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Since I’m always…
Since I’m always yammering about tenure, I should mention this story, even though I don’t have enough info to mention it intelligently! News this week includes a university chancellor in Wisconsin who was fired for making porn videos with his wife. He’s suing on free speech grounds. I doubt that the suit will succeed. He…
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Silliest headline
Headline: 2024 will show us what America wants to be. Our USA TODAY Opinion team is hopeful – and worried. No it won’t. Polls consistently and strongly agree that America DOESN’T want TrumpBiden. The “election” offers us TrumpBiden, with ZERO possibility of a second choice.
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GetReligion closes
The GetReligion blog, which I’ve often read and cited here, has decided to close down in February, on the 20th anniversary of its startup. Mattingly says that their original purpose is now futile. GetReligion has always been written FOR journalists, not really FOR ordinary readers. Their commenting policy made the distinction clear. If you had…
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Tale of two Lewises
The Ankler has a sharp piece on the new movie about Leonard Bernstein. The author focuses on an important aspect of Bernstein’s later life, the cocktail party with the Black Panthers. Tom Wolfe’s account of the party became an epic for good reasons. Wolfe wasn’t quite new; Sinclair Lewis wrote a similar fictional party in…
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Wanna revolution?
Let’s say the “courts” decide Trump is ineligible because he didn’t officially halt a four hour trivial protest in one building, but the “courts” have no problem with Trump for ORDERING AND IMPLEMENTING THE BIGGEST CRIME IN HUMAN HISTORY, IMPRISONING AND STRANGLING THE ENTIRE COUNTRY FOR TWO YEARS. If the “voters” give him a majority…
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The usual AI point-missing
A new startup is promising to restore trust in media and politics by providing a ‘chain of evidence’ for ads or political messages. = = = = = START QUOTE: “If you don’t actually have transparency and a level of authenticity on the images and videos you’re seeing, you could be easily misled without knowing…
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Demons live to 100
This is the year when lots of centenarian demons finally stopped slaughtering. Today: = = = = = START QUOTE: Jacques Delors, a pivotal figure in the European Union’s history and former President of the European Commission, has passed away at the age of 98. His daughter, Martine Aubry, confirmed his death to the news…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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's Mill
Be your own beacon.
Polistra's Mill 