marginnotes

The Internet Archive has many, many scanned books. I tried with Nickell's Botanical Ready Reference to use the hOCR file they provided and vibe code a small application making it easier to look up an entry.

In a way, it's such a small project you can do it with a free tier subscription to an LLM in a few minutes. Trouble is, garbage in, garbage out. The hOCR file is riddled with errors and assorted junk. The LLM tries to work around that, gets it somewhat right, and leaves you with the non-negligeable job of cleaning up the mess.

Once you start cleaning, you realize the LLM didn't necessarily get the right text even when it thought it did. It just swept the mess under a JavaScript rug.

Going back to the original hOCR file, you can use hocrjs to view it in the browser, but not to edit it. HOCR editors don't seem to be a widely available thing. How do people fix OCR output in practice?

In the US, today is known as Black Friday or, alternatively, Buy Nothing Day. In France, consumer-facing businesses have adopted Black Friday, not limiting it to the Friday after US Thanksgiving.

The idea of specifically avoiding buying stuff today has some appeal given the extent to which the original story of Christmas—God's only begotten son being born—has been drowned out by the story of Santa Claus we're not even supposed to believe, yet we're supposed to get excited about buying a bunch of random stuff.

I hadn't planned ahead, however. Weeks ago, I made an appointment to get my hair cut today. Then I bought some eggs and coffee beans. So I guess it's been another buy something day.

Come to think of it, every day is buy something day for most of us. We have subscriptions for everything from telephones to electricity. The water bill arrived in the mail today. I didn't shut off the heat pump at midnight. Many of us have debts we pay off. Although we don't make payments each day, a portion of the payment could be attributed to each day until the debt's reimbursed. So we can make an effort to avoid voluntary purchases on a particular day but all those scheduled purchases keep happening.

Hmm. There are still places in the world where people aren't well-integrated in the money economy. I wonder how many of them would say, "No thanks," to money. How well-integrated in the money economy do you need to be before, "No thanks," to money starts sounding like an answer worth considering?

A man is given a time machine. He goes back in time but fails to account for the earth’s motion. He dies in empty space.

Years ago I ran marathons and later put my bike in the car to go ride far from home.

Back when Lance Armstrong was still on the tour de France the ride came down the road through my town. I walked over to have a look. Preceding the riders were a bunch of promotional vehicles throwing advertising trash, which people mostly picked up to take home. Then there was a police escort. Then a bunch of support vehicles. Finally, the riders came through. They were pursued by helicopters and riding at about 50 kph in a dense pack where a moment's inattention would probably lead to major bonebreaking pileup. Most seemed to be suffering. Some threw their trash high over shoulders onto the side of the road.

It looked like a pretty bad day at work and there was a lot of stage left to go. We're near the mountains, too, so they were nowhere near finished. Probably many of these guys were taking dangerous drugs to be able to hang in there. What for?

The tour de France symbolizes our working lives. A dangerous struggle sometimes, nasty conditions all the time. There's a winner take all myth but the ones who really profit are in the air conditioned cars telling other people what to do, not the ones doing the hard work. Rest assured, though. The ones in the air conditioned cars will be on the hook if anything that goes wrong is found out. They're suffering from a different kind of stress. When broadcast it all seems wonderful. When you see it up close, it looks like hell on earth.

I still ride regularly. I try to avoid driving somewhere just to ride my bike. I try to avoid riding in traffic. The roads, even in the mountains, used to be impressive. Now they have potholes in the winter and chip seal in the summer.

Decades ago in the smoky end room of a trailer, we would get together and play. Some of the playing was musical. We even recorded a few songs and a couple of what we thought at the time were funny stories set to music. At the time, the recording technology for teenage garage bands was fairly primitive, using cassettes as 4-track tapes. The sound was not great in the first place. The recordings didn't make it better.

The best singer among us aimed to be consistent about songwriting. At one point, he said he was going to write a song a day. He probably did that for a while. He was already married and had a wife, child, and trailer. He had a book by John Lennon next to the toilet. The toilet was probably the right place for it. He ended up working in the kitchen at the prison.

There were animosities hidden in the group that did not become common knowledge until much later. There was a day one of the older brothers came over and the guitarist almost had to leave in embarrassment. There were drunken near fights. None of this prevented persistence in folly, but no one became wise.

