It is wrong for the US government to be attempting once again to force a “regime change” in a foreign country. Especially in Latin America, given our history. Especially when the nominated replacement didn’t even run in the disputed election.

This time, we’re imposing our will by the cynical provision of humanitarian aid. IMHO, this is intended to force a confrontation between civilians in Venezuela who badly need the aid and the Venezuelan military, whereupon the US military will intervene to “save lives”. For this reason, the aid donations have been denounced by other aid NGOs.

It is legitimate for US politicians to comment on the mismanagement of other countries (although somewhat hypocritical, as https://brandnewcongress.org/trump-and-members-of-both-parties-challenge-sovereignty-in-venezuela points out), to offer aid without forcing it, to offer help hosting a fair election. That doesn’t appear to be what we’re doing.

You’re using Gforth, which came out in 1992. Also, it’s 2017.
Okay. But Fredric Jameson establishes that in postmodernism we have experienced a weakening sense of historisity such that what is, what was, and what will be all exist as presents in time. 1970, 1991, 1992, and 2017 all happen simultaneously. Hence developers working on new projects while still coding in decades-old text editors. They write the future in the past and are made present in so doing.

Here’s a good idea (from https://avc.com/2019/02/the-free-and-open-internet/): federated paywalls. One fee that covers a bunch of sources.

Saw this on Create Digital Music feed the other day, but forgot to post it.

There are two pieces to it: first, Lippold Haken (didn’t he do that synthesis/analysis thing with tracking sine wave partials?) is an instrument builder now, and he has a beautiful ribbon controller-like thingie called a Continuum. He’s announced a smaller, more reasonably priced version, the ContinuuMini.

Then, there’s a really nice instrument builder, a luthier, who is building acoustic resonators for electronic music. The one I like is a small guitar-like body modeled after, and named for, the Ondes Martinot, in whose tradition this guy is steeped. He also makes a bigger floor-standing unit.

Check out the combination in this video:

Here’s the link to the resonator guy: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lavoixduluthier/la-voix-du-luthier-powered-acoustic-soundboard-res

Here’s the ContinuuMini stuff: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1605483632/continuumini

Health care spending is out of control. Over 500,000 families go bankrupt from medical expenses each year according to The American Journal of Public Health, via Boing Boing. I spend more than my mortgage each month for “insurance” for Shelley and myself, and I’ve not yet met the usurious deductible, ever. The “cost” of health care is simply whatever can be expropriated from the consumers involved. How is this not being addressed?

We just finished watching “Black Earth Rising” on Netflix, by Hugo Blick. The English have a long tradition of intelligent parsing of their Empire and colonialism in their fiction; Graham Greene and his ilk. We in the US are more immature about ours. All our discussions, and our art, are still reduced to black and white, polemical. Lots of shouting, still. I wonder if the French have a grown-up point of view in their literature.