Author: polistra
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True and important
EnidBuzz has a meme: A southern goodbye is saying bye 20 times and standing around talking for another half hour while slowly inching your way toward the door. True and important. I noticed this as a child but didn’t associate it with broader culture. I thought it was just the way our family did things.…
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WordPress hacks
Since this blog is on WordPress, I should pass along this notice from Protos. A malware hack is using WordPress blogs, or more specifically websites based on WordPress with their own logins and storefronts and so on. The hacker presents a popup that seems to be coming from your browser (Firefox, Chrome, etc) asking you…
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Master class
In this live segment Tiffany is unintentionally giving a Master Class in real journalism. She illustrates the correct characteristics and behaviors and forms of thinking. Wide open about her own biases and preferences, willing to get deeply personal with sources, always keeping the facts STRICTLY separate from all personalities and preferences. If any professional journalists…
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Losing the argument
Greg Lukianoff works for FIRE, the defender of free speech on campus. He’s on a crusade to convince skeptics that cancel culture is unique and special. I’m in the skeptical camp on that point. I know that censorship is normal, and I also know that many of the “canceleds” were either fired for other reasons…
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The hologram
Reprint from Nov 2016, shortly after Trump was “elected”. Nothing has changed except that I’m older now and exhausted from three years of TRUMP’S Nazi torture and strangulation, so I can’t write as well now. = = = = = START REPRINT: I’m still impressed by the fireworks aimed at a shimmering hologram of “Trump”.…
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SAG, UAW, DAC
The Ankler notes frustration by two old labor activists who are unexpectedly members of SAG. Nader complains that he wrote letters to Fran and she didn’t answer, which seems cranky and whiny. He’s warning that AI is a serious threat, which is redundant because SAG is already treating AI as deadly serious. I don’t see…
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Not worth the price.
Kirn and associates have started up a printed newspaper. Since I’ve been mouthing off about real printing and real newspapers for a long time, decided to put my moneying where my mouthing is. Got the first issue. It’s nicely wrapped and nicely printed, but it doesn’t have ANYTHING I couldn’t find on the web. No…
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Radartoons
Haven’t done one of these in a while. We’re being invaded by the entire Western Hemisphere, starting with snow from Canada! And here’s the bombing in progress. First snow of the season.
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Newtonian politics
The current spate of canceling academics for holding balanced and objective views is being compared to McCarthyism. In a general sense this is valid but it misses the important TIMELINE of the HUAC/McCarthy period. HUAC started its inquisition in 1947. ALL of Congress was on the same side. It wasn’t Joe McCarthy’s “indecency” vs the…
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I started with Foy.
This is a clever approach to Big Data. The researchers realized that data compressors like ZIP and MP3 work by predicting what comes next. They developed a simple prediction engine, just a few lines in Python, by using GZIP to generate the predictions. No need for a giant LLM, no need to pay Satan Sam…
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Branded content came first
Via the Ankler: While it’s certainly not a new form of advertising, a confluence of events within the entertainment industry has set the stage for branded content to make an evolutionary leap over the next few years, according to a panel of experts at an Ankler panel at Advertising Week New York in Manhattan last…
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Reprint from last month
Polls consistently show that people are tired of war and tired of being beaten up and muzzled and needled and disemployed by Share Value capitalists. Across the world most countries are quickly moving away from the warmongers and Share Value capitalists. From Africa to Latin America to India to Russia to China, the old strong…
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Ledgers all the way
Tiffany also has a Substack column, which she doesn’t use as heavily as Twitter and Youtube. She does put some documents there. This one is especially informative. It’s a document Sammy wrote to her, outlining part of his defense strategy. It’s crystal clear, not fuzzy at all. Good old double-entry bookkeeping, familiar to an old…
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Clarifier
Randomly noticed a question/answer on Quora that clarifies a lot of things. The writer was not intending to clarify, but nevertheless his semantic point removes a lot of blinders. The point as stated: Zionism is just Jewish nationalism. We don’t give special names to other nationalisms because we don’t argue about them. The fact in…
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Zenith leftover
(Redated and reposted) This duplex should have gone in the Zenith set. At that time I showed the Trans-Oceanic in a generic house. Now I’ve made the proper duplex, so will more or less repeat the text with proper pictures. The duplex also has a coffee connection and a printing connection, so it does fit…
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