Un-Un-Cat, Episode 13. — Ask the People What They Want.
During the four year gap where U.G. didn’t serve in the Idaho State House of Representatives after the Republicans won a redistricting lawsuit that took effect in Idaho in 2011, anytime she ran into anybody, the telepathic AI-critter would seek in their minds, asking what they wanted.
It was shocking how many times AI-C could find that even among the tangle of thoughts revolving around loved ones, what people wanted to eat or drink, daily chores or things yet to get done at work , and bills that needed to be paid, (amongst other more interesting topics too numerous to list) — in people’s minds, the majority in Idaho still wanted U.G. to represent them. Some of them would think things like; “We miss seeing your fuzzy face on the news. I miss you every time I see anything at all about politics”. Or they would think things like “We had someone special, not just a talking Cat; you were always fighting for us even if you couldn’t win against those (fill in the blank) do nothing, liars, in office now” .
The Cat she was, never even had a chance to doubt that she missed fighting for them too. Only when she was alone would she ask herself why she even got involved in politics at all. When she was at home, in the house Lee had rebuilt, everywhere she looked, every meal just her and the AI critter she missed that Dog from outer space so much. And Lee, he had loved people so sincerely. The Dog People would never give up on the humans.
So, to keep the AI-critter, from absolutely going bonkers with boredom and loneliness, U.G. and the AI-C kept up her web presence. Specifically the web page on topic the AI-C like best — listing everything everybody wanted (even if it was not possible to achieve) ranked by what was most popular at the top with a special side-bar list to give people’s more unique, good ideas a chance.
. . .
The standard broad categories: The economy, jobs, healthcare, affordable housing, education, military spending, crime, infrastructure, etc… barely peaked the AI-Critter’s interest. It would log the entry on the page with what number of people had a similar political ask.
What the AI-C was really was trying to solve was the truth about what Earthlings really wanted, to be able to better understand why humans do all the many, diffuse idiosyncratic things people do.
Here was this creature from out-space, a cross between a biological computer and an octopus, developed by a people descended from canines not primates. In case you forgot the most valuable thing to the Dog-people as both a commodity and an art form– is food, and they don’t have fiction. How do you explain fashion trends, or music fads, gambling, video games, bumper stickers, gardening gnomes or worst of all, any form of fans of fictional — TV, movies or book characters to an AI-Critter?
The AI-C and U.G. the Cat-person would have many late night conversations like this.
AI: The humans are destroying the food on planet Earth. Why don’t they care about the fish? They do seem to like to eat some types of fish.
U.G. looks up from her dinner, a trout she caught in the stream on her land a few hours earlier.
Cat: Are we talking about a specific oil spill or general water pollution?
AI: General overfishing, and illegal fishing out of season, with barbed hooks in catch and release rivers. Yes, they don’t understand that fish runs used to boil over the banks along almost the entire Pacific Coast. Pollution is only one part of it.
The AI-Critter would site popular web search data and reflect for a bit.
The most pervasive source of pollution to water is from sewage and waste water treatment, (or lack of). While for diffuse water pollution, main sources are from farming, then fossil fuel power plants (via the air) and then transportation (via the air combined with runoff and debris from roads).
Like most Americans ignoring scientists for decades, this data prattle U.G. could mostly ignore.
But, then it would go over biofuel toilets again. Because both of them missed the their Dog friend Lee, that was personal. The Dog-person had been very upset about people pooping in WATER. It was sacrilege to him, so vile and upsetting. U.G. had a difficult time consoling him the first time he had heard and smelled toilets flushing in a large public restroom. They had held it together, Lee crying real puppy-dog tears until they got to the nearest wooded area where he could go dig a hole. To make himself feel better he ran from the truck into the woods on all fours nose to the ground, like a human’s domesticated dog.
If you think this behavior is strange. Try to see it from his perspective. A person born on a large grassy planet with no oceans and no large lakes on the Dog-planet’s surface. Before he teleported down to Earth he orbited hidden in a blind spot behind the moon for several hours tongue hanging out, trying not to drool, how beautiful the oceans and giant lakes, river deltas and the icecaps of the planet below him were, a memory heightened by fear just before landing and first encounter on the salty smelly little blue planet.
