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Widdecombe murdered.
Ann Widdecombe, the only politician who ever spoke the truth about crime and prison, has been killed. Police have already arrested a suspect but no further info at this point. = = = = = START 2018 REPRINT 99% of published articles on prisons are lethally genocidally wrong. A few are only mortally wrong. Here’s…
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Zero Problems revisited
Before 2019 I was impressed by Erdogan’s unique approach to economics and war. His slogan was Zero Problems, and he fulfilled it in the same way that Ike gave us Zero Problems. Don’t start new wars, don’t aggravate existing wars, try to make peace when neighbors are fighting. He lost his mojo sometime before 2020,…
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Speaking of inventions
The parking meter was an unnecessary invention, causing more disruption than solution. Here’s a REAL PROBLEM that nobody has solved. FITTED SHEETS are devil spawn. Installing a devil sheet damages hands and backs. Devil sheets can’t be folded for storage. Devil sheets wear out washers and dryers by amoebaing up all the towels into one…
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Parking constants
Seen on social media: idk what it is about paying for parking that absolutely infuriates me. Even if it’s just $1 at the meter. I will pay for so many other things, but parking? That’s where I draw the line. The Chevrolet newsreels featured the debut of parking meters in 1936, of course featuring pretty…
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Fake surprise as always
Half of what passes for “news” is fake surprise. Propagandists love to attribute a permanent condition like weather or corruption to a “surprising” “unprecedented” action by Horrible Wrong Party. Nice example. Wired warns us that Instagram has “suddenly” decided to chew up your photos in AI without permission. Nonsense. This has ALWAYS been the basic…
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Trying to Ctrl-Z
At the start of 2025 I vowed to pull away from the tortures of 2020. Three years of horrible nastiness from all levels of government and business made me hard and cold. I don’t like being hard and cold. I’d rather feel proud of doing the right thing. I’m also trying to restore (where possible)…
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Should be the end, won’t.
The NYC skyscraper currently collapsing on its own should finish off the entire skyscraper cult. 9/11 should have finished it off. The curtain-wall skyscraper is inherently unstable, even without earthquakes or collisions or changes by construction. Going up instead of out made sense before 1930. Complex commerce required physical nearness to transfer documents and conversations…
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Normal everywhere else
I’ve been watching the case of the Jamaican writer who won a literary prize for alleged AI writing. It’s not a big deal but it seems to be an inflection point. My first thought was: Pick a side. His output isn’t the ‘pedestrian ordinary slop’ that supposedly indicates AI. His output is wild and incomprehensible,…
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Tailings, nuggets
SR describes a huge new $20 million house in Coeur d’Alene. The spec-built estate is spec-named Talis. Clearly the marketers gave considerable thought to the name. 1. Per the article, talis is the genitive case of tal in Latin, (‘of such a type’) which apparently acquired the connotation of ‘best of the type’. 2. Unstated…
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Rights and the Moore method
Last month I lambasted the Moore Method of math teaching, after seeing that my old calc teacher was famous for advocating it. The Moore Method was just a stricter version of normal American math teaching. It focused SOLELY on axioms and theorems while fiercely rejecting any hint of real world applications. Today somebody is praising…
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Rights vs duties, 2026 rehash
I can’t think or sleep while the demonic mad bombers are having their annual Arsonfest, so might as well run my annual Gouvernour Morris version of the 1776 tax evasion. Rehashed from several 2018 items. = = = = = Background: Two of the episodes in the best radio series ever, ‘Strange as it seems’,…
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2038 bug starting to appear
After the Y2K hubbub was calmed down by intense and NECESSARY programming work, the next date problem will be in 2038, when the number of seconds since Jan 1, 1970 overflows a 32-bit integer. Newer systems store time in a 64-bit integer, which won’t overflow for hundreds of billions of years. This item in the…
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Fun with fonts
I’ve been following Daniel, one of the few remaining REAL pressmen. He’s been working with large display fonts to create art with a proof press. Now he’s designed a digital font in the same spirit. I bought it and tried it out in my 1930s Lynwood neighborhood model. The font is suitable for store signs,…
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Did Eyman retire?
The latest idiotic “anti-tax” referendum is operated by hedge fund billionaire Brian Heywood. He wants to repeal a 9% surcharge on income over a million passed by this year’s state “legislature”. Shockedshocked etc. Sarc off: I truly don’t know why rich assholes play the referendum game. It calls attention to them, costs extra money, and…
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TIL: SNAKES!!
Cute headline: Rattlesnake wanting to read is found outside Auntie’s Bookstore Customers told an employee that a snake was slithering around parked cars. The employee went out to see, and sure enough it was a rattler. She tried calling all the usual wildlife-related agencies, and as fucking usual none of them were “able” to deal…
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