Slim pickings at DonorsChoose
Every month or so I check the available projects in DonorsChoose.org. Seems like the originality is fading lately. Nearly all the "needs" are iPads, "wiggle seats" or rugs. "Wiggle seats" are clearly a fad, or a way to substitute for proper recess.

One teacher just wanted a clean rug. Doesn't your school have a janitor? If not, buy a Dirt Devil and organize the kids to use it. Turn it into a regular housework lesson.

Found exactly one project involving hands-on learning, and supported it. Slim pickings.

Labels: Experiential education

  ¶ 11:25 AM

  Videogames + Meth =
This.

30-year-old runs wild in a cathedral, grabs a long crozier thing, spins it around in a Ninja routine, breaks off parts of the figures in a Last Supper sculpture, rearranges the furniture, lights all the candles.

In the brief security video he seems to be thinking "Hmph. I thought this was going to be fun. It isn't."

What did he expect? I'm pretty sure Candle-Lighting Jesus-finger-busting Crozier Ninja isn't a recent movie that would inspire emulation.

= = = = =

Later: I didn't intend this parallel but it works. Repooflicans have spent ALL DAY EVERY DAY FOR FOUR YEARS chanting BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI

and now they finally get the orgasm:

House Benghazi Report Finds No New Evidence of Wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton

Well. Was that as much fun as you thought? Apparently it was, which means that Repooflicans are vastly less perceptive than a meth-soaked gamer.

The worst part: Because the Repoofs were fully and totally engaged in chanting the magic word, they were paying exactly zero attention to AMERICAN VOTERS. American voters don't know and don't care what a BENGHAZI is. We only want to STOP MAKING AGGRESSIVE POINTLESS WARS IN PLACES THAT DON'T MATTER ONE FUCKING BIT.

Trump was paying attention to American voters. He grabbed onto our REAL emotion and rode it to the Repoof nomination. We still don't know if he will follow through, but AT FUCKING LEAST he was PAYING ATTENTION.
  ¶ 5:59 AM

  Zero Problems returns
For a couple of years Erdogan was acting confused, perhaps under the pressure of Syrian migrants. He abandoned his previous Zero Problems policy. Now he seems to have recovered. Productive negotiations with both Israel and Russia.

The latter is especially important. Europe is failing, and Europe has never been Turkey's friend. Russia is on the upswing, and Russia can be Turkey's friend. I don't know why Erdogan went off his path, but it's GOOD that he's back.

7/15 update: Well, we have a partial explanation now. He abandoned Zero Problems to keep the military happy. When he returned to Zero, the military got REAL MAD. Armies need problems to justify their budgets. This still doesn't explain WHY Erdogan decided to switch back.

Labels: Turkey, Zero Problems

  ¶ 12:23 AM

  Beaufort scale for empires
Convective thought....

I've been placing Brexit alongside other empire-breaking moments like Sarajevo 1914 or Gandhi 1948 or Hungary's border opening in 1990.

No, it's not the same. Those empires had grown, matured, spoiled, run their course. They were full of rot and bark beetles, ripe for toppling, and it didn't take much of a wind to crash them.

EU is an empire of similar size and power but it's a NEW empire. EU was SOLELY a trade zone until 1992. At that point the imperial trappings started to grow, but it's only in the last ten years that EU has been BEHAVING like an empire.

Measuring indirectly, Brexit must be a stronger wind than the abovementioned breakers. It toppled a fresh active growing empire.

Labels: Metrology

  ¶ 5:14 PM

  Shibbomyth
Polistra likes to collect linguistic shibboleths.

RULE: Any time you see a headline or title in the form There is no X or X is a myth you can be 100% certain that the author belongs to X or is contained in X.

There is no Republican Establishment = I am part of the Republican Establishment

There is no Wall Street Elite = I am part of the Wall Street Elite

Tribal control of the media is a myth = I am part of the tribe that controls the media

Housing bubbles do not exist in Canada = I am head of Mortgage Professionals Canada.

Scientific consensus is a myth = I am a market-maker for the scientific consensus


A new one today.

The myth of the catty woman by Sheryl Sandberg

7/26: a new variant. I condemn X = I am X.

I Condemn All Threats to Turkey’s Democracy by Fethulla Gulen.

Labels: Language update, Leth

  ¶ 10:28 AM

  Antichrist vs Ohm
The latest tl;dr ramble from the Antichrist:

I will repeat what I said on my first trip. I repeat what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says: that they must not be discriminated against, that they must be respected and accompanied pastorally. One can condemn, but not for theological reasons, but for reasons of political behavior...Certain manifestations are a bit too offensive for others, no? ... But these are things that have nothing to do with the problem. The problem is a person that has a condition, that has good will and who seeks God, who are we to judge? And we must accompany them well...this is what the catechism says, a clear catechism. Then there are traditions in some countries, in some cultures that have a different mentality on this problem. I think that the Church must not only ask forgiveness – like that “Marxist Cardinal” said (laughs) – must not only ask forgiveness to the gay person who is offended. But she must ask forgiveness to the poor too, to women who are exploited, to children who are exploited for labor. She must ask forgiveness for having blessed so many weapons. The Church must ask forgiveness for not behaving many times – when I say the Church, I mean Christians! The Church is holy, we are sinners! – Christians must ask forgiveness for having not accompanied so many choices, so many families...I remember from my childhood the culture in Buenos Aires, the closed Catholic culture. I go over there, eh! A divorced family couldn’t enter the house, and I’m speaking of 80 years ago. The culture has changed, thanks be to God. Christians must ask forgiveness for many things, not just these. Forgiveness, not just apologies. Forgive, Lord. It’s a word that many times we forget. Now I’m a pastor and I’m giving a sermon. No, this is true, many times. Many times … but the priest who is a master and not a father, the priest who beats and not the priest who embraces, forgives and consoles. But there are many. There are many hospital chaplains, prison chaplains, many saints. But these ones aren’t seen. Because holiness is modest, it’s hidden. Instead it’s a little bit of blatant shamelessness, it’s blatant and you see so many organizations of good people and people who aren’t as good and people who … because you give a purse that’s a little big and look at you from the other side like the international powers with three genocides. We Christians – priests, bishops – we have done this. But also we Christians have Teresa of Calcutta and many Teresa of Calcuttas. We have many servants in Africa, many laity, many holy marriages. The wheat and the weeds. And so Jesus says that the Kingdom … we must not be scandalized for being like this. We must pray so that the Lord makes these weeds end and there is more grain. But this is the life of the Church. We can’t put limits. All of us are saints, because all of us have the Holy Spirit. But we are all sinners, me first of all! Alright. I don’t know if I have replied.

I'm not going to grab the obvious bait. Nothing new to say there. We already know what this monster is. Instead, I'll take him at his word that he's just being a pastor. He talks about prisoners, so let's focus there.

Do prisoners need or want a pastor who doesn't judge, a pastor who CAN'T PUT LIMITS, a pastor who takes all sides of an issue at once? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Professional criminals can't stand wiffling and waffling. They respect a man who holds his GROUND, who provides a fixed REFERENCE POINT. Criminals have an extremely strict moral code, which agrees with the Old Testament moral code in most ways. The only real disagreement is on Thou Shalt Not Steal. Everything else is Natural Law, even unto A CORRECT UNDERSTANDING of Thou Shalt Not Murder. A robber doesn't kill randomly; he kills in self-defense to halt people who interfere with his Stealing.

If you can get a pro criminal to reverse the polarity of his Stealing battery, the rest will fall into place. But his system cannot allow an open-ckt input for random noise, which is exactly what Francine is trying to provide. All wires must connect logically and firmly, and all neutrals must be spiked to the earth of Natural Law with #00 copper rods.



This is why Islam is spreading in prison, why Islam does a better job of reforming than Christianity. Islam is a tight coherent structure, solidly grounded.

= = = = =

Graphic sidenote 1: At first I had a dummy ckt in the picture, then decided to make it functional. This little JFET ckt sort of models the notion of a two-way morality detector.


Graphic sidenote 2: What's that tool in Antichrist's hand? Can't quite remember what it's called....

Graphic sidenote 3: I really enjoy the idea of soldering iron as symbol of reconnection. It works for me.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 7:59 AM

  "Scientists", innovative and creative and disruptive as usual
Anti-Nature has a few vignettes showing how "British" "scientists" react to Brexit. Drably predictable. "Scientists" love tyranny and corruption and rigid orthodoxy and falsehood, which means they love EU.

Listing the reactions:

Terrifying, depressing, grieving, devastating, heartbroken, disappointing, concerned, catastrophe, shocked, disappointed, harsh, unworkable.

Or in more direct terms,

I LOVE MONEY. I HATE FACTS. GIMME TRILLIONS SO I CAN OBLITERATE THE UNIVERSE! I DESERVE TRILLIONS. I AM GREEDY. YOU TAKE MONEY AWAY. WAAAAAAH! MINE! MINE! MINE! ALL MINE! GIVE BACK MONEY! MINE! ME! ME! ME! MEEEEEEEEE!

One of the commenters breaks out of the tantrum and says something a bit more rational but flat wrong:

I am also concerned about the impact on the free movement of labour and the restriction on the skills base if the UK turns inwards.

Got it backwards, fuckhead. When labor moves freely, skills atrophy. Each country specializes and loses most of its skills. Graybill, asshole.

Labels: skill-estate

  ¶ 12:52 AM

  No, that's not discrimination, fuckhead.
Article in MIT Tech Review starts to make a good point but misses it by a thousand miles.

Talking about the Facebook selection bias, the author says that some kinds of bias are unavoidably baked into the code, so it doesn't matter how you use it. True of some types of bias (eg misuse of stats), but none of her examples fit the point.

