Facts do not exist. Status exists.

Latest “news” item via New Superstitionist:

We have ignition! An analysis has confirmed that an experiment conducted in 2021 created a fusion reaction energetic enough to be self-sustaining, which brings it one step closer to being useful as a source of energy. The fusion ignition took place on 8 August 2021 at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California, but NIF researchers haven’t been able to reproduce this landmark achievement since. They have spent the past year analysing the experimental conditions that got them to ignition to determine how to achieve it again.

Remember the earlier cold fusion experiments by real scientists in Utah, who weren’t funded by Deepstate? They had ‘ignition’, a self-sustaining reaction in a small easy-to-build reactor.   They are PSEUDOSCIENTISTS because they don’t have STATUS.

Now the Deep Deepstate Livermore outfit has achieved one possible ‘ignition’ in their vast hard-to-build magnetic hot fusion reactor. They were unable to make it happen again. (Remember “reproducibility”?) They are SCIENTISTS because they have STATUS.

Previous item about AI and creativity made me wonder what AI would do when instructed to draw an old car. Would it come out hopelessly weird like a ’62 Dodge, or would it be a statistical average of all old cars, like the generic advertising cars?

Neither.

Ian Fischer has made a movie solely by instructing AI to make a series of frames. He included a screenshot of the commands given to the AI.

The first car is “whimsical blue stationwagon”.

My initial thought is a cross between a Lloyd Kombi and a Mini panel van. The googleable pix of both are often blue and white.

Googling “whimsical blue stationwagon” doesn’t lead directly to these two, BUT: Both of these have been featured recently in Curbside Classic without the word “whimsical”. One of the refs including “whimsical” is this Fiat 500 panel van at Curbside Classic.

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The second car is “yellow lamborghini”.

Literal, so no logic or stats needed.

The AI is remarkably smart in some ways. It recognizes that the animals need to be controlling the cars, so the zebra is controlling by chin and the giraffe seems to have his hoof on the wheel. It also does a good job of In and Out. A 3d rendering engine knows how to put A behind B when A is farther from the camera; but the AI has to orient the bodies properly to let the rendering work properly. In the first Lambo pic the giraffe’s head is closer to the camera, so it can be seen in front of the roof.

AI is not so smart in other ways. It clearly doesn’t understand how doors work.

Linked this in previous item. It’s worth a reprint.

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Looking for old info on coherers, ran into a US Census publication from the magic year of 1906. The Census bureau wrote a splendidly informative article on the present condition of electricity and electronics, getting everything right and describing everything with crystal clarity. As expected, the publication also included lots of tables and maps of employment, sales, etc.

Another section described an industry I’d never heard of!

The Shoddy Industry.

There is, perhaps, no article produced in manufacture, no article used in manufacture, and no article in common use, that bears a reputation more undeserved than does shoddy. Its very name is a synonym for pretense and fraud. To the popular mind goods containing shoddy are not merely destitute of wearing quality, but are suggestive of the unwholesome secondhand clothing shop, and inspire one with apprehension lest the fabric should communicate loathsome disease to the wearer of apparel in which there is this substance of ill repute. All this is unwarranted by the facts, as all are aware who understand the shoddy process, the method of making use of shoddy, and the benefits which the use of it confers upon the user. It is not the case, as is too commonly supposed, that a garment — or the cloth which is made into a garment — is or can be composed wholly of shoddy. New wool or animal hair is always the basis of the yarn and a certain amount of shoddy is mixed with it on the card.

Substance of ill repute is a brilliant phrase for an important insight. Our entire nation is now devoted to wiping out substances of ill repute. Witch powders and the witches who spread witch powders.

Now we only know the ill repute of Shoddy, and never realize we’re insulting a whole branch of industry that employed ordinary people making useful products in an EFFICIENT way, RECYCLING resources that otherwise would have been trashed.

In 1906 government experts were engaged in telling the truth CLEARLY, and more importantly they saw their job as DEFENDING honest productive work. They provided VALUABLE INFORMATION in the sense that you could LEARN SOMETHING NEW AND USEFUL by reading their articles.

