In my previous post, I advocate turning against the unproductive. Whenever you decide to turn against a group, it’s very important to prevent purity spirals. There needs to be a bright line that doesn’t move. Here is that line. You should be, on net, producing more than you are consuming. You shouldn’t feel bad if you are producing less than you could be. But at the end of your life, total it all up. You should have produced more than you consumed. We used to make shit in this country, build shit. It needs to stop. I have to believe that the average person is net positive, because if they aren’t, we’re already too far gone, and any prospect of a democracy is over. But if we aren’t too far gone, we have to stop the hemorrhaging. The unproductive rich are in cahoots with the unproductive poor to take from you. And it’s really the unproductive rich that are the problem. They loudly frame helping the unproductive as a moral issue for helping the poor because they know deep down they are unproductive losers. But they aren’t beyond saving. They just need to make different choices. This cultural change starts with you. Private equity, market manipulators, real estate, lawyers, lobbyists. This is no longer okay. You know the type of person I’m talking about. Let’s elevate farmers, engineers, manufacturing, miners, construction, food prep, delivery, operations. Jobs that produce value that you can point to. There’s a role for everyone in society. From productive billionaires to the fry cook at McDonalds. They are both good people. But negative sum jobs need to no longer be socially okay. The days of living off the work of everyone else are over. We live in a society. You have to produce more than you consume.

Updates to the Bear license

<![CDATA[I'm exploring another corner of the Interlisp ecosystem and history: the Interlisp-10 implementation for DEC PDP-10 mainframes, a 1970s character based environment that predated the graphical Interlisp-D system. I approached this corner when I set out to learn and experiment with a tool I initially checked out only superficially, the TTY editor. This command line structure editor for Lisp code and expressions was the only one of Interlisp-10. The oldest of the Interlisp editors, it came before graphical interfaces and SEdit. On Medley Interlisp the TTY editor is still useful for specialized tasks. For example, its extensive set of commands with macro support is effectively a little language for batch editing and list structure manipulation. Think Unix sed for s-exps. The language even provides the variable EDITMACROS (wink wink). Evaluating (PRINTDEF EDITMACROS) gives a flavor for the language. For an experience closer to 1970s Interlisp I'm using the editor in its original environment, Interlisp-10 on TWENEX. SDF provides a publicly accessible TWENEX system running on a PDP-10 setup. With the product name TOPS-20, TWENEX was a DEC operating system for DECSYSTEM-20/PDP-10 mainframes derived from TENEX originally developed by BBN. SDF's TWENEX system comes with Interlisp-10 and other languages. This is Interlisp-10 in a TWENEX session accessed from my Linux box: A screenshot of a Linux terminal showing Interlisp-10 running under TWENEX in a SSH session. Creating a TWENEX account is straightforward but I didn't receive the initial password via email as expected. After reporting this to the twenex-l mailing list I was soon emailed the password which I changed with the TWENEX command CHANGE DIRECTORY PASSWORD. Interacting with TWENEX is less alien or arcane than I thought. I recognize the influence of TENEX and TWENEX on Interlisp terminology and notation. For example, the Interlisp REPL is called Exec after the Exec command processor of the TENEX operating system. And, like TENEX, Interlisp uses angle brackets as part of directory names. It's clear the influence of these operating systems also on the design of CP/M and hence MS-DOS, for example the commands DIR and TYPE. SDF's TWENEX system provides a complete Interlisp-10 implementation with only one notable omission: HELPSYS, the interactive facility for consulting the online documentation of Interlisp. The SDF wiki describes the basics of using Interlisp-10 and editing Lisp code with the TTY editor. After a couple of years of experience with Medley Interlisp the Interlisp-10 environment feels familiar. Most of the same functions and commands control the development tools and facilities. My first impression of the TTY editor is it's reasonably efficient and intuitive to edit Lisp code, at least using the basic commands. One thing that's not immediately apparent is that EDITF, the entry point for editing a function, works only with existing functions and can't create new ones. The workaround is to define a stub from the Exec like this: (DEFINEQ (NEW.FUNCTION () T)) and then call (EDITF NEW.FUNCTION) to flesh it out. Transferring files between TWENEX and the external world, such as my Linux box, involves two steps because the TWENEX system is not accessible outside of SDF. First, I log into Unix on sdf.org with my SDF account and from there ftp to kankan.twenex.org (172.16.36.36) with my TWENEX account. Once the TWENEX files are on Unix I access them from Linux with scp or sftp to sdf.org. This may require the ARPA tier of SDF membership. Everything is ready for a small Interlisp-10 programming project. #Interlisp #Lisp a href="https://remark.as/p/journal.paoloamoroso.com/exploring-interlisp-10-and-twenex"Discuss.../a Email | Reply @amoroso@oldbytes.space !--emailsub--]]>

Billionaires, am I right? Immigrants, am I right? It’s going to be so painful to watch. Billionaires will go away. Immigrants will go away. The problems will continue to get worse. The problem is the unproductive. The rich unproductive and the poor unproductive. The finance middle-man and welfare recipient. The real estate agent and the person on disability. The person with a fake job. Anyone who purposefully creates complexity for others. The obstructionists. Rent seekers. Anyone who lobbies against others getting so they can have relatively more. Broken systems that elevate zero sum losers. Why can’t we all turn against them? The first step is recognizing this is the problem. I don’t know why most people don’t see it.