Polistra's Mill

Polistra's Mill

Be your own beacon.

  • More Tirn Tibbles

    Another case where Kirn misses a point because he’s not inside the tech world. I believe deeply in creativity, innovation, imagination & in the idea that they must be protected because they benefit all of us. The framers of the Constitution believed this too. It is why they gave special attention to patent law. We…

    polistra

    September 10, 2022
    Uncategorized
    Kirn Quibbles
  • Grandma was more right than she knew

    Common wisdom was right about nearly everything before “science” and “democracy” and “philosophy” turned wisdom into genocide and torture. Some branches of science are accidentally recovering old wisdom in recent years, while other branches (like “social” “science” and public “health”) are zooming out beyond the event horizon of infinite satanic lunacy. = = = =…

    polistra

    September 10, 2022
    Uncategorized
    Emersonian justice, Entertainment, Sucker Filter
  • It’s all in the deltas

    UD notes the death of Frank Drake, father of the Drake Equation estimating likely planets for intelligent life. Drake was working at the Green Bank Radio Telescope during the early days of radio astronomy, in the late 1950s, when he was inspired by Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison’s famous 1959 paper in Nature about using…

    polistra

    September 9, 2022
    Uncategorized
    Constants and Variables, defensible cases, Metrology, UFO
  • One Liz dies, another ascends

    I’ve given up on Britain. Still, the tradition of REAL nobility resonates in REAL humans. It’s innate. Sailer catches the power of REAL nobility in an elegant little story. Another evocation of REAL nobility. The monarch leads the troops into battle. REAL nobility is detectable between species.

    polistra

    September 9, 2022
    Uncategorized
  • Interesting for other reasons

    This new study at PNAS caught my eye. The title implies an actual resonance: Neural synchronization predicts marital satisfaction After buying and reading the article, it’s not about phaselocked waveforms, it’s about brain regions activating at the same time. Still somewhat interesting. The details of the subjects and researchers are more interesting. The team was…

    polistra

    September 9, 2022
    Uncategorized
  • Today is & day!

    Time to reprint the genuine history of the symbol, which doesn’t match the standard etymology. = = = = = START REPRINT: I’ve always been bothered by the bizarre-sounding etymology of Ampersand. The symbol itself is no mystery: just a stylized version of et. But the usual etymology for the name doesn’t make a lick…

    polistra

    September 8, 2022
    Uncategorized
    defensible cases
  • Can’t be monetized

    CNN is trying, or pretending to try, for a less partisan approach. Its viewers are revolting. No fairness allowed! We want pure D-brand crack! There was never any profit in plain truth. Newspapers have always been partisan. The only difference is that they’re all D now, compared to about 60% D in earlier decades. Radio…

    polistra

    September 8, 2022
    Uncategorized
    Fairness Doctrine
  • Meta-lesson

    This is a good lesson of some kind. I read that British energy costs were going up from $1200 per month to $3000 per month. Both the before and after seemed utterly insane, but in a time when all governments are utterly insane, nothing can be counted out. Today I checked other sources and found…

    polistra

    September 7, 2022
    Uncategorized
  • Appropriate names

    The new out-in-space Webb telescope has found a constellation described as a space tarantula. Huh? Where’s the tarantula? My first thought is a bow-legged cowboy wearing an old-fashioned sombrero.  (eg Yosemite Sam.)  Second thought is a bear rug erasing a crescent wrench. Those are obviously too contrived, so here’s a one-part image: I guess Yankee…

    polistra

    September 7, 2022
    Uncategorized
  • Math random vs real random

    This distinction was generally recognized in earlier decades. Now that the Platonists are fully in charge, it seems to have been lost. I recognized it in 2000 when I was designing and running perception experiments. Lately I’ve noticed a couple of older references to the point, indicating that it was common knowledge. (1) Puthoff and…

    polistra

    September 7, 2022
    Uncategorized
    Blinded by stats
  • Private and public names

    Enid Buzz asks about middle names. Most people mentioned that their middle name was only used when Mom was seriously pissed. This is a common habit in America, but it can’t be very old. The three-name standard is basically limited to the Protestant parts of the English-speaking world. Catholic areas traditionally have a pile of…

    polistra

    September 6, 2022
    Uncategorized
  • Probably a healthy tendency

    Looking at Substack after a pause, I notice several teapot tempests about accusations of Controlled Opposition. The accused APs are stoutly defending their veracity, which doesn’t help. I think it’s a good sign when people are sniffing the unmistakable AP smell. An influencer who argues persistently and expertly for one side of the wrong question…

    polistra

    September 6, 2022
    Uncategorized
  • Refunders vs hoarders

    This is completely irrelevant and overly nuanced, but it’s what I want to write about today…. Duane Jones, in his wonderful little book about advertising and human nature, gets hardass at times. He talks openly about forcing a purchase. Here he’s discussing the money-back guarantee: = = = = = Mr Burke was silent for…

    polistra

    September 6, 2022
    Uncategorized
    Duane Jones, Patient things, skill-estate
  • Why sane people avoid IOT

    This is why sane people avoid ‘Internet of Things’ and ‘smart’ appliances. Thousands of Colorado residents were locked out of adjusting their thermostats on a 90 degree summer day. The thermostats read “energy emergency” and customers had no way of moving the temperature down. Energy company Xcel had placed a temporary lock on some smart…

    polistra

    September 4, 2022
    Uncategorized
    Carbon Cult
  • Back to Kirn Quibbles…

    Kirn’s latest pithy: The forces of adamant top-down control & the forces of creative distributed responsibility both feel that they now have an opportunity in technology to manifest long-held dreams. So they’re fighting. Nope. Wrong three ways. First: Distributed responsibility is NOT creative. Strong cultures don’t need a lot of top-down control because they’re bound…

    polistra

    September 4, 2022
    Uncategorized
    Kirn Quibbles
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