Category: Uncategorized
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Nicely understated
The back of a Hershey chocolate bar has some recipes under the headline ‘Great for Any Occasion!’ It’s rare to find something cheerful and non-political on a package, amid all the required nonsense about GMO and Gluten and such. But this bit of advertising is actually understated. Nobody needs an Occasion for chocolate! Hershey could…
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Worth supporting
I know that local “elections” are mythical. I still make marks on ballots to register a survey response, though I know decent people will never be allowed to take office. Manweller’s Rule. One candidate for council in this part of town got my “vote” and a donation. Chris Savage is working class. Currently a truck…
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Shocking but didn’t seem right
Saw this pair of graphs, credited to NYTimes. Industry was dominant everywhere in 1990, now healthcare is dominant everywhere. First response was Yup, that’s exactly what happened. Then I stood back and compared with what I know from tech history and experience. On the 1990 end, industry was never dominant in most states. It was…
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Leonardo da Jersey
Postal inspectors busted the latest giant Ponzi, a New Jersey racketeer who called himself NJ Flipper. = = = = = START LONG QUOTE: Cesar Pina provided services for narcotics traffickers, bribed a government official, and defrauded unsuspecting investors out of millions of dollars, all for personal gain. Under the guise of being an entrepreneur…
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How to kill science
Oxford University Press will censor genetic studies from China because some of the samples come from Uyghurs, who are allegedly persecuted. First: Most of the good research is in China now. Rejecting Chinese studies is deliberately blinding ourselves to most science. Second: I can understand rejecting a study because the subjects were unnecessarily harmed. But…
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Were books better?
Literary types are always lecturing the unwashed masses about the critical importance of BIG HEAVY BOOKS. If you aren’t reading BIG HEAVY BOOKS you’re illiterate. I used to read lots of books, including BIG HEAVY ones. Did I get more benefit from them than I’m getting currently from social media? Not really. Through the 70s…
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Also unsurprising
Also unsurprising but not as important as arsonists… Bari Weiss set up a fake “independent” news source using Substack as the platform. At first it looked independent, but soon showed its purpose. It’s just a branch office of NYTimes. Bari allegedly got disgusted with NYTimes and quit to form her own media company. She’s competing…
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Schrodinger’s jail
Yesterday an arsonist was released without bail “because the jail was critically overcrowded.” Today an arsonist who caused only a dumpster fire was arrested and held on $100,000 bail. Mysteriously the jail was no longer critically overcrowded. Hmm. I wonder what emptied the jail? From police report: = = = = = START QUOTE: On…
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NextDoor tries to reform
The doorbell net NextDoor recognizes that it has become a gossip and bitching party line. It’s trying to add more of the services that people need, services that USED to be provided by local radio and TV and newspapers. I signed up for NextDoor in 2018, but quickly realized it was mostly groundless suspicions, not…
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Error bar and tense
My reading at Substack has pretty much reduced to one writer, Del Mastro. I was reading him before he moved to Substack, and he’s still worth reading. Today’s article observes that we tend to view short increments of time or distance as “within tolerance” or “within NOW”. An activity that takes a few more minutes…
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Two forms of measure
Well, I’ll try to work around the WordPress weirdness to say what I wanted to say. = = = = = I overuse Dillinger’s Rule because it’s an elegant explanation for many human activities that have more complex conventional motives. When asked “Why do you rob banks?” Dillinger said “Because that’s where the money is.”…
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Superweirdness by WordPress
I started to write a silly piece with some wordplay. After pushing Add New Post, WordPress gave me a single line with 1 at the left. Each time I hit Enter it adds a new line with a new ‘verse number’. This is bizarre. How far will it go? Probably indefinitely. Is this a special…
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Back to unsurprising.
At the start of July the so-called “city” passed a so-called “law” that pretended to enable more enforcement against the homeless. Two weeks later they’ve had plenty of chances to use it, and nothing has changed. Chad “Misty” Horne ran wild, starting more than a dozen big fires in one day, causing massive damage and…
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Clarified
One of the big fact-stoppers has decided to quit using misinformation and disinformation to stop facts. They say the words formerly clarified things but don’t clarify now. In reality, everyone understands CLEARLY now that information means a perfect copy-paste of DNC talking points, while misinformation means an imperfect copy-paste of DNC talking points. The terms…
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Everything Altman does.
NewScientist is admirably avoiding pure partisanship this year. It’s still continuing the LONG tradition of public science voices, boosting the newest fashion in Share Value, treating the latest tech dystopia as utopia. From an article on Altman’s latest crime: = = = = = START UTOPIA: But ask agentic AI, “What should I eat tonight?”…
Polistra's Mill 