Tag: skill-estate
-
Used to be a job
Listening to the new breed of journalists covering Sammy. They had to get along without their iPhone mental prostheses. They’re doing a fair job of taking notes on paper, but they admit that they can’t keep up all the time. This used to be a standard job for shorthand stenographers. I wonder if anyone thought…
-
Salute to cafes
(Redated and reposted after some additions) Last week I noticed a picture of an old workingman’s cafe in Enid. The picture was self-explanatory. Why did little cafes do a good business? Because they were right next to downtown apartments and rooms where most people lacked kitchens. Decided to do a proper salute to cafes and…
-
Oldest rule
Another example of my oldest rule and oldest passion, endlessly repeated in this blog. As I animate electrotyping and stereotyping, I’m having trouble with the chemical aspects. One of the source articles made an error which was probably simple and obvious. I couldn’t spot it until I read several other explanations. I took chemistry in…
-
60/40 odds
Via NewSuperstitionist: Coin flipping is controlled by the flipper. = = = = = START QUOTE: Researchers theorised that when a coin is flipped, the flipper’s thumb imparts a slight wobble to it, causing it to spend more time with one side facing upwards while in the air and making it more likely to land…
-
Meaningless word peeve
Political spammers keep asking me if I’m proud of Biden or proud of Trump or proud of America. In the first fucking place, I have nothing but hatred toward all excrescences of the national government, with the possible exception of Jerome Powell. In the second fucking place, proud can’t possibly apply to these entities, even…
-
What for?
Tara Henley, former CBC reporter who turned independent, interviews Eric Kaufmann. He’s trying to set up a School of Heterodox Social Science within an existing British college. He offers a balanced and rational approach to the whole mess of Cancel and Woke and such, recognizing that censorship and orthodoxy are permanent in academia. As I…
-
What makes men happy?
Vintage.es has a set of 1910 photos showing all the employees of a gas and electric utility in upstate New York. Some are office workers, some are laborers, some are skilled technicians. Correlation: The men who are holding a tool, or posing with a truck, are smiling and proud. The others are expressionless, which was…
-
The main point
I was looking through this catalog of the 1887 Paris Exhibition, trying to find new gadgets as usual. No new gadgets, but a good lesson in the PURPOSE of industrial policy and tariffs. The book includes 90 pages of excruciatingly detailed French tariff regulations. Why? Because Exhibitions were sponsored by governments to bring in new…
-
Nice salute to country papers
American Radio Library added a station album from WTAQ in Green Bay. Most albums are predictable, with a selection of station employees pretending to work, plus a selection of famous network personalities. This one is different. It includes short features on several small towns served by WTAQ. Normally a feature on a small town would…
-
Metawait 2
I’m deeply enjoying the failure of bitcoin. Fine vintage Schadenfreude**. One of the podcasters mentioned that mining one Bitcoin now costs $45k, but the coin only sells for $26k, with no hope of ever rising again to a profitable level. Wait! Why didn’t I think of this before? Nvidia makes the processors that grind up…
-
Doing what GUILDS are meant to do
The Writers Guild has published their new contract. The section on AI is exemplary. = = = = = START QUOTE: AI can’t write or rewrite literary material, and AI-generated material will not be considered source material under the MBA, meaning that AI-generated material can’t be used to undermine a writer’s credit or separated rights.…
-
No copyright needed
Newspapers and magazines often held puzzle contests to exercise the mind, with a reward at the end. Puzzles were part of the patent insides industry. Nobody ever imagined that a puzzle contest would inspire one magnificent unknown artist to create an entirely new artform and then demonstrate it with a category-killing masterpiece! Seen at Vintage.es:…
-
Sailer atypically misses
Sailer on India: = = = = = START SAILER: Narendra Modi is fooling around, Elon Musk-style, with the idea of changing the name of his country to “Bharat” as an anti-colonial gesture. And the California legislature has, after much acrimony among Hindus, sent a bill to governor Gavin Newsom’s desk outlawing the ancient Hindu…
-
Skill-estate in the raw
Our conventional “history” of labor unions focuses on the violent conflicts and corruption, from Haymarket to Hoffa. As I read about the history of printing, one constant emerges. Guilds have been around for 500 years in highly skilled trades, from masons to printers to silversmiths. The original purpose of a guild was a bank for…
-
One problem
This interview focuses on the AI part of the Hollywood strike. The actors are missing one important point about the nature of copyright. They want each actor to own the copyright on his own image and voice and behavior. Copyright was NOT meant to defend one author against a publisher. One author can never mobilize…
Polistra's Mill 