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Before the Fairness Doctrine
American Radio Library has added a long booklet written by WGN in Chicago, providing a deep portrait of the purposes and intentions of broadcasters in 1928. At that point most stations were still run by stores advertising their own products, or by colleges or tech schools using the broadcast for training and ‘extension’. The authors…
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TVA part 1 of 4
I did a tribute to WPA last year. The Tennessee Valley Authority was another of the New Deal’s giant perpetual improvements to America. TVA and the smaller Bonneville Power Administration continue even now as the sole illustrations of government working like a business. Both still make a profit from selling electricity. They create real value…
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TVA, part 2 of 4
I’ve been putting together some digital replicas of TVA’s model city at Norris, obviously not trying to include the whole thing! Here’s the top view of the street plan with a scattering of houses. The original was somewhat denser, but nowhere near ‘walkable’. Norris was named for Senator George Norris, who had been pushing the…
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TVA, part 3 of 4
Some of the TVA house designs were intended for mass production, not local culture. This was called the Demountable house. In modern terms it would be Modular. The basic section was made in a factory and shipped out by railcar for quick non-permanent use. The flat roof wouldn’t have lasted long in rainy and snowy…
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TVA, part 4 of 4
The book on TVA architecture featured a picture and plan of a model gas station. The building itself was photographed but I think the rest of the plan was skipped. I went ahead and tributed the whole thing. The station was in the median of a boulevard, with entrances from both lanes. Floor plan of…
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Off by a hundred years, idiot.
Useless Idiot Taibbi continues to trumpet new “leaks” generously provided to him by Deepstate so he can serve them more effectively. = = = = = START IDIOT: Now, a large trove of new documents, including strategy documents, training videos, presentations, and internal messages, reveal that, in 2019, US and UK military and intelligence contractors…
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Good sign.
In 2021 when DeSantis and Abbott were starting to fight back against Trump’s holocaust, I said that I would know things were truly back to normal when muzzles were BANNED EVERYWHERE, as they were before the “virus” “forced” the monsters to strangle everyone: = = = = = START REPRINT: Texas has joined Florida and…
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France returns to Foy
From a substack titled ‘Craftsmanship’: = = = = = START QUOTE: In 2017, an idealistic and relatively unknown French activist sued tech behemoth Apple, Inc., over its “alleged” practice of designing iPhones to fail after just a few years. She wasn’t the first environmentalist to challenge Apple—but when she won, it became big news.…
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More on short features
Related to my recent focus on SHORT features. The latest Ankler podcast includes a discussion of cadence in movies. Filmmakers haven’t yet figured out how to capture and keep audiences who aren’t trapped. For several decades people went to the theater for an entire evening, and watched whatever was on. When the audience has put…
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Granted
Amanda Achtman is watching Canada’s requirement of officially performed “suicide”, which is really official murder. Suicide is a voluntary decision. The Canadian version is not decided by the victim, it’s decided by the killer. That makes it murder. As always with psychopaths, the “cause” is blamed and framed and displaced. The killer didn’t choose to…
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Sohrab carries FDR’s spirit
Sohrab Ahmari, sane and realistic as always, suggests how the Repooflicans could get along with unions. = = = = = START QUOTE: Beginning in the 1970s, pro-business Republicans—and some like-minded Democrats—tore down a New Deal order characterized by a high-wage, manufacturing-oriented economy and high union density. Free trade, deregulation, and de-unionization went hand-in-hand to…
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More specific distinction
Denyse cites a Twitter discussion between philosopher Phillip Goff and physics prof Sabine Hossenfelder. Goff is pushing the idiotic “multiverse” nonsense, and Sabine reproves him: You don’t need maths to see that assuming the existence of other universes is unscientific. All you need is to understand that assuming the existence of something you cannot observe…
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Interesting dream
Napped at an unusual time, got an unusual dream. All the rich fuckheads were traveling on four-person sedan chairs, hand-carried by teams of servants. While the rich fuckheads were lounging on sofas, chatting and sipping cocktails, the servants were sweating and trying to maneuver the big platforms through doors and streets. Unfortunately the dream wasn’t…
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Is it prosody or epigenes?
This is interesting. Newborns respond preferentially to stories in the ‘mother tongue’ before they’ve had a chance to hear much talking through air conduction. Were they picking up intonations and prosody through the liquids in the womb? Or is the familiarity imparted through epigenes? The former possibility could be checked by using different languages with…
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Need another graph
Kissinger stopped killing yesterday, at age 100. Back in 2018 I made this graph of the Dow and the NYC homeless on the same time axis. Homeless is the gray blob, Dow is the upper line. Wall Street is built on a foundation of human carcasses. Now another graph could be drawn, though the sample…
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