Tag: skill-estate
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Not snark
Yahoo Financial was interviewing an expert on gold and silver. Announcer asked “Gold is the boomer metal. What’s the millenial metal? Is it lithium, or the other rare metals that go into EVs?” My instant snarky answer was BITCOIN! The expert’s NON-SNARKY answer was BITCOIN! We’re fucked. = = = = = More seriously, The…
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It’s simple.
I noticed that a lawsuit by publishers against Archive.org has been decided in favor of the publishers. The web coverage of this decision is uniformly one-sided, calling it unfair and illegal. After reading the actual decision, it’s obviously correct and should be uncontroversial. There’s no question of free speech or censorship. The books in question…
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Defending the guild
BlackVault has a new FOIA find from NSA. It’s a short report for internal use, dealing with NSA’s terrorist detection abilities in the ’70s. Only a few redactions, which don’t affect the meaning. The writer sounds like a true professional trying to maintain objectivity in a situation (2002) when objectivity about terrorists was no longer…
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Always hoard your work.
I pulled another forgotten tool out of my pre-made Poser toolkit and saved a lot of tiresome labor. Now that I’m old and burned out by the “virus” torture, it’s nice to have the stored work of a younger and smarter ancestor on hand. AMORTIZE, AMORTIZE, AMORTIZE! ALWAYS HOARD YOUR WORK, EVEN IF YOU CAN’T…
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Improving on Nature
Reddit has some weird categories. When they involve physical arts and crafts, they’re often worth a peek. Anthropomorphic Fungi seems maximally weird, but it includes some well-done paintings and arrangements. This is purely wonderful.
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Type trust?
In looking through old catalogs of printing supplies, I kept seeing this declaration: We are not part of the Type Trust! What was the Type Trust? From a book listing all the known trusts, How did it break? Classic LBO tactics, same as now. Pick up a mortgage on part of the company, force payment,…
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Anyone could own?
Last week I was trying to show that one individual has always been powerless against the rulers, but an organization or union has always been capable of pushing back against demons. 4. Before Hollerith, record-keeping and calculation were partly mechanized by printing presses and typewriters and abacuses and cash registers. Anyone could own an adding…
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Rita’s talent
Lately I’ve been listening to several Hollywood gossip columns in my OTR bedtime list. The available selection is extremely sparse, only about a dozen altogether. Most are Louella Parsons, with a couple from Erskine Johnson and Nancy Terry. The dates range from ’46 through ’54. Nearly all have one common factor: Rita Hayworth. She was…
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Make something of it, never give up
I’ve been reading Curt McConnell’s ‘Great Cars of the Great Plains’, mainly to gather more about the Great Smith in Topeka. One of those car companies found its niche and is STILL IN BUSINESS TODAY! Luverne began in the usual way as a small carriage maker in a small town, tried making a car in…
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Pierce cars
I’ve done two features on Pierce trucks, first on the rule of sticking with your niche, and second on the trend toward compressed air starters. Pierce cars were stylistically unique. In the ’20s when all cars were basically the same shape, Pierce had the only headlights blended into fenders. You could spot a Pierce instantly.…
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Sunflower blooms again!
The former Sunflower Ammunition Plant in DeSoto is being recast into a giant EV battery plant by Panasonic. I caught a hint of this via Reddit, and noticed that the location looked like Sunflower. Most of the articles miss the Sunflower connection. This article at Bizjournals confirms it. Sunflower was a mysterious ghost town for…
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Why India wins
I’ve been hammering these points: We’re fucked because we’ve been lying about caste for 200 years. We substitute all sorts of other shit like IQ and hard work and ideology. Those variables aren’t entirely irrelevant but the base constant of human activity is CASTE. Caste is innate and permanent. The distribution of castes occasionally shifts…
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Close but no pierogi.
Via UncommonDescent, a new hypothesis about human intelligence is generally wiser and more ‘non-partisan’ than the usual Darwin crap. The article acknowledges that brain size is not the major variable, but still clings to the energy-consumption model. The discovery of fire made us smarter because cooked food is easier to digest. First, easier digestion DOES…
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Best thing in the universe
Noted via Reddit, the Broken Arrow schools near Tulsa are teaching biology and physics as part of fly-fishing! = = = = = START QUOTE: “Over a month ago, we started taking a look at insects,” he said. “Then we started learning how to mimic insects, to fly tie, and now we’re putting these flies…
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Unrealistic
TheFederalist makes a somewhat valid point: In a world where the left has achieved near-total dominance of the cultural space, finding an openly conservative artist can feel like tracking down an endangered species. Unfortunately, like poachers in the jungle, the left is on the hunt. While leftist artists can openly spew their bile for the…
Polistra's Mill 