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Why so vague?
Why do companies always put a misleading warning on envelopes containing bills or invoices? The envelope says Do not discard! Contains information about your utility bill. or IMPORTANT! Information regarding your medical plan! Information usually means updates to the Terms And Conditions or increases in rates. I don’t need to know those things. If they…
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Not sure, sure
An interesting thought from Rushfield of the Ankler. = = = = = START RUSHFIELD: Among the many downsides of a presiding meritocratic elite is the takeover of the arts by a very narrow strata of individuals with a common pool of interests and obsessions. In literature, what that has meant is that portrayals of…
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Origin story of the Tech Tyrants
Reprinting and expanding this item from two years ago because it fills in the origin story for monsters like Altman and Elon and Ellison. They’re the third generation of Tech Psychopaths, and they’re implementing the agenda gradually developed by the first two generations. Bezos is the LITERAL third generation, since his own grandpa helped to…
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Spot the bot
Two signs of computer-driven fakery: 1. When you see an exponential pattern you know it’s done by computers, not humans. The real world doesn’t do exponential. The real world follows either a sine wave driven by sun and moon, or a tanh shape driven by life. Both are somewhat obscured by random noise, but usually…
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Missing the divide
Via NiemanLab, a survey tried to distinguish active vs passive news consumers. Do you spend money and time seeking out news, or do you happen to hear about things? The separation is clear, though the author didn’t seem to catch it. Upper status people spend money and time seeking “news”. Lower status people don’t bother.…
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Work done, for now
The latest courseware is finally DONE and submitted. I’ve been aiming for maximum quality this year, which meant more work and more refined proofreading. My big goal this year is all three parts of the KSTP motto in the top icon: Laugh at your ills, pay your bills, behave yourself. The first part is the…
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Not entirely predictable
This is one of the EXTREMELY RARE cases where journalists actually work both ways. Via Nieman, journalists have universally derided Trump’s Napoleonic effort to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. This, of course, is more predictable than gravity. Journalists NEVER go along with anything ordered by Official Wrong Party. Locally, journalists…
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Canada does it FIRST.
I’ve been darkly watching China, Russia, and India zoom ahead with nuclear while the WEFtern “countries” deprive ourselves of clean power. We bomb our hydro dams and turn off our nukes. We started to plan small reactors in 1954 under the Rural Electrification Admin, created by Henry Wallace. Then we dropped all reactors and clean…
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SOE and Studie
Here’s a new thought after rereading the history of Studebaker for the 100th time. Albert Erskine took over as CEO in 1918. Under his rule Studie prospered and handed most of the prosperity to shareholders. Erskine believed in paying the stock criminals first and letting the company (facilities, workers, development) have the leftovers. Some of…
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More on Desistance
Lately I’ve been thinking again about Desistance. The idiot politicians who claim to be Resisting Trump are actually Assisting him. Everything they do creates more reasons for normal people to want the opposite. If this is “democracy”, give us a king. Resistance is Assistance. I handled Desistance in a deeper way in 2021 when the…
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Followup
Nice followup to previous item. The Spokesman lists results of a survey conducted for several years. = = = = = START QUOTE: About 70% of survey takers said they lacked confidence in their local government to effectively address their concerns, still better than 80% in the last survey in April. Respondents rated their quality…
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More Democrat campaigners for Trump
Deadpan reporting from SpokaneNews: 22300 East Appleway Ave, caller reports a naked male in the parking lot. Reported the male has entered the business and is refusing to leave. Stating he had a venomous snake thrown on him One in custody = = = = = If this is “democracy”, we need a king.
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Go with the flow
Nobody seems to be reading what I’m writing now, but for some reason this older item is getting a few reads. Might as well go with the flow and REwrite what AI bots are “reading.” The item was posted in 2022, but most of it was originally written in 2016 before the Bush/Trump “virus” torture…
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Linked discoveries
NewScientist summarizes a neatly constructed experiment on the parallels between birds and humans. Cuckoos and a few related species are brood parasites. They lay their eggs in other nests and let other birds raise their kids. The researchers noticed birds making a unique ‘whining’ sound when brood parasites were around. Other members of the species,…
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Unhappy 50th, “global warming”
Unhappy 50th, global warming! Or Climate Crisis or Climate Emergency or Climate Chaos or whatever you’re calling yourself at this hour. Before October 26, 1975, actual scientists (and government and media and schools) UNDERSTOOD CORRECTLY that the weather is an infinitely complex set of local, global and solar cycles and random changes. Before October 26,…
Polistra's Mill
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Polistra's Mill 