#stafford beer posting

[thursdayisbetterthanfriday]

Stafford Beer has entered the chat

[thursdayisbetterthanfriday]

Time for some more Stafford Beer posting!

Today, the Viable Systems Model and the differences between reductionist and cybernetic paradigms.

[earhartsease]

this is so on the nose

just adding (since it seems to have stirred some people up) that obviously this is not an absolute - it just points to how some oppressive systems (for example) rely on bad faith to cover for their systems doing what they're really intended to do by claiming that they're still in progress - but there are plenty of other less bad faith examples too that are more to do with poorly thought out or poorly implemented plans

[ID: post by The Garantine quoting the start of a wikipedia article

Very tired of hearing about what the intentions are. If a system constantly produces a different outcome than the one it is "intended" for then it's perfectly reasonable to assume the actual intention is the outcome it continues to produce.

beginning of quoted article below reads as follows:

The purpose of a system is what it does

The purpose of a system is what it does (POSIWID) is a systems thinking heuristic coined by Stafford Beer, who observed that there is "no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do." The term is widely used by systems theorists, and is generally invoked to counter the notion that the purpose of a system can be read from the intentions of those who design, operate, or promote it. When a system's side effects or unintended consequences reveal that its behavior is poorly understood, then the POSIWID perspective can balance political understandings of system behavior with a more straightforwardly descriptive view.

ID ends]

[teledyn]

Designing Freedom: The Free Man in a Cybernetic World

I don't mean to post a spoiler without a CW, but it's not REALLY a spoiler, it is more of an inadvertent description of the greater ecology of a distributed, decentralized #Fediverse, or maybe an eccentric summary of what COULD be done with such, if we wanted.

Stafford Beer, Massey Lecture #6, 1973

[transastronautistic]

ID: someone has responded to a tweet reads "How does a 'war on Hamas' kill over 12,000 children? A war that kills thousands of children is a war on children" with a screenshot from wikipedia for an entry titled "The purpose of a system is what it does," which reads:

The purpose of a system is what it does (POSIWID) is a systems thinking heuristic coined by Stafford Beer, who observed that there is "no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do." The term is widely used by systems theorists, and is generally invoked to counter the notion that the purpose of a system can be read from the intentions of those who design, operate, or promote it. When a system's side effects or unintended consequences reveal that its behavior is poorly understood, then the POSIWID perspective can balance political understandings of system behavior with a more straightforwardly descriptive view. / end ID

Link to the wiki post

[nextwavefutures]

Designing organisations that work

Designing organisations that work—the lessons of Stafford Beer’s Viable Systems Model for organisational design. New post on Dan Davies’ book The Unaccountability Machine.

Nine chapters into his book The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies makes a little self-deprecatory joke. He had intended to write a detective mystery about cybernetics, he says, but has spent eight chapters describing the construction of the murder weapon. The question that Davies starts out with is about how it is that the modern organisation has become structured in structured in such a way…

[merinsedai]

It's Staffordshire Day!

Apparently it's Staffordshire Day on the 1st May! First I've heard of it, but let me celebrate my home county:

This is Staffordshire:

It used to be a whole lot bigger, but they lopped off most of the Black Country and stuck that into the West Midlands in 1974. Bye bye to Walsall and Willenhall and Wolverhampton.

Places:

Stafford: the county town- suffers from traffic problems and has a 19th c replica of an ancient castle. I met my future husband for the very first time in the train station here, but I can't tell you any more about the place since I've never really been. Maybe it's really interesting; maybe I'm missing out.

Stoke-on-Trent: the potteries. You've probably heard of this place. Famous for Wedgewood, Moorcroft, Spode, Royal Doulton, Emma Bridgewater etc, etc. They really dig ceramics in Stoke-on-Trent. Has a football team with a hippo for a mascot (The Potters-hippopotamus-geddit?) and it's really five towns (is it six now?) melded into one city. Parts of the city look like some kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland but it has an excellent museum with some of the Staffordshire Hoard on display. Treat yourself to an oatcake somewhere and mourn the loss of the Leopard pub in Burslem, where great 18th c minds met to plan wonderful engineering works like the Trent and Mersey canal.

Tamworth- it's got a snowdome, it's close to Birmingham and currently has a popular Tiktok jacket potato man to visit. Can't tell you any more as I don't think I've ever actually been to Tamworth... actually that's a lie, since I went ice-skating at the snowdome on a school trip when I was 11.

