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Dying empires
Thomas Harrington writes a true masterpiece at Brownstone. He says historians and other observers are using Rome as the comparison with our Dying Empire (as I did just yesterday**) but the true comparison and the true lesson is Spain. We’re now retracing Spain’s path with different words. Because Spain had the power to print money…
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Dying empires continued
Continuing the timeline from Harrington’s magnificent insight. What happened next? After Spain’s religious and primitive empire was defeated by the superior tech and finance of England and France and Italy, the same damn thing happened. France took the tech and science learned from Islam, along with the secular reaction of the Protestants, and overmodulated it…
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Rarely discussed
Here’s a random chain of thought. This week I’m playing with a somewhat different graphics project after reaching saturation with the pinfeed to pigskin line. There’s a lot of detail work in this project, with absolutely no monetary benefit. For a moment I felt guilty about wasting time. Stupid! The cost and benefit of experimenting…
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Not so dumb
Yesterday I was chuckling over Wells Fargo’s stupid misestimate of human behavior. They signed a 10 year contract with a credit card company that was offering discounts on rent, provided the landlords would agree to the deal. Wells itself would bear the cost of the discounts, so the landlords wouldn’t lose. Wells figured that very…
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Hours vs years
Breaking Points headlines this piece ‘Dying Empire, Gaza Pier collapses’ Hmm. I seem to recall that another Dying Empire built piers in the same ocean, not too far from Israel… This article shows a 2000-year-old pier still holding up, while our pier collapsed after a few weeks. Not even 2000 hours, let alone 2000 days…
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Gaian grammar
Religion Unplugged, the successor to GetReligion, constantly beats the drum for “climate emergency”. It’s a good reminder that “global warming” was a Christian scam before it was coopted by CIA and turned into a secular religion. One aspect remains constant. Apocalyptic Christians always miss the meaning of prophecy. A prophet is telling us what WILL…
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Is digital currency new?
Found the banking statistic I was looking for. It’s not exactly the same quote but it agrees with the proportions. From a history of US banking: = = = = = START QUOTE: Gen. James A. Garfield, in speaking on the Resumption Act in the House of Representatives, November 16, 1877, stated that while Chairman…
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Nice whether I grasp it or not.
Two newsish articles today form a contrast that proves a point: Banks are one of the few remaining old-fashioned businesses. (1) The Ankler is discussing how movies get capital. Private equity is one of the sources as expected, and PE wants to take huge risks and make huge losses for tax evasion. Regular banks are…
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Not so bad
Maybe AI is a good thing after all. Lever News, a ‘progressive’ site, pulls together some facts about a side of AI we normally don’t consider. The data centers for AI servers are adding a huge load to electric grids, and the electric utilities are keeping coal power running to satisfy the need. = =…
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Where do they learn?
Here’s a question worth asking. All official Experts in science and related fields know how to generate fake panics for fun and profit. In medicine, climate, economics, social science, they all seem to know the same torture techniques. Where do they learn these techniques? I’ve been in and around speech and hearing since the ’70s.…
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Hardass humor
Seen on SpokaneNews under one of the dozen overdoses today: Dark humor is the best way to survive when the whole state is an insane asylum.
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Somebody should, somebody did
Random thought while listening to Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. Somebody should write an Overly Finished Symphony with too many shimmering glissandos and silvery cornets. Or an Unassembled Symphony, with instructions to Insert Trumpet A in Rest B. Or a Lego Symphony, modules that could be assembled in various ways. Come to think of it, real composers…
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No spoilage in caves
Vintage.es has a cute feature about thousands of unsold Mavericks stored in one of the giant caves under KC. When I lived in Lawrence in the ’80s, I owned one of the Mavericks made by the KC Ford plant, and I drove it through one of those caves without realizing that it was visiting its…
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Fairness Doctrine vs d’Aurignac
In previous item about modularity I didn’t mention the Fairness Doctrine. It’s an important part of the platform vs publication distinction. The FD censored broadcasters for a specific reason. Ideally censoring a platform should be wrong, but every platform has rules to keep the traffic going smoothly. Streets have stop signs and speed limits. The…
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What could they do?
Last week I asked: Who benefits from the overdose genocide? At that time I couldn’t see any obvious money gains. New thought: There is one beneficiary. City governments are receiving federal aid to keep the genocide running. The devil “mayor” made this clear when she “declared an emergency”, which is another name for requesting a…
Polistra's Mill
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Polistra's Mill 