Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

What fresh hell is this?

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

Shelter in place is one thing. Shelter in pants is quite another.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

It’s not even safe to go out and pick up 2 days worth of poop anymore.

Four legs? good! two legs? we’re not so sure…

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

This is a big f—–g deal.

Women: they get shit done

Fuck if i know. i just get yelled at when i try it.

The house always wins.

I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Han shot first.

This blog will pay for itself.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

I did not have this on my fuck 2020 bingo card.

Consistently wrong since 2002

‘Forty-two’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

Verified, but limited!

I’m only here for the duck photos.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

You are here: Home / John Cole Presents "This Fucking Old House" / A Fleeting Epiphany

A Fleeting Epiphany

by | 237 Comments

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I was driving to the farmer’s market to pick up some vegetables for a dad, and for a brief moment I think I was able to visualize things in four dimensions. I got goosebumps and the feeling that things made sense but I didn’t really comprehend it, and then I saw a family of deer near the road in a field, and focused on them and it was gone. I tried to think about it again and just felt confused like when a pitcher is actually called for a balk and the runner advances and you are sitting there trying to figure out what is going on, but for a moment I THINK I was able to do it.

I was so excited I called my brother and he just said “Ok and check your wheat bread for mold when you get home.”

Reader Interactions

237Comments

  3. 3.

    Ken

    Ever since I learned about microstrokes thinks like that terrify me.

    However, if it does happen again, can you use your fourth-dimensional powers to reach back in time about four years and change things?  Nothing major, just inject a tiny air bubble where you think it will do the most good.

  4. 4.

    misterpuff

    The Brown Acid is Bad.

    Well, specifically not too good.

  7. 7.

    Chris Sherbak

    Now you know why I got a degree in Math in college. Sometimes those Aha! moments are just amazeballs. (Also, it was mostly the only thing I was good at. So sue me.)

  8. 8.

    who

    Inadvertently entered a flow state?

  9. 9.

    Calouste

    I once read a book where something like that happened. And then 5 minutes later the Vogons showed up.

  12. 12.

    catclub

    I guess the simple explanation that the 4th dimension is time and you can envision things moving in time
    is not what you meant? I think I can do that regularly.

  16. 16.

    Mary G

    O/T but Floriduh man strikes again:

    Is there a more perfect metaphor for Florida’s COVID response?

    Florida Emergency Operations Center closed till Monday after workers test positive for Coronavirus https://t.co/kmBVO609fE
    — Barry Schapiro, MD, FAAOS (@bschapiroMD) July 16, 2020

  17. 17.

    greenergood

    Well, that’s what an epiphany is!! Never let anyone tell you it’s ‘equivalent’ to something else – it is what it is – and that’s the basic beauty and amazing thing about it. All your senses and brain power are just totally focused but you have no idea why – and we as humans mostly don’t know how to accept this, but oddly enough, that’s what makes us humans – well, I don’t know how to tap into whale brains, or dogs, or cats – so I have to go with the idea that this epiphany thing is pretty based in humans – though having read ‘The Soul of an Octopus’ I’m starting to have doubts …

  18. 18.

    Just Chuck

    @catclub: Time is the fourth dimension we have, in that space moves along it in a manner we only have limited perception of.  In the quantum realm, things move forward and backward through time all the, uh, time.  But they’re usually cancelled out by the their antiparticle moving in the opposite direction.

    Fun video on the arrow of time, especially if you’re a Billy Joel fan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6rVHr6OwjI

  19. 19.

    Quaker in a Basement

    Break on through to the other side…break on through…break on through…yeah! Ow!

  21. 21.

    pacem appellant

    “I turned to look but it was gone / I cannot put my finger on it now / The child is grown, the dream is gone.”

    You can only “visualize” in three dimensions (and three colors!). But we take part in the fourth experientially; no active perception is required.

  26. 26.

    Salty Sam

    Far out man! I can dig it

    ETA-  Have you ever looked, I mean REALLY looked at your hands?…

  32. 32.

    raven

    Many years ago I bought 100 hits of purple mescaline, went to college and dropped a couple of time. The last time I had a REALLY bizarre trip with another guy. We were actually talking to each other without really talking, total non-verbal communication. We got worried about the whole thing and decided we needed to separate. I ended up wandering around the U of I campus and encountered some really weird people. At one point I UNDERSTOOD everything. . . everything! I went back to my room and the only way I could get to sleep was to just give up and not care if I lived or died. It was fun but, when I woke up, I couldn’t remember what I had understood.

  38. 38.

    Juju

    I understand what you mean, John. Every now and again I will have dreams where I see complex equations and that I have figured out how it can help humanity. Then I wake up and for a brief second I have the feeling I still understand what I just saw in my dream and then that feeling goes away. I say this as a person who’s most complex math skill is figuring out a tip. I have no idea what this means, but I prefer that sort of dream to the one where I’m back in jr. high school and I can’t remember my locker combination and I’m going to miss the school bus home.

  39. 39.

    Salty Sam

    @raven: We were actually talking to each other without really talking, total non-verbal communication.

    Been there, done that too, although the communication was with music.  I was speaking Jethro Tull, my buddy was speaking The Who.  It was a very good conversation.

