Tag: Entertainment
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Hardass humor
Seen on SpokaneNews under one of the dozen overdoses today: Dark humor is the best way to survive when the whole state is an insane asylum.
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Sentence never written before
The president headbutted the pope. Even AI couldn’t come up with this combination. Only our actual presidents and popes can reach this level of impossible unimaginable lunacy.
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Back to Magic Lanterns 2
Last week I returned to the subject of Magic Lanterns, the intersection of science and entertainment. Now I’m imagining another development of magic lantern tech that was easily possible in the era of the lanterns. Fluidic analog computers came along in the 1930s, AFTER electronic analog computers. This sequence was common. Many machines could have…
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Back to Magic Lanterns
Returning to the crucially important theme of science as entertainment. Before science became a tool for war and torture in 1946, science was often mixed with magic and entertainment. The Magic Lantern was the intersection of the two. This time I’m not trying for historical authenticity; I’m mixing periods and making up things that could…
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Pits and spoons
Briggs is trying to bring real human experience back into science. In this piece he analyzes claims of telekinesis and speculates on quantum action. He doesn’t reach any conclusions. I think he may be starting from an unproductive angle. Our thinking on these subjects is narrowed down by our intuitive sense that force is a…
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Clear picture
Tonight’s radar gives a nice clear definition of mountain rain shadow! Pile up against the Cascades, squeeze out most of the rain, travel over the central plains without raining, then pile up against the Rockies.
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Stevens was right the first time
From a substack article complaining about student reading skills: = = = = = START QUOTE: A professor at Stevens Institute of Technology says that she and her colleagues discuss the problem regularly, agreeing that they can’t assume students will do the readings. But if they simply go over in class what students should have…
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I’d rather
More random pointless thoughts. Before the web, newspapers were divided into Serious Publications and Tabloids. Serious Publications had pictures of Serious Men Doing Serious Things, which was usually a meeting to conjure up a new unjustified war. Tabloids had pictures of pretty girls. The same division happens in the web, with one addition. Serious Publications…
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Easy correction
When a demon worries about an event or phenomenon, whether it’s “global warming” or “pandemics” or AI, the demon is really informing us about his plans. Psychopaths blame and frame innocent bystanders. I didn’t imprison and strangle you for two years, some dude named Virus imprisoned and strangled you. I didn’t turn off your electricity…
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Old joke still works
Q: Who killed the president of Tanzania? A: Yes. Q: Who killed the president of Burundi? A: Yes. Q: Who shot Slovakian PM Fico? A: Yes. = = = = = Stupid sidenote: I was trying to remember the real original form of this joke, which was pretty good. The best I could come up…
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Ice cream
Nice warm evening after a long tired (but blessedly NOT very snowy) winter. The ice cream man is driving around, playing his unidentified song that sounds like Lilly Marlene. His tune has been the same for several years, but apparently less than 10. Around 2013 the ice cream man was playing the required Entertainer Rag.…
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Livetech
Caution! Random thought, not intended as logic! When technology is generally sane and non-genocidal, the products of technology look like mammals and birds, like the animals we keep as livestock or pets, the animals we eat. I’ve drawn this analogy with cars. Before 1940 cars were cows or horses, with long noses and ruminant eyes…
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Halal vs AI
This has undoubtedly been said many times (heh) but I don’t recall reading it before. Customized one-hour productions like movies, novels, plays, symphonies and operas are totally unlike all other human activity. All other activity consists of repeated reused segments, interspersed with possibly original commentary or filigrees. The typical job repeats the same transaction or…
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Today is Shakespeare Day
It’s Willie’s birthday and also ‘Talk like Shakespeare Day.’ The poet at the local Weather Bureau was truly inspired.
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Random memory
Nice warm Sunday evening. A random picture reminded me of something… When I lived in KC and taught at DeVry, I was renting a basement apt in suburban Overland Park. The apt was large, fairly modern, and stayed cool in summer without air conditioning. The apt above me was occupied by an older couple from…
Polistra's Mill 