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Puppets
Rob Lowe’s latest piece at the Ankler is about the total disconnection from SKILL at all levels. Hollywood doesn’t pay for skill, it pays for the PRESENCE OF A BODY. In pre-tech eras when the studios were more functional, executives and writers and actors were all expected to use the SKILLS appropriate to their position.…
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Just before audions
Found what seems to be the first electrical analog computer, or at least the first to be described as such. It’s in this 1909 physics journal. The Arthur Wright Electrical Device for evaluating Formulae and solving Equations wasn’t really a practical device and it wasn’t especially new. Wright was using modified versions of the Wheatstone…
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Reprint on Russian tech
Reprint from 2015, linked in previous item. Keyloggers and Lysenko Interesting discussion at ArsTechnica about a clever keylogger bug that KGB implanted in the Selectric typewriters at the US Embassy. The bugs remained in place from 1976 to 1984, when someone finally spotted them. The commenters are more interesting than the article. A few showed…
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Not an ideal world
Caitlin Johnstone points out that Vivek is not totally antiwar. He wants to make more war against China and less war against Russia. Yup. Can’t argue. In an ideal world I’d prefer total isolationism, as we had with FDR. We’ll never get another FDR, so in the world of universal monsters we need to support…
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What would Kellogg do?
Substack serves the same purpose as the preprint or Patent Insides services. Substack makes it economically feasible for small writers and publishers to reach a large public without the massive overhead needed for a separate website with its own SEO and payment methods and publicity spreaders. Web services often make weird changes at the start…
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Legacy and copyright again
Branching off from the Kellogg patent insides, I started reading histories of stereotyping. 1. From Gutenberg’s movable type through the long line of inventors who repeatedly REdiscovered stereotyping, a pattern emerges clearly. Each inventor tried to keep the process secret through oaths (NDAs) and patents and copyrights. When the inventor died the process died with…
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The father of boilerplate
Previously I covered the Army Press, a simple manual press that could handle newspaper-size stock. The Army Press helped country weeklies to survive until they could afford more automatic presses. Reviewing the Army Press: It looked like a proof press. On the proof press, the paper is clamped to the roller, which rolls and slides…
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Meaningless observation
Pundits in 2016 and this year are noticing a difference between the two parties. I observed this strongly in 2016, but I’ve been paying too little attention this time. (2020 was too fucked to observe anything.) In both 2016 and 2024, the R campaign had a real choice of candidates who were claiming to represent…
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Outside the boilerplate
A Substack writer was wondering how the hippies turned into “virus” tyrants. I wrote my standard comment: = = = = = START BOILERPLATE: The hippies who turned into tyrants were always tyrants. The division between high-status hippies and the rest of us was clear in the ’60s. The high-status types led the movement and…
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Interesting!
I haven’t been paying any attention to state-level politics since the PUSSYASS COWARDASS REPOOFLICANS sabotaged Loren Culp’s serious attempt to oppose Demon Inslee. Now a new and interesting candidate is working inside the D party. He’s been making the rounds of “conservative” radio shows in Seattle, but I didn’t notice until his campaign hit my…
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Party LAN
Thinking about Wincharger and rural electricity, it occurred to me that phones were common on farms LONG before electricity and automobiles and mail service. Started looking through old sources, easily verified the proportion: The rural free delivery carrier’s route rarely exceeds 24 miles in length and serves on an average about 70 farms. A rural…
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If you really want ethics
Via Hollywood Reporter, the AI demons are plotting how to destroy more skills. Still, across SIGGRAPH, the use of new buzzwords such as “responsible AI” underscored broad fears about the impact the tech could have on Hollywood. “I’m hearing about actors scanning themselves and copyrighting their scans. I wonder if it’s going to be affordable…
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One promising note
The philosophers and Intelligent Design folks are still handling the wrong end of the AI question, trying to knock its competence and credibility and HumanPersonNess. Those qualities are IRRELEVANT to the Tech Tyrants who are mobilizing and implementing AI. The Hollywood strikers, who were formerly on the wrong side of nearly all questions, are hitting…
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What you mean ‘we’, we?
Trump has achieved a new unbreakable record in Cognitive Dissonance and absolute lunacy. “To every [virus] tyrant we say: WE WILL NOT COMPLY!” Trump is THE tyrant. He created the lockdowns and muzzles and needles and torture and destruction of small business and murder of the elderly and infinite enrichment of the rich. Now he’s…..…
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