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Misdelivered
Online Brits are complaining about the heat. Usually a British “sweltering intolerable heatwave” turns out to be 70. This year it sounds like they’ve got some actual warmth, up to 105. The British summer was mistakenly delivered here. Most of June was strictly normal, mid80s. Typically the end of June gives us high 90s and…
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Juries are alive
Juries almost always figure things out and create justice. A Spokane deputy was tried for “excessive force” and acquitted. Most such trials have the same result NOW. Back in the 90s when the libertarian cop-haters were new, a local jury convicted a cop of “excessive force” in a situation where force was plainly justified and…
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Understands that science is entertainment
In Preparation is a fairly new Substack publication performing a task that has been missing for a LONG time. It treats science as entertainment, parodying the bizarre excesses of Publish Or Perish and other old and new trends. The writer is extremely careful to label it as satire, which is crucially necessary in the online…
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Anomaly alert!!!
For a long time I’ve suspected that WordPress’s own stat counter is missing something. Google’s internal stats for the OLD Blogspot blog have consistently shown a few real reads along with the underbrush of AI bots. In some cases those reads must have been clicking through from a link I’d given here, but WordPress didn’t…
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Can’t be Prime Day!
Somebody was saying that today is Prime Day, and recommending that people should celebrate Anti-Prime Day instead. First thought: Huh? Today isn’t Prime Day. There aren’t any Prime Days this year. The last Prime Day was 11/29/23. Today would be a generic Anti-Prime Day, but not the best. The best recent Anti-Prime Day was 9/16/25.…
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Useful tech info
Some of the suits against AI are just lawyers riding a trend to make money. This one is serious and could set a meaningful precedent if it isn’t quietly settled. The publishers of 400 local papers are suing OpenAI and Microsoft for scraping content, chewing it up into AI answers, and often copying it verbatim…
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Snake oil to snake oil
History Today has a short article on the history of snake oil. Caught my attention by starting in Oklahoma. In 1901 a former circus performer named Susan Masall set herself up as a one-stop snake shop in the snaky part of the state, making snake venom for the peddlers and also for more legit purposes.…
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Why I never re(re(re(re(re(curse)))))
In 40 years of active programming I’ve never used a recursive function. I don’t see why you’d want to GUARANTEE problems. I know the Turingian theorists and Computer “Science” classes advise recursing everywhere, which is an added reason to avoid it. In the AI era, text witch hunters search for em-dashes. In coding the witch…
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Hudson lock trivia
Nader’s criticism was correct though most of his details were wrong. The majority of US automakers were totally unconcerned with safety until the government forced it on them. Hudson was a notable exception. Hydraulic brakes failed OFTEN and SUDDENLY. Hudson’s failsafe braking system, on all Hudsons from 1936 to 1957 except the Jet, solved the…
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Beauty wins
Linked in previous, rehashed for emphasis. Modern artists, especially the ones who get subsidized and supported by governments, view themselves as Coyote the Trickster, obliged to play nasty and expensive pranks on the dumb yokels. A vicious monster named Dale Eldred lived in Kansas City. His cruelest joke was played on the downtown development council…
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Irresistible metaphor
Reading about Obama’s new Archive, funded by the Tech Lords and banksters as payback for the 2009 bailout. The main building reminds me irresistibly of a USB type common during Obama’s term. Modern architects make buildings look like something else, thus destroying the usefulness of the building. The form of this particular USB would lend…
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This is SMART.
I enjoy seeing people use what they have. Too often businesses will bet on billion-dollar expansions or billion-dollar subsidies to accomplish something that they shouldn’t be doing in the first place. Via Nieman, newspapers and magazines have been abandoning book reviews for 20 years, LONG before Trump or AI. Most complainers want to get rid…
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It’s not a balance
Saw a title: Why nobody’s listening to new music, part 2 Well, I can fill in both parts without reading it. Why nobody’s listening to new music, part 1: It’s Why nobody’s listening to new music, part 2: Shit. The same goes for new literature, new art, new movies, new philosophy…. anything in the field…
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Life in the cracks (honorary)
I’ll declare today Honorary Life in the Cracks Day, though it’s not the real thing.. I make the same storetrip every week and wait for the bus in the same places on each end, so I have time to look closely at houses, plants and cars. The weekly interval lets me calibrate changes. Google Streets…
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What happened to Flash?
Somebody on Substack showed a 2005 online issue of The Onion, done entirely in FLV and SWF. The issue was a prophecy of 2025. They missed the basic point that Flash itself would be “outlawed” by the tech lords. I’ve never understood why Flash needed to be “outlawed.” Allegedly it was “vulnerable”, but we know…
Polistra's Mill
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Polistra's Mill 