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Ford and Carver!
Two of my favorite people worked together. I’ve read about Ford’s attempt to make car bodies out of soybean-derived plastic. I’ve seen pictures of Henry demonstrating the strength of a plastic trunk lid on an otherwise normal ’40 Ford. I’ve never seen this unique modernistic car before! Ford commissioned Carver to develop the chemical process…
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Random auto thought
Chrysler doesn’t get enough credit for devotion to safety. Imperials and Chryslers had padded dashes every year since 1949. The padding was standard from ’49 to ’54. Might have been optional later, but a quick look at online pictures for every year from ’55 to ’65 shows padding in every picture. Most are attractive, designed…
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Random pissed thought
Workers are quiet quitting. Politicians are noisy superquitting. They not only spend enormous energy in preventing themselves from working, they PREVENT REAL HUMANS FROM GETTING SHIT DONE. Any attempt to put together a big project is stalled endlessly by an infinite pile of Federal regulations and compliances and lawsuits and obstructions. Government used to accomplish…
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Why I like Quora
I like Quora better than other platforms for several reasons. 1. It’s easy to stay focused on one subject. If you like jokes, the algorithm will feed you jokes. If you like programming, the algo will feed you programming. Substack pays no attention to your preferences at all. It just obsesses on one subject at…
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Fine incentive!
Via Protos, Altman’s perfectly dystopian hypernightmare is having trouble recruiting soldiers to help Sammy eat souls. They set a goal of one billion souls eaten, but only made it to 7 million. Now they’re taking extreme steps to incentivize more soul suckers. They’re going to pay new recruits $100 in actual fiat money…. WHOOPS! I…
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Trinity House again
Somebody has proposed eliminating NIH after its tyrannical genocide during the “virus”. The agency needs to be punished by elimination for goddamn sure. There’s no real solution for the Public “Health” torturers except elimination. We’ll never get a Nuremberg for the torturers, but we can stop paying them. BUT: NIH also funds quite a bit…
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The power of creative work
The animations I’m making for courseware right now have led to a couple of major insights that are now influencing my thinking about other matters. Old rule: teaching is the best way to learn. One insight gives clarity about MLMs and similar phenomena. Substack is full of people who write about writing. This strikes me…
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More on Union Power
Two weeks ago I highlighted WCFL, a Chicago radio station run by a labor federation, which wisely started broadcasting on shortwave in the early 30s. Shortwave was the best way of reaching a worldwide audience with relatively low expense. Now American Radio Library has uploaded a 1929 magazine published by WCFL. It’s a high quality…
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Another failed “average”
Since I’m doing Failed Inventions, one of the Post Office films from around 1961 discusses the many projects of the Post Office’s research lab. Real research was widespread before 1980, active in most industries and governments. Now it’s all gone, replaced by stock manipulation and fast-moving hi tech genocide. Along with zip codes and internal…
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No such thing as “moderate” or “centrist”
One of the Industry On Parade shows that I keep in my bedtime playlist features the Scripto Liquid Lead pencil. (Around the 5 minute mark.) Basically a ballpoint pen with graphite ink. The film shows fine details of the manufacturing process, which was fascinating. The product seemed unlikely to succeed, and in fact it didn’t.…
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When you’re in a hole, excavate faster
Political noise isn’t my department, but this is just too delicious. Alan Lichtman had a good reputation as an election predictor. He missed this time. Ideally, when an expert or scientist makes a big mistake he goes into seclusion to rethink his assumptions. Ideally he modifies his theory, or abandons his theory and starts fresh.…
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Salvage vs Abandon Ship
New thought. This might be a rule, but it’s certainly a sharp distinction. The people who have left the sinking ships of old institutions divide into two camps. Some of them want to pull the ship out of the water, others are happy to let it sink so they can live and work free of…
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The Creeping Thyme solution
Matt Stoller tries his hand at diagnosing the D party’s ailment. = = = = = START STOLLER: For the last few weeks, I’ve been mulling over a question that I think will bedevil all of us in the anti-monopoly space for years, perhaps decades. Anti-monopoly policy is immensely popular, and there hasn’t been an…
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They’re baaack
The one good thing about last week’s “election” was the end of both email and paper political spam. Now it’s starting to come back, copying the scripts of the more permanent Your account SiriusXM will be deleted type of spam. Latest political: Your GOP account is expired. Friend, this can’t be!
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Not accidental
I was reading a defense of the Canadian system of postal codes, which is part alphabetic and part numeric. One example is X0E 0R8 for a region in Northwest Territories. The writer claimed that part-alpha is easier to remember. Nope. When our post office established Zip Codes, they chose 5 numbers. As far as I…
Polistra's Mill
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Polistra's Mill 