Burton- they make beer here. Brewing's big business in Burton. It's in the East of the county and again, I can't tell you more since I don't frequent Burton... ever.

Lichfield- historic, founded way back when by religious types and has a cathedral dedicated to St Chad. Known as the 'ladies of the vale', Lichfield cathedral sports not one, not two, but three spires. Bit greedy really, but looks nice. It has a nice spring bank Bower festival every year where it always seems to rain. The potato man here is pretty good... I wonder if he's still in business. Be sure to stop by Erasmus Darwin's house and admire the statue of Samuel Johnson, Lichfield's most famous son. Also make time to go to the park and admire the statue of Capt John Smith of Titanic fame. I don't think he had any connection to Lichfield, but apparently Stoke didn't want the statue so Lichfield took it.

Burntwood- really a collection of former mining villages, there's a lot of houses here and not much else: no history, no culture, nada. A place for people to live and to dream about living somewhere more interesting and where people speak with less awful accents. Or that might've just been me. You will never have heard of this place and will have no reason to ever visit unless your mum still lives there.

Biddulph- small market town. Has Biddulph Grange NT garden. Very nice. Good display of tulips and rhododendrons in the spring. Once heard it described as a 'poor man's Bodnant' but really, we can't all be Bodnant and anyway, there's room for all sorts of gardens in this world.

Leek- another small market town. Nice bookshop. Don't mention roundabouts. People in this town really know how to hold a grudge about roundabouts. Famous for the double sunset each midsummer. Obviously it's usually cloudy and everyone misses the double sunset but it happens nonetheless.

Assorted lovely little villages dotting the place. Lots of nice ones up in the Moorlands.

OTHER STAFFORDSHIRE THINGS!

Staffordshire Bull Terrier- not my kind of dog, I'm afraid, but they're pretty popular.

Staffordshire oat cake: it's an oatmeal pancake filled with warm and savoury stuff. I like cheese and mushroom personally, but I reckon bacon and ham and whatever is most popular. Can also get a sweet filling, like nutella. A North Staffordshire delicacy, the Hairy Bikers made these in Lichfield for their TV show once, much to the confusion of the locals. South Staffordshire holds no truck with oatcakes apparently.

The Staffordshire Hoard: oh, only the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver ever found in this country. Imagine being the detectorist who found it, or the farmer whose land it was found on. Whew. I used to work at a riding stables in Hammerwich (where it was discovered). Imagine if I'd gone poking around in fields rather than picking poo in stables... anyway it's bloody impressive stuff.

Alton Towers- you might not have heard of Staffordshire, but you've heard of this place, eh? Our famous theme park. Must peeve the people of Alton off, all that traffic through their lovely little village. Still, I heard they get free entry to the park so... silver lining.

[shituationist]

These unpleasing threats to all we hold most dear are products of a system so organized as to produce them— to produce them , and not their contraries. These are not accidental; and they are not mistakes. They are the continuing output of a systemic conflict which is due to specific modes of organization. And those modes of organization have currently arrived at a stage in their inexorable pattern of behaviour which, like the wedge-shaped wave of 120°, is incipiently unstable—on the verge of catastrophic breakdown.

Stafford Beer, Designing Freedom

[postingonanon]

[Image ID: A Twitter post by "The Garantine" which reads as follows. "Very tired of hearing about what the intentions are. If a system constantly produces a different outcome than the one it is 'intended' for then it's perfectly reasonable to assume the actual intention is the outcome it continues to produce." End quote. This is attached to a screenshot of the Wikipedia page for "The purpose of a system is what it does," which reads as follows. "The purpose of a system is what it does (POSIWID) is a system thinking heuristic coined by Stafford Beer, who observed that there is 'no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.' The term is widely used by systems theorists, and is generally invoked to counter the notion that the purpose of a system can be read from the intentions of those who design, operate, or promote it. When a system's side effects or unintended consequences reveal that its behavior is poorly understood, then the POSIWID perspective can balance political understandings of system behavior with a more straightforwardly descriptive view." End ID.]

You gonna do anything or make any statement about the rampant transmisogyny on this hellsite, especially in cases like predstrogen recently? Or yall gonna stay silent and keep letting/making us get pushed off of it.

I have a number of asks about this, so this is to address all of them, I won't do each individually.