Now government experts tell nothing but vicious lies, and they see their job as DESTROYING honest work and STEALING honest labor and KILLING honest workers. Experts provide negative information. When you read the spewings of experts, real data is RIPPED out of your brain and replaced by demonic monsters.

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Credit footnote: The section on electricity was written by Expert Special Agent Commerford Martin, and Shoddy was written by Expert Special Agent Edward Stanwood.

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Note that Martin and Stanwood had the word Expert in their titles, and the word was appropriate and honest in 1906.

The videogaming industry is turning against the whole Web3 shit. VR headsets, blockchain “trading”, the NFT fraud. Minecraft, the biggest and oldest company, which is owned by Microsoft, recently banned the whole mess. Most corporations will stick with The Current Thing even when it repels their customers and employees, because most corporations don’t want customers or employees.   Most corporations have either doubled down on NFT shit or “temporarily paused for re-evaluation”.  Minecraft said a firm harsh NO.   We won’t do it and we won’t allow it.

The worst example of abuse is Axie Infinity, which runs a click-farming operation. Click-farming is fraudulent on both ends. (1) It deceives advertisers into thinking that their ads are getting vastly more clicks. Incidentally, the old boxtop premiums automatically prevented this type of fraud. (2) Clickfarming, like all offshoring, is colonial oppression. It takes advantage of a hidden difference in exchange rate to underpay the foreign workers and totally disemploy domestic workers.

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The podcasters at Blockworks Macro are solidly in favor of all Web3 shit. I’ve started the video when the interviewer asks: What’s the advantage of Web3 in gaming? The expert answers in detail, using Axie as a SHINING example of the best advantage.

1. Blockchain “makes a gray market less gray”. In other words, it legitimizes fraud and oppression, which is a GOOD THING in her view.

2. NFT enables more external speculation in the various premiums and rewards of gaming. Speculation is explicitly designed to enrich the rich and kill the poor, which is a GOOD THING in her view.

Earlier today I mentioned the invention (or rather evolution) of the transistor in 1947. Bell Labs also developed most of speech science, including synthesis and recognition, and the C programming language, and microwave technology, and a million other useful devices and entire branches of science.

After the switch from profit to Share Value in 1980, Bell Labs was sold to Lucent and killed.  Later, Lucent devolved into something called Avaya, which accidentally returned to making just one Bell-like product: office extension phones and switchboards for call centers in India.

This afternoon Wolf reports on the further DEvolution of Avaya into a stock buyback vehicle.

This morning, the company confirmed the previously warned-about plunging revenues and a gigantic loss 2.4 times the size of its revenues. In addition, it disclosed an investigation into its financial reporting. And it warned, that it might not be able to pay off its bonds due in June 2023, though it had just raised $600 million by selling new debt in order to pay off these bonds, and that as a consequence of all of this, “there is substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.” So, this is a bankruptcy candidate. If it files for bankruptcy, it would be the second time.

The only thing missing is bitcoin and NFTs. I’m sure those will be the next step downward.

Whoops, I’m 5 years late. Avaya jumped into the bitcoin parade in 2017. There’s an NFT representing a song about Avaya, but so far I haven’t found an NFT offered by Avaya itself.

Modern podcasters and writers are always unmarried when “on stage”. Males sometimes mention their kids but NEVER mention their wives (or more likely husbands). Females sometimes mention their kids but NEVER talk about their husbands (or more likely wives.)

The earlier form of podcast was nearly always a team effort, a chat between husband and wife. In the ’40s there were dozens of these 15-minute chats, national and local. Some couples were already famous, some became relatively famous by doing the chat. Most of these chats were partly scripted to insure the requisite number of product placements.

Occasionally they mentioned their kids, and even more rarely brought one of the kids into the program. For instance, here’s Mr and Mrs Adolphe Menjou discussing auto racing with their son, and realizing that his tastes were more sophisticated than they thought.

Modern chats, with the implication of sole responsibility, don’t provide a role model for full partnership in marriage.