Dial-a-frog
The Eurekalert writers are having fun with this one:

The FrogPhone introduces a new concept that allows researchers to "call" a frog habitat, any time, from anywhere, once the device has been installed. The device has been developed at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra and the University of Canberra in collaboration with the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and Region Frogwatch Program and the Australian National University.

The FrogPhone utilises 3G/4G cellular mobile data coverage and capitalises on the characteristic wideband audio of mobile phones, which acts as a carrier for frog calls. Real time frog calls can be transmitted across the 3G/4G network infrastructure, directly to the user's phone. This supports clear sound quality and minimal background noise, allowing users to identify the calls of different frog species.

Well, it's not a new concept. Call-up telemetry via telegraph has been common since 1870, and via telephone lines with sound since 1920. But I'll grant credit for cuteness. We can use some levity.

Labels: Morsenet of Things

  ¶ 6:51 AM

  Interesting but not quite meaningful yet....
Via New "Scientist":

Previously, devices have been attached to plants to record the vibrations caused by air bubbles forming and exploding – a process known as cavitation – inside xylem tubes, which are used for water transport. But this new study is the first time that sounds from plants have been measured at a distance.

On average, drought-stressed tomato plants made 35 sounds an hour, while tobacco plants made 11. When plant stems were cut, tomato plants made an average of 25 sounds in the following hour, and tobacco plants 15. Unstressed plants produced fewer than one sound per hour, on average.

There's no doubt that plants are intelligent. They have senses and outputs, and they think and communicate.

This particular set of outputs doesn't necessarily serve as communication. It could simply be the result of liquid moving through the veins and capillaries of the stem to reach the injured place or to redistribute water. Insects could certainly use the sound whether it's intentional or not.

Labels: Smarty-plants

  ¶ 12:20 AM

  Euclid would be proud
The vandal who ate the banana was NOT arrested because he was already known to be a criminal.

The vandal who wrote a

on the same wall was arrested because he was NOT known to be a criminal.

Sane people have known for many decades that "art" is pure fraud, but this takes the proof to the next step. This proves beyond all doubt that "art" is an integral part of Epstein's criminal network.

A parallel sequence happened a couple months ago in the realm of "science". Sane people have known for decades that big "science" is a fraud. During the 15 minutes when the Epstein window was open, we learned that several big fraudulent labs had close financial and personal ties to the Epstein mob.

The "performance art" piece titled Epstein's Suicide closed the window.

= = = = =

Later skill-related thought..... For many years I've been asking why there's no GUILD action in science. There are many honest scientists in fields like engineering and materials and medicine. The reputation of science is RUINED by the fraudsters in "climate" and "social science" and "economics". Worst of all is "particle physics", solely devoted to obliterating the universe with a black hole. Why don't the honest fields disown the dishonest and murderous ones?

Now the same plaintive question in art. There are plenty of honest artists in the more mundane areas of commercial graphics, and among freelancers on Etsy or similar platforms. They produce REAL paintings and pottery and jewelry, and sell their work for rational prices. Why don't they disown the fraudsters of "abstract" and "performance" and "installations" who are hogging the spotlight and the money?

Labels: Carbon Cult, skill-estate

  ¶ 11:28 PM

  Might be right
As usual, BBC's travel section has some interesting and fairly objective articles, totally unlike the pure Soros poison of the "news" section.

This article describes Point Roberts, a US enclave on the tip of Vancouver BC. Some people believe Point Roberts is used as a big safe-house for FBI operations like Agent Provocateur Protection.

A persistent rumour describes Point Roberts as a popular resettlement site for the US Federal Witness Protection Program, an initiative to assist informants who testify against criminals. Folklore says dozens of people have been given new identities and relocated here. In 2012, Atlantic.com’s City Lab suggested that 50 residents could be in the program.

Unlikely. FBI doesn't let rumors out.

But maybe it's true. Googlestreet untells the unstory of the uncity:



Interesting that Canada placed Diefenbaker Park right up against the border.

= = = = =

A few minutes later, YouTube 'suggested for you' correctly translated my silly puns:

BBC: Maps reveal hidden truths of the world's cities.

Which is more scary, the officially invisible city or the instant accurate translation of semi-coded language?

Labels: Askedanswered

  ¶ 12:29 AM

  She's precisely correct
The "independents" are mocking this Twitter post from Hillary:

In the United States of America, no one is above the law.

Not ironic or paradoxical or hypocritical, just factual.

Hillary is the law. Nobody is above Hillary.

Labels: Answered better than asked

  ¶ 12:04 AM

  Not needed, not better
Dave Rubin is launching an alternative to Patreon.

Jordan Peterson is also launching a similar effort, which isn't ready yet. Peterson smells like Agent Provocateur to me, so I'm not interested.

Rubin seems benign, but it's not clear why his effort is needed or better than existing methods. The definitely good part is paid subscriptions instead of advertising. Customer, not product. But Patreon already works by subscription, and Patreon has taken down a number of "controversial" creators. The same external forces that act on Patreon will be acting on Rubin's setup. Paypal can shut off the payments whenever it wants.


Not needed:

All sorts of "controversial" info is easily available through all sorts of channels. If Youtube chops a clip, it doesn't matter. Many other clips with the same "controversy" are still there.

I've been saying lots of "controversial" things here for 15 years, and I've never had anything taken down for that reason. The only things that were removed were a couple of OTR clips and a couple of photographs, both for copyright reasons, not political reasons.


Not better:

One commenter says that paywalls make it hard to persuade people by inviting them to look at a video or text.

