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Fish in a barrel shooting themselves
Sometimes it’s just too easy! Headline seen at Eurekalert: Populist parties choose divisive issues on purpose, researchers say You don’t need research, and you don’t need to specify populist. The SOLE PURPOSE of EVERY political party is to create false division and avoid real problems. Ockham and Machiavelli warned us against this trick 500 years…
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Auto supertrivia
Just noticed an odd exception to an often stated trivium. I’ve written it many times, and others including Chrysler itself have said it. Chrysler products have always had hydraulic brakes. There were some exceptions in the first few years. Walter Chrysler started his company in ’24 by taking over Maxwell and Chalmers. In ’24 and…
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WPA and culture reprint
Linked in previous, reprint from 2010. = = = = = START REPRINT: I’ve been noticing something lately while re-reading those wonderful WPA Writers Project books. Example from Oklahoma, p 388: WYNONA is at the approximate center of the old Osage culture, and for a long time ancient customs and rites could best be studied…
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Compete by tradition, not by innovation
People who should know better are pushing Innovative Disruption. Each city and country “must” compete to enrich Sam Altman and destroy civilization. NO. Competing to make Sam Altman richer will make you poorer and lose everything that makes you special. If you want to improve your OWN city or country, boost and expand your OWN…
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“Election”
Locally, fucking urbanist Zappone won again. He will return to his usual idiocy now that the “election” is over. I’m disappointed but not surprised. This “city” has been incompetent and corrupt as long as I’ve lived here, and was probably the same before. I supported and donated to Zappone’s opponent Chris Savage, and I’m NOT…
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Why so vague?
Why do companies always put a misleading warning on envelopes containing bills or invoices? The envelope says Do not discard! Contains information about your utility bill. or IMPORTANT! Information regarding your medical plan! Information usually means updates to the Terms And Conditions or increases in rates. I don’t need to know those things. If they…
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Not sure, sure
An interesting thought from Rushfield of the Ankler. = = = = = START RUSHFIELD: Among the many downsides of a presiding meritocratic elite is the takeover of the arts by a very narrow strata of individuals with a common pool of interests and obsessions. In literature, what that has meant is that portrayals of…
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Origin story of the Tech Tyrants
Reprinting and expanding this item from two years ago because it fills in the origin story for monsters like Altman and Elon and Ellison. They’re the third generation of Tech Psychopaths, and they’re implementing the agenda gradually developed by the first two generations. Bezos is the LITERAL third generation, since his own grandpa helped to…
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Spot the bot
Two signs of computer-driven fakery: 1. When you see an exponential pattern you know it’s done by computers, not humans. The real world doesn’t do exponential. The real world follows either a sine wave driven by sun and moon, or a tanh shape driven by life. Both are somewhat obscured by random noise, but usually…
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Missing the divide
Via NiemanLab, a survey tried to distinguish active vs passive news consumers. Do you spend money and time seeking out news, or do you happen to hear about things? The separation is clear, though the author didn’t seem to catch it. Upper status people spend money and time seeking “news”. Lower status people don’t bother.…
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Work done, for now
The latest courseware is finally DONE and submitted. I’ve been aiming for maximum quality this year, which meant more work and more refined proofreading. My big goal this year is all three parts of the KSTP motto in the top icon: Laugh at your ills, pay your bills, behave yourself. The first part is the…
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Not entirely predictable
This is one of the EXTREMELY RARE cases where journalists actually work both ways. Via Nieman, journalists have universally derided Trump’s Napoleonic effort to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. This, of course, is more predictable than gravity. Journalists NEVER go along with anything ordered by Official Wrong Party. Locally, journalists…
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Canada does it FIRST.
I’ve been darkly watching China, Russia, and India zoom ahead with nuclear while the WEFtern “countries” deprive ourselves of clean power. We bomb our hydro dams and turn off our nukes. We started to plan small reactors in 1954 under the Rural Electrification Admin, created by Henry Wallace. Then we dropped all reactors and clean…
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SOE and Studie
Here’s a new thought after rereading the history of Studebaker for the 100th time. Albert Erskine took over as CEO in 1918. Under his rule Studie prospered and handed most of the prosperity to shareholders. Erskine believed in paying the stock criminals first and letting the company (facilities, workers, development) have the leftovers. Some of…
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More on Desistance
Lately I’ve been thinking again about Desistance. The idiot politicians who claim to be Resisting Trump are actually Assisting him. Everything they do creates more reasons for normal people to want the opposite. If this is “democracy”, give us a king. Resistance is Assistance. I handled Desistance in a deeper way in 2021 when the…
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