an interesting migrant gathering, which was followed up with a visit from James N., and yesterday with a catch-up with Nathan B., visiting from Sydney at Naked for Satan, which provides the best views of any pub in Fitzroy. On Friday and Sunday, I spent time with Mel S., and Victoria S., both from Christchurch which is the other side of my migrant history (I am one of the few in Melbourne who can say that they are both a migrant from New Zealand and Western Australia, but such are circumstances), which included a visit to the Hellenic Museum. Last week also caught up with some of Alison B's friends at Hopscotch bar who were also part of a rather notorious UniMelb club that I had a tangential association with - the Friends Of Unnatural Llamas (FOUL).

On Thursday, Nitul D., took me to an Italian jazz event at the most politically powerful building in the state - government house. It took a while to find an open entrance, and we accidentally gatecrashed a wedding at Garden House for a while, but we finally made it to what is a truly impressive building. The following evening I helped Carla move into her new home (and put up some large but extremely well-designed shelving units), and the following day I joined the youthful Ru's Crew group the following day for another session of the boardgame, "Root" where my mighty river otters succeeded through position and assistance. Another moving session is planned for this Saturday. In summary, it has been a busy past several days - and I really must make use of some of those planned holidays (New Caledonia et al, alas, is delayed to January).

This evening I completed a difficult short exam for "Physical Basis of Climate Change", just the final exam to go. I also received a grade today for the major essay for the same subject on "Earth's Climate System and Changes Since the Industrial Revolution"; given that I received 27/30 maybe I know something about this. Given that this is one of the more challenging subjects I have taken in my long and varied university career, I am understandably quite pleased with this result. The next few weeks will see final assessments in this and other subjects, and that will be trimester one complete for this degree.

There's been a couple of nice upticks at work today as well. This afternoon I hosted a researcher presentation for one Arshiya Sangchooli who gave a great talk about amygdala and information processing using Spartan and Mediaflux. Apart from speaking on a part of the brain that holds a particular interest to me, it is always great to see how very complex problems that require a lot of data are processed on our system to generate useful results. In addition, a survey of staff from the Cultural Working Group suggested that my work for the past two-plus years in this body has not been in vain, with very significant improvements across all previous metrics of concern. More work to be done, but it was a very pleasing result.

Tomorrow is the annual general meeting of the Isocracy Network, my favourite political organisation (it should be, I founded it). We're having a discussion on recent increases in rents, housing prices, interest rates and the like and why home affordability has become increasingly painful for many Australians. It is a subject that I've been grumpy about for some years but - rather like global warming - there are some powerful vested interests that get in the way of making life better for people. As a related political aside I must mention attending a Melbourne adieu for one Doone Clifton who is moving interstate. Doone is an old North Melbourne Labor Party comrade who I first met over twenty years ago, and her farewell really was quite a meeting of people of that locale and politics. It was also a lovely opportunity to see Rob and Angela L., there as well with follow-up drinks and conversation with these worthy souls.

The last three days have been spent almost entirely at Conquest, Melbourne's Easter weekend gaming convention that has been running for some thirty years or so. The RPG Review Cooperative had a stall, where our members have the opportunity to sell their old games to an enthusiastic public and, as has been the case with other conventions, there were plenty of people and plenty of enthusiasm. This was a great opportunity to engage in old conversations with like-minded friends on the finer points of game design, and various publications, and catch up (albeit often briefly) with some old friends. For what it's worth, proceeds from my sales from this event are directed toward Effective Altriusm who note that the most effective donations you can give to save and extend lives are for anti-malarial and vitamin supplements for children in sub-Saharan Africa.

In the evenings of this weekend, I made my way to two comedy events. Saturday night Liana F and I went to see "Comedy Zone" at Trades Hall which provided several excellent presentations of which Alexandra Hudson's curious observations of the world from a person with cerebral palsy was a personal favourite. The evening previous I went out with Erica H., to see yet again, that rather famous upwards-punching stirrer FriendlyJordies as he described his recent experiences in the High Court for defamation. There's a rather good youtube video of the story that led up to the show which is thoroughly recommended. As political comedy the topics of substance of are no laughing matter; the fact that it's presented to illustrate absurdity and incredulity through irreverence is quite a successful formula.