    Peyote buttons, food of the gods.

  40. 40.

    raven

    @frosty: In the morning I went down to the cafeteria in the dorm and saw my buddy. We looked at each other and both said “are you ok”! We were but I was never really very good at psychedelics after that. Not that I didn’t give em a couple of go’s but I was always edgy.

  44. 44.

    Just Chuck

    @pacem appellant:

    Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
    Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
    Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
    Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

  45. 45.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    When I was very young (like age 5-6 or so), I used to have very strange feelings occasionally like the world around me wasn’t real

  50. 50.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Mary G: 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

  51. 51.

    Emma from FL

    I think there are pathways in our brain that we don’t use but can tap into accidentally and they trigger that something extra in our consciousness. Mine is auditory. Random moments when I hear odd chords in music overlaying what I am listening to. It’s like I’m being shown something deeper, more… precise? It hasn’t happened more than maybe a dozen times in my  life. But it’s there.

  53. 53.

    dnfree

    @Chris Sherbak: I got a degree in math for the same reason, and a minor in physics. I loved both subjects but wasn’t good enough at either to work in those fields. It turned out okay because I took a FORTRAN course in 1965 and I was better at that.

  55. 55.

    scott (the other one)

    “I could feel myself climbing a spiral walkway as I was talking to Dylan. I felt like I was figuring it all out, the meaning of life. I was going ‘I’ve got it!’ and wrote down the key to it all on this piece of paper. I told Mal ‘You keep this piece of paper, make sure you don’t lose it, because the meaning of life is on there.’ Mal gave me the piece of paper the next day, and on it was written ‘There are seven levels.’ Well, there you go, the meaning of life…” — Paul McCartney, talking about the first time he got really stoned

  56. 56.

    The Moar You Know

    I have to go with the idea that this epiphany thing is pretty based in humans

    @greenergood: I have raised eight puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind. It is ABSOLUTELY not limited to humans.  And a really wild part of it is when after you’ve had one for a few years, they start understanding speech.  Not commands (they get that quickly) but speech.  My last dog, previous to this one, could understand a sentence with multiple instructions.  That’s unusual but not unknown.

    FWIW I have also – rarely – seen it in cats.  But with dogs, it is very consistent, that complete change in worldview.

  58. 58.

    Death Panel Truck

    Jethro Dull. Jimmy Page once said they could put out a live album called “Bore ‘em at the Forum.”

  59. 59.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Mary G: O/T but Floriduh man strikes again:

    Ah, there you are wrong, Floriduh man is part of the great equation; without Floriduh man dumb stuff doesn’t happen.

  62. 62.

    Redshift

    Apparently the human brain can learn to work with four spatial dimensions. There are apps you can get for VR goggles that let you experience it and get used to it.

  64. 64.

    Benw

    Yeah that’s cool and all but how were the veggies at the market? Did a dad ever get them?

  66. 66.

    Kelly

    Well this seems a good place to repeat last night’s post on comet Neowise. Mrs Kelly and I drove up on a hill last night and found a good view of the comet. Didn’t need to be on a hill it’s higher in the sky that I thought. The comet is in the NW sky in evening, NE at dawn. We could see it from the road across several open fields on the drive home. If you have a spot you can see the Big Dipper the comet is below it about halfway between the Big Dipper and the horizon and a little to the east (right). It was dark enough for it to show at around 10:15 here in Oregon.

  69. 69.

    kindness

    Ergot fungus only grows on rye grains and flour. Sounds like a flashback to me but the 4th dimension is time so I’m not really sure how to visualize time. Maybe I need to find me some ergot fungus and find out.

  72. 72.

    raven

    @chrisanthemama: I have a 40 something friend who keeps bangin on me to do shrooms! I’m 70, been clean and sober for 26 fucking years and this dude thinks I need to blow out the cobwebs!

  75. 75.

    Kropacetic

    Progressing to more complex dimensions I understand as each consisting of infinite iterations of the previous layer of complexity; a line is infinite points, a plane is infinite lines, et c.
    Since I can’t conceptualize a four dimensional shape; to understand the nature of that dimension, I consider the third dimension as a point then arrange infinite “third dimensions” in a line. It basically appears to me as the progression of time as infinite frames of progression.

  77. 77.

    Van Buren

    @The Moar You Know: I had a professor in college who had a dog that knew 70 toys by name.

    He had a huge bin and you could tell the dog to go get Elmo and he would.  I never saw him get one wrong.

  80. 80.

    WereBear

    I think it’s akin to the phenomenon of leaving the house and only then remembering what you have forgotten to pack or check. Because this is the first chance our brain has to drop the clutter.

    So, if this is a problem for you, sit down before departing, close your eyes, and imagine you are driving away… and it will come to you. While it can do you the most good.

  81. 81.

    bucachon

    I can highly recommend Living with a wild god by Barbara Ehrenreich. She’s a fuckin national treasure as they say. It’s about her moment of epiphany at age 20(?) and its repercussions. It’s part memoir of her early life and politics and atheism and science and it’s really good!!!!

