Tag: defensible cases
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Older and clearer thoughts
The two “bank” crashes this week resulted from a bizarre reversal of basic definitions. In 2017 I had some broader and clearer thoughts on the subject. = = = = = START REHASH: While feebly attempting to “think” about REAL VALUE vs FAKE VALUE in banking, I noticed a basic fact. So far I can’t…
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Fake all the way down
I always knew that our “wakeup” response to the surprise of Sputnik was fake, or maybe just incalculably stupid. We ruined our own science and math education in an alleged effort to surpass the genuinely excellent Soviet education. This article shows that our SURPRISE was also fake. The context makes sense based on what I…
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whorfles
Now we have more “Chinese” UFOs. After I obediently gave Deepstate the snap reaction it wanted, I turned up my input filters and baseline sensors. This is clearly a rather low-quality fake THREAT, and the repeat is designed to create a new fake threat CATEGORY. Deepstate treats an ordinary and frequent object as a UNIQUE…
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It’s all in the deltas
UD notes the death of Frank Drake, father of the Drake Equation estimating likely planets for intelligent life. Drake was working at the Green Bank Radio Telescope during the early days of radio astronomy, in the late 1950s, when he was inspired by Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison’s famous 1959 paper in Nature about using…
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Today is & day!
Time to reprint the genuine history of the symbol, which doesn’t match the standard etymology. = = = = = START REPRINT: I’ve always been bothered by the bizarre-sounding etymology of Ampersand. The symbol itself is no mystery: just a stylized version of et. But the usual etymology for the name doesn’t make a lick…
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Reprint on cultural dominance
Linked this 2017 piece in previous item. Worth a reprint if only because it’s smarter than anything I can write now. = = = = = START REPRINT: A couple days ago I tossed in a techy sidenote on UNARY VARIABLES, just as a random pointless pun: ANTI-WAR is the key. Left and right, liberal…
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Reprint on chaos vs order
Statcounter showed that somebody was reading this item, written in early 2020 just before the “virus” hoaxocaust. Feels like a good time to reprint the item, in the context of chaos vs order. = = = = = START REPRINT: In previous item I mentioned a question that has been itching me for a while.…
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That’s the purpose.
Continuing the theme of previous item, examining modern shit by trying to transpose it to an earlier era. I’ve got Github updates on my mind today because I just finished shaving an especially dirty yak. I’m cranking up my courseware-making tools for a new edition. One of my processing programs depends on the PIL image-handling…
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Already answered, but missed a point
Okay, we know that “journalists” have stopped serving any function. That’s tired territory. Batya is covering it thoroughly and usefully. Purpose-based question: If reporters DO have a real function, the function should be definable in a basic biological way. It should be the same for a beehive or a tribe or a city or a…
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Statusotopic mapping?
If we start from my unconventional thought that secrecy is the default, what happens? If we treat this as the baseline assumption, what about “innovation” and “robust debate”? First some clarification. I’m talking about secrecy and language within a family or tribe or guild, not secrecy between all individuals. Language forms the circle and keeps…
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Reprint on the uses of expertise
I’ve reprinted this list many times in various contexts with various additions. Feels like a good time to reprint it again, connecting it to my recent language-based comparison of facts vs commands, and this week’s UFO obsession. This version of the list is from 2017, with a good discussion of factual experts vs commanding experts.…
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Reprint from 2018
Especially germane on the subject of protests, media insanity, etc. = = = = = START REPRINT: Want to break the “cycle of violence”? Break the media. The press has been running this routine for at least a hundred years. It’s not mysterious or “unintended”. It’s an intrinsic part of their business model. Blood sells…
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Defensible Spaces review 4/6
How about defensible times? From 2019 again: Roger Scruton’s latest article includes this evocative sentence; At first, I thought that the placeless character of modern housing is a matter of style—the modern materials and proportions, the grammarless disposition of windows and doors, the random orientation along cul-de-sacs that join nothing to nothing. But it soon…
Polistra's Mill 