Notices by Rusty Swarf (rustyswarf@refactorcamp.org), page 4

@BruceJia Sure, but that doesn't mean that when permanent farming became the norm it wasn't a major transition.

The real hard work to be done here is to explain WHY civilized cultures have consistently beaten nomadic cultures until now, when there are none left.

Guns Germs & Steel was an admirable, but inadequate effort.

@BruceJia Agriculture was not a major transition?!? I'm on board with the rest of it.

@BruceJia Economics was pretty strawmanned, Money less so.

Wish he had acknowledged the role of money in allowing large societies to trade with each other--enabling transfer of ideas.

@BruceJia Notice in the footnotes "how to change the course of human history" by Graeber which I've tried and failed to get through so far. If you've read that, what's your take?

@BruceJia Hope you don't mind if I skim. First impression: he used the word "convivial," so it's heavily reliant on Ivan Illich.

Also, very impressive editing/formatting for a self-published book.

@BruceJia I'll give it a go ... been meaning to.

@nindokag Haha, that's interesting. Does that mean you could estimate the MPG of a horse by converting the caloric value of oats to gasoline?

I think the best New-New-Deal would be to give young people a Guaranteed Basic Job working for one or two elderly people, as IT support.

At the local computer store:

me: "Do you have any advice about how to learn to use this [new smartphone]? Like, what do all the different swipes mean?"

repair technician: "Ummm, I'd suggest finding a small child and asking them to teach you."

The Wall Street Journal has become "Rich Kids of Instagram" for old people.

Rephrasing the question:

If you had to create scientific climate data for the place you live, what events would you feel confident recording, with relative certainty about dates?

Do you have any personal heuristics you use to record annual weather patterns?

People who grow plants often keep calendars and record "first frost," for example.

Homeowners might keep track of major storms with repair/cleanup bills.

Seasonal workers might keep track of their hours, indicating a fish spawning or the beginning/end of snowpack.

@dereklh What kind of work could you do where most of it was worthwhile?

@nindokag Have those three rules of etiquette ever served you wrong?

@riga I mean, looking at it that way, the catholic church was the ultimate corrupt, nepotistic tax-evader that only took several hundred years to produce a few architectural marvels, destroying countless lives in the process.

So maybe we can look forward to something like that?

@riga Still, the CCC made a lot of long-lasting infrastructure that no private company would have paid for at the time.

I often think about how the US lags Europe because it hasn't yet built much millenia-level infrastructure.

@riga The Civilian Conservation Corps is the best example I can think of without going back to pre-money societies. But that was still a "jobs program."

@arteteco Sounds like a frustrating situation.

In my experience with group decisions like that, it's better to have a working example somewhere else.

Then have someone from the group visit your place, with the expertly managed compost/garden/whatever, and they see it and think "Oh, this is a nice thing, I wish we had one at our place."

Then you become the expert in someone else's battle.

@riga Everyone needs a framework for doing useful work, right?

What other frameworks exist?

@vgr So what are the advantages of nativism?