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First original idea
NYC’s next mayor Zohran has one original idea. This is a landmark! No US politician at any level or any party has shown originality since 1945. All politicians copy-paste the same shit in different dialects. His idea: NYC should run municipal grocery stores. This is what the New Deal did in other areas. The principle…
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Not any worse
Reading tech history and medieval history in the last decade has been highly satisfying and informative. Old tech journals tell you what was happening in society if you know the jargon and know how to read between the lines. The newer medieval historians are actually DOING THEIR JOB, telling us in clear language how ordinary…
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Farm focus to the next level
Many stations in rural states focused on farming. WIBW in Topeka, my nighttime companion in the 50s, devoted most of its mornings to agriculture and timeshared the frequency with KSAC, the all-ag station at K-State. WEKZ in Monroe, Wisconsin took farm focus to a new level. They owned and operated a farm right next to…
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Why licensing is crucial
Recently I wrote a defense of licensing, from medieval practices to modern authorship and occupation licensing. Here’s why licensing is needed. A judge has made a completely unusable and pointless decision on AI theft. Anthropic likely violated copyright law when it pirated authors’ books to create a giant dataset and “forever” library but that training…
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Medieval // REM
Not especially relevant, and I’ve said it before in a different context. When programmers add comments to code, we think we’re doing something new and modern. Here’s a piece of my C++ code from Audin, my all-purpose courseware engine. The active parts are on the left, and my explanations and reminders are on the right.…
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Pope gets it.
The old joke: Is the Pope Christian? was supposed to be a self-evident tautology. For too many years the pope was not a Christian. Now it’s a tautology again. From Prevost: = = = = = START QUOTE: Every member of the international community has a moral responsibility to stop the tragedy of war before…
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Reprint plus encouraging news
Linked in previous, worth a reprint as a more general look at currencies and standards. = = = = = START 2024 REPRINT: An 1880s British book on banking gave a simple statistic that altered my view of how money works. The statistic: Earlier I summarized an American book from the same era, which I…
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Cursed weight, sacred weight, part 2 of 2
= = = = = MEDIEVAL METROLOGY PART 4 = = = = = Why has gold been a standard** for so many centuries? Partly because it’s a suitable standard in a metrology sense. It doesn’t mix easily with other elements, it doesn’t degrade with time, and it can be purified and verified. But metrology…
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One more inevitability
Previous item is a perfect example of why the RIGHT kind of price controls are needed. Enid hasn’t been affected by the real estate bubble. When I compare rental and sale prices there with what I remember from the 70s, the current numbers are in line with overall inflation. A $100 apartment then is $700…
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Enid’s Fallingwater is for sale
It’s a fantastic Wrightish design, every part custom engineered and custom-made. It’s in The Woodlands, Enid’s best neighborhood for many years. Built in ’92, it wasn’t there when I lived in Enid in the ’70s. From the blurb: Upon completion the home was featured on the HGTV series “Extreme Homes”. When entering the walled courtyard…
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How a Sucker Filter works
Spam email says: Congrats! You’ve received a United Healthcare reward! You have been accepted! ONLY 1 DAY LEFT to avail this DEAL! Do they realize United Healthcare is so universally hated that most people want to REWARD the man who committed justice on UHC? I’m sure they do. This is exactly how a Sucker Filter…
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Dream helped to answer a question
A 1980s coal pollution project popped up in a dream recently. Thinking about this project led to an answer. At that time Penn State was eagerly hosting hundreds of Chinese grad students. Universities favor foreign students because they pay full price while most domestic students have discounts. They could afford full price because the Chinese…
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Random neighborhood note
SpokaneNews always shows a map when it reports a car crash or overdose or brush fire. They reported a crash at the corner next to the VA Hospital, a common crash spot. Cars on Wellesley often zoom right through the four-way stop. The map shows street names inside the VA Center. Independence, Liberty, Memorial, Freedom,…
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Pull or push
Following on previous item about writing vs thinking. A closely related theme seen in the same places: You need to consume lots of books before you can write. First: This axiom makes it too easy to defend AI. Sam’s machine consumes billions of books and other writings and mushes them all together to form its…
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What good is writing?
If you aren’t writing you aren’t thinking. Variations on this theme, allegedly quoted from the usual suspects, are common in substack and other literary places. It doesn’t make a lick of sense. Humans were thinking in constructive ways LONG before writing was established. They were thinking well enough to selectively breed plants and livestock, to…
Polistra's Mill
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