Tag: Metrology
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Need more metrology
Wolf has fun with a fake IPO based on a small Vietnamese auto company. The owner created a huge number of shares and manipulated the meme stock bros to jack the “market cap” up to 216 billion for a few days. The meme bros stole as much as they could from the sucker bros, and…
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Measuring modularity?
Continuing the theme of modularity with a reprint from 2018. = = = = = Why isn’t there a standard Scale for Modularity vs Centralization? As I’ve discussed forever, Nature is perfectly modular. From the ‘organelles’ inside a cell, to cells, to tissues, to organs, to complete organisms, to colonies of organisms, every layer has…
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Statusometer
Curbside Classic features a 1969 Motor Trend article comparing the three luxury brands. As always, MT tested everything from braking to G-force to suspension characteristics. They concluded that Lincoln was the best by car guy standards, but they also recognized that luxury buyers aren’t car guys. So they found a way to test STATUS, which…
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Breaking a taboo
In this clip Vivek is discussing bitcoin with an old friend, not a random interviewer. His casual demeanor is appropriate for the situation. (Normally Vivek is fully suited up.) What Vivek is SAYING is orthodox techie talk, not unusual. What he’s DOING is more interesting. He’s drawing diagrams and using them to illustrate his points.…
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Isms forbid solutions
Solving a problem can be divided into a few steps, with a loop on the last two. 1. Find the desired goal. This is the hard part and the genuinely variable part. In politics the right goal should be a functional civilization and a functional economy for ordinary people. 2. Know your baseline and measure…
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Quake preview? Maybe
According to SpokaneNews we had a little quake an hour ago at 10:25. I was sitting quietly doing graphics, no music or air conditioner, so I “should” have heard or sensed it, but didn’t sense anything. It was out west of Fairchild, and people south of there in Cheney and Medical Lake reported strong sounds…
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Just before audions
Found what seems to be the first electrical analog computer, or at least the first to be described as such. It’s in this 1909 physics journal. The Arthur Wright Electrical Device for evaluating Formulae and solving Equations wasn’t really a practical device and it wasn’t especially new. Wright was using modified versions of the Wheatstone…
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When Sailer writes what he knows
Sailer writes best when he writes about California. He lives there and PAYS ATTENTION to both current events and local history. He doesn’t blow up verb aspect by conflating permanent with temporary or vice versa. = = = = = START SAILER: In Los Angeles, Hurricane Hilary, the first since 1939, has been a summer…
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The Exeter clock
This is a quickie, just a graphics project to pull my mind through the recent hot spell. The Exeter Cathedral clock was built in the 1300s and remodeled around 1890. It’s a geocentric orrery with a 24-hour dial, numbered as two sequences of 12. It’s not a freestanding clock. I’ve mounted it on a flat…
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Natural clock?
After pondering the eightness of natural money, and the twoness and fourness of natural sleep, the concepts merged in my tired brainlet into a question. What if clocks were consistently binary? Our clocks inherited the quadrants of Roman ‘watches’, mixed with the 12s and 60s of the Babylonian system. As with money, we say the…
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There is no coffee in China???
TIL, as they say at Reddit. I’m always suspicious of ‘there are no X in Y’ sentences. Authoritative people have said There Are No Pianos In Japan, and There Are No Basements In Oklahoma. I can debunk the latter from experience, and the former is easily disproved by Yamaha with a long history of making…
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Pagebits
Dan Murrell does a highly detailed breakdown of the actors vs producers negotiations. One of the details was interesting to a metrology freak: Murrell says 5-4/8 is not a typo; all paychecks and contracts divide up scripts into eighths with no reduced fractions. 1/4 is 2/8, 1/2 is 4/8, and 3/4 is 6/8. Eighths have…
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Hypothesis
Denyse discusses an evocative and important question which is triggering new research: = = = = = START QUOTE: How can a person living with advanced dementia abruptly communicate in a clear manner? Many wonder what mechanism underlies this phenomenon and if it might be a key to mitigating—or even reversing—neurodegeneration. It’s also a mystery…
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Metaground
Kirn is getting credit for a brand new idea: In @palladiummag, a fascinating idea from @walterkirn that the spectacle of news, social media, changing mores, etc. is designed to prevent memory formation. Not new at all. This was the POINT of 1984. Room 101 was not about lies and propaganda, it was explicitly and obviously…
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