Tag: bemusement
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Random stupid thought of the day
My view of religion is pretty much the standard ‘watchmaker deist’. There’s plenty of evidence for a designer of living things. Evolution simply can’t explain the structures and functions of life, though some form of evolution does occur, perhaps only in the epigenes. There’s no evidence at all of maintenance or customer service by the…
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Perpetual puzzle
This AMC dealer training strip proves that the Hudson fail-safe braking system was still being made in ’57, the last year of the brand. (Books and articles are vague and inconsistent on this fact.) I don’t expect any regard for safety from the big three, but AMC was actively SELLING this feature up to the…
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What is it?
I’m fairly familiar with old electronics stuff. I’ve been around it most of my life, and I’ve been researching and writing tech history pieces for 10 years. This one is a complete puzzle. It’s an attractive deco ad in a 1930 issue of the British Popular Wireless. The text doesn’t say what the Blue Spot…
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More of the oddity
Lately I’ve been noticing an oddity, which may not be an actual trend. The official myth of “the economy” has been based on strictly fake and fictional “numbers” at least since Nixon. If we defined unemployment the same way we did in the 30s, the current unemployment would be the same as the 30s. We…
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New retronym
Headline from the Ankler: My chat with Gabe Spitzer, Netflix’s head of nonfiction sports, at the Netflix Slam tennis event reveals the streamer’s sports ambitions keep growing. Nonfiction sports? I guess fiction sports encompasses “scripted events” like this: One can easily envision this becoming an annual event, one that’s clearly meant to build on the…
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It was weirder than von or de
Truth is stranger than logic! I’ve always been fascinated by the name Daniel of St Thomas Jenifer, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. I always ass-u-me-d that the of was an indicator of nobility, like French de or German von or Irish o or Scottish mac. I further ass-u-me-d there was a…
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Unique clothing
An extremely non-generic suspect, peculiar from head to toe and everywhere in between. Shouldn’t be hard to identify this one! He seems to come from the same planet as Klaus Schwab.
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Conjoined Substack
Substack|Substack has created a new and interesting UI|UI bug|bug. When you click into an article, it first appears in this hall|hall of mirrors|mirrors: and then when you click on either one of the titles, it resolves to the usual single-stack setup. Sometimes a UI bug is peculiar to Firefox, but this one appears in both…
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Somebody is having fun
Now that I’ve finally got a working landline again, I’ve been making a few calls to unsubscribe from various services. Back around 1998 when I first switched to Comcast internet and gave up the old musical modem, I decided to add a second web service for backup. I chose PeoplePC for some reason, and might…
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Pinned down the weird
After getting more of the weird lovey-dovey spam from the Trump campaign, I’ve pinned down the exact form of the weirdness. This is how an about to be ex-wife talks to a husband who has already moved on to a nicer lover. Why would The Second Cuming of Our Lord And Personal Saviour Jesus Christ…
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Folly houses reprint
Reprinting solely to add an interesting fact that lends weight to one side of my guesses and eliminates the other side. Fact: Vintage.es shows city officials smashing pinball machines with the same gusto that they smashed kegs of beer. Pinball is about as innocent as you can get in the whole historical realm of gambling,…
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Novative Ruption
In sync with my recent items about the history of Standard Register and the history of Electrotyping, and in sync with previous item about Bible IP, received an email just now from Monotype. I vaguely remember buying a license for a computer font LONG ago, maybe 2004. At that time I was trying to sell…
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Inner fog
Thankfully we’re past the supercold and snow, into a typical January period of fog and overcast. Looking at the airport records this morning to see if the fog was starting to let up… It’s so dense you can’t even see outside at all! You can only see inside your head!
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Had to jump in
The Hasidic tunnel in NYC is weird in an infinite number of ways. First, a Hasidic Riot is the weirdest possible image. Second, if they wanted a mikvah, it would be easier and safer to build one in their own building, instead of paying Mexicans to dig a tunnel to reach the existing mikvah. Hasidim…
Polistra's Mill 