First she claims...

One area of potential bias comes from the fact that so many of the programmers creating these programs, especially machine-learning experts, are male.

Machine-learning types are Nietzscheans who see themselves as GOD, fully authorized to exterminate all Negative Externalities (IQ<200). This bias shows up in the code of autonomous vehicles, which are specifically designed to exterminate the slow and poor and old. But this is not male vs female, this is psychotic vs normal. The author doesn't give any examples of male vs female, so we have to conclude that the author is an anti-male bigot.

Then...

Harvard professor Latanya Sweeney looked at the Google AdSense ads that came up during searches of names associated with white babies (Geoffrey, Jill, Emma) and names associated with black babies (DeShawn, Darnell, Jermaine). She found that ads containing the word “arrest” were shown next to more than 80 percent of “black” name searches but fewer than 30 percent of “white” name searches.

Sounds about right. If black parents would stop giving their kids black names, the problem would disappear. When you identify yourself right up front and publicly by race, advertisers will naturally hit you with ads that are likely to fit your needs.

Rehashing a point I've already beaten to death: Before 1968 black people didn't have black names. Here's the first few columns of two pages from the 1940 Enid census again. Each page is entirely one race. Try to determine which is which before you hover the mouse to see the titles on the JPG files. I've copied out the names into text to make the task even easier. (Skipped a couple names that I couldn't decipher.)



Florence, Cache, Eugene, Charles, Bertha, Opal, Robert, Shelley, Pearlie, Carrie, Amy, John, Ida, John, Lillie, Edith, William, Lawrence, Clarence, Johnnie, Teddie, Lorenzo, Annie, Geneva, Jay, Florence, Mariah, Lona, Alonzo, Clarence, Inez, Webster, Laura, Reginald, W.B.



John, Berniece, Roy, Mary, Bobby, Freida, Patricia, Elmer, Ida, Cloyd, Geneva, Billy, Lon, Susie, Billy, Edith, James, Madge, Joe Ann, Jerry, LeRoy, William, Etta, Ina, George, Mary, Henry, George, Lillian, Willie, Charles, Orville, Ernest, Emma, Delores, Ramona, Ernest Jr, William.

There's no way an algorithm could sort those names AS names. If the algorithm also knew the Zip code, it might be able to make a better guess; but even in mostly segregated 1940 you'd really need LOCAL knowledge of which blocks were black.

In other words, the example given by the author is NOT discrimination by algorithm. It is simply an accurate use of FACTS. It is SCIENCE.
  ¶ 5:54 PM

  Meta-headline
Excellent NYTimes headline:

European Leaders Tell a Dazed Britain to Get Going on ‘Brexit’

Dazed. Perfect word.

Meta: The FACT that the British elite were dazed, stunned, gobsmacked, sucker-punched by the result is the COMPLETE AND DEFINITIVE EXPLANATION of the result itself.

The elite and media had lost all contact with the nation they misruled. They were governing an imaginary nation that existed only in their alien heads. Cameron knew that he was safe in calling a referendum because the voices in his head were purely pro-EU. He never heard the voices of any actual British people.

The referendum came out Leave because the people were TERMINALLY TIRED of watching the ACTUAL nation turn to shit while the IMAGINARY nation got richer and richer and richer.

Same in US and most of EU, except that US won't get a referendum. We get a fake "election" which will be Rectified by the Electoral College or the Supreme Demons if it comes out wrong.

  ¶ 5:43 AM

  Super-weird dream
I worked for the Bridge-Throwing Agency. Our mission was to find heretics and throw them off the bridge into the river. This wasn't easy because, like any good agency, we had to Comply with all sorts of Regulations about Bridge Safety and Humane Treatment and Email Preservation and especially Environmental Protection of the rivers where we threw the heretics. Despite all these tiresome Obstacles we were Passionate Around Our Mission.

= = = = =

As usual I'm impressed by the cleverness of my dream-scripter. As usual I wish to hell it would work in waketime when I need a little cleverness. But where did this come from?

Best guess: I had been thinking (pointlessly) about my past jobs... Was there a way I could have stayed in one job for 50 years? After paging through the actual jobs, the answer is No, because none of those employers lasted. Some went out of business, some were LBO'd. In more recent years the research contracts I worked on were limited in length. Even if I had been more steady, the jobs themselves wouldn't have held up.

Among relatives and friends, a few managed to hold one job for a lifetime. Those jobs were government jobs or Bell Tel jobs. Nothing else. Among all businesses, only Bell was loyal to its loyal employees.

The dream-scripter might have started with that realization, might have been trying to illustrate the problems with a gummint job. Maybe.

Labels: TMI

  ¶ 4:05 AM

  Chi-Nah
Was rereading a book on Soviet autos, which includes a chapter on Chinese autos following Soviet designs, which were following American designs. The author is an expert on cars but not so strong on language-related shit. He simply follows his sources on transliteration. The names of cars (Hong Qi) are modern, and Beijing is modern, but for some reason Shang-Hai is not modern.

The contrast made me think... we've skipped the hyphens in Chinese place names for a long time. We were writing both Peiping and Shanghai consistently in the 1930s. Google's ngram thing shows that Shang-Hai disappeared suddenly in WW1, which is rather strange. Did we consider China to be German? Checking... No. China wasn't really involved, but it was nominally on our side, along with Japan.



BUT: We continued using hyphens in personal names much longer. Even now, in the modern Pinyin transliteration, we often write Mao Ze-dong.

None of those hyphens make any sense. The hyphens aren't there in Chinese, and the names aren't considered to be compounds. The only difference is that China doesn't borrow foreign names, so the meaning of each syllable is always present in the background. English happily borrows foreign words, so most of our names aren't separable.... but we also use compounds with retained meanings, and separate words. Running along US24 east of Manhattan (borrowed Injun), we find St George (separate), Wamego (borrowed Injun), Belvue (compound with retained meaning), St Marys (separate), and Rossville (compound with retained meaning). We don't put hyphens in any of them.

Were we using hyphens for Chinese to indicate that each ideogram represented one syllable? Maybe, but we also used hyphens to separate the syllables of Injun names that had never been written in any form, as in this passage from an Osage story:

"Place this earth on your foreheads when you offer up your prayers and you will excite the compassion of Wah-Kon-Dah, the Great Spirit’, the crawfish told them. From this time on, the Little Ones rubbed this earth on their foreheads when they prayed to Wah-Kon-Dah at dawn, and in their ceremonies and vision quests; it was symbolic of their humility.

If we write Wah-Kon-Dah, we might as well write Fore-Head and Craw-Fish and Sym-Bol-Ic. In both languages Syll-Ah-Bulls are syllables.

Only possible conclusion: The hyphen thing was our way of indicating "This is a primitive language. These people can't master multisyllabic words."

= = = = =

Sidenote on the ngram: The word frequency of Shanghai moved up and down in the 30s and 40s then held steady from 1945 to the present. In reality: from 1930 to 1980, China was basically meaningless to Americans. It was a strategic tool for diplomats and generals but normal Americans had no reason to think or talk about it. After 1980, China became our factory. It's a tool for traitorous corporations to steal American jobs. We talk about it all the time. The ngram seems backwards.

Labels: Language update

  ¶ 3:17 AM

  Nature works 2
Following on previous item about Brexit showing the superiority of Parliament. The British system also works to reject poor leaders on the opposition side.

Corbyn is also running into trouble for failing to win his side ... which was the SAME as Cameron's side ... Shouldn't that immediately tell you what's wrong?

The Labour leader is facing a no confidence vote over his "lacklustre" campaign for a remain vote. He vowed to fight off any leadership challenges, and told one activist who heckled him as he attended a Pride march in London: "I did all I could."

Attended a homosexual march. Self-explanatory sentence if you know the obvious facts.

Obvious facts: Brexit succeeded BECAUSE Labour voters got out and voted. Labour voters made the difference. REAL Labour voters. Union men. Working men. Former coal miners. Former steel workers. Men who had good jobs before globalization. And in Britain, globalization mainly means EU.

Corbyn has NOTHING to do with those union men. He has EVERYTHING to do with Globalism and Gaia and Die-Versity and Trans Things and Homosexual Pride. His utterances on economics are jumbled and confused. Conservatives accuse him of being Marxist, but he's got Marx all wrong, just as Bernie does.

Here's a couple paragraphs from the 1977 SOVIET Constitution.

The state exercises control over the measure of labour and of consumption in accordance with the principle of socialism: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work". It fixes the rate of taxation on taxable income.

Socially useful work and its results determine a person's status in society. By combining material and moral incentives and encouraging innovation and a creative attitude to work, the state helps transform labour into the prime vital need of every Soviet citizen.

To each according to his WORK, not his NEEDS or ves GENDER FLUID.

Doesn't sound like Freestuff. Doesn't sound like Homosexual Pride or Die-Versity. Sounds just like Graybill. Sounds like the proper and correct CIVILIZED damping of natural inequality. Status in society is determined by the results of your work, not by your attractiveness or the precious metals in your name.

Labour voters in England and Populist voters elsewhere remember a time when our system approached that ideal without having it in the Constitution. We know it's possible because it HAPPENED. Things that HAPPEN are possible by definition.

= = = = =

Sidenote: It's fun to watch the Express changing its headline and picture as more and more Labor MPs pull out of Corbyn's shadow cabinet. Since he doesn't have the sense to resign, the party is seceding from him. Especially wonderful since the mutiny is a contest to see who can be most ANTI-LABOUR. Corbyn wasn't ANTI-LABOUR enough for his assistants, so they're trying to kick him out and find an even more ANTI-LABOUR leader for Labour.

