Derpetology

Wednesday, August 20, 2025

advice for introverts

I'd say the basic definition of an introvert is someone who prefers to be alone if given the choice. After enough hostile encounters, I learned to be wary of others. Perhaps I was being timid, or fragile, or extreme. Being on guard all the time is tiresome. In the Army, Peace Corps, stand-up comedy, and other experiences, I've proven to myself I can handle social situations, so I no longer seek them.

HAPPIER ALONE, Multi-Award Winning stop motion animation

Dick Proenneke in Alone in the Wilderness

Better alone than with bad company, I like to say.

Proverbs 21:19

"Better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and nagging wife."

Being alone doesn't mean being lonely. It's a matter of pruning away or reducing relationships that don't add to your well-being.

In my case, I ran out of patience for dealing with people who annoy me, especially when it was deliberate. That's been a frequent problem whenever I've been in group settings.

Consider your wants and needs, then satisfy them with minimal human interaction. It's an extreme solution, but it's worked for me. And if you grow tired of living that way, you can always modify your habits.

Try to respect and get respect from all. If you can't get respect from someone, avoid them. If you can't avoid them, make them afraid of you. Let aposematism be your guide. In nature, living things use odd coloring and other visual clues to show would be predators they are not worth attacking or eating.

Aposematic Coloration

My favorite introvert and MGTOW song:

Never let a woman in your life!

Eh, the last woman I let in my life brought me much joy, but we never moved in with each other. That was for the best.

A Day in the Life of a Japanese Hikikomori (Shut In)

Technology has made it much easier for introverts to socialize in ways that are comfortable for them. It's good to take advantage of that.

No man is an island said Donne long ago, but today, you can be something like that without being a hermit.

Monty Python - Hermits

It's best to think of every relationship as a Venn diagram where the overlap represents your mutual benefits and interests. If there's no overlap, don't deal with that person. When there is an overlap, respect your differences with them.

Remember that happiness is possible. Go placidly amidst the noise and the haste, as it says in the Desiderata.

Desiderata read by Leonard Nimoy (A powerful poem for challenging times)

If in a cynical mood, try the Deteriorata parody:

1972 National Lampoon - Deteriorata (Norman Rose, narrator / Melissa Manchester, vocal)

We are all flukes of the universe.

going through the motions - another public-school charade?

I read an article on NPR about a math teacher in Texas who improved attendance and test scores by incorporating hip hop music. Good for him, though I'm skeptical such techniques have much use in teaching math more complicated than arithmetic.

Texas teacher uses rap to make math fun

To get kids hooked on math, teacher brings rap music into the classroom : NPR

Jaime Escalante was in a similar situation but did not dumb things down or give up.

Jaime Escalante - Wikipedia

Stand and Deliver (1988) - The Gigolo Problem Scene (4/9) | Movieclips

***

In 1974, he began to teach at Garfield High School. Escalante was initially so disheartened by the lack of preparation of his students that he called his former employer and asked for his old job back. Escalante eventually changed his mind about returning to work when he found twelve students willing to take an algebra class.[6]

Shortly after Escalante came to Garfield High School, its accreditation became threatened. Instead of gearing classes to poorly performing students, Escalante offered AP Calculus.[7] He had already earned the criticism of an administrator, who disapproved of his requiring the students to answer a homework question before being allowed into the classroom: "He said to 'Just get them inside.' I said, 'There is no teaching, no learning going on here. We are just baby-sitting.'"[8]

Determined to change the status quo, Escalante persuaded a few students that they could control their futures with the right education. He promised them that they could get jobs in engineering, electronics, and computers if they would learn math: "I'll teach you math and that's your language. With that, you're going to make it. You're going to college and sit in the first row, not the back because you're going to know more than anybody."[8]

***

Baby-sitting is being generous. My experience being a teacher in US schools was more like being a prison guard, but with less authority and respect. Parents should be the ones disciplining their children.

It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness. Sometimes cursing the darkness inspires someone to find and light a candle.

designing a supercomputer cooled with heat exchangers

Below is a prototype I built myself. It attracted the attention of the FBI who came to my apartment to ask me about it. It was cooled with mineral oil which does not conduct electricity. The same oil has been used to cool high voltage transformers for over a century.

Computers are about as small and cheap as they're ever going to be. Advances in software are few and far between. Thus, the only way left to improve performance is through better heat transfer. Oil immersion cooling is not a new idea, but it has yet to be embraced fully. See these cluster computers for examples:

World's Largest Raspberry Pi Cluster

Cheapest super computer in the world أرخص سوبر كمبيوتر في العالم

Cluster computing is a big part of the solution and was heavily advocated by computer pioneer Grace Hopper. She compared it to hitching multiple oxen to the same yoke if one was not strong enough to do the job alone. It's a similar idea to multiengine aircraft.

Microsoft did an interesting and successful experiment called Project Natick where they packed a data center into a waterproof shipping container and submerged it.

Project Natick Phase 2

I think it could be better to combine the cooling power of oil and water used a shell and tube heat exchanger. Cold lake water could be pumped into the shell, and the heated cooling oil would be pumped through the tubes to keep it extra cold.

