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Third Shift Workers Day (habitual reprint)
Today is Third Shift Workers Day! From the linked items I couldn’t tell for sure which day is the Official Day. They range from May 7 to May 13. This is fitting, since graveyard shift blurs the boundaries of dates. I’ve always been happiest and steadiest on graveyard shift. I worked graveyard at motels in…
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I should be unpissed
In all the discussions of the stupid ban on Tiktok, I haven’t heard anyone mention the obvious prima facie failure of the “law”. At one time there was an old novel or play or something containing the words: No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. I don’t remember what this…
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Copyright trap or just error?
While looking through my old maps to find the right corner of Manhattan for previous item about city dumps and barrios, I noticed a really odd error on a USGS map. File creek? I remembered it as Pfeil Creek. Another USGS map got a little closer: Here’s the same Phiel, scanned from a more recent…
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Reprint on Libertarians
I wrote this in April 2020, after the lockdowns but before the waterboarding got started. Later on the point got even sharper, as the holocaust directly ruined public transit, another favorite target of the Randians. I’m proud of catching the correlation before it was blatantly obvious. Right now I’m tired of Repooflicans trying to blame…
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Not just “elections”
I’ve been hammering for years on the FACT that all “elections” are rigged, and the rig is NOT in the votes or counting. It doesn’t matter who votes or how the votes are counted. The rig happens before the ceremony of voting, when parties carefully remove all candidates and referenda that could change government behavior.…
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Natural growth
Following on previous item about Sailer contours. Our homeless camps remain camps, with uncontrolled fires and craziness. They’re strictly illegal, not allowed to settle. In countries with softer governments, poor people build casual houses in their camps, and the houses gradually become more permanent, turning into barrios or favelas and gradually acquiring infrastructure. A similar…
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Deeper dodge
Via Yahoo, Reddit has made its first revenue report after entering the stock criminal market. Before the IPO it was owned by Conde Nast publications. The report shows revenue of about 3 dollars per user, but that’s not profit. The site lost 7 dollars per user. As always VCs are seeking a tax loss gimmick,…
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Contours
Reading the constant flow of ‘reported brush fires’, really homeless campfires gone out of control, I was struck by the perfection of Sailer’s altitude rule. Height = status. The homeless occupy the floodplain and hillsides next to the river. The urban Democrat types are on the first shelf near downtown. The working class and retired…
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Modern equivalent
Popup thought. For many decades, avant garde “art” was random messes with fancy titles. A picture of a few paint splashes was called “Evening soiree among thorns”. Radio and TV and movies made fun of this tendency, which eventually disappeared from painting. Now the musical alt-subcultures are the audio equivalent. All of the noise is…
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Why so late?
I noticed a picture of a school hall with lockers on both sides, and remembered the ritual of putting books into the locker two or three times a day. It was wildly impractical. We only had three minutes between classes, and at least once in each day we had to stop at the locker, unlock…
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Speaking of and speaking of
Speaking of legalizing pot, and speaking of old memes, here’s a pretty good meme seen online: What Would Jesus Do? And can we legalize that? It’s a good question. When you think of what Jesus did in a secular sense, as seen by the local government, every bit of it is STILL fiercely illegal. What’s…
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Sell amortize, sell non-amortize
Nash was the greatest of all amortizers, so the exceptions to the rule stand out. Hudson had two unique inventions, the failsafe brake system in 1936 and the stepdown body in 1948. Nobody ever copied the failsafe brakes, which were the BEST SAFETY FEATURE before seatbelts. AMC continued installing the simple failsafe system on its…
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-Anslinger
Bloomberg clarifies the new change in the legal status of pot. This doesn’t make it legal at the federal level. The change allows it to be prescribed by “doctors”, but only if it’s approved by FDA, which is guaranteed not to approve it. Neat backflip of the old Anslinger gambit which criminalized pot in the…
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More ZiG
Listening to more commentators, mainly African, discussing the new Zimbabwe gold-backed currency. Some of them miss an important point, others hit it squarely. Miss: The central bank doesn’t have enough physical gold to pay all notes “on demand”, so the currency can’t work. No. Banks NEVER had enough physical gold to pay all bills “on…
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Productive oddballs
EnidBuzz posted an ad for an apartment. Looks like an uninteresting but solid unit. The rental is $750, which is NOT hyperinflated. Back in 1980 an apt like this would be $350, and overall inflation is x2 since then. The address rang a bell, so I googlemapped it. Sure enough, the lot was formerly occupied…
Polistra's Mill
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