Tag: skill-estate
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Giant waste of talent
There’s an interesting desistance movement in videogaming. Influencers are ganging up on game companies that specialize in addictive gambling with REAL MONEY. At the moment the worst offender is Diablo Immortal. The influencers, who have been playing the game intensively, have figured out all the super-complex steps needed to … win? Well, it’s not really…
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What am I comparing with?
Lately I’ve been fussing about low quality and low quantity of online stuff. Substack is low quality and low quantity. Straight Arrow News is good quality but low quantity. What’s the baseline? What am I comparing them with? I’ve said that old newspapers and broadcasts had a much better mix of topics, a “substantial and…
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That’s the purpose.
Continuing the theme of previous item, examining modern shit by trying to transpose it to an earlier era. I’ve got Github updates on my mind today because I just finished shaving an especially dirty yak. I’m cranking up my courseware-making tools for a new edition. One of my processing programs depends on the PIL image-handling…
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I missed the best part.
The remarkably realistic comment by the Harris Poll included a quote from Ice T. I was enamored of ‘analog people’ and didn’t notice the POWER of Ice T’s suggestion. It would [be] kinda dope if Musk bought Twitter and just shut it off. It’s powerful because shutting off is THE NORMAL PURPOSE of buying a…
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NO! THAT’S NOT THE FUCKING POINT!
Cited by Batya: “The most reliable cure for confirmation bias is interaction with people who don’t share your beliefs. They confront you with counterevidence and counterargument.” NO, NO, NO, NO, NO. This is the same stupid myth as “robust debate” or “academic freedom”. Interaction is the solution, but CONFRONTATION is NOT part of the solution.…
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Language doesn’t create culture, as usual.
On a random impulse I got curious about the grammar of Polynesian languages like Hawaiian. Their phonology is extremely simple. Is their grammar equally simple, or bizarrely complex? I expected the latter, but the answer is in between. Hawaiian grammar is in the median range of complexity. It has NGDA for nouns, singular/dual/plural for pronouns,…
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Deceptive standard wisdom
Our thinking about economics and technology and history is full of standard “wisdom” that isn’t remotely true when you stop to think about it. Ran into a couple of those standard wisdoms in automotive articles this week. Collectible Auto mag has a feature on the ’28 to ’30 Cadillac. The author commits two standard wisdoms…
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Cancelling is hardly new
Among the scattered preserves of OTR is one 1954 Mutual news broadcast by Frank Edwards, at KFWB in Los Angeles. Edwards made a point of NOT insulting the audience. He was clearly trying to tell the truth as he saw it, and understood that normal people are also capable of seeing the truth. In discussing…
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Interesting idea but needs improvement
In politics, Big Tent usually means rigid orthodoxy. Tablet magazine is starting up a subscription service for people who want to ask detailed questions about religion. They’re calling it The Tent, but so far it’s a mighty narrow tent. Their answerers include 4 rabbis, 3 Muslim chaplains, 2 Episcopal priestesses, 2 Hindus, 1 Orthodox priest,…
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WPA 2/5, Oklahoma
The WPA was engaged in a huge variety of tasks, all focused on the SKILLS of workers. People need to be useful, and men need to make things. Training develops the soul and brain most effectively and permanently when you’re MAKING THINGS that are visible and useful and a source of pride to your parents…
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WPA 5/5, summary
WPA’s main goal was to make people useful. WPA gave poor people a meaningful way to use their existing skills for money. Men without existing skills learned a marketable skill while building schools and parks and dams. WPA also taught new skills to adults who already had jobs. The Dust Bowl was caused by poor…
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The missing element, part 2
Continuing from here. Passive vs active, facts vs experience, in education. Here’s a sharp comparison from the early ’30s. RCA was promoting the passive version in a sneaky way. VITALIZED EDUCATION Radio has added to the plan of teaching a third dimension through which it may project a living personality into the school room or…
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The missing element
After being relatively inactive for a couple months, American Radio Library is flooding their website with new and interesting materials. In previous post I was reading some Education in Radio journals from an arrogantly elitist group. Now a larger pile of more general discussions has appeared. From 1922 to 1952 to 2022, one crucial element…
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Ringing words
A good sharp paragraph from Kirn: There are things against which even the concerted leveling of brute force is powerless. Beauty. A mystical epiphany. True prowess in some difficult endeavor. The ring of the right word. It’s those things which civilization must protect if it’s to be worthy of the name. I’ve been saying a…
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Turnaround in SKILLS
Matt Stoller gives a history of consolidation in defense contractors, which was actually ORDERED by Clinton. Stoller is tracking a fairly sharp turnaround. The FTC is now rejecting mergers that it would have approved before, and the Pentagon has joined the switch. Amazingly, the Trump administration tried to turn the tide, and even more amazingly,…
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