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When a character rewrites the book
What if Winston Smith was a real man who rewrote 1984? What if Bernard Marx was a real man who rewrote Brave New World? What if the Obama character in ‘Love in the Ruins’ was a real Obama who rewrote ‘Love in the Ruins’? It happened. Obama, of course, didn’t write it, but his corporate…
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Illustrating the point
Self-parody is sometimes accidental. This discussion at the Federalist is unusually fair and reflective. Ryan Grim is talking about different fundraising and media styles on Right and Left. He mentioned ActBlue as a highly successful funding system, which isn’t matched on the right. (WinRed tries, but it’s nonfunctional. They started billing me for a monthly…
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Why do I defend Hollywood?
Why do I worry about the survival of Hollywood? I haven’t liked anything they produced since 1970, and very little since 1950. Everything they produce now is intentionally awful, devoid of empathy and depth. Mike Gioia writes a spirited defense of the new independent producers, emphasizing that AI will give more power to the independents…
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The original Cave Gas
Vintage.es has an article on a unique place operated by a unique man. Colonel George Chinn served in WW1 as an explosives expert, then returned to serve in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. He designed the M19 grenade launcher. After WW1 he coached football for a few years, then decided to make use of his explosives…
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Good.
Earlier I was hoping that Substack would respond in a firm adult way to the attempted witch hunt by ex-Twitterites. Now founder Hamish has done exactly the right thing with this Note. He hits all the necessary points and declares all the necessary values, precisely in the spirit of the Fairness Doctrine.
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You asked for it, you got it
The Repooflicans are calling Colorado’s decision to remove Trump from the ballot “unconstitutional”. Leaving aside the plain fact that the “constitution” was deleted in 1803, there’s nothing wrong with a state deciding who can be eligible. The “constitution” said NOTHING AT ALL about popular votes for President. In fact it assumed that states would NOT…
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Morale didn’t improve
Wars end when the aggressor runs out of immediately needed resources. No more bullets, no more bombs, no more gasoline, no more food. Aggressive empires end when the war machine runs out of human resources and popular support. No more usable soldiers, no fighting spirit. We’ve reached that point. We no longer build anything except…
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Innovative?
I was looking in this 1962 journal from the Naval Research Lab, trying to find gadgets and gimmicks for my next graphics project. One issue in the volume started with this elegant bit of parody and wordplay. Transcribing: = = = = = START QUOTE: Computers and Data Processors, North America A Fourth-Generation, Hybrid, Self-Organizing,…
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Everybody did get stoned.
I was dubious at first about Sohrab’s Compact Mag. It seemed low on Shannon information. The magazine has improved, and it’s worth the price now. Many of its articles offer insights or information that I couldn’t acquire by experience. In this piece on the drug-infested Tech Tyrants, the author focuses on a cult leader named…
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The only thing left
Pointed by The Ankler, this chart shows how Big Entertainment is collapsing from its own idiocy. 2022 TV RECAP: Live @NFL games accounted for 82 of the 100 most-watched TV broadcasts of 2022 Full list: https://t.co/Ff6wWI15Hg pic.twitter.com/zZm4QipheX — Sportico (@Sportico) January 6, 2023 The 100 biggest events on broadcast TV this year. 96 are sports,…
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Integity
The spam from Speaker Mike addressed to Friend continues to roll in hot and heavy. Now they’re barraging Friend with paper spam as well. Friend knows that “Elections” are a myth, so “election integrity materials” are similar to “Santa Claus integrity materials” or “Jackalope integrity materials”. You’d think they would pay more attention to SPELLING…
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Weird WordPress glitch /// No, Firefox glitch.
WordPress often introduces bugs in its UI, then fixes them after a few days. This week’s bug is a new trick. It seems to treat me as “halfway signed in”. I’m able to write and publish new items, but when I try to see the preview while writing, the preview looks like this: Also, it…
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Medieval mindset
The medieval mindset is hardass realistic about human nature, especially the nature of demons. Machiavelli wrote it all down in systematic and scientific form so we can read it now, but ordinary peasants were equally realistic. You can hear the realism in religious songs and prayers from the period. They didn’t ask God to Elect…
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Metawait 2
At a fixed timepoint in every episode of Lady Edgar’s official propaganda outlet This is your FBI, the smarmy Special Agent slaps his forehead and says “Wait! Why didn’t I notice this before?” Here’s one of those moments. For many years I’ve been focusing on ZERO TAX as the sole purpose of Repooflicans and Tech…
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King Solomon’s rosary
One of those supershort Ripley pieces tells a strange story. A village in India commonly received rain including pre-drilled beads. The natives gathered them and strung them into ‘King Solomon’s Rosaries’. Several old books note that Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists use rosaries; the Buddhist version is well known. Finally found the source of Ripley’s story.…
Polistra's Mill
Be your own beacon.
Polistra's Mill 