Author: polistra
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Three rings
From Phonographic World in 1889, an article that rang several of my bells. 1. This may be the first letter from an Okie in any published journal. The eastern part of Okla was in the middle of the first Land Run at that moment, and the only Euros in the state were in missions and…
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Are they also pissed?
Sammy’s continued antics are irrelevant but entertaining in a schadenfreudisch way. The whole bitcoin crime is only entertainment now that QE/ZIRP is done. JUDGE Kaplan has finally started being a JUDGE, so Sammy is finally getting a taste of what he deserves. His latest spoiled-brat routine is even spoileder than before. = = = =…
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Metaburge
Ryan Burge ran into a twitterstorm when he posted graphs showing that church attendance is a function of status. People objected that their own experience didn’t match. Burge is trying to assert the data with rationality, but it’s a hopeless fight for the SAME REASON THAT THE GRAPHS SHOW. In the last 30 years ALL…
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Skill-estate in the raw
Our conventional “history” of labor unions focuses on the violent conflicts and corruption, from Haymarket to Hoffa. As I read about the history of printing, one constant emerges. Guilds have been around for 500 years in highly skilled trades, from masons to printers to silversmiths. The original purpose of a guild was a bank for…
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More detail on bubbles
Yesterday I made the point that bubbles and frauds depend on who’s in charge, not on the specific mechanisms of money. In 2011 I made the argument in more detailed form. = = = = = START REPRINT: One of the Money Talk shows featured a good long interview with economist Ken Rogoff, who has…
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One problem
This interview focuses on the AI part of the Hollywood strike. The actors are missing one important point about the nature of copyright. They want each actor to own the copyright on his own image and voice and behavior. Copyright was NOT meant to defend one author against a publisher. One author can never mobilize…
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Reprint on Pluponents
Linked in previous item, worth a reprint. = = = = = START 2017 REPRINT: I tried briefly to follow this article on MMT. Gave up quickly. It’s EXTREMELY abstract and academic, full of name-droppings only familiar to members of the same subsubsubsubdiscipline, written by a creature whose academic title is longer than most articles.…
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It’s not the mechanism
More from the 1891 Inland Printer. Note the year. This is an editorial on the condition of the Government Printing Bureau. = = = = = START INLAND PRINTER: The bureau intended to gradually substitute steam presses for hand presses, but Congress failed to execute a contract. [SOUNDS FAMILIAR.] However, by working overtime the bureau…
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Phats?
Reading an 1891 Inland Printer, noticed an odd modern word in a report of conditions in KC: = = = = = START INLAND PRINTER: The past few months have witnessed the lowest depression in all branches of the printing business ever known in this city. Retrenchment has been the universal cry and practice among…
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Substack in 1830
In 1896 William Dean Howells, known today as one of Twain’s associates, wrote a brief remembrance of his father’s country newspaper in the 1840s and 1850s. This was in Ashtabula at the northeast edge of Ohio. He discussed the Patent Insides, which were dominant in 1896: = = = = = START HOWELLS: Twice or…
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The Stevens rule
Very old rule: Tight budgets cause smart plans and smart designs. Unlimited money causes stupid plans and stupid designs. The rule is clear with designs. My favorite example is Brooks Stevens. His 1947 design for the Willys wagon was TIGHTLY constrained by postwar restrictions. Willys was last on the priority list for bodymakers and machine…
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Learning requires stability.
In previous item about the history of stereotyping as it related to Kellogg’s Patent Insides, I was quoting a 1927 book by George Kubler. He understood how psychopathic chaos halts all learning and genuine innovation. = = = = = START QUOTE: Writing of books by hand continued to be the only method practiced throughout…
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The modern pattern
My rule about legacies and copyrights also applies to leaders. If you want your ideas to have a chance of lasting and spreading, don’t wall them off behind copyrights and patents and NDAs. Obviously not every idea is great enough or important enough to last, but when all ideas are walled, the good concepts won’t…
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An eye for an eye,
a decimal point for a decimal point. Via Protos: The founder of collapsed Turkish crypto exchange Thodex, Farouk Fatih Özer, has been sentenced to 11,196 years, 10 months, and 15 days in prison. Perfect. You want to create an autistic fraud and an autistic dystopia? We’ll give you an autistic punishment. A wildly unrealistic HUGE…
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Today is & day!
Time to reprint the genuine history of the symbol, which doesn’t match the standard etymology. = = = = = START REPRINT: I’ve always been bothered by the bizarre-sounding etymology of Ampersand. The symbol itself is no mystery: just a stylized version of et. But the usual etymology for the name doesn’t make a lick…
Polistra's Mill 