Author: polistra
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Four things I couldn’t have guessed
Just for my own purposes, collecting four important things that I learned from others in recent years. Most of my learning comes from painful experience. I couldn’t have figured out these four facts on my own, and I’m grateful to the people who revealed them. 1. Manweller’s Rule. Elections only count when they don’t count.…
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What we lost, part 54386738957857834579
Yet another example of what we lost when the NYC tax evaders broke out of the FUNCTIONING British system in 1776. = = = = = START QUOTE: MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough admitted last week that he and his wife, co-host Mika Brzezinski, often talk with democrats and other politicos — and “every discussion” about Biden…
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Not noticing
Unfortunately COWARDASS SISSYASS PUSSYASS REPOOFLICANS still haven’t noticed their own marketing failures. TheFederalist is tripling down on the crucial importance of three-piece suits and silk ascots and top hats and monocles and spats and perfumed periwigs and fine cigars and crudités and fine grammar. Tell you what, dummies. A man who thinks first of haute…
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Noticing the problem
For a long time I’ve been hammering on the fact that academic “social science” is totally disconnected from reality. It operates on a standard set of weird preconceptions about ordinary people. The real social scientists are advertisers and marketers, who understand real people deeply and use their understanding for profit. The rule seems to have…
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Spam express
Random pointless observation. I accidentally left AOL mail open this morning while I was cooking and eating. The inbox bell kept ringing over and over for several minutes, and then it stopped. All the items were related-looking spam, not meaningful emails. I’d previously noticed that spam seemed to pile up at a particular time, but…
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Why does the myth persist?
Burge takes a detailed look at Hispanic voting patterns in Florida. I found one BIG number more interesting than the details. = = = = = START QUOTE: Politically, are Hispanic Catholics predisposed to vote for Republicans at a higher clip? I don’t really see that in this data, honestly. According to Nationscape data, 47%…
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Leaning in, steering in
Substack is “leaning into politics” by hiring a political coordinator who worked at CNN and WaPo. Not auspicious. One basic rule runs deeper than all the current idiocies and monstrosities. Big corporations MUST conform to the whims of the ruler if they want to function and grow even bigger. Big media needs lawyers, loans and…
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Pratt’s Pterotype, 1 of 3
First a story about John Pratt and his invention. This was found in a 1927 issue of Typewriter Trade Journal. = = = = = START QUOTE: Mrs Worl recently gave to the Wenatchee Daily World of Wenatchee, Washington, the following story of the invention of the Pratt typewriters, one of the earliest writing machines.…
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Pratt’s Pterotype 2 of 3
Pratt’s US patent, issued in 1868, is titled Mechanical Typographer but he normally called his machine the Pterotype for unknown reasons. It wasn’t notably wingy. Here’s how it looked in operation: Each key had a long lever pivoted in the middle of the machine, and each lever activated three separate horizontal bars. All letters were…
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Pratt’s Pterotype 3 of 3
Returning to both Sholes and Hammond. Sholes and Glidden didn’t use Pratt’s keyboard at first. Like most early typewriters they followed the piano model. They also used an entirely different way of getting each letter to the paper, with individual hammers bearing each letter. Oddity: Glidden and Sholes sold their idea to gunmaker Remington, but…
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Fresh point
Tara Henley interviews Sue Gardner, a former CBC executive who now writes on the problems of media. Gardner hits the usual well-known issues about the failure and mistrust of media, which is an international problem. She adds one point I haven’t heard before. There have always been people who pay more attention to news and…
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Record for the Martians
Unsurprisingly the COWARDASS PUSSYASS SISSYASS REPOOFLICANS in this “state” are kicking down on a meaningful candidate yet again. They did it to Loren Culp in 2020, now they’re doing it to Semi Bird in 2024. He has lots of local donors, and he has the endorsements of 12 county Repooflican organizations including Spokane County. The…
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Kosher qibla
One of Polistra’s rules is: Constraint makes good design. Freedom makes bad design. Tablet magazine has a DELIGHTFUL article on a lost NYC Jewish technology, which flourished in the 1930s. Writing on the Sabbath is forbidden, but raising funds at a synagogue is permitted. The fundraising had to be recorded, for monetary bookkeeping and for…
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Ohmari’s law
Sohrab Ahmari gets everything right. So far I haven’t heard one false note in his discussions. In this interview with Trish Wood he focuses on the standard Friedmanite lie that price is an automatic result of equal forces on two sides, like a drain trap. Nobody believes this brazenly delusional lie. Even the economists don’t…
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Fairness Doctrine is back.
THIS DUDE UNDERSTANDS KRAUTS. Hat tip to Cindy Sheehan for pointing to the DryBar channel, which enforces the Fairness Doctrine rigorously. It’s made up of comedians who don’t spend all their time either FUCKING TRUMP or SUCKING TRUMP. They just laugh at life.
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