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Not alone!
Clothing disobeys physics. It sticks when it should slide, slides when it should stick, drops when it should stay up, stays up when gravity should pull it down. When I try to arrange sheets and blankets at night, they turn into a topologically impossible Mobius strip or Klein bottle. I’m not alone! This frustration is…
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Y beaches and mountains?
Just figured something out. The COOL people only like mountains and oceans. When COOL people show pictures of places, it’s always grand vistas of rocks or blank beach and ocean. I’ve never understood why these things are interesting. There’s nothing to see, no plants or animals or houses or creeks. Beach is plain white, ocean…
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You asked for it
Via Nieman, another survey on the loss of newspapers, both print and digital. As usual it misses the reasons. Here’s the REAL danger signal: = = = = = START DANGER: The price of newsprint rose nearly 18% over the past year, Dudley reported, as U.S. mills closed or stopped production of newsprint. That’s about…
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Happy Hundredth, Halliburton!
This year is the centennial of Erle Halliburton’s first invention, a device to analyze oil formations. His company quickly branched out into all areas of oilfield service. This old training film shows the complex descendant of the original in full detail. I’ll reprint my tributes to two well analyzers from the same era. The Fessenden…
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Refreshingly straight
Amid the chaos stirred up by Altman’s gang, here’s one refreshingly straight court decision. An AI startup gobbled some of Reuters Westlaw’s writing and produced its own versions, directly competing with Westlaw. The AI company claimed “fair use”. The judge wasn’t fooled or bribed: = = = = = START QUOTE: “Under ROSS’ framing, this…
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Truly unprecedented
For the first time since 2011 this state is doing something sensible and sane. It’s a very small piece of sanity, but a bit of goodness is better than 100% genocidal evil. Via Spokesman, the Dept of State, which handles referendums, has made two SMART changes to halt spammers. Habitual ref-makers like Tim Eyman were…
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Cloud politics then and now
Currently we have a werewolfpack of California-based tech tyrants deeply involved in politics. Elon became semi-official Copresident for a while until Trump got bored with him as psychopaths do. The others are household names, massively influential in the Dow, which is another name for the government. Did this happen before? It did happen before with…
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One good thing about the internet
The web has always been an interesting carrier of obscure hobbies. Even before the HTML web, the Compuserve and USENET forums were full of peculiar hobbies. Some of those tribute pages are still around, untouched since 1996, and still valuable. Here’s a new one I haven’t seen before. Preparing railroad spikes on a bed of…
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Backward definition of rogue
Headline seen at RealClear: Math formula predicts when AI agents go rogue First thought: Well, that’s dumb. No formula needed, they’re rogue by definition and intention. In programming terms, if Exists(agent): GoRogue(agent) Second thought: No, this misses the meaning of rogue. In normal life a man goes rogue by breaking his contract, an animal goes…
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Y no Trig?
Occasionally I wonder why math is so scantily represented in street names. Integers are everywhere, and some addresses have 1/2 or rarely 1/4 and 3/4. (Those quarters seem to be a specialty of Los Angeles bungalow courts.) There are only a few decimal street names applied to county roads. For instance, T.5 Road is halfway…
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Nice clear distinction
Addams vs Ulrich, candidates for county judge, two lawyers representing opposite poles in the AI mess. For many jobs the distinction between new and old digital tools isn’t a central part of the job itself. A commercial artist isn’t enforcing laws, she’s making pictures for magazines or websites. When she uses AI she indirectly steals…
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Y not Decistars?
Seen at Substack, the OnlyFans for readers: Goodreads finally has half stars! About time! They also added quarter stars. I am curious, do you like to rate in halves and quarters? Web people are ferociously metric. If you dare to mention inches or pounds, you’ll be consigned to Primitive Murkan Hell, a horrible neanderthal cave…
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Not even a reported full moon reported!
Along with the usual reported dozen reported overdoses, we’ve got some reported Creative Craziness today reported! 2200 East South Altamont Blvd, assault reported. Caller reports she was attacked with a dog bone and a water can. [Imagining this fight would be a good challenge for story-writers. I can’t picture it!] Reported a student stabbed a…
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Heimatkunde test
Seen in the Zillow Gone Wild section of Reddit. It’s in Junction City, deeply familiar territory to me. Looking at the first pic, it’s just a well-kept typical tract house, nothing special. Typical Kansas cliff behind it, again nothing special. I used to climb cliffs like this, made forts, dug fossils. Wonder why it’s so…
Polistra's Mill
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