2,000 years of history?

TL;DR -- DTG has been releasing under Gardner Family Trust. This post announces a recent one that has a long historical view. This hypothetical work has a basis that is beyond the current influences of SciFi that are so problematic. But, we have work to do in this area. 

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With the U.S. government buying into what I have been calling 'tAIn't, and the DoW diving in big time, can we go wrong following them? Well, we ought to be be aware. So, here is an example that I have been paying attention to. 

David Todd Gardner contacted me in the early 2010s, about the time that the body of Richard III was discovered. Briefly, people reading historical documents used modern techniques to pinpoint where the body would be if it had not been moved according to contemporary accounts. 

That's the key here? Are there records that will influence the historical view? Suppose some might have been found in Wales? 

Let me make a comment with respect to the 250th. Last year, we went to reference the papers of General Nathanael Greene which were just recently published. The first efforts (about 1/2 of the amount) were published after the 200 (1976). The research began a few decades after the Revolution was over. Slowly, people gathered documens which were mostly related to northern New England. The rest of the material related to Greene's term as General was mostly about southern New England. 

And, Greene won the war by cornering Cornwallis in 1781. The treaty was not signed until 1783. And, this guy got no notice for about 200 years? Washington was the one who put him in charge of the Southern Campaign. 

As we go through the six years of the conflict after the Delcaration celebrated lately, we will find research pulling out lots of interesting information. 

Unfortunately, the likes of Grok will add huge amounts of uncertainty, of a new type. More on that. 

So, DTG published this post under Gardner Family Trust. 

           https://www.2000yearhistory.com/2026/07/gardner-family-codex-orthographic-root.html   

Using Grok for certain functions, DTG has pulled out and published information that had been largely stored in Wales. Grok was great at transcribing, it looks like. DTG, used OCR for the text processing. Then, having trained his system, DTG had Grok match up his material with known material. 

That is the point. What is published is generally a small set of the total information. Additionally, the profession of history, like any other, puts efforts into finding generalizations that work. Too, as this type of work progresses, algorithms come to fore, many through identification of patterns. 

But, taken too far, there is no provenance trace for the majority of this work. So, the caveat would be to consider the work as conjecture. But, pay attention as it may provide something useful. We cannot handle that type of judgment a priori. 

And, if that is not understood, we, at TGS, will go into that as necessary. There is reason that some companies are hiring philosophers. But, my counsel to them is that they are looking for good old autodidacts who have waded through all of these fields looking for the nuggets. And, finding them. 

As such, DTG's Grok work deserves some attention which we intend to provide as we go forward. For one thing, auxillary topics will be discussed. One example, the hype of recent vintage seems to have been driven by marketing or even SciFi interest. Whereas the preferred modes ought to relate to science that has sloughed along for over a century.  

Remarks: Modified: 07/04/2026

07/04/2026 --

Iron roads

 TL;DR -- Rails. Iron roads. Puffing motion. The early view. 

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Wall Street Journal has had several articles on the 250th. Two days ago, they covered their view of the top inventions. We will go over this list. One issue had an image that we used in a post a while ago. Be mindful of the first year which was 1860, prior to the Civil War. By 1870, there was one thread out west. Then things boomed. 

Pace of change (29 Jun 2021)
Note comparison with the U.S. Post Office

Meanwhile, here are a few links to WSJ material. 

• A MMostly Happy 250th. 
• World's Greatest Economy. 
• Three milestone front pages. 
• ...

 As we have noted, the 250th needs to be in mind over the next few years, until the 250th of the 1783 peace treaty was signed with Britain. 

Remarks: Modified: 07/04/2026

07/04/2026 --

LinkedIn - its use

TL;DR -- We have pushed posts from this blog to LinkedIn. We have referenced LinkedIn posts from here. That will be regularly done with link both ways. This is about a new idea conjured up by scientists and philosophers. But, it's not so new. 

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We think of this as the adult Facebook (Meta). People use it to find jobs. Let the world know about themselves. 

Several posts from the TGS, Inc. blog have appeared at the sight. This post is from LinkedIn. We made a comment and copy it below.  

Subject: 

A team of scientists and philosophers has suggested a new basic rule of nature that might help explain how many different kinds of evolving systems change over time. They call it the “law of increasing functional information.”