  82. 82.

    raven

    @Salty Sam: I have young  friends who do a karaoke thing for the wife on her birthday and Elton was the theme a couple of years ago. The had never heard Tumbleweed. We were having some confederate hysteria here the other day about The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down and I posted the lyrics to “From This Day On I Own My Father’s Gun”. Not a fucking peep.

  83. 83.

    zhena gogolia

    We are all euphoric because it’s in the 80s not 90s and we’re sitting on the deck for the first time since something happened, and we’re getting takeout from our favorite restaurant!

  84. 84.

    Just Chuck

    An interesting application of n-dimensional space is support vector machines used in machine learning.  Basically you plot out each “feature” of whatever you’re trying to classify, and the combination of them becomes a point in n-dimensional space.  Then based on the support vectors of known quantities of what you’re classifying, the SVM then does some crazy math wizardry (something about “kernel functions”) to find an n-1-dimensional “hyperplane” that bisects the space.

    For example, with antispam you might take features like word count, url count, letter frequency, rule weights from another system, recency of domain registration, etc, then train it with a known corpus of spam and legit messages.  Based on the training data’s support vectors, it draws the hyperplane such that everything on one side of the plane is spam, and everything on the other is legit.

    Not sure if SVM is still hot in the ML crowd.  I never got into it that much since statistics were never my thing.

  86. 86.

    zhena gogolia

    @raven:

    I stayed out of that. I can’t give up The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. Art has all kinds of bad stuff in it. It’s art.

  91. 91.

    Salty Sam

    @raven: I saw that thread, and participated, but I must’ve bailed out before you posted.  I’d have said something.

    I used to have (woe for lost vinyl) an LP that EJ did, live recording on BBC before he hit big.  Some of Tumbelweed Connection was previewed on it.  Classic.

    ETA- he lost me during the Glam years.  I didn’t care for much after Madman Across The Water…

  92. 92.

    NotMax

    @Kropacetic

    Friend with a PhD in math once tried to explain the topic of his thesis to me. Something to do with stacking cannonballs in 11 dimensions.

    Far, far above my pay grade.

    Switching gears a mite – for those with kids, The Dot and the Line is an enjoyable way to introduce the concept of dimensions. Both in original book form or as the short animated movie made from the book.

    So too (for teens) the 1880s novel Flatland, however the style of prose may be offputting to today’s youth and the satire on social class distinctions conveyed quaintly alien to them.

  93. 93.

    Poe Larity

    The deer were Red Lectoids.

    Be careful, remember your last adventure with a Subaru overthruster.

  94. 94.

    TheOtherHank

    When my younger boy was 3 years old and fluent enough to tell stories, he would occasionally start a story with “Last time, when I was 5…” When he was old enough to be told about it we decided that he had gotten unstuck from time and was really a Time Wizard. Over time, that has evolved into him being a Time Lizard.

  95. 95.

    debbie

    @raven:

    I believe I had some of that same stuff a long time ago. I and my friend solved every problem in the universe! Even better, there was no chemical hangover the next day.

    Never found anything as good as that again.

  96. 96.

    raven

    @debbie: I bought it in San Francisco the day I mustered out September 3, 69. We dropped, went to North Beach and then to the Fillmore and saw some band named Santana!

  97. 97.

    jl

    Thanks for info. Glad Cole is OK. After checkout from doctor, if the wheat mold isn’t poisonous, pack some up and sell it at the BJ blog gear store. Will be big demand for it in current dystopian environment and this blog is supposed to pay for itself.

  98. 98.

    Redshift

    @Kelly: Cool! We scouted locations in the neighborhood yesterday evening, but by the time it was late/dark enough, the horizon had clouded up. I’ll keep trying. We may try to drive west to darker skies, but it’s tough not having a known location that’s good to watch from to go to.

  99. 99.

    Mike in Pasadena

    I had a differential equations indtructor in college, Colonel Plumb, who would write an equation on the board and say, “That’s six dimensions. Now here’s how you can visualize all six.” Then he would run at the chalkboard with his hands held at odd angles while shouting, “There it is!” When his hands hit the board he would turn toward us and ask in an excited screech, “Did you see it, did you see it?” The first time he did it the room fell silent as we cadets looked at each other wondering whether the colonel was joking. He did it right up to twelve dimensions. We concluded he was just nuts. He no longer had access to nukes, fortunately.

  100. 100.

    The Pale Scot

    Been there. In a deer stand while hiking in the Pine Barrens on mushrooms. A strong breeze blew thru and for a nano second the sky was filled with ethereal inter- spatialized nautilus shells, it took my breath away and I tried to save the feeling/memory but I’m only left a vague image.

  101. 101.

    bucachon

    @raven: dancing in the street: a history of collective joy blew my mind. I’m still tracing down everything she was pointing at in the book. I’ve given away two of my copies to friends and made a literature class at college last year read it.

  103. 103.

    Death Panel Truck

    @raven: Zep were sued by a lot of people. Half of their songs were stolen from other artists. I liked “The Lemon Song” before I found out it was an amalgam of Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Johnson. Page had no compunction whatsoever about erasing other songwriters’ names and scribbling in “Plant-Page.”

    Jeff Beck, on the other hand, asked the Wolf’s permission to record “I Ain’t Superstitious.” He actually didn’t need to do that, but it points to the respect he had for the men whose work had inspired his own.

