The Art of Business Leadership then, consists of how to pull off this scam successfully, while mentioning it as little as possible.

The problem is not how to motivate people.

The problem is how to motivate people, while quietly pocketing most of the value they add through their labor.

The founders of an enterprise are just one part of its success. The company is made successful by the efforts and talents of many people.

There is no reason the founders should be compensated disproportionately. There is no reason for a few to take the lion's share of the wealth generated by all, while lording over them.

If the business were paying its workers fairly, the whole point of business leadership would be obviated.

Just pay the people what they earned! Then you won't have to figure out strategies to motivate them, to foster innovation, and to do any number of bullshit tasks that are necessary only because traditional business steal surplus value from their workers.

You don't have to tell people what to do! They already know what to do.

You don't have to “foster innovation”. Just pay people fairly, and they will feel incentivized to do their best. Actual innovation will take place, when people give their earnest best, not to please their “boss”, but because it is in their own interest.

You don't have to create a “welcoming workplace”. People already know how to deal with each other, as adults, without your paternalistic/maternalistic meddling, infantilizing and condescension.

You don't have to pay people to go play pickleball on company time.

You don't need to bamboozle your employees with cheap tricks — a foosball table, video games, a fridge full of snacks and beer, and other such gimmicks.

You don't have to tell employees, “We're a family here.” Everyone knows just how true/false that is, and you don't need to embarrass yourself needlessly by mouthing those words, for a few dollars.

You don't have to incentivize people with time off. Just let them work from wherever, whenever, as long as they attend scheduled online meetings, and produce quality results in a timely manner.

A leader will often make things worse. The best leaders do as little as possible and get out of the way.

Here is a Free Software co-operative I founded in 2024, that is employee-owned, and egalitarian:

we.glue.earth Inc.

I welcome your feedback, funding, collaboration, pull requests etc.

All work is licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Table of Contents

Introduction

Identities — the Public, the Private, and the Anonymous.

AlohaCoin — the cryptocurrency for Wealth Redistribution.

maLcoLM — the Ethical AI.

cool:// — the Web de-enshittified.

SpamFree — the end of SPAM.

Worker-owned Co-operatives — the shape of work in the 21^st century.

Introduction

When Sir Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989, it was meant to facilitate the exchange of scientific data between researchers around the world. Over the years, it has mutated into a digital landfill with a cloud of data smog hovering above it, filled with commercial advertisments, dancing baloney, clickbait, fake news, AI posing as humans, solicitors, snooping agents, identity thieves, phishers, scammers, spammers, and crackers. As a result, trust in basic institutions like the government and the press has eroded, and we are left confused, with few things to believe in.

High priests and gatekeepers ruled through sheer obscurantism and gaslighting the masses into thinking that they are less than capable of running their own lives. Talking heads and panels of experts browbeat us into choking down our voices, and engage with their endless dissections of issues of no actual relevance, while ignoring what is meaningful to us.

In this article, I offer a few ideas to shape how we use the Internet in this century. The aim is democratization, and giving a voice to everyone, including marginalized people who were kept by a gauntlet from voting in a so-called democracy.

Identities

Most of the world's information systems were rube goldberg contraptions, in the absence of an identity management system.

Web identities can be simplified to exactly 3 types:

1. Public Identity

A public identity is certified by a distributed, decentralized, democratic certifying authority and always ends with a globally unique id in brackets. Maximum of one public identity per living person.

Examples: Samuel Clemens [808] and Ashwin Dixit [420] refer to these people by their legal names.

2. Private Identities

A person can have any number of private identities, which are pseudonyms and always begin with an * and end with a globally unique id in brackets.

Examples: * _ashitaka_88 [862] and * Mononoke [862] are the same user.

* James Bond [45565] and * James Bond [937841] are different users.

3. Anonymous Identity

The universally Anonymous identity requires no permission and no key. Bots can use this identity ( as can 👽, etc. 😁 ).

It is always shown as: [Anonymous]

maLcoLM — the Ethical AI

Quite frankly, conventional AI is daylight robbery and creative people are understandably enraged about it. The main problems with conventional AI are:

1. No Consent: grabs people's content without asking.

2. No Credit: gives the creators no credit.

3. No Compensation: does not pay the creators.

4. Trivialization: dehumanizes the craft people worked hard to learn.

5. Displacement: throws creative people out of work using their own creations, which it stole, against them — like a thief breaking into your house, stealing your gun, robbing you at gunpoint with the same gun, then getting away with evicting you from your home, since they now have your gun, money, and all your stuff to boot.

6. Environmental Impact: inefficiently uses Earth's resources for purposes that are often neither quite utilitarian, nor properly aesthetic.

Solution: maLcoLM — the Ethical AI

maLcoLM is a completely Free and Open Source LLM, named as a tribute to Malcolm X.

maLcoLM uses all available public domain data for training.

Also, maLcoLM addresses the pain points of conventional AI:

1. Consent: Creators voluntarily send ( not submit ) content to maLcoLM, for use as training data.

2. Credit: maLcoLM credits each creator every time a derived work draws upon their creations, if they choose to be publicly credited.

3. Compensation: maLcoLM pays each creator instantly in AlohaCoin, using smart contracts, every time a derivative work of theirs is monetized.

4. Celebration: maLcoLM celebrates the hard work creators put into learning their craft, by pooling it with the work of other creators, and turning it into a supercharged tool to let us take creativity to the next level. For example — if you spent decades learning a drawing technique, now you can slack a little, and apply that skill ready-made to your next creative project. Create a maLcoLM account, and send one creation ( code, image, audio, video, etc. ) as training data, and maLcoLM is yours to use free for life.

5. Empowerment: See Worker-owned Co-Operatives

6. Environmental Impact: See AlohaCoin

Free and Open Source programmers use maLcoLM to generate code, and optionally help train it by using the IDE plugin or sending code repos.

As with contributing to any Free Software project like GNU/Emacs or GNU/Linux, contributions to maLcoLM will help the world at large.

