Category: Uncategorized
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When Harry met Herbie
Another pretty good article from Ryan Zickgraf at Compact. He’s making the case that some unions were against Vietnam while unions are not joining the current antiwar movement. I won’t argue with the few cases he cites, but I was there at the time and we certainly didn’t feel any support from the working class.…
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Would be a good business!
One of the news aggregators mentioned that Uber is tamping down fake rumors about an Uber ‘walking buddy’ program. Uber isn’t doing it, but somebody should! It would be a good business, especially in big cities. We have dog walkers, why not person walkers? Extroverts would walk more if they had company, but can’t find…
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Gap
I wanted to reread Duane Jones’s wonderful little book. I thought it was in the top shelf of my ‘actively used’ bookcase, but it’s not there. Started looking through other areas. Finally looked through a little stack of magazines in a basket next to the dining table. When a magazine or catalog comes in, it…
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Who fucking cares?
Via MindMatters, math profs are trying to use ChatGPT to disprove theoretical conjectures. So fucking what? Mathematical conjectures and theorems are meaningless noise, like the pro wrestling of “congress”. Theorems never solve real problems. A different sort of theory (not same as theorem) arises from real experimenters solving real problems, and occasionally provides a useful…
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Excellent general advice.
Biden: And by the way, I say to every young man looking to get married – marry into a family of five or more daughters. I did, my wife is the oldest of five sisters. You know why? One of them will always love you. Not the same one. I don’t know about the specific…
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The answer
Ryan Grim seems like a plain vanilla commentator, sort of vaguely Libertarian but not unusually incisive. In this clip he shows a UNIQUE GRASP OF REALITY. No other public speaker has ever caught this basic fact of life. He’s talking about an international survey asking people if they feel their country has democracy. In US…
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My old question
Wolf posted his latest update on housing prices. Nothing new there. The usual combination of Larry Fink evading taxes and Chinese billionaires evading taxes. Just the US economy operating as intended for the benefit of all Americans. (All Americans = Larry Fink and Chinese billionaires.) One commenter hit a new and previously unasked question: When…
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Normal stage
MindMatters notes a splitup in Satan Altman’s company. Several top execs are leaving all at once. There’s no point in speculating about the detailed reasons for the split, which is a typical stage in a fast-growing company with a fanatical founder. At some point the fanatical founder needs to PURIFY his execs, and the less…
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Not controlled opposition
The antivaxers are working for Bush and Mecher and Fauci. They’re all on the same side, seeking the same goal of eliminating normal medicine and eliminating immunity. Headline from one of the obviously fake antivaxers: Near 0 deaths per year from MMR in the US over the last 6 years. So why do we REQUIRE…
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Still more word boundary peeve
Last month I was amused by Substack’s hyperactive AI algorithm. When you leave out a space after a period, the combination of two words with a dot between them automatically triggers an ad for a website. Now it appears that Facebook’s algo is doing the same thing. The webmaster for Spokane News must have typed…
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Wallace as always
Around the same time when John Langan in Hollywood was envisioning aperture cards as an aid to filing and sorting film clips, others were envisioning the same idea as an aid to scientific references. Atherton Seidell is credited with the first published mention of the idea. (Sync: Another Atherton was involved in commercializing the Langan…
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Tiktok switches to Toyota
I’ve overused the Toyota analogy. In this case it’s literal. Until now Japan and China have followed diametrically opposite methods to take over US industries. Neither was aggressive. In both cases our “own” industries happily SURRENDERED the field to the foreign competitor without a fight. Our industries HATE to make things and employ people. They…
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From impressed to unimpressed
After being impressed by the learning abilities of the prosecution and judge in the Craig Wright case, I made the mistake of reading some “independent” “journalists”. Highly unimpressed as always. I keep stupidly hoping that one of them will eventually show a grasp of reality and history, and they continue to disappoint. They constantly throw…
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Talent and drive
A British court has decided firmly and colorfully that Craig Wright is not Satoshi. The general verdict was announced earlier, and the final document was published today. Overall I’m impressed by two things. 1. Impressed by the comprehension and understanding of the judge, who clearly spent vast time and effort learning the details of the…
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Kissinger in reverse
Perusing headlines about the ever weirder and trivialer and nonsenicaler and meaninglesser pro wrestling in so-called “congress”. Many years ago Demon Kissinger spent some time in academia after “retiring” from government. He famously observed that academic battles were fiercer than political battles because the stakes were so low. Now the same rule applies to political…
Polistra's Mill 