  104. 104.

    Redshift

    I remember a time years ago when I was driving at night. I was looking in the rear-view mirror, and I saw the wheels on the cars slowly turning backward, like wagon wheels in an old Western. My first reaction was, sure, that happens. But then I remembered that effect is only because of the movie (or video) frame rate interacting with the motion of the spokes, and started thinking, whoa, am I in a simulation? Gave me chills.

    Then a while later, after I got home, I figured out the cause was that the screw holding on the rear view mirror had come loose, and it was vibrating slightly. Really freaked me out for a while, though.

  108. 108.

    Spinoza Is My Co-pilot

    @pacem appellant: “when I was a child/I caught a fleeting glimpse/out of the corner of my eye”

    Among my very favorite song lyrics, ever (lines of real, meaningful poetry, far as I’m concerned). First thing that came to mind reading John’s post.

    I think we all have epiphanies, but rarely (very rarely for most, I’d guess, and certainly fleeting most — if not all — of the time).

  109. 109.

    Just Chuck

    @Death Panel Truck: A lot of roots blues is just considered a standard, something everybody already knows and doesn’t expect to be original.  It’s not like Robert Johnson had an estate to ask permission of.  Howlin Wolf had a long enough career though that yeah, they should at least have credited (I don’t believe in permission to do a cover, and the law agrees).

    What’s really egregious is how much of Stairway to Heaven was stolen from the band that used to open for them.  That’s unbelievably crass, and kind of sad since Zep added a lot to it, and their interpretation really was better.

  110. 110.

    zhena gogolia

    What I love about BJ is that John Cole dropped this post, then went away and engaged with his dogs and cat and has no recollection of starting this freaky, wonderful thread.

  111. 111.

    The Moar You Know

     

    I had a professor in college who had a dog that knew 70 toys by name.

    He had a huge bin and you could tell the dog to go get Elmo and he would.  I never saw him get one wrong.

     

    @Van Buren:  A border collie (of course – those dogs are so fucking smart they’re barely trainable) holds the record at over 1000 named items and can understand complex sentences.

    Smart Dog

  112. 112.

    Jinchi

    for a brief moment I think I was able to visualize things in four dimensions.

    That sounds phenomenal. Next time it happens, could you take a peak at January 20th 2021. It’d be nice to get a heads up on the smoldering ruin left behind after the Trump presidency.

  114. 114.

    debbie

    @raven:

    Many artists claim that the drinks backstage at Woodstock were spiked with LSD. Roger Daltrey said he was tripping balls when the Who played their famous super-late-night set. But Carlos Santana was one of the many performers who wanted to be stoned at the show, and he made sure to arrive with some mescaline on hand. “When we first got there, around eleven in the morning, they told us we weren’t going on until eight,” he told Rolling Stone in 1989. “So I said, ‘Hey, I think I’ll take some psychedelics, and by the time I’m coming down, it’ll be time to go onstage and I’ll feel fine.’ But when I was peaking around two o’clock, somebody said, ‘If you don’t go right now, you’re not gonna go on.'”

    He bravely took the stage and played an amazing set, though if you watch the video, it’s a little obvious he’s on something.

    I don’t remember how long ago it was, but an episode of American Experience featured Carlos. At one point, he was talking about Woodstock, dropping very intense acid, and then being told to hit the stage ASAP. He said while he was playing, he hallucinated the neck of his guitar was a snake fighting to get out of his grip. He said the whole performance, he was fighting like hell to hold onto that snake!

  115. 115.

    Kelly

    When I was in high school I was driving a car load of buddies home from watching an away basketball game. Late at night in dense fog driving well under 20 mph most of the time. Lousy headlights. The road was parallel to train tracks and when that freight train came around the corner and it’s headlights blasted our dark adapted eyes we were all sure we were dead ;-).

  116. 116.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @bucachon:

    I just looked it up on Amazon, and the “product description” refers to it — twice! — as Living With a Wild Dog.

    Dyslexia, or harmless fuckery?

  118. 118.

    RSA

    @Just Chuck:

    Not sure if SVM is still hot in the ML crowd.

    It’s not my area, and I don’t have the math to do research in ML, but I do regularly come across papers on machine vision that include the use of SVMs, typically in comparison with other classification techniques.

  120. 120.

    Ruckus

    @greenergood:

    This is what racing a motorcycle is like. You don’t see anything outside what you are doing, your focus has to be 100% or you are screwed. The world narrows to what will happen in the next few seconds but you can/have to see/envision what the next few seconds looks like. The best have a wider and deeper view and know what they are going to do farther ahead of them.

    The really interesting bit is that the better you get the easier it is to do this and it becomes second nature.

    Now learning to do this whenever is not something I think most ever figure out.

  123. 123.

    JustRuss

    @Redshift: try spinning a bicycle wheel under a fluorescent light.  Fluorescents are high-frequency strobes, so if you get the wheel spinning at the right rpm it looks like it’s not moving, or spinning backwards.  Don’t try this with a circular saw.

  124. 124.

