Tag: skill-estate
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Who’s communist?
Trump wants to disconnect our auto industry from its foreign branches and “bring it all home”. The impulse is good but the approach is fucked up as usual. Our auto makers had foreign branches FROM THE START. Ford and Buick had Canadian plants a few years after founding, and nearly all makers had Canada plus…
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Elon vs FDR
Elon is cutting vast amounts of federal bureaucracy, or at least attempting to do it. He has no official role, so courts would be fully justified in rejecting all of his cuts. SYLLOGISM. FIRST PREMISE: We know that Elon will never cut war or tyranny, the only federal FUNCTIONS that need to be eliminated. He…
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The Markup Man
This 1957 film on printing careers reminded me of the STUPIDEST decision I ever made. Speculating about the past is pointless, especially when based on information that wasn’t available at the time. Some of this info was available, some wasn’t. The film itemizes the various specialties in printing. One is the Markup Man, who lays…
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Ford for thought
PR Newswire cites the Edelman Trust Barometer: = = = = = START PR: Innovation is accelerating and should be a growth enabler, but it will be stymied if business doesn’t pay as much attention to acceptance as it does research and development. More than two-thirds of our respondents who say innovation is poorly managed…
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Reprint on limited resources
In previous item about Krugman and Cobol I linked this 2014 piece. I was talking about Modern Monetary Theory, which turned out to be a passing fad. MMT was just a fake philosophy to justify the standard Wall Street and government method. Never save, never produce or preserve anything. Create counterfeit and pour it into…
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Brutalist typography
This 1970s film is teaching journalism students about proper design. It’s unapologetically brutalist, in the same denaturing spirit as Corbusier in architecture or Cage in music. Remove all beauty. Remove all decorations. Remove all variation and improvisation. Only stark colorless rectangles are allowed. Replace it with squared-off type masses… Short words, short sentences and short…
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Trump and Polk
From CBC. Trudeau talked with Trump and says the 51st state threat is serious. Trudeau’s press people say “There will be no messing with the 49th parallel. Period.” This mention of latitude reminded me of an obscure and forgotten dispute. 54-40 or Fight! was a slogan used by Polk in the 1844 election. 54 degrees…
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Philco = medieval
The Philco Rule: Sell merchandise that doesn’t come back to customers who do come back. Good manufacturers avoid quantity. They make high-quality products that don’t come back, and they interact with customers to maintain the products. Good lawyers avoid trials and judgments. They negotiate and interact to reach a plea deal or a settlement. Good…
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No QE in nature
Another “leftover” “vestigial” piece of anatomy turns out to be useful after all. The muscles around the outer ear are unquestionably used by most mammals. We can see a dog or cat moving both ears to listen in various directions. The outer ears are also used for emotional signaling, showing fear or alertness or curiosity…
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Only driven by
Books have algorithms too. The physical aspect of a paper book is its algorithm. The font, paper quality, margins, spacing, and binding determine whether the book can be perused occasionally with difficulty, or kept in a bookholder to read at leisure. I always read books in a bookholder, usually while eating. With an especially good…
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Y no Gates?
Picking up WWV for New Year pulled me back into shortwave, at least for a while. (I have real work to do right now, and I don’t have enough spare gumption to delve into another sideline.) I’m reminded again of the fact that shortwave is a vacant resource. Broadcasters and commercial communication services have moved…
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Math teacher’s joke
Seen on Quora. A math teacher met one of his former students in a parking lot. The student parked his Lamborghini next to the teacher’s old Chevy. The surprised teacher said to him: “How can you own a car like that? You were a lousy student.” The ex-student replied: “You see this office building? I…
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Work, not logic
Perfect example of the standard “conservative” and Catholic stupidity about education. “Kids should be taught basic epistemology and logic in primary school before they get access to the Internet”. Precisely wrong. Tyrants LOVE logic and philosophy. The JOB of philosophy is to help tyrants lie and kill. Logic happily defends all sorts of destructive shit.…
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If you don’t like tariffs….
A serious novelist was complaining that publishers have turned into a monopoly, giving less advantage to authors. Not really new. Harper and Random House and Doubleday were always dominant. She’s afraid that Trump’s tariffs will make publishing even more costly, BECAUSE ALL PRINTING IS IN KOREA. I can vouch for the latter. The publisher who…
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Lazy is best.
Following on this item and this item on the importance of MECHANICAL government. = = = = = Good businesses and good rulers are LAZY as well as mechanical. The two go together. When you make a process mechanical it’s affordable and easy to use. When everything is custom-made and ’boutique’, everything is expensive and…
Polistra's Mill 