Persuasion doesn't work that way. Nobody is going to watch a clip that comes from The Horrible Other Side, whether it costs money or not. Discussion and debate are totally pointless.

Changes of attitude happen through serendipity.

When you're working on a neutral and important task, working with people of other religions and ethnicities, you see the good and bad parts of their ethnicities more objectively. You lose both positive and negative prejudices.

When you're reading old technical or literary material, you bump into references to other ways of thinking in a non-threatening context. That's how I changed my attitudes toward Islam and the Soviet system around 2012. It wasn't from watching Al-Jazeera or RT.

But you have to be open to serendipity first. You need to unplug the TV. You need to be dissatisfied with standard modes of thought and propaganda.

= = = = =

Apologetic sidenote: When I first wrote about attempts to compete with the tech-monsters last year, I didn't understand the payment connection. I assumed falsely that subscription vs advertising was the only variable. Later I realized that payment systems were the real controller.
  ¶ 10:32 AM

  Bad idea
Some of the TSLAQ twitterites are responding to Elon's latest victory over "laws" and morality by engaging in counter-bullying, perhaps on the grounds that he can't sue everyone.

Bad idea. Elon won't learn anything from it, he won't feel shame, he WILL sue all of you, and he WILL win. Most likely he will obtain an injunction prohibiting all criticism and short-selling, and this injunction WILL be ruthlessly enforced by SEC.

We need to give up the suicidal myth that "laws" and "constitutions" exist. There is only one law in this part of the world, and Elon is safely inside it.

Labels: $TSLAQ, Sorosia

  ¶ 9:19 AM

  That's what Morris was doing!
Chris Hedges said that Bill Clinton turned Democrats into Republicans and turned Republicans into crazy far-far-right-KKK-HITLERS.

Leaving aside the standard nonsensical terminology, he's onto something. I hadn't thought back to that period for a while. Looking at the '90s in light of Hillary's later employment of Trump as Pied Piper, the technique makes sense.

AHA! That's what Dick Morris was doing. In the '90s we were happy that Dick had "changed sides" and started "working against the Clintons." Nope. He was just turning us into a precisely fitted foil for the Clinton machine. The machine needed to move all the elite and soccer-mom and tech-monster types from R to D, so Dick (assisted by Rush, Fox, etc) shaped the Repoofs into a maximally aversive landscape for those types.

It's the same trick Roy Cohn pulled over and over. First with McCarthy, then with the Birchers, then with Trump. Create a precisely designed villain-magnet that will attract all the people who need to be slaughtered. Then slaughter them.
  ¶ 2:07 AM

  The sun rose this morning
And Elon gets away with every crime in the books.

Equally predictable.

Blackmail is everything. Mossad never loses.

Labels: $TSLAQ, infinite infinite infinite infinite evil, infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE lunacy

  ¶ 2:36 PM

  Fractal banana
ZH correctly mocks the latest idiocy in the world of "art" where name and provenance are EXACTLY EVERYTHING. An "artist" who apparently has a "name" has sold a plain old banana ductaped to a wall for $120,000.

ZH missed a parallel, which may not be a national phenomenon. In local grocery stores, buying one banana is the standard way for food-stamp customers to get cash for drugs. They slap down the banana, insert the EBT card in the scanner, and ask for $50 extra. Apparently it's illegal to just use the EBT card as an ATM; you have to buy something that counts as food. Real food is unnecessary for a methie, so the transaction is shaped for minimum nutrition and maximum cashback.



So the banana as physical icon for totally wasted money is fractally valid at all scales.

= = = = =

Later: A commenter at ZH probably got closest to the truth. "Conceptual art" is a money-laundering scheme, and the evidence disappears on its own.

Labels: Entertainment, meta-entertainment

  ¶ 1:09 PM

  Still grumpy
Speaking of monsters who get paid and recognized:

"Expert" Krugman is paid millions and gets Nobel Prizes....

OK, this is extremely weird. I received an email saying that a payment has been received into my blockchain wallet. But I don't have a blockchain wallet. Presumably there's some kind of fraud going on, but what?

... and he can't recognize an ECONOMIC fraud.

Some of the commenters are blaming Krugman's age (OK Boomer and all that) but they're wrong.

This is the oldest setup in the world. And this instance actually reverts BY NAME to the oldest version of the oldest setup, the wallet drop.

TV and radio used to warn us about scams and frauds. Even among the scattered remnants of old TV and radio shows, I can immediately cite two examples of the wallet drop: This is your FBI, 1945 and Racket Squad, 1951.

Modern versions are better known as the Nigerian Prince. The rig is always the same. You stumble onto a potential "windfall", then you pay to get access to the "windfall", then the "windfall" disappears after you pay.

Krugman doesn't recognize any of this. Why the fuck should we recognize him?

What's the fucking purpose of an economics expert who KNOWS LESS THAN WE DO ABOUT ECONOMICS?

= = = = =

As long as I'm citing old radio, It Pays to be Ignorant was an explicit parody of "experts" who know less than we do. It was modeled on Info Please, which had a panel of arrogant condescending NYC "experts" like Krugman. Ignorant had three intentional idiots who found an infinite number of ways to miss the point.

Example questions:

How many lakes are in the five Great Lakes?

Which wild animal is on the buffalo nickel?

Can you name a President who started life as a baby?

What liquid is contained in a fountain pen?

When is a June Bride married?

And the best of all:

Can you name the people who star in the radio program It Pays to be Ignorant?