    Kay

    Diana Farrell
    @Farrell_Diana
    ·8h
    Today, the #JPMCInstitute released a new insight examining the impacts of expanded unemployment benefits. 1/2 https://institute.jpmorganchase.com/institute/research/labor-markets/report-consumption-effects-of-unemployment-insurance-during-the-covid-19-pandemic
    Diana Farrell
    @Farrell_Diana
    We find that the $600 supplement to state unemployment insurance benefits not only helped families maintain consumption but actually boosted their spending above pre-unemployment levels, effectively creating a stimulus to the overall economy. 2/2

    Literally the only thing that has worked as intended in this entire clusterfuck.

  126. 126.

    Calouste

    @Death Panel Truck: Funny thing is that Zep gave a song credit to Ritchie Valens’ mom when they heard she didn’t get any royalties on the songs her son had made before he died.

  127. 127.

    The Pale Scot

    @Juju:

    I will have dreams where I see complex equations and that I have figured out how it can help humanity.

     

     

    “And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.”

    Then Vogons

  128. 128.

    Baud

    Former game show host Chuck Woolery announced Wednesday his son has tested positive for COVID-19, just days after Woolery accused medical professionals and Democrats of lying about the virus in an effort to hurt the economy and President Trump’s reelection chances.

  131. 131.

    ColoradoGuy

    I briefly saw four spatial dimensions, maybe for two or three minutes. Very very strange. Was on psilocybin at the time, just after a rather frightening ascent to the peak.

    What was almost stranger was that I could remember it vividly and clearly for about half a day afterwards (after coming down), then could not grasp the direct visual after that. It became a memory of a memory. I remember the experience, but not what it really looked like. It is as if there is no good memory spot for the actual experience, just more of a visual shorthand, more like John’s description of the after-impression. Frustrating, I know, that just-out-reach feeling. Perhaps even more frustrating to realize our descendants might take this level of perception for granted, but we can’t.

    It’s interesting to know that our ancestors weren’t stupid or anything, but they lived in a very different mental world than we do. And our descendants will live in a world just as different.

  132. 132.

    Eric U.

    I’m just an engineer, but I have studied advanced math.  Once I learned about infinite dimensional space, all those lower dimensional spaces got boring.  Once you get past 3d, visualization gets difficult though.

  136. 136.

    Fergie

    That happened to me 42 years ago. At 10 am, at the corner of 9th ave and Gambell, across from the old Safeway. I saw it all, the universe before me, where I just knew the answers. Then the light turned green, and the curtain descended, and like trying to hold on to a dream… it all dissolved. But I still remember!

  143. 143.

    RSA

    @debbie: It’s hard to say, “I was wrong and I’m sorry.”

    So of course Woolery doesn’t say that. Instead, he says, “To further clarify and add perspective, Covid-19 is real and it is here…” and then he runs away.

  144. 144.

    MomSense

    Meanwhile I’ve been pondering WTF to do with all this kohlrabi from my farm share.  Why do they grow kohlrabi?  No one knows what to do with it.  It’s like all the small farmers got together and decided they were going to force us all to like kohlrabi.

    It’s a passive aggressive CSA conspiracy.  Believe me.

  147. 147.

    Roger Moore

    @Just Chuck:

    An interesting application of n-dimensional space is support vector machines used in machine learning.

    There’s a huge amount of data analysis of all types that is built around the same basic concept of thinking of things as existing in spaces with many abstract dimensions.  A big application I’m used to using is Principal Component Analysis.  You plot a data points in your multi-dimensional space, then you change the coordinate system to try to put as much of the variation as possible in the fewest possible axes of the new coordinate system.  You can usually approximate the data using only a handful of coordinate axes instead of the hundreds or thousands you started with.  It effectively figures out what combination of features from the original data explains the variance.

  150. 150.

    Ms. Deranged in AZ

    I had a dream a few weeks ago where I kept living my life over and over and I was consciously tweaking my actions in order to improve the outcomes.  I was sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes straight, sometimes gay, sometimes white, sometimes not, etc.  I want through so many variations and combinations trying to get it right and be happy. In other words I was consciously living every moment or at least I thought I was.  But the more I tried to affect what happened the worse my life turned out to be. Finally I woke up and had an epiphany about my real life. I am always too busy trying to make the future better or trying to fix the past, or worrying about something or distracted, etc and never, ever in the actual moment.  I realized that truly being in the moment is the key to happiness.  I’ve always wanted to know why I was always so depressed and anxious and the explanation that it was just my brain chemistry always felt so unsatisfactory and insufficient.  I don’t doubt that it is scientifically true but emotionally it was unhelpful.  This epiphany was something I could understand, something I could actually work on, cope with.  It was such a wonderfully deep moment of introspection that it moved me to tears.  And no shrooms or acid of any kind was involved.  Just my weird brain.

  152. 152.

    RSA

    @schrodingers_cat:

    OT: Is a pulse oximeter a good  buy or unnecessary?

    Right now I’m feeling a little under the weather (despite being almost a hermit over the past few months) and I’ve looked at the oximeter the past couple of mornings to see if I should start worrying. But I already had one, so it wasn’t as if I had to decide to get one. It’s useful for my peace of mind, maybe.