Shell And Tube Heat Exchanger Animation

There are many cold lakes in the continental US that could be used, and the water temperature would not change much even for the cooling needs of a very large supercomputer complex such as the one in Oak Ridge. It would also be cheaper in terms of water usage than the NSA data center complex in Bluffdale, Utah which is cooled by water evaporation. Mineral oil does not evaporate, and the volume and water temperature of most lakes stays constant.

The ideal location for a supercomputer complex cooled by heat exchangers would be on the shores of Lake Superior. Using freshwater eliminates many of problems brought on by sea salt and other complications such as tides and bad weather. The main risk would be water leaking into the oil, but it would settle to the bottom of computer tank because water is denser.

If the complex was some distance below the water level of the lake, artesian pressure could be used instead of pumps to circulate the water. Instead returning the water to the lake, it would drain into a pond for evaporation. Al valve would be opened or closed to control the water level. The main drawback is maintenance, though I suppose that could done by divers depending on the size of the oil bath.

In my experience, it will also be necessary to keep the oil bath covered. Insects are attracted to the oil and get stuck in it. These were the literal bugs I dealt with my oil-cooled computer. There were no adverse performance effects, but all the dead bugs were unsightly.

Basically, the oil bath would be about the size of an Olympic swimming pool with a uniform depth of maybe five feet. A bundle of tubes carrying the cooling water would pass through the oil bath on one of its sides. On the bottom of the oil bath would be a layer of copper BBs or pennies to act as auxiliary heat sinks. In this way, the oil bath acts like the shell side a very large heat exchanger with the lake being the tube side. Another way to think of it is like the way a car radiator exchanges heat to cool an engine.

CPUs and other such chips are designed to slow down once they reach a center temperature. But if the chips through better cooling never reach that temperature, there is no limit to the speed of the system clock. If something like Intel's terahertz processor was used with the cooling system described above, I can scarcely imagine how fast the computer would be.

Intel TeraHertz - Wikipedia

There are all kinds of computer science problems thought to be unsolvable only because of the current limits of processing speed. This is the reason for all the work with quantum computers. However, those require technology that could be decades away if it is possible at all.

List of unsolved problems in computer science - Wikipedia

Blowing air on a machine to cool it down is 19th century thinking. It is time to use mineral oil and heat exchangers.

Tuesday, August 19, 2025

My NSA odyssey - recap after 4 years

This post will revisit some things I've discussed before. Below is a post with links to other one of relevance.

Derpetology: NSA Harassed Karen Stewart (Zersetzung, Gaslighting)

It's amusing that odyssey refers to a dangerous journey named after its sole survivor. That story has always spoken powerfully to me. About 4 years ago, I applied to be an NSA codebreaker after having spent the previous 2.5 years working for them as an Arabic linguist while in the Army. My application is still under consideration, though I doubt very much I'll ever get an offer for reasons I'll explain later.

In March of 2021, I suspected that NSA was spying on me and manipulating my electronics. I know for a fact they do this routinely because I watched them do it to others and read their reports about it. Later events confirmed that for me beyond a reasonable doubt. At first, I thought that perhaps they were trying to pacify and rehabilitate me or mold me into someone they found acceptable. Later, I concluded they were more likely trying silence, provoke, and discredit me. They've done such things before. See the case of William Binney for an example.

I'd take a job if they offered one, though I have little enthusiasm for it now. The traffic near NSA HQ in Fort Meade would give me cancer of the soul. I'm open to using my abilities for the good of national security under any kind of arrangement. At heart, I'm still a patriotic man mostly. I've returned to welding after 4 years of hiatus. It's figuratively and literally more constructive than anything I did at NSA, or even my life in general, though I am always open to other possibilities.

How odd it all turned out. I have all these exotic achievements under my belt: Eagle Scout, chemical engineering degree from a full scholarship, Peace Corps, Army, and NSA. If I was a smarter man, I'd have realized at a younger age that high achievement is often me with indifference, scorn, or jealousy. Schopenhauer had wise words on that:

Schopenhauer: Why Society Hates Intelligence | Counsels & Maxims 34

Even so, I don't regret my efforts at pursuing greatness. You find what you look for. A better way of phrasing that is you go on a journey to get what you want and find what you need along the way.

There are times when I've pondered thoughts of revenge against my various tormentors. I try to remember that it's better to just move on and enjoy life. I have other, more important goals than getting even, becoming a father and homeowner chief among them. The truth always comes out in the end anyway, and the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice.

I don't like making threats or ultimatums, but I will note my abundant patience is finite. Hopefully it never runs out. In my experience, people won't leave you alone until you give them a compelling reason. I prefer to defeat my enemies by making them into friends.

The harassment has dropped off greatly since 2023. It mostly consists of my internet mysteriously getting jammed and an inexplicable number of YouTube ads about living with schizophrenia. It's all so tiresome. Whatever. If they're trying to break me, it's not going to work. I've been through a lot more than most.

Below is the strongest piece of evidence I have for what I've claimed. I made that video at my apartment in Augusta, Georgia in the spring of 2022. The same sequence of events happened every time I locked or unlocked my apartment door for weeks.