The "experts" were expert comedians. Their obtuse struggles with self-evident facts were genuinely funny. It's not so funny when an obtuse idiot advises governments and corporations.

Labels: Entertainment, meta-entertainment

  ¶ 5:32 AM

  Grumpy
Reviewing yesterday's thought that labor unions were banks for human capital. They improved skills through training and experience (interest); they protected skills from low-priced competition and theft (vaults); and they made sure the skills were employed to create real value (investment).

The Soviet system continued this respect for human capital long after it was lost in the Soros world. Free training that emphasized skills; no offshoring of industries; and patents that recognized innovation instead of killing it.

= = = = =

I got into a grumpy mood today, comparing things that I shouldn't try to compare. I can't really complain; my creative work is recognized in a small way and paid in a small way. Not entirely futile. The work itself is tremendously satisfying.

Still, it's annoying to see what gets MASSIVELY recognized and paid. Pure destruction. Raw sin and crime. Killing and torturing millions of people. Obliterating the universe by making black holes. Using science to serve bankers and intel agencies.

And specifically on this topic, the Github Syndrome. Constant changes in technology, always expanding the required universe of compatibility. Each increase in global compatibility knocks out huge pieces of skill. It's not just a question of changing a presentation to fit the new tech; some forms of presentation that were possible in the Windows universe are IMPOSSIBLE in the HTML/SVG/CSS universe. Even if you can make it work for one combination of browsers and iPhones, it won't work for some other.

Just as globalized language grinds off all fine points of metaphor and idiom, globalized tech grinds off the fine points of interactive presentation.

Big question: If labor unions had survived into the era of software, would they have improved things? Would a union manage to slow down the Githubbers?

Labels: Asked and unanswerable, Natural law = Soviet law, skill-estate

  ¶ 2:33 PM

  Speaking arcs in action
Old pre-1900 tech books made vague references to 'speaking arcs'. Before loudspeakers, experimenters were able to use arc lights as sound emitters. In the same way that lightning produces thunder, changing the strength of ionization created a compression wave around the arc. Supposedly a German train station used a 'speaking arc' for a PA system to announce arrivals and departures.

Here's a specific non-vague example, from a modern history of radio in the Seattle area.



Transcript:

A "musical trolley car" on the Seattle-Tacoma interurban line, about 1915. Experimenter Paul Hackett, working in Kent Valley with an arc transmitter and powerful microphone, discovered his signals were modulating the nearby trolley line's power system. Arc lamps on the cars acted like receivers and reproduced Hackett's music and voice transmissions, to the delight of riders.

One of the tests was also picked up by an electric heater in the home of a woman who happened to know Hackett. Recognizing his voice, the startled lady was sure the inventor was hiding under her bed.

Bear in mind that Morse was common in 1915, but voice transmissions were unfamiliar until about 1922.



Electric heaters would have been effective speakers for wired radio, with a resistive coil focused in a parabolic reflector. Magnetostriction.

Note also the Seattle to Tacoma interurban line. Interurbans connected everything, and often ran at 70 MPH. There is a modern light rail system from Seattle to the SeaTac airport, but it's not going to reach Tacoma again until 2030.

Labels: 1901, Entertainment

  ¶ 10:12 PM

  One area where skill DOESN'T matter.
The TSLAQ folks who are actually present at the Elon vs Unsworth trial are pretty sure that Elon will win. They believe Unsworth's lawyer is incompetent.

This seems to be a long-lasting and general observation. I've had two direct contacts with lawyers and three 'observations' during jury calls. I was strongly UNimpressed with the performance of every lawyer. None of them had any skills, and some weren't even literate.

The first lawyer, hired by parents in 1969 for my marijuana charge, was supposedly topnotch and well-connected. He was a direct descendant of the Shad Hanna dynasty that ruled Ohio for decades. He didn't know what he was doing. In the most recent jury call, the Saudi defendant was rich and could hire the best lawyer. His lawyer didn't know what he was doing, and the prosecutor wasn't any better. The case was full of ambiguities. I might have acquitted if the defense lawyer hadn't insulted our intelligence at every turn.

I suspect the real variable has nothing to do with the courtroom skills of lawyers, because "law" doesn't exist. Blackmail exists. Elon is going to win because he is Satan. He has no moral code or limitations at all, and he has strong connections to Mossad and USA Deepstate. He used nasty fixers and "investigators" to ruin Unsworth, and probably subverted Unsworth's lawyer as well. Elon operates outside of all "laws" and regulations. All bureaucrats and officials know that he has the goods on them.

In short, lawyers don't matter because "law" doesn't matter.

= = = = =

Nasty filthy update a few days later: Unsworth's lawyer wasn't incompetent, he was a traitor. We don't know if he was bought and blackmailed before the trial or during, but now he's joyfully proclaiming his loyalty to Lord Elon.

Labels: $TSLAQ, Constants and Variables, Jail mode, NOT skill-estate

  ¶ 2:22 PM

  The imperceptible Insatiable
I've described a classic Insatiable response to Deplorables...

Other people enjoy discussing my faults in my presence, knowing that the bottom-status item will not fight. One of them realized I was listening. He gave me the standard imperceptible headshake with hooded eyes and pursed lips, meaning "You are shit".

... but I've never tried to catch a video example of the gesture. Now somebody has caught it in an interaction of Kamala and Tulsi. Kamala is unquestionably Insatiable. Tulsi isn't Deplorable in the broad picture, but she's clearly Deplorable as seen by Kamala.

