Category: Uncategorized
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Wiggle and watch
Via RealClear, a small Vermont college was closed for the usual reasons, and now a Brand New Unprecedented Innovative Foundation is taking over the campus for a wildly experimental sci-fi approach to education. = = = = = START QUOTE: Many renovations are complete, including the transformation of one building into shop rooms full of…
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Inverting Duane Jones
One basic rule of salesmanship has been inverted. When you’re currently dealing with a company or buying their products, they don’t send you any offers and don’t seem to want your business. When you haven’t bought anything for many years, or never bought anything at all, you’ll keep getting offers for updates and new products.…
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Born every minute
The post office podcast seems sparser this year, less frequent and less interesting. Today’s item is interesting but hard to translate. The hosts are interviewing a Postal Investigator who brought down an especially evil scammer with a long record of violent crimes. For some reason the Investigator speaks a rigid cop dialect where EVERY SINGLE…
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We weren’t scared of novelty!
Comment seen elsewhere, intending to make the analogy with AI. I’m old enough to remember when people were scared of these new “computers” and saw no need for them. At first I thought, yeah, I remember that too. Then I remembered more precisely. 1. I was mature when PCs started. Nobody was scared of them.…
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This is why…
Two weeks ago I noted that the state “attorney” “general” was playing a stupid game by making a law against Kalshi BY NAME. = = = = = START 8/14 REPRINT: Ideally: Laws should apply to all people and all companies. Don’t steal. Don’t kill. Don’t defraud. Don’t evade taxes. In practice: Most laws apply…
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Also
I’ve pulled these 1948 election news clips into my bedtime playlist again. The big entertainment shows were carefully preserved. Networks and sponsors archived full seasons on transcription disks so they could rerun if needed. News wasn’t officially preserved. Why would you want to rerun last year’s events? We have only a handful of scattered clips…
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Skinner’s good ideas
Bucky Fuller, Marshall McLuhan, BF Skinner. Three nasty bastards, cult figures in the 70s, direct ancestors of the tech tyrants. Fuller was utterly worthless. His weird shit was impractical, dangerous, inefficient, contrary to science and engineering. McLuhan had one big valid idea, but got the details wrong. Skinner’s big idea of tabula rasa equality was…
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Ranch and range reprint
Something reminded me of the word ranch. Decided to look up the etymology, since it doesn’t sound like other terms for land. It comes from the French military se ranger, meaning to pitch camp or set up a location, related to arrange. Range, of course, has dozens of meanings in math, biology and surveying. The…
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Old trick still around
Seen in Reddit’s silly software department. It’s nice that programmers are still using 99999.99 as a debug marker or unattainable max. The trick dates back to decimal registers and COBOL in the 1950s. The unattainable max was used like this: Set Price = 99999.99 at the start. Sum up items sold, calculate discounts and taxes,…
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Didn’t earn her pay
Another day, another arson. A homeless female ignited a garage in a residential area, in the middle of a rainstorm. Residents and neighbors got it under control and she was arrested quickly. Her Altruism wasn’t very Effective. Her Polymarket employers will be disappointed. Trying to be charitable though I’m not in the mood… She could…
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It’s not just the tech monsters
A moment of clarity or something. Effective Altruism says the biggest bet is the only bet. Normal bets on stock prices or football scores or arson or assassination are pocket change. The only bet worth making is 50% odds on obliterating the world. Abolish jobs and business, bulldoze the bipeds. If you think there’s a…
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Economics as a verb
Rehash of my 2012 Economics As A Verb, modified for current relevance. = = = = = START REHASH: We get locked into booms and busts, inflations and deflations, because we forget that our measuring unit is only a measure. In Alan Watts’s famous metaphor, a carpenter wouldn’t stop work because he “ran out of…
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Trump, Taft, Truman
In terms of parallel logic, Trump should have renamed Lake Ontario to Lake New York, not Lake America. It isn’t called Lake Canada! The parallel is deeper than logic. Populism means localism above all. Real populists are loyal to their own place first, then secondarily to nations and not at all to planets. A real…
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Counterexample reprint
Trump is playing the rename game again, Lake Ontario to Lake America. I wrote about a similar move last year when he tried to rename Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. The counterexample I used is even more relevant to this week’s Canada rename! The big point is ALWAYS the same. Psychopaths are predictably…
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More Polymarket bets
Via Spokane News, a new arsonist. He was downtown near the interstate, a traditional homeless area but not close to the Catholic Criminalities apts. Kudos to the cops and the witness for catching him fast. No kudos to the crime-aiding “judge” who will release him after a few hours. (That’s a sure thing, no bets…
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