Author: polistra
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Monkeys down the drain
Pointed by Denyse, this article by Arlie Coles is an excellent clarifier of AI. = = = = = START QUOTE: To find a math map between inputs and targets, neural networks need a lot of examples of input-target pairs. If you give people a puzzle like, “you want to turn two into four, and…
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Specific suckerdom
Listening to something about Altman’s brazenly dystopian Orbs To Capture Your Soul. Deepstate is perfectly open now. First thought: Not new. Deepstate and undercover agents have always been open to their victims, though not quite as publicly visible as now. Second thought: Good old Sucker Filter. Make outrageous claims to pull in the suckers who…
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When didn’t it matter?
Rob Lowe’s latest piece takes the long way around to plead for less fussiness by the unions. I think. During the long trip he makes a point that seems automatic but maybe isn’t. He’s talking about what entertainers call continuity, the small details that some people notice immediately but most people don’t see at all.…
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Unions understand Mach
There is only one law. RULERS DO WHAT THEY WANT. Rulers, whether government or big corporations, do NOT change their behavior in response to “laws” or “elections” or “protests” or “open letters”. All of those gimmicks are PROVIDED BY THE RULER to keep us occupied and distracted, to maintain our delusional myths about power. Well,…
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Work done.
Done with this edition of courseware. Probably a bit more debug, but I’ve checked all I can check, sorted all I can sort, and submitted. Now I can return to full-time fun for a while, and try more analog MAKEFORCE. Reusing a very old work-done animation…
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Worthy reprint
Looking at the statcounter for the old blog. I haven’t changed it in 18 months, but the readers there are more varied and “purposeful” than the readers of this new WordPress version. I still don’t know why. Is it something about the format, or am I just dumbed down after three years of NAZI TORTURE?…
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Clavecin Oculaire, useless edition
American Radio History has a new issue of a 1925 Gernsback magazine. It starts with an article about a Color-Music Piano, which seems to be a vastly less usable repeat of the color harpsichords in the 1700s. = = = = = START QUOTE: This apparatus, as constructed hy the Ernemann Works, comprises two main,…
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More on Edwin Pauley
Writing about FBI blackmailer Edwin Pauley reminded me that Bert Andrews had mentioned Pauley in one of his opinion pieces about the 1948 election. The context was Congressional hearings about commodities trading by Federal officials. Found two separate Pauley events in a Congressional Quarterly. The pattern of the two events is distinctly revealing. The first…
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Big flip
This is highly encouraging if generally true. Via Ankler, Wall Street is siding with the strikers in the Hollywood conflict! = = = = = START QUOTE: Michael Pachter, research analyst at Wedbush Securities, is more pointed: “The market thinks all of the corporate bosses are idiots, and generally sides with the unions.” He adds:…
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Loyal Edgarite
Wallace mentioned Edwin Pauley as one of the Errand Boys who slapped Truman into submission to Deepstate. I automatically linked the Wikipedia article on Pauley but didn’t automatically read it. Now I’ve read it. Pauley was a lifelong Deepstate blackmail agent. He was an oil exec whose career was advanced by collaborating with Bush Senior…
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Smart civil engineers
Last week the city paved a short street that has been dirt since 1910. Most city construction projects are pointless or destructive, obeying EPA or ADA grants. Building flood generators to avoid a few PPT of phosphate in a lake, or installing disabled ramps on all corners whether the block has a sidewalk or not.…
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More X
Using X as a brand is almost always doomed, starting of course with plain old Brand X, the universal “wrong” brand contrasted with Our Wonderful Brand. I could only think of one positive X brand in the past. One of the legendary Texas cattle brands was XIT which stood for Ten In Texas. The Farwell…
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First, second, third, fourth
One of the pro-AI substackers, discussing the fast “development” of systems like Midjourney, said: The next blockbuster movie will be written by a kid in Mom’s basement. First thought: It’s not “developing”. The development is done. What we’re seeing now is a carefully planned and staged rollout by the Men Of Monopoly, carefully publicized by…
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More Wallace
Here’s another 1948 speech by Henry Wallace, focusing on postwar inflation. Again I’ve uploaded the speech itself without the intro and outro. Causes of Inflation, 14 minute mp3. I’ll transcribe some relevant parts for the web record. Part of the speech is details of prices and products that are no longer relevant. Our current postwar…
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Shared Multilie
Xlon’s X thing was always intended to be the whole web. 1. Commentators on both “sides” are missing the NON-ORIGINAL aspect. Before the HTML web, Compuserve and Prodigy were the entire web experience. If you were on Compuserve, you didn’t need anything else and couldn’t reach anything else, unless you got techy and delved into…
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