Link:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ratanak-roth-oeurn-kent-627b1974_in-the-news-carbon-under-pressure-forms-share-7477644560811290624-Rvw7/?

Our comment: 

Kant comes to mind (Prolegomena, where he defended his Critique of Reason clarifying his thinking for future researchers). 

Briefly, we only know phenomena and not their noumena (things in themselves). Quantum modes may break down to pieces. But those pieces we do not know in the sense of ripping them open as the biologists of old could dissect a specimen (so too, many a school child tortured a frog). 

Differentiation has been easy; integration? Not so much. 

Some barf at Kant's attempt to explain how we know phenomena where he uses "representation" (wait, model-based computing and lots of mathematics seem to agree, yet differences in viewpoint abound - ah, relativity). 

Kant wins. He proposed that we have noumena, too, and know it. Consider. 

Waiting in the wings: psychether; truth engineering (with the computer fully simpatico with ancient human ability that we can study through careful consideration of the thoughtful words left). 

Jump back to Spinoza and overlook his attempt at Ma Nature as being God. 

Knowing? Emotions are prime. We learn to manage them with reason which is sorely needed, sought, and difficult to attain. It is not the fancy marking in chaulk as we see with advanced science. 

Humans and their noumena? 

Notes: 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-transcendental-idealism/

I use the Carus translation of Prolegomena.

https://archive.org/details/kantsprolegomen00carugoog/page/n4/mode/2up

Context - Insights from KBE within the phemenonal world of the 20th Century.

https://thomasgardnerofsalem.blogspot.com/2022/10/time-lines.html

Commentary: 

We have mentioned both Kant and Spinoza several times with respect to AIn't or what we are now identifying as 'tAIn't which ponts to the pending disasters that are on the horizons (we will get to this). 

One general comment. Philosophers are those who think deeply and write. I like Spinoza and Kant for the reason that they were prime examples. Spinoza had a career, optics - generating lenses. Kant taught Logic and wrote a book on the notes of his class. Or, he gave his notes to a student who wrote the book. 

As an aside, intelligence, reasoning and such with respect to AIn't. Well, not. Our strongest argument deals with the work of Spinoza who laid out the rationale for describing Emotions and their power. Our Reason develops in learning how to handle Emotions. 

What says that about buckets'o'bits? We are due to our humanity and long periods of evolution and learning. The machine tries to simulate use. In fact, that concept/notion is quite prevalent with some thinking that a mathematical system might behave so as to be like we humans. Good luck with that. 

Remarks: Modified: 06/30/2026

06/30/2026 --

Early Road

TL;DR -- Right outside of Washington, D.C., is a lot of history. We like to pay attention to trails (becoming roads) and to rivers. An important road is on the VA side. Last year we mentioned that Gen. Braddock used it to get out west during the conflict that trained the US forces under the auspices of the Crown. 

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This is a quick post to be filled in later. Last year, we looked at Gen Braddock and how he came through Northern Virginia up to northern New York during the Indian-French affair. Also, we looked at details of the earlier period. We like to consider the influence of roads and rivers (both a boon and a barrier) on the expansion of what became the U.S. of 250 years.  

The post emphasized the pre-1776 timeframe:

• Lord Fairfax -- the focus was the Lord as owner. We mentioned Braddock since the beginning of his jaunt has been Alexandria VA which was about half-way to Mount Vernon of the Washingtons. Remember, this was of the earlier conflict where the colonials learned their military tactics under the auspices of the King's Crown.  

See Siege of Boston, about the colonials in 1775/6 not being a unruly crowd. 

Back to roads. The Vestal's Gap road was an animal trail and then used by the Native Americans and later by the colonials. Now, it consists of highways and even Interstate sections going from the Potomac port at Alexandria up over the mountains. 

Early in the 20th Century, Claude Moore bought land in Northern VA and worked to honor the colonial heritage through preservation.  

• Vestal's Gap Road - By the late 1720s, the trail had been travelled enough to become a road. It eventually led to a gap in the Blue Ridge mountains, where an enterprising businessman named John Vestal operated a ferry crossing the Shenandoah River. A young George Washington used the road to travel to Winchester and points west, where he surveyed the Fairfax propriety for Lord Fairfax.