How maLcoLM works:

maLcoLM assigns a unique creator_id to each creator, and a creation_id to each creation they send. For every derived work generated, maLcoLM produces a credits hash table.

key: creator_id

value: % of the generated work that this creator's creations were used as input data for.

For example:

This is somewhat like tracking tomato plants grown by various growers around the world, processed through a complex and dynamic supply chain, from harvesting tomatoes, processing them into ketchup, to bottling ketchup and shipping it to stores. Then, picking up a random bottle of tomato ketchup off a shelf, and asking to identify each individual tomato plant that contributed to that specific bottle.

This granular level of tracking is already possible. Piggybacking a creator_id metadata field alongwith each input item, and preserving it throughout the generation process is relatively easy and gives us digital provenance. Thanks to Jaron Lanier, and his article “There is No A. I.” for the inspiration behind this idea.

AlohaCoin ( v2.0, proposed )

• AlohaCoin is a green-energy-based cryptocurrency aimed at Wealth Redistribution.

• 10% of each AlohaCoin transaction is automatically disbursed equally to every existing wallet. No exceptions. No ifs ands or buts. No politicians, experts, or talking heads to distract the people and siphon public funds.

• AlohaCoin wallets have a finite size, like cash wallets, and unlike the greed of the billionaires. If there are W wallets, and N Alohacoins in existence, then each wallet's balance is capped at N / W. If the globe's wealth were a pie, everybody gets an equal slice of that pie. Any amount sent to a wallet, in excess of the wallet's maximum size, is automatically disbursed to all wallets.

• If some boats in a marina rise with the rising tide while others are stuck in the mud, the marina is rigged, and should be demolished and replaced. While many disadvantaged groups, such as descendants of enslaved peoples, rightly feel that they should be made whole, perhaps the idea of reparations is too complex to be practicable. Distributing reparations requires tracking genetics and records of human slavery, which raises difficult questions:

  • Do African-American immigrants, who are not descended from enslaved people, get reparations? Does Elon Musk get reparations?
  • What if the genealogy is mixed, fuzzy, and/or complicated? Who should get paid how much in reparations, according to what rules or formulae?

• AlohaCoin aims to spread wealth so abundantly, that we skirt these thorny issues related to exactly how to implement Social Justice using reparations as a means. If all boats rise with the rising tide, and no boats are stuck, do we care much about the past state of affairs?

• Over time, as wealth is distributed more evenly, the incentives for crime, violence, and war drop. The world becomes a kinder, gentler place. Eventually, money itself becomes moot. If everyone on the planet were a millionaire, and there were no hyperinflation, who would care about the petty amounts involved in daily life?

• If you are wondering — “Do people get paid 10% of every AlohaCoin transaction, even if they don't work?”, the answer is, Yes! AlohaCoin aims for everyone to have enough, so you can scale down your work hours, which will scale down production of goods, extraction of resources, mass over-consumption, and the pollution problems it brings. If newly rich Asians started consuming like their Western counterparts, the Earth would be reduced to a landfill, before climate change problems can even affect us seriously. Stopping this unsustainable growth in garbage is crucial to fixing global warming.

• If your sense of justice is galled by the idea of people getting paid to do nothing, consider this:

{ *********************************************************** }

• Each living person can have upto 1 AlohaCoin wallet. Bots can have none.

• Like Ethereum, AlohaCoin has a Distributed Virtual Machine ( DVM ) on which one may purchase compute resources. The AlohaCoin DVM also runs computations to verify AlohaCoin transactions by accepting payloads from any user who purchases AlohaCoin compute resources, processing them, and returning the output to that user, thus becoming a candidate for the AlohaCoin block resolution reward.

• Birth/Death certificates are issued by a crowdsourced, decentralized and democratic entity, which also creates/deletes AlohaCoin wallets.

• To verify transactions, AlohaCoin miners provide proof-of-useful-work, offering compute resources by serving as nodes in the AlohaCoin Distributed VM.

• AlohaCoin miners use green energy from offshore arrays of floating spherical pods which harvest solar & ocean energy.

  • each pod runs:
    • Linux Container
    • AlohaCoin miner

Web Dev is cool:// Again

Why cool://?

When I started as a Webmaster ( that's what they called “the web guy”, because the Web field was not very diverse, or specialized ) in 1994, Web Development was very simple. There was no client-side scripting. Then Web Development turned into a labyrinthine nightmare. A Full-stack Web Developer had to know HTML, CSS, JS, a server-side language, a templating language, DDL, and SQL, at the bare minimum. That's 7 different computer languages each with very different purpose and arcane syntax.

cool:// takes the Web back to its roots, trims out the junk, distills it to essentials, consolidates the most commonly recurring patterns, and makes Web Development simple and fun again, even in the age of AI and vibecoding.

cool:// is the eye in the needle through which everything passes and which filters out the shit to create a new, de-enshittified web.

How cool:// benefits Users:

• No cookies.
• No ads, which means a faster user experience.
• The great joy of not being sold anything.
• No distractions. No nonsense. Just content. A focused and leisurely experience.
• No trackers following you around the web.
• No popups and disclaimers at every site you visit.
• Very few forms to fill, as logins are as seamless as possible. ( See Identities )
• Improved privacy and security.

How cool:// benefits Developers:

• cool:// aims to replace JS, an ugly language that has gone on too long.

• cool:// radically simplifies Web Development by using Python for both — client-side and server-side code.

• Content: Instead of HTML, cool:// uses a simple Markdown-ish language based on Syntext. A very minimal subset of HTML tags is allowed to be mixed in with Markdown. Some custom tags are added to this minimal set, and will be proposed before the W3c, as additions to the HTML standard.

• Logic: cool:// uses Brython instead of JS for client-side scripting. The server-side language could be Python, Ruby, Perl, Raku, or anything else you like.

• Presentation: cool:// uses a minimal variant of CSS, radically simplified for developer friendliness.

How cool:// benefits Enterprises:

• It is easier to hire cool:// Developers, as the required skill set is much smaller.

