Tag: Constants and Variables
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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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Don’t help them
Activists always have a tendency to overshoot. When rulers manipulate activists, they push hard to force the overshoot. This is well known in political and cultural and religious activism. Life always applies NEGATIVE FEEDBACK to minimize overshoots. Monsters always apply POSITIVE FEEDBACK to maximize overshoots until the system is damaged. Damaging the system is the…
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Substack is an MLM.
Over the last year I’ve been watching Substack lose its value. It started as an advertised REFUGE from mainstream idiocy, and now it’s just an alternate channel of mainstream idiocy. At first I couldn’t spot the exact trouble. For sure, clickbait and partisan teams are taking over, crowding out the more subtle writers. Is it…
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What is a politician?
A politician is a salesman for broadcast media. TV started in 1948 as a way for people to watch live sports events. Radio was inadequate for the purpose. For a few decades TV provided a broader range of entertainment. Now it’s back to nothing but sports. There are four major-league sports on TV. Football, baseball,…
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Bell’s photophone experiments
In the 1880s Bell and his collaborator Tainter performed some experiments using light and heat to generate and carry sound. They wrote up the trials in a little monograph Upon the production of sound by radiant energy. Bell was the consummate speech scientist. He thought like a larynx and experimented like a larynx. A larynx…
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Just figured this out
I’m sure this explanation is available on Google, but I figured it out for myself and I’m proud. Often I’ll see frost on roofs and other surfaces when the outside ambient is about 38. The previous day was up in the 40s or 50s, and there was no actual freezing in recent days. Why do…
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So that’s what it was about…
I’ve been puzzled by the intense email spam from the California election between Adam Schiff and Katie Porter. I’m nowhere near California and neither side seemed to need money. Why were they filling my inbox? Turns out Porter’s complaints about stolen elections were true. All elections are stolen, but this one was manipulated in an…
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Demonic constant, fake variable
Oregon is recriminalizing hard drugs after decriminalizing for three years. This is a good move but as always with legislatures it’s a fake move. Constants and variables! Fentanyl is a city-ending plague EVERYWHERE, not just where drugs are decriminalized. Every city has the same genocide. Portland is no worse than Philly or Spokane or NYC.…
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CathGPT
I’m working up a tech history piece on the 1611 telescopes of Christoph Scheiner, who bridged the gap between alidades and lenses. I felt the need to reconnect with the beacons of the universe lately, and Maragha is where the beacons are found. Ran across this piece in a 1902 history of astronomy by Agnes…
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Mockery is the controller
I’ve learned one big thing over the years, especially in the last decade when I’ve been running tech history pieces, looking up information in obscure journals and books, OUTSIDE the standard media and school sources. EVERYTHING in the usual media and history books is false. EVERY FACT we learned in school is demonstrably false, by…
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Flat wrong.
From EvoNews: = = = = = START QUOTE: The advancement of science is one of mankind’s greatest triumphs. And who could be against it? Deploying the raw power of rational analysis, science exponentially increases our understanding of the natural world and leads to wonderous applications to improve the human condition. = = = =…
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Not the main variable
Several articles this week are focusing on the fentanyl problem in Portland, blaming it on Oregon’s legalizing of all drugs. Decriminalizing might be part of the problem, but the same problem is equally bad or worse in states that haven’t decriminalized. I suppose the law change makes it a bit harder to jail the dealers…
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Isn’t that fraud?
The latest weird spam from the Trump campaign asks if I’d like to be Trump’s VP. Isn’t that outright fraud? Making a job offer that is known to be false? Well, I guess it isn’t weird. Everything Trump does is outright fraud, so a non-fraudulent action would be weird.
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UAW loses
Shawn Fain, after a year of splendid leadership against the corporate monsters, sacrifices it all by endorsing one of the corporate monsters. Betrayal breaks trust. Everyone in a position of power is a betrayer now. In a less dramatic sense, smart independent power-seekers understand that you lose your magic when you endorse a party or…
Polistra's Mill 