We generally do not comment on individual cases, but because there seems to be mass misinformation around this, I will make an exception and comment on predstrogen.

First, Tumblr has a number of LGBT+ including trans people on staff, and they see things from the inside fully, and they're not protesting this case.

Why do we wrongly have a transphobe reputation? We did have an external contract moderator last year that was making transphobic moderation (and also selling moderation, criminally). As soon as we were aware that person was fired, and we later terminated the entire relationship with that contracting firm and have brought almost everything in-house (at great cost). I have previously commented on this publicly, several times.

I am not aware of any Automattician (people who work at Automattic and Tumblr) who has made any transphobic moderation actions. If it's reported it is investigated immediately, if anything were found that person would be terminated for cause immediately.

In predstrogen's case in addition to some mistagged sexually explicit posts, which on its own wouldn't be that bad, we have documented cases of harassment against other users. Most importantly, and why she is banned from Tumblr for life, is she made threats of violence against Tumblr staff.

That is never okay. Threats of violence is not protected speech. We will work with police and FBI where appropriate. I just got a death threat yesterday from someone mad about predstrogen, and that account was immediately terminated.

So regardless of whether you still think Tumblr staff is somehow a bunch of transphobes, know that threats of violence or death are still not acceptable and will result in immediate and serious action. Know that when you rile people up, they can do dumb things with possibly permanent consequences.

(2 hours later update: I have changed instances of the pronoun "they" or "their" to "the account" because I am unaware of pronoun preference in this instance and don't want to misgender anyone. Thank you for the people who reported this as an issue. Update 2: "She" is apparently better, the post now says that. Sorry for the mistake.)

Here's one (of many!) examples of the harassment violations, this one targets me but there are others targeting other users on the site.

The second part seems to indicate she wanted to be suspended, I'm unaware of why, perhaps to create this sort of uproar.

[frestoniia]

THE BLACKJACK DISTRICT PT. 2 ( LANDMARKS )

A follow-up to my previous hc post giving a general overview of the Blackjack District. 

The District’s overall aesthetic draws heavy inspiration from London across several decades, with many of the buildings highly reminiscent of historic London landmarks.

CASTOFF CASINO

A popular destination for people with too much (or in most cases, not enough) pocket money. Craig starts performing regular gigs here after joining the ranks of NSR, and it serves as his primary place of concert. 

RAGTIME REVOLUTION JAZZ CLUB

A spiffy underground nightclub where many musicians and artists come to play live. This venue is a popular hangout for locals and tourists alike, and is one of the most historically significant buildings in the district. This is also where Craig gave his very first performance.

THE OL’ PICKAXE PUB

Both night owls and early birds flock to this popular local pub, famous for it’s beer-battered fish ‘n chips. It’s owned and operated by Craig’s uncle, Llewys, who previously worked in the mines before they were shut down. He’s also known to play swing alongside his brothers at the Castoff Casino some nights, and the pub sometimes has karaoke nights.

TROLLEY TUNNEL 

An underground rail system that runs underneath the Blackjack District. The underground trolley used to be a prominent feature of the district, ferrying miners from within town up to the mines and back again. But when the mines were shut down, the tunnel lost it’s purpose. Eventually, the tracks were removed and the tunnel was paved in order to allow people to walk through normally. 

Nowadays, most of the locals use the district’s cable car system as their primary mode of public transport. 

 AL’S GARAGE

An auto shop located at the front of the district. Craig’s uncle Alistair works here as a mechanic, when he’s not playing (or drinking) at the local casino. 

RISING STAR CINEMA 

The oldest standing cinema in Vinyl City.

GRAND OAK CLOCKTOWER

A massive old clocktower overlooking the Blackjack district. According to tradition, no other building in the district is allowed to be taller than it.  

STAFFORD MINE MEMORIAL

A memorial in the center of the district dedicated to the 125 workers who died in the Blackjack District mine collapse. It’s an old mine cart filled regularly with fresh flowers by relatives of the deceased, and each employee’s name is etched into the outside metal..

[scifigeneration]

What if we ran society not based on the market but on evidence?

by Spyros Samothrakis

Will it soon be possible to draw a blueprint of our future society? Viktoriya/Shutterstock.com

Following the successful Brexit campaign, Dominic Cummings – the then campaign director of Vote Leave – published a series of blog posts describing how the campaign was run and what his plans were for a successful civil service. The last of these posts was released on June 26 2019, just before he became the special advisor to the current prime minister, Boris Johnson. The idea this post resurrects is a promise in public policy that has died since the 1970s – the use of hard scientific (knowledge-based) methods to guide policy choices.

