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Alexanderson alternators
This month’s Fessenden focus leads to a sidetrack. Several of Fessenden’s big innovations used high-frequency alternators instead of spark gaps. His first voice broadcast in 1906 used an alternator. The alternator deserves its own description before I dig into his most interesting use of it. Before the vacuum tube there was only one way to…
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Got it right finally!
Stoller provides an informative history of the Section 230 exemption, which was finally knocked down this week by a circuit court decision. Section 230 was ALWAYS wrong. The distinction between a publisher and a carrier is perfectly clear if you understand what Press Freedom means. The standard misconception is that a publisher is free to…
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Democracy exists, but only…
I often say that “democracy” is a meaningless word. It doesn’t exist and can’t exist. Trying for more precision… If the word means that decisions are formed by negative feedback, sensing the will of many people, then democracy does happen in some situations, but not governments. Competitive businesses MUST satisfy a large enough number of…
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Another fine engineer joke
Three engineers are arguing about the nature of God. The first says, “God is a mechanical engineer. Look at how we manipulate our arms, legs, lungs, and how blood flows through our bodies. God is a mechanical engineer.” The second says, “No. God is an electrical engineer. Our nervous system, heart, brain. Everything is run…
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Pulls and pushes
Researchers looking at AI have determined that training the AI on a dataset that INCLUDES previous outputs of the AI will quickly descend into repetitive boredom. The same thing happens in human creativity. When I started writing courseware for money in 1996, I quickly found that I needed to avoid looking at similar work. I’m…
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Not new!
People are constantly complaining that nobody reads books any more. Da Yoots are stuck to their screens, and only the ancient geezers read books. In the old days everybody read books! Nope. Vintage.es has some London street scenes from the 1960s, focusing on street book vendors. They were well-equipped, with customized trailers and carts full…
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Ratmasters are having fun
The social media algorithms are getting more and more annoying. Their programmers are clearly enjoying their Room 101 power, snapping the victims back and forth at random like rats in a Skinner box. For many years the algorithm at StatCounter and the internal stat measurement in WordPress were stable. They excluded my own reads, as…
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Best engineer joke ever
Seen at Quora. = = = = = Two engineering students were walking across a university campus when one said, ‘Where did you get such a great bike?’ The second engineer replied, ‘Well, I was walking along yesterday, minding my own business, when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike, threw it to the…
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Interesting!
This is INTERESTING from a Speech & Hearing viewpoint! RFK’s relatives are disowning him, which isn’t surprising. In this clip one of his sisters is interviewed, and she has EXACTLY THE SAME spasmodic dysphonia! Normally it’s acquired through stress or ‘unknown origin’, but this must be genetic. = = = = = The Rising hosts,…
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Meaningful joke
Pretty good joke seen at Quora: Salons always have hair on the floor. Garages have oil on the floor. Carpenters have sawdust on the floor. Hey, banks! Get with the program! The joke helps us understand why money is different. Banks handle lots of bills and coins. Why isn’t there any rejected material? In fact…
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Credit where due
Relentlessly pursuing the Fairness Doctrine! I had the annual Medicare Wellness Visit this week. It’s clear that Kaiser Permanente is trying to restore some of the trust they violently threw away in 2020, plus even a bit more. Long before the holocaust they had a ‘mandate’ that aggravated me. They wouldn’t let me renew the…
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Hundreds of wells per month!
Shepstone continues to report the REALITY of the oil industry. Both political “sides” make the same idiotic noise about eliminating oil, and both political “parties” actually allow oil to continue booming. It’s a good reminder to pay NO ATTENTION to the noise and consider only the reality. = = = = = START QUOTE: U.S.…
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Hello again, Full Circle
During the LONG hot weather I got twitchy and ‘snappy’, making premature decisions to cancel things. On July 27 I canceled the Full Circle food box service because I was wasting it. In hot weather I couldn’t spend much time in the kitchen and didn’t feel like eating much. Now I’m feeling the shortage of…
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Reprint on political codes
Linked in previous, worth a reprint. = = = = = START 2022 REPRINT: Trying to track the latest in Elon vs Twitter, I noticed that Faker Trump is getting into the act with his usual random whiplash, countering Elon’s random whiplash. I’ve discussed this post-1990 style of random-sounding disorganized emissions from leaders and commentators.…
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Political coding
SpokaneNews posts a city proposal to change something or other relating to transparency and fire dispatch. As a total outsider I couldn’t even grasp what the whole thing was about. Looks like garbled jargon. Several outsiders commented with reflexive partisan hatred. Several insiders with complete knowledge of the situation are against the proposal because the…
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