[FRIAM] MoNA

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Very cool way to frame it! It well captures how I think of Pelosi, in contrast to AOC and Warren. Pelosi seems capable of maintaining multiple ways of operating to meet objectives that might seem to conflict otherwise. And I agree that *experienced* people do this ... have learned to do this ... or, put another way, anyone who *hasn't* learned to do it is weeded out. It sounds a bit like a biased sample, to me.

Anyway, the real trick is how one handles their failures. At the moment, I'm still capable of letting all the mostly indendent researchers use and abuse anything I've done at their leisure. I'm quick at cleaning up the blood and at least pretending there's still some coherence there. But I'm getting old. And my learnedness-combined-with-agility *experience* will eventually falter, if it hasn't already. How do we handle it when that happens?

If we've spent our experienced years building and cleaning up occult infrastructure and we aren't replaced by people with similar Necker-cube swapping abilities, our legacy will be whatever mode dominates as we crash: hegemonic infrastructure or bursts of throwaway Bash code. On a similar note: Greg Walden, the sole Republican Rep here in Oregon, announced his retirement. It's sad because he's moderate and might be replaced by a jackass. It's good because maybe he's realized his party has been thoroughly infected and the only graceful denouement is to retire.

On 10/28/19 11:42 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Consider a large software project.   It can be thought of as an org-chart with roles and responsibilities of people each having complementary skills.  A new project can be thought of as a Platonic design that (just) needs a competent implementation.  A new project could also be a free-wheeling effort where anything goes provides a customer gets something -- such a project can be thought of as an evolving implementation or feature set that just needs to be rationalized well-enough to sell.   An established software project might be characterized more by bug-fixes and the refinement of documentation.
> 
> The metaphor of a software project to governance is loose, but both systemic (top-down) and causal personalities (bottom-up) could both identify a thing to ship (or sail) separate from themselves.
> 
> Someone that has been around software long enough has had the experience of having to do implementation or debugging when they would rather being doing design, or vice-versa.  I just don't buy that experienced people have just one way of looking at things.   Similarly an experienced legislator can also wear the hat of a ruthless operative and then return to legislating when the deed is done.   Because I wrote a throwaway Bash script yesterday doesn't mean I can't write some enduring C++ today.  Just mop up the blood from time to time, you know?

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