Labels: skill-estate

  ¶ 5:19 PM

  Natural works
A meta-thought.

The Brexit process, ALL OF IT, shows why Britain's parliamentary system works VASTLY better than the US mess, and shows yet again why 1776 was a giant mistake.

This would still be true if the referendum had favored Remain. I'm talking SYSTEM, not results.

NONE OF IT could happen here. Our dysgovernment would never agree to a national referendum on anything. We've never had a national referendum, and our Presidential "elections" are systematically corrupt. The Electoral College has no purpose but corruption.

The aftermath of Brexit continues to show Parliament's superiority. Prime Ministers are temporary outgrowths of Parliament. When a PM fucks up, his own party will usually fire him and bring up the next man in line, WITHOUT HAVING TO WAIT EIGHT YEARS until the next fake "election". If his own party is slow in firing him, the opposition will call a vote of No Confidence which requires a new election, and a change of national direction, SOON. The mechanism steers out of a skid.

In this case Cameron understood that his reputation was on the line, and when the people voted against his intentions on Brexit, he immediately offered his resignation with proper transition time. If he had tried to stay, his party or the opposition would have fired him. Because he knows the consequences, he picked the cleanest way of quitting. He won't be PM again, but he still has a good future in politics. Leaders are rewarded for doing the right thing.

Parliament is an old and NATURAL system, developed through centuries of ADAPTATION. Therefore it's still the most ADAPTABLE of all systems, the most responsive to negative feedback.

Our system was based on a wildly insane set of false theories about "equality", and stopped adapting in 1803 when the Supreme Demons eliminated Congress. Since then it has grown crazier and crazier, with exactly two semi-lucid intervals forced by undeservedly great leaders FDR and Ike.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 10:25 AM

  Idiocy
Idiocy from DW:

"...Britain was better off in the EU because we could have a say in what regulations were made...."

STOP AND THINK, IDIOT.

In the first place Britain DIDN'T have a say. In the second place, EU regulations WON'T MATTER when you're out of the EU.

And then you dare to call the Leavers "uninformed" and "unintelligent".

= = = = =

Unfortunately there's also delusion if not idiocy on the other side:

From the Von types:

While secession of American states is often dismissed as absurd, there are few reasons to believe that a state like Texas - to name just one example - could not immediately transition from state to nation-state.

You're missing the only thing that matters. Raw force. Brussels doesn't have nukes. DC does have nukes. DC has repeatedly shown an instant readiness to use all necessary force to squash every hint of secession. Unless a coalition of states containing missile sites can QUICKLY take over all the missile sites, there's no point in thinking about secession.
  ¶ 3:13 AM

  Not nostalgia
Idiot Ryan likes to accuse populists of 'nostalgia' because we remember how things ACTUALLY WORKED for many years and we don't see why it can't work that way again. This isn't nostalgia, it's logic.

Ryan's own form of nostalgia is just weird. Today he's proposing simplified taxes yet again, doing the old postcard routine yet again.

This is not logic or even real nostalgia. He's remembering an idea that

(1) Won't happen because tax reform ALWAYS means more complexity.

(2) Was never necessary because most wage-earners use 1040EZ, as simple as a postcard. IRS will fill it in for you if you want. Can't get any easier!

(3) Is even more unnecessary NOW because even fairly complex tax forms are easy with computer helpers like TurboTax.

Ryan does show proper nostalgia on a different level. He's drifting in pleasant memories of Shit Repooflicans Like To Chant. Enough of this modern BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI. Let's get back to the good old days when we chanted ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX.

Both magic incantations are equally irrelevant and incomprehensible and delusional, but ZERO TAX apparently has a sweet taste in Ryan's calvarium.

Aside from my usual silliness, the real problem here is the consistent Repooflican hatred of the GOOD FUNCTIONAL parts of government and love of the EVIL parts of gov't. Repoofs mock IRS, Post Office, SS and Agriculture, which are FUNCTIONAL and normal parts. They expand POINTLESS AGGRESSIVE WARS and DHS and FBI, which are the EVIL parts.
  ¶ 4:52 PM

  No, it's a bad comparison
Few days ago I compared Soros to Dillinger.

= = = = = START REPRINT:


Soros is telling Britain:

My 60 years of experience tells me the pound will plummet, along with your living standards. The only winners will be speculators.

In other words:

The last time you pulled away from My Empire, I robbed you blind. I will also rob you blind this time.

I was thinking that this blame-the-victim shit is a lot like the commies blaming Trump for the commie demonstrators who attacked Trump supporters. Trump instigated those violent thugs by existing.

Then I realized ... No, it's not A LOT LIKE, it's THE SAME FUCKING THING, because those anti-Trump thugs WERE WORKING DIRECTLY FOR GEORGE SOROS.

We wouldn't let John Dillinger blame the bank tellers for allowing him to rob them.



Why do we allow Soros ... Oh. Yes. Dillinger wasn't Master Race. Soros is. When you are Master Race, everything you say is logical, true and mandatory by definition.


= = = = = END REPRINT.

Now that Soros has stolen a few trillion and laughed about it, I see the comparison was poor. Unlike my cartoon, Dillinger was NOT a lone gunman. He stormed a bank with a dozen subthugs, taking out all guards and cops along the way. Everyone understood that resistance was suicide.

Soros, like the rest of his Tribe, doesn't use guns. What's more, he doesn't rob small-town banks and ordinary citizens; he robs BIG traders and investors by manipulating transactions. These BIG traders and investors must know that they are being swindled by Soros or by an agent acting for Soros. No guns are involved, nobody can get killed. So: WHY DON'T THEY REFUSE TO BE MANIPULATED? With billions at stake you could afford serious investigation and publicity to block Soros's actions and frontrun his blackmail. Why don't they permanently lock out all of Soros's tentacles? I don't get it.

Labels: Asked and unanswered

  ¶ 2:19 PM

  Always fun
Fun to watch all the INDIVIDUALISTIC NONCONFORMIST CREATIVE INNOVATIVE RADICAL REVOLUTIONARY DISRUPTIVE YOU CAN'T JUDGE ME artist types mourning the loss of total tyranny and total censorship and total uniformity, desperately trying to maintain the STATUS QUO.

Stop and think. If tyranny and censorship and uniformity are CRUCIALLY IMPORTANT to your existence, you are not a non-conformist. You are a goose-stepping totalitarian. If you need above all to maintain the STATUS QUO, you are a REACTIONARY, not a radical.

If you are genuinely creative, you should want a world with more VARIED AND INDEPENDENT places, so that you can find a place where your own set of skills will be comfortable and supported.

Labels: skill-estate

  ¶ 8:45 AM

  Revenge of the constructive


This map from Politico.eu shows the Graybillian reason for Brexit, at least within England and Wales. I don't understand what's driving Scotland, so I won't try to say anything about it.

Graybill's Law: Globalism forces each country to focus on just ONE skill, and forces all economic activity into ONE location and ONE type of business.

Before EU, England had a wide range of skills. Coal, wool, textiles, banking, steel, electronics.

After EU, only banking prospered. All other skills were forced to shut down.

Politico's map shows this beautifully. The parts of England that were accustomed to MAKING things are angry that their skills and utility are no longer wanted. The banking zone around London, accustomed to TAKING things, is happy with globalism.

Constructive vs destructive. Globalism favors the destructive and starves the constructive.

Fortunately the constructive parts of England haven't been entirely starved yet.

Labels: skill-estate

  ¶ 3:07 AM

  ENGLAND IS FREE!


ENGLAND IS FREE!

When I went to bed last night, BBC was cheerful and chipper as the Empire seemed to be winning.

When I woke up this morning and turned on BBC again, the announcers were deeply depressed. Can it be true?

YES!

Cameron is resigning. GOOD.

Markets are screaming. GOOD.

EU bureaucrats are sternly lecturing the "infantile" Brits. GOOD.

The BIG POINT: Bullies can be broken. One firm resistance is enough to melt a monster. It will take time, but the EU monster will melt.
  ¶ 12:47 AM

  Bye, England.///EDIT: NO! NO! NO! HELLO, ENGLAND!
CANCEL THE TEXT BELOW! I've never been so happy to be proved wrong.

= = = = =


Well, so much for Brexit.

EU has learned that assassination works. More assassinations to come. More invasions and rapes and murders by Dreamer migrants. More empire. More tyranny. More genocide. More killing the poor to enrich Goldman.

Krauts learned that the third time is the charm. Kaiser Bill tried to smash England and failed. Adolf tried and failed. Merkel tried and succeeded without using massive force. One shot was enough this time.



The only good part is that truth will be DRAMATICALLY visible now. The Goldman shark will no longer hide its teeth.
  ¶ 3:33 PM

  Upscaled a bit
Latest pic from KSHS: A Watkins Products salesman around 1900. Looks tired and dusty. Usually a picture of a Man And His Ride will show pride of ownership. Hand on fender, hand on back of horse. Not here. Just tired.



These narrow one-man buggies were popular with peddlers and postmen and aptronymic postladies but have dropped into obscurity. Rarely seen in advertisements or paintings from the era. The horsey version of a business coupe. Note the complex harness, with reins passing through holes in the dashboard.

Watkins Products is still around, still in the same basic line of business, considerably less tired and dusty now.

Labels: Aptronym Alert

  ¶ 10:06 AM

  This is dumb.
Every year Spokane holds Gangfest, a peculiar rite of sanctimonious suicidal Die-Versitarians who invite a bunch of gangsters to town to shoot hoops and honkies. Every year the gangsters shoot a bunch of hoops. Some years they fail to shoot any honkies. Not very successful in that department.