Prior to this weekend, I managed to get a few words in regarding politics; the first was the article on Australia's truly ludicrous decision to spend $368bn on submarines. My article, "A Subservient Decision" outlines the awful opportunity costs and tragic ineffectiveness of this very poor decision. Further, last Tuesday, I was interviewed by John A., on Sydney's Radio Skid Row's "Roving Spotlight" on the topic of Hannah Arendt's approach to truth in politics and the structural causes for totalitarianism. When I get time this coming week I'll also put finger-to-keyboard about the proposed constitutional change for an indigenous voice to parliament; in the meantime, I am watching the LNP continue to drift further out-of-touch with public opinion and prosaic facts on the matter.

It is a curious thing, that in the week that I have written an extensive essay on how the new user interface of Duolingo will probably damage the company and is sufficiently bad that I have cancelled my paid subscription of many years, that I should end up on top of the Diamond League for the week. But then again, that does display how extensively I have been a user. Following a bit of investigation I have discovered - not to my surprise - that there are some reasonably good free-and-open-source software solutions, the most attractive seems to be the media-rich Anki flashcards, built on the principle of spaced repetition, but with user-created content (including your own). I can see why it has received such positive recommendations on various language-learning forums.

There have been a few political engagements in the past week as well, this time being an essay for the Isocracy Network, "The Failure of Putin's Gamble", which basically says what is stated on the title; Putin thought that Ukraine would be easy to defeat and it wasn't. Ultimately I keep returning to the article I wrote in 2014; let the oblasti in question themselves determine what country they would prefer to live under. On a much more local scale, I must mention that I also attended a local candidates forum for the State election, where both candidates and voters did not surprise in either the questions or answers.

The last item being noted here is that I've discovered that the philosopher Geoffrey Klempner has died. He is not the sort of philosopher that has left a magnum opus in terms of philosophical insight, but rather his great strength was opening up the discipline through the journal "Philosophical Pathways" and establishing the International Society for Philosophers, of which I am the University Outreach officer. I do have some concerns on the future of the organisation now that Geoffrey has gone as he really was the main driver, despite an extensive supporting board.

The highlight of the past few days was attending a Lunar New Year party hosted by tabouli. It was mostly attended by her friends in Toastmasters and a writing group, which were all lovely company and with cherry conversation. I've even made a couple of new friends out of the event. Tabouli really provided a wonderful reading of "The Great Race: The Story of the Chinese Zodiac", a children's book on the story of how the Lunar calendar was established and proved her ability to mimic and roleplay the sounds of the various animal characters. We were also introduced to the low-complexity party game, Taboo by Tiffany; a good vocabulary is certainly helpful. Tabouli also conducted private I Ching and Tarot readings in the course of the evening which, as useful, could prove quite insightful. Of course, the insight is provided is that such tools tap into one's unconscious. One has already been thinking deeply about a particular situation and even has an answer mapped out. The cards simply provide the bridge between conscious realisation and unconscious reflections.

On further lunar matters, I was recently alerted to a report that Adam Smith Institute has suggested selling the moon to combat global poverty. As if that's the only way to do it. It is a rather ironic argument seeming that Adam Smith was a steadfast advocate for maximum land taxation which, of course, groups like the Adam Smith Institute abuse the name and do not argue for. I rather suspect that they do not share Adam Smith's view of the legal fiction of corporate personhood, either. Such arguments for the complete privitisation of natural resources are quite antithetical to genuine capitalism, as the early economists knew, and instead, it is a type of monetary feudalism. Most modes of production start off as revolutionary, then become mainstream, and then become a fetter for future development. I would require more investigation but I suspect that capitalism is the first mode of production that actually goes backward as it develops beyond its highest point.

It has not all been fair sailing in my world, however. I have been getting some small, random, dizzy spells of late and a few of days ago one resulted in me misjudging a curb and falling to the ground. A couple of scrapes etc, and I'm otherwise fine. But then I start getting some rather bad headaches, almost like a migraine. It wasn't until late yesterday that I realised that part of my glasses was chipped, just on the periphery of my vision, which I suspect was the cause. So spare glasses are being used, new glasses have been ordered. As for the dizzy spells, I am going to see a doctor about those, but I have reason to believe that they are more psychological than physical (indeed, I hope that's the case). I learned some news last week which left me simultaneously quite uncomfortable and empty, not so much the content but rather the circumstances. I do not need to elaborate much further at this stage, but it is worth mentioning apropos that through work I've enrolled in a Mental Health First Aid course: Iatre, therapeuson seauton.

