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Pratt’s Pterotype, 1 of 3
First a story about John Pratt and his invention. This was found in a 1927 issue of Typewriter Trade Journal. = = = = = START QUOTE: Mrs Worl recently gave to the Wenatchee Daily World of Wenatchee, Washington, the following story of the invention of the Pratt typewriters, one of the earliest writing machines.…
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Pratt’s Pterotype 2 of 3
Pratt’s US patent, issued in 1868, is titled Mechanical Typographer but he normally called his machine the Pterotype for unknown reasons. It wasn’t notably wingy. Here’s how it looked in operation: Each key had a long lever pivoted in the middle of the machine, and each lever activated three separate horizontal bars. All letters were…
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Pratt’s Pterotype 3 of 3
Returning to both Sholes and Hammond. Sholes and Glidden didn’t use Pratt’s keyboard at first. Like most early typewriters they followed the piano model. They also used an entirely different way of getting each letter to the paper, with individual hammers bearing each letter. Oddity: Glidden and Sholes sold their idea to gunmaker Remington, but…
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Fresh point
Tara Henley interviews Sue Gardner, a former CBC executive who now writes on the problems of media. Gardner hits the usual well-known issues about the failure and mistrust of media, which is an international problem. She adds one point I haven’t heard before. There have always been people who pay more attention to news and…
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Record for the Martians
Unsurprisingly the COWARDASS PUSSYASS SISSYASS REPOOFLICANS in this “state” are kicking down on a meaningful candidate yet again. They did it to Loren Culp in 2020, now they’re doing it to Semi Bird in 2024. He has lots of local donors, and he has the endorsements of 12 county Repooflican organizations including Spokane County. The…
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Kosher qibla
One of Polistra’s rules is: Constraint makes good design. Freedom makes bad design. Tablet magazine has a DELIGHTFUL article on a lost NYC Jewish technology, which flourished in the 1930s. Writing on the Sabbath is forbidden, but raising funds at a synagogue is permitted. The fundraising had to be recorded, for monetary bookkeeping and for…
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Ohmari’s law
Sohrab Ahmari gets everything right. So far I haven’t heard one false note in his discussions. In this interview with Trish Wood he focuses on the standard Friedmanite lie that price is an automatic result of equal forces on two sides, like a drain trap. Nobody believes this brazenly delusional lie. Even the economists don’t…
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Fairness Doctrine is back.
THIS DUDE UNDERSTANDS KRAUTS. Hat tip to Cindy Sheehan for pointing to the DryBar channel, which enforces the Fairness Doctrine rigorously. It’s made up of comedians who don’t spend all their time either FUCKING TRUMP or SUCKING TRUMP. They just laugh at life.
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GOC 2.0
The military has allegedly lost a super-expensive F-35 jet, and is asking the public to help find it. Happened before. In the 50s the military organized the Ground Observer Corps, who were allegedly tasked with watching for enemy aircraft. Russia wasn’t trying to attack us then. Russia has NEVER tried to attack us. So the…
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Breaking a taboo
In this clip Vivek is discussing bitcoin with an old friend, not a random interviewer. His casual demeanor is appropriate for the situation. (Normally Vivek is fully suited up.) What Vivek is SAYING is orthodox techie talk, not unusual. What he’s DOING is more interesting. He’s drawing diagrams and using them to illustrate his points.…
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Good question
Somebody asked on Reddit: Water is the base drink. What’s the base food? Evocative question. My instant answer was barley. Barley grows everywhere, unlike rice and wheat and corn. Most of the answers were broader, including all of those localized grains when turned into some kind of bread. BUT: What about the premise? For most…
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Isms forbid solutions
Solving a problem can be divided into a few steps, with a loop on the last two. 1. Find the desired goal. This is the hard part and the genuinely variable part. In politics the right goal should be a functional civilization and a functional economy for ordinary people. 2. Know your baseline and measure…
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Discrepancy
Rushfield at the Ankler calls out an interesting discrepancy. The Hollywood strike is stopping a huge part of the US economy. The UAW strike is less consequential as measured by workers or dollars. (Only a few selected factories of the Big Three are struck. US factories owned by foreign companies like Toyota or BMW are…
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Missionaries of tyranny
Continuing from item on Ecumenical Institute. I wrote that EI was spreading the Tech Gospel in preparation for the Web War. This reminded me strongly of the missionaries sent by the same Deepstate to Kansas, who prepared the ground for Lincoln’s war against secure employment. The endpoint is the same in both cases. Costless labor…
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Reprint on Hikers
Linked in previous. Worth a reprint because it shows that I understood the situation in 2010. I didn’t fully discard partisan shit until I discarded the TV in 2012. HIKERS All the Propaganda Factories are hugging and weeping this morning about the three “hikers” in Persia getting a visit from their mothers. All the Propaganda…
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