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The citing is as old as the citations.
Boring and dubious quotes from Mark Twain, CS Lewis, Einstein, Chesterton et al, is not a new problem! A joke from the Inland Printer trade journal, 1910: = = = = = START JOKE: They were boasting of the wonderful record of the new Linotype operator. “How many ems in fifty-four hours?” inquired the machinist.…
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Just fucking dumb
One of the AI defenders on substack is playing Altman’s game by planting doubt and confusion in our minds. If we believe this crap we’ll be less inclined to BLAME THE MAKER OF THE TOOL. = = = = = START IDIOCY: When an AI agent causes harm, who’s responsible? The developer, the deployer, the…
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Aunt Rose in tech
Social platforms always introduce new crap at the start of the month, fulfilling their Prime Psychopath Directive: MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS. Never let the customer USE the service, always force the customer to spend time and attention on readjusting. Facebook’s menstruation for February is a question-asking bot. At the moment the bot’s comments are…
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What did you expect?
Via Protos: Binance, one of the leading counterfeiters, did something in October that changed the fake value of its fake “money”. Now the people who bought large amounts of this particular counterfeit brand are suing Binance for …. For what? For being more counterfeit than you expected? Fakery is the OPENLY DECLARED ADVANTAGE of bitcoin.…
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Tale of two alternatives
I’m pushing against two computer-related frustrations right now. One is the Kafkan rules of ADA, and the other is the Deepstate spying and molasses sludginess of Windows 11. Windows has a built-in screen reader but it’s rather weak and not widely used. NVDA is the most common alternative. NVDA is shaped BY and FOR blind…
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More universal than gravity
Via Spokane newspaper: The Wash “state” “legislature” wants to impose an income tax on millionaires. Alien hyperdemon “Ferguson”, described as a “governor”, kicks out the proposal. The “legislators” pretend to be surprised, since the “governor” wears the same D label as the “legislators”. Three universal rules are pulling in the same direction. Manweller: It’s an…
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Where’s Petrillo when we need him?
The tech demons read dystopian fiction as blueprints and instruction manuals, not horrible warnings. Anthropic digested Bradbury’s book along with millions of others, and decided to do more than just copying Bradbury. They bought millions of books from used-book stores, scanned and stole the content, then destroyed the books. The news story popped from emails…
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What Sherlock meant
This task of (more or less) satisfying the absurd ADA mandate has two main parts. The first part was LONG in quantity and simple in concept. I examined 2000 images and wrote an alt-text description for each. It took exactly one month of fulltime drudgery. The second part is much shorter in quantity but much…
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Not new at all.
The vast majority of headlines in sciency websites are clickbait. Half of them are ads or promotions. Others are “Study suggests A could cause B”. Wake me when you prove causation by a controlled experiment**, not by stats. Some headlines are simply rebranding an old thing as new or rebranding a universal as a particular.…
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China is helping more
Via Protos, China is rooting out and executing fraudsters and mafia leaders. They’ve closed down several ‘pig-butchering’ factories operating in China and nearby countries, especially Burma. Before Mao the Chinese government was sometimes operated BY the tongs and mafias, but the post-1980 version is hardass. The US government has mostly been operated BY the gamblers,…
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It’s a valid point anyway
In previous item, the proposal to teach reliable signatures focused on a past era when signatures were easy to recognize and hard to forge. I argued that the signature itself isn’t nearly as important as the PURPOSE of the signature. Nevertheless, the marketing point is true. = = = = = REPRINT FROM 2019: The…
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Bad marketing, halfway good idea
Via the local newspaper: Some state legislators want to add “creating a signature” to civics classes. The marketing focuses on John Hancock, but the proposal is somewhat more meaningful than the usual civics crap. It turns out that poor signatures are a real problem for voting officials. Mail ballots require a signature which is checked…
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Manufactured fine art
Got another Hudson book. This one doesn’t have many cars I haven’t seen before, but all of the illustrations are clear and high-res, suitable for closeup views. This ’39 shows the graceful detailing of stamped parts, typical of the Moderne era. The parking lights were horizontal strips on the hood sides. Closeup view of the…
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Hey four eyes!
Via Smithsonian, a close look at an early vertebrate shows that it had four eyes. = = = = = START QUOTE: The earliest known fossil vertebrates, from 518 million years ago, may have viewed the world through four eyes — and one pair of them was the precursor to the pineal gland, according to…
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Random language note
Reading one of Burge’s pieces on the categories of non-religious people, churched vs unchurched, believing vs non-believing, praying vs non-praying, I thought: I’m a prayer, not a believer. I’m not sure if there are any gods, but I spend a lot of time and effort praying to them. Oops! Language isn’t logic. When you believe…
Polistra's Mill
Be your own beacon.
Polistra's Mill 