One of the commenters uses almost the same words:

Next time someone embarrasses me with a valid, fact-filled argument for which I have zero retort, I’ll smirk, disapprovingly shake my head, and pretend to scribble on a notepad

Labels: Entertainment

  ¶ 7:02 AM

  The most important thing about unions
Soros-sponsored TAC has a pretty good article on the importance of unions as a counterforce to robber barons.

The author makes the same point I made a few months ago about the three ages:

= = = = = START REPRINT:

Between the two Gilded Ages we had the Union Age, 1933 to 1979. Predatory corporations existed, but they were CONSTRAINED by hardass Fed regulators AND by hardass unions. They knew exactly how far they could grow, and they didn't try to go beyond the limits. They were forced to operate on PROFIT and DIVIDENDS instead of share value, which means they were forced to have EMPLOYEES and PRODUCTS.

I've covered that territory too often.

New thought:

During a Gilded Age, robber barons have names. Everyone can list several robber barons. During the Union Age, there weren't any named or famed robber barons. In fact the most famous leaders were union leaders.

Gilded Age 1 = Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Morgan, Mellon, Stanford.

Union Age = Jimmy Hoffa, James Petrillo, Walter Reuther.

Gilded Age 2 = Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Jobs, Musk.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

I wrote a comment on the article appreciating the main focus and adding the most important aspect of unions: SKILL aka HUMAN CAPITAL.

Humans are meant to be useful. Specifically, men are meant to MAKE THINGS. Unions were organizations of makers, and they did everything necessary to preserve the GOD-ASSIGNED DUTY of their members.

In writing the comment I also caught something that I hadn't thought of before. I've said before that unions amassed and protected human capital by training and improving the skills of their members.

I hadn't noticed before that unions protected their human capital from cheap knockoffs and foreign competition. When unions were in charge of a workplace, they had strict rules forbidding non-union workers from doing jobs that were part of the union's skill capital. These rules often seemed silly, but they were the most important part of the union's task.

The analogy between money capital and human capital was complete. Unions treated human capital the same way banks treated money capital. Savings earned interest (experience and training); savings were guarded against theft; savings were employed to create more value.

In the '70s unions lost the human capital aspect and focused solely on wages, which really meant the wealth of the union leaders. They were perfectly willing to destroy entire categories of skills to maintain the wealth of the leaders.

Unions lost their DUTY and deserved to fail.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law, skill-estate

  ¶ 11:01 PM

  CYBRTRK's origin
As I peruse old car mags while eating, I've been halfway watching for previous examples of Elon's idiot CYBRTRK. Nobody could have done something so stupid, even as a concept car.

But there is a predecessor. It wasn't a car or even an actual concept car. It was a concept of a concept car.



The '49 Ford had this emblem on the decorative chrome strip above the doorhandles. The strip was unnecessary and the emblem was even more unnecessary. It added another rattle to an already rattly car. It's not clear what the designers were trying to do. If they were stirring up anticipation for Ford's next product, it couldn't have worked. Nobody wanted to ride in this grotesque thing.

Ford made a few concept cars in the mid-50s, but none remotely resembled this thing. Why would anyone want a car with a gable roof? Houses have gable roofs.

In fact the CYBRTRK drawing was actually LESS modern and LESS trend-setting than the Ford itself. Most writers agree that the '49 was the main influence for the straight-through design of the next two decades. A few cars got there slightly earlier; Packard and Hudson and Kaiser had the flow in '48. But Ford did it right, with fenders above the hood and trunk, and taillights at the same height as the headlights. Ford's actual next product in '52 was even cleaner and sharper. Chrysler followed the trend in '53, then GM in '54.

I was thinking about citing earlier examples, but one of the excellent writers at CurbsideClassic did the whole job just now, starting in the '20s.

[The '50 Rambler seemed to follow the '49 Ford directly, almost a copy... but in fact the Ford was copied from Nash. George Walker had designed the Rambler, then moved to Ford and brought the idea with him. Ford was able to tool up and switch faster. Unethical but not illegal.]

Later: Another predecessor came from Ford. The 1966 'Magic Cruiser' concept car had a similar shape and a similar flip-up rear.

Labels: $TSLAQ

  ¶ 5:29 AM

  Meanwhile,
Meanwhile, in the sane part of the world, Russia and China just turned on the first natural gas pipeline from Siberia to China.



We're tangled up in endless meaningless "court" proceedings and "environmental" proceedings that delay the start of every project by 30 years, effectively canceling every project before it starts.

Russia and China are GETTING SHIT DONE, linking the Eastern Hemisphere with pipes and roads and railroads, factoring out the Western Hemisphere and Ctrl-Zing Columbus.

Irrelevant: The ceremony in the video strikes me as historically confused and anticlimactic, with old-fashioned voice commands and permissions driving a mouse click. Since the commands were obviously staged, they should have staged real hands opening a real valve.

Later: Oddly, RT got this story wrong in a way that underrates Russian capability and skill. Rick Sanchez and two correspondents all stated clearly that the public event marked the start of construction, not the end. They were discussing the potential benefits when the project is eventually done. This made me doubt the Russia Insight video, but many other sources including US media agree that the pipeline is now finished and running.

Labels: skill-estate

  ¶ 6:14 AM

  Another stage prop
More misuse of tariffs by Trump, supposedly to punish other countries but actually to punish America.

Now he's threatening to impose tariffs on steel from Argentina and Brazil, who are supposedly using currency rates to undercut American farmers. Nonsense.

We constantly export twice as much as we import with Argentina.

Ditto for Brazil.