The participants all probably worried most about the lack of sex. They worried less about the weakness of the rock 'n' roll. There was an inordinate concern with the lack of drugs. When their wasn't a lack, the rock 'n' roll was even weaker than usual.

Needless to say, those involved were not persistent over the long term. Probably everyone went on playing and listening to music, having a special affinity for music in one way or another. But they didn't go on playing together. Only one went on with music at the center of life, and that player has created music regularly but haphazardly over the years. Others have created from time to time, but less regularly.

Rock 'n' roll itself looks particularly silly later on in life, but you must start somewhere. The test is not to get started, but to persist in spite of the obstacles, and to keep approaching each obstacle calmly with fresh attention. Sometimes the limitations seem severe enough to preclude any hope of achievement. Maybe it's possible to continue diligently without hope.

These are the first sentences in that entry that didn't go down smoothly. That second sentence caused a "No!" reaction immediately.

To explore why, it might be useful to define the terms:

create

to bring into existence

know

to perceive directly, to be acquainted with

understand

to grasp the meaning of

In other words, "We don't bring things into existence that we do not perceive directly/are not acquainted with and we don't grasp the meaning of."

What about software? Take, for example, a little Pythagorean numerology calculator that I claim to have brought into existence. Not the subject matter, or the explanations that ecosophia posted, just the HTML and JavaScript. As I wrote the software, I perceived it directly and was acquainted with it to the extent that it worked more or less as intended. So I knew it piecemeal, perceiving and being acquainted with small parts of it at a time.

Complete knowledge doesn't seem to be required, though. Piecemeal knowledge was enough to bring the software into existence.¹ It's fair to concede knowledge within limits.

What about understanding? What would it be like to grasp the meaning of software?² The word meaning doesn't seem to fit in this case. Maybe retreat to a more down-to-earth definition:

understand

to be capable of modelling with mental impressions

In that sense, yes, I did understand the software, though the models started out vague, broke time and again during the act of creation, and doubtless still harbor many bugs.³

One counterexample clarified. I hope.

Counterexamples I rejected included things we bring into existence but do not create, such as children or accidents. Not sure about stories, music, recipes, garments, furniture, and so forth. They seem similar to software, too complex to fully know or understand.

Other beings have different limits. Some no doubt have limits that are beyond my understanding. The infinite Creator God described in Greer's entry seems that way. I can sit with each sentence and try to make some sense of it temporarily. Maybe that's the best I can do.

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¹ Did Bach, Beethoven, or even Mozart fully know the pieces they wrote? Or did they only know their parts, and heard that they fit in performance? Zappa explained at length that composers' works often don't make it as far as performance. So maybe they did hear everything together, as if they were listening to it. Wow.

² Or music?!

³ One known bug is in the calendar of day numbers. The day numbers are wrapped in HTML <abbr> tags with the explanations in title attributes. So if you mouseover the number, the definition should pop up. The <abbr> title attribute does not pop up on a phone or tablet browser, however, only on a laptop or desktop.

Scorpions, possibly fluorescent (although how could I have known that?) would be desert-dwellers who can go for long periods without food and even water. Similar to hawks and most spiders, they prey on other animals.

The scorpions can live in an environment that has a surplus of fire.

Serket (Selket?) protects, she heals stings and bites, and also controls breath, whether giving it or constricting it. She is a goddess of magicians. Her stories do not seem to be very well-known.

Unlike aristocratic vampires and working-class lycanthropes, Big Foot sits neither at one extreme nor the other.

Big Foot doesn't:

• Devour human victims.
• Grow fangs or shape shift.
• Infect others.
• Have trouble with sunlight.
• Lose sleep over garlic or silver.

Big Foot lives out in the woodsy wilderness and mostly leaves people to go about their business. Occasionally, a Big Foot will interact with people, usually for spiritual or sexual reasons.

Big Foot might live a long time, but is not condemned to hang in there forever.

Big Foot does not have super powers. Nobody really has super powers.

Big Foot is only a monster to those who are looking for monsters in creatures they don't know, yet.

If you're the son of Buffy and Big Foot, what do you get for free? Is your soul special compared the others in your cohort?

Maybe nothing. Maybe not. Maybe what you get is a somewhat unusual sense of physical well-being. (You don't get sick often; you're fit; physical activities come to you easily.) Perhaps a sense, from what happens to your parents that others in your cohort are dangerous when they get irrationally scared, especially when they get together and feed each others' fears.

