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Lost name opportunity
Some of the Trinity House experiments in shipboard wireless were performed at the lighthouse on Muckle Flugga, an island in the Shetlands. What a lost opportunity! If the first success had happened there, we’d be studying Mucklefluggology and listening to the Flugga and checking our eflug. The lighthouse is still there, and looks very muckle…
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The ZERO PROBLEMS era
Listening to Kim Iversen discussing China’s long patient war against USA, I suddenly realized that China didn’t start this war. I’ve been writing about the front end of this sequence for a long time, but didn’t connect the two ends as question and answer. In 1946 we stopped minding our own business and resumed minding…
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Doveration
Earlier I noted the rather cheap graphics in stamps honoring the new King Charles. Now the invitation to the Crowning has been revealed. Also looks familiar. Here are a couple segments from the invitation, and a couple of stock ‘floral images’ on a CD that I bought from Dover many years ago. Not quite the…
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Chief Trumpiac
Reading the full story of Chief Pontiac’s famous lacrosse game. There’s a lot of nasty stuff that didn’t get into the usual history. Pontiac was ready, willing, and able to do anything and everything, and had a unique talent for spine-chilling horrible torture. The next day, the Indians rooted Henry from his hiding place. For…
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Better without the name
The DeSoto was a car that sold better when it wasn’t named. It was developed as an answer to Pontiac. Pontiac was a jumped-up Chevy, and DeSoto was a jumped-up Plymouth. At first DeSoto played up the Spanish theme, calling models Cupe De Lujo and Cupe De Business. This gimmick disappeared immediately. Both had personal…
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Waggle
Kirn cites this short clip of Tom Wolfe interviewing McLuhan. They’re discussing the value of turning off mass media, which is unquestionable and unsurprising. I’ve been doing it for many years. McLuhan says that all mass media is intentionally wrong, which is also unquestionable and unsurprising. Insiders have been telling us occasionally for centuries. If…
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The AI telegraph
Well, not exactly… but Highton’s telegraph did use the selective lens idea. Henry Highton was an engineer working for British Railways in the 1840s. (Of course.) He developed several improvements in magnets, wires, insulators and telegraphs. One of his telegraphs was a needle sensor generally similar to Wheatstone. Another was a dial similar to Breguet.…
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Blog tech note
After more than a year, I finally added the Tag Cloud to the bottom of this WordPress blog. It’s an important part of the ‘mechanism’, and I used it constantly when writing in Blogspot. It gives me the pattern of what’s been written so far, which shapes the direction of current entries. The internals of…
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Ugly Taxling
Elon is mostly continuing Deepstate control of Twitter, which is not surprising. He’s made a few changes to turn Twitter into a money-making business. The blue check thing is a classic example of how a real business works. Previously the Twitter management knew who was Correct and who was Incorrect, and assigned elite credentials accordingly.…
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And that brings us
Gary Smith is treading outside of economics territory and measuring Life, but he hasn’t quite crossed the boundary yet. He’s showing how log vs linear graphing can aid or obscure your understanding of a topic. It’s a hugely important point, and deeply familiar in acoustics and speech and neurology. His first attempt made a linear…
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Right about problem, wrong about solution
This discussion of college loans gets one big point right. Major universities are hedge funds with an apprentice program for future hedgies attached. That’s all. Demons training demons. The discussion misses the PERMANENCE of this situation. Colleges were FOUNDED for this sole purpose. Nothing has changed for 1000 fucking years. At one time the A&M…
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Three ancient words yet again
These folks are strongly pro-bitcoin, but even they can’t figure out why anyone would want to “own” a reference to a part interest in a Warhol painting. If we understood those three ancient words, we’d be harder to fool. = = = = = START REHASH: Thinking of NFT in terms of the three ancient…
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Big point from Kirn
Kirn makes a HUGE and NEW and SALIENT point, around 15 minutes into the weekly discussion with Taibbi. Paraphrasing: I don’t know how the people who profit from the internet expect it to keep going when it has become nothing but a giant elephant trap. Every time you write a word, you are placing yourself…
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“Dream” come true!
EDIT: OOPS, IT WAS A JOKE AGAIN. THE DATE WAS RELEVANT AFTER ALL. But the process is unfortunately real now, whether it’s triggered by a button in Daz or not. ============================= Daz, one of the big CG toolmakers, has finally achieved the “dream” of artists. The Make Art button. With the Make Art Daz Studio…
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Reprint on science as entertainment
From Dec 2020. = = = = = START REPRINT: Science is simply a form of entertainment, and we should treat it as entertainment. We should fund it the same way we fund sports or museums or orchestras or ‘serious’ theater, via season ticket holders. Big media is NOT entertainment and doesn’t fall into this…
Polistra's Mill
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Polistra's Mill 