In what looks like to be Cumming’s version of public policy, an elite group of administrators trained in the disciplines of pure thought – mathematicians and philosophers – would run society based on evidence. Collected data points would be used to create a machine simulation (often called the model). Policy makers would then be able to test the simulations with hypothetical policies (“what if drugs were legal?”) and, according to the results, adjust public policy.

A complete cybernetic version of economic policy was advocated, but not practised, in the Soviet Union by the likes of nobel-prize winning economist Leonid Kantorovich and mathematician and computer scientist Victor Glushkov. They hypothesised the possibility of taking things a step further – getting the machines to identify what actions to take to reach optimal outcomes. That is, policy makers would need to decide what they are looking to achieve (“maximise the production of butter”) and machines would come up with the the policy of how to allocate resources to achieve this.

Outside the Soviet Union, this kind of thinking was actually enacted with Project Cybersyn, an effort put together by management consultant Stafford Beer in the 1970s for the government of Chile under the then president, Salvador Allende to help manage the economy (the project was dismantled following the coup by General Augusto Pinochet).

Though Cybersyn was never fully operational, it was rushed into use so as to help break one of the biggest anti-government strikes, which was instigated by a right-wing union. Beer’s vision is far more decentralised and democratic than its Soviet counterpart, but it still falls within the same line of thought.

As you will have gauged by now, the cybernetic vision tends to be securely located on the left of the political spectrum.

The market

Sitting on the opposite side of the cybernetic vision, one will find the fathers of modern liberal economics, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek. Their arguments, taken more broadly, consider the cybernetic dream impossible from a computational perspective, either due to not being able to model the world efficiently, or not having appropriate signals to evaluate the quality of solutions.

They argued that another mechanism that exists inside the real world (in their case, the market) needs to do the heavy lifting, by providing a signal – which, in the case of goods and services, is prices. For them, a good policy is not one that lays out what steps need to be taken towards a solution, but focuses more on setting a “game” of sorts with the right incentives and punishments. This basically just leaves room for one real public policy which can be summed up as “privatise everything, create a competitive arena, let the market sort the problems out”.

Leaving all real policy decisions to the market has been a very traditional (post-1980s at least) right-wing idea. This raises the question as to why someone advising the current UK government is even discussing concepts that are not purely market-driven. In his latest post, Cummings laments the inability of the British state to do serious modelling. This seems a superb contradiction – shouldn’t the market be able to solve everything?

It is worth mentioning that conceptions of planning methods differ a lot across individual thinkers – there are even advocates of socialist markets on the left. Though there is a clear left-right divide, in terms of actual party politics it seems that the idea of some planning has been partially accepted (somewhat grudgingly) by the historical right for some time.

Market signals. Tony Stock/Shutterstock.com

AI and public policy

So, does the progress in AI and (the concurrent) massive increase in computational power and availability of data allow us to circumvent the liberal arguments? I would say yes, but only partially. One can easily envision a solution where the latest AI methods are used to affect policy directly. It’s quite plausible that one could plan and re-plan millions of products and services on a daily basis, find the optimal set of actions to help tackle social ills and generally push for an overall brighter future.

This isn’t, however, trivial – delivering causal models to drive simulations is extremely hard, requires significant expertise, and can only be done in a limited capacity. On top of this, current AI methods lack a concept of “common sense”. A model created with a specific task in mind might be able to optimise for said task, but is prone to generating unwanted side effects. For example, an AI-optimised factory that aims to optimise production will do so without care for the environment.

But the mother of all problems in AI is that a lot of the more modern probabilistic planning algorithms are not stable without excessive human tuning, due to a number of reasons that are beyond the scope of this article. In practice, this means that outside straightforward, traditional planning (such as linear programming), getting value from modern AI requires significant human expertise. At the moment this sits mostly within private AI research labs and some university departments. Any serious attempt to create a cybernetic state would need both significant human resources to be moved towards the project and some further algorithmic breakthroughs.

Unfortunately, current AI deployments in public policy do not adhere to the ideas above. It seems that AI is mostly deployed only for simple predictive tasks (“will person X will commit crime Y in the future?”). For this reason, public bodies are finding this technology increasingly useless. But technological innovations almost always experience a series of failures before they find their pace, so hopefully AI will eventually be implemented properly.