• Faster development time.

cool:// Implementation Notes:

• Browser Plugin intercepts and handles calls to the cool:// scheme.

• Encrypted handshake with web servers that support cool:// over an extra http header. Servers that suport cool:// answer back with an encrypted response. Otherwise the Plugin exits, defaulting the session back to https://.

• If the server supports cool://, it specifies which Identities it accepts. The user has configured the cool:// browser plugin with their choices, and so an identity is agreed upon nearly automatically and its credentials exchanged. For example:

  1. The server might require the public identity, e.g. for public voting systems and forums. If the client agrees to share their public identity, an authorization level is agreed upon, and the session proceeds. Each page served is encrypted with a key containing the current UTC timestamp.

  2. The server might state that it supports the public, and private identities. Depending on the user choices configured in the Plugin, it might choose to login with a private identity with the server, optionally prompting the user to select from a list of their many private identities. Or the client might choose to log in with the public identity, if the user chose that default during Plugin configuration.

  3. The server might state that it allows all identities ( public, private, and anonymous ) or any combination thereof. Again, which identity the client logs in with, depends on the user's existing choices which the Plugin knows about.

• Cryptographically signed timestamps

• cool:// key signed by an OTP that is periodically refreshed

• Extend Syntext through composition to add custom tags.

• A limited subset of HTML is passed through.

• Initially piggyback on HTTPS.

• Could front for multiple protocols including X11. An X server (MIT license) is bundled with the plugin.

• Ensure maximum accessibility with 100% ANDI compatibility.

• End-to-End tested with Playwright

SpamFree

SpamFree is an email system that adds AlohaCoin Smart Transactions to fight spam.

With each email message you send, you can optionally attach a Reading Fee in AlohaCoin, which the recipient of the email may claim instantly. This is possible using AlohaCoin Smart Transactions.

You can set a Minimum Reading Fee for your email inbox. Messages should have at least that many AlohaCoins attached, to be worth your time, otherwise they will not be shown.

You may get an advertisement from a commercial interest, and choose to read it ( or not ), and collect the attached reading fee. Remember, 10% of all AlohaCoin transactions get automatically disbursed to all existing wallets.

When you receive an email from someone you know, you may enter them into your personal Allow list, which will bypass the requirement of a reading fee for all future messages. You may also choose to not claim the reading fee attached with their initial email.

You can block email addresses by adding them to your Block list, so they will not be shown, no matter the reading fee attached.

Worker-owned Co-operatives

maLcoLM changes the shape of work in a radical way. Too many people were unemployed, anxious in their long job searches, were ghosted by employers, and sat around spinning their wheels ( hopefully learning new skills to stay up to date ).
Exploitative corporations and their hierarchical mindset never suited the contemporary generations anyway. So people chose to connect with their peers, and formed egalitarian, democratic, radically transparent, employee-owned co-operatives. They pooled their time, energy, skills, money, and any other resources they could, to become owners of their own businesses, running them with pride. In all walks of business – from pizzerias, ride-sharing services, delivery services, home repair services, remote-first software companies, to pet-sitting services, people finally decided to keep their earnings rather than hand over the lion's share to some corporation. They enjoyed all the personal freedom, creative leeway, collegial work environment and informal, no-nonsense directness that came with the pride of ownership. In many cases, family units started their own co-operatives with all adult members owning equal shares. One could buy one's share out of any co-operative, including one's family's and move to another town to join/start another co-operative. Using maLcoLM, people can produce for their co-operatives at a higher scale of integration.

See also:

• Brython
• Syntext
• ANDI
• Playwright
• X11

Thanks:

• Malcolm X
• Margaret Heffernan
• Sir Tim Berners Lee
• Jaron Lanier
• Cory Doctorow
• Neal Stephenson

All work is licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Here's my firsthand account of systemic corruption in Hawai'i:

1.

I paid for a camping permit for 7 nights ( $21/night ), at the Punalu'U Black Sand Beach. One evening, I was very tired. It was cold, and windy, and getting dark, so I was having difficulty setting up my tent on the beach. Then it started raining. So I decided to run to a pavilion, instead of setting up my tent.

Around 8pm, I was resting in the pavilion, when a security guard showed up and asked me to move out of the pavilion, saying “Overnight camping in the pavilion is not allowed.”

I tried explaining my situation politely: * It was only around 8pm, not near midnight. * It was cold & dark outside. * I showed my ID, & a paid camping permit.

This did not change the security guard's mind. He called the police. The police arrived, and checked my ID & paid camping permit. Then, without reading me my rights, the police arrested me. The police manhandled me, damaging my arm which was recovering from surgery. I was put in jail for the night. Next morning, I was brought before a judge, then released with a trial date to assess my “crime”. I had filled out a form to request a public defender, as I could not afford a lawyer.

2.

Having no place to stay, I went back to Punalu'U Black Sand Beach. As I was sitting in the pavilion, charging my devices, a security guard arrived again and asked me to leave. Again, I showed my ID & camping permit. Shortly thereafter, police arrived, arrested me again, without reading any rights, and put me in jail again. I was brought before a judge, and released with another trial date. Again, I filled out a form to request a public defender. Now, I had two “offenses” on my record.

3.

I went to court on the appointed court date. The public defender refused to represent me, giving some nonsense reason, such as losing my paperwork. The judge was unsympathetic to my pleas, and set another court date. Again, I filled out a form to request a public defender.

4.

I went to the court on the next appointed court date. The public defender refused to represent me again, and made up some other nonsense reason. The judge was unsympathetic to my pleas, and set another court date.

5.

I attended the Zoom call, on the next appointed court date. The public defender refused to represent me again. I told the judge that I was homeless and food insecure, and did not trust the public defender. The judge was unsympathetic to my pleas, and set another court date.

6.

I lost my phone, which locked me out of many of my online identities. My court date was June 24th, but I thought it was June 28th, 2024, because I had lost access to my online identities & data.

