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Should call it an earbird
Most people call the inner musical repeater the earworm. I call it my mental jukebox. It has a few old scratchy records that the drunk at the bar tiresomely plays every night, plus a much wider row of buttons that push automatically for no obvious reason. On this morning’s walk I became conscious of an…
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Worse than Altman’s eyeball
Noticed via New Scientist, which properly considered it as a candidate for the next Ig-Nobels. You thought Altman’s soul-stealing Eyeball was intrusive? How about a new industry devoted to wearable fart detectors? The fartup sees an oppootunity in the well-known hianus of infartmation. Most people aren’t aware of their actual fartquency, either under or overstating…
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Moore’s Law? No, Less’s Law.
I’ve always figured my own income tax. A long time ago when I had a circle of friends, I often figured taxes for friends because I enjoyed the work. Now I hate it. Why did I enjoy it then and hate it now? Easy. Paper vs computer. Even for a relatively simple situation, tax involves…
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What’s the real diff?
Via NiemanLab, this is a good piece of reporting on a sneaky and obscure part of the tech world. A company called Clickout Media is acquiring many of the sites that write about videogaming. After it acquires a site, Clickout turns it into a front for bitcoin and gambling. Clickout’s specialty has a revealing name:…
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ChatGPT is a blonde.
Some people are having fun testing the limits of AI. ChatGPT has tremendous emotional intelligence but low math and logic skills. In other words it’s more female than male, the classic airhead blonde. No wonder lonely men are treating it as a girlfriend.
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Trying for resonance
We’re running two aggressive pointless wars right now. Both are repeats. We’ve invaded or colorrevolutioned Venezuela many times, and we’ve done the same to Persia at least three times. We never gain any advantage from our aggressive evil wars, we just kill a bunch of people who NEVER ATTACKED OR THREATENED US. Tessa writes a…
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Show, don’t tell.
If you want to sell a product or a religion you have to SHOW the product, not just tell us to buy it. Churches quote the New Testament and then viciously reject lonely and poor people. In 2020 the Democrats talked “resistance” and then lethally assisted Trump’s torture chamber, continuing it for two years after…
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Placebo vs tiredness?
NewScientist covers some recent experiments on sleep, indicating that our internal measurement of restedness is loose and flexible. When we’re convinced that we got good sleep, we feel awake and we perform better. When we’re convinced that we missed sleep, we feel tired and we lose sharpness. This experiment is clever, using a technique popular…
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True but not how they mean it
Fuckheads are fond of saying “One injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere”. Citing Einstein, Gandhi, Franklin, Jung, Nietzsche, Lewis, Chesterton, Plato, etc. It’s true but NOT the way they mean it. Justice DOES NOT MEAN what those fuckheads think it means. I can’t possibly translate or parse what goes on in those supercrazy heads.. JUSTICE MEANS…
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Logical conclusion
Unscientific Unamerican is screeching as usual about BURNING BURNING CLIMATE EMERGENCY. = = = = = START SCREECH: Award-winning Burundian journalist Arthur Bizimana and his collaborator Martin Leku, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, risked their safety by travelling deep into the rainforest — the world’s second-largest — to gather material for their exclusive…
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Lilienthal on modularity
David Lilienthal’s magnificent book on the TVA and New Deal is a very small paperback, published in 1944 under paper rationing. I’ve scanned some important pages for my own reading convenience, as a sort of adaptation to my elderly eyes. Nobody else will read this, and nobody else is interested in learning from the ACTUAL…
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Great phrase, why isn’t it used?
This show from Canadian TV features a carousel scheme designed to evade taxes by passing purchases around a circle of temporary fake companies. The purchases in this case were packets of “telecom minutes”. Carousel scheme is a wonderfully descriptive phrase but for some reason it hasn’t spread. Google leads only to this specific scheme, not…
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Copying the New Deal
Good is good no matter who does it. Bad is bad no matter who does it. In 2020 Trump did the evilest thing in 70 years, and the most widespread evil in all of human history. In his second term his admin is doing the standard American evil things like bombing foreign countries and enriching…
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Verrrry uninteresting and pointless
Reading the McAlester architecture book triggered a pointless new thought, which no human will read. The book carefully distinguishes between folk and non-folk styles. Non-folk is the unmarked default. Victorian vs Folk Victorian, Italianate vs Folk Italianate. New thought for me, undoubtedly old for others… This distinction is clearcut in all realms of creative products.…
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Last straw.
When Greatest Satan Bush was allowed to be an “author” on Substack it was ALMOST enough to push me out. But he isn’t PART of the business, he’s just allowed to be there. (Or more precisely his media minions are there.) His presence doesn’t directly contaminate my transactions. Polymarket is the last straw. = =…
Polistra's Mill
Be your own beacon.
Polistra's Mill 