The AI-Critter had been there with him experiencing everything and its job was to remember.
AI: Digesting toilets that produce biofuel, the fuel is not was is most important — not even because it is a source of renewable energy. What is most important is combusting the waste to keep water and soil from being contaminated by pathogens, medicines, chemicals and microplastics in the human effluent.
U.G: We can build biofuel toilets in our neighborhood because I got the permits while I was in office and had Dean and his engineer buddy formed a small LLC. to maintain our local utility network. But, it costs way, way too much for the rest of the nation for every rural toilet near a lake or a stream to install and maintain biofuel toilet systems. Especially if these expensive systems only product at best 25% of heating energy needed or 10 to 15% of cooking fuel, or less if converted to generate electricity.
AI: Unless they get their local permits, form their own LLC. to produce the toilet units and maintain their own utility network groups. Then the variable is time and skilled labor more than money correct?
Cat: Yes. May I eat my legally caught in season trout dinner in peace, now?
AI: Yes, meaning correct? … But, why don’t the other people care about their local fish?
This conversation is just one example of how the AI-Critter was driving U.G. batty, when it wasn’t kept busy while she was working as a politician. Before he departed, Lee had strict instructions against letting the AI-C get bored, it is very dangerous to let a telepathic creature go feral. So, U.G. added more interesting topics to the AI-C’s wish list to be helpful.
Idea number 6. on U.G.’s How to postpone the apocalypse’ list, — A list of ideas for everyone interested in working together to save the world. (Episode 9 TL:DR) 6. Ask people 1st, before excess production of goods. Flip the post-industrial age paradigm from GDP production growth manufacturing of a series of products on a massive scale to demand only production of more specialized products made to order, reducing the waste of products people don’t want or need from the market. Focus on the most toxic waste first: e-waste, plastics, meat (see ideas: 4., 35. and 33.) appliances and automobiles to toys. Only use the Earth’s energy and resources to make it — if someone wants it.
The big question is how to best do this?
U.G’s want but can’t find yet, list had 3 major items:
A small compact car-sized plug-in EV pickup truck/utility vehicle with enough range to get her safely home. Prefer a truck is Made in the USA. Would like to choose custom colors and seat options to install a black seat to haul people instead of stuff, if she needed to. (Note this was in 2011 in this story, fingers cross they are designing this small EV truck in 2022).
The 2nd item on U.G.’s want but can’t find in the US list was a foot-pedal flywheel mixing station for her kitchen.
Lee had set up a hopper-fed peddle-powered stick and compost grinder in the barn outside of the garden. The design of it inspired the smaller flywheel mixer set for the kitchen. He probably would have made the kitchen flywheel appliance if he had felt better in the last years of his life. He didn’t feel well at all, suffering a lot at the end, so she never mentioned fixing up things in the kitchen to him.
The 3rd thing on U.G.’s list? Environmentally friendly clothing and shoes made to order via 3D design software, manufactured in a locally owned fashion co-operative.
U.G. had to wear custom made to order shoes and clothes because she was funny shaped. As a Cat-person it was nearly impossible to find comfortable human clothes that she looked nice in off of the rack. U.G.’s grandfather had gone to a tailor to get his suits and dress shirts. And he went to a cobbler to get his boots custom made. Her parents had gone to the same cobbler, tailor and dressmaker until one by one, all three small businesses just faded away as their skilled proprietors died and their children didn’t fill their shoes.
U.G.’s Mother found an artist who made custom-fitted and designed clothes. She did a lot of wedding dresses, prom dresses and some clothes for very large people like U.G.’s Mother, who had been obese in the last few years of her life. This woman loved to make suits for U.G. She had been kind to U.G. helped her find a nice Native American couple skilled in cobbling shoes and boots to make comfortable footwear to hide her paws. Shoes that didn’t fall off or mess too badly with her gait or cat sense of balance were not an easy thing to find.