In the past several days I've been working on numerous writing projects. which is not so unusual for me. The first is a compilation of transcript and notes from my presentation at the University of New South Wales on cryogenic electron microscopy. The second is an article for Isocracy on a "parliamentary path" for the abolition of economic classes - not that I actually think it would happen, but rather it serves to identify what are the legal privileges that allow for such classes. These two are complete; the third is a major revision content on regular expressions in high performance computing, as I have a training course to deliver on that subject next week, mainly grep, sed, awk, perl, and running such things in parallel. Then there's an increasingly large two-part article for RPG Review on Housing, Food, and Clothing In Imagined Worlds, which sort of combines real-world history, geography, but also adds fantasy and science fiction options. It's pretty much a broad sweep on the sociology of everyday life in many ways.

But it's hardly been all work and no play; not in the literal sense. On Sunday a regular gaming group had 'session 0' of the new Alien RPG, based on the famous film series. It's a pretty simple system, with a highly coarse-grained skill system, but it has flavour and of course, the quotes will come thick and fast. Our ship captain is an android, so what could possibly go wrong? It was the second game for the week, with Thursday evening witnessing the regular Cyberspace game with the usual shenanigans of aliens and corporate espionage in the Stalker zone of central Australia. In my long-running HeroQuest Glorantha game, I have just introduced a chaos version of The Great Dragon. Glorantha never mucked around with dragons, so it is worthwhile to apply the biggest beast of all as the story nears a close.

As we've stepped out of lockdown in Melbourne, I've had additional visitors through my door in the past week. Jac and Damien were guests in a housewarming of sorts, and we managed to down a very good portion of a surprisingly good Aldi brandy for quaffing. I rather wish their mobile phone customer service was of better quality, however; after three months of various calls not getting through (including Net Banking!) with little responsibility I've had to switch to iiNet who offered a good deal and now, of course, the calls are functioning. I've also had a visit from former work (VPAC, UniMelb) colleague Martin during the weekend when we ventured with his family and friends to a New Zealand specialist cafe (yes, there is such a thing) and to the South Melbourne markets. Finally, I had a visit from Bryan K, of the Georgists. His work on land valuation spans decades and for those interested in the economics of such things. "Economics as if location matters", is quite a witty by-line.

The past weekend I spent down in the Great Otways National Park. It's the fourth time I have had reason to visit, and each has reminded me that I should have done so more often, given its fairly close proximity to Melbourne. The cool rainforest produces a remarkable density of foilage, with emergent and canopy layers of eucalyptus, beech, and blackwood to the dense ferns and fungi of the forest floor. At dusk one witnesses the play of black wallabies, the grumpy howls of koalas, as a cool mist roll in. There is the rugged coastline of the Great Ocean Road, the 1848 Cape Otway lighthouse, and the very accessible Erskine Falls near Lorne. It is certainly a place where my naturalistic pantheism feels at home. Remarkably, and this will leave me somewhat in awe for a while, little of the journey was of my own making, courtesy of the organisation and company of my special friend lei_loo, whose brother had gifted us the weekend cabin.

I recently 'blogged about the installation process and structure for Eazy-Photoz, "a photometric redshift code designed to produce high-quality redshifts for situations where complete spectroscopic calibration samples are not available". It's a good project, but the authors haven't thought out the software in terms of operating environments. I have also written a piece for The Isocracy Network, A Political Economy for Libertarian Socialism, which I take a difficult elaboration on government and state, public and private, factors of production, class analysis, etc. It is in hindsight that I realised that both were examples of complexity, of attention to detail. The latter concluded with the remark, "a complex truth is preferable to a simple lie", despite the enticements of the former.

