Author: polistra
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We can’t even.
Thinking about those optimistic Air Force researchers in 1962 amid the hoopla about Man In Space. We were trailing behind the Russians in space and in telepathy. Sputnik got there first, Gagarin got there first, and Popov got there first in telepathy research. We were trying to catch up, and we DID catch up in…
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A new SES
I used to collect Self-Explanatory Sentences, extremely condensed statements of an entire life or situation. The “virus” hoaxocaust knocked out most of my old habits and enjoyments as I focused on raw survival. Trying to bring back this habit now that the hoaxocaust is briefly paused…….. Defund the courts. Perfect SES. The courts are currently…
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No, it’s not chintzy
Following the subject of unnecessarily CHEAP and chintzy software. I was looking at it from the wrong angle. It’s about COMMAND AND CONTROL, not about saving money. Providing variable features for users is OLD in software. It became practical when hard disks became standard around 1985. Every major program has some way of setting preferences,…
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The Endicott experiment
One of the old FOIA files on the Black Vault site is an account of an Air Force experiment in telepathy. The researchers were working out of Hanscom AFB in Mass. They built a complicated set of computing machines in an attempt to eliminate the human judgment factors in the usual JB Rhine picture-drawing experiments.…
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Price puzzle
There’s an odd conflict in the automatic assumptions of media about prices. Media assumes that everyone wants lower gas prices and food prices. At the same time, media assumes everyone wants higher house prices and stock prices. Polls agree that 3/4 of Americans want lower house prices, ESPECIALLY the younger generations. This makes EXTREMELY GOOD…
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Sharp contrast
Two articles on the use of simulations and models in “science” appeared today. (1) An article in PNAS with ELEVEN co-authors tries to make the use of models appear more legitimate. Why do they want more legitimacy? Here’s why: In a wide range of research fields, computational modeling has become a critical tool. Its use…
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Hard answer to soft question 4
This is a repeat question, and I’ve used it before. But the answers this time were disjunct from the previous answers. Question: What’s the best thing you’ve ever won in a contest? Second prize sweet answer: 3-speed English Racer bike when I was about 12, at the movies. It was electric blue & so pretty.…
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Yet another grandma was right
Every fucking thing we learned in school was criminally false and wrong. Our “science” books mercilessly mocked Schiaparelli’s canals, Lysenko’s acquired characteristics, the old wives tales about stress influencing genes, and phrenology. Now, unsurprisingly, we have proof that the phrenologists were right. The shape of a face and skull does tell you a lot about…
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Trash puzzle
If a fictional detective encountered this oddity, he’d pursue it and find a complex crime at the base. I doubt that there’s anything complex, but it doesn’t make sense. Like most ‘environmentally conscious’ cities, we have a brown bin for regular trash and a blue bin for recyclables. My simple lifestyle doesn’t fill the bins…
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I don’t see the cede
I can’t quibble with this Kirn oracle, but I can’t call it realistic either. Beneath the hard dry crust of the establishment, a powerful dynamic reservoir of turbulent independent energy is starting to exert real counter pressure. It does not have a name yet, this force or movement, but it is developing as a real…
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More fake outrage
We have more fake outrage based on an intentionally inverted concept of reality. The latest fake whistleblower is accusing Twitter of “failing to protect user data.” The sole purpose of social media is to gather user data and sell it to the government or anyone else who wants to buy it. That’s all. That’s the…
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New record?
Social media and blockchain and DeFi and NFT and DAO enable super-fast and super-efficient swindles. I wonder if this one sets a new record for Greater Fools Per Second. (GF/s, or GFs-1 in proper metric format.) An NFT exchange called SudoRare set up its website, grabbed $820k in real money from Greater Fools, and then…
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Not much charge in the disc
Took a peek at the latest “revelations” on UFOs. BlackVault has a solid website and a well-organized Youtube channel with good clear careful narration. I like the way they’re handling things, and I think Frank Edwards would have been pleased. There’s not much beef in this burger. These FOIAs are a lot like the older…
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When Foy worked
Still thinking about the Foy solution for automation, I looked up some 1960 government studies on automation. At that time business and labor were mostly working together to protect skills and workers. Businesses understood that labor would strike hard if they fired workers unnecessarily, so businesses behaved decently. The study predicted correctly that file clerks and…
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Strong stuff, weak history
Strong stuff from Kirn: So much imagination, eccentricity, dreaminess, and creativity went into the creation of the tech we use now. Yet it is becoming the instrument of our species’ most simplistic and brutal instincts for raw power, deception and coercion. Damn it, I want that Renaissance they promised! First part is wrong. The true…
Polistra's Mill 