This year the city is running a dumb publicity campaign:

Everyone is a Pedestrian!

Spokane County, WA—Hoopfest activities will draw pedestrians to downtown Spokane. Spokane County has seen an increase in pedestrian deaths and serious injury collisions, 24 pedestrian fatalities and 123 pedestrian serious injuries from 2010 through 2014. Most pedestrian crashes occur during clear weather, from the hours of 3:00pm to 9:00pm and with a pedestrian in the roadway.

Pedestrians should use the sidewalks were available and cross only at intersections or marked crosswalks. Make eye contact with the drivers etc etc

Good specific advice, I guess.

As a serious long-term pedestrian, I resent the We Are All Pedestrians shit.

We are NOT all pedestrians. Most people never walk on the street or sidewalk. They walk from their kitchen to the garage, drive to work or mall, then walk from their parking place to the store or office. When they intend to Obtain Exercise, they drive to an Officially Designated Exercise Location like the Centennial Trail or a Gymnasium, then Officially Exercise for a specified period, then drive home.

Real pedestrians don't need the advice. Long experience has taught us what works and what doesn't work.

If the advice is new to you, then by definition you are not a Pedestrian. You are a Driver. That's why you need the advice.

Labels: skill-estate

  ¶ 9:25 AM

  APOLITICAL?
BBC notes a decision by linguists:

But this was no banner-waving activist, and the crowd in this instance was made up of members of the 127-year-old American Dialect Society. “We need to accept ‘they’, and we need to do it now,” came the linguist’s cry, and at that moment an otherwise apolitical event took on an unexpected edge.

APOLITICAL?

Academics are NEVER apolitical. Here's what BBC considers APOLITICAL:

The Society was meeting in Washington DC to decide on its Word of the Year for 2015. Of all the possible candidates – which included ‘ghost’, ‘ammosexual’ and ‘Thanks, Obama’ – its final choice was an apparently straightforward pronoun. On the face of it, ‘they’ is hardly trailblazing. But what is controversial is the acceptance of a new way of using it. The Society’s website explains that “’They’ was recognised by the society for its emerging use as a pronoun to refer to a known person, often as a conscious choice by a person rejecting the traditional gender binary of ‘he’ and ‘she’.”

Thanks, Obama. Apolitical. Nuff said.

The real problem, of course, is that BBC and academics don't see this as a contradiction. In their alien mind-like substances, total abject adherence to this week's Correct Line as defined by the party traditionally representing the Left (Labour, Democrat) is apolitical. In linguistic terms, unmarked. Failing to sing the current song of Labour or Democrat is political and heretical and


Recognizing they as a singular common-gender pronoun would NOT have been political 50 years ago. The usage was already advancing NATURALLY to replace clumsy formations like he or she. By recognizing they right now, and making specific reference to bizarre science-denier delusions like "non-binary", the decision becomes intensely political.

One quoted expert gets the principle right while missing basic facts about the history of English:

Sally McConnell-Ginet, Professor Emeritus in linguistics at Cornell University [says] “We’re much less likely to accept a new form like that than to just allow ‘they’ to expand its scope a bit so that you can freely use it to talk about specific individuals – and that is happening more and more.”

She points to one example that indicates we could embrace ‘they’ as a singular pronoun. “There is a parallel in the history of English. We used to have ‘you’ contrasting with ‘thee’ and ‘thou’, and now we happily use ‘you’. We say ‘you go to the store’, not ‘you goes to the store’ – even if addressing a single individual, we still use the plural verb form,” she says. “People don’t seem to be upset about that – why can’t we do the same with ‘they’? Just let it expand to do this job.”

Correct about natural evolution, incorrect about you and thou. In fact ye was nominative plural and you was accusative plural, contrasting with thou (nom sing) and thee (acc sing).

In table form,

....	Sing	Plur
Nom	Thou	Ye
Acc	Thee	You

The reversed rhymes of this pattern probably contributed to the eventual conflation of all four forms into you.

Sally Hyphen-Hyphen really should know better.

Labels: Language update

  ¶ 5:21 AM

  Vaguely connected
Vaguely connected to previous item about persistence of spirit....

I've been listening to EWTN for a loooooong time, first on SW then on AM, and more recently reading their NCR website.

Their powerful founder Mother Angelica had been 'out of commission', incapable of giving orders, for several years after a stroke, and finally died a couple months ago.

While Angelica was alive though mute, EWTN was trying to resist Antichrist. There are obvious limits for any major Roman organization; can't rile up the bishops too much; but within those limits, EWTN was correctly reporting Antichrist's heresies and tyrannies.

IMMEDIATELY after Angelica's body died, EWTN gave up the fight. Now they're defending and loving Antichrist just like CNN or NPR or Fox. The website's format also changed. Previously each day had included a 'roundup' of real Catholic comments from various bloggers. After Angelica's physical death, the 'roundup' disappeared, indicating that they no longer wanted to be responsible for quoting Christians.
  ¶ 1:08 AM

  Heard it before somewhere
New Scientist has a brief article on an INTERESTING development.

Researchers were worried about transplanted organs developing cancer despite seeming 'clean' at the time of transplant. They checked to see what kind of gene activity persists in a dead organism. Killed a bunch of mice by wringing their necks, then extracted genetic material at intervals for 48 hours.

Most of their findings make sense in terms of an orderly shutdown and cleanup procedure, and their original question was answered. Genes that create inflammation and cancer were upregulated (switched on) after death, and stayed on for varying periods, doing what genes do, synthesizing proteins.

The surprising part: A whole bunch of genes that normally act during EMBRYONIC DEVELOPMENT also switched on and started work, and these genes seemed to be peaking at 48 hours.

The researchers didn't try to guess what these genes are doing.

Reasonable guess: Maybe they're a vestigial remnant of an earlier system in which organisms regenerate after two or three days?

Sounds familiar somehow.... regenerate ... three days ... old system for regeneration no longer operating .... new system is just plain death ... Seems like I've heard this before, but can't quite place it.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 4:55 PM

  What's the biggest vehicle?
Seems to be a recent trend toward an unconventional arrangement of wheels. The stupid Segway and its stupidest descendant the Hoverboard have two wheels located transversely. All previous two-wheeled vehicles had the two wheels spaced axially.

But wait! These stupid toys are NOT the first vehicle arranged this way. In fact the LARGEST of all wheeled vehicles has this arrangement. What is it?

The irrigator.



Aerial maps of southwest Kansas show the work of these vehicles, creating a mysterious radial landscape or a carton of assorted PacMans, depending on scale of interpretation. The bigger circles on this map are a half mile in diameter, which means the irrigator vehicle is a quarter mile wide and 20 feet long. Beats all other vehicles, even those giant mine excavators. Even beats the AMC Pacer in a competition for egregious width.

= = = = =

Randomly semi-related: A 1922 British discussion of applying electricity to farming included this wonderfully elegant idea to simplify the heartache of plowing:



Note the 500-volt temporary overhead line and the transformer lorry. The plow itself was pulled back and forth between two slow-moving trucks that moved forward once per row, like a giant typewriter.

Vastly more convenient and safe than a tractor or horses. With a tractor or horses, you have to avoid hooking up your temporary overhead 500-volt line to the main HV line, and you have to avoid buying and using a transformer lorry, and you have to avoid stringing up a 100-yard cable between your two winding wagons because you already avoided buying two winding wagons, and you avoid the freedom from contour plowing, which means you also avoid the thrilling excitement of a field that blows away in every windstorm. Tractors and horses also avoid paying the representative of the Electrical Supply Authority to make the hookup, and avoid paying the four men who supervise and synchronize the various cables and winding wagons. All of that avoidance of equipment and labor is costly!

= = = = =

Hey! I'm starting to think like an economist. What's next? Appreciating NIRP? Nope.
  ¶ 3:25 AM

  Must be something serious........
Chaka Fattah was convicted of nonsensical "ethics" charges for doing what all politicians do. Jailed for breathing. Normally Repooflicans get ethicuted. When a D gets ethicuted, he must have done something SERIOUS to offend the masters.

All politicians, if they want to succeed, are forced to break campaign finance rules. Finance rules exist so the masters can prosecute any successful politician who commits heresy. The charges are automatically there, waiting for the detonator.

What was Fattah's heresy? I don't know. I hadn't noticed him before.

Going through his Wiki bio ....

Strong emphasis on education. He created several Federal scholarship programs, which look unremarkable and not especially meaningful. Might have even helped a few youngsters. No heresy there.

He's the ranking D on the House committee that funds the Department of Dysjustice. Since the Dept of Dysjustice is prosecuting him on "ethics", maybe he failed to raise their funding? But even the ranking D on a House committee can't unilaterally cut funding if everyone else wants it.

Aha! Here it is.

Fattah states that his priority is ensuring that small and medium businesses have the tools they need to prosper in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. He is the lead Democrat responsible for funding the Department of Commerce and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. In his role on the Appropriations Committee, Fattah has advocated to $128 million in funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a program that assists small and mid-sized manufacturers create and retain jobs, increase profits, and save time and money.

Maximum sin, maximum heresy. Making a move that TROLL Trump would approve, a Federal project that might HELP NORMAL PEOPLE. DON'T FEED THE TROLLS! See what happens when you take money that might have gone to Jamie Dimon's bonus and redirect it to (trigger warning for delicate ears) m*n*f*c**ring? The horrible word is even dirty after I bowdlerized it for you. I apologize.

NO!!!! EVEN WORSE!!!!.......