Courtesy of a visit to Brendan E., on Australia's tragic excuse for a holiday watched a couple of films last week both in a historical high-fantasy genre; Dracula Untold (2014) and The Great Wall (2016), neither of which were terrible although the "high fantasy" component is a little strong for my tastes in a historical setting. I find myself too influenced by a more graduated disenchantment that suggests a more subtle, "low fantasy" approach for the post-mythic age. Apropos, last night finally watched Sunshine (2007), which really is quite close to being brilliant in terms of characterisation, development, and setting, but marred with a few flaws, or rather questions, that need filling in.

Work has been hellishly busy for me the past week as we're preparing for an outage on the supercomputer from Monday to Wednesday with a great variety of operating system upgrades, storage improvements (from CephFS to GPFS), network upgrades, and the addition of some 3,000 cores, and the removal of around 2,000 cores worth of older system units. For my own part, not only do I have new courses to run on the Thursday and Friday following the outage (which were filled in under 48 hours after the announcement), I spent a lot of time working my way through some fifty-plus example job scripts, modifying the existing ones so they would be compatible with the old build system, and writing new ones for the new build system. Unsurprisingly, there were a number of bugs and deprecations discovered along the way.

In the evenings I have been writing an article related to BLM, COVID-19, and Fake News; plenty of material of course. It's almost complete, but I was a little distracted by the Australian Prime Minister arguing against an elimination strategy; die on the altar of the economy, apparently. I responded with an Isocracy 'blog post entitled Elimination, not Suppression, which has generated some interest, and then shortly afterward, a call to arms following the Trump administration deciding to suppress CDC data from the public. I have suggested that all means; fair, foul, and illegal, should be used to ensure that the public has access to said data.

Despite the cool and overcast weather, I took to the bike today, hurtling my way some through the luscious green forests alongside the Main Yarra trail from Kew to Templestowe and eventually reaching Birrarung Park, where I caught up with Liana F., whom I hadn't seen for close to 25 years. Liana and I were old friends back in WA from the 80s, so we had plenty to catch up and talk about. In the recent decades, she's become the mother of four children, most now in their teenaged years, and has spent a number of years in northern New South Wales. It was good to meet up in the great outdoors, and the Birrarung was quite a beautiful setting - but so was the journey there and back.

World COVID-19 confirmed cases are now at 3.395 million, and 239 thousand dead. The United States makes up 1.129 million and 65 thousand of those figures. It has now killed, in three months, more Americans than their military intervention in Vietnam, which was over two decades, which is more of an indication of the political and cultural shift which the latter generated. A health comparison with considering is HIV, which in 2018 which had a mortality of 770K, but of course with COVID-19 the challenge is the speed and ease of transmissions and deaths of all which necessitates the strong social isolation measures. It would make an interesting study to see what it would be like without such an approach (a comparison between Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland provides some indication; Sweden, which has a strong communitarian spirit, is still practising voluntary social distancing, for what that's worth).

Of course, even for those countries that have engaged in flattening the curve, there is still a massive economic hit that's coming down like a tsunami. I have written a piece (c2400 words) on Pandemic Economics, which compares the approaches of stimulus packages, universal basic income, and job guarantees. It followed an interview I did with David Ayliffe on Thursday which covers similar topics which will be on Youtube soon enough; I am hoping to do a follow-up one on the effects of inequality of income and wealth, of which The Spirit Level is an influential text. Apropos, I am continuing my massive sell-off of my collection of roleplaying games to donate the proceeds to Medicines Sans Frontiers; I am at around $5000 raised so far, although I must confess it can be slow going with work and other pressures. Usually, I manage to compile a list for four to five people a day, and at that rate the current list will take another two weeks.

In what little spare time I have had over the past few weeks has involved a little ventures into the aesthetic dimension. I have finally written my review of Mark Burgess' View From A Hill, which had been on my to-do list since 2012. I have also made my through a few SF films, namely Annihilation, with a rather well-constructed "enter a wild and dangerous locale" plot, Advantageous, which takes a good look at the dangers of re-sleeving technologies, and Snowpiercer, a slightly absurd and violent take on the class system in a train. In addition have finished the second season of Altered Carbon which does improve over episodes, the latest season of The Blacklist, and the art-deco period of Archer. In addition, I finished Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart; a beautifully written, but very unhappy novel, and indirectly appropriate for our times.