Back to Brexit

What does Brexit have to do with any of this? My understanding is that Brexit (according to Cummings) is needed in order to help disrupt the civil service enough so as to allow it to be rebuilt. It would then be possible to deploy serious AI public policy solutions (which is another name for scientific planning). So the British state would be deploying projects that can model the future, with machines or civil servants probing the model for golden paths.

What is truly surprising, in my view, is that such proposals don’t come from the broad political left (though there are, of course, extremely interesting takes on the topic of scientific planning) – but from the right. This might imply the use of AI to hasten the free-market agenda by asking questions like “what is the best propaganda to produce in order to get everyone on board with increasing state pension age to 95, privatising every public service and getting people to accept a ban on immigration?”.

All this AI talk might be a red herring – the more traditional right-wing Brexit party policies are simply an intensification of a deregulation agenda, though again the signals are mixed. Alternatively, it might be the case that there is a split between One Nation Conservatives and free marketeers across the board.

It’s hard to imagine the EU allowing for direct planning (it goes against most of the principles of the internal market), but it’s equally hard to envision post-Brexit Britain doing the same. Most institutions see the market as the only legitimate form of organisation.

But some cracks in the consensus seem to be appearing. Perhaps we may end up in a position where actively planning using AI towards a ���good society” is actively pursued.

About The Author:

Spyros Samothrakis is a Lecturer in Analytics and Data Science at the University of Essex

This article is republished from our content partners over at The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

[the-trig-and-tonics]

Journey to Greenway Hall

As we ran along, we kept a look out for any other footpaths but there wasn’t any more up to the end of the road so the one we took must have been correct. We took a left turn into Thorneyedge Road and to our left we could see the field where we thought the trig was. We passed a footpath sign on this road but as we looked up the fields, we weren’t sure if it led towards the trig, It certainly wasn’t the easiest to find.

Another runner passed us and he must have been going at quite a pace because he was soon heading off into the distance. The road forked and we could see he went in the direction of Werrington whilst we headed towards Bagnall. The sun was shining, the sky was blue and as we ran down hill we were met with a sparkling ford, trickling over the glowing cobbles.

A narrow footbridge allowed pedestrians to pass without getting wet. It really was a tranquil scene and an ideal photo opportunity.

However, it got even better after we got to the other side of the ford as Carol spotted a stone well standing on the left hand side of the road. It was a solid structure with an ornate, carved front. Inside, there was running, fresh water and Carol bent down to scoop some up to sip.

I then took a drink too and it was cool and refreshing. It was an idyllic spot and we were so grateful to have come across it.

Further along the road we then saw a little green, carved bunny nestled by the roots of a large tree stump. On the image were the words, Bagnall Bunny No. 10.

We could only presume it was part of an Easter hunt. I’m sure lots of people must have searched for these rabbits and if the others had been placed in similar, picturesque positions it would have been a very pleasant walking route.

Soon, we were climbing a steep hill but we were able to take a rest as we passed a field with deer in. As far as we could see there were three of these animals and they looked very graceful in the sunshine. They must have heard us because they were standing completely still, listening and this allowed Carol to get some shots.

After taking a right turn we came to Jackson’s Nursery and we discovered the deer belong to them. The nursery looked a great place to visit as not only did they sell plants but there was a children’s play area as well as an opportunity to see the animals. I need to remember this as somewhere to go with the grandchildren.

After a steep uphill climb we entered the pretty village of Bagnall. We came to The Stafford Arms and it was lovely seeing people sitting outside in the beer garden, enjoying a drink in the sunshine. We then turned around and saw a gleaming, gold post box. The home district of gold medal winners in the London 2012 games had their post boxes painted gold and Lee Pearson, who won gold in the Paralympic Games, lives in Bagnall so we had to get a photo of that.

The road now went in two directions and we weren’t sure which way to go so I asked a woman who was outside the inn and she happily gave us directions, We set off down another road and we soon came to a small village green. There was a tall, stone cross standing on a pillar in the middle of the grass with the village name carved on it and the year 1991. One of Carol’s sons was born in 1991 so I took a photo of Carol standing by it.

