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𝟘𝟟· I've updated my thoughts about Stephen Miller's recent CNN interview because my memory wasn't as precise as I'd like. Here, from the CNN subtitles, is a bit of what
Miller tells interviewer Jake Tapper: “We live in a world -- the real world, Jake -- that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by
𝕁 power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” The logic is clear enough: strength enables the use of force, granting the
𝕒 power to govern. Even the right to govern in peace is backed by the the capacity to escalate force to violence. What societies call ‘law’ is an agreement between the
𝕟 strong to defer violence until weakness sets in on one side. Government, the enemy of the people, corrals citizens with violent threats and deeds - it is the apex
𝕦 terrorist organization. What follows for our society? Rights are ensured only by an armed citezenry ready to inflict violence that results in significant pain to the
𝕒 government. Schools and homes exist in the same world; are the threats and acts of playground bullies and domestic abusers the way to pick our leaders or make
𝕣 decisions in families?
𝕪
𝟘𝟝· puzzles I started on a formulation of Slitherlink rules in ⟪Sapphire⟫. Connectivity, as a pairwise relation could be easily satisfied by being true for any vertices
that are connected to anything. I ended up defining a distance function with a special value (rather than a distinct relation) for ‘not connected’. In the next day or
two, I'll see how ⟪Silver⟫ does trying to find a satisfying model (aka solution).
𝟛𝟘· coding I've been bogged down by my bootstrapping shenanigans. I finally decided to re-execl the current build when cyclic dependencies could change generated code.
Because I'm building my tools in place, I use a “revert-bootstraps” routine often to deal with all-to-frequent breakage.
𝟚𝟠· coding More language infrastructure progress - I've got code generating from the ⟪Violet⟫ language layer that bridges between ⟪Cobalt⟫ (aka C) and ⟪Midnight⟫ (aka
Python). I generate code that uses Python's ‘ctypes’ module to call C from Python, making it easy to mix and match implementations.
𝟚𝟞· coding I took a small step toward sensible language handling by generating a full parse tree for a small input file. Starting life as a no-op, my evolving ‘zypp’
preprocessor converts ⟪Midnight⟫ and ⟪Cobalt⟫ to Python and C, respectively, in an entirely ad-hoc fashion. At least I know I can create an inviting bug hotel.
Eventually, each language layer I use will share a unified parser, but different intermediate code generators which will perform first level semantic checks. The
intermiedate language will support high level primitives that can be lowered to target subsets which can be used to emit code. My ⟪Sapphire⟫ project has a good deal
of infrastructure to cope with.
𝟚𝟝· piward I finished implementing SDL ‘framebuffer’ objects which display a screen sized OpenGL texture. Framebuffer support is primarily for debugging, but also can be
used with small ‘gadget’ displays, like Pimoroni's Display Hat Mini, ePaper displays, also available from Pimoroni or from Waveshare, which I used to prototype a
Raspberry Pi based e-Reader.
𝔻 𝟚𝟜· I finally got around to watching Jordan Peele's documentary "Get Out" the other night. I have to say, the re-enactments were grisly, but well done.
𝕖
𝕔 𝟚𝟛· logic I've added support for the Cartesian Product, represented by ‘×’ in Unicode (U+D7). What I call “tuple constrained quantification” (∀⟨x y⟩∈Z×Z) is accepted in
𝕖 ⟪Sapphire⟫ as well as set exponentiation by an integer (Z^4 ▷ Z×Z×Z×Z) ({1⋯3}^3 ▷ {1⋯3}×{1⋯3}×{1⋯3}). Finite expressions can be evaluated in calculator fashion (⟨1 2
𝕞 3⟩∈{1⋯3}^3 ▷ ✔) (∀⟨a b⟩∈{1⋯3}^2 a>3 ⇒ a+b>4 ▷ ✔) and can also be symbolically manipulated by ⟪Ag⟫, aka “The Silver Solver”. I've updated my Sudoku rules to use these
𝕓 new features
𝕖
𝕣 𝟚𝟚· coding I'm using ‘⊙‘ for dot product and ‘⊗’ for cross product. My preprocessor translates these from binary operators into calls to ‘dot’ and ‘cross’, which are
native in GLSL and implemented in Python to work on number sequences of equal length (dot) or only 3-tuples of numbers (cross).
𝟚𝟚· coding While I use Unicode extensively and appreciate its near universal adoption and support, I object to any description of it as a "character set". It is a partial
encoding for semantically based typesetting of all human-readable text that includes representations for historic character sets. Ideally, a "character set" provides
an abstract, finite set of symbols for computation and a visual representation that allows human beings to readily identify symbols in a sequence - a simple alphabet.
If we remove codepoints that are control values (modifiers and typesetting indicators) and, for groups of characters which are (subjectively) visually similar,
discard all but one, we are left with a workable character set. But it's a major bonus if human beings can naturally associate meaning with sequences to form a human
readable language. This character set requires knowledge of every alphabet included in Unicode and fluency in at least one language that uses each alphabet. I encode
formal languages and strings using my own (still evolving) ”Zy Logical Character Set" or "Zylch" (the "zy" is vestigial, but still makes for entertaining acronyms).
It's a single byte encoding starting with the digits 0⋯9, followed by the 26 uppercase then 26 lowercase letters of English. Then a bunch of symbols that change from
week to week...
𝟚𝟙· coding I updated my color text routines that I use in all my Python tools to proceess faster when read into Emacs. One day, I may create an IDE for my ‘neo-retro’
logic-puzzle computing environment, but Emacs is still the best tool for me.
𝟘𝟞· logic I now have a somewhat general "pigeonhole solver" ...