A Farm Update

 We haven't been posting about the Farm much. Farming has not been my priority for two years, and deep depression took one of those away from our long history. But things are happening right now worthy of letting people know something about.

We had a litter of puppies in the last Winter which gave us some excess money to spend on putting a floor under our wrap around porch roof. We had planned for concrete but concrete got really expensive and I suck at it. So we are going with 2x6 wood planks. We are using concrete to make a barrier between the concrete bases of the porch supports. Even though they are strange the idea is to block out the rats and raccoons who would just love a nicely sheltered home under the decking. The concrete retaining wall comes within a quarter inch of the understructure of the deck so there's a chance it will keep the bigger people out. We will not be putting a wodden deck under the west side roof so that our segregation kennel has the drainage and is easier to clean up. Part of that section will house a newer hot tub too for old bones to soak in next Winter.

We put up a new greenhouse last year and it worked wonderfully. All of our plantings came up strong and the garden is looking really well. Today all is doing super out there and we have bought a few new tools to make things easier on arthretic hands and tired bodies. We got a nifty rechargable pruner which cuts anything up to 5/8 inch without slowing. Ann oftentimes uses it to cut off larger weed stalks and berries. The battery lasts for months and we have two of them. I bought Ann a mini rechargable roto- tiller which tears anything up which is less than two inches into the dirt. The thing clears crabgrass, the last thing in the dirt after everything else is gone. And last Summer we bought a used riding lawnmower so our flowering weeds don't stand a chance in the longer term. The place seems much more managable these days and we get more done in less time, which is good. We need more done and time is fleeting. Our corn is chest high today, we've had strawberries for two months, potatoes are doing very well. Tomatoes, peppers, zuchinni, cukes, are doing better than we've had in a while. We're no longer a farm, but as gardeners we are killing it.

The fruit trees I put in at odd intervals in the past five years are fruiting their little branches off. We have four varieties of apple, five of plum, all of these fruiting it up out there. A nectarine which is doing nothing, an apricot which is barely hanging on, and a peach which is doing less than nothing still look good at a distance. Our Mimosa is flowering and lovely. We initially started the Farm with the idea of becoming a Upick orchard. It might have worked too.

Our chickens and Ducks are healthy and egg sales happen weekly. Not enough to do it for the money, but it does defray some feed expenses. We built them a larger run this year to keep them out of the gardens and protect them from Raptors. It has two ponds and loads of berries hanging around, so the birds are happy.

And finally, but not the least of our good fortune, our Hound business is doing very well. We have had two litters this year, boarding rates were risen and the business is up, and we even have one order for dog coat (in Summer) so far. Between retirements, dogs, eggs, and our age keeping expenses low, the accounts are stable. 

Life is good here. We hate leaving, even for an hour. Ou personal health is exceptionally good for a pair sixty-seven years old. It won't last, as nothing ever does, but if you live day to day by God's grace and it works out. . .  Celebrate.

AI – Luddites and Light Switches

 It seems to me, an old man with a lot of rudimentary computing experience, that the current hulla-balloo about Artificial Intelligence, it's promise, is either polly-ann-ish, or outright deceptive.  Let us discuss for a minute the public perception in my close-by neighborhood.

The generalized fear is that AI will replace people. End of story. These machines will somehow become self actuating and self replicating. Ultimately they will do whatever we human types do and we will be out of a job; whatever that particular job is. So we better get busy finding a new line of employment before the AI figures out what we are doing and gets there before us.

The much brighter vision is that AI will begin doing the menial work we loathe. AI will do the cleaning and the cooking, begin doing the hard tasks, the hot work, and the danger will go out of our lives. Nothing but improvement for humanity and the only people effected are those who do the menial labor, the hot work, and the dangerous stuff; you know . . . immigrants. Those people need to find better work or become useless and superfluous back in their old countries.

Of course there's a spectrum of possibilities between these two and the AI hub-bub will most certainly bleed over the outside edges of these two visions as well. But the fact of the matter is that AI cannot do any of these things, and likely won't be able to do much of this for many years, likely decades, possibly a century or so. Despite the hype, this isn't happening. Let me explain.

