The Build, Days 8-10

This first part of the week was entirely taken up with further demolishing of the structures on the site and trucking them away …

Here the final duplex has been taken down .

In the foreground a pile of metals, another to the right. Seeing the fine-grained sorting of metal from rubble by the excavator arm with a two part scoop on the end serving as a hand, was totally impressive.

A computer gamer said the excavator operator was using it as a ‘skin’ and I suppose operating an actual excavator is probably not very different from operating a digital excavator, except that the ‘real’ operator has the rest of his crew to keep alive, make sure he stays on task, doesn’t break through the sewage pipes if any, etc etc. Meaning that there are real-world consequences.

This operator’s skill, though, makes me think that this job at least will be safe from being automated for a good while … the adult human brain is still very capable of out-thinking the AIs we’re all so worried about.

A reddit dot com/r/singularity discussion nine months ago considered that AIs didn’t yet have the capabilities of most mammals in that though AIs can be very smart on isolated tasks, they have no sustained intelligence the way most animals have.

All work stopped early on Wednesday afternoon as rain was forecast and we indeed had a good downpour.

Cat Diary 10

We have embarked on another training program, which is me learning not to ‘scrapple’ the carpet, is what the old woman calls it. Good luck with that, I say. It feels entirely too satisfying to give that up in a snap. I spread my front paw toes out wide and extend my front claws. Grab hold of a good swag of the stuff, and P-U-LL!

“NO!” the old woman said in a big voice.

The first time I got such a fright I had to go spend time under the couch to recover. But I had to make sure it was the clawing she was talking about, you know?

So I waltzed out in front of her working on the kitchen bench. Did it all again.

“NO!” she said.

So, yeah. OK. She doesn’t want me to shred the carpet. I’m pretty sure I’d have no problem, I already made short work of two rows of carpet weave that were sticking out into my domain from under the shed door.

Well no, maybe not short work. It might’ve taken me all one night, niggling at it. But would you believe, when the old woman went out for a walk, she came back with a huge slab of flood-worn five-ply she picked up from a place on the creek bank.

I said it’s big! But totally not something I’ve ever seen. Why wouldn’t I cringe away from it?

So first there was training me to trust it. Using kibbles of course.

Does she think I’ll trust anything just because it has kibbles on it?

OK, I didn’t last very long not trusting it. Soon gobbled them up and the thing didn’t leap up and bite me.

So next is teaching me to use it for my scratching instead of the carpet. Huh! I so can’t see that a piece of wood will be as satisfying as carpet!

The Build, Day 7

The demolitions began with a weeks worth of fencing the whole site as is the normal procedure. So counting working days from then, it’s day 7. My son kindly let me know that the whole construction industry in this country (Australia) uses the same calendar where 9 day working weeks and flexi-days are concerned.

So when I said on Monday nothing is happening, where are they? He said, they’ll be doing something on another site.

Well, they’re back today. At 8.30 AM a huge semi dump truck backed into Carinya’s main street, looking bigger than normal due to the littleness of the houses. That starting time, by the way, is due to the work being in a residential area. Normal construction industry starting times are 6.30 AM, or even 6 AM. An early start makes sense in spring summer and autumn, when temperatures may be over 30 Celsius.

Yesterday, at 35 degrees C (95 Fahrenheit) from about 11 AM here, would’ve been unbearable, with the humidity quite high too. Today temperatures are back in the mid twenties.

A couple of men in orange hi vis shirts unloaded maybe two dozen tires. And it’s only because I saw a clip about an archeological site in the Orkneys being covered with black plastic, with ‘retired’ tires to weight it down, that I realized the tires in the present scene must be to prevent a load of dust and rubble being blown all over the highway.

Sometimes it boggles my mind that old tires are being used for that purpose all over the world. One of the joys of the internet: good ideas spread as fast as bad ones.

They dumped a pile of concrete rubble at the end of the street, next to the mysterious hedge that is still there. All the other vegetation were massacred except the hedge? I need a site informant.

A large front end loader is at work at the lower (eastern) edge of the site, In the elbow on the map, filling that same truck with rubble and broken cement it’s scraping up from–I suspect–the forecourt. I’m going by what I can hear, in this instance.

I need to try and retrieve the map of the area we were all sent a couple of weeks ago … got it!

Well, it’d be better upside down, because that’s the way I’m looking at it and taking photos. I shall endeavor to do magic with various software. I’d like to put on treasure-island-style crosses to indicate where the work is being done. Watch this space.

WP, where is the hang up?

I’ve probably spent about an hour trying to comment on people’s websites–my apologies to the people who missed out–and then, to top it all off, had half an hour trying to get back to my own blog!

I had three passwords turned down, one of them the one I just put in. Then I linked with a service I do have a strong connection with, and was turned down the minute I tried to input using them.

Of course it may not be the fault of the platform we all love, or why keep coming back?

I’ve written before about the immense chain of connections necessary to be able communicate in this manner. And that is not even considering things things like power supply, labor strikes and the weather.

Correct me anywhere where I go wrong listing the stages necessary to make blogging possible.

Me on my laptop or using my mobile > by way of Jetpack or WP classical > my internet link > signals to the nearest telecommunication tower > [I’m a bit hazy on the next step. Is it up to space to a communication satellite?] > to the next tower and hopping to where an undersea cable takes the signal to the next country?

Well, I can see I need to do a bit of research.

New Growth

I’m just boasting here … not that I did any of the growing myself. These plants don’t seem to mind standing around on a south facing balcony …

Australian native fig (proper name later)

This is a rainforest species and starts in the undergrowth, so the conditions probably right up its alley.

Bolly gum … it’s reaching for the outdoor light I’ve been leaving on for the fishpond. It’s grown over 30 cm in 6 months. A sprig of its new growth.

This velvety kurrajong is also putting out new growth. I think I finally found the place it likes.

Isn’t that a lush and verdant growth of parsley and Chinese cabbage? I suspect that their success is more to do more with growing in thinly covered composting vegetables.

Most of the rest of the plants are struggling in various different ways. But never mind, I heard from my neighbours that we do get sun for a few weeks! Maybe then there will be various growth spurts. We’ll see.

The Build, Days 1+2

Day two of the demolition stage … a brand spanking new machine is busy taking out the vegetation so carefully nurtured by the gardening crew only a few days ago.

Someone could’ve saved themselves a swag of money, time and useless busy work if they only worked together.

When I watch a machine like that at work, I always wonder whether a couple of men on the ground couldn’t do that work more efficiently.

Chainsawing the shrubs, stacking them on a pile or dragging them to a truck. There aren’t any real trees in that section. How can it be cheaper?

Yes. Don’t worry. That was a rhetorical ‘big world’ question. I realise that by the time an employer pays humans their holiday pays, sickness benefits and super, one driver is cheaper than three laborers.

By ‘big world’ I mean the ESG costs as well as just running a demolition company.

E = environmental; S = social; G = governance … I’m still in the dark about the significance of the last one. You?

Reading: ‘The Lathe of Heaven’

I love Ursula Le Guin’s writings. I have The Lathe of Heaven on my shelves and as soon as I’m done with The Revenger series–any day now– I’ll be re-reading The Lathe.

In the meantime read this fabulous review by Sam Matey, and his reminders of how much ‘we’ (humanity) have/has progressed since the 1970s … And even though we’re trying to get used not progressing, not using more resources, these kind of progressions are needed.

https://sammatey.substack.com/p/unpaywalled-book-review-the-lathe/comments