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Had to jump in
The Hasidic tunnel in NYC is weird in an infinite number of ways. First, a Hasidic Riot is the weirdest possible image. Second, if they wanted a mikvah, it would be easier and safer to build one in their own building, instead of paying Mexicans to dig a tunnel to reach the existing mikvah. Hasidim…
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2012 as seen from 1962
This 1962 publication by IRE (now IEEE) celebrated the 50th anniversary of the organization and looked ahead to 2012 with a series of “lookbacks”. The supermodern superadvanced world-peaceful 2012 inhabitants looked back with contempt at horrible neanderthal 1962. Technical predictions were highly accurate and not really prophetic, since all the necessary pieces were either finished…
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New thought about the comparison
I’ve often observed the Constant of Russia and the Variable of Communism. From 1948 to 1989 we hated Russia because it was COMMUNIST AGGRESSION. Then we loved Russia for a few years after our Color Revolution installed Yeltsin as Our SOB. When Yeltsin handed power to Putin, Russia was no longer our colony. Soon we…
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The oldest hack
Bitcoiners, the ultimate anti-bank and anti-WallStreet radicals, are eagerly and voraciously gobbling up the chance to become part of Wall Street via Blackrock. Blackrock has been trying to set up an ETF, which is an abstract side-bet that used to be illegal before Reagan and Clinton wrecked FDR’s stock laws. All the gossip in the…
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Unlike most questions….
The UFO distraction is coming into the “news” again. Underneath the noise, there is one basic question. Do intelligent lifeforms live on other planets? Unlike most “philosophical” questions such as the origin of the universe or Free Will, this is a simple physical question which CAN be answered, at least in one particular narrow circumstance.…
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Fake charge
Emperor Bill Ackman got the president of Harvard fired for “plagiarism”. Now media are pulling a nice satisfying Gotcha on Emperor Ackman, noting that his wife also “plagiarized” some passages from Wikipedia. Plagiarism is a fake issue and a fake outrage. Copyright has specific rules. Copyright is about MONEY, not morality. There aren’t any copyright…
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Another converger
Substack finally yielded to the censors. I’m disappointed but not surprised. It’s just a permanent fact of business. If you want big money and big distribution, especially in the tech world, you need big loans and big VC capital and big lawyers. All of those resources are rigidly locked into the worst of Deepstate. If…
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Reprint on Heimatkunde
Previous item about the role of geography in letting students imagine their future, reminded me that I had spent some time on this topic in 2012. This introduced the concept of Heimatkunde or Home Geography. = = = = = I was doing my 1901 thing, trying to locate a specific account of Puget Sound…
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Inland waterways
Random thought triggered by another of those Natl Assn of Mfrs films. This one was showing how Houston became a major port after building the 60-mile Houston Ship Channel. A wide variety of industries, not just oil, built factories along the channel. I knew about Houston’s role as center of the oil industry, but I’d…
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Bach Light
This article in Compact takes a fact I’ve known for a long time and connects it up in a way I’d never thought about. Fact: Classical music has HATED its audience and done everything possible to reject and evict its audience for 100 years. Connection: Now all institutions, from media to politics to corporations making…
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Interactive
Interactive gimmicks in publications have been around for a long time. The technology for die-cutting and inserting gimmicks is very old, but expensive in time and planning. This Natl Assn of Mfrs film showed various ways that corporations communicated with their employees, ranging from the usual bulletin boards and suggestion boxes to closed circuit radio…
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Overthrew himself?
In previous item I noted the weird self-contradiction of the “insurrection” charge, which accuses Trump of trying to overthrow himself. Reminded me of something in those short Ripley pieces. They mentioned a president of Mexico who ran a rebellion against himself and forced himself into exile. Wikipedia gives a far more complicated picture, which is…
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Reader directs my attention
After several weeks of essentially zero readers, I’m finally seeing a couple of non-bot readers in the WordPress statcounters. One reader is catching some items that I’ve forgotten about. In this item I was highlighting a 1938 radio editorial by Raymond Gram Swing who debunked the then-current Trotsky and Niemoller trials. = = = =…
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Strong and pure
Tara Henley, former CBC journalist, struck me as ambiguous, mostly buying the standard line, not truly independent. Until now. In this piece on the fate of Canada she comes out strong and pure, clearly distinguishing the pro-worker Marxist tradition from the pro-plutocrat Maoists. = = = = = START QUOTE: For obvious reasons, these conditions…
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