Across the road from the green was a footpath leading onto Greenway Hall golf course. The woman we had spoken to earlier had said we could take a footpath but we weren’t sure if this was the one. Luckily, two walkers were passing the entrance so we asked them if it was the right route and they confirmed it was. They warned us to take care and not get in the way of the golfers. Famous last words and all that!

[weemsbotts]

Rest in Pieces: The Messages Left in Exploding Glass Bottles

By: Lisa Timmerman, Executive Director

The Weems-Botts Museum has a cool collection of glass bottles. Charter members and gracious supporters Gary and Nancy West recently donated a bottle marked “Triangle Quantico Bottling Works” with a triangle in the middle and “Registered” on the bottom. Mr. West recalled that Dumfries residents tossed the bottles underneath The Weems-Botts Museum’s kitchen among other objects. Besides for these bottles once containing root beer, ginger ale, and other sodas (aka pop!), does the bottle contain any messages?

(Triangle, Virginia. Prince William County’s Historic Preservation Division dates this photo to the 1930s)

Early Americans enjoyed similar tastes but in different forms and for different purposes. Containing anywhere from 2-12% alcohol, small beers were popular and appealed to a wide variety of consumers. By the 19th century, pharmacists experimented with different herbs, berries, and barks in hopes of delivering marketable remedies for common ailments. Notably, Charles Hires developed a recipe (he did not “invent” root beer), he sold as “Hires Root Tea” named for the sassafras root. By the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876, he changed the named to “beer” hoping to make the beverage more appealable to the middle class but also emphasized it as an alternative to alcohol to appeal to followers of the Temperance movement. Now offered as a liquid concentrate, he even sold root beer kits for people at home to enjoy. Although advertised and promoted as a healthier drink containing no alcohol, carbonated soda does contain very trace amounts of alcohol, and sassafras root had to be replaced with an artificial flavoring in 1960 after the FDA determined safrole, contained in the oil of sassafras root, was a carcinogen. It can be safely removed, some companies use safrole-free sassafras extract, and as of 2021, health concerns focus on the sugar.

Back to our bottle collection. According to our records, George C. Oleyar operated the wholesale bottling company at the corner of Amidon and Post Street in Triangle, Virginia in the 1920s (possibly from 1920-1929). Old Dominion Glassworks in Alexandria manufactured the bottles and Triangle Bottling bottled the beverages on site and marketed them in Prince William and Stafford county along with the City of Fredericksburg. Old Dominion Glassworks represented one of four glassworks in Alexandria and the company employed black and white men, women, and children. Photographs from the early 1900s exposed child labor violations leading to fines. Equipment failures, a decline in business due to Prohibition, and frequent fires led to the company’s closure in 1925. The Weems-Botts Museum records indicate the bottles also exploded. While both of ours are intact, I have never experimented with carbonation or fermentation…

(Triangle Quantico Bottling Works Glass bottle, donated by Charter Members Gary and Nancy West)

The people throwing the bottles did not leave us written messages. Did they toss them or just drop them when visiting the Merchants or their boarders? Or did people toss them during the transitory period from personal home to museum? Did any of the Merchants like root beer? What other hidden gems can we discover from people’s casual attitudes towards trash and recycling? It is neat to consider how one glass bottle traveled across our local region and emerged once again, rescued as a reminder of local history, labor, and soda (aka pop!).

Note: We are celebrating Black History Month at our Children’s Day at the Museum Sponsored by Walmart program by discussing and reading African American folktales! Click here for your free tickets to this monthly program!

(Sources: HDVI Archival Files: Oleyar; Today I Found Out: Feed Your Brain: Upton, Emily. Why Root Beer is Called That, 07/16/2013; Virginia Humanities, “Old Dominion Glass Company,” AfroVirginia, accessed February 3, 2021, http://places.afrovirginia.org/items/show/319.; The Connection to your Community. Bah, Char McCargo. The Oher Alexandria: Working in the City’s Glass Factories, 02/2019; Office of Historic Alexandria: Alexandria Times: Out of the Attic: Old Dominion Glass Company, 06/2010)

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/soggy-delivery-food-could-be-a-thing-of-the-past-thanks-to-a-high-tech-freshness-sticker/

Soggy delivery food could be a thing of the past thanks to a high tech “freshness” sticker

Thanks to apps, you can get just about any food you can want, delivered from any restaurant you want. Problem is, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be the same quality as dining in. Now, a high tech food packet hopes to change that.