Lanesville Historic District

We have said that the 250th this year was of a conflict started earlier (even before 1775). So, on July 4th of 2026, remember please that the conflicts went on until 1783. 

Remarks: Modified: 06/26/2026

06/26/2026 --

UAP or UFO

TL;DR -- UFO morphed to UAP. We even have a whistleblower. And, LLM is no longer the new kid on the block, we have plasmoid life. Even with football. American or other? 

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With the quantum computer getting so much press, and the issues of energy usage there is about as bad as what we are seeing with data centers for AI/ML (GenAI/LLM), perhaps its time for a bit of information drop. As in, we are aware but think that humans need to be studied too. 

Without further ado, we'll switch gears here. Have we not heard enough about LLMs the past couple of years? We have seen the Dulles area (DC) host numerous (more than wise?) data centers, that ruin the landscape while drawing more resources (water, energy) than probably rationally supported. 

So, let's start with some links, starting with Wikipedia. What we are dealing with, too, is an old subject with a new name: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (Formerly known as UFO). Assuming that there have been UFO encounters (there have been a number of books on the subject - written by people who survived the event), perhaps, we might learn something. 

• David Grusch, whistle blower - former Air Force officer notes that money has been spent on this subject without oversight. 
• NASA hosted a team for this theme (2022) - this predates ChatGPT's emergence. Did it allow a cover or increase the potential usage? That LLM grabbed the attention of millions around the world, in Nov of 2022. I did not even wake up to the fact until Feb 1 of 2023. 
• buckets'o'bits is how we can talk of LLMs. Now, if we have high-tech visitors, perhaps that would be ripe for learning a thing or two (or being lab subjects - whatever, it's SciFI laden which is too bad -- as science touts its abilities). 

Okay, there will be more. In the meantime, Grusch mentioned plasmoid types and alluded to attributes that would be interesting to study. So, what's not to like, as long as we don't fry ourselves interfacing with such. 

Rebecca Hardcastle Wright, PhD

Remarks: Modified: 07/12/2026

07/12/2026 -- Retrieved the image. 

Twelve years ago

TL;DR -- A cousin blogger had an interesting post today. She went back a few years to bring a post forward that remembered an ancestor who was hanged in the events of 1692 in Salem MA. That is, hanged by the neck until dead. We have had several posts on the theme but reference two of them: the first image looks at a family wirh two hanged on the same day as several others; the second image is about a hypothetical meeting where all ancestors involved from any side (pro, con, critical, ...) is identified with their relationship established. That event was 334 years ago.  

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Nutfield Genealogy, on FB, pointed today to a post from the blog dated 10 Jun 2017: Bridget Playfer Wasselbee Oliver Bishop, hanged as a witch in Salem. Going by today's date, we are talking 334 years ago. There was a question today on FB: Is there a victim of the 1692 witch trials in your family tree? 

Well yes. Lots and lots of families. So, first, we will look at one of them through posts with one of them from twelve years ago. Then, we will consider a slew of families who were on all sides of the controversy. 

A great-grandmother (Lucy Foster Wilson Gardner) of Dr. Frank (Gardner author) had two persons hanged in September of 1692. The Thomas Gardner Society published an article on Lucy's pedigree titled Trials of the Wilson Family that appeared in The Essex Genealogist and was accompanied by a Ahnentafel for Lucy. 

Later, we had posts about the family, such as Andover Ordeal, that recounted one generation which, after the witch trials, lost all of the children except one who had children one of which became Ann's forebear.  

The following image is taken from The Essex Genealogist (August 2014) and shows three generations of Wilsons. In Gen 1, Joseph Wilson married Sarah Lord. She and her daughter were imprisoned for several weeks but were cleared in 1693. For Gen 2, we see John Wilson, son of Joseph, marrying Mercy Wright whose grandfather was Samuel Wardwell who hanged with several others. In Gen 3, John Wilson, son of John, married Hannah Frye whose great-grandmother was Mary Ayer Parker. This widow of fifty-five years of age was hanged. One motive was getting her land as her husband had left her well off. Later, her sons were able to get their property returned. 

