Category: Uncategorized
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The real independents
While we bicker and squabble about “free speech” vs Woke, on Twitter and Google and Facebook “versus” Gab and Parler and Substack, the real independents are blasting away inside the very same tech pipes and companies. Who are they? Videogamers. The biggest games have about 200 million users each, the same size as Twitter. And…
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Natural beauty correlates with theft.
Still thinking about Bell Labs. I visited there once ‘on business’ when I was working in the acoustics lab at Penn State. I feasted my eyes on The First Transistor, which wasn’t under lock and key. It was just casually displayed in a glass case in the main hall. One of the Substackers wrote a…
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NFT next?
Earlier today I mentioned the invention (or rather evolution) of the transistor in 1947. Bell Labs also developed most of speech science, including synthesis and recognition, and the C programming language, and microwave technology, and a million other useful devices and entire branches of science. After the switch from profit to Share Value in 1980,…
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Reprint from 2016
In previous item I was bitching about modern podcasts failing to show the real balance of male and female in marriage. A similar change happened in drama and comedy, with a pivot point around 1960. Before the shift, spy shows and adventure shows had teams of men and women with everyone participating in appropriate ways.…
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No teams
Modern podcasters and writers are always unmarried when “on stage”. Males sometimes mention their kids but NEVER mention their wives (or more likely husbands). Females sometimes mention their kids but NEVER talk about their husbands (or more likely wives.) The earlier form of podcast was nearly always a team effort, a chat between husband and…
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From an extremely different era 18
Latest upload at American Radio Library is an unusual booklet written by Emerson Electronics in late 1943. Most people knew that the war in Europe was in the final lap, and industries were turning their thoughts and advertising to postwar NORMALCY. Emerson: = = = = = Fond hopes and rosy prospects of great things…
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Reparations for Hessian Genocide!!!!!
Via LiveScience, archeologists in New Jersey have found a mass grave with 17 Hessian mercenaries who were fighting for the Brits in 1776. We need to pay reparations to the Duchy of Hesse! Now! Find the descendants of Ernst Ludwig, the last official Grand Duke of Hesse, and make them whole!!! Probably a few trillion…
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It’s Bab-O all the way down!
Duane Jones told several stories about his campaigns for Bab-O soaps and cleansers. He also told how the Babbitt Soap Company invented the whole concept of the premium: Around 1850, Benjamin Babbitt had switched from machinist to soap-maker, because he believed that in the long run it would prove more profitable. And being a shrewd…
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Code talkers
It’s relatively clear that Substack is getting ready for a big convergence of some kind. Maybe they’ll be bought up by Twitter, or funded by Soros. I don’t have any idea what’s next, but it’s clear that something is next, and next is always worse. Today their ‘director of communications’ is leaving for bigger pastures.…
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Dams
A great image from Kirn: Every day little dams are being placed in the rushing current of the English language. The builders think they will hold. They believe new technologies will help their project succeed. Shakespeare laughs. More to the point, pimps and hoes laugh. New language comes from the peasants, not from the writers.…
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WWJD?
This week I’ve been quoting Duane Jones’s 1955 book on marketing and business practices. What would Jones say about Bitcoin and Metaverse and NFT? Facebook is primarily an advertising agency, so it certainly fits inside the topic. Jones couldn’t have imagined such MAGNIFICENT STUPIDITY. He worked in a period (1930-1960) when businesses functioned on PROFIT,…
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How to succeed in business
After screwing up Facebook’s main usable features, spending billions on the never-successful VR, and then screwing up Instagram’s main usable features, Zuck has discovered the MAGIC KEY to success!!! Can you guess success? Yes, you guessed success! Success is spelled And not just any old NFT. No sir, no dull drab pipe-smoking monkeys. Only the…
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More chintzy
Following on Zuck’s chintzy metaverse. Substack is also chintzy in an obvious front-facing piece of UI. It’s not hard to adjust singular/plural to the number. I do it in courseware, on the countdown of quiz questions: If one creaky old dude with near-zero budget and near-zero JS skills can do it, surely Substack with its…
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Speaking of brands and senses….
EnidBuzz asks for your favorite back-to-school memory. The responses show a clear separation between introverts and extroverts. Introvert: One year closer to it being over. Extrovert: Going to school to check the class lists to see if my friends were in my classes. Common factor: The smell of Crayolas. Interestingly, many people remember getting their…
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Temporation vs Parkinson
Civilization requires resonance. A strong culture has a place for everyone and a time for everything, at the daily level and the seasonal level and the lifetime level. Detemporation is a prime murder weapon for demons. In every conceivable way, demons break up natural resonances. Deepstate-sponsored music and art are atonal and random. Psychopaths give…
Polistra's Mill 