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Why so early?
Just putting this down so I won’t forget it…. I’m always asking Why So Late? In this case the puzzlement is reversed. Why were horseless carriages licensed so quickly? Horses and buggies had not been licensed. It appears that state licenses for cars began around 1905. Horses were still completely dominant. A typical city might…
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Sweet and sour largesse
Tech demons are hammering us with Sweet and Sour sides of an argument. The Sour tech demons, aided by Philosopher MacAskill, tell us straight out that we must lose our jobs and die for the good of future generations. We must be exterminated because we are non-self-aware inanimate objects. After we have been disinfected from…
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Another Martian dream
Odd parallel with a Martian dream last summer. = = = = = Today’s dream: I was attending an arts fair. Noticed an old lady selling typewritten manuscripts about her experience with Martians, who taught her their system of government called optothecy. I told her I was curious and asked to hear more. “Well now,…
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It’s about cheating
The Supremes have firmly ruled that boys can’t cheat by muscling into women’s sports. Good. Both “sides” are missing the point as usual. It’s not about “rights” because “rights” don’t exist. It’s not about Trump because this shit started long before Trump was in politics. It’s simply and solely about CHEATING. Pre-college sports are unique…
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Spies don’t spy
I was noticing yet again that spy agencies have switched from senses to muscles. Spying is a necessary part of life. Every living thing uses its senses primarily to detect what’s happening around it, and secondarily for advance warning of competitors or predators. When governments use spies properly, information helps to avoid war. We stopped…
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Infringement calling infringement black
I’ve always had an uneasy feeling about Retraction Watch and the ‘replication crisis’. Like the AI em-dashers they’re working on the wrong end of the problem, trying to clean things up by sorting out a few especially bad-looking products. Reminds me of Porkbusters Coburn and Proxmire who ridiculed “silly” government projects, mostly agricultural because aristocrats…
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More infill harmony
Here’s another example of architects creating a pleasant harmony with existing houses. The lot to the left of this house has always been empty. It’s a triangle with no practical frontage, so it probably wasn’t enticing to builders. (Google makes it look wider.) A few months ago a builder put up a duplex in the…
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Not scary
Scare headline in Verge: The war against ‘woke’ could end US science as we know it YES! PLEASE! DO IT! MORE! MORE! MORE! US science as we know it is FUCKED and LOST and RUINED by 80 years of tenure and competitive Deepstate grants. China is winning for two reasons. 1. China doesn’t give the…
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Del Giudice
After finishing the long hard ADA courseware slog with quality at end of May, I’ve been deliberately decompressing. Letting new thoughts or possible projects form, not starting anything specific. New thoughts seem to be turning toward math, not settled yet. Decompressing always stirs up fancy dreams with plots and characters that I couldn’t possibly imagine…
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Where’s the source?
When people quote their “conversations” with AI bots, I notice that the bots have a broad vocabulary of niceness and sycophantic obedience. The bots can say “I’m sorry” in dozens of creative ways. A few years ago I was dealing with customer service chatbots that repeatedly scheduled mythical technician appointments, then apologized when the mythical…
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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, mid 80s. Typically the end of June gives us high 90s…
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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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