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Not much charge in the disc
Took a peek at the latest “revelations” on UFOs. BlackVault has a solid website and a well-organized Youtube channel with good clear careful narration. I like the way they’re handling things, and I think Frank Edwards would have been pleased. There’s not much beef in this burger. These FOIAs are a lot like the older…
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When Foy worked
Still thinking about the Foy solution for automation, I looked up some 1960 government studies on automation. At that time business and labor were mostly working together to protect skills and workers. Businesses understood that labor would strike hard if they fired workers unnecessarily, so businesses behaved decently. The study predicted correctly that file clerks and…
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Strong stuff, weak history
Strong stuff from Kirn: So much imagination, eccentricity, dreaminess, and creativity went into the creation of the tech we use now. Yet it is becoming the instrument of our species’ most simplistic and brutal instincts for raw power, deception and coercion. Damn it, I want that Renaissance they promised! First part is wrong. The true…
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Who isn’t Kuhnian?
Thinking today about those two huge debunks of pill-pusher theories: Depression is chemical, and Alzheimers is chemical. Those theories lasted for decades and NEVER DID ANY FUCKING GOOD AT ALL. The drugs for depression did massive harm. At least the Alzheimer plaque theory was only useless. Both conditions are best controlled by two little words:…
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Opportunity cost
Recently the long-standing and richly funded theory of Alzheimers plaques was decisively debunked. It should have been debunked and defunded earlier. It wasn’t logical in the first place, and it consumed all the resources for twenty years with zero results. A much more logical and obvious hypothesis is starting to yield logical and obvious RESULTS.…
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Age reversal
This morning I took a peek at Renderosity, my old graphics stomping grounds. Is there a new version of Poser that I can continue to reject? Apparently not. The first discussion I saw was this discovery of AI. Almost everyone seemed to be completely gobsmacked by text-to-art AI websites. One of the older guys was…
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We need a Foy Rebellion
Yesterday I was discussing the cultural IMPERATIVE to re-employ ordinary men after WW2. France implemented a similar IMPERATIVE after it recovered from the 1789 revolution, which turned its demonic vision of “science” into a god of war and torture. France returned to a strictly practical and concrete way of life, with careful regard for the…
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Great line
As the Web3 metaverse continues to collapse, some jaded observers are turning out great lines. The specific story is yet another weirdly complex trading of nothing: The problem is brewing at BendDAO, a peer-to-peer lending service that lets users borrow ether (ETH) against their NFTs. Customers can typically take out a loan equal to 30%…
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Rifts all the way down
Yesterday I did a grouchy political take on the latest URGENT BREAKING NEWS PANIC EXISTENTIAL EMERGENCY: The continents are drifting! Here’s a somewhat calmer thought on the subject, maybe trite, maybe entertaining. This week I’m putting together an animation illustrating how the larynx develops through embryonic stages. The latest edition of the textbook will have…
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If it’s a trend…
The folks at TheFederalist are still trying to claim a trend toward genuine populism on the R side. They claim that the defeat of Liz Cheney marks a pulling away from Bush/Cheney neocons. I doubt it. A much simpler explanation is the Trump personality cult, which is pretty much the only thing in Repooflican minds…
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Healthy reaction
After WW2 everyone was FUCKING TIRED of working doubletime under extreme conditions. Though the conditions here were vastly better than in Europe, the same response happened in both places. Workers in the ’50s expected to do their job, without undue strain and stress, in a reasonable number of hours. Workers also expected to support a…
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Gresham metaphor
Most of the content on the Blockworks Macro channel is pure bitcoin crap. But as usual, the bitcoiners are often the best realists on everything else. This clip features an old guy talking with two young Bitcoin Bros. Starting at 36 minutes, the old guy makes a wonderful analogy with Gresham’s law. Our information has…
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Stark idiots
I’m impressed by the NON-PANIC of those German electronics publishers. While the country was being bombed down to bedrock and Thermited to a crisp, the home front kept on with business and fun. The Post Office made training films about new developments in TV, and the magazines wrote about experimenting with leftovers instead of new…
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D-tag? What D-tag?
American Radio Library has added a nearly complete collection of Funkschau, a German electronics newsletter. It started publication in the 20s and is still in business. The magazine scarcely noticed WW2. Near the end, a few articles on DIY parts appeared, but the mix of theory and construction and review remained constant as the pages…
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Oz is not dumb.
Everyone is making fun of Dr Oz’s grocery video. Let them eat Cruditay. BUT: Youtube has dozens of his grocery shopping videos (segments from the Oprah show) for the last 10 years. They look and sound like the new one. Most are about prices. So this latest grocery price video isn’t a first try, it’s…
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