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Rain at last!
After a month of nearly unbroken heat, we finally have a RAINY DAY! I went out to walk in the rain and everyone had the same idea. Passed 4 walkers, compared to the usual 1. The last long hot spell was in 2015, arguably worse because it was in June with longer days. But I…
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Didn’t need Buffett backup
Noticed somebody using Warren Buffett’s advice as an authority to say “Buy low, sell high”. First thought: Shit, you don’t need to bring in Buffett to reinforce this basic advice for stock criminals. Second thought: The motto for people who are NOT stock demons is: Buy lasting and maintainable things regardless of price. Then keep…
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Connection
Just made a connection. Trump loves preaching to Christians. Trump loves preaching to bitcoiners. The two groups don’t have much in common culturally. Bitcoiners are atheists who disdain normal ways of morality. The two groups have the MOST IMPORTANT THING in common. Both belief systems are supreme maximum Sucker Filters, preselecting their members for the…
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Lesson in skill-estate
I must admit one item from the Olympics is worth thinking about. Most competitors are expensively equipped and sponsored, with highly specialized custom-made gloves and clothes and helmets. They perform all the expensively trained moves. The shooting contestant from Turkey showed up in T-shirt and jeans, no ear protectors or goggles, looking like he just…
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Transformed
Substack Notes started as a copy of Twitter. Now it has become a precise mirror image of Reddit. Both consist mainly of horrible can’t-unsee-it pictures atop blindly partisan insults related to This Week’s One Official Topic. Only difference: Reddit takes the D side and Substack takes the R side. This week’s One Official Topic is…
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Fessenden’s practical side
Reginald Fessenden is famous as the Canadian who claimed the first invention of radio. The first is hard to determine. Many people were working on wireless from different angles. Fessenden later made one of the first voice broadcasts in 1906, using a high-freq alternator instead of a spark-gap transmitter. Around 1912 he moved into a…
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Talking to the Gods
It’s fun to watch Trump’s misplaced hits against Harris. He’s a gangster, accustomed to fixed fights. He won against a corpse, but he simply doesn’t know how to deal with a live opponent who has some positive qualities. Now he’s flailing randomly, mostly hitting himself in the face. He runs the standard racist-sounding insults, knowing…
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Always baselines
BreakingPoints does word-association polls on candidates. The responses from partisans are meaningless. Partisans are simulcasters, each faithfully retransmitting today’s Official Program from DNC or RNC Network Central. Responses from independents are more salient. The top response to Harris is Incompetent, followed by variations on Fake. I can see the Fake. She’s been a standard politician…
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All flipped
All of the major activists against Trump’s holocaust have now flipped into Trump cultists. Such a conversion makes sense in terms of innate personality. When you’re passionate AGAINST a specific subject, you can switch to passionate FOR the same subject. A anti-abort may become a pro-abort. An anti-abort is LESS likely to become fanatical about…
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Never noticed before
For some reason the Star Strangled Banner dropped to the turntable of my internal jukebox, followed by the original Anacreon. In 70 years of hearing and singing the newer version, I never stopped to count the beats. It’s a completely screwed-up rhythm, with a new pattern for almost every word. The original is a smooth…
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Misblaming
There are three main forms of misblaming and misattribution. The first is as old as humanity, the other two are fairly recent propaganda tools. 1. Blame Side A for a crime that only Side B committed. 2. Blame everyone for a crime that only Side B committed. 3. Blame Side A for a crime that…
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Modernizing Rush
Protos gets cute in an article about bitcoin billionaire Justin Sun. Apparently Sun published a picture of his birthday celebration. In the picture he has seven fingers, and the cake is decorated with RAPPY SLBTHDAY. Both of those are classic AI signatures, so everyone assumed it was AI. Later he denied the AI accusation, saying…
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Good idea!
Somebody wrote an opinion piece proposing that the Repooflicans should get rid of Trump now that the Dems have buried Biden’s corpse. I didn’t read the article because I knew the reasons would be entirely backwards and crazy. On a strategic level the proposal makes good sense. Trump is such a horrible candidate that he…
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Journalism is a cult.
After trying to read more weirdly lunatic shit from NiemanLab, I reached a conclusion. Journalism isn’t entirely crazy, it’s a high-status cult like Scientology. The members live in a completely isolated bubble of thought, surrounded by their fellow cultists and hearing only their fellow cultists. Reprint of a more general version from 2017, which isn’t…
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Manual vs verbal assembly line
Automotive assembly line workers are fairly well paid for semi-skilled work, typically around $70k a year. The pay compensates for the drab dullness of their repetitive days. Verbal assembly line workers (sometimes called “journalists”), who repeat the same sentence over and over and over for several hours per day, get $10 million a year.
Polistra's Mill
Be your own beacon.
Polistra's Mill 