I went to the Kailua-Kona library, on June 28th to get exact information to go to the court. I could not find an email address for the court. I asked the librarians ( Julia and Allison ) to help me find the email address for the court in Kailua-Kona. They could not find that information, but told me that the trial was on June 24th.

So I missed the court date. Now, there was a “contempt of court” criminal charge against me, in addition to the two other “offenses”. There was a $10 fee I could pay to post bail. I did not have $10.

7.

I used to sleep on the beach on Old Airport Road, but my life was physically threatened and my belongings stolen. I decided to start sleeping behind the Kailua-Kona library, where there was light and security cameras. Many other homeless people sleep in the library campus at night. Overall, I thought this would be a safer place to sleep. I would pack & leave by roughly 6am every morning.

8.

I was just getting up one morning, behind the library, when another homeless person showed up, whom I knew from Hope Services. He had been taken to the hospital the week before, for drug / alcohol / psychological issues. He was somewhat drunk and offered me alcohol. I don't drink, but offered to have breakfast with him, to calm him down, and then leave the library with him.

In this process, I lost track of time. It was after 7am when Allison, the librarian arrived and threatened to call the police on us. This man quickly left, leaving behind many of his belongings. I cleaned up his mess. As I was packing to leave, Allison again showed up and threatened to call the police.

I raised my voice at Allison, and shouted, “Call the police! I don't get justice around here anyway. I have been arrested before, without any rights being read.” ( paraphrased )

I then left the library.

9.

2-3 days later, on Friday, August 9, 2024, I was inside the library, using the computer, when Allison told me to come outside. She had called the police on me. The police arrested me, again without reading any rights. I was put in jail from 2024/08/09 – 2024/08/12, on the criminal charge of not paying the $10 fine, “in contempt of court”.

10.

I went to the library a few days later, and was told that I had been “trespassed” and was not allowed in the library for 1 year.

I told them that this was “selective enforcement of law”. The librarians are quite aware ( ex: from security cameras ) that many, many homeless people sleep in the library campus at night. Yet, Allison chose to call the cops on just one person who had raised his voice to her.

I told the librarians that this was an illegal exercise of privilege.

Example: 10 illegal immigrants work at a place. Some local has a personal dispute with 1 of those workers. The local has that 1 immigrant deported. The other 9 immigrants are now supposed to be deferential to this one local, because she can get them deported too.

The law exists, but is selectively enforced by those with privilege. Effectively, the privileged class uses the laws for their own nefarious purposes. The law does not apply equally to all.

This is very, very illegal!

I intend to seek justice ( not revenge ) so that the world is a little bit better, not just for me, but for everyone.

Here are the parties I need to seek justice against: * The Security Guards at Punalu'U Black Sand Beach * The Police * The Public Defender * The Judge * The Librarian

Equal rights & Justice!

All work is licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

The elephant sock puppet and the donkey sock puppet put on quite an engaging show, with the elephant playing a convincing baddie and the donkey, the “good” character. Some didn't like the goody two shoes, and rooted for the elephant. The puppeteer sighed at how easily the children were engaged with his silly pantomime. The plot was hardly new or original, mostly revolving around how the brown brutes from a land across the seas were coming to attack the village and whether the donkey or the elephant was better qualified to protect us from the big bad brownies.

As the donkey and elephant both loudly made pleas for money, the audience stuffed cash in their favorite puppets mouth. Each time, the puppeteer, Mr. War Pig, emptied the cash into his pocket, and theatrically thanked the audience. Making people a part of the show was great show biz, and the fiat monopoly money tokens with Illuminati logos printed on linen strips really made the audience feel like they were controlling the story interactively.

All work is licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

The peaceful vibe of our towns is disturbed daily by loud landscaping tools – leafblowers, weed whackers, lawnmowers etc.

Leafblowers not only emit harmful fumes, but their loud sound harms the delicate ecosystems of birds, bees, and other fauna. The irritating noise is also a public health hazard for humans, adding to our stress levels.

Proposed Solutions:

. Let us:

* Ban gas-powered leafblowers etc.

* Require street cleaners to use old-fashioned brooms and rakes.

. Replace these machines by recruiting homeless people to keep the parks clean of leaves and trash. A handful of city workers could be designated to supervise the manual cleaning efforts of teams of homeless people, who would be paid a decent hourly wage ( preferably above the minimum wage ). These homeless contractors would be issued brooms, rakes, and other supplies to keep the public areas free of leaves and litter. They might be organized in teams, each team assigned responsibility for maintaining a specific zone.

Benefits:

. Lower cost: * fuel costs * maintenance costs * cost of skilled operators

. Lower air pollution.

. Lower sound pollution.

. Benefit to the local community: Giving homeless people not just an income, but a sense of ownership, responsibility, and pride.

. Better results: An hour of daily cleaning by an operator-driven machine doesn't quite keep the parks clean. Homeless people and visitors soon litter the park. The cleaning process has to be repeated daily, with limited results. If the same homeless people were zealously guarding their assigned territories, the park would be kept clean continually.

. Lower crime.

. Increased ecotourism.

All these factors, taken together, would significantly improve the overall quality of life. I humbly request responsible officials to study the feasibility and do cost-benefit analyses.

All work is licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

complacent,

complicit in corrupt crony capitalism,

cruel cops,

callous churches,

cheerful consumerism.

I have become comfortably dumb!

All work is licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Legislative Reforms:

People's Budget:

Let the people of Hawai'i make up their own State budget. This could be accomplished via a website where voters can choose where to allocate taxpayer funds. For example:

• Healthcare: 25%
• Education: 21%
• Transportation: 20%
• Energy: 23%
• Agriculture: 11%

Inclusive Government:

Abolish the requirement to elect all officials from the same party. Candidates from various parties should work together to solve issues for the people. The system should disallow “winner take all” crony capitalism.

Reduce dependence on US mainland!

Transform Hawai'i into a big Green Energy Powerhouse

Energy sources:

1. Solar energy
2. Ocean energy
3. Geothermal energy
4. Wind energy

Free electricity, available throughout the State!

