Tag: skill-estate
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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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:…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Substack in 1830
In 1896 William Dean Howells, known today as one of Twain’s associates, wrote a brief remembrance of his father’s country newspaper in the 1840s and 1850s. This was in Ashtabula at the northeast edge of Ohio. He discussed the Patent Insides, which were dominant in 1896: = = = = = START HOWELLS: Twice or…
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The Stevens rule
Very old rule: Tight budgets cause smart plans and smart designs. Unlimited money causes stupid plans and stupid designs. The rule is clear with designs. My favorite example is Brooks Stevens. His 1947 design for the Willys wagon was TIGHTLY constrained by postwar restrictions. Willys was last on the priority list for bodymakers and machine…
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Loyalty is lethal
Good long interview with a striking actress and a striking writer for Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The Pittsburghers have put together their own Strike Paper where they can continue practicing their craft, but for some reason they haven’t DIVORCED themselves from the paper. They already have the new marriage with their CUSTOMERS, so they don’t need the…
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Puppets
Rob Lowe’s latest piece at the Ankler is about the total disconnection from SKILL at all levels. Hollywood doesn’t pay for skill, it pays for the PRESENCE OF A BODY. In pre-tech eras when the studios were more functional, executives and writers and actors were all expected to use the SKILLS appropriate to their position.…
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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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