  153. 153.

    frosty

    @raven:  Sequoia National Park, I got talked into a tab of acid. Everywhere I looked I could see gravity. The trees were so long-lived because the earthquakes hadn’t knocked down the mountains. Erosion, streams had missed them.
    OTOH I cracked up my friends by saying “Boy, these redwoods are *really* red!”

  156. 156.

    greenergood

    @The Moar You Know:  I guess dogs have been around us a lot longer than cats. Not an archeologist (though I wish I was), but I think dogs were hanging out with humans way before the Neolithic, which is when cats figured out we liked them because they ate the mice that ate the new fangled Neolithic grain … but I’m pretty sure that after all these centuries of ‘domestication’, dogs are cool with it, as long as there’s walks and bones, and cats are tolerant, as long as there’s skritches and tuna.

  157. 157.

    MomSense

    @NotMax:

    Those fritters look wonderful.  I just took a few of them and made a small tray of scalloped kohlrabi because I had a little milk that needed to be used.  I threw in some cheese and seasoning – who knows.

  159. 159.

    CaseyL

    @raven: Mescaline was, hands down, my favorite hallucinogen, and I am very very glad there is no easy way nowadays to get my hands on any.

  160. 160.

    Another Scott

    @schrodingers_cat: One of the scary aspects of COVID-19 is that people can have scary low blood oxygen saturation and not know it until it is too late.

    We have several (from when J’s parents lived with us).  We check our numbers occasionally, to have one less thing to worry about.  So, it’s probably useful to have if you’re a worrier, or if you have a better-than-average chance of coming across someone who is infected, or if you have underlying health issues.

    My $0.02.  HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  161. 161.

    joel hanes

    @zhena gogolia:

    Listen more closely.  The Night etc.  does not have bad stuff.

    When Virgil laments “taking the very best” or says “you can’t raise a Caine back up”, he’s talking about the death of his older brother, and about his own desperate poverty and hopelessness.   The song is a dirge for his brother.

    And the line “There goes the Robert E. Lee” refers to a riverboat.

  162. 162.

    NotMax

    Title it The Incredible Shrinking Plan.

    In a letter to delegates, national GOP Chair Ronna McDaniel said public health concerns will limit attendance in Jacksonville. Only delegates — about 2,500 people — will be allowed on each of the first three days, from Aug. 24-26. Only about 7,000 will be in the arena when President Donald Trump accepts the nomination on the fourth day. Source

    Would risk real folding money those scaled down numbers won’t be achieved.

  163. 163.

    Martin

    @Kropacetic: It can. In physical space additional dimensions need not be expansionary, though. One reason we study higher dimensions is to explore whether fundamental forces can be explained through the compaction of dimensions. Basically these dimensions are incredibly small in size.

  165. 165.

    Kelly

    @🐾BillinGlendaleCA: I’ll try some pics over the next few nights. I have a Panasonic gx85 micro 4/3. Thinking the 25mm f1.7 is my best bet. Wide open up to 10 seconds shutter on a tripod.

  169. 169.

    joel hanes

    @schrodingers_cat:

    A substantial fraction of cases that go to the hospital have never had any fever, maybe no symptoms at all, and yet the blood oxidation is below 85%.   They only feel a little short of breath, because they’re still getting rid of carbon dioxide — but they’re not sufficiently oxygenating.   This is bad.
    Normal oxygen saturation for most persons at sea level is 94 to 100 percent; Covid pneumonia patients I saw had oxygen saturations as low as 50 percent.To my amazement, most patients I saw said they had been sick for a week or so with fever, cough, upset stomach and fatigue, but they only became short of breath the day they came to the hospital. Their pneumonia had clearly been going on for days, but by the time they felt they had to go to the hospital, they were often already in critical condition.
     

    In short, yes, a pulse-ox meter is a good thing, possibly a better thing to monitor than temperature.

  170. 170.

    Gin & Tonic

    I’m at the point in the summer where I go through nearly a quart of hummingbird nectar a day. It’s amazing.

  173. 173.

    WaterGirl

    @MomSense: Here’s what I do with the weird stuff I get thru CSA.

    Put it in the fridge, then come back to it in 7-10 days when it’s old and sad, and then you throw it out.  Works like a charm.

  174. 174.

    Roger Moore

    @greenergood:

    The bigger difference between cats and dogs is how social their wild ancestors were.  Wolves live in family groups, which requires them to have the kind of social intelligence that lets them effectively integrate into human families.  Wild cats are largely solitary.  They probably have social interactions with their neighbors, but it’s a far cry from the kind of social hierarchy wolves have.

  175. 175.

    🐾BillinGlendaleCA

    @Kelly: 10 seconds would be the 500 rule, you might want to try a shorter exposure time to avoid star trailing.  I shoot 6 seconds at 16mm with my NX1.  The NPF Rule is generally better than the 500 rule for modern DLSR/Mirrorless cameras.

  176. 176.

    frosty

    @joel hanes: I missed that whole thread too but I’m with you on the lyrics. I just read them again and they say what you just wrote.

    ETA and it’s Stoneman’s Calvary, not “so much calvary” that Joan Baez sang. Talk about ruining a lyric with a word or two. (Unless I completely misunderstood her).

  177. 177.

