Tag: defensible times
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The ice industry, part 4/5
How did the ice plant make its portable blocks of coldness? The method was unexpectedly complicated. Here’s the coldroom, where the compressed and relatively cool ammonia is allowed to relieve its pressure and absorb heat from the water that will become ice. What’s going on inside? We have a grid in the floor, over a…
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Atomic house
Expanding a random thought in previous. Through most of history, families lived together. In many parts of the world families still live together. American houses built before 1946 made provisions for internal subgroups with occupied basements, occupied attics, and occupied porches. The ‘nuclear family’ crammed into a tight one-story house was part of Deepstate’s 1946…
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Stop the goddamn fake surprise.
The latest official line about Bankman-Fried is the old “Nobody expected!” “Missed warning signs!” Raw ratshit. The regulators and political operators knew full well what Sam was doing. Many of them were in constant contact with him, and he certainly wasn’t shy about stating openly and clearly what he was doing. He said “I AM…
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Division of labor
Civilization formerly mitigated the natural force of status and attractiveness by setting up a division of labor, and judging mates on their capacity for the appropriate type of labor. Civilization is long gone, so this is irrelevant. One of those supershort Ripley features mentioned a highly specific test for brides. Ripley described it as a…
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Print equivalent
My bedtime OTR playlist has changed its form over the years, partly from available material and partly from my tastes. In the ’90s when I started pulling away from current toxic crap and seeking older and better entertainment, the only available tape cassettes carried the Big Shows like Fibber and Jack Benny. After the early…
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Trying too hard
Lately I’ve been thinking about art and copyrights and unions and such. While pondering such thoughts, opened an old issue of Collectible Auto to read while eating. This picture of an Airflow on the assembly line showed up first. The Airflow was a result of designers trying too hard for Disruptive Innovation. Chrysler wanted to…
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Politics and science
Continuing to notice the peculiar tone of political emails. The word devastate seems to be at the top of the choice stack. It can be used internally: “We’re devastated!” The reader is supposed to empathize and throw money at the candidate to rescue him from devastation. It can be used externally: “Trump is DEVASTATED!” The…
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A clear view of exp vs linear
One basic fact about money is always understood by the plutocrats but never explained to the peasants. We hear inflation numbers or exchange rate numbers, and the influencers of “left” and “right” base their appeals on these fake numbers. Even the bitcoiners, who claim to be entirely outside government and banking, always treat official “inflation”…
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Geo vs Helio, Rectangular vs Polar
Since today is what used to be called Columbus Day, a couple of rehashes from 2014 or so… Hundred Flowers Toxic Sludge Factory #125, sometimes known for mysterious reasons as “Seattle”, has decided to get rid of Columbus Day and replace it with “Firstses Nationseses Indigenouseses Peopleseseses Days.” (Yous gots to haves lotses ofs excessesese…
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Farm electric was a BIG business
Following from the Delco vibrator mystery, perusing 32V farm power systems. I was mainly curious about the form of the outlets. Was there a special plug for 32VDC so regular 110VAC appliances couldn’t be plugged in, and vice versa? No. At that time the two-pronged outlet was still rare; most houses had nothing but screw-in…
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The techy president
Millard Fillmore is famously the non-famous non-descript nothing-much president. He deserves credit as an early adopter of tech. In 1851 he got the White House kitchen to adopt cookstoves instead of fireplaces. The cooks went on strike, fearing explosions or something, so he brought in tech advisors from the company that made the woodstoves, who…
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Fractal exploration
From the Twitter of Bitsavers, one of the Blessed Preservers of this world: Book that doesn’t exist that needs to: “The Fractal Geometry of Writing” The thought actually started out that whenever I start writing something, I end up going down ratholes that each turn into something that would end up being the length of…
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Reprint on “privacy”
Noticing more idiotic “concerns” that one agency or company might be accessing your private data. THIS IS FUCKING STUPID. Everyone who isn’t hopelessly bound up in partisan soap opera assumes that EVERYTHING IS PUBLIC ALL THE TIME. This isn’t specific to one agency or company, and it’s NOT NEW AT ALL. Only the shockedshocked is…
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When the S in ESG really meant something…
EnidBuzz featured the Failing company, and linked to a longer article at Okla Hist Soc. I always admired the deco architecture of the building, but had no real connection with the company or its drilling rigs. The commenters filled out the story. The company treated its workers well, and the founder’s family semi-retired into real…
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Morse is music
A column from Telegraph and Telephone Age in 1910. Morse is a way of speaking and hearing language, so it ‘logically’ should be processed in the same parts of the brain as spoken language. These 1910 observations indicate that Morse occupies the same areas as music. Experienced operators were not bothered at all by general…
Polistra's Mill 