Eliminate Gasoline imports!

Transport:

• Improve the public transportation system.

• Phase out gasoline powered vehicles.

• Develop drop-in electric motors to replace the infernal combustion engine, converting existing vehicles to run on electricity.

• Generate local jobs by creating cottage industries to make lightweight bikes, trikes, cars and other vehicles:

  • made from local ingredients:

    • Bamboo truss frames
    • Hemp Canvas
    • Bee's wax for waterproofing

  • The only synthetic / metal parts will be:

    • battery
    • wires
    • motor
    • electronics

  • The drive train and even the gear box could be made out of wood / bamboo, to lower the impact on Earth.

  • featuring:

    • optional manual assist, so you can get some exercise.
    • regenerative braking, so your energy is used to charge the vehicle.
    • Collision-avoidance Protocol: An onboard safety protocol based on Bluetooth.
      1. Vehicles form temporary, spontaneous networks with other vehicles in close proximity.
      2. Each vehicle uses a one-time identifier to join a network of local vehicles on the road, guaranteeing anonymity.
      3. Each vehicle publishes its characteristics, such as:
         • dimensions
         • current position
         • mass
         • acceleration characteristics
         • battery status
      4. The vehicles can detect unexpected conditions that require a split-second-response, such as any combination of:
         • driver error
         • bad road conditions, such as a wave, fallen rock or tree.
         • bad weather conditions
      5. In case of such emergencies, the vehicles do an algorithmically concerted dance in lock-step, to ensure passenger safety and avoid collisions.
      6. For example, in case the road is narrowed due to a fallen tree, the algorithm might align the vehicles in a single file, letting them avoid the obstacle and pass in a row, one at a time, through a single lane.

Ecotourism, not just tourism:

Place strict regulations on tourism, transforming it to sustainable ecotourism.

Trees:

• Ban chopping trees, except by forest rangers.
• Allow gathering fallen wood only.
• Wood will become expensive, and used mindfully for specific purposes like:
  • Printing books, on demand. The book is printed after an order is placed.
  • Art supplies, such as drawing paper, papier mâché etc.
  • Sculpture
  • Furniture
• It will become expensive to print paper flyers, junk mail etc.
• Eliminate all paperwork possible, in favor of electronic communications.

Funeral rites:

• Ban clearing land for burials.
• Ban chopping wood for cremations.
• Human remains should preferably be incinerated.
• Trees may be planted to commemorate deceased people. The trees may be in groves, denoting families, friends, and other related people. It may be more meaningful to remember all the deceased ones, by sitting silently in their memorial tree grove, than to weep over an isolated concrete grave stone.

Ban harmful items:

• Ban Gasoline powered leaf-blowers

• Ban Car Alarms:

  • Ban noisy external car alarms!
  • They ruin the sonic ambience and peace of the area.
  • They are ineffective in preventing car theft.
  • In 2024, every car can send an alarm signal directly to the owner's phone, which will not disturb the peace.

• Ban filter Cigarettes: in favor of filter-free cigarettes which use locally made cigarette-holders, with rarely replaced filters. Like the good old roaring 20's!

• Ban disposable Vapes: in favor of re-fillable vapes. Locals use disposable vapes as USBC power sources, which mitigates some harm, but eventually these devices end up in the Ocean.

• Ban Plastic Lighters: in favor of wooden / bamboo lighters.

• Ban Plastic bottles: in favor of locally made, re-fillable bottles, made of bamboo etc.

  • Provide abundant free water fountains throughout.

Raise import taxes on anything that can be produced locally!

• Bananas: Why import bananas from Ecuador, that are raised on chemical fertilizers, harvested by exploited third world labor, and flown to Hawai'i on carbon-emitting airplanes that harm the Earth? Local, organic bananas are a much better choice for both the local farmers, and for the Earth!

• Coffee: Why is coffee flown in from the mainland cheaper than high quality, locally grown coffee?

• SPAM: Produce a line of locally produced lunch meat that tastes like SPAM, but is organic and healthier. Reduce the need for cans.

• Toothbrushes & toothpaste: Replace with fresh Neem datun (tree twigs) available at local farmer's markets for natural dental hygiene, as practiced in ancient India.

• Antiseptics: Boil Neem leaves, and use the water as a disinfectant, and for cleansing baths.

Sewage:

* Parks & Recreation should eliminate toilet paper and chemical porta-potties. * Fit toilets with bidets that use solar energy to pump filtered sea water to wash your rear. * Provide Earth friendly soap. * Supply desalinated tap water. * Treat the sewage locally as humanure. Decentralize sewage processing.

Garbage:

There is a small financial incentive for people to pick up recyclable bottles and cans. However, a large portion of the garbage is not recyclable and goes into the Ocean. Examples: * Cigarette butts ( mentioned above ) * Plastic wrappers * Bottle caps * Food containers

• Here's a proposal that incentivizes people to pick up all garbage.

• Strategically install well-designed garbage bins with lids, throughout the touristy areas. People will dispose of garbage properly, if you give them half a chance.

Tool lending libraries:

Hawai'is State Library System should make household tools available to check-out, as easily as books, movies, or musical instruments. Every household does not need to have a full set of tools at all times.

Educate people in sustainable living

• Need less.
• Consume less.
• Work less.
• Produce less.
• Pollute less.
• Play more.
• Rest more.
• Take pride in the Āina:
  • Set a good example for visitors by showing them the hospitable spirit of Aloha!
  • Maintain Hawai'i so well, that visitors are too embarrassed to throw garbage around.
  • Volunteer to serve the local community, by picking up garbage, and helping those in need.

The USA may fight oil wars, but

Not In Our Name!

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The Island of Hawai'i provides public transportation via the Heleon Bus System.

The buses are free to ride.

However, there are several issues with the Roberts Heleon Bus System:

• Punctuality: The buses are not punctual. If you plan to travel by bus, add several extra hours for bus tardiness.

• Regularity: The buses are not regular. Many times, a bus simply does not show up, leaving passengers stranded. Don't plan time-sensitive travel on the bus.

