Polistra's Mill

Polistra's Mill

Be your own beacon.

  • Speedrunning Newark

    At Curbside Classic, Stephen Pellegrino posted a series of street pix from his home area in New Jersey. Each pair was Then/Now. Then was 1970s. Now was the closest he could get to the original on Google Streets. Jersey in the 70s was declining badly. Now only the streets and infrastructure remain, and the streets…

    polistra

    December 28, 2023
    Uncategorized
    Powell!
  • Galling headline

    Headline in Bezos paper: America has a life expectancy crisis. But it’s not a political priority. Yes it is, but not the way you pretend to mean. Our rulers want us to die soon, and they’ve been working diligently and furiously on all possible fronts since 1946 to make it happen. If you want IMPROVING…

    polistra

    December 28, 2023
    Uncategorized
    #WholeOfSociety
  • Growing and shrinking /r/

    BBC has an article on dialect change. Final /r/, which has been absent from The King’s English for many centuries, persisted in isolated areas. Now it’s disappearing in the isolated areas as well. = = = = = START QUOTE: Accent change is often like a puddle: it dries up in most places and leaves…

    polistra

    December 28, 2023
    Uncategorized
    language update
  • The basic question

    Now ordinary people are free to say that the “virus” panic was a fraud. I’m sure many of them recognized it all along, but kept quiet to survive. Silence is rational when noise is useless. Even the executives who participated in the torture are backing away slowly, blaming and framing others as usual. Our executives…

    polistra

    December 28, 2023
    Uncategorized
    Constants and Constants, Machiavelli
  • Illiterate as usual

    Pointlessly browsing through the increasingly Twitterized landscape of Substack, ran across an article by Douglas Rushkoff discussing the REAL media analyzers, Jerry Mander and Neal Postman. Rushkoff was interviewing a fellow Media Literacy prof about how they train people to look critically at media. I had to subscribe to get the podcast, so I paid…

    polistra

    December 27, 2023
    Uncategorized
    Fairness Doctrine
  • Why does Toyota have quality?

    Since I’ve been discussing Toyota vs GM, today’s news is appropriate. Toyota bought Daihatsu some time ago. Daihatsu is their low-end brand, mainly for domestic sales. Recently the Japanese government caught Daihatsu cheating on emission tests. What would GM do? GM would lobby the government to change the standards, and would probably succeed. What did…

    polistra

    December 27, 2023
    Uncategorized
  • A lawsuit that might matter

    The NYTimes is suing Microsoft and OpenAI for stealing its work. Unlike some other suits, this one might get traction. Judges religiously believe and infinitely value everything spewed by NYTimes, so they will be inclined to support the suit. = = = = = Later, Jonathan Bartlett at MindMatters has a different take on this…

    polistra

    December 27, 2023
    Uncategorized
  • So far no fakery

    RFK sounds like a populist. He even agrees with FDR in many ways. I was suspicious of him from the start because he was using the massive crime of the “virus” holocaust to push environmentalism. He was steering the activists away from the real crime of the lockdowns and muzzles and panic, toward the OCD…

    polistra

    December 27, 2023
    Uncategorized
  • The Tocqueville shared lie

    Linked in previous, worth a reprint. = = = = = START REPRINT: Listening to a second-string Repooflican radio talker. He’s running the same old tape about The Forty-Seven Percent, the same old line about Voting Largesse From The Public Treasury. He’s saying that Obama is guaranteeing perpetual D majorities by offering lots of free…

    polistra

    December 27, 2023
    Uncategorized
    Shared Lie, skill-estate
  • Another shared lie

    In 1948 a Chevy sales film mentioned Volkswagen as an icon of Hitler. Twenty years later the actual car was the enemy in this 1973 film aimed at GM factory workers. It cites the losses in various other industries. Textiles were mostly gone. Home radios and TVs were all gone. 20% of autos were foreign.…

    polistra

    December 27, 2023
    Uncategorized
    Shared Lie, skill-estate
  • Da yoots has got it right.

    The Progressive Policy Institute (Will Marshall’s outfit) surveyed young working class folks. If the poll is valid, it shows a remarkably accurate understanding, despite all the toxins spewed by R and D media for decades. These people want Democrats to be like FDR and want Repooflicans to be like Ike. A couple of specific questions:…

    polistra

    December 27, 2023
    Uncategorized
    experiential education, Shared Lie, skill-estate
  • Let’s do both!

    The Dems have been removing Trump from ballots. Now the Texas lieutenant governor is playing footsie by asking to remove Biden from ballots. DO BOTH!!!!! Ideal solution! Then the dozen COMPETENT candidates could have a real election.

    polistra

    December 26, 2023
    Uncategorized
    Fairness Doctrine, Modest proposal
  • What we assume

    Most of what we semiconsciously assume about the past is wrong. We assume that electric power must have come before telegraphs and telephones and radio, because all of those systems need electricity. In reality the grid started long after telegraphs and slightly after telephones, and wasn’t really complete until the 1950s. We also assume that…

    polistra

    December 26, 2023
    Uncategorized
  • Why lawyers?

    Thinking about those lawyers who write on Quora. Why do I appreciate them? Because they’re OBJECTIVE. Other professions sometimes write ‘out of character’, but other professions never manage the same degree of objectivity. Academics never bash tenure outside the ivied walls**. Politicians never reveal real secrets. Journalists never tell the truth about the permanent idiocy…

    polistra

    December 26, 2023
    Uncategorized
    Asked and answered, Constants and Variables, Fairness Doctrine
  • Never thought I’d say this…

    Quora is a better reading experience than Substack now. Quora hasn’t changed. It’s still a few interesting writers (mostly lawyers!) and a jungle of pointless bot-questions about math and IQ. The pointless bots are easy to spot and ignore. The interesting writers don’t feel obligated to join meaningless disputes. Substack has changed since it introduced…

    polistra

    December 25, 2023
    Uncategorized
    Machiavelli
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