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Romantic vs engineer
Someone posted a picture of a snowy mountain with a dense pine forest in the background, and a railroad track with a freight train in the foreground. He described it as a beautiful Nature scene marred by an ugly human artifact. I see the EXACT OPPOSITE. The train is BEAUTIFUL because it’s a crucial and…
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Car grammar
The car sales training films are all about grammar, and not in the usual dumb way. (Upon whom, through which, in order better to drive, I haven’t cars.) All of the sales advice can be reduced to noun cases. This 1958 Chevy film** hits the points directly, but all of them from 1950s to 1970s…
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Pick a side.
Canada and EU are both sticking firmly to the irrational hatred of Russia. They won’t be able to achieve full independence from the US monster as long as they maintain the CORE INSANE BELIEF of US imperialism. Europe, of course, has been hating Russia and trying to invade it for hundreds of years. Napoleon, Kaiser…
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Was it time or space?
Thinking again about trust. A definite change happened in the early 80s. I don’t have enough ‘control variables’ to determine if this was a matter of national culture change or location. It could easily be culture by location, not culture by time. With that giant disclaimer, here’s the observation. In the ’70s, employers trusted me…
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True and deep
Myq Kaplan, a pro comedian, has been posting oneliners on Substack. Most are good puns, worth a quick smile or chuckle. This one is true and deep! The meek shall inherit the earth…. as soon as the bold are off conquering the rest of the solar system and don’t want earth anymore.
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Bikes not buggies
Vintage.es has a few pictures of the Studebaker factory’s showroom in 1909, along with a short and correct history of the company. The showroom displays a long line of buggies. At that time the company was carefully moving into the automobile business but still mainly a carriage builder. Surprisingly these buggies are all steel, built…
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Nope, still wrong
Seen in a meme: Science is not the truth. Science is finding the truth. No. Not even close. Science has nothing to do with truth or knowledge. Science solves problems. Every plant and animal solves problems all the time. Science is a carefully organized, measured and recorded way of solving problems. Organized and measured so…
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If Canada wants…
If Canada wants a REALLY BIG self-sufficiency project, they could build a pipeline to Europe. As I’ve noted before, there isn’t a lot of open ocean between Canada and Ireland. Ellesmere to Greenland to Iceland to Ireland would include frequent landfalls. The technology was already developed by Russia’s Nordstream, about the same length as the…
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Random grammar thought
Those old industrial films followed the radio “grammar” rules rigidly. 1. Never end a sentence or phrase with a preposition. 2. Never begin a sentence with if. Reverse the verb. 3. All verbs must be passive. 4. Don’t say I or you. Say one. 5. Every sentence must contain at least one which or whom.…
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Happy Blogday 20!
This month is the 20th anniversary of Polistra’s Mill. In the earlier years I marked each anniversary. The first entry was dated March 1, 2005. I started writing at Blogspot on March 14, and imported the previous two weeks from a brief attempt at blogging on LiveJournal. The tenth year seems to be the last…
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If logic worked
This week: It’s raining. It’s snowing. It’s sleeting. It’s hailing. It’s storming. It’s thundering. If logic worked on language we’d also say: It’s winding. I can see why tornado, graupel and lightning don’t work. The first two are recent imports and the third would be uncomfortably redundant. Wind is an old word and “should” behave…
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They also understand
At least in writing and movies, Brits understand the psychopathic type, while Americans don’t. It’s reassuring to see that Canadians also understand. Kirsten Hillman, Canadian ambassador to DC, grasps the type perfectly and accurately, and best of all she knows the right way to HANDLE a psychopath. Don’t respond to every new insult and switchback.…
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Nash trivia
1. Nash built 4wd vehicles three separate times. First from 1916 to 1920. When Charles Nash bought Jeffery to start his own company, Jeffery’s best-selling product was the unique Quad truck, with 4wd and 4-wheel steering. The military bought plenty of them for WW1, and Nash kept production going under his own name until the…
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Hack-proof is impossible.
Supposedly China has used “quantum” computing to set up a hack-proof satellite linking China with South Africa. (The C and S of BRICS.) There’s no such thing as hack-proof. There are thousands of well-established ways to encrypt a message. None of them are hack-proof if the channel can be physically intercepted. Avoiding physical interception is…
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Fucking up everything
In previous item I mentioned that the Hudsons Bay Company had been the first explorer of the Columbia basin around here. Now it turns out that Trump is fucking with the Columbia along with every other damn thing. The Columbia starts in BC and flows into Wash, then turns west toward the ocean. Water is…
Polistra's Mill
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