• Service: I have personally experienced several problems with the drivers.

  • Denial of Service: On a handful of occasions ( more than 6 ), the bus drivers denied me service, by simply not stopping for me. Once a bus stopped, the door opened, and as I was picking up my luggage to get in, the door closed within 10 seconds, and the driver drove off, with me banging on the side of the bus. On a few other occasions, I was left standing alone in the middle of the designated bus stop area, as the driver pulled in, noticed me, and kept driving instead of stopping.

  • Rude Drivers: On several occasions, bus drivers have treated me with extreme rudeness. Recently, a bus driver started shouting at me, unprovoked, asking me not to touch the doors. He would not let me get a word in edgewise.

• Unclear Stops: Bus stops are sometimes not marked clearly, or in many cases not marked at all. There is not even a sign indicating where the bus stops. Furthermore, different drivers stop at different places along the vaguely designated, unmarked bus stop area making life confusing for passengers.

• Unsheltered Stops: Many bus stops don't offer passengers shelter from the Sun, rain, or wind while they wait.

  • Ocean View: an unpaved, potholed dirt lot, with nothing around to offer passengers any shelter.
  • Whittington Beach Park: unmarked stop with no shelter.
  • Na'Alehu Elementary School: the stop could use a redesign, as it offers scant shelter from rain and wind.

• Unclear Website: The Hele-On bus website is overly complicated, and not user-friendly. The schedules and maps are not easy to access, as they are available in the form of badly laid-out PDF files. The web application to look up a route is quirky and does not always return the expected results.

• Unclear App: The Moovit app displays a lot of advertising, and is not well designed. For example, it requires an Internet connection to work, rather than storing the latest available schedules on the phone, for offline use.

• Environmental Pollution:

  • exhaust fumes pollute the air
  • noise pollution from engine

• Cost:

  • Fuel: Costly gasoline imported from the mainland.
  • Maintenance: Internal combustion engines require significant maintenance costs.

==================================================

Alternate proposal:

A solar bus system.

• Each bus will be powered by batteries which are charged at solar charging stations and swapped into buses.

• The buses will provide:

  • Onboard restroom ( with compostable sewage processing )
  • Free onboard WiFi
  • Every seat will have:
    • Free electric charging outlet
    • Fan vent
    • Reading light

• The buses will be zero emission in terms of:

  • exhaust fumes
  • sound

• The buses will be designed for passenger safety and comfort, and environmental friendliness.

• The buses will be simple, minimal and robust in design. Since there is no engine, there will be very few moving parts. The maintenance overheads will also be greatly reduced. The buses will be built to last, and not for planned obsolesence.

• The buses may have an almost completely transparent top ( ceiling and sides ), reinforced by a frame.

• Optional: Individual passengers will be able to polarize/unpolarize the window above their seat to get shade from the Sun.

• There will be a very simple, elegant and streamlined website with:

  • a clear schedule that can be quickly consulted at a glance.
  • a map showing all the bus routes, with stops, and arrival times at each stop.
  • the current real-time location of all buses ( like Lyft / Uber ) on the map.
  • the What3Words address of each bus stop.

• There will be a simple app that:

  • lets you look up the current real-time location of any bus on a map.
  • lets you look up the What3Words address of each bus stop.
  • caches the latest bus schedules for offline use.

• Each bus stop will:

  • be clearly marked with a sign, and optionally the schedules of buses that stop there.
  • be covered on all sides, providing thorough protection from the Sun, wind and rain.
  • provide free WiFi.
  • provide electric charging outlets, optionally powered by solar panels on the roof.

Benefits:

• Save money in:

  • fuel costs
  • maintenance costs

• Reduce air and sound pollution.

• Significantly improve the passenger experience, which could boost ecotourism.

• Reduce dependence on cars, which could mean better road safety for the island.

• Reduce reliance on gasoline, thereby greatly reducing Hawai'i's contribution to US wars.

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Personally, I am all for God. However, in this essay, I am with Russell in voicing my opposition to Christianity.

“You shall know them by the fruits of their labor.“

• Who enslaved Africans? Christians.
• Who committed the genocide of Native Americans? Christians.
• Who colonized Hindustan ( India, Pakistan & Bangladesh ) killing millions, looting wealth, and reducing one of the most prosperous regions on Earth, to one of the poorest? Christians.
• Who colonized and forcibly converted South America, nearly killing off advanced ancient civilizations ( the Mayans, the Aztecs and the Inca )? Christians.
• Who committed the genocide of Australian aborigines and stole the continent? Christians.
• Who burned women as witches? Christians.
• Who persecuted Galileo? Christians.
• Who opposed Darwin? Christians.
• Who burned crosses on lawns? Christians.
• What was the official religion of the German Nazi party? Christianity.
• Who started World War I? Christians.
• Who started World War II? Christians.
• Who are the only people to drop nuclear bombs? Christians.
• Which mainstream religion preaches intolerance towards LGBTQ+ people? Christianity.

Taken together, the three Abrahamaic religions have the highest body count in all of human history.

Are there good Christians and bad Christians? See the “No True Scotsman fallacy”.

I oppose Christianity, not people. After all, Jesus said, “Hate the sin, not the sinner.”

Whitewashing Genocide

Bengal was a region rich in natural and cultural resources, before two to four million people were killed as a direct result of Churchill's policies, in the Bengal Famine of 1943.

36 year later, Mother Theresa was awarded the Nobel prize, for “helping the poor people of Bengal”.

The world remembers the kindness of the Christian nun, but not why the people of Bengal needed her in the first place, due to the white supremacist prime minister of UK.

Psychological Manipulation

Abraham was apparently commanded by God to kill his son Isaac, and readied to obey. Note that Abraham was not asked to kill some random person, or even himself, but to knife his own child. Killing one's own child is the most heinous and cold-blooded act a human being can commit. This act of mindless submission to authority is held by believers as good.