Follow Tech Reporter Rich DeMuro on Instagram for more tech news, tips and gadgets!

“We’re now essentially a delivery business that happens to have a few tables sporadically placed at a social distance,” explained Charles Lew, owner of Stout Burgers & Beers with several locations throughout Los Angeles. Since the pandemic, he’s seen delivery go from about 15% to more than 50% of the business.

“The fries are the real problem,” said Lew. Thanks to apps, deliveries are going further, and by the time food arrives, it can be cold and soggy. “Your food’s in a package, for a long period of time. How do you keep it fresh?”

A sticker called SAVRPak might be the answer! Inside, food-grade materials trap humidity in an effort to keep foods fresher, longer. “It’s like a magnet – it’s grabbing that moisture sucking it in and not letting it go,” explained Grant Stafford, CEO of SAVRPak.

Stout is sticking the high-tech freshness packs to the inside of their food containers.

To test it, I tried french fries sealed up in to-go boxes for up for about 20 minutes. One batch didn’t have the patch inside, the other did.

When I tasted the fries, the difference was very clear. The fries in the box without the sticker were the typical soggy and limp fries you’d expect from takeout or delivery. The fries in the box with the sticker were noticeably drier and crispier.

Fries without the pack, left, fries with the pack, right

“Our closest competition really is just a vented box,” said Stafford.

“These are things that will help us survive. This is an incredibly hard climate as you can imagine,” concluded Lew, referring to restaurants the current pandemic climate.

Charles Lew, owner of Stout Burgers & Beers

Each SAVRPak costs about 25 cents and they are made from food-grade materials, although you don’t want to eat one. Also, each pack is recyclable. SAVRPack says its freshness packet works with a variety of foods including many hot fried foods, pizza and even salads.

NOW: Listen to the Rich on Tech podcast, where I talk about the tech news I think you should know about and answer the questions you send me!

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[formfeeding-blog]

Free As In Beer: Cybernetic Science Fictions

A paper delivered at the 2009 Pacific Ancient and Modern Languages Association Conference by Jeremiah Axelrod and Greg Borenstein that describes how British cyberneticist Stafford Beer’s writing, infographics, and industrial design for his ambitious Cybersyn Project worked together to create a science fictional narrative of omniscience and ominpotence for Salvador Allende’s socialist government in Chile.

Follow us on twitter for news about the Computer Science Fiction project: http://twitter.com/computerscifi Likes: 135 Viewed:

The post Free As In Beer: Cybernetic Science Fictions appeared first on Good Info.

[gplusbfics]

A BDay Request + 43 Things

I’ve been wanting to do this anyway, but today’s my birthday – first one since I started this blog last fall – and I wanted to ask everyone to tell me what your Garashir story is and give me a link. (Or just the name if you cannot find the link.) Leave it in the comments or message me. Later I’ll post all the links. And read them, if I haven’t already.

Meanwhile, here are 43 things about me, one for every year of my life. Some I’ve definitely mentioned, others not.

The earliest “crushes” I can remember in my life are Spock and the Tin Man (Wizard of Oz). Notably, both wore blue eyeshadow, which made me feel all fuzzy inside.

I grew up in northeast Massachusetts (New England) but have somehow lived in Georgia for the past 20 years (19 of those in Atlanta).

I’m 6 ft. tall and got to that height at age 12. (I was 5 ft. in 2nd grade already.)

Was severely bullied as a child (definitely just for being tall), going on through high school and while it was pretty horrible, had lasting effects, it’s had some positive too, like I am extremely empathetic and I never say nasty stuff to anyone ever.

Favorite movie: The Wizard of Oz (1939). Other favorites: The Third Man, Lawrence of Arabia, Wings of Desire, Young Frankenstein, Metropolis, Lord of the Rings, My Life as a Dog.

One of my dearest friends is British fantasy-scifi author Storm Constantine. (Rather a cult author, so not hugely well known, but if you���re into dark fic or are a goth or into weird fic or queer sci, you might know her.) I am actually her fiction editor (on her Wraeththu universe books) and we are currently working on our fifth short story anthology together. I’ve also visited her at her home in Stafford, England, I think six times now. I love her :)

I’m really big on international travel or, I should say, travel to Europe. As a teenager I spent a summer in Germany and after college I got hooked, to the point I’ve been over 20 times at least. Been to the England, Scotland, Germany and Italy multiple times – Germany by far the most often – and also Slovenia, Austria, Czechia, Netherlands, Belgium. My most recent trip was Berlin. For my most immediate travel plans (next year) I have in mind: Sicily, Bucharest (have a friend there), Scandinavia, Dublin, Budapest (friends there too).  

