Category: Uncategorized
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The ice industry, part 1/5
I’ve always been puzzled by the long persistence of household iceboxes. Mechanical refrigeration was invented around 1880. Ice plants had formerly used natural ice from ponds or from frozen pools, requiring massive insulation and storage, but rarely lasting through the summer. They started using refrigeration soon after its invention, and by 1910 all ice production…
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The ice industry, part 2/5
Who invented ice? Fredric Tudor. Obviously ice is a large part of the world, but nobody thought of it as a salable commodity until 1805. Tudor was a wealthy Boston kid with an unbreakable passion for sailing and trading. He knew that spices were the source of many fortunes, but spices were inadequate for preserving…
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The ice industry, part 3/5
The Enid Ice Plant, photographed in the 1920s and seen on the EnidBuzz facebook page, inspired this piece: Ice trade journals from the era list this company as Enid Ice and Fuel, which is a rational business model. They were processing and delivering portable energy, lumps of heat and blocks of cold. The visible tracks…
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The ice industry, part 4/5
How did the ice plant make its portable blocks of coldness? The method was unexpectedly complicated. Here’s the coldroom, where the compressed and relatively cool ammonia is allowed to relieve its pressure and absorb heat from the water that will become ice. What’s going on inside? We have a grid in the floor, over a…
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The ice industry, part 5/5
Summing up: The ice trade journals from the ’20s show an industry starting to grasp its decline, and responding in predictable ways. We need better salesmanship, we need to work harder, we need to organize better. By 1933 the decline was heard in radio comedy. An episode of Mirth Parade (not online now) has an…
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Great interview on economics
Another great interview. Elliott explains macroeconomics in a truly understandable way. His approach should be used in textbooks. The prison analogy is strictly accurate. Been there, done that.
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Connection
Just noticed a meaningful connection. The souls of ordinary people demand justice. We want to see a real crime punished, and we want to see incurable criminals removed or killed. At the moment we have two seemingly unrelated crimes disappearing on their own. The “virus” holocaust, which seemed permanent, halted in late 2020 in sane…
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Interesting dream
Interesting dream just now. I was talking in-person with some politicians, trying to teach them the radical weird concept of “solving problems”. I explained that humans do this all the time, in life and in jobs. Most of the problems humans solve are created by politicians. Unfortunately the politicians were impenetrable. They just looked down…
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Tickled
This joke tickled me. Businessman calling entertainment agency: “How much will it cost to buy a large singing group? I need one for a formal dinner party.” Agent: “Do you mean a choir?” Businessman: “Okay, fine. How much does it cost to acquire a large singing group?”
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Brilliant observation
A brilliant observation by Celia Farber. Something I often think of: Always the arse-end of their PSY OPs fall off, clumsily, after a few years. This is where you can see the whole anaconda of the PSY OP in perfect hindsight clarity, reviewed backwards. Try it with 9/11, or AIDS, or JFK or anything. The…
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WW∫D?
Interesting question in the Buttcoin reddit. Rather than admit defeat and reveal that they were running a ponzi, they simply gave away your assets and added more leverage to the system in an attempt to hide the deficit. At this time an ethical person with morals would have said “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise what…
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Agreeing with Sam
The redditors are mocking Bankman-Fried’s attitude about books: “If you wrote a book you fucked up. You should have written six paragraphs.” I’m basically on Sam’s side. Six paragraphs is too extreme; the traditional long-form magazine article is right for most topics. Ten pages, 5000 words. I wouldn’t have agreed with Sam in 1980. Book…
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What happened to stereo?
Totally random thought after happening to review some of my early stereo tech pieces. From 1955 to 1980, fashionable people had BIG stereo sound systems. The formal living room or parlor was dominated by the amplifier and the furniture-quality speakers, carefully placed for concert hall sound. Most people weren’t really interested in music, so the…
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Reality = ∫(Demon)dt
Wolf has two great graphs today. The first is the total quantity of counterfeit “money” in the central bank, updated. It shows the sudden surge “justified” by the 2008 manufactured “crisis”, and the VASTLY LARGER surge “justified” by the VASTLY LARGER 2020 manufactured “crisis”. The 2022 turnaround is continuing without pause, and the demons are…
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One year in WordPress
Just noticed that 11/27/21 was when I switched from my old Blogspot location to WordPress. I didn’t write much in the first month. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue writing at all. Cancelers were starting to take down important stuff from Blogspot, and I wasn’t convinced that WP would do any better. After…
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