U.G.s seamstress was named Szarlota, like Charlotte. When she finally earned her citizenship, her American name, the name on her ID was Charlot to make it easy for AE (American English) speakers. And her friends called her Loti. A joke, it is the name of old currency before the Euro, it’s like calling her Dollar instead of Dolly. They were longtime friends since U.G. had been 16 and she had been barely 20 trying to make it in the U.S. as a newly arrived illegal immigrant from Latvia.
Now, after a couple of decades working as a seamstress Loti’s hands were painfully arthritic and she wore arm braces to help support the carpal tunnel in both wrists.
Measuring U.G. for a new outfit. She would say. “Fur is so much more fun, more of a challenge than a person in underwear.”
“You always say something like that.” Of course, U.G. didn’t wear underwear she had fur. The clothes Loti made for her were for show, a costume for humans. Loti would use a couple of layers of lightweight fabric draped loosely to hide U.G.’s natural coat, not to keep her warm. All the seams sewn folded-in on the inside to reduce bunching and tangles. After all, she was a long-haired cat. Entire body daily brushing to prevent knots was part of her routine.
“Loti, why did your last seamstress leave?” U.G. asked during her latest fitting.
“Same reason as last time,” Loti replied, a couple of pins in her teeth, as she adjusted her hem and inseam. She would fold the cloth in both hands, and the pens in the cushion would move to the garment, from her mouth, two or three at a time.
“Oh. Can’t pay them enough to keep them, and they get other work.” U.G. answered for her.
“Turn.. turn around, quarter turn,” Loti said focused on the seam. “I don’t want you to look fat. We know it’s mostly fur don’t we.”
“Mostly.” U.G. lied thinking of her middle.
“The legs are. Not that you are not a strong Cat-Lady, but your legs are thin.”
The last daydream on U.G’s list was dedicated to Loti and the dying art of seamstress and tailor. And to the young creative people, she had met who dream of fashion as an art form and a career. A couple of them lived and worked in the experimental cabins down the road from her house. They made most of their own clothes or wore whatever hand-me-downs they could find often spruced up with a bit of creative patching.
U.G. wanted a ‘design-to-order virtual-clothing and shoe co-op’, like an artist co-op, only with a manufacturing and fitting studio with enough staff to compete with the brand name retail stores. And fancy robot sewing machines to automate the process as much as is physically possible.
The designers would post a catalog, a line of clothing and a pallet of fabrics people could choose from to make their outfit. The software would use the patterns and a form to tell people where they needed to measure themselves to order enough fabric to make the garment. The shop website would tell the customer what was in-stock or direct them to custom order options for designs and fabrics they didn’t find in the local co-op catalog. To reduce waste the garments would not be cut until the person came in to see and feel the fabrics and the mock-up designs in-person. Unless speed was more important; then they paid extra to have the garment made in advance. Skilled labor pooled for the benefit of everyone. The shop subsidized if need be to make affordable custom designer clothing that can compete with mass-produced brands. The sweat-shop work made easier for human hands and eyes by utilizing sewing machine robots to complete a lot of the painstaking labor like button-holes, embroidery, quilting, and sewing tough fabrics like canvas and denim, etc…
U.G. knew this type of clothing was happening in a few specialty shops. But, it wasn’t happening in enough locations to make a dent in the environmental impact of the global fashion industry. Most Americans can not afford custom-designed clothing manufactured using only fair-trade labor and eco-friendly fabrics. When U.G. went to a factory outlet shopping mall, looking at the racks of things that had been shipped across the ocean, to be moved from one store to the next, some of it never to be sold. She wondered how many hours of people’s lives all around the world were spent toiling away like Loti only not for their own business, in a sweat-shop factory working on ugly clothing no one would ever wear or making plastic-fabric plush toys no child would ever play with.
Then she would look at Loti’s face when she tried on a new suit. Mostly she just nodded, her gaze looking up and down at the fit, but there was still a twinkle in her eye. A smile when she knew it was done right. And U.G. knew Loti was proud whenever she saw U.G. on stage giving a speech wearing “her” clothing.
And U.G. would be reaffirmed to do what she could. One person at a time, one dream at a time, never give up.
The story continues with Un-Un-Cat, Episode 14. Wake Up America! The Millennials are coming!