I have been in the computing world for many decades. I did manual labor directly for Steve Jobs. My Step mother had Wosniak over to the house before his name became well known. I spent my early teen years punching card stock on a big machine to program a much bigger machine that couldn't compete for computing power with a modern blood pressure monitor. I built my own computers through the 8086 chipset days, with their 5.5 inch floppies and 256K of storage and continued to engage in this until it just got cheaper to buy a laptop which did everything I ever dreamed of. I knew personally the guy who helped create the MP4 format and waited patiently for the 1982 promise of streaming video and broadband internet to deliver the movies in 2012. I adopted cellular telephony as soon as I could afford it and bought a smart phone as soon as they got into the price range I desired. I witnessed the entirety of the Internet's birth while in the military and watched it grow for almost fifty years. I paid attention to this extraordinary period of informational growth and access with curiosity and took the good with the bad. Not once was I filled with overwhelming wonder because I saw the actual bones of the baby before the flesh got added; saw the bubbles bursting even as the pundits huffed and puffed. So much soap.

And AI, for all it's promise, is just another thing of this fictional genre. Possible, but not probable. Certainly not practical. All the bubbles people seem willing to invest and believe in will be found to be more bubbles in the making once the current flotilla fails to fly. And here's why it will sink.

At the root of computing is the idea of data. Computers keep this in files. Files are simply numerical things filled with organizations of letters and numbers designed to keep things where things go for use when they are needed. Computers access these things when ask, develop these things as instructed, and output whatever the result is when the result is found. Back in the old days (back when Luddites worried about computers taking their jobs) much of what went into the machines was trash, so when we ask it to tell us something we didn't know we got trashy answers. Things have become better since then.

Faster computers, loads of data, billions of lines of code. If you hadn't seen the beginning you wouldn't have reason to suspect that what these wondrous things do is just the same as they have always done, only faster. The machines are much smaller, and they do so much more and, strangely, unemployment decreased because we still needed people to put the data in, tell the machine what to do, and read the results. Result which are likely going to need correction because the inputs were trash in the first place.

This is not to say the machines are trash, they are not, but the paperless promise cut down a lot of trees and the wireless promise installed a lot of wires. If you were to guess how much wrong information, both accidental and intentionally included was contained in the database we call the Internet you might have to say about half of what we know is suspect and all of it will take a human with an education to know the difference. If you were to ask an AI, the best ever created, to tell you how much of the data is false it would wait for more instructions. It would need to know what the scope of the project is, where to find the data, what does false mean, and then give you an answer which is likely needing analysis and correction by human minds.

AI is a machine trick incapable of making a moral choice and having no stake in the decision. It might someday be able to follow a well defined set of instructions and procedures for making a pseudo moral choice and might one day do this so as to be thought of as good at it. But humanity still has no such set of moral definitions to work from which might allow the programmers to commence work writing code. Eventually these machine choices will fail and be amended to call for other programs and fuzzier statistical manipulators which check the work and seem to decide better. But these machine will only give you what you gave them and do with it what they were told to do with ever increasing specificity. Don't expect this to happen any decade coming soon to your lifetime.

AI has limits as to what it possibly might do. It might become a light switch which knows when to turn on the lights in many situations. But the switch will still need to be given instructions to work the way the user wishes it would; instructions which might take as much time as flipping on the lights a thousand times. There will be many thousands of man hours dedicated to making this basic system of light switching to actually perform as expected. The promise of the intelligent light switch, if we ever get around to it, is potentially achieved in the efficient replication of the invention which lowers costs, (which will take a bit of time to be set up before promises come true). Today all you need do is walk over to the wall and flip the switch and this might always be the case whether they build smart switches or not; but saving humanity a few hundred thousand hours and countless piles of treasure takes a different moral choice.

Automobiles and airplanes might someday move themselves with speed and accuracy, but they will get to do this because thousands of people made millions of moral choices and hypothetical questions were eventually answered to our collective agreements. Until then self-flying planes will crash, self driving cars will find themselves driving in circles or into rivers, both are economic decisions. The tragedies will continue and moral decisions about the effective usefulness of the machine will be sorted out by legislators and invisible market based hands. Until then employment of drivers and pilots will continue. The AI promise un-kept for the time being despite the hype.