Our ag imports from Argentina are almost entirely tropical fruits that we can't produce here. This is already the CORRECT form of trade by good populist standards.

Our ag imports from Brazil are mainly coffee. Again a crop we can't produce here.

Argentina and Brazil are NOT competing in any way with American farmers. They may be competing with American steel producers, but the reason we lost our steel producers was EPA rules, not foreign competition. If we hadn't closed down metals and mining in the '70s, there wouldn't have been an opening for sane countries with sane regulations to expand their industries.

So what's the purpose? Trump isn't hurting China, which will continue trading with both countries. He may slightly bother the steel industry in Brazil and Argentina, but they are already moving their focus eastward. This threat will strengthen their connections to the Silk Road, which will hurt our EXPORTS more than our imports.

Mainly Trump is just building another stage prop that he can move around to manipulate the Dow and the Fed. His tweet explicitly aims the action at the Fed.

And who loses from infinite Dow and zero interest? Americans. The same Americans (including me) who foolishly and stupidly voted for this vile faker.

Labels: malign misattribution

  ¶ 5:16 AM

  +Gold = -Soros
Via ZH, Serbia and Slovakia are joining the movement to bring back their own gold from British storage, and to buy more gold.

ZH attributes the rush to a remembered fear from WW2, when Krauts were grabbing everyone's gold. There's a much more recent example: Venezuela. When it asked the Bank of England for permission to take its own gold back, BOE said no.

Admittedly Venezuela is a mixed-up case. (1) The gold may have been pawned instead of stored. The stories aren't clear. (2) Venezuela has plenty of gold in the ground, which it could be mining for great profit if Maduro wasn't so fucking stupid.

I don't know why any sane country would let BOE store its gold in the first place. There must have been a reason, but it was a bad reason. If you want to talk about historical betrayal, England is the champion.

The map of gold-buying countries is pretty damn close to the map of non-Soros countries, ie sane countries.

India and China are special cases. Both have always been fans of gold, regardless of political changes. China is running up huge debts like a Sorosian country, and simultaneously buying gold like a non-Sorosian.

Labels: Constants and Variables, Sorosia, storage

  ¶ 12:11 AM

  Hard to find analogies
Catch and release is a peculiar tactic when you think about it.

The courts and the cops are two parts of the same system. They derive their funding from the same tax revenue, and nominally respond to the same legislature.

The courts INTENTIONALLY release criminals who LEGALLY should be kept in jail, and the cops then have to RISK THEIR LIVES 80% of the time to repeatedly arrest the same few professional criminals who will then be released in an hour to create more havoc.

I can't think of any other system that dysfunctions this way.

Try some examples:

1. Chevy repairmen have to spend 80% of their time sending the same few engines back to the GM factory, which then returns the engines immediately, untouched, with a "fully rebuilt" tag.

2. Hairstylists have to spend 80% of their time on the same three women, who report to the Hairstylists Union immediately to have their hair misstyled by the Hairstylists Union so the regular stylists can redo the same cut.

3. Programmers have to spend 80% of their time debugging the same program over and over, because the beta testers working for the same company undo each bugfix immediately after they receive it for testing.

These examples are bizarre nonsense.

In each job there are real repeat offenders: Unfixable engines, stubbornly unbeautifiable women, bugs that pop up over and over. But the real repeats are NOT created by saboteurs within the same company. In these normal situations the parts of one company cooperate to solve or eliminate the problem. Melt down the unfixable engines, politely dissuade the unstylable women, discard the bad programs and start over with fresh code.

Labels: #bluelivesmatter, Asked and unanswerable

  ¶ 7:27 AM

  Is this a change? Maybe.
Deutsche Welle, normally solid Soros, seems to be wavering just a bit, and one Kraut judge is also wavering just a bit.

DW has an article, categorized as News not Opinion, which acknowledges a big part of the problem:

Thousands of migrants in Germany have applied for asylum multiple times and return to the country after having been deported, according to a report by German newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag published on Sunday.

There are nearly 5,000 asylum-seekers who have reapplied for asylum after being deported from Germany since 2012, according to the report, which cites official government figures. Some of the asylum-seekers willingly left Germany, knowing deportation was imminent. The then returned to German to make another application for asylum, according to the report.

Asylum seekers who have been deported and have entry bans are jailed for a few months for re-entering the country, according to the report. Arrests and longer sentences are rare.

Catch and release is a HUGE problem in USA STRONG as well, and not just in immigration. It's an even bigger problem with ordinary criminals. The police are trying to do their job, but the "courts" are smashing civilization and overburdening the cops with 5000-time PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS who commit the same crime several times a day, except for occasional hour-long coffee breaks behind bars.

Normal people, not just ULTRA ULTRA ULTRA ULTRA FAR FAR FAR FAR RIGHT KKKTRUMPHITLERHITLER EXTREMISTHITLER WHITEHITLER NATIONALISTHITLER TERRORISTHITLERS, see this in their daily lives and know it's a problem, but the media and dysgovernment NEVER EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE the problem. Anyone who ACCURATELY OBSERVES the problem is jailed solidly and permanently, not for an hour.

Now the premier Soros Satan of EU media has said the same thing that the ULTRA TERRORISTHITLERS have been saying for years.

= = = = =

A Kraut judge has also acknowledged the truth of reality, though in a peculiar and abstract way.

A German judge ruled that an election campaign poster reading "Migration kills!" was a partly accurate description of reality and does not incite racial hatred. The campaign poster was used ahead of the European parliamentary elections earlier in 2019. In full, it reads: "Stop the invasion: Migration kills!"

