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Never noticed before
For some reason the Star Strangled Banner dropped to the turntable of my internal jukebox, followed by the original Anacreon. In 70 years of hearing and singing the newer version, I never stopped to count the beats. It’s a completely screwed-up rhythm, with a new pattern for almost every word. The original is a smooth…
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Misblaming
There are three main forms of misblaming and misattribution. The first is as old as humanity, the other two are fairly recent propaganda tools. 1. Blame Side A for a crime that only Side B committed. 2. Blame everyone for a crime that only Side B committed. 3. Blame Side A for a crime that…
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Modernizing Rush
Protos gets cute in an article about bitcoin billionaire Justin Sun. Apparently Sun published a picture of his birthday celebration. In the picture he has seven fingers, and the cake is decorated with RAPPY SLBTHDAY. Both of those are classic AI signatures, so everyone assumed it was AI. Later he denied the AI accusation, saying…
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Good idea!
Somebody wrote an opinion piece proposing that the Repooflicans should get rid of Trump now that the Dems have buried Biden’s corpse. I didn’t read the article because I knew the reasons would be entirely backwards and crazy. On a strategic level the proposal makes good sense. Trump is such a horrible candidate that he…
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Journalism is a cult.
After trying to read more weirdly lunatic shit from NiemanLab, I reached a conclusion. Journalism isn’t entirely crazy, it’s a high-status cult like Scientology. The members live in a completely isolated bubble of thought, surrounded by their fellow cultists and hearing only their fellow cultists. Reprint of a more general version from 2017, which isn’t…
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Manual vs verbal assembly line
Automotive assembly line workers are fairly well paid for semi-skilled work, typically around $70k a year. The pay compensates for the drab dullness of their repetitive days. Verbal assembly line workers (sometimes called “journalists”), who repeat the same sentence over and over and over for several hours per day, get $10 million a year.
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Loss of filtering
In former times, news and entertainment media served as a noise filter for both money swindlers and political swindlers. They devoted considerable time to dramatizing scams. The Fairness Doctrine REQUIRED media to skip partisanship and pay attention to reality. Frank Edwards, the best newsman of that era, did the best job of filtering political noise.…
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Rifles are fine, cigarettes are banned
Via Protos, Trump held a large meeting for bitcoin fraudsters on 7/27. The top Bitcoin gangsters are RICH, so rich gangster Trump wants them in his circle. = = = = = START PROTOS: As the majority of the conference’s 20,000 attendees queued to enter Nashville’s Music City Center main stage — some of whom…
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Back to 2008
From a Duane Jones viewpoint politics is back to 2008. Before Biden was kicked out, both sides were running defective products. They had to rely on cult behavior to get any buyers at all. The first rule of honest business and honest politics is to start with a product that people feel they can use.…
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Classy Spokane
Via SpokaneNews: North Division and East Courtland area, Reported thousands of fake $100 bills are all over the streets and causing traffic issues as people are stopping in the road collecting them. = = = = = A similar windfall happened several years ago. A drug dealer working from an RV stashed his cash in…
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Crowd of Pied Pipers
Looks like RFK is getting ready to join a long parade of traitors and Pied Pipers, leading a movement directly into the establishment they thought they were fighting. Jennings Bryan did it in 1908. After leading populists for a decade, he joined the Wilson admin and helped to make war and create the League of…
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Why so explosively stupid?
The Repoofs have exploded a blast of crazy shit against Harris. None of this shit will help them win. Normal people WANT strong police and controlled crime. Harris has real experience in accomplishing those tasks. Normal people WANT restraint of monopolies and rich fuckheads. Harris has real experience there as well. Why are the Repoofs…
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Indicative vs imperative
Struck me just now that the Sucker Filter isn’t really unexpected. There are old sayings: If you’ll believe that, you’ll believe anything. If you’ll believe that, I’ve got a bridge… What’s unexpected is that swindlers use these sayings as an operating rule. Madman Lincoln’s saying: You can fool some of the people, etc. We take…
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Y Euclid?
Noticed a news item about a car crash on Euclid here in Spokane. Reminded me that Euclid is a nearly universal street name. Almost all the cities I’ve lived in have a Euclid, often an important street. Trying the autocomplete in Googlemaps finds a Euclid in about 90% of the cities I could think of.…
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Tidegauge
This gadget caught my attention as an example of equipoise in measurement. The chain has a float at one end and a weight at the other. As tide rises, the float goes up and the weight goes down. The pulley drives a sliding pencil on a graph recorder. Far view, in my Electric Village scene,…
Polistra's Mill
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Polistra's Mill 