Author: polistra
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Nature’s ledger
Thinking again about the peculiar self-liquidating scrip. A city issued the scrip with a series of boxes or punch locations. Each time the scrip changed hands, a new hole was punched and a small tax was paid to the issuer. When all the holes were punched, the scrip was simply discarded. It had served its…
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Same date
Sailer questions the usual narrative about Hitler’s concentration camps. The standard narrative says that Hitler was killing faster and faster until we defeated him. Sailer looks at the trains shipping Jews into Poland, and finds that the trains peaked in mid’42 and stopped at the end of ’42. This date matches an observation on Quora…
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Tracking the trace
Trying to explore the concept of value in ledgers, consulted an 1873 book on accounting which has a fresh view of the subject. The book also has an unexpected phrase: With regard to stocks, the titles of account, by which value in them is kept trace of, will be suggested from their descriptive names. If…
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Sucker filter, tax edition
I got tired of the Repooflican hatred for IRS a long time ago. The main purpose of ZERO TAX is to build support for monsters like Bezos who never pay taxes anyway. It’s a branch of meritocracy. When you believe taxes are a crime, you’re fantasizing that you belong to the same elite as Bezos.…
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Police Polodge
American Radio Library is adding a huge variety of different RCA internal publications. This one includes three interesting items. A 1952 article on Canadian public service radio has a Plodge, probably ’48 by the smaller tires: A 1952 article on Civil Defense has a weird Chevy COE van that I’ve never seen pictured before: And…
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Why only v’
Listening to the Strange as it seems episode on the origin of the Star-spangled Banner. The characters are singing the song as it first appeared in a Baltimore paper, and their father tells them it’s not new at all. He then sings Anacreon in Heav’n and orders his daughters to stop singing an old bawdy…
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Hey Bobby!
RFK is playing the old old old game of government “investigations”. Every government “investigation” is a coverup, designed to permanently hide the real culprits and blame lower-level officials or innocent bystanders. He’s pushing to prosecute Fauci, thus conveniently hiding the real culprits. Fauci was a late recruit to the monstrosity. In Feb 2020 he was…
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Great line
Denyse at MindMatters turns out a couple of classic lines! But an overarching theme has been the need to promote the idea of a gradual development of human-like intelligence. As it happens, ancestors way stupider than their descendants are just not what paleontologists have been digging up. And histories that are made up rather than…
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Can’t walk and chew bombs
Alisdair MacLeod discusses international banking. He has an important observation around the 15 minute mark. In our frenzied permanent obsession with obliterating Russia, we took our attention off the Middle East. Those countries realized that our Machiavellian dividing force was absent, so they made peace! All the fake enemies we created are now getting along…
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This one is personal
One of the Substackers went back to the martyrdom of Magufuli, and mentioned that Dlamini, the prime minister of Swaziland, also died “of” “the” “virus” in late 2020. I hadn’t heard this before. Checking BBC, it’s true. Unlike Magufuli, this martyrdom is sort of indirectly personal for me. Back in the ’90s one of the…
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Three steals
I finally had to sign up for Twitter (indirectly via Google) because Elon has blocked all non-members. I have no desire to write anything there, but I do need to see the Weather Bureau’s storm info. The Bureau has its own website and Facebook feed, but only the Twitter keeps up with fast-moving storms. Lots…
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Big Bezos is watching
AOL’s mail was recently remodeled to feature an ad along with every inbox. Today’s ad reveals what we already know: the ad servers are always watching. Amazon sees that I’ve been writing about Zenith. Admittedly this isn’t nearly as intrusive as the ads that respond to what you’ve been whispering near your cellphone, but I…
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Bungalow topology
On yesterday’s walk through an unfamiliar block, noticed an atypical house. It’s a rancher turned sideways, with the narrow end forward. These houses were a common way of creating ‘variety’ in the 50s, but not common around here. First thought: Ranchers were originally bungalows turned sideways, so a rancher turned sideways is just a bungalow…
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Needs more AI
Noticed this on Reddit: I was in Virginia this week and made some subs. Just edited this piece and wrote “Small town Virginia”, now its under Niantic review. I forgot about “Virgin” being a no-no word. It has too be frustrating for those who live there or West Virginia. I don’t know what Niantic is,…
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Repetition isn’t bad
Denyse at MindMatters says: Hollywood has been developing a culture that welcomes AI-generated content with its tendency to pressure writers to fit a formulaic narrative structure instead of encouraging them to pursue real creativity and collaboration. Well, this is hardly new. Mass entertainment has always been a repetitive product, and that’s a good thing. Humans…
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