Judge Andreas Hofer, who made the decision, cited "historical movements of people" from 5,000 years ago to the present day that directly led to "death and ruin," including the expulsion of the Israelites from Egypt and the colonization of the Americas. On that basis, he said that the poster "at least partly reflected reality."

Huh? He's missing the point entirely. It's true that every movement of people involves trouble and conflict and deaths, but each migration has a different PURPOSE. The current migration in Europe is neither ordinary colonialism nor an expulsion. It's an intentional invasion of migrants sponsored and inspired by Soros. The migrants themselves are not the problem. Soros is the problem, and the EU/US/UK dysgovernments who work in tandem with Soros to SLAUGHTER their own Deplorables.

Are we seeing a minor signal of shifting elite opinion? Hard to tell.

Labels: #bluelivesmatter, #DeplorableLivesMatter, Sorosia

  ¶ 11:11 PM

  Ed misses a point, sort of
Ed Niedermeyer, as always, gives a deep and coherent set of thoughts....

We still have a collective memory of a time when cars were created by go-with-your-gut auteurs like Musk, in the form of classic cars that make modern cars and automakers look banal and bureaucratic. What Musk is selling is the fantasy that we can (or should) return to that era.

I think he's missing a subtle but important point.

The 'auteurs' who succeeded were working for big companies that already had many lines of profitable non-fantastic cars. The Corvette and Mustang were irrational cars built from a base of sturdy reliable economy cars. The original Corvette was mostly '53 Chevy, down to the 235 six and Powerglide. The original Mustang was a fancified Falcon. Development was relatively easy because there wasn't much new. Most of the package had been produced and tested in huge quantities for many years.

The auteurs who were more like Elon (in a corporate sense) went the other way, toward too much rationality. The Everyman's Car was the universal auteur fantasy. It always failed because Everyman's Car is a used car. You can't make a real car cheap enough for Everyman to buy new.

Elon is going both ways. His explicit appeal is strictly numerical and precise because his intended audience is autists, not auteurs. His cultists are thrilled by the performance numbers and carbon footprint numbers. Even the CYBERTRK appeals strictly to numberoids. It's not an organic shape like real cars; it's an abstract Euclidean heptagon. It's beautiful to Plato, not to Aristotle.
  ¶ 3:40 PM

  Not too swift
Modular banking mode again....

Via ZH,

On Friday six European countries issued a bombshell joint statement declaring their intent to join INSTEX, or the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges, a European special-purpose vehicle serving as a 'SWIFT alternative' to bypass US sanctions on Iran.

Finland, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden released a joint statement asserting it's of "the utmost importance to the preservation and full implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA) on Iran’s nuclear program by all parties involved."

"In light of the continuous European support for the agreement and the ongoing efforts to implement the economic part of it and to facilitate legitimate trade between Europe and Iran, we are now in the process of becoming shareholders of the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (Instex) subject to completion of national procedures," the statement reads.

France, Germany and Britain are already part of INSTEX, so it's now most of Europe.

At the moment there are several separate alternatives to the globalist SWIFT, each serving a distinct but somewhat overlapping set of countries. This is a much better counterforce than Bitcoin, because the PURPOSE of these separate alternatives is to BE SEPARATE, not to serve the interests of NSA.

Real business is BILATERAL and MODULAR. Overlapping modularity makes it harder for USA STRONG to play the sanctions game. When everyone was solely linked through SWIFT, we could kill one country's economy with a single flip of the blockade switch. With separate and overlapping small arrangements, nobody is totally vulnerable. We can try to block one of the networks, but each member of that network can now shift its transactions to other networks.



The best part of this particular network is that it breaks the power of the Saudi/Israel mob. Our war on Persia is fought under contract to Saudi and Israel. Our war is growing more futile as our control levers are wilting and melting in our hands.
  ¶ 2:10 PM

  Observations from real experts
Continuing this week's modularity theme....

Some observations on bitcoin from an econ blogger who has contact with real bankers. The bankers are telling him:

1 bearer style assets are user hostile and wont catch on
2 conflating settlement and payments is bad news
3 final settlement not required for payments
4 hard to financialize something which resists regulation

= = = = =

1 and 4 are sort of conditional. It's possible though unlikely that bitcoin will become more user-friendly. Bitcoin resists regulation because bitcoin is NSA, not because bitcoin is "decentralized". NSA wants to avoid the usual written regulations so it can use bitcoin for tyranny and blackmail.

2 and 3 are intrinsic to the whole process of banking and business. These are not usually discussed in the context of bitcoin, and I hadn't thought about them before.

Bitcoin is incurably and intractably GLOBAL. Every transaction requires automatic settlement, and nominal permission, by everyone on the whole chain.

Real banking, like all real business, is always modular and bilateral, a single wire connecting buyer and seller in a trust relationship. The buyer who writes a check trusts that the bank will sooner or later transfer funds to the seller's account, and the seller trusts the bank to give him the money. Neither party needs to know how and when the bank handles the intermediate steps of the transfer.

In earlier centuries, and even now in unconventional banking like scrip and hawala, the settlement happened rarely and bilaterally. Each bank was fully modular. Each bank maintained a pile of real money through its normal savings and loan activities with its own customers. Each bank would keep a ledger page of its credits and debits to each of the other banks. Once a year, Bank 1 and Bank 2 would transfer their net result in gold to null out the differential. Bank 1 and Bank 3 would transfer their pairwise net result, and so on. In an active system those net differences tend to be small because there are lots of checks going both ways between each pair of banks. Each bank's customers didn't know about the transfers and didn't need to know.

