Author: polistra
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GOC 2.0
The military has allegedly lost a super-expensive F-35 jet, and is asking the public to help find it. Happened before. In the 50s the military organized the Ground Observer Corps, who were allegedly tasked with watching for enemy aircraft. Russia wasn’t trying to attack us then. Russia has NEVER tried to attack us. So the…
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Breaking a taboo
In this clip Vivek is discussing bitcoin with an old friend, not a random interviewer. His casual demeanor is appropriate for the situation. (Normally Vivek is fully suited up.) What Vivek is SAYING is orthodox techie talk, not unusual. What he’s DOING is more interesting. He’s drawing diagrams and using them to illustrate his points.…
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Good question
Somebody asked on Reddit: Water is the base drink. What’s the base food? Evocative question. My instant answer was barley. Barley grows everywhere, unlike rice and wheat and corn. Most of the answers were broader, including all of those localized grains when turned into some kind of bread. BUT: What about the premise? For most…
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Isms forbid solutions
Solving a problem can be divided into a few steps, with a loop on the last two. 1. Find the desired goal. This is the hard part and the genuinely variable part. In politics the right goal should be a functional civilization and a functional economy for ordinary people. 2. Know your baseline and measure…
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Discrepancy
Rushfield at the Ankler calls out an interesting discrepancy. The Hollywood strike is stopping a huge part of the US economy. The UAW strike is less consequential as measured by workers or dollars. (Only a few selected factories of the Big Three are struck. US factories owned by foreign companies like Toyota or BMW are…
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Missionaries of tyranny
Continuing from item on Ecumenical Institute. I wrote that EI was spreading the Tech Gospel in preparation for the Web War. This reminded me strongly of the missionaries sent by the same Deepstate to Kansas, who prepared the ground for Lincoln’s war against secure employment. The endpoint is the same in both cases. Costless labor…
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Reprint on Hikers
Linked in previous. Worth a reprint because it shows that I understood the situation in 2010. I didn’t fully discard partisan shit until I discarded the TV in 2012. HIKERS All the Propaganda Factories are hugging and weeping this morning about the three “hikers” in Persia getting a visit from their mothers. All the Propaganda…
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Rings a bell
Biles at MindMatters connects the transhumanist and Effective Altruist movements to the writings of Teilhard. = = = = = START QUOTE: Teilhard was a French Jesuit who believed that human evolution, nudged along with tech, was actually the vehicle for bringing about the kingdom of God, and that the melding of humans and machines…
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Would it help?
Seen in the same 1895 magazine that I cited for the bloodbathing Countess. Wilson’s Ear Drum. Deafness and head noises relieved. Would it help? Hard to tell from the picture. If it provided a resonant chamber, it could emphasize some frequencies to compensate for noise-induced loss. I’m more certain that it would help suppress rumbling…
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The turnaround man
RFK has his own Substack now, and he’s using it enthusiastically. He met with Oliver Anthony, the working-class singer. RFK empathized lyrically and accurately with the plight of working MEN. And then he turned the solution toward Organic Non-GMO farming. We envision regenerative agriculture and greenhouses where residents will grow wholesome organic food, learn skills,…
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Regents
The Santayana quote is meaningless, and he probably meant it as parody. Modern demons do learn from history, but not the way we naively imagine. They use history to improve the efficiency of their evil deeds. History is quality control, not a horrible example to be avoided at all costs. Does knowing history make any…
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Adding a tech gene
Last year I mused on tech genes and epigenes. I’ve tacked on a new item that seems appropriate. = = = = = START REPRINT: I just finished pulling together the Morse prototype and the Endicott experiment into a single Poser set, released on ShareCG. Gathering up and debugging a set always stirs thoughts. The…
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Another IP situation
Here’s another nonstandard copyright situation, in connection with food instead of sewing. An online recipe writer complains about copiers who grab all the credit and money. = = = = = START QUOTE: This wasn’t a case where someone just had a similar recipe or idea — she had three recipes (that I know of,…
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No copyright needed
Newspapers and magazines often held puzzle contests to exercise the mind, with a reward at the end. Puzzles were part of the patent insides industry. Nobody ever imagined that a puzzle contest would inspire one magnificent unknown artist to create an entirely new artform and then demonstrate it with a category-killing masterpiece! Seen at Vintage.es:…
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Pritzker
Greenwald’s latest piece is a deep dive into the importance of Penny Pritzker. She’s heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune in Chicago, and she was the main driving force behind Obama’s rise to state and national power. (Her brother is the current superdemonic governor of Illinois.) Now she has been appointed to head our LBO…
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