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Blew up his own case
George Packer, who is apparently a famous writer, makes a solid plea for less partisanship in art. His basic point is that nobody is required to be an artist. Nobody is required to treat all subjects fairly and honestly. But if you’ve declared yourself to be a writer or an artist, you must listen to…
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Exactly backwards
EnidBuzz asked a repeated question: What should schools be teaching? Most answers were variations on Life Skills. A teacher said: Most of these answers are things PARENTS should be teaching their kids. As a teacher, I frankly don’t have time to raise your kids. Exactly wrong. 90% of what schools teach is strictly unnecessary and…
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Y REA?
Here’s Y in one picture. FDR recognized that Germany and Russia had BETTER SYSTEMS than we did. Those BETTER SYSTEMS were competing against ours and huge numbers of Americans SAW the difference. Our system was totally fucked in 1932, as it is again now for the same goddamn reason. Our alleged “capitalism” had failed on…
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Trading
Tiffany talks with Sammy again. Predictably he’s taken up trading mackerel packs, which are the modern prison equivalent of cigarettes. When I was in the walls, cigarettes were the currency. Each pack had a “par value” of a quarter, though the actual price in the commissary was 40 cents. I bought my way out of…
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Bigger point
Anton Howe writes a VERY long and detailed critique of the failed process of peer review in tech history. The specific paper in question deals with an obscure aspect of iron work. The writers were clearly aiming for a standard elite political goal, and the journal, following modern practice, amplified the political goal instead of…
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Wisdom from Burge
He’s continuing to explore the NIPs. After running through a lot of inconclusive details about party and ideology and non-attenders of church, he concludes that the inconclusion is the conclusion. = = = = = START BURGE: It used to be easier to predict whether someone was a never attender by whether they identified as…
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Need to remember
In one of Bloomberg’s more casual podcasts, someone said: Welcome to 2023, when nobody wants to work and everything is ten times harder than it should be. Exactly. Services that used to take days to schedule now take months. Stores are switching to self-scan because they can’t keep employees. BUT: I need to remember that…
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El Nino is here!
Oklahoma got six inches of snow yesterday. So far we’ve had a half inch last week, which melted immediately. Nothing much in the forecast for next week. Thanks, weather gods! Bless you.
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Not learning
Suckers are still spreading the fake threat that AI will become fully independent and take over the world. They overthink and overwrite, inventing thousands of terms and diagrams and organizational charts and algorithms to “prove” how it can happen. Calling Doc Ockham! It’s physically impossible and IRRELEVANT. The large-scale AI is ALREADY owned by Gates…
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Interesting question
Denyse points to studies that seem to show the placebo effect is getting stronger now, at least inside the clinical trials where it’s used as a control variable. Placebo is part of an innate social structure. When the Healer gives us a Healing Token or a Healing Touch, we get healthier. If the placebo side…
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Fairness Doctrine by accident
At various times I’ve stupidly donated to both D and R candidates. I think the most recent D was Tulsi when she was a fake D. Being on the email list of both teams provides a simulation of the Fairness Doctrine, with equal time for both campaigns. I get the same emails from random candidates…
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Precisely wrong
Seen on Reddit: Kids ask how people knew facts before the Internet. Well, we asked Aunt Marge, and she gave us a pack of lies. NO. Precisely exactly diametrically wrong. Here’s what we really did: We read our school textbooks and listened to the teachers, who filled us with violently wrong toxic poison. We DIDN’T…
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Reminds me…
This Brit pollster is talking about the complete loss of trust in media and politics. Also applies to every other institution, churches, schools, big business. Reminds me of an old Kingston Trio song. Every word is still precisely valid. The media side has been going on longer than the others, and SHOULD have offered a…
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Who rejects Google?
This map seen at Reddit is informative. It shows all the streets covered by GoogleStreets, condensed onto a world map. In most of the world the streets are where the people are. Northern Canada, northern Russia, inner Australia, and the Amazon region are blank because no cities or roads are there. Some entire countries are…
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Simmering 2
The simmering metaphor in previous item reminded me of a picture I’ve been wanting to make. Back in 1970 when I got out of prison, my first experience with independent life was in this duplex in Stillwater. My Zenith Trans-Oceanic helped to pull me out of the walls and back into the larger world. I…
Polistra's Mill
Be your own beacon.
Polistra's Mill 