Labels: MMT, Patient things, Real World Math, scrip

  ¶ 7:28 AM

  When the 10th Amendment was real
Reviewing Graybill's Law:

The people of Free-Trade countries are therefore driven into the few occupations which are left, by reason of the destruction of their formerly more varied pursuits. Hence those diversified talents with which men are endowed are not developed but remain latent and unused, an incalculable detriment to the prosperity of their respective countries.

Graybill works the same way at ALL SCALES, from cells to worlds.

I've previously discussed how modularity in a city helped develop and maintain the skills of black people. When all ethnic groups have to compete in the same global market, only a few skills are favored.

In the realm of radio, I've discussed how distinct local stations developed and maintained the talents of local musicians and actors, who couldn't possibly make it in Hollywood.

Here's an example of modularity helping to develop engineering skills.

Globalism requires each module to know what the others are doing. Modularity frees up each entity to perform its duty with full attention. But Nature sometimes forces globalist knowledge into a localist situation. Do you surrender to globalism and break all the boundaries? Do you let the biggest and nastiest element have a total monopoly?

No, you don't have to surrender. Federal radio regulators in the '30s were devoted to maintaining localism and balancing big vs small, despite the physical limits imposed by the ether. There were only about 100 bandwidth channels in the broadcast band, which meant that many stations had to be assigned to each frequency. Low-power stations could be safely assigned to the same freq without interference, but higher-power stations posed a problem. One solution was time-sharing. There were dozens of sharing arrangements, some of which lasted into the 2000s.

One such arrangement linked KFAB in Lincoln and WBBM in Chicago.

From a modern book about the history of radio in Nebraska.

Having to leave the air during prime network programming in the evening hours was a problem that needed to be solved. A break came at the end of 1931 when KOIL 1260 dropped CBS and snatched the more popular NBC Blue from KFAB. It turned out to be a fortuitous move for KFAB. KFAB engineers and management realized that with CBS, programming during the restricted 7:30 to 10 p.m. hours would match that of WBBM, the Chicago CBS affiliate with which KFAB shares time. KFAB conceivably could remain on the air during the evening hours, but only if the audio and the radio frequencies of the two stations could be perfectly matched. Any slight variations between the two stations on the air at the same time would create annoying interference for listeners in areas where the signals overlap.

WBBM and CBS were on board with the idea. KFAB took over the less popular CBS network on January 8, 1932, and CBS engineers went to work to find a way to get the nighttime signals and audio of the two stations synchronized.

Synchronization was necessary because, in an area where the two station’s coverage overlaps, the two signals beat against each other producing an audible note that’s equal to the difference in the signal frequencies. That note can range from a low growl to a high tone. The greater the frequency difference, the higher the note. If the signal frequencies are within a cycle of each other, the note is too low to be audible.

Also to be synchronized was the program feed. It takes 26 milliseconds for the network audio to travel from Chicago over phone lines to Lincoln. This difference would be heard in the overlap area as an annoying echo.

The frequency problem was solved with a dedicated phone line that carried a tone, its variations being commands that would adjust the two transmitter frequencies together, but the audio delay was a harder problem. With CBS and WBBM footing the bill, engineers worked on a way to create a 26-millisecond delay at the Chicago transmitter in order to match the audio arriving 26 milliseconds later at the Lincoln transmitter.

For several months while the electronic delay system was being perfected and constructed, a relatively primitive non-electrical delay was developed. It used a 23-foot pipe with a speaker at one end and a microphone at the other. The distance the sound traveled through the pipe created the delay. The audio output of the acoustical delay was a bit narrow but acceptable for the time being and was used successfully for about nine months. The electronic audio delay when completed consisted of a lengthy series of filter circuits, equalizers, and fourteen amplifiers.

Those engineers were having fun. The FEDERAL REQUIREMENT OF LOCALISM gave them a reason to develop a unique solution, transferring KNOWLEDGE between the modules through a singular dedicated channel, without turning all variables into top-down global variables. Note especially that WBBM, the bigger station in the bigger city, paid for the work and compromised its own signal to let KFAB gain profit.

Now KFAB's loyal listeners could leave the dial on 770 during the important prime-time hours, and receive CBS with a strong local signal.

Labels: defensible times, skill-estate

  ¶ 1:22 AM

  Narwhal tusk!
Speaking of weapons and tools... ZH focuses on the HERO who stopped the latest "terrorist" attack by grabbing the nearest effective weapon and using it. The nearest effective weapon was a five-foot narwhal tusk displayed on the wall of a fish market. Another HERO grabbed a fire extinguisher and used it effectively.

Those are the dudes who should be running the police and army. Innate defenders who respond to an emergency with instant rationality and imagination.

Will UK give them knighthoods and hire them to manage the police? No. We know what UK will do. UK will imprison the HEROES for "hate crimes", and will continue to leave "terrorists" free to commit more crimes, as this one was. (He had been "arrested" and released with an electronic monitor, which clearly wasn't being monitored.)

That's the PURPOSE of "terrorism". That's why Sorosian dysgovernments fund and organize "terrorists". Keep the public in maximum fear and chaos, punish and exterminate self-defense in all forms.

REMEMBER: Soros's holocaust has already matched his role model Adolf's record, even without counting the millions of war casualties. And he's not stopping. Insatiable psychopaths never stop.

