Tag: skill-estate
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Back to Magic Lanterns
Returning to the crucially important theme of science as entertainment. Before science became a tool for war and torture in 1946, science was often mixed with magic and entertainment. The Magic Lantern was the intersection of the two. This time I’m not trying for historical authenticity; I’m mixing periods and making up things that could…
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Watching the football
VW has pulled back from the EV craze and decided to continue developing gas engines. They’ve moved most of their future development budget back into real car engines. The EV craze was partly motivated by Elon’s cult power and partly by Share Value imperatives. Elon’s prank follows the model of GM’s pranks from the ’50s…
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Pants on the ground
Here’s a perfect contrast to Establishment Rushfield’s hardass economic realism. Compact mag explicitly claims to be populist. Some of their articles fit the promise. This one goes the wrong way. = = = = = START COMPACT: The problem Biden faces is that a long-simmering cost-of-living crisis—reflected most but not exclusively in stifling housing prices—has…
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Belt and suspenders
Rushfield hits the nail again in the middle of a general news column: = = = = = START RUSHFIELD: We’ve been living in an environment of very low-risk speculation thanks to a decade of low interest rates, also known as a speculative bubble. That affected entertainment as much as anything else, as people poured…
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Indirect futility
Thinking about the plight of the younger generation, I’m reminded yet again of the magnificent quote from Schwellenbach: Futility is the nemesis of democracy. More accurately, futility is the nemesis of trust and civilization. When you’re punished for doing the right thing, you revolt. You vote and nothing ever changes. You work hard and can’t…
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Another rerereprint
Originally from 2010, with a few celebrity names and topical words modernized. = = = = = Three types of knowledge: How, What, Who. All three types are necessary, and everyone uses all three types all the time, but the dominant type strongly influences the form and the success of a culture. = = =…
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Why is music unique?
In Gioia’s latest interview he spends a lot of time discussing Romanticism, which is the parallel to my Foy Rebellion. He also uses Taylor Swift vs AI as an example of opposite trends. AI is removing the human element from the ‘low end’ of music, Swift is returning the human element to the top-dollar end.…
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Ask and ye shall
Last night, thinking about the satanic “government” of Spokane, which is unfortunately the default in most cities, an odd analogy popped up. When other jobs need to solve a problem and can’t think of the solution, we Google it. More specifically we go to subject area websites like Slack or StackExchange, where people within a…
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Still trying to settle this…
I’m uncertain about the FTC ban on non-compete agreements. My consistent theme is STORAGE, which includes amortizing skills. If a company has paid an inventor or developer while he worked up a device or program or design for the company, the business should be able to protect the skill they paid to develop. Patents and…
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Reconstructing a bombed country
In previous item I wrote: WPA definitely employed white-collar workers who had been discarded along with the skilled laborers when Wall Street bombed America down to bedrock. Stirred up a thought. The Marshall Plan was based on the New Deal. Marshall was rebuilding and restoring and resettling Europe after the Krauts bombed it down to…
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Metaphor misses
Growth is the Wall Street mantra. Go big or go home. The crime market insists on growth of cash flow, with a negative correlation to profit. In real life you don’t want endless growth. Endless growth is CANCER. In real life you ALSO don’t want to survive by merging into a larger body. Merging into…
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One huge point
The latest article by Charles Hugh Smith makes one HUGE point that I haven’t heard before. It resonates deeply. The one huge point: AI is winning because the people in charge of making decisions NO LONGER HAVE A QUALITY HUMAN PRODUCT TO COMPARE WITH. The deciders don’t know how shitty the new offshored or AI’d…
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Reprint on Platonic crap
Reprinting this from just a few months ago because I feel like it. = = = = = START REPRINT: Via MindMatters. = = = = = START QUOTE: Mark Balaguer defends the proposition that mathematics belongs to an eternal realm. This realm is frequently referred to as the Platonic realm. Mathematics is like nothing…
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Enjoying rare realists
Online people who agree with reality are rare. (Offline realism is far more common.) So I appreciate the few writers and podcasters who are firmly grounded in reality, ignoring soap opera noise of all sorts. Taggart is reliable, and most of his guests are also reliable. Last week he talked with Hoenig, who was the…
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Reprint on grammar and skill
Reprint from 2021, relevant to the Altman AI monstrosity. = = = = = START REPRINT: MindMatters tries to separate out human language from animal communication: Believers in human non-exclusivity do not appear to be especially picky about what counts as evidence for their views. For example, here’s a research finding that is supposed to…
Polistra's Mill 