Tag: asked and not worth asking
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Where was the research?
I’m trying to do a tech history piece on Western Union. Not trying very hard at the moment, mainly focusing on courseware. I wondered how big WU’s research department was at the height of telegraph dominance in the 1920s. The answer: Not very impressive. But they used their relatively small staff effectively, covering a wide…
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Total puzzle
As a non-driver and non-iPhoner, I’m WAY out of the modern loop. I can’t grasp the habits and assumptions of those castes. Spokane News facebook page always posts car accidents along with fires and crimes and overdoses. Many of the readers seem to be professional drivers, Uber or similar, who are constantly in touch with…
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Meaningless meandering about dreams
For the last 10 years or so most dreams have signaled time to wake up by catching the bus from downtown Spokane to home. This was the real-life routine during the 90s. After 2001 I’ve been working from home. Dreams always run 20 years late; in the 90s most dreams were still in Oklahoma where…
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Belated mystery
Listening to these Postal Service training films brings back a memory of a situation that I didn’t question at the time, but seems puzzling now. In 1978 I worked night shift for a quasi-private part of OU in Norman. This “business” ran two facilities on the OU campus. One was the Conference Center at the…
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Wrong question
Headline: Lawfare Exposed: How Democrats Weaponized Justice Against Trump HOW is not a mystery. Politicians have been playing the lawfare game forever. Opposition research coupled with nuisance lawsuits are a great way to distract the opponent and force him to make stupid moves. Both sides know HOW to play the game. In this specific case…
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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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What’s a vehicle?
Spokane News uses the word vehicle in sometimes odd ways. A car hitting a bicycle is vehicle vs bicycle, but a bicycle hitting a person is vehicle vs pedestrian. Sometimes the word means only a motorized vehicle and sometimes all things on wheels. Got me thinking. Is a ship a vehicle? I don’t think so.…
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One sober man
From the 50s to the early 70s, the big three automakers were running on alcohol, not gasoline. By all accounts their top execs were falling-down drunk all the time, making uninhibited random bad decisions and generating stupid ideas which were forced on their companies. Mormon Romney was the only sober man in the industry, and…
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Better useless analogy
There’s no way to stop warmongers with logic, but nevertheless there is one easy analogy. Why do we get involved in SOME domestic disputes between other countries and not OTHERS? Ukraine is not a good comparison with Israel. We started the Ukraine conflict, first by breaking up the USSR in 1990 and then by color…
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New stupid thought
Random thought, seems wrong, but maybe worth writing down… Thinking again about the peculiarity of the partisan divide on the “virus”. The lockdowns and ballgags and needles were developed and scheduled by BUSH appointees acting on a 2005 command by BUSH. The lockdowns and ballgags and needles were implemented and mandated by TRUMP. The anti-Trump…
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WTF is he thinking 2
Continuing from here. I didn’t waste time listening to the DeSantis announcement. Reading about it is bad enough. He’s doubling down on strategic stupidity by trying to beat Trump at the nastiness game. WRONG BRAND! Trump is the literal killer app of blackmail and filthiness, trained by Roy Cohn. You shouldn’t get into the nasty…
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Conglobulate
Totally irrelevant. I was running laundry and getting pissed that the load insisted on tangling up. It wouldn’t let me transfer to the dryer piece by piece. I had to wrestle out the whole glob at once. Of course I’m always pissed at cloth. Baseline condition. Me and cloth DO NOT GET ALONG. The word…
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Y no Metni?
Reading Pat Foster’s history of the Metropolitan again. At one time Pininfarina developed a ‘wagon’ version of the Met which looked both practical and cute: Sort of a Nomadette. In reality this was just a proper coupe with a usable back seat. In a tiny car like the Metro, the two-box plan is the only…
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Super-random thought
On this morning’s walk, my old eyes thought I saw some miniature writing on the pavement. First thought: Micro-graffiti! Neat idea! Turned out to be a piece of plastic food wrapper, transparent with white letters, so it looked like white paint on the asphalt. Still a neat idea. In other forms of art, miniatures are…
Polistra's Mill 