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The Memes ye shall always have
In ancient times memes were painted on rock. In the 1850s memes were novelty sliders in Magic Lanterns. In the 1900s memes were naughty or “novelty” postcards. In the 1970s xeroxed or mimeographed fake memos made the rounds among business offices. Now memes are purely digital. Same process, different technologies. Alter a picture, give it…
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No heroes
Random meandering… The entertainment writers are analyzing Disney’s overuse of the same superheroes, which worked for a while but finally went flat. Supposedly every boy read comics about superheroes. I didn’t. Never interested in role models or heroes. I did read Disney and Lantz comics, Mickey and Donald and Woody, until about age 9. Then…
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Not the same We.
The cultural preservers continually focus on giant cathedrals that took hundreds of years to build. This Twitter item says “we built that”. No we didn’t. The we who built it lived in an entirely different cultural and economic system. There’s no way we could recover the system that made such monuments possible, and such monuments…
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We’re the 4th world now.
For many years “conservative” idiots have been parroting idiot slogans. “Illegal immigrants keep coming here because we’re the BEST HOLY UNIQUELY BLESSED BY JESUS EXCEPTIONAL LAND! Everything is perfect here! Perfect education! Perfect jobs! Perfect justice! Perfect health care!” Now the conditions here are so perfect that immigrants from 3rd world countries are turning around…
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Metrology lesson
The Pew Center has some graphs on the decline of newspapers. They broke a basic rule of metrology. Always put measurements into context. Know the baseline and measure in proportion to the baseline. Pew’s graph of newspaper total circulation (brown line) seems to show that newspapers were starting to lose in 1990, when digital media…
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Wincharger addendum
A few months ago I featured Zenith’s Wincharger wind generator systems, part of the farm electrification movement of the New Deal. Noticed this ad in a 1947 broadcast trade journal: The Wincharger factory was already making short towers for the generators. After most farms were hooked up to the grid, Zenith switched to tall towers…
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Two-headed coins
Stock trading is the exact opposite of real business. A real business makes real things or fixes and maintains real things. Selling and delivering real things are also real businesses. A stock trader doesn’t make or fix or sell anything real. He just makes sidebets ABOUT the people who make and sell. Above all he…
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Might be halfway interesting
Trying to find something positive… Manchin’s retirement and potential candidacy is interesting. He’s unquestionably an old-fashioned industrial Democrat, generally on the side of the worker. He doesn’t smell like an Agent Provocateur or a Pied Piper. He has a little bit of Henry Wallace spirit.
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More on phats
Recently I ran across the peculiar term phats in a union journal and tried to figure it out. Here’s a more specific definition. Phat Man A phat man, found in some offices is a hand compositor who pays to the other compositors a bonus for the privilege of setting the display heads of articles, which,…
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Why the new breed is new
I’ve been watching the new breed of journalists formed by the Sammy trial. These two clips from Carly lead to an observation. Here she’s discussing Sammy’s parents and their failed attempt to manufacture political victories. Carly was finance director for Andrew Yang’s campaign in 2020, so she knows how to run a campaign. When you…
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Old shared lie
Headline: Hillary Clinton warns against Trump 2024 win: ‘Hitler was duly elected’ Classic example of a Shared Lie. This is a valid argument against Trump. It’s ALSO a valid argument against Hillary. Most importantly, it disproves the entire myth of elections. Machiavelli wrote the book. Rulers still follow the book. For a ruler, elections are…
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Status all the way
Spokane had a mayoral “election” yesterday. The results seem to give a majority, not a landslide, to Lisa Brown (D) over Nadine Woodward (R). Brown will continue ruining the city, with a D label instead of an R label. There might be some differences in flavor on the question of homeless camps, but otherwise no…
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Ionopus
Pointed by Denyse as usual, this is the first EKG of an octopus. The researchers are trying to figure out how the eight arm-brains and one center-brain of an octopus communicate. Each arm-brain can operate independently, talking to the other arms without involving the center-brain. This isn’t entirely alien; our kinesthetic sensors in arms and…
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Vaudeville isn’t dead!
A nice Vaudevillian exchange on Twitter: The AMPTP’s “last best final” proposal would allow them to body scan performers making *more than minimum* in TV and features. Performers would get paid once. But studios would be allowed to profit off their AI likenesses without their approval forever — even after they’re dead. Ever Carradine, granddaughter…
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New translation
JFK’s famous Arsk Not slogan is always portrayed by media and schools as a noble declaration. In fact it was a declaration of independence for monstrous rulers, and specifically a repudiation of FDR. FDR ruled by serving. He created a reciprocal moral obligation by HELPING THE PEOPLE first. He starkly constrained the bankers and monopolists,…
Polistra's Mill
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Polistra's Mill 