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Unshaving the yak
Following on this year’s yak-shaving…. Now it’s time to unshave. After two weeks of slow patient debugging and detours, using little constant/variable tests to eliminate all of the things that WEREN’T causing the problem, I finally eliminated the one thing that WAS causing the problem. Still not sure why it’s a problem in newer versions…
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Greenwald gets it.
The push for yet another war against Russia has stirred up some serious writing. Taibbi, who normally writes with a light and parodic tone, gets serious here. Greenwald, who is always serious, gets even more serious here. Taibbi still misses the main point, constantly focusing on ‘incompetence’ by the demons. They are NEVER incompetent. There’s…
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Provocative but not quite true
Kirn’s latest Provocative Point: Speech and expression are most suppressed and regulated in academia and the media, where you’d think they would be freest. The culture has basically seized up and died in those places. For a revival of the creative spirit we must look to bodegas, casinos, tire shops, and hair salons. “You’d think”,…
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Orby in action
Following on yesterday’s re-memory of the Orby toy… I’ve been deep in C++ programming lately, which is productive but drab, with a sense of mission. Still, I seem to have an unquenchable appetite to make something visible, so here’s a quickie demo of Orby. First the mechanism: Then Orby in his original habitat, a 1957…
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Random musings on interactivity
Wolf made his usual excellent charts about the steep decline of movie theaters. Number of tickets peaked in 2002, then gradually fell off until the “virus” holocaust. Why 2002? That’s when the web became mature and fast for most people. Most types of information had theatrical versions and private versions for many centuries. The web…
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This makes me feel awful.
Via Kirn: I’m hearing far too many reports — not on the news, but from people I know — of young children struggling with speech issues as a consequence of masking. In a couple of cases, parents can’t find therapists willing to go unmasked during sessions. This is stunning. Several of the responders gave personal…
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More sleep, more memory
An article at UncommonDescent was mocking sci-fi writers for inadequate imagination. There’s a zero percent chance that aliens would look like humans with only slight differences, like Mr Spock’s ears. I commented that good sci-fi authors did try to imagine genuinely strange aliens, and added that even sci-fi toys were more imaginative than Spock. I…
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It’s a better fit than you think
Skeptics are alarmed this morning about the latest censorship. A small university in England has placed a trigger warning on 1984. Doing just what the book warned us against? Yes, but in a more subtle and deeper way. Orwell emphasized the caste distinction between Inner Party and Outer Party and Proles. We have the same…
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Actions, not words
Listened again to Lindsay MacHarrie’s dramatization of the Cardiff Giant story. In 1869 George Hull, a skeptic with plenty of money, was arguing with a pastor about the Giants mentioned in the Bible. Hull hired a sculptor to make a huge gypsum man, carefully aged it, and buried it on his brother-in-law’s farm. Hull got…
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Sputnik again
Randomly wandering again through the old Computers and Automation mags at Bitsavers. In 1956, ran into a single statistic that activated my Sputnik gene. Statistic: Average number of students in class: USSR 19 or 20 and decreasing. USA 34 or 35 and increasing. = = = = = I can verify that 35 was not…
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Corporate personhood
The fiction that a corporation is a person usually serves to make life easier for evil corporations. Judge Alsup takes it seriously. First, reprinting from 2019. = = = = = START PARTIAL REPRINT: In an age of infinitely fake outrage and fake action and fake every fucking thing, it’s hugely refreshing to see genuine…
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Caring is prelude to slaughter
Saagar is shocked at the horrible cruelty of an NBA billionaire who refuses to care about the fate of Uyghurs. I have no sympathy or empathy for billionaires, but this one happens to be correct. It’s not natural to CARE about people who live halfway around the world. It’s natural to care about our family…
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The stupidest man in the world
Admittedly this is a far larger competition than Sanest Man, but here’s one convincing finalist. A professor in England is worrying about the moral implications of “virtual characters”. The question is actually moot, though. If we create our characters to be free-thinking beings, then we must treat them as if they are such – regardless…
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Sanest man in the world
Reported at Spokane News Facebook page: Sprague and Howard. Reported Male going from pothole to pothole to pothole, licking all of them.
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The real threat to artists
Sailer is appropriately mocking a major museum’s Woke cancelling of Rembrandt. As usual it’s guilt by multi-level association. Rembrandt lived in Holland at a time when Holland was a major colonial power, conquering tribes in the Caribbean and Indonesia. He didn’t conquer or enslave anyone, he just made money from the aristocrats who were profiting…
Polistra's Mill
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Polistra's Mill 