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Build what you know
It’s easy to see the goal of bitcoin and DAO projects. Pump and dump, often in just a few hours. Cheap riches for the real-world swindlers who run the fake world. The dumps aren’t especially large by Wall Street standards, but 100k for a few keystrokes is an extremely high ROI. Well then, what’s the…
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Wilt or Rubett!
Janelle at AIWeirdness ordered up a batch of Halloween candy customized for each state from the AI engine. Some of the sources appear to have picked up other food from the state. Connecticut got Craney Chowder. Kansas got Farte Cats, perhaps from online references to methane from cattle feedlots? Most simply jumbled up the name…
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Wonderful!
For some reason I missed this a couple months ago. If I had seen it, I might have been less quibbly about the project! Avi shows his work. The world is full of ‘alt’ tech and ‘alt’ social media and ‘alt’ money projects, which grind and grind and eventually dissolve into factions and fractions because…
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It’s always about caste
From a Louella Parsons gossip broadcast in Sept 1948: = = = = = Politics invaded Hollywood with a vengeance last week, when President Truman and Governor Dewey made speeches within hours of each other. Conspicuous on the Truman platform were Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Ronald Reagan. Equally conspicuous with Dewey were Barbara Stanwyck,…
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CMT
Still grinding on my Sputnik question, the failure of US education to teach skills. There’s an obvious line between physical skills like typing and soldering and cooking, versus symbolic skills like arithmetic and writing. New thought: There’s a more subtle line between symbolic skills like arithmetic and writing, versus symbolic description of the symbolic skills.…
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Mach wins every time
From one of Wolf Richter’s commenters: Buying the company you hate most has always been a profitable investment. Strict Machiavelli. Made me think of a question that has always bothered me… Divestment campaigns, where “socially responsible” fuckheads sell shares of uncool companies like tobacco and alcohol and Russia, make no sense at all. The “socially…
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Trying too hard
Lately I’ve been thinking about art and copyrights and unions and such. While pondering such thoughts, opened an old issue of Collectible Auto to read while eating. This picture of an Airflow on the assembly line showed up first. The Airflow was a result of designers trying too hard for Disruptive Innovation. Chrysler wanted to…
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A real use case, sort of
Seems to be 2017 today…. A strictly traditional Catholic convent near KC used Bitcoin to raise money for construction. One thing I was immediately struck by when visiting the monastery is the brand new, awe-inspiring church that dominates the grounds. I expected to drive up to a modern, utilitarian building, as (disappointingly) can be expected…
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Doubling the insult
While writing previous item, I was trying to determine that the Heinz soup thrown by the protesters was actually made in England, so I wouldn’t be accidentally ruining my point. Heinz’s own website, full of ESG legalism, doesn’t answer the question, but incidental Google mentions made it clear that Heinz does produce soup in England.…
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Punching backwards
The idiot protesters tossing soup on Van Gogh are an easy slapdown in a hundred ways. They’re wearing hair products and clothes made from oil, built in China in factories that don’t bother with any of our pollution laws. The products were shipped from China on ships burning bunker oil, the dirtiest of all fuels.…
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Bimetallism cubed
Screencap from an ad in one of the Reddit bitcoin zones: Finance is failing and DeFi can fix it. But not yet. Right now the tools for DeFi are not sufficient to allow devs to build secure apps etc. This is what happens when a cult of inexperienced THEORY MEMORIZERS are led around by galaxy-brain…
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Shannon in schools
Continuing as always on the Sputnik theme. Schools should only train SKILLS. The verbal material we “learned” in school was worse than useless. It was either false or irrelevant. If schools are going to include verbal material at all, it should be USEFUL material. Shannon information. History should be Machiavelli and Parkinson, preparing the students…
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What is an expert?
I decided to delve back into the archives of Edmund Berkeley’s magazine ‘Computers and Automation’. I’m looking for a specific vaguely recalled item that I haven’t re-located yet. Meanwhile, this editorial from May 1969 deserves sharing. = = = = = Title: The cult of the expert. It is an old human habit, when you…
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Politics and science
Continuing to notice the peculiar tone of political emails. The word devastate seems to be at the top of the choice stack. It can be used internally: “We’re devastated!” The reader is supposed to empathize and throw money at the candidate to rescue him from devastation. It can be used externally: “Trump is DEVASTATED!” The…
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Montessori
I’ve been bemoaning the lack of school-based training and entertainment-based training about scams and swindles. Experience is the ONLY teacher, but there are two ways to acquire experience. Ideally a training experience should put you through most of the real situation without danger to your life or wealth. Whether intentionally or not, the DAO swindle…
Polistra's Mill
Be your own beacon.
Polistra's Mill 