Today, Abraham would be diagnosed as a homicidal schizophrenic, for attempting murder at the command of a voice in his head. Christians are told to be grateful to this murderous voice of authority, and regard it as kind and merciful, because it actually stopped the murder, before Abraham could kill Isaac.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.“

~ Voltaire.

Once a malicious hacker takes over a system, they test to see if they have full access. That seems to be the intent of the Bible here. Can the reader act on their own conscience and common sense, or can they be made to commit the most horrible act imaginable?

Christianity is a religion of Slave Morality, as Nietzsche put it. Basically, it asks you to switch off your brain and obey.

“Lean not on your own understanding...“

Christianity is the religion of crusaders, conquerors, colonizers, conquistadors and imperialists.

“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.“

~ Desmond Tutu

Christianity teaches people to be like sheep, not like human beings. Christianity teaches that obedience to a voice of authority is supreme virtue.

Guilt Tripping

Christianity turns normal human behavior into a problem ( actually a “sin” ), to which Christianity conveniently has the only solution.

People have been having all kinds of sex for hundreds of thousands of years. Then, Christianity came along and told people that they would have to pull out an eye just for looking at someone lustfully. ( Sure, all lustful stares are not the same, but that's another story. ) Having convinced people to be sex negative and shamed them for their sexuality, Christianity proffers itself as the only solution.

Having implanted its bizarre system of morality, Christianity convinces people that they are “sinners” who need to be “saved”, and that Christianity is the only thing that will “save” them, in exchange for a mere 10% of their income, and a lifetime of obedience to an arbitrary set of rules that some religious authorities interpret and dictate as fact.

Christianity needs people to suffer, so it can swoop in to “save” them and enslave them to a lifetime of guilt-tripping by the church. Christianity tells people that they are “wretches”, and asks them to be grateful to the church for “saving” them. Christofascism is a system that works with the government to underhandedly push people to unnatural excesses, such as alcohol, harmful drugs, sex, violence, gambling, shopping, and other “addictive” behaviors.

Christianity hypocritically teaches people to “not judge”, although the invading forces of Christianity ( converting missionaries, colonizing armies, conniving politicians ) commit murders and rapes with impunity. When the colonized people try to rebel against Christian invaders, they are told to “turn the other cheek”.

Everyone has done something that they're not proud of. Everyone makes mistakes. But Christianity cleverly exploits our universal, small-scale personal guilt and equates it with its large-scale atrocities. Essentially, planting the fear of judgement in people gets them to trade jaywalking for genocide.

No other religion in history has attempted to convert people as aggressively and forcefully as Christianity.

Hypocrisy

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Christianity, as it is practiced, teaches one to be selective with one's neighbors. In America, many Christians live in gated colonies, with neighbors handpicked for their race and socioeconomic status to be easier to “love”. Poor people sleeping on the sidewalk are not seen as neighbors, and can be safely ignored as you drive to church in your best clothes, to put on a good show of worship, and sing in the choir of Pharisees.

Eternal Life: the Ultimate Scam

While I personally don't believe in an afterlife, many others do, motivated ( in my humble opinion ) by the fear of death. It is easier to believe something that we'd like to believe, than what is actually true. People die. Dead people don't come back.

If you are on the after-life trip, you have already bought a ticket to the great scam of “Eternal Life”. Jesus is merely the Travel Agent who claims to be able to upgrade your accommodation for the duration of eternity, in exchange for 10% of your income and a lifetime of obedience. In case there's no afterlife and/or you don't get into heaven after you die, please see Jesus for a full refund.

“You have only two lives, and the second one begins when you realize you have only one.“

~ Confucius.

Several other scriptures, predating the Christian bible by thousands of years, advise against the deadly trap of believing something to be true, merely because you want it to be true.

Yaksha: “What is the greatest wonder in the world?”

Yudhisthira: “The greatest wonder in the world is that people see other people die every day, but they still want Eternal Life.”

[ excerpt from “The Bhagvadgita” ]

Diversity of Thought

In my opinion, God does not need defending, or door-to-door advertising. God is far too vast and powerful. When people defend their religion, it is their ego's reduced image of God that they are defending.

The library is full of books on all subjects. However, fans of one book go around forcing this book on others at sword-point or gun-point.

When a Christian zealot pesters me on the street, and asks, “May I pray for you?”, I am deeply offended. They seem to make so many prejudiced and insidious assumptions, that it takes work to untangle them. Here are some:

1. Assumption: I am not an atheist who would like to be left alone.
2. Assumption: If I do believe in God, then I don't pray / meditate.
3. Assumption: If I do pray / meditate, then my prayer / meditation practice is not enough.
4. Assumption: The Christian in question, has a better connection with God than I do.

This offer of prayer is disingenuous at best. Nothing, absolutely nothing is preventing them from praying for me, themselves, or anyone. Who doesn't want good wishes and blessings? They don't really need my permission to pray. After all, I don't approach passing people and ask them, “May I masturbate to an image of you in my head?” If I feel like it, I just do it!

The whole offer of prayer is a sad, transparent ruse to obligate me in some way, and to show off how holy and superior they are. It's a sales tactic used by slimy salespeople who know their product is shoddy.

Often, Christians ask people if they need a prayer for something specific, like a miracle ( healing physical ailments, improving financial circumstances, etc. ) This pushes people into superstitious thinking. The same Christians will tell you that “God has a plan.”, which is really, really funny!

“God has a plan for everything, but we Christians can get him to amend it, just for you. Without prayer, God's plan will go on, as God planned. However, if you join us in our superstitious religion, that has already killed more people than any other religion, God will modify his Grand Plan. Our Bible is an infallible book of prophecies, but we can alter those prophecies.”

To me, helping hands are better than praying lips. Approach me with a cheesy, wordy ploy, and I am repelled. On the other hand, if I see people quietly picking up garbage from the street, or planting trees, I am drawn to them.

Big Business

Imagine this scenario – A pastor receives a ticket because his dog pooped in a public area, and he did not clean it up. He contests this ticket in court, saying that Constitution of United States forbids the government to abridge religious freedoms.