Pretty much fluent in German, although not to the point I could write any decent fanfic :)

My eyes are true hazel.

I live in condo in a 104-year-old neo-Gothic skyscraper. It’s beautiful.

I’m actually terrified of the idea of going to or being in outer space.

I’m more intrigued by the mysteries of the ocean than space.

My B.A. was in journalism but I never used that degree professionally as an actual journalist. Instead I went into web development. But eventually with my current job (starting 10 years ago) I came back around to using my verbal & comm. skills like gangbusters.

For my work I spend a huge amount of my time promoting academic medical research.  

I -love- black licorice. I, um, even have a Tumblr about it.

Back in college (UMass Amherst) I spent 2 years living in an all GLBTQ dorm. Yes, for real. THAT was an experience. 

I’m a gray asexual. The part of me that is into people is bisexual. 

Consider myself trans and/or gender nonconforming, bc in many ways I do not identify with the gender I was assigned at birth. For several years I had it in my head I was meant to be a man (outwardly, possibly with hormones or other physical changes) but gradually had a realization that this was utterly unnecessary. 

I consider pretty much ALL clothes (my clothes) to be “drag.”

I don’t know how to do regular makeup Everything I do ends up being either like glam rock or drag queen style. Over the top is my style 

On multiple occasions, my friends have been asked, out of my presence, if I am a trans woman. (Which I find flattering.)

In college I used to go into Boston completely in trans man type drag and would see how many times I could get sirred. (Answer: always. It was very skinny.) This now sounds unbelievable because…. see 21 above.

Over the past 8 years I’ve gained about 70 lbs. and as result I’ve switched to wearing dresses and “femme” type clothes almost all the time. Don’t have to worry about growing out of them nearly as much and I can get dressed in about 30 seconds. Also my outfits are usually flamboyant, so it’s kind of my own gender expression. 

I’m kind of in love with my cats and I don’t care what people think of that.

I’m genetically immune to caffeine.

1/3 pint of beer is enough to get me drunk.

I love beer and my fav types tend to be extremely dark, opaque. Also 9%+ alcohol by volume. This plays interestingly into my susceptibility to alcohol (even regular beer).

My dad died 4 years ago and my mom (my favorite person IN THE WORLD) is 81. Mom is amazing and ever since Dad died we take awesome vacations together. Mom is is a total geek.

I’m the youngest of 5 kids and by FAR the youngest. The age spread is 16 years and my nearest sibling is age is 7 years older.

I hate hot weather. I live in the South. Go figure.

Crazy crazy Instagrammer.

I’ve known my two BFFs nearly 24 (!) years now, since the first month of freshmen year. One of them has been down here in GA with me 20 years, while the other was here for a bit but moves around. Been in Seattle for years and I see her when she comes to Atl for Frolicon and Dragon Con and stays with me.

My favorite “holiday” is Dragon Con.

This year will be the 10th year I march in the Dragon Con Parade in the “walking Periodic Table” as Beryllium.

Favorite post-70s bands/artists: David Bowie, Depeche Mode, Björk, NIN, The Cure, Queen, Beastie Boys, Einstürzende Neubaten, Sinead O’Connor, The Orb, Prince, The Smiths, Morrissey, Kraftwerk, Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees.

I can listen to Philip Glass on infinite loop. (Which is funny)

Obsessed with Art Deco. Like… you have NO IDEA.

Pescatarian. But I have a rule whereby I can eat meat on holidays, on vacation and on my birthday. (Tonight: BBQ ribs.)

I love reading smut. I loathe watching porn. (When I was younger I would watch gay porn but in my mid-20s I just started to find it repulsive, watching anyway.)

As a teen and into college I was kind of a misogynist. Gender issues. But I am OVER IT.

Because I live in the City of Atlanta and in addition don’t drive, rely on public transit, I have spent the past 19 years in situations where I am frequently the only white person on a bus or train. Happens at least once a day. Given that I grew up in a town where there were maybe 2 black families per 35,000 people, this has rewired me.

I am virulently anti-fascist.

I seriously underestimated how hard it would be to get to 43. Like OMG.