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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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Just be Pew
There’s a lot of pointless soul-searching by the humanities: anthropology, sociology, philosophy, etc. They’re wondering why normal humans no longer want to pay for the fine points of quasi-post-Rawlsian pseudo-Carnapism. The natural conclusion is that normal humans are illiterate non-self-aware numbskulls, so the humanities need to crank up our name-dropping and arrogance to a more…
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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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