Fattah is considered a “true champion” of the co-op movement by the American Co-op Association. In May 2013, Fattah introduced the Creating Jobs through Cooperatives Act (HR 2437). This legislation will provide means to catalyze cooperative development, provide tools to entrepreneurs to bring cooperative to their communities, partner with financial institutions to provide grants a loans to developing businesses, offer technical training and professional development.

Coops are a TERRORIST BLOW directed at the very foundations of Goldman[pbuh] capitalism, which is of course the TRUE AND ONLY capitalism. Goldman[pbuh] is the only God, and Goldman[pbuh] is his prophet.

Okay, now I see why Fattah is a sworn enemy of all that's good. Who knows what TERRORIST harm he might have done if allowed to continue? We're unquestionably better off with him in prison. Sing along with me: WHAT'S GOOD FOR JAMIE DIMON[pbuh] IS GOOD FOR AMERICA.

Labels: Asked and answered, skill-estate

  ¶ 2:35 AM

  Incompetently asked and unanswerable 2
Following last week's pet peeve on people who don't know how to ASK A FUCKING QUESTION. Here's the ultimate useless question:



Well now, Ade. Can I call you Ade? Okay, I'll call you Ade. Let's parse out this question in the only possible way. The question mark at the end of your sentence indicates that the text before the question mark is the content, the gist as it were, of your question. So you are asking for information on ? .

We can look up ? in a dictionary or Wiki for you. We find:

The question mark [ ? ] (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in journalism)[1] is a punctuation mark that indicates an interrogative clause or phrase in many languages. The question mark is not used for indirect questions. The question mark glyph is also often used in place of missing or unknown data. In Unicode, it is encoded at U+003F ? QUESTION MARK (HTML ?).

Must admit I've never heard ? called eroteme. The term would more appropriately apply to =D or {(.)} but it was probably invented by some ivory-tower creature who claimed to be above such nonsense.

Turned out to be a literal FUCKING QUESTION after all. See Rohrschach jokes.
  ¶ 1:19 PM

  Chicken update
Interesting to watch chickens spreading through the neighborhood. The first set began four years ago; unimpressive at first, it's turned into an exemplary urban farm. The second began this year; I don't think they have intentions of full farming, but their hens make a nice homey soundscape. Now a third resident is building pens that look chickeny. Might be rabbity instead, but given the trend I'll bet chickeny.

Also interesting to examine the status change of chickens. 60 years ago chickens in the yard were a definite mark of country-hick poverty. Okie jokes and nigger jokes often featured chickens. Of course the attitude among Okies and blacks was not contemptuous or snide. Chickens were just a good way to get eggs and meat.

Now, after a few decades when chickens were totally absent from all urban areas, the prejudice has faded and the practical attitude has taken over.

Labels: Heimatkunde

  ¶ 10:02 AM

  How to be a fucking tyrannical murderous liar
Nationally distributed AP story, as read on KHQ website:

A prosecutor in south-central Idaho is refuting a widespread rumor that three young Syrian refugees raped a girl at knifepoint. Twin Falls County Prosecutor Grant Loebs says that no gang rape involving Syrian refugees or a knife took place despite allegations currently circulating on social media and conspiracy-oriented websites.

However, anti-refugee activists have aggressively pushed the story, arguing that police failed to respond the alleged incident in a timely manner. Loebs denies this claim. Instead, Loebs said charges have been filed involving young children at a laundry room at a Twin Falls apartment building, but those records are sealed because of the ages of the juveniles.

Idaho has refugee resettlement centers in Boise and Twin Falls. No Syrian refugees have been resettled in Twin Falls.

So. According to that nationally distributed story, NOTHING HAPPENED. The XENOPHOBE TROLLS are lying to stir up HATE HATE HATE KKK KKK KKK HITLER HITLER HITLER TROLL TROLL TROLL TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP BUFFOON BUFFOON BUFFOON.

= = = = =

Now here's the story as directly told by Twin Falls police:

Twin Falls Police Chief Craig Kingsbury has confirmed that three boys who were allegedly involved in the rape of a five-year-old girl in Twin Falls were of Iraqi and Sudanese descent. At a press conference in Twin Falls, Chief Kingsbury addressed community members and the city council about the alleged assault and explained that two of the three boys involved in the incident are at a detention center following the crime. The boys are reported to have been in the Twin Falls area for less than two years.

Chief Kingsbury was unable to confirm or deny if the boys are refugees.

So. The incident ACTUALLY HAPPENED, and the perps are refugees, whether defined officially or not. The XENOPHOBE TROLLS are basically correct, with a couple of wrong details.

Good rectifying, AP. Winston Smith's supervisor would be proud as punch.



= = = = =

Aside from the temporary questions of invading armies and memory holes, the BIG PERMANENT PROBLEM here is PRIVACY LAWS about juvenile crime. We miss the chance to RECOGNIZE PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS because of murderous privacy laws. A pro criminal starts work at age 9. By the time we start counting "real" offenses at 18, he has usually piled up a dozen MAJOR crimes including one or two killings. Gang leaders have taken full advantage of his official immunity, using him as a reliable and trainable tool. Over-18 tools are much more likely to be jailed, thus interrupting the valuable training process. If we had been counting crimes equally from birth, we could have slammed him in prison by 14, thus saving several lives and depriving gang leaders of their best tools.
  ¶ 6:33 AM

  Not a lot like
Soros is telling Britain:

My 60 years of experience tells me the pound will plummet, along with your living standards. The only winners will be speculators.

In other words:

The last time you pulled away from My Empire, I robbed you blind. I will also rob you blind this time.

I was thinking that this blame-the-victim shit is a lot like the commies blaming Trump for the commie demonstrators who attacked Trump supporters. Trump instigated those violent thugs by existing.

Then I realized ... No, it's not A LOT LIKE, it's THE SAME FUCKING THING, because those anti-Trump thugs WERE WORKING DIRECTLY FOR GEORGE SOROS.

We wouldn't let John Dillinger blame the bank tellers for allowing him to rob them.



Why do we allow Soros ... Oh. Yes. Dillinger wasn't Master Race. Soros is. When you are Master Race, everything you say is logical, true and mandatory by definition.

Labels: Asked and answered

  ¶ 5:31 AM

  We are the Axis.
UN is running a propaganda campaign to "do something" about the refugees that OUR wars have created. Needless to say, UN doesn't suggest that we should STOP ATTACKING every country except Israel. No, UN only wants to help us destroy our own people by forcing the refugees from OUR wars onto OUR people. All XENOPHOBE BUFFOONS must be slaughtered to make room for refugees.

Meanwhile, the same empire continues to bash Turkey for "human rights violations" because Turkey is TROLL. We don't mention the fact that Turkey has been housing and feeding millions of Syrian refugees without any help.

I suppose there's some justice in this on a national level, except that the people who are attacked and raped and murdered and disemployed by refugees are NOT the same people who make the wars. The imperial dynasties and their courtiers are never raped or attacked or disemployed.

I've already run the numbers on war deaths to parse out Hillary's kill record. She killed 265,000 people during her term as SecState. Now let's try an estimate for the refugees. It's harder to pin these numbers down because many "refugees" are not really fleeing wars; they're escaping from a bad economy or crime. Also, the war deaths are separated by year, so I could parse out Hillary's exact contribution. These refugee numbers are cumulative totals. Nevertheless we can say that Hillary is fully responsible for Libya, Ukraine and Syria; and partly responsible for maintaining our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Somalia and Sudan. She is NOT responsible for the long-running wars in Central Africa, Congo, Burundi, etc. Those wars started and continued with no major US connection.

Total refugees from the countries that fully or partly belong to Hillary:

Afghan 2.6mil
Iraq 246k
Libya only 6k ???
Somalia 1.1m
Sudan 1.5m
Syria 4.8m
Ukraine 300k
-----
Total 10.5m

Hooray for Hillary! Hooray for Genocide!

265000 dead, 10.5 million refugees!

Quite a wonderful record, especially compared to TROLL Trump's miserable ZERO in both departments.

Note: The Libya number seems absurdly small, considering that Libya has been a major source of the refugees passing through Italy into Germany and UK; but no way to find better numbers.

Labels: STRONG!, switchover, Turkey

  ¶ 3:25 AM

  $10k vs $10
Almost got run down this morning by one of those Lycra Bycra assholes. Zooming along Wellesley on his $10k custom bicycle, with his $1k custom-made Lycra ass in the air. Humped it through the 4-way stop without pausing or looking, maintaining 31.768 mph in order to summit** the Shadle hill in Gear #41.8 of his 256 available gears.

Asshole.

Reminded me of the last encounter with a bicyclist at the same corner. Six months ago in slippery January, I was walk-skating northward and a ragged old coot, maybe even slightly raggeder and older than me, was coming the other way. He was trying to stay upright on his $10 Huffy while smoking a Bugler. Finally gave up and walked the bike. As we met I said something like "Not a fun day for biking, is it?" and he said "Nope. But she'll get better. She always does."

Perfect contrast. Arrogant ass-view from the $10k man, tough nobility from the $10 man.

= = = = =

** Language note: Summiting is an asshole verb.

Labels: Zero Problems

  ¶ 4:13 PM

  Insufficiently paranoid again
As usual I was insufficiently paranoid.

When I heard that the Bureau of Instigation had "interviewed" the Orlando dude, I figured they were trying to get a sting going but decided he was too smart. Like other gang leaders, FBI prefers low-IQ or weak-minded stingees who will follow orders easily. I dismissed the notion of FBI influence on his eventual acts.