Now, switching gears, we had a couple of post dealing with a hypothetical meeting (Imagine a meeting). The intent was to bring back everyone who was involved in the incident, except for the victims. This table shows relatives of Dr. Frank as if we are talking two generations back (rather than a couple hundred years. 

Hathorne and Corwin were noted judges. For Dr. Frank, his grandmother was John Hathorne's sister who opposed her brother. Several jurors were grandfathers. One of the officiating ministers was an uncle. But another grandfather, graduate of Harvard (Rev. John Wise), was highly critical of the proceedings as opposed to Cotton Mather who was a cousin. 

There have been several posts on the subject. We will point to one: Meeting, again. 

Remarks: Modified: 06/10/2026

06/10/2026 --

Great Awakening

TL;DR -- Great Awakening. There have been several from one of which we got Princeton University. But, we can analyze the emergence of GenAI/LLM similarly with respect to the "animal"spirits related to its potential as boon or bane. There is the other side of the coin: great disappointment. 

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The topic? It will be familiar to some. And, there seems to be a U.S. nature to this phenomenon, however we can look at these affairs from a more general framework and learn a thing or two. 

In this case, we are talking about GenAI / LLM which is known as "AI" now. Was that an awakening, of any kind? That is something to discuss which we will be doing while the fad rages on for a while and after the expected burst we can expect to participate in the analysis. 

Here is Wikipedia's take on the matter: Great Awakening. Apropos to the event's characteristics, there is a related phenomenon: Great Disappointment. The main theme relates to spirituality and religion, but there have been comments with respect to the psychological aspects: True-believer syndrome; Cognitive dissonance; and a lot more. 

Our interest is that Princeton University was founded in 1741 after the first of the Great Awakenings due to a conflict within the Presbyerian church. Tying this to the 250th which is coming up, John Witherspoon, president of the college from 1768-94, was a "signer of the Declaration of Independence".  Princeton is the fourth-oldest of the Colonial Colleges. The first three were Harvard (see our series on the Presidents), William and Mary (Virginia), and Yale. 

Colonial Colleges

Given what we have learned so far, our plate of topics is more full. For this post, let's switch the attention to the 'tAI'n't of recent years. Depending upon one's views, the 2022 entry onto awareness of OpenAI's ChatGPT was the greatest thing ever or the worst affliction cast upon humankind. We have seen plenty dicussion on both sides to the situation over the past three and 1/2 years. 

No doubt, those discussions will continue due to the lack of an theoretic basis with which to frame an analysis and to the shaky reports that have been provided during that same time. Each of the LLMs (which we will use for the class of systems) underwent changes over the years. Lots of that activity was undertaken in order to overcome some deficiency that was noted or to bring in missing pieces. 

Cutting this short, today I read the believers' accounts of the "agentic" approach that happened of late. Briefly, this is a model-based approach that takes output from several LLMs and determines some potential bit of action (truthfully established - questionably?) and then performs that action (which can be sensor/actuator based - or API-centric with respect to something somewhere and somehow accessed). You see, "agents" in the model are types with names and characteristics and functional ability. 

Nothing new, folks. That type of processing goes back to the early days of simulation many decades ago. Back to the beginning and even before the bunch of mathematicians met at Dartmouth in order to start "artificial intelligence" as an academic study. We can go into that at depth, as John was involved early with that thrust and continued to have involvement over his career in engineering support. 

From our viewpoint, there was work in the 70s, 80s and 90s that never got studied since this was done in the commercial/industrial environment that has goals and motivations that are not academically attuned, though many doing this work have advanced degrees. "engineering support" consists of the activities of scientists and mathematicians to support engineers in their problem solving. One aspect of this deals with tradeoff analysis which is the basis of modern approaches. 

Too, the computer has been applied in this arena from the getgo. There is much to discuss. The theme though: was the LLM emergence a boon (great awakening) or a bane (great disappointment). Per usual, we will most likely find some balanced view. Perhaps, the main lession will be just that: how to handle the complications related to modern problem solving in a manner that does not cause harm but provides support for our American Dream: life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (for all citizens - not the brainy or rich or whatever other attribute of the priviledged state is applied. 

Remarks: Modified: 06/08/2026

06/08/2026 --