    Yutsano

    @NotMax:  The delegates will show up because the state parties will obligate them to. But they will (probably) be voluntarily masked. Will the 7000 show up? ‘Tis a puzzlement!

  178. 178.

    hueyplong

    Cole was:

    1 fixing a hole in the ocean

    2 trying to make a dove-tail joint

    3 looking through a glass onion

    4 all of the above

  179. 179.

    WaterGirl

    @Another Scott: @schrodingers_cat:

    I agree with you, Scott.  At some point they were saying not to go in until you were in real trouble.  But apparently by that time it’s often too late.

    I bought one and I tested it when it arrived.  Now I’m happy to have it on hand.  You can apparently have oxygen issues with COVID even if other issues are mild, and I like the idea of having it around just in case.

    Because if you wait to try to find one until you need it, you’re probably too late.  Unless they are more widely available now.  It took 5 weeks for mine to arrive.

  183. 183.

    Barbara

    @joel hanes: I have read that many people have only mild or even no fever.  Which makes mass monitoring for escalated temperature seem like a waste of effort, not to mention that normal body temperature varies enough between individuals to make it even less predictive of illness.

  184. 184.

    NotMax

    @Yutsano

    Where delegates are concerned all that’s needed is a majority. Maybe there will be a lottery to determine who attends.

    “Congratulations, you’re a winner! You don’t have to go!”

  185. 185.

    Quaker in a Basement

    @The Moar You Know: I knew a border collie once who tailored her strategy to the style of the person throwing her ball. It only took her a time or two to adapt to a new thrower she hadn’t seen before.

    Her owner would fake in a couple of directions before throwing–she would lock in on his face and/or hand until he committed. On the other hand, I didn’t fake. She would check the direction of my gaze and take off running in that direction.

  186. 186.

    Martin

    What a great timeline. Gov of Georgia now suing the Mayor of Atlanta, home of <checks notes> the US Centers for Disease Control, for having a mask mandate.

    It’s really hard to get work done when you feel constantly murderous.

  188. 188.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Martin:  I genuinely wonder if this is one of those cases where the pressure of an increased spotlight becomes unbearable and the person snaps– an explanation sometimes offered for Palin. Then again, there are probably people behind the scenes telling him this is a good idea. Several.

  193. 193.

    catclub

    @Barbara: Does anybody have a sense of who goes to get tested and turns out negative? Is it people with cold symptoms?

    Is it people who think they may have had contact with someone who was positive?

     

    It is probably both of those. I wonder what proportions.

  194. 194.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Martin:

    Reminder #100001 that Kemp oversaw his own election to the Georgia governorship. He shouldn’t be the governor right now

    I hope that Kemp loses this lawsuit

  195. 195.

    Gin & Tonic

    @catclub: My wife got tested last month and was negative. She works in a hospital, but not with direct patient contact, but one of her co-workers was positive, so she wanted to make sure.

  199. 199.

    Barbara

    @catclub: I don’t know.  I have never been tested.   I got a serology test because I had a dry hacking cough for nearly a month, and after a week of coughing, I noticed additional symptoms (chills, for instance) escalating to feeling exhausted and having a fever for four days.  I never felt bad enough to go to a doctor, and I decided that given the competition for tests, I would wait.  But the serology test was negative.  Either I didn’t have it, or I had it and the test was a false negative, or it was mild enough that I didn’t make measurable levels of antibody.  I have to assume that I haven’t had it.

  200. 200.

    Another Scott

    @Mike in Pasadena: I had a math prof who was talking about dimensionality of some equation and he started drawing a perspective drawing of various unit vectors and he kept going past 3, and kept going, and eventually said something like “You get the idea.  I have trouble after 17 dimensions…”

    ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  203. 203.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    Former game show host Chuck Woolery announced Wednesday his son has tested positive for COVID-19, just days after Woolery accused medical professionals and Democrats of lying about the virus in an effort to hurt the economy and President Trump’s reelection chances.

    Karma is just having fun now: “Keep tempting the Fates, stupid muthafuckers.”

    Woolery at least had the decency to admit his error:

    “To further clarify and add perspective, Covid-19 is real and it is here. My son tested positive for the virus, and I feel for of those suffering and especially for those who have lost loved ones,” Woolery tweeted before his account disappeared.

  206. 206.

    Martin

    @Baud: Quite proud of that accomplishment. Some background:

    This was one of the long term statewide project I worked on. We’re nearing a point where 50% of all students that graduate from California high schools are latino, and not only were they not 50% of entering freshmen, they weren’t even the majority of entering freshmen.

    One of the things we worked on was the cause for why students are selected for admission in the manner they are, and how that should change. Not surprisingly, the thing the faculty thought were good predictors of success (because they were traits they identified with) were not actually good predictors. Some were in fact the opposite. Faculty, you see, are not a representative group of anything other than faculty. In fact, people with PhDs that teach at universities are pretty much outliers in every respect.

    So, we spent a decade and a half slowly bending those policies. Locally, then statewide. They’re not perfect, they’ve reverted a bit since I moved onto other things, there are some admissions shenanigans that keep me up at night, but it looks like enough of the core work held together long enough to get there. And this work wasn’t just focused on latino representation but on making UC look like the demographics of the state overall in terms of ethnicity, income, and all that. Latinos were simply the largest problem demographic. African americans are also difficult but for a whole host of other reasons.