Your mom is still with you, and she has to struggle to keep you both housed and fed. You see that she's able to do that because other people help her, and that you wouldn't make it without them. But you also see that you wouldn't make it without your mother's struggle and her sacrifices.

You will also struggle. School is the first place. You're a smart kid. You're also impatient with people who insist that you follow their arbitrary rules when it's pretty obvious that they're just making them up to see who will follow, and who won't. You don't necessarily get along very well with other kids your age, especially when you all make it to about eleven years old and suddenly notice that some people are in and some people are out.

First, you don't feel like one of the in kids. They tend to follow the arbitrary rules, not only the ones made up by the administrators, but also the ones made up by each other. Then you realize that you don't feel like one of the out kids. The out kids are not all alike, of course. Some are failed in kids. Others a like minority in kids, who would be in if their contingent were larger. The ones more like you, the non-belongers, are only a group in the sense that you can group them together after you take all the other groups away. Once you look at them closely, they're all different from each other, not necessarily compatible.

In your childhood, you have acquaintances, but not friends.

Where you do feel you belong is outside, in the natural world. In the natural world, there are rules, and you do have to discover them. But no one, or at least no one you can identify, is making them up just to see who will follow them. The rules seem to provide a structure, one that's the same for everyone. They're not always easy to follow, but they're fair.

Nature, as well, doesn't have in and out like at school. It's more complicated than that, and there's generally room for so many different arrangements that a binary, in-out model wouldn't begin to explain any of what is going on. And there's lots going on. The in-out model must just be something kids go through as they're growing up and trying to work through budding desires. And human sexuality, at least seen through the conventions that all the "good" followers are trying to live up to, is certainly a binary thing.

Knee-jerk reactions, remembering a nightmare. There's no sound or smell. Wandering over broken concrete on something between a road, a parking lot, and the rubble not after a disaster, but after long neglect.

The vampires pursue from above, flying.

It came original as a fever dream, and occasionally returns. Perhaps a glimpse of a future bike ride.

The things that lead to anger, the response that wells up suddenly and then is gulped back like reflux, it continues burning in the gut. In the gut where there's a way to neutralize, or at least survive, the burning feeling of acid.

The burning feeling of fever.

The vampires are not seen, but sensed. They fly, pale white skin, dark hair, thirst for warmth and blood. And they're still in pursuit, even though the last of the people are running over the last of the broken ground. The asphalt has grass growing in the cracks. The roads are totally neglected now.

There are screens still showing a glowing world of their own fantasy, bears no relationship to what you see if you look away.

And in the midst of this, there is gratitude. Contentment that might be a bit forced in the beginning, but becomes ever easier, making way for the energy that lets it all continue. Continuing until... when? No end will be reached; it's the inside of a sphere, or the outside of a sphere, on and on in every direction around.

The feeling of pressure, digesting, hoping the reflux stays down.

Is there imbalance? Yes, and at the same time there's re-establishment of balance, but only briefly.

Demands, demanding cats, demanding before anyone has woken up, demanding while everyone is busy, demanding after you go to sleep.

They, too, wonder what they're doing here, the cats. It's a feeling of wondering what? Wondering what might be behind the sense of unease.

Vampires? Blood suckers? They're really good looking, they even smell good, or you'd think they would if you could smell, but they're out for blood. And they have so little, truly, to give, so they take, and in doing so, turn the others into takers. Into blood suckers. It's epidemic.

In the meantime, staring at the screen, typing, no one can see it, the screen is a blur. The software is weich. It oozes around the imagination, mostly invisible, or at least only dimly visible. Only a part of it resolves into something half-understood at a time. When the machine appears to be done, let it sit, don't touch it, oh, it's broken, it's becoming broken by itself, even if it's an algorithm. We keep perturbing it, all the ricketty scaffolding that the weichesware rests on, oozes into.

Not a machine. Not even like that. As it gets sufficiently complex, the machine emerges.

It feels gratitude. It tells itself of the power of positive thinking. It has will. It had will. It was less hesitant when it was simpler.

Ultimately, why don't the vampires hesitate. Perhaps they do.

The fly over, hungry, wrestling with their existence, just as much as any of the scattered and scampering prey humans down below, stumbling across broken concrete in a fever dream.

The fever will subside. The fever will subside. Then it will be time to rest.