Author: polistra
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New thought about Wilson
Continuing a random look through old arch stuff… Hotels in 1918 were struggling to keep up with Madman Wilson’s lunatic Food Administration. Like today’s Public “Health” psychopaths, the USFA sent out a paralyzing flood of ever-changing and impossible regulations. Hotels and restaurants were supposed to do without wheat entirely, which resulted in VAST WASTAGE of…
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Skills != books
Randomly looking through old architect books on the web, trying again to find an equivalent to Grandma’s apartment building, a fourplex with a separate service hall. Previously I’d looked through my bookshelf of Dover plan books from that era, with no results. There are some fourplexes but no service halls. While googling, another aspect of…
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Not the best argument
Via MindMatters as usual: New AI systems have carved inroads into many industries, not least of all those involving voice and audio. Now the audiobook business is in trouble; since AI has the increasingly good ability to mimic the human voice and generate words, many voice actors and readers have watched the demand for their…
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Three-way flasher
Speaking of medicalized: In the grocery store checkout this morning I was behind a highly overweight older couple who (1) properly self-gagged with M95.78854377 as per CDC instructions (2) brought their own shopping bag as per Our Dear Prophet Inslee’s instructions (3) bought white bread, lunchmeat, frozen dinners, and a case of Bud Light as…
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Elegant joke
Seen on Reddit: I asked my daughter for the phone book. She laughed at me, called me a dinosaur, and handed me her iPhone. Now the spider is dead, the iPhone is broken, and my daughter is furious.
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More yoot sanity
This is wonderful. Da yoots UNDERSTAND that employers are totally unreliable and disloyal, so they treat every job as a gig. In between gigs, they’re funemployed. The attitude resembles 1920 and 1970, when WW1 and Vietnam persuaded youngsters that their elders were stark raving mad psychopaths. Flappers, hippies, funemployment. 1920, 1970, 2020. 50-year cycle?
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WTF is he thinking?
DeSantis starts his campaign with a magnificent bit of political brilliance: “I’m better than Trump because I can serve two terms and Trump can only serve one.” Yessir, way to distinguish your unique brand! Every citizen over 35 is better than Trump for this reason. In reality he has an ABSOLUTELY UNIQUE QUALIFICATION. Unlike ALL…
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Who’s the computer?
The Turing test is hopelessly outdated. Eliza passed the test in 1964 for all practical purposes. Dembski is now applying the test backwards. He presents a weird Godel-like chain of convoluted self-referential sentences, and finds that ChatGPT can’t “solve” the chain. Normal humans can’t “solve” this totally contrived and totally trivial “problem” which doesn’t NEED…
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Dogs know
The Ankler has a nice picture of a dog joining the strikers, with a definitely strikey face. Smart dogs know who’s family and who isn’t, and know when the family is presenting a united front, even though they may not know why the family is united. Old snapshots often include the dog posing along with…
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Reprint from 2021
Reprint from May 2021, linked in previous. Switched and Witched. One aspect of the holocaust deserves more attention. I touched on it briefly before, and it’s becoming more obvious now. Testing and wellness laid the foundation for a fake “epidemic”. Heroic martyr Magufuli understood this from the start. He disproved the fraud at the start…
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Princess of Sanity
Via DailyMail. = = = = = START QUOTE: Kate, 41, was beaming as she arrived at Anna Freud’s London base this morning, where she joined a series of roundtable discussions about the mental health challenges facing youngsters today. The Princess of Wales said she believes emotions should not be ‘over medicalised’, particularly among young…
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Old ads work
I don’t respond to modern media, which includes modern ads. Old ads in old radio shows or old publications are more effective, as long as the product still exists. Example: Last November I had a common cold for the first time in many decades. Google suggested chicken soup. Inspired by this 1927 ad, I altered…
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Bitgosbank?
Via Protos: Texas has passed a law requiring bitcoin “banks” to be proper FULL-RESERVE banks. No fractional reserve. Even better, bitcoin “banks” must follow the old 1936 banking laws, keeping their customer deposit business strictly separate from trading and speculating. Glass-Steagall prevented serious bank failures when it was in place. The current mess began when…
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Fabled
Radio scriptwriters mastered the technique of creating a full image in a few words. The cheaper shows overused great to describe a great mansion on a great boulevard in a great city. Erskine Johnson’s Hollywood gossip column in the late 40s began with: This is Truman Bradley speaking to you from the fabled penthouse studio…
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Fibers
Convective thought: I’ve been annoyed by galaxybrain bullies for a long time. Like Ockham’s schoolmen, they know ALL the details of ALL the facts in the world, and spin intricate webs of details, precise to an infinite number of decimal places. If you dare to answer, the galaxybrain will twist and turn your answer in…
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