Right about the facts, wrong about the influence. An insider knows better:

“It looks like it's pretty much standard operating procedure for preliminary inquiries to interview the subject or pitch the person to become an informant and/or plant an undercover or informant close by to see if the person bites on the suggestion,” Coleen Rowley, a former FBI agent and division counsel whose May 2002 memo to the FBI Director exposed some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, told AlterNet. “In the case of Mateen, since he already worked for a security contractor [G4S], he was either too savvy to bite on the pitch or he may have even become indignant that he was targeted in that fashion. These pitches and use of people can backfire.”

In everyday life, suspicions and worries often turn out to be groundless. But when dealing with USA STRONG, facts always turn out to be worse than any paranoia I can develop.

Labels: Age of Stings

  ¶ 1:43 AM

  More from 1945
From the 1945 electronics trade journal mentioned in previous item, here's a NEAT postwar product suggestion that didn't get picked up.



When I worked in motels we had a similar Telechron gadget to set wakeup calls. The guest would ring the office, I'd set the appropriate quarter-hour on the clock, then make a corresponding note on the Wakeup Sheet.

The ad claims 'volume producers are now choosing it', but as far as I can tell no radio manufacturer actually took up Telechron's offer. Too bad. The idea of programmed listening didn't go commercial until VCRs in the 80s. (There were plenty of clock radios, but they just turned on once like a regular alarm clock.)

... Aha. After a moment of thinking, the problem is obvious. People don't turn a radio on and off per program. They turn it on in the morning and leave it on till bedtime. [Especially true in the tube era, when radios took two minutes to warm up.] A clock that changed the tuning to the correct station for Farm News or Winchell or Fibber might have been more useful, but the controls would have been wildly complex. The same problem happened with VCRs. Even with a full-screen menu, very few people managed to program their VCRs correctly.

Also, the October issue has a detailed guide to building an atomic bomb, summarizing a 150-page PUBLIC document issued by the War Dept just a few days after Nagasaki. Shows a rather different approach to classification than we use now, to put it mildly. On p. 722 of the PDF.

Later: Googling to see if any radio actually used the gadget, found something better: A wire recorder with the Telechron on the front. Direct ancestor of the VCR!


And finally: My kind of ad!

Using a dam as a positive symbol would be Unthink now. EPA Terrorist Army would close you down with protesters. Advertising SKILLS of American workers wouldn't bring protests, but it would be completely uninteresting to corporate traitors. Only Asians have the SKILL of working for near-zero wages, which is the only SKILL that counts now.


= = = = =

Later update: Motorola went whole hog in 1938 with a radio that automatically switched up to six preselected stations. AND the same radio had a wireless remote control box. So the idea of full-auto programming was fully developed but never made a splash.

Labels: skill-estate

  ¶ 5:40 PM

  We knew
Found a great big resource in GoogleBooks, a 1945 electronics journal aimed at industrial users. Some forgotten ckts, some anticipations of digital stuff, lots of learning.

More broadly interesting: This is a 12-month volume starting at July 45. With magazines, especially trade journals, the actual writing is finished three or four months before the masthead date. So the July issue was mainly written in Feb and Mar 45. What's missing? No war propaganda at all, no wartime atmosphere. It's written on the assumption that the war is over. The ads are in peacetime already, Army surplus distribution is well under way.

This announcement from FCC in the August issue gives a hint of the internal Fed processes. (WPB = War Production Board)

Something similar appears in the auto industry. Passenger car production actually started July 3, 45, which means the order to start would have been given about six months earlier.

In other words: We KNEW around Feb 45 that the war would be done by August. Food for thought.

Nowadays, of course, we're past those primitive notions of "ending" a war. We abandoned the ancient notion in Korea, which is still nominally at war. When we attacked Vietnam, we couldn't schedule an end because we were soundly defeated and ran for our lives. All of our aggressions since then have been carefully designed as self-expanding perpetual motion machines. Attack a country that didn't attack us; kill lots of the natives and piss off the survivors; pick up some of the survivors and forcibly import them into USA and EU so they can attack our natives; when our natives get pissed off at being attacked, bomb them. It's complicated but it works BEAUTIFULLY.

Labels: STRONG!

  ¶ 3:27 PM

  Why do they say such things?
Constant puzzle. Why do establishment types say dumb things? Who do they think they're fooling?

Biggest and worst example, of course, is the myth that QE/ZIRP was "meant to improve the economy." It wasn't, and Bugsy Bernanke SAID IT WASN'T. AT THE VERY START, HE SAID QE WAS DESIGNED TO BOOST STOCKS AND NOTHING ELSE. And he was right, because he knew what he was doing. Despite this, all the imperial media continue to tell us that QE is not working very well because it's SURPRISINGLY not having the desired effect.

New example in a BBC article on likely effects of Brexit vs non-Brexit. I shouldn't complain, since BBC has rather bravely restrained its MORE EMPIRE demon to write a halfway objective and unemotional piece ... but even so, why do they say this:

A Remain vote will be received with a collective sigh of relief... [EU leaders] will be expected to fast-track the changes to the UK's membership negotiated by David Cameron earlier this year - including curbs on in-work benefits for EU migrants, safeguards for sterling and an opt-out from ever closer union.

WHAT? Those concessions were solely designed to give Dave something to talk about. If Brexit fails, Dave no longer needs talking points.

This is just human nature. Even a normal sane non-satanic organization would quietly forget those offers and resume the status quo. EU is insane and satanic, so it will clamp down FEROCIOUSLY after the prey is back inside its jaws.

= = = = =

Three days later:

But, within hours, Mr Juncker had rubbished the Prime Minister’s suggestion he will be able to encourage more change within the EU. The unelected official told reporters in Brussels: “The British policy makers and British voters have to know that there will not be any kind of renegotiation.”

Toldjaso.
  ¶ 11:48 AM

  Old scam
Despite 100 years of knowledge and warning, idiots still fall for this shit. Fortune-ately these idiots are rich, so their loss is a net gain for civilization......

News emerged Friday that The DAO, a venture capital fund operating through a decentralized blockchain inspired by Bitcoin, had been robbed of more than $60 million worth of Ether digital currency, or about 1/3 of its value, through a code exploit.

And it's not just a hack, it's a mathematical proof showing that the entire operation CANNOT work as advertised. Thus the entire operation is an intentional fraud.

The DAO has been touted as the first major implementation of a Decentralized** Autonomous Organization, a financial organization underpinned by so-called “smart contracts,” written in computer code and enforced through a blockchain which controls investors’ digital currency holdings.

In short, the DAO is meant to eliminate lawyers and other humans from contract negotiations and financial dispute resolution. That possibility, along with security advantages, has contributed to major banks’ surging investment in blockchain technology.

But by finding an unintended code exploit, the DAO hacker has called into question the core idea that code can substitute for human-dependent legal and financial processes.

Foolish blockchain investors really ought to watch these two episodes of Racket Squad. There's nothing new about the Blockchain scam. Set up a system under the scammer's control, a system that appears to move lots of money around without human checking. After the mark is convinced that the system favors him, snatch the money and run.

Much as I enjoy the vengeful image of homeless starving lawyers overdosing on Oxy, the simple fact is that human checking and human feedback can stop frauds. Lawyers who write and inspect contracts are not the same as predatory prosecutors and ACLU lawyers. I can't get properly vengeful against bookkeeper types.

Putting it another way: There's no such thing as 'untouched by human hands'. If the part of the system available to you looks robotic, it means you are unprotected from the trickery of the humans who developed the system. They paid lawyers to guarantee that you don't get a lawyer. They paid auditors and coders to guarantee that you can't use an auditor or coder.

= = = = =

** Let's return to this word DECENTRALIZED, which is the CENTER of the blockchain fraud. You CANNOT be decentralized when you are using the Web. When you are operating through the Web, you are connecting to the NSA, and you are also opening yourself to spies and hackers of all types. Blockchain methods are the most centralized of all, since all parties to the whole blockchain must participate in every transaction. The only way to have a decentralized transaction is with PAPER currency and PAPER contracts. If you want to be really safe, write the contract by hand or on a free-standing mechanical typewriter. PAPER doesn't automatically send signals to NSA. It is simply exchanged between the two parties, usually with copies deposited in locations trusted by both parties.

Labels: defensible spaces, Emersonian justice

  ¶ 2:16 AM

  Best exdorsement yet!
Trump continues to gather exdorsements. All the worst enemies of civilization have come out against him. Now Apple, the most evil corporation in history, has cancelled advertising of the R Convention because Trump.

I'm surprised there was anything to cancel. I didn't think Apple had EVER supported ANYTHING remotely connected to Repoofs, even when Repoofs were represented by hypermonsters with the same infinitely traitorious America-hating China-loving lunatic slavedriving world-smashing views as Apple; but apparently it was putting a few pennies into RNC. Now it won't.

GOOD. We need to have the lines drawn clearly if we're going to have a proper revolution.
  ¶ 2:02 PM

  Hey! You forgot to tourette the Trump!
I used to buy lots of architecture books from Dover. Not much lately, as I've moved away from graphics into more active electronic stuff. Dover continues to send occasional ads in email, which I do appreciate and read. This one is outright peculiar, and oddly out of character for an NYC publisher:



All of the portrayals are silly and contrived, but Trump and Sanders come out better than Hillary. Trump is shown as You're Fired, which is just his regular trademark, and as a builder, which is positive. Hillary is a housewife ... ???????????????? ... and a Wonder Woman dominatrix. The latter is appropriate and the former is superweird. Neither fits her self-chosen image as Supreme Warlordess Of All Universes. Bernie is shown with a barbecue outfit, which should please his vegan zero-gluten zero-MSG zero-GMO zero-KKKarbon breathatarian fans; and as a Vermont outdoorsman, which is pretty much his chosen image.

