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Why miss a chance to show your skill 2
Brazil’s auto industry used to apply considerable design skill to its adaptations of foreign cars. Willys and Ford and GM and VW all had Brazilian plants that began with assembly and quickly expanded into truly original products. Now Brazil’s extension of our Deepstate is copying FBI products with no adaptation or originality at all. FBI…
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Speaking of Harding…
A Harding speech from Dec 8, 1922, a little more than 100 years ago. This is how a PROBLEM-SOLVING president would talk right now. Substitute NAZI TORTURE for war to modernize. = = = = = START HARDING: So many problems are calling for solution that a recital of all of them, in the face…
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Why miss a chance to show your skill?
This is one of my perpetual puzzles. In the ’40s and early ’50s, the best Euro cars tried amazingly hard to omit taillights. Designers who lavished close attention to shapes and grilles and roofs and dashboards simply ignored taillights, tacking on microteensy standardized pinpricks way down behind the bumper. Taillights were apparently obscene. Two haute…
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Random thought about dynasties
Thinking about the current medieval setup. One thing is missing. In Dark Ages 1.0, political dynasties continued for many generations, and competing dynasties warred for many generations. The worst wars were between families, not between nations. In Dark Ages 2.0, our national dynasties are strictly ‘horizontal’. Before 1900 there were a couple of father-son pairs:…
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Speaking of reinvention…
Speaking of reinventing old tech and speedrunning the Dark Ages: Back in 2015 when discussing old bookkeeping symbols, I caught a truly peculiar advertisement for a nightmarish toilet: I’m convinced the artists in the 1880s were on some kind of hallucinogen, perhaps ergot in spoiled bread. Now the nightmare has been reinvented with a more…
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Mercy for orphans
Sammy’s got a Substack now, opened just a few hours ago. In his first post he puts out some carefully lawyered-up caveats, and then bashes the bankruptcy CEO for not undoing Sammy’s crimes fast enough. Later: Various discussers are trying to figure out Sammy’s motives. At least one lawyer has already given up on him,…
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Curling
I’m back to animations of embryonic development, after a brief break for Steinheil’s ground. Today I’m setting up a cochlea model and trying to match the shape changes with the actual timepoints. We’ve got rain today, fortunately warm rain instead of snow or ice. Nice relief after a month of solid ice and cabin fever.…
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Milk comes from cartons
MindMatters is belatedly grasping the tenure problem. People who work inside academia have known and recognized this for many decades. My father saw it when he started work as a prof in 1957, and warned me about it. Everyone knows it, but outsiders, even outsiders who attend college for four years, don’t hear about it.…
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Trying again
Trying to talk myself down from Muzzle PTSD yet again. Even the fucking NY Times now acknowledges that self-muzzlers are weird and crazy. The mood of the elites has unquestionably shifted. They’re done. When the NY Times is done, the whole monstrosity is done. The agencies will keep pushing, but so far their pushes are…
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I don’t get it.
A failure of FAA’s air control system caused aircraft to be grounded for a few minutes or whatever. This is THE ONLY STORY right now, and Congress promises to “investigate” the glitch. The airlines (and buses and trains and taxis) STRANGLED AND GAGGED THEIR PASSENGERS for two fucking years, and media didn’t notice it. I…
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Odd correlation
The US Commerce department wrote this book in 1929. It’s an impartial description of radio systems and radio advertising in every country of the world, for the guidance of American advertisers who want to reach foreign markets. There’s a STRONG and backward-seeming correlation between advertising and government style in Europe. The countries that we called…
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AI is like…
AI is a lot like dreams, or more precisely the semi-dream crap that sometimes pops up just before sleep, and forces you to wake up from cognitive dissonance. As I was drifting toward a noon nap just now, this snippet of text in printed form popped up: … is equally valid because Hollen is a…
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Another victory for coal
This demonic move wasn’t well publicized. I hadn’t read about it until today. The demon states are already banning natural gas appliances in new construction, and the feds are getting ready to do the same. They’re using an insane tiny pseudo-“correlation” with asthma, based on one small “study”, to “justify” the ban. THESE ARE THE…
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Hardwired doesn’t need marks
This is intriguing but dubious. Researchers looking closely at some cave paintings of elk and antelope have been puzzled by periodic markings around the animals. These researchers see a correlation between the 13 months of the lunar calendar and the mating cycles of the animals. First: When people are intensely interested in a set of…
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Sharp observation
One of the anticoin Redditors sees the early signs of a switchover. So apparently personal finance YouTubers/Influencers are now doing AI-related schemes/scams where supposedly this magical AI software can predict which stocks will be best. If NFTs and high yield accounts are what sparked the 2020/2021 bubble, I’m guessing that something related to AI could…
Polistra's Mill
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