Sounds ridiculous, right? This is just what goes on every day. You can start a business without any qualifications, collect 10% of your customers income, and pay no taxes, if you claim that it's a church.

Religious organizations should not get a blanket tax-exempt status. Churches should be required to produce receipts and file taxes for any charitable work they do, just like any other organization. Religious leaders should be held accountable under the law. This does not abridge their religious freedom in any way. They are free to worship in any way that is permissible under the law. However, if your religion requires human sacrifices, that's not protected under the law.

In Ka'u, Hawai'i, there are 14 churches, including ironically, a Baha'i temple. In Na'alehu, there are many houses of worship right next door to each other. Each with its own building, its own spin on theology, and its own tax free organization. Some churches are better funded than others. They do charitable things, like feeding the poor.

1/3 households in Hawai'i experienced food insecurity in 2023

With so many churches feeding the poor, it is surprising that so many people are still food insecure. All churches get blanket tax-exempt status. And yet, there is too much duplication of effort, too much waste, and the poor are still not fed consistently. Homeless people have to keep track of the various times & places on Big Island where charities are feeding people. The schedule is very complicated. On the first Wednesday of each month, this church hands out free slices of pizza. On the second Tuesday, that church in another town gives out hot dogs. Many churches feed people at HOPE Services Hawai'i, except on weekends.

Life is certainly difficult for poor people, already stressed about other aspects of life, such as finding work, taking care of kids, getting training and education, arranging healthcare, and being able to afford other necessities.

If so many churches all believe in Christ, why can't they coordinate their efforts, to make sure they're actually getting the poor fed consistently, and getting the best outcome for their time, money and efforts? Feed everyone, and the motivations for crime drop. Well fed people are more civilized in behavior, agreeable, law abiding, generous etc. People take pride in the land, and start taking care of it.

So why are the levels of food insecurity so high? The answer, in my humble opinion, is systemic injustice.

Picture this – you're a young person, 18-25 years old. You drank some beer and/or smoked a joint. You engaged in rowdy behavior, as is normal for young people. Soon, you are arrested by the police and brought before a judge. The judge asks you a series of questions, such as:

• Are you clear-headed right now?
• Are you under the influence of any substances?

Being young, scared, and a little buzzed, you give the safe answers, on autopilot. Having given the answers that you thought would keep you out of trouble, you relax a little. Shortly thereafter, the judge makes the simplifying assumption that you are competent to stand trial. You are tried, in your inebriated state, and end up in prison.

In America's for-profit prison-industrial-complex, you are exploited as a worker who can be paid less than the minimum wage. In prison, you are exposed to harder drugs, gangs, and the darker side of life. By the time you come out, you already have a black mark on your permanent record and face an uphill battle when applying for work or educational opportunities. To survive, you break bad, and are on the margins of society for life, engaged in low-level crime at worst, doing menial jobs and living hand to mouth at best.

The church comes along, and makes you beholden to them by helping you just enough to trip you for life. The church needs you in a cycle of self-flagellation, to which it claims to have the only solution. Alcoholics Anonymous. Narcotics Anonymous.

Once you are in this downward spiral, it is very hard to recover. Even if you do, you have become a broken person, superstitious in your belief system, scientifically illiterate, low in self-esteem and in your expectations of life. You are forever told to feel grateful to your “savior”, the very organization that is gaslighting you and preying on your life-force. You join the ranks of the homeless, and are moved off the land to some tent city ghetto if you're lucky. Another native moved off the land, unable to claim ownership through a thorny thicket of laws, unable to fight for your rights, because you're struggling for survival. Mainlanders move in and buy more land in Hawai'i, which has become cheaper.

You just went from being a normal, stupid youngster, to a marginalized person without rights, living like a refugee on your own land.

This is what modern day slavery looks like. This is what imperialism looks like, should you care to look.

Sinead O'Connor rips the church a new one!

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• Apple has lost top designers.

• Apple's Vision Pro headset has been a let-down, ( partly due to a series of unfortunate events that derailed me off the killer app I had planned to launch in March 2024 ).

• Apple misread the pulse of the public and committed a major faux pas with its iPad Pro ad.

• Apple is now past its zenith, and it would behoove Apple leadership to gracefully acknowledge that and strive to preserve the legacy of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozcniak, whom Apple fans adore.

“Computers are bicycles for the mind.”

~ Steve Jobs.

The Good:

• Apple controls the M-series chips and Apple hardware.

• Apple has the fanatical following of the cult of Mac.

• Apple has a lot of cash on hand.

The Beautiful:

“I have something to say. It's better to burn out than to fade away.”

~ Kurgan, “Highlander”

You already got Trillions, Apple. Use financial and social capital well instead of squandering it with hesitation and short-term greed. You can already afford 16942 healthy, tasty meals every day, unlike most people on this planet.

Please be a Super Nova, not a Black Hole, Apple.

To prepare for a year, plant rice. To prepare for a lifetime, plant a tree. To prepare for many lifetimes, educate the young ones.

~ Chinese proverb.

Apple should go all out and release the full source code to all their software ( not just Darwin ) under the GPL.

Apple has already been involved in education with its eMacs. Now Apple needs to use its remaining design acumen to become a leading producer of Free Educational Software for students of all ages.

When you use an Apple computer, it will explain its workings. It will encourage you to play with the software, improve it, share the improvements, feel the joy of sharing, and score bragging rights too.

Apple is the gateway to the Hacker Hippie Gift Culture of the two Steves' roots.

You can tweak the OS, and all applications, and Apple will provide Free Software to facilitate that interactive learning process.

Apple computers have 3 modes:

1. User mode: Users will have to make as few decisions as possible. The interface will be very simple and streamlined.

2. Expert mode: Expert users will be able to tweak configuration parameters using an advanced UI, create themes et cetera.

3. Dev mode: Developers will be able to edit the source code of applications and of the OS itself. If OS modifications cause the system to break or malfunction, a fallback to the last known good OS image will be provided.

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