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Aphid Day 2024
Sept 28, 2024. Today’s temperature reached 86, and the weather bureau sees nothing but cool from here on. The aphids suddenly appeared at 3PM. Are they saying this is really the LAST hot day? I hope so. This summer has been WAY too long, and the combination of poor sleep and stress got my anxiety…
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The Sechometer
Polistra is cranking a strange little machine, and the galvanometer needle is wiggling in response. The mysterious little gadget is a sechometer, with an equally mysterious name. It was made by Leeds and Northrup, one of the two big lab equipment companies. I wrote a series of features on L&N in 2021. Allegedly the name…
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Common sense from courts
Bitcoin fraudsters always pretend their schemes are decentralized and uncontrolled. Two different courts applied common sense to this criminality. = = = = = First, Coinbase is trying to argue that DeFi networks are simply a form of speech, since they don’t have a central controller, so they don’t need to register as securities. Courts…
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Profit leads to sanity
Via Variety, Scripps-Howard is laying off a large part of its “journalists”, along with everyone else in the deservedly dying “news” biz. = = = = = START QUOTE: “Amidst an already difficult linear television advertising marketplace, many brands and agencies have decided that advertising around national news is just too risky for them given…
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50 years since the ONE EXCEPTION
This autumn is the 50th anniversary of the ONE TIME when congress responded to the will of the people. Allegedly the lower house is supposed to respond, but it never does. Just this ONE TIME. For the 1974 model year, NHTSA required cars to REFUSE TO START unless all seat belts were buckled around all…
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We’re supposed to waste our emotions
As usual we have dozens of overdoses every day, some fatal. There are two responses. Dark humor and caring. Dark humor is winning, as more and more people realize that caring is a fraud. Media and rulers want us to CARE about everything so they can feed our caring with solutions that make things worse.…
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Creative dream
I finally got enough sleep this morning, resulting in an interesting dream: I was reading a technical book and noticed that important words were underlined like href links in HTML. The words seemed to be thicker than the rest of the page, and when I pulled them out, each became a little reference card. The…
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Another victory for sanity
Via UK Guardian: The Green party in Germany has lost most of its support, and its leaders resigned. = = = = = START QUOTE: The leaders of Germany’s Greens, partners in the embattled central government of Olaf Scholz, have announced their resignation, saying that a series of election defeats requires a radical reset. In…
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Real capitalism works.
While “journalism” and academia and politics continue to destroy their own credibility, big corporations are returning to grounded sanity FAST. Here’s a lengthy list of corporations that have abandoned the Gaian religion. It includes most sectors, from high tech to petroleum to clothing. Microsoft and Google, formerly leaders of the religion, have decided that profit…
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Sportwave reprint
I brought up this topic in the sidenote on previous item. Worth a reprint on its own. = = = = = START 2014 REPRINT: Shortwave is unique among all means of communication. It has a certain sporting aspect. When you send out a signal in the range of 3 to 30 mc, the atmosphere…
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Bankruptcy is the solution.
Denyse comments on the latest evidence that “science” has totally abandoned science for politics. SciAm outright endorsed Harris instead of Trump, AFTER FIRMLY SUPPORTING WHAT TRUMP ACTUALLY DID IN 2020. This is the exact opposite of the “independent” activists, who worked hard to oppose WHAT TRUMP ACTUALLY DID, and now are universally working FOR Trump.…
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Just for a bit of beauty
This Fessenden antenna isn’t especially interesting. Mostly I needed to make a little beauty after previous item reminded me of the duty of living things. Value is an increase in order. Value is an increase in life and beauty. This is from patent 793651 in 1905. Here’s the antenna in the Machrahanish scene with Fessenden’s…
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Good work but pointless
A good speech by Lankford of Oklahoma. He runs through all the important issues, details what Congress COULD do about each issue if it had any purpose, then asks why nothing ever happens. If Congress was even slightly functional, this speech would get them off their collective asses. Unfortunately it can’t happen. He says most…
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Inverse question
Who do you trust? is a familiar question. In the current peculiar situation, the inverse question is vastly more important. The inverse is a bit clumsy: Whose trust do you want? Corporations and “journalists” and most politicians have declared openly that they DO NOT WANT to be trusted by customers and readers and voters. They…
Polistra's Mill
Be your own beacon.
Polistra's Mill 