Category: Uncategorized
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More weather bureau poetry
Latest poem from the Weather Bureau, echoing MANY local sentiments. Soft comes the night, hoping the weeping willow smiles. Do you call this a cruel summer? Fill in the blank space. In another fortnight, heat will be a memory. I want lavender haze of such evenings; but I shake it off. As I’m the anti-hero,…
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This is a philosophy????
A brand new REVOLUTIONARY radical way of parenting tries to let kids get out of the house and try things for themselves. This is known as the “Let Grow Philosophy”. It gradually pulls anxious kids out of their anxious shells. Just 30 years ago, calling normal life a “philosophy” would have been unimaginable. I’ve always…
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Funniest joke I’ve seen in ages
Since I’ve been immersed in old car sales training films, here’s a car salesman joke from Reddit. Customer: Cargo space? Salesman: Car no do that. Car no fly.
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Google knew the correct answer
Somebody in a Catholic forum was saying that Reason helps us to defend against emotions or fashions. Nope, it’s backwards. When I’m trying out various theories or explanations for a health problem or a programming problem, the “rational” mind instantly and easily develops a chain of “logic” that explains how this theory works for the…
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Taibbi still a fucking idiot
Jesus, what a naive fool. If law enforcement was still agreeing to seek warrants before spying, we wouldn’t have this controversy. Durov was specifically arrested for creating an obstacle to warrantless surveillance. Warrants were ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS meaningless rubberstamps for ALL ALL ALL police. Police do their real searching BEFORE getting the warrant. NSA…
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More relief
This gives me another reason to favor Harris. Above all I want to keep both Trump and Newsom as far from the presidency as possible. Many governors were following Trump’s lead in imprisoning and torturing their people, but Newsom was the head of the pack. He had a serious passion for ruining lives, expressed in…
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‘Flipflop’ is the stupidest insult
Terminally tired of ‘flipflop’. Anywhere else but politics, changing your mind is a sign of LEARNING. Fuck around and find out is the definition of LIFE. Learning is EXACTLY seeing that one course of action fails, and trying a different course. Science is EXACTLY experimentation. Try something, measure results carefully, do something different if the…
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Alexanderson alternators
This month’s Fessenden focus leads to a sidetrack. Several of Fessenden’s big innovations used high-frequency alternators instead of spark gaps. His first voice broadcast in 1906 used an alternator. The alternator deserves its own description before I dig into his most interesting use of it. Before the vacuum tube there was only one way to…
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Got it right finally!
Stoller provides an informative history of the Section 230 exemption, which was finally knocked down this week by a circuit court decision. Section 230 was ALWAYS wrong. The distinction between a publisher and a carrier is perfectly clear if you understand what Press Freedom means. The standard misconception is that a publisher is free to…
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Democracy exists, but only…
I often say that “democracy” is a meaningless word. It doesn’t exist and can’t exist. Trying for more precision… If the word means that decisions are formed by negative feedback, sensing the will of many people, then democracy does happen in some situations, but not governments. Competitive businesses MUST satisfy a large enough number of…
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Another fine engineer joke
Three engineers are arguing about the nature of God. The first says, “God is a mechanical engineer. Look at how we manipulate our arms, legs, lungs, and how blood flows through our bodies. God is a mechanical engineer.” The second says, “No. God is an electrical engineer. Our nervous system, heart, brain. Everything is run…
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Pulls and pushes
Researchers looking at AI have determined that training the AI on a dataset that INCLUDES previous outputs of the AI will quickly descend into repetitive boredom. The same thing happens in human creativity. When I started writing courseware for money in 1996, I quickly found that I needed to avoid looking at similar work. I’m…
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Not new!
People are constantly complaining that nobody reads books any more. Da Yoots are stuck to their screens, and only the ancient geezers read books. In the old days everybody read books! Nope. Vintage.es has some London street scenes from the 1960s, focusing on street book vendors. They were well-equipped, with customized trailers and carts full…
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Ratmasters are having fun
The social media algorithms are getting more and more annoying. Their programmers are clearly enjoying their Room 101 power, snapping the victims back and forth at random like rats in a Skinner box. For many years the algorithm at StatCounter and the internal stat measurement in WordPress were stable. They excluded my own reads, as…
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Best engineer joke ever
Seen at Quora. = = = = = Two engineering students were walking across a university campus when one said, ‘Where did you get such a great bike?’ The second engineer replied, ‘Well, I was walking along yesterday, minding my own business, when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike, threw it to the…
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