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ŋ
Random phonetic musing. Among Euro languages, only the Germanic group treats ŋ as a phoneme. In every language ŋ is a natural allophone of n before k or g within one word. It’s unavoidable. English has three ways of pronouncing the written arrangement of n and g. (The previous sentence includes all three.) Examples after…
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Emerson wins
A few days ago a dream contained an encouraging message. Things aren’t as bad as they look on the surface. Give people a chance. Semi Bird has been running for governor of this “state” on a clear and firm anti-muzzle and anti-vax and anti-lockdown agenda. The last time I checked he seemed to be losing…
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Pony in Oz
Jeffrey Funk gathers up a long list of fake AI successes. In each case the machine was only doing part of the work, with humans in India doing the rest. There’s a real Turk inside the Mechanical Turk. There’s a little man named Ramesh behind the curtain in Oz. The same illusion was forced on…
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Universal NIP
Burge continues to delve into the details of NIPs. He shows plenty of survey data to prove that NIPs aren’t just uninterested in religion; we’re uninterested in EVERY SINGLE institution, from politics to corporations to journalism to entertainment. I commented with some sales-training wisdom: It might help if the churches or newspapers would ASK why…
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The fleet rule
Listening every night to those auto dealer training films. They assumed forced obsolescence as a basic fact of the universe, and relied on the manufacturers to keep it moving. The Conservative Prospect was troublesome because he liked simplicity, liked to do his own maintenance, and disliked constant change. New thought: This is a pretty good…
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Reciprocity
I’m trying to pull away from places where I’m the Product and stick with places where I’m the Customer. Substack has become a Productifier since it started Notes. Just now I totaled up the subscription payments over the last month, and it came to exactly $100. That’s a lot of money for not much pleasure.…
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Random memory
Nice warm Sunday evening. A random picture reminded me of something… When I lived in KC and taught at DeVry, I was renting a basement apt in suburban Overland Park. The apt was large, fairly modern, and stayed cool in summer without air conditioning. The apt above me was occupied by an older couple from…
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Oops, not parody
Still peeving about Trump cult email spam. One persistent theme is pretending to offer me the Vice Presidency. Friend, the Don wants YOU for his VP! Obviously loony, the most absurd Sucker Filter. Just for fun I considered my qualifications. I’m a natural-born American citizen and I’m 74. Two strikes. You must be a dual…
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Colorful GenRad
GenRad specialized in both light and sound. I’ve been featuring sound for a long time, now let’s do light. Polistra and friends are processing food, using a GenRad color comparator to check the quality of tomatoes. The Comparator was simple to use. You’d place the object on top of the viewport, then turn the filter…
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Flashy GenRad
Continuing with GenRad’s light measuring tools. Stroboscopes were a GenRad specialty, going through several generations, with the usual assortment of accessories for different industrial uses. Strobotac was one of GenRad’s widely known brands, along with Variac transformers. Their other products were more obscure, known only in research and testing labs. Polistra is aiming a Strobotac…
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Both valid now
Reading some old Soviet jokes again. For many years the spy and secret police jokes also applied to USA, but the economic jokes were hard to understand. Now the economic jokes are funny too.
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Weirdly repetitive
The spam from the Trump cult is getting weirdly repetitive. I STORMED INTO COURT. I STORMED OUT OF COURT. I STORMED INTO COURT. I STORMED OUT OF COURT. I STORMED INTO COURT. I STORMED OUT OF COURT. I STORMED INTO COURT. I STORMED OUT OF COURT. I STORMED INTO COURT. I STORMED OUT OF COURT.…
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Pointless peeve
I’m tired of seeing water bottles in every goddamn podcast and TED talk. Everyone unscrews the cap, sips tap water from disposable plastic, then screws the cap back on every goddamn time. There’s no reason to screw the cap on. You’re not going to put the bottle back in the refrigerator when you’re done. We…
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Bandwagon
Luskin at EvoNews points to a new paper by establishment biologists who acknowledge that the standard theory of evolution is flawed. They propose, without actually doing it, that AI might help to sort out the question. Unfortunately they miss the basic problem with LLMs. In current parlance, the term AI means systems like ChatGPT. If…
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Metaphor misses
Growth is the Wall Street mantra. Go big or go home. The crime market insists on growth of cash flow, with a negative correlation to profit. In real life you don’t want endless growth. Endless growth is CANCER. In real life you ALSO don’t want to survive by merging into a larger body. Merging into…
Polistra's Mill
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