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Just like smallpox!
Back when the NAZI TORTURE CAMPS started, my very first impulse was to assume that China was wiping out opposition, not “viruses”. A few days ago I casually used the assumption: The “virus” holocaust, which seemed permanent, halted in late 2020 in sane places and halted last month in the craziest places. (Except for China,…
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Salon?
Non-woke Twitter users are quickly developing a cult of personality around Messiah Elon. Kirn claims to see a much more “salon-like” atmosphere. As a non-member who doesn’t spend a lot of time on Twitter, I don’t see any difference. Twitter now allows a non-member to browse without limit, so I can see more messages than…
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Reprint on Mennonites
Following on previous item, here’s a 2018 reprint on those culturally influential Mennonites. = = = = = START REPRINT: As I’ve noted repeatedly, the line between Soros and non-Soros corresponds pretty closely to debt vs saving. The one BIG exception is China, which has fueled its tremendous mercantile expansion with pure debt. Now that…
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Good work by Burge
Ryan Burge, the religion graph man, has put together a huge batch of graphs from the latest annual survey. Overall, maps by county are hard to use and deceptive because ‘county’ is an entirely different entity west and east of the Dry Line. East of the Dry Line, all counties are about the same physical…
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Two Matts
Nice clean comparison between two major Substack writers doing similar exposures. = = = = = Matt Taibbi has pulled together some internal emails from Twitter ex-employees, showing how Twitter favored D over R. This is not SHANNON INFORMATION because anyone can see that Twitter is pure D. This is also meaningless information because it’s…
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Just seemed interesting…
American Radio Library added an old RCA research publication from 1936, exploring the possibilities of TV. At that time the BBC was already broadcasting a regular TV schedule using CRT systems. American stations had been experimenting with both mechanical and electronic systems, and several stations (including the usual NYC suspects and also KMBC in Kansas…
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Coal vs Ice
Here’s a leftover thought from the Ice Industry set, not quite resonant with the theme. I mentioned that Enid Ice and Fuel was in two parallel businesses, processing and delivering portable cold and portable heat. The parallel doesn’t work well. Ice is extremely temporary, almost as evanescent as electricity. Ice can only be stored in…
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Sharp distinction
Sharp observation from Matt Levine at Bloomberg. It’s hard to feel bad for bitcoin “victims”. Semiquoting: 1. Bitcoin requires a tremendous amount of knowledge and familiarity to make any transactions at all. 2. After you’re thoroughly immersed in the reddits and discords and systems needed to understand just one transaction, you ALSO see constant reports…
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Before WP rudely interrupted me…
Back to regularly scheduled snark. Taibbi discusses his parents who were both journalists: My father had a saying: “The story’s the boss.” In the American context, if the facts tell you the Republicans were the primary villains in this or that disaster, you write that story. If the facts point more at Democrats, you go…
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Huh?
This is weird. I opened a new blog post, wanting to say something snarky about journalism. Before I wrote anything, the fresh unused post looked like this (screenshot, not pasted text): This didn’t come from my clipboard. I had just copied a couple sentences from Taibbi’s substack to use for snark material. I definitely didn’t…
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The ice industry, part 1/5
I’ve always been puzzled by the long persistence of household iceboxes. Mechanical refrigeration was invented around 1880. Ice plants had formerly used natural ice from ponds or from frozen pools, requiring massive insulation and storage, but rarely lasting through the summer. They started using refrigeration soon after its invention, and by 1910 all ice production…
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The ice industry, part 2/5
Who invented ice? Fredric Tudor. Obviously ice is a large part of the world, but nobody thought of it as a salable commodity until 1805. Tudor was a wealthy Boston kid with an unbreakable passion for sailing and trading. He knew that spices were the source of many fortunes, but spices were inadequate for preserving…
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The ice industry, part 3/5
The Enid Ice Plant, photographed in the 1920s and seen on the EnidBuzz facebook page, inspired this piece: Ice trade journals from the era list this company as Enid Ice and Fuel, which is a rational business model. They were processing and delivering portable energy, lumps of heat and blocks of cold. The visible tracks…
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The ice industry, part 4/5
How did the ice plant make its portable blocks of coldness? The method was unexpectedly complicated. Here’s the coldroom, where the compressed and relatively cool ammonia is allowed to relieve its pressure and absorb heat from the water that will become ice. What’s going on inside? We have a grid in the floor, over a…
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The ice industry, part 5/5
Summing up: The ice trade journals from the ’20s show an industry starting to grasp its decline, and responding in predictable ways. We need better salesmanship, we need to work harder, we need to organize better. By 1933 the decline was heard in radio comedy. An episode of Mirth Parade (not online now) has an…
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