Today we are being ask to allow the building of thousands of expensive data centers where the promise of AI is said will be found. We are ask to invest in the bright new future of AI light switches and talking bathroom mirrors, none of which we need, and most of which will fail on design or marketing made by people capable of doing what AI can never really do: make a moral choice which will hold up in the real world of life, legality, and longevity. But it isn't going to happen they way they sell it today. It might happen some day, but not how they planned it. And we don't have to allow these hypothetically driven dreamers to gamble the life we have on their promise of the life we someday might.

What Could You Have Done?

What Could You Have You Done?

I saw what you did
and then I did wonder,
what could you have done
to allow this to be.

What crime you committed
has caused you to travel,
with a criminal unworthy;
with a man so unclean.

That you'd give up your soul.
And give silent assent.
That you'd offer your favor
without any cost.

And gladly you saw him
continue to rise
all the time knowing,
he arose without you.

You carried his weight
the weight of a criminal
and the weight of his loot
your share became his.

Was it some magic?
What caused you to give
to him your support
and a vote against you?

Was there some reason
you support him today.
And is there a reason
to support him tomorrow?

When will you grow
into your own decisions?
When will you look up
and see what you've done?

And remove from this person
the power you gave him,
and send him to hell
he deserves and has earned.

Copyright David E. Smith
Banks, Oregon
All Rights Reserved

Things have been different

 In the past few weeks things have changed in me. Big things. All things. Who knows. But my life has been better than most will believe. And my mind seems to have changed as well, the way I see the world and how I communicate with it is changing. So much, in fact, that I am preemptively declaring all discussion as too egotistical to talk about and refuse discussing it further.

The below are letters that popped up on my keyboard and demanded I play whack-a-mole. So I punched keys and these things fell out. It seems the Muse are out and about these days. The Second one is challenging to read and this seems intentional.

No Kings Is Not A Protest Poem

The righteous they scare him.
And boos drown his demon.
He pays for ass wiping.
His lies and his semen.

But listen to him.
Believe what he's saying.
Believe what he's doing.
For Him they are praying.

They give him the power.
They'd make him their King.
They'll call him messiah.
But it all means nothing.

He comes just to use them.
He comes for their worship
He comes for their money.
Their ears filled -his bullshit..

They pay for the privilege
of paying him more.
And he keeps on taking.
We all know the score.

And we know the answers.
Are they're all just for asking.
But you'll get no reply,
from the man who would be King

Kings might be cowards.
Kings might be brave.
They don't follow rules
and take what they crave.

The trick to it all.
Is to heed every call.
To not have a King.
For the good of us all.

We have little voices,
But hear what I'm saying.
Use the voice that they give you.
And don't have a king.

©All rights reserved to David E. Smith
CreeksideFarmOregon@gmail.com

A Novel Poem That.Nobody Will Get

People will peep.
Fighters will fight.
Talkers will talk.
Trees grow.

Seekers must seek
Seer's got to see.
Sorcerers use source.
Rocks do nothing..

Poets don't po.
While Singers do sing.
And Puppies might pup,
And Dogs might do it too.

Truth is from God.
Truth's undeniable
Like beauty and Sadness.
Some gifts you don't want.

It's an open book test.
They furnish the answers.
And right there before you.
You stand in your way.

Every four lines,
you expect to hear rhythm.
But this is strange meter.
Get over yourself.

This isn't about you.
Not part of your story.
Not one of your answers.
Give God the Glory.

God's Grace make this happen.
Informed not conceived.
You got all the answers.
So why did you keep reading?

©All rights reserved to David E. Smith
CreeksideFarmOregon@gmail.com

---

A new way to go

 We have decided that it is time to begin activating ourselves in the service of our nation. The current horror show we experience around us requires people of good conscience to act. We are aware of our age and the relatively little difference we can make, but every small act of resistence to evil is part of a bigger picture. 

Today I have closed my Facebook, Twitter (X), Instagram, and other social media accounts because those people running them want to destroy my country in their support of evil doing. I will close my Amazon Prime account too, even though I like it and use it all of the time. We cannot give one more dollar to a company which serves evil. We are not revolutionaries, we hope to save our nation as we have all along. But there needs to be a nation and right now the nations itself is placed on the block by men who have benefitted so much, yet given so little, and now are failing to protect it. Fuck them and anyone who supports them. We are through with staying out of it and there's too much at stake. 

This came to me in a stream of conscious today. I release any copyrights to anyone who wishes to use it.

Ice Out

My muse is so noisy
From God's Lips to my ear.
And now I stand fighting,
without any fear.