  215. 215.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Martin:

    Absolutely not for her. It’s personal. The R gov of Oklahoma announced the other day that he had tested positive. Remains to be seen whether he will finally issue a mask mandate. Here in Ohio we’ve only had one in the hardest hit counties, as if people don’t cross county lines

  217. 217.

    Martin

    @Baud: Thank you. That ultimately led to me getting forced out of a job. So I don’t get to work on that any longer, but I still get to push a bit from the shadows.

    Some things are worth losing a job over.

  219. 219.

    Fair Economist

    @Kelly: I drove out to the Mohave to see Neowise night before last. Not as bright as I had expected, about 3rd magnitude. Hard to see distinctly by eye; clear in binoculars.

  220. 220.

    Another Scott

    @joel hanes: Dunno.

    Ignoring the obvious errors here – https://genius.com/The-band-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down-lyrics

    1. Who is “they” that “drove old Dixie down”?
    2. Who laid his brother in his grave?
    3. Who took the very best?

    Answers (it seems to me):
    1. The Union.
    2. The Union Army.
    3. The Union Army.

    I don’t see any other reasonable answers.

    It seems to be lamenting the results of a terrible war.  Not lamenting anything that caused the war to begin with.  So while it’s not an obviously pro-Confederate song, the protagonist certainly seems to be anti-Union.

    My $0.02, FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  221. 221.

    MomSense

    @WaterGirl: 
    HA!!
    The Scalloped kohlrabi was ok. I w’s able to use up some milk and cheese that needed to be used. Kohlrabi doesn’t taste like rutabaga, but it does have a similar after taste. I put some fresh herbs, onions, garlic and added a tiny bit of nutmeg to the bechamel (not as thick).
    I think I’ll try the fritters from the recipe Notmax found next. There should be carrots in my next share.

  222. 222.

    glc

    @joel hanes: Excellent point. Silent hypoxia is one of the more potent threats in the bad cases. Really everyone should get one of those fingertip oxymeters and check it occasionally. If your first symptom happens to be silent hypoxia that is something you really need to know.

    Since I have two children, I wound up buying three. And suggesting it to friends. But I feel we should be making more noise about that.

  223. 223.

    Philbert

    @schrodingers_cat: pulse oximeter is added to my stuff, along with a pocket ECG (I get afib sometimes).  Covid can clog up blood with tiny clots that cut off oxygen, but without the CO2 reaction that gives us the short of breath sensation. It’s a big indication of Covid if you are low (<90%).   Cheap from Amazon but you only get one.    Someone who knows more please post!

  225. 225.

    Mary G

    @schrodingers_cat: @RSA:

    I had a pulse oximeter from lung trouble a while back, but it had died. I was too cheap to pay the inflated prices on them for quite a while, but I finally got one at the beginning of the month and check my vitals every morning, because something is always hurting and I can obsess about it being the ‘rona unless I have facts.

  226. 226.

    low-tech cyclist

    @NotMax:

    Switching gears a mite – for those with kids, The Dot and the Line is an enjoyable way to introduce the concept of dimensions.

    To the vector go the spoils!

    Written by Norton Juster, who also wrote The Phantom Tollbooth which is absolutely wonderful.

  227. 227.

    low-tech cyclist

    And more in keeping with the thread:

    The man standing next to me, his head was exploding
    I was praying the pieces wouldn’t fall on me

  229. 229.

    J R in WV

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Is a pulse oximeter a good buy or unnecessary?

    It can tell you both your pulse rate AND your blood oxygen level, which should be 90+ for a healthy person. Those data tell you if you lungs and heart are operating in a relatively normal manner.

    If your pulse rate is very different from your normal rate, or if your blood oxygen level is low, you should seek medical care. That’s what it is useful for.

    Thermometer tells you if your body temp is low, or high… same thing, if abnormal — seek medical assistance.

    My wife had a low O2 level once, but I didn’t know about it until after I took her to the ER. Now I can check for that here at home.

  233. 233.

    catclub

    @Martin: have you checked out Michael Lewis’s against the rules podcast?  It should be right up your alley – coaching kids to get into college.

     

    and coaching in general. If Tiger Woods benefits from having a coach, so does everyone else, but usually does not have one.

  234. 234.

    Greenergood

    @MomSense: many moons ago in Germany I was served kohlrabi in a salad, sort of like potato salad but with kohlrabi instead. Really good!! Never seen, or tasted, since. Maybe try German/Central European cookbooks for kohlrabi recipes??

  235. 235.

    Slwalczak

    I had that experience 30 yrs ago. I felt so wonderful and it was like I understood everything and everything made sense. Afterwards I felt so happy and peaceful. As I pondered my experience, I realized that it could well be what others describe as religious enlightenment. I even sought out the book  The Varieties of Religious Experience by Wm James. Ultimately I decided it was an event of Consciousness, a connectivity we all have but seldom attain.

  236. 236.

    Slwalczak

    @Fergie: exactly! Same with me 30 yrs ago. I know exactly where I was and what I was doing, and I hope it returns some day!

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