Tag: Mindset

A Costly Trip to the National Cryptologic Museum: Enigmas and Espionage | July 02 2025, 14:56

I went to the National Cryptologic Museum yesterday. Indeed, this trip will cost me $1000 because a rock hit the windshield of the new Tesla on the way. Anyway, let’s talk about the museum.

It’s very small. Located on the premises of the National Security Agency. The museum basically consists of three small rooms. One is dedicated to German Enigmas and there exhibits Alan Turing’s Bombe decryption machine, — a device as big as a kitchen in Lobnya, used for systematic decryption of messages encrypted by the Germans using “Enigma.” After the war, Churchill, for reasons of secrecy, ordered all physical traces of the program, including the Bombe machines, to be destroyed, so it’s quite a rare thing. Moreover, there’s only one working Bombe machine in the entire world, somewhere in England, and even that was barely restored. The Enigmas themselves were produced in large numbers, and the museum has two working ones; you can press the buttons and encrypt something.

In the room with computer equipment stands an old Cray, as well as a decommissioned nuclear deterrence hardware server rack taken out of service 15 years ago. It’s not very clear what’s remarkable about this – well yes, old computers, that’s all. The Cray is actually exhibited many places.

Unfortunately, there are no longer exhibits from the Star Gate project — like the blue box shown in the attached photos. The Star Gate project was used by the US government during the Cold War. Many of the psychic spies were based at Fort Meade, tasked with gathering intelligence, detecting enemy agents, and identifying vulnerabilities in the US using “remote viewing.”

Never heard of “remote viewing”? It’s the mental observation of a distant place where a person has never been, in order to gather information about an individual, an object, or specific data. As absurd as it may sound, it’s claimed that the program was quite successful and used until 1995 🙂

Specifically, this little blue machine, PSIFI, is part of that program. For example, it was used to study the impact of consciousness on random processes — like altering the behavior of random number generators through thought, collecting statistics on attempts at psychokinesis — with “hits”, “trials”, “gated hits”, “gated trials” etc., suggesting successful impacts compared to an expected random distribution, biofeedback — the lower part of the panel contains controls and inputs, apparently for electromyography and other biosignals. Overall, a good addition to the UFO research program.

Risks of High-Pressure Activities on Eye Health and Hearing | June 28 2025, 23:52

Interesting. I learned, for example, that the human retina is not really attached to the vascular tunic, but is held in place only mechanically by intraocular pressure. Because of this, those who jump from heights or engage in diving, and generally anything that increases intraocular pressure, are at risk of retinal detachment.

(By the way, about pressure, I had a slight barotrauma in my left ear today during airplane landing: after landing there was a lingering feeling of stuffiness and muffled sounds, and while in the air it even hurt a bit. That is, some traces of sensation remained several hours later, but probably, by tomorrow morning I will recover fully).

https://youtu.be/QmX60IgWCGk?si=GrWzDtuZTpFeig-X

Switching to Pencil: Mastering the Art of Drawing with Three and a Half Rules | June 20 2025, 12:53

In the studio, we decided to switch from oil to pencil, which I hadn’t touched for years (and, frankly, never really knew how to use properly). But with practice, I understood just three and a half rules of good drawing.

1. Draw what you see, not what you think you should see if you look at the reference. This is the most difficult part because it involves fighting your own brain, which is convinced it knows what things look like.

2. Judgment of proportions. If something occupies a fifth on the reference, you need to distinguish it from a sixth or a fourth, and of course, see exact halves and thirds clearly. It’s like having a musical ear. If an imaginary line ends at a point on the ear, you need to see this imaginary line. It’s not hard, but requires practice, and it seems you need to practice it all your life. Interestingly, you are initially surprised at how wrong you are about proportions. There are many small optical illusions that one must get used to.

2.5. Angles. A continuation of judging proportions. You need to see the difference between, say, 45 and 40 degrees at least. And see where to turn the wrong line and by how much.

3. Ability to simplify. Any complex shape needs to be simplified in the mind to straight lines and shapes and draw those first, and also to reduce reality to spots of a maximum of a few shades (with white and black at the edges).

That’s all. If you master just these three and a half points, you won’t need anything else for a long time. No knowledge of anatomy, understanding of materials, or laws of perspective (all this is important, but comes later).

Success and Second-hand Embarrassment: The Two Extremes of Expertise | June 01 2025, 21:25

Enthralled. When something is done successfully by professionals, it’s like balm for the soul. But when done by idiots, you experience second-hand embarrassment.