For my God is mighty.

I have God's protection.
What you have is simple,
Not a Godly connection.

For my country I fight,
for Red, White, Blue.
For my nation I stand,
and stand against you.

For my nation, my family.
Native born are we all.
Since 1832,
we heeded the call.

We were soldiers then,
as we are soldiers now.
We follow our God.
Never herded like cow.

You follow a madman.
You follow a fool.
You follow him blindly.
You're only his tool.

For he does not love you.
Though he may tell you so.
And when you aren't useful.
He will suddenly go.

For He is not loyal.
And He is not true.
And He's always false.
But expects more from you.

You stand on his bastions.
Carry weapons of hate.
We stand on the streets.
Our numbers more great.

You give him your body.
You give him your soul,
You give him your all,
That's His only goal.

So keep giving freely.
And He'll take it all.
For the shekels he offers
For the shekels you'll fall.

But he lives in safety.
And promises you that.
But he is a devil.
And you wear his hat.

A hat full of troubles.
You wear it all day.
For life you'll wear it.
You can't get away.

You will be known,
for the damage you do.
But you can leave now.
We give this to you.

He offered you shekels.
And now you're a cog.
If your pockets are empty.
Let him send out his dogs.

He gave you hotels
and restaurant bars.
He told you he'd do this.
He tricked you this far.

But when it all stops.
When he grinds to a halt.
Hotels becomes barracks.
And food without salt.

The sweet and the salty
will go from your diet.
But we have a plan
and you might as well try it.

The plan is so simple.

Go home or just join it.

We are fun people
But can be a riot.

And there you will stand,
with eleven and one.
And there we will stand,
without any gun.

And they will say shoot,
and shoot you just may.
Shoot brothers and sisters.
Shoot children they say.

What names we will call you
the word choices horrid.
And you might not like it.
It might make you torrid.

And you just might want this,
for a fight you are spoiling.
You do something stupid.
And we all will start boiling.

And when all that heat
Gets a just bit all too much.
And you are not sleeping.
And feel out of touch.

Think kindly of people.
The one's you disdain.
And wish to rekindle.
Our old friendship flame.

And we will accept you,
and your weak excuses.
Your claims you were fooled then.
You hope for forgiveness.

And we will accept you
but you followed orders.
We'll bring you to judges.
As His cannon fodders.

And if you can't see
what you read here is true.
Pull the trigger and find out
just who protects who.

For our God is mighty
and our God protecting,
our wives and our children.
while yours will be wailing.

For our fight is righteous.
God calling the tune.
Your god an orange man.
But more the fool you.

You follow him blindly.
Lend ear to his orders.
You pull the triggers.
You cause these disorders.

It's you causing riots.
You offered no peace.
And you stand there thinking.
That you are police.

But you are the person.
Whose doing the wrong.
And when you start singing.
We'll love your sad song.

And when your own family
does leave you behind.
You will cry at their doorstep
for your sin of pride.

It all comes from God
and pride's a great sin.
You are responsible
for the trouble you're in.

Your leaders are guilty
of crimes against us.
And they will sit sadly.
On our prison bus.

Or theymight just flee
to resorts full of plenty.
And leave you behind to
face the wraith of almighty.

And they you might follow,
and stand at their door.
They will smile at you.
But won't offer more.

They'll steal all your money
take your soul then forget it.
And leave you behind,
To face truth unprotected.

You'll know what you know
just as you do right now.
You're cattle to them.
To them only cow.

They will eat you or wear you
without any thought.
They will herd you to slaughter.
And sit on their butt.

They will laugh at the carnage.
They themselves have created.
And call out for more cowboys.
Their hunger not sated.

New cowboys may come.
Cows do what Cows do.
Because cows are just cows.
And now so are you.

These fences you build.
Will soon become walls.
The walls will contain you
if any of us falls.

They rope you and brand you
and put you in stalls
Our God sees our peace.
And break down your walls.

For our judges all know
from where power's derived.
And who is the righteous.
And who must be fried.

You do Satan's bidding
You shit smelling pup.
And we will stand peaceful.
Then cover you up.

And forget who you were.
You're not worth remembering.
And your name will be lost
Your family forgetting.

That they gave you a life.
And a good life no doubt.
They offered you all.
Then you sold us all out.