A bit later: I didn't notice the REALLY odd thing because it seemed normal until I ran the constants and variables on history. At this point in the process, Trump and Hillary are both presumptive nominees. Bernie shouldn't be there, and in all previous elections he wouldn't be there. This year conventional wisdom has shifted to understand that the PROCESS is criminal. Most people now understand that Trump and Bernie were picked by the VOTERS of their respective parties, and Hillary was picked by a long series of obviously loaded dice.

Normally both nominees would be pure 100% USDA Prime corruption, chosen by the Chosen. This year the Repoofs failed to load the dice, for reasons that are still unknown.
  ¶ 11:49 AM

  H-rain 2


Another variation on railroad radar. This time we have two parallel curved tracks with at least 5 crossbars.

Labels: Heimatkunde

  ¶ 10:17 AM

  Slow Antichrist
Come to think of it, Antichrist Francine is behind the curve of satanic fashion. Many other institutions are far ahead of AF when it comes to driving away your own followers or citizens or customers.

I see three stages in this trend.

Offering products or services that your best customers don't want is nothing new or special. Every business and organization does it at times. It's a basic part of life and learning.

Normal functional businesses LEARN from these mistakes. When Chrysler did this:

they got immediate negative feedback from dealers even before the customers had a chance to reject the Insect From Mars. Chrysler fired the designer and ran a crash program to improve the product, with good results. (Hint: Having a multi-layer feedback system is an excellent idea.)

Churches have been making a deeper mistake for a long time, offering products designed to please anti-Christians, then wondering why their Christian customers keep disappearing. They refuse to learn.

The trend Francine has joined is a third stage, going beyond corrected mistakes and uncorrected mistakes.

It showed up first in old media, in the 90s when the Web was starting to provide real competition. Newspapers, like any other business, watched their circulation and used it for feedback. In the 90s the Spokane paper had a cartoonist and a columnist who specialized in DIRECTLY AND PERSONALLY shitting and spitting on normal Spokane residents. The paper apparently got tired of canceled subscriptions, so they fired the cartoonist and damped down the columnist. For several years the paper was totally wrong and totally evil like all papers, but at least it didn't DIRECTLY AND PERSONALLY punch you in the face every time you opened it. Now they don't give a fuck. Back to their old kicking and punching habits, with no sign of monitoring an error signal.

The Repoofs went through the same menopause this year. For three decades they had been totally neglecting their own voters, working fiendishly hard to satisfy Israel and Mexico while committing vile treason against America. This year, after real competition emerged in the form of Trump, they started DIRECTLY AND PERSONALLY PUNCHING Americans over and over and over. They're still at it, even after they mistakenly allowed Trump to get those mysterious arcane alien things called "votes".

EU went through a partly similar pattern, but without the attempt to please non-customers. For many years EU quietly parasitized its own countries to enrich EU bureaucrats. Now that the loyal customers are starting to leave, it's DIRECTLY AND PERSONALLY KICKING THE SHIT OUT OF THEM.

And now Antichrist has joined the parade. At first heshe was just following the mainline church tradition. Work hard to satisfy people who will never never never attend your church, ignore your own loyal customers. Now heshe is DIRECTLY AND PERSONALLY PUNCHING the best and longest-suffering customers.

= = = = =

One aspect is puzzling. The violence seems to emerge AFTER real competition appears. From the outside and from common sense, you'd think an organization would coast along, stuck on stupid, until strong competition forced it to mend its ways. But the opposite happens. Strong competition leads to futile and self-destructive frothing and spitting.

... After a walk, the answer showed up. NOTHING TO LOSE. When the Repoofs realized Trump had developed a mysterious impenetrable secret magic method (ie telling the truth) they realized they were finished. Nothing left but mass shooting. The Roman Church has been through this before. When Luther and Zwingli provided real competition, Rome started shooting its own best followers with the CounterReformation. I don't see the sudden competition this time, but given Rome's tortoise-like nervous system, maybe this is simply a delayed response to the 20-year-long disgust with choirboy-fucking priests.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 4:55 AM

  Putin and Parkinson
Russians are realists. That's why they drink. Putin is the most realistic of all. Luckily for the world, he continues to face reality head-on without vodka.

However, NATO “needs a foreign enemy, otherwise what would be the reason for the existence of such an organization.” The whole conflict was forced on Ukraine “to substantiate the very existence of the North Atlantic alliance,” the Russian president concluded.

Yup. Putin understands Parkinson. He sees that the zombie West has outlived its purpose and continues growing and metastasizing in order to justify its growth and metastasis.

Labels: Гром победы

  ¶ 3:16 AM

  New and meaningful
This is a significant change!

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has criticised Nato military exercises in Eastern Europe, accusing the organisation of "warmongering". Mr Steinmeier said that extensive Nato manoeuvres launched this month were counterproductive to regioal security and could enflame tensions with Russia. He urged the Nato military alliance to replace the exercises with more dialogue and co-operation with Russia.

Note that this is a CURRENTLY SERVING TOP-LEVEL OFFICIAL, the Foreign Minister. Not a random commentator or a safely retired official or an anonymous leak 'speaking on background'.

When USA STRONG gets too crazy for the Krauts, you know things are starting to shift. That's a fucking high bar. Will we change? Of course not. We will continue to get crazier and crazier and crazier and eviler and eviler and eviler until Putin finally bombs DC. Consummation devoutly. But the Krauts may stop assisting us.
  ¶ 2:40 AM

  Sleep ticket
Good sleep last night despite a thunderstorm. I'm realizing that good sleep opens up the door to the 1961-1966 Room in my Memory Museum. This is a consistent pattern.

Normally I have non-subscription access to that room, but 7 hours of sleep signs me in for full access.

Today's full access, for no discernible reason, showed me the PECULIAR architecture of Manhattan Junior High. At the time I was too miserable and painful to stand back and think about the architecture.

MJHS was built in three sections. West wing came first, then east wing, then the middle. West and east had three floors of classrooms, and the middle contained the auditorium, gym, and locker rooms. (Center of misery and pain for a nerd.) West had originally been the HS, east had originally been JHS. So the separation of the wings had originally made some sense. When a new HS was built around 1956, all of this old structure became JHS, and that's when it got weird.



There was NO direct path between west and east. You had 3 minutes to get from one class to the next, and you had to figure out which of the indirect paths was likely to work, depending on traffic and weather. (The new 'bridge' was added in the '80s, after the building was turned into a school administration center. Admins get direct paths. Nice for them.)

On the first floor (semi-basement) you got from east to west through a hall under the auditorium, which ended at the wood shop room. You then opened the door of the wood shop, walked past all the running lathes and saws and grinders, opened the other door, and you were in the first floor of the west wing.

From the second floor east, you entered the back of the auditorium, unless an assembly was in session; walked down the right aisle of the auditorium; opened the lower door; ran down a long winding hall which ramped upward at one point (which I JUST NOW REALIZED was needed to counteract the downslope in the auditorium!) and then entered the west wing.

From the third floor east, you had to walk down two flights, exit the building, walk across the courtyard, enter the west wing, then walk up or down to your classroom.

All in three minutes.

The gymnasium (aka Hell) was west of the auditorium. The locker rooms (aka SuperHell) were directly under the gym. The ONLY way to get in and out of the gym was a 3-foot-wide stairway that ran from the locker room up to the gym, with a landing to the ramped hall described above. There was an outside fire exit from the back of the gym, but we rarely used it.

How could the architect think that a one-person-wide sinuous stairway was a good way to get in and out of a gymnasium? Triangle Shirtwaist, anyone?

Labels: TMI

  ¶ 12:15 PM

  Futility is the nemesis
Handy hints and kinks from Antichrist Francine:

Pope Francis said Thursday that the great majority of marriages today are not valid, because couples do not enter into them with a proper understanding of permanence and commitment.

Great! A billion people struggled for an entire lifetime to obey the Church, avoid temptation, attend Mass, treat their husbands and wives properly, raise their kids in the Church, and now the Maximum Leader tells them their efforts were TOTALLY USELESS.

If they had gone the other way, drinking and carousing and drugging and hooking up and whoring and aborting, the result would have been IDENTICAL.

[Correction. I didn't read it carefully the first time. Antichrist did not say the two ways are IDENTICAL. Antichrist said the fucking-around way is BETTER. Evil is better than good.]

THE MOST DANGEROUS CONDITION OF ALL IS NOTHING TO LOSE.

The one common factor in all mass shootings and full-scale revolutions is NOTHING TO LOSE.

Now we have a billion people in every country of the world who have just been informed by their Dear Leader that they have NOTHING TO LOSE.

Good work, Satan's successor. I'm just fucking glad that poor old Scratch already offed himself so he doesn't have to see this.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 8:43 AM

  Graybill vs Lerma
Thinking about a puzzle. In many cases the BEST versions of American cars were produced by foreign branches of the US automakers, and never brought here. We didn't get the good stuff even from our own companies.

Example 1: The Canadian Meteor was the BEST-looking Ford by a long shot. Peak Ford. Other Canadian variants weren't prettier than the original but offered more variety in sizes and engines.



Example 2: The Argentine IKA Torino took the neat but dull Rambler American and turned it into a dramatically beautiful sports machine with wood and leather interior. AMC in Mexico turned the Hornet into the Lerma, a snappy and roomy Euro-style hatchback.



Example 3: The Brazilian branch of Willys turned the drab Aero into the sharp modern Itamaraty, after Willys had stopped making sedans entirely in US.



These struck me as exceptions or violations of Graybill's Law. Maximal use of local skill made possible by globalism?

No. I was falling into the false binary created by the antinationalists. They force the question of trade into two endpoints. If you're trading at all, you're globalist. If you're not globalist, you want NoKo-style isolation.

