Category: Uncategorized
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1890 2.0
The SS admin has released the most popular baby names from last year. For males: Liam, Noah, Oliver, James, Elijah, William, Henry, Lucas, Benjamin and Theodore. For females: Olivia, Emma, Charlotte, Amelia, Sophia, Isabella, Ava, Mia, Evelyn and Luna. Except for Liam and Luna, these are 1890 names. Both of my grandfathers, William and Henry,…
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Brits don’t grok the Dry Line
DailyMail bemoans the number of counties without a grocery store. Most of them are in Texas and the Dry Line parts of the plains states. Most of them are nearly unpopulated. Texas is especially peculiar because it has something like 250 LITTLE counties, the same size as counties in Ohio or Virginia. Several of the…
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Can’t leave a cult
Ever since the 1980s days of BBS and Compuserve, the web has been a team sport. Every forum on every subject has Team A and Team B, and woe betide the unfortunate novice who tries to walk in the DMZ. After you figure out the gradients, you either slide quickly onto one team, or you…
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Good bad example
When making illustrations and animations for anatomy, I should be sure to avoid comparisons like this. EDITING is the most important part of creating. Later thought: The above ‘bad example’ is French. There’s a long French tradition of inserting sly double entendres and plain old silliness in technical illustrations. Maybe the example is continuing the…
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For clarity
After mentioning homeopathy in previous item, a footnote for clarity. I don’t know for sure if homeopathy is better or worse than establishment medicine. I know for DAMN SURE that homeopaths are better than establishment doctors. Re-re-repeating an old couplet: How do you know which side of a “debate” is good? “Scientists” jail you for…
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Underground, undermud
I’ve been illustrating and animating the hair cells of the cochlea for work and for fun. The outer hair cells, which are also found in the semicircular canals, are designed to communicate and physically vibrate up to about 40 KC, possibly up to 100 KC. Steinheil’s ground telegraphy was DC, much like Morse except that…
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What would be familiar 2
In previous item I noted that a 1950’s writer would find today’s Hollywood landscape mostly familiar. How about a 1950’s Teamster? Even more familiar. The head of Teamsters in LA is Lindsay Dougherty, who literally wears Jimmy Hoffa on her sleeve. She declares absolute Teamster support for the writers strike in language that Jimmy would…
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What would be familiar?
Listening to continuing coverage of the writers strike. They’re mentioning all the companies that make movies and how the companies are handling the strike. What would a 1950s movie writer think if she tuned into this broadcast through an ionospheric timewarp? How would the Martian visitor explain it? Martian: Well, they’re striking against Paramount, NBC/Universal,…
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Vivek the magsman
This Vivek character is playing a weird game. First he claimed that Lincoln’s Genocide was about applying the 2nd amendment to blacks, which is loony. Now he proposes raising the “voting” age to 25, and requiring a literacy and citizenship test for “voting”. After two examples, a pattern emerges. He’s parodying everything Repooflicans say, as…
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Almost aptronym
Elon has appointed a full-fledged WEFoid to head Twitter. Yaccarino was in charge of the publicity campaign for ballgags and vaxes. (Her name should be Vaccarino for a perfect aptronym.) Now regular WEF programs can resume on Twitter, and the usual suspects can safely return. Not that they ever REALLY departed. The folks who foolishly…
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Today is Odometer Day!
Today is Odometer Day! Time for a reprint from Dec 2020. = = = = = START REPRINT: In 1999 there was considerable hubbub over the Y2K bug in old programs, many of which were in COBOL. The language itself wasn’t busted; its date functions have four digits. But the early mainframe programmers in the…
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Who’s the bedbug 2
Latest pithy point from Kirn: It takes only moments for AI to “write” a book, but it will still take hours, even days, for a person to read one. It used to be the other way around; the writer labored far longer than the reader. It made reading books feel worthwhile, to know that. Now?…
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Who’s the bedbug?
Earlier I talked about Marx’s real purpose. He was a scholar, not a politician, and he was trying to disprove the economist theory of marginal utility. In theory every product is identical except for price, and consumers choose products SOLELY on price. The real world doesn’t work that way. Every product is different, just as…
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QT continues to solve problems
Yahoo notes that Beyond Meat, a pure QE cash-burning fake company, is on the way down. They miss the main problem, which I discussed in 2019. = = = = = START REPRINT: It’s been clear from the start that Tesla cultists are not truly green. They’re rich fuckheads who fly and drive all the…
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Gold rush observation
I’m sure somebody has made this observation before, probably Sailer, the true expert on California. Levis is happily “leaning into” the ESG craze of advertising solely for trannies. Unlike Budweiser, they’re making the right lean, and will be rewarded. Levis has been haute couture for a LONG time. Their loyal customers are haute couture. Levis…
Polistra's Mill 