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Glamorous?
Somebody on substack said “People think traveling for work is glamorous.” … then showed some of the unglamorous places she traveled to. I never thought it was glamorous. Back in the 70s I traveled for work, mainly driving a 1955 Ford flatbed truck, and went to faraway places with strange-sounding names like Meade and Goltry.…
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They don’t make them like that any more.
I’m too busy with courseware to do a proper tech piece, which wouldn’t get read by humans anyway. This little trivium will have to do. JL Hudson was not the founder of Hudson Motors. He was the biggest investor in the new enterprise, so the founders named the company after him. He got involved because…
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Dammit, it’s not the output.
Online folks are obsessed with the wrong end of AI. They worry that the supposed Chatbot prose style is taking over, and they bash and block people who “sound like AI”. This is classic witch hunting, and unquestionably helps Altman. Now his coders can just change the style to sound “creative”, whatever the hell that…
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Normal Spokane
Spokane has been comparatively quiet for a while, now back to normal…. 24000 East Mission (Liberty Lake), Reported naked male on a balcony threatening to jump. Also reported male is throwing swords off the balcony. I’m curious. How do you organize a sword collection for easy throwing? And how do you store your sword collection…
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Extremely positive signs from schools!
1. Enid High has an aviation class. They spent the last three years BUILDING THEIR OWN AIRPLANE! It has been certified as flightworthy by FAA. It’s a beautiful plane and a fantastic achievement. 2. On a much smaller scale, nice to see a school teaching math the RIGHT way! Cheney High, south of Spokane, is…
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Positive signs from the neighborhood
For 20 years a vacant apartment building was the worst thing in the neighborhood, constantly squatted and constantly visited by cops who weren’t allowed to do anything. This situation was NOT understandable. The property was owned by an LLC who could afford to fix things if they wanted to.** In 2017 the squatters burned the…
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More positive signs from mainstream
Via Columbia Journalism Review. A few larger TV stations are cutting loose from the networks and becoming truly local. Best of all, it’s not about Trump, it’s about MONEY. The stations decided that networks are charging too much for nothing meaningful except big league sports. Most people get their entertainment elsewhere now. The stations also…
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Hardass for hardass
It’s easy to tell when a new stronger batch of fentanyl comes along. The overdose deaths suddenly spike. I’m getting the same spiky feel from the AI addicts. They seem to be smoking a batch that tells them to go hardass, to smash the remaining skeptics and heretics. Altman’s distribution chain is much more instant…
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As instructed by a dream
Last night’s dream told me to think about chordal methods in adapting courseware for blind folks. I’m not sure what it wants, but let’s reprint this tribute to one remarkable woman as a start. = = = = = START 2020 REPRINT: Earlier I had wondered why chordal technology wasn’t more widespread. It seemed especially…
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More on cursive
Mentioned in previous item, also worth a reprint. = = = = = START 2016 REPRINT: Wandering through KSHS again, found this collection of documents left over from the founding of Bluemont College, which became K-State after Isaac Goodnow finagled a state purchase. Goodnow was an IPO man in modern terms, picking up capital by…
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Good question about learning
Quora sometimes has a question worth thinking about. Do people need to forget old things so they can learn new things (new knowledge)? First impulse: Yes, especially with skills. When you’ve mastered an inefficient process or poor word usage or poor posture, you need to abandon the old movements or shapes to get into the…
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Why Hank?
Thinking as usual about Henry Ford. A few very old friends were allowed to call him Hank. I’ve called him Hank in the Hank vs Frank comparison. Wait. How did Henry shorten to Hank? Harry is the more obvious phonetic elision, and the many King Henrys were often called King Harry in literature and song.…
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No Bud Light in spam
Big corporations weirdly assume that everyone is “non-binary”. They pitch all their advertising toward the 2%, not the 98%. Spammers are realistic. Most of the spam in my inbox is unrelated to sex because most of life is unrelated to sex. The “offers” range from insurance to roofing to supplements. When the spam is sex-connected,…
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MBS is the answer
Quick take on Polymarket by Ted Gioia, who knows the biz end of show biz: It’s getting harder to earn money in the entertainment business. But it’s getting easier to earn money gambling on the entertainment business—especially if you own the betting platform. The same is true of all industries. At one time the stock…
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