Correct definition: Globalism is not JUST trade. Globalism is TREASONOUS USE OF TRADE. Globalism is using trade to destroy your own country.

These local specialties were SPECIFICALLY MOTIVATED by local-content laws. Canada and Argentina and Brazil and Mexico bought some parts and tooling from the US corporations, thus contributing to US profits; but they didn't simply take complete cars. They built their own cars using some of their own materials and designs because their governments insisted on SERVING THEIR OWN PEOPLE.

And the US carmakers didn't import those local specialties because the US automakers were also SERVING THEIR OWN WORKERS. Bringing in the variants would have taken work away from US factories.

Labels: skill-estate

  ¶ 6:43 AM

  Swift, thou shouldst be living at this hour
Madame Polisztra has been absent for a long time. She returns in a fruitless attempt to ring up the spirit of Swift. At first she thought of calling Mencken, because he did speak directly to our problem; but Mencken was too much like modern "comedians", stoutly defending the Deep State while sounding "rebellious". Mencken would have joined the crowd. Swift would see everything clearly.



= = = = =

Two headlines will do the job.

= = = = =

1. State Department officials call for U.S. military action against Assad regime.

Allegedly we want to slow down the force of terrorism. Even idiot Brennan finally admitted that Arabs are mixing in with our importation of Dreamers, though this didn't lead him to propose slowing down the Dreamers or closing the borders. That would be FEEDING THE TROLL. Everything proposed by TROLL becomes impossible. So instead of closing the door to keep the bugs out, we're going to STIR UP THE ANT NEST and direct the ants toward our house.

We had been allowing Putinix to exterminate the terrorists in their nest for a while, but now we're going to fight the exterminator. Can't make it up.

= = = = =

2. Obama: Notion that being armed would have saved Orlando victims 'defies common sense'

Allegedly we want to slow down the current epidemic of mass shootings. Logic and facts tell us that criminals can always find a gun. The specific facts of the latest mass murder show that the killer worked for a "law" enforcement branch of the dysgovernment, a branch that buys guns and ammo by the millions for its own use, which means he would have been able to find or purchase a gun under all conceivable sets of rules. So instead of finding solutions that actually work, we say: Notion that being armed would have saved Orlando victims 'defies common sense'.

Common sense defies common sense.

Previous dictators told lies, used Doublethink, and used the O'Brien quick-change trick, but I can't recall any dictator saying explicitly, all in one neat compact sentence, that facts are not facts and logic is not logic.

= = = = =

Conclusion: (and I do mean Conclusion in the absolute and total sense for the whole fucking world): The only thing we're really trying to do is beat all previous dictators and lunatics to gain the Guinness Record for Maximum Evil and Maximum Insanity. Of course we've already won, but precisely because we're maximally evil and maximally bonkers, we can't stop there and we won't stop there.
  ¶ 4:03 AM

  SES


Self-Explanatory Skeletons
  ¶ 3:21 PM

  DeepState assassinates Brexit
When dissent can't be silenced by normal censorship, use AP methods. Make the dissidents look horrible. Alinsky works every time.

Is this the Gavrilo moment? Could be. Note the INSTANT response by UK govt. They knew what this was for.

Probably irrelevant but interesting historical coincidence.

And while I'm on APs, let's review why the Orlando thing is highly unlikely to be an intentional Alinsky event. All the usual AP lines are factored out. Was the shooter a "homophobe" designed to make all Christians look horrible and killable? Nope, he was a confirmed and open homo. Was he a devout Muslim, designed to make all Muslims look horrible and killable? Nope, he was marginally Muslim by heritage but violated all rules of Islam. Was he meant to force new gun control rules? Nope, he worked for DHS, which means he would qualify for a gun under ANY conceivable gun-control regime. Was he meant to make "anti-government" or "xenophobe buffoons" look bad? Nope, same thing. He worked for a DHS contractor specifically tasked to bring in Dreamers and avoid customs.

Of course this doesn't stop all of those forces from trying to use him. It just makes all of those forces look dumb for using an inappropriate agent. All of their arguments can be busted easily.

Labels: Age of Stings

  ¶ 8:29 AM

  More delightful Disruption
Google starts to threaten its own supporters.

As usual the bait is attractive: One company can perform all those tiresome iterations of applying different chemicals to different pathogens. Supposedly this frees up the Real Intellects to do Pure Thought.

The bait itself will DISRUPT the conventional order in Tenure World. When grad students are no longer needed, where will the next generation of Pure Intellects come from? What will students do while they're waiting to be picked as the next generation of Pure Intellects? How will they be picked? Answer: by popularity and attractiveness.

But we know the switch is coming soon. It always does. Google doesn't stop. Negative feedback is a characteristic of life, and Google is the opposite of life. The Pure Intellects are next in the unemployment line.

Pure Thought is the easiest thing of all to automate, because it doesn't require tiresome building of precise robotic gadgets to dispense and measure chemicals accurately without running wild and exploding the building. Pure Thought is the native language of computers. And when you disconnect Pure Thought from human hands, you get CRAZY Pure Thought. We already have too much CRAZY Pure Thought, as in the entire fields of Economics and "Climate Change", or the LHC experiments designed to generate black holes and eliminate the universe. We don't need MORE.

A few of the Pure Thinkers seem to be vaguely aware that the floodwater is lapping at their own jobs. Nothing will change until the flood takes out a few thousand Tech Tyrants and leaves them permanently unemployable.

Labels: Emersonian justice

  ¶ 3:40 AM

  One good thing
Bloomberg's best bitchboy Copkiller Condon appointed his fellow Bloomberg Boy as police chief. NYC Straub immediately turned out to be a fuckhead, a feral tyrant who SMASHED morale and destroyed the organization, both uniformed and bureaucratic sides. No surprise. That's NYC.

Copkiller Condon fought the police for a year, and finally had to give way in the face of a threatened total mutiny.

NYC Straub immediately began the usual NYC counterbarrage of lawsuits and media, and the city "government" weakly resisted with its own investigations. We actually have an investigation into why the investigation of the investigation is too slow.

Meanwhile, crime is increasing fast in the unfortunate city. We're beating Compton at its own game. Total chaos. High-quality NYC product, excellent Bloombergian result. Massa Bloomberg is well pleased with her/his house nigger Copkiller Condon, and with Condon's political defenders Copkiller Fitzsimmons and Copkiller Rydell.

Now one major piece of the NYC Straub chaos is coming unglued, as a judge rejects NYC Straub's lawsuit for wrongful termination.

Undoubtedly the multi-layered non-investigation will continue to fester.


Later thought: I should generalize the One Good Thing beyond this specific decision. Local judges are the One Good Thing, maybe the Only Good Thing. They steadily resist corruption and impose rationality. They're not perfect, but at the moment they're the only sane element in all layers of "government".

Labels: Heimatkunde

  ¶ 3:18 AM

  Constants and variables 44
Via ZeroHedge:

USDA figures out that the 'food desert' isn't valid. Low-income people simply don't choose healthy food.

[I've probably written this before, but it's directly connected to a current story so I'll write it again.]

The real distinction is easily visible by comparing the two Safeway stores that I use. The NW Blvd store is close to a low-income area with lots of welfare clients. Shadle is in a middle-middle area, stable retirees and young couples. Both stores have the same departments with roughly the same selection of food items.

I've learned that the NW Blvd store is the best place to buy snack items and canned food, while Shadle is best for fresh produce. Why is one store better? I asked the produce guy at Shadle once, and he said "We have better produce because the customers buy it faster."

Makes sense. Fast buying means constant new stock, slow buying means long shelf duration.

Even though the same items are available in both places, the low-income area buys more snacks and the middle-income area buys more tomatoes and broccoli.

Labels: Constants and Variables

  ¶ 5:26 PM

  Incompetently asked and unanswerable
Schools could do a lot of good if they'd handle ONE JOB.

Teach people the correct way to ASK A FUCKING QUESTION.

I used to encounter this on buses constantly when I worked downtown. Now I hear it much less often, but it's still notable when it happens.

After riding for a couple miles, lady walks up to the front and asks bus driver the following question, verbatim:

"You don't mnmnttwtnnm Garland. You don't go parallel [makes meaningless hand motion]."

The driver, suppressing his exasperation, asked the ONE QUESTION THAT MATTERS: "Where do YOU want to go?"

Lady still couldn't handle it. She asked "Where do you end up?"

Driver, obviously wanting to specify in fine detail where the lady should end up, said "Five Mile Park-n-Ride."

For some reason this was enough to convince the lady that she was on the wrong bus, and she got off at the next transfer point without ever saying WHERE SHE FUCKING WANTED TO GO.

Similar failures appear on the Spokane-News facebook page. Two examples right now:

"What's going down on the North Side?"

"It's at my apartment. What's up? Flashing lights."

WHERE ARE YOU? If you want an answer, GIVE THE RELEVANT INFORMATION.

= = = = =

Tacking on another completely random item. Wandering the web I noticed an Indonesian headline that ended with bagi bagi amplop. I think the world would be better off if we all spoke a language that can say bagi bagi amplop. You can't frown while saying bagi bagi amplop.

Labels: skill-estate

  ¶ 6:00 AM

  Asked and Answered
UK Telegraph used to provide a lot of these Asked-Answered pairs by accident. Since they smartphonified their website, they no longer provide anything at all. Totally useless even for unintentional funnies.

This one appeared on ZeroHedge just now. ZeroHedge is vastly smarter than Telegraph, so I'm sure this was NOT accidental...



... but still good.

Labels: Asked and answered

  ¶ 5:20 AM