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Tensile test
Animating old GenRad testing machines got me thinking in terms of Metrology again. Social media algorithms are testing machines for the pigeons in the Skinner box. You have a lever marked “block”, which allegedly gets rid of stuff you don’t want. You keep pressing, assuming that the AI algorithm will adapt to your desires. If…
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All open now
The purpose of venture capitalists, and the stock market in general, is the EXACT OPPOSITE OF PROFIT. The stock market is the RECIPROCAL of real business. When real business prospers, the market goes to zero. When real business collapses, the market goes to infinity. VCs make the goal perfectly transparent. They invest to destroy business…
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Thanks for proving his point
Berliner made some mild criticisms of the North Korean climate inside NPR. He’s undoubtedly playing the usual cancel trick, setting up a lease-breaking party that guarantees firing under harsh conditions so he can go elsewhere and spread North Korea to the few remaining real independents. Now the current employees have made his points far more…
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Experienceleth
People who have real experience in a specific area can immediately distinguish between experienced and inexperienced writers or experts. This is especially true with juries and trials. Jury service is a common** experience, but the vast majority of people who write or talk about trials show that they haven’t been there. The media are focusing…
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AI and fingers
AI famously has trouble with multiples like fingers and headlights. It tends to run wild with a pattern, giving people seven fingers or giving cars six headlights. Just now I got an email from Quantum Fiber, the successor to Pacific Bell and Qwest and CenturyLink. The heading says “there’s an outage in your area”. Here’s…
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1974.2
The current fake flap around Uri Berliner’s fake ‘cancel’ reminded me of something that happened before. The details are different this time but the basic pattern is the same. 1974 was a major Deepstate coup. Nixon was assigned as official scapegoat or sacrificial anode. He accomplished all the horrible tasks Deepstate needed, while cloaking the…
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Message from dream
I’m feeling a bit better lately, as my semicircular canals gradually close down their annual Spring Dance Festival. The Fest was longer and louder this year for unknown reasons, probably just aging. I’m also getting more sleep, creating a virtuous circle. Less trouble with different head positions leads to more sleep leads to less trouble,…
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1936 fiberoptics
Perusing some of Gernsback’s magazines, noticed this in Radio News for June 1936. The article doesn’t give a brand, so this may have been a prototype or ‘concept radio’ for a display, rather than a mass-produced receiver. The dial had a map of Europe in the middle. As you tuned across the dial, a miniature…
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Jeffrey gets Booker T
Jeffery Tucker of Brownstone is a complicated figure. He has some Libertarian genes that occasionally pop out, possibly without full intentions. His deep anger at the SHIT we endured drives him to PROTEST! Be like MLK! Be like Assange! Get imprisoned and assassinated so you can’t influence anyone at all! He’s moving quickly toward the…
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Punching half was so much fun…
In the ’60s colleges expelled and arrested “leftist” protesters. Since then, colleges have been expelling and arresting “right-wing” protesters while supinely obeying “leftist” protesters. Now they’re arresting leftist protesters again, and nobody seems to notice the reversal. Pro-Palestine has been a leftist issue for 60 years. I tried to join the SDS in ’68 but…
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Assembling a thought
I’ve said both sides of this many times but didn’t quite assemble the two sides before. (1) Journalists and advertisers live in a world of Luxury Prospects (aristocrats). They no longer know any Conservative Prospects (peasants) so they feel perfectly free to insult the peasants openly. Newspapers and media of all types constantly punch peasants…
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Occasionally the other way worked.
Reprint from 2017, tied to today’s theme. Later I realized that Desistance, trying to starve or bore the monsters, works far better than fighting them. Edited to include the better understanding. Nevertheless, the Harding breakup of Wilson’s monstrosities was a real-life example of excising the monster instead of starving it. So both paths can be…
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Y no piano girl?
Saw a random picture of an old piano, captioned ‘Jazz piano in Lewisham Station’. I wonder why pianos weren’t more common in public places? Restaurants always had jukeboxes or radios. Nightclubs had pianos only for professional performers who were part of the scheduled entertainment. In that era MANY people could play the piano competently, and…
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Alliance of predators
I somehow got on the mailing list for the Endangered Species lunatics. Of course unsubscribing doesn’t work. Code is Law. Today they want me to help protect both wolves and sharks. Why should I want to protect killers? These monsters are on the side of predators and criminals. They are not friends of the earth,…
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Today is Bean Counter Day
The day after the traditional (but not observed) Income Tax Day has been dedicated to accountants and bookkeepers and clerks. Clerks are insultingly called bean-counters by grandiose executives who want to eat all the beans. Following today’s theme, clerks are the internal negative feedback mechanism for predatory capitalists. When the exec wants to LBO the…
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