Labels: defensible spaces, Sorosia

  ¶ 12:12 AM

  Just an exotic and mysterious place
Another reminder of the vital difference between a non-interventionist country and an empire.

In a properly modular mechanism or program or world, each module or gearbox or country doesn't need to know what the other modules are doing. Each module is free to perform its own duty with full attention.

In a globalized mechanism or program or world, each part needs to keep track of the other parts, because the other parts can intrude or invade on this part's variables or shafts or life. The invading part needs to know about the invaded parts so it can slaughter the victims with maximum efficiency.

= = = = =

An ad from a Los Angeles radio mag in 1924, during non-interventionist Harding's term.

I happened to see it at the same moment when I was listening to Tulsi and Joe Rogan discussing our recent fake killing of our fake ISIS leader al-Baghdadi.



Dance to the Thief of Bagdad!

Bagdad wasn't a place we were obliterating, or the locative surname of a fake "terrorist" we were fake killing. It wasn't a place where we had killed a competent secular government that offered tolerance to Christians, and replaced it with chaos and genocide. It wasn't a source of refugees who were weaponized by Soros to destroy America and Europe.

Bagdad was just part of the Mysterious Orient. We could impute glamor and romance to its exotic arts and dances. We were probably wrong, but it DIDN'T FUCKING MATTER IF WE WERE WRONG.

Labels: Alternate universe, From rights to duties

  ¶ 3:25 PM

  Ah. That's better.
A fitting finale for my Objective History Mode week.

Joe Rogan interviews Tulsi, and she finally gets a chance to talk Objective History in full paragraphs without idiotic interruptions and idiotic questions. Rogan asks hard questions, but never asks trite or trivial questions.



Been waiting for this for a long time. Should have happened earlier. Still not convinced of Tulsi's intentions, but her grasp of HARDASS REALITY is unquestionable.
  ¶ 10:37 AM

  Interesting statement from Macron
Still in objective history mode!

Granted that Macron is something like Trump and Boris, capable of saying all sorts of things without meaning them... still, if you take this as a policy statement, it's a big change.

Is our enemy today Russia? Or China? Is it the goal of NATO to designate them as enemies? I don't believe so. Our common enemy today is terrorism, which has hit each of our countries.

First evidence of HARDASS REALISM from an EU leader. Russia hasn't attacked Europe since 1940. China has never attacked Europe. Neither of them WANTS or INTENDS to attack Europe.

Russia is a crucial trade partner and a FRIEND if Europe will let it be a friend. China is a major trade partner but not a friend.

If you apply REALISM to the second part, this goes even farther.

Who is in charge of the "terrorists"? USA and Soros.

Aside from "terrorists", who made the latest conventional military attack on Europe? USA in the '90s.

NATO is never going to fight against Deepstate and Soros and Adelson, so Macron probably doesn't mean to carry the implication all the way. But the first part is good enough.
  ¶ 5:09 AM

  Dubious but scary thought
I think there's something more to Elon's CYBERTRK than a simple Sucker Filter. He's expanding the acceptable range of sadism and murder for his cultists.

I wrote in 2015:

= = = = = START REPRINT:

The old NRA slogan "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" applies correctly to guns, and also to normal autos and most other tools.

A gun or car or hammer or knife or screwdriver or weed-wacker can be a weapon... but only when used with specific deadly intention.

The slogan does NOT apply to autonomous cars. These weapons do kill people on their own, without any human intention.

Hold on. This seems complicated and subtle. Something is missing.

After thinking and walking about it, I formed a chain of reasoning:

What about a mousetrap? When I cock a trap and leave it in a mouseroad, I've created an autonomous weapon. It's programmed to detect a mouse (of below-median intelligence) and kill it.

What about a humantrap? When a store owner gets tired of thefts and sets up a shotgun with a tripwire, he has created an autonomous weapon. It's programmed to detect a thief (ditto) and kill him.

What about a landmine?

Aha. Now the correct dividing line emerges.

Mousetraps and tripwires are SELF-DEFENSE weapons. Landmines are NOT self-defense weapons. Landmines are placed on property that you don't own, and they're not protecting your own body or family.

Self-driving cars are mobile landmines. They are sent out to wander the roads, killing totally innocent pedestrians as a desired side-effect of unnecessary luxury.

Basically a Non-Virtual Reality Entertainment Experience for passive sadists.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

My first thought about the CYBRTRK last week:

WHY is bulletproof a selling point?

Elon's cultists are tech-monsters. Libertarians. Young males. A lot of them are Oriental or Hindu. All of them are well-educated, strong in math, short on life experience. They live precariously in high-rent areas surrounded by slums. They feel physically threatened, and perhaps they also sense that their wealth is on shaky ground, cantilevered by debt and subsidies and share-value Ponziness. Owning a bulletproof vehicle that looks just like the SWAT team's trucks is their substitute for owning a gun. You get to feel like a cop, leaving you free to ignore the gross inequality that you're helping to create, and leaving you free to HATE actual cops who actually put their lives on the line to defend your Libertarian ass.

= = = = =

Add these two concepts. The sum is a private army of literally weaponized autists, willing to let their sword-like autonomous autos do the killing for them, with no moral qualms.

Labels: Deadthink, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 12:39 AM

  Bravo!
Still in objective history mode.....

Via ZH as usual, the Syria war has been totally debunked by a source who can't be easily dismissed. Max Abrahms is a CURRENTLY EMPLOYED ACADEMIC and an insider in policy circles. He's not a random blogger or a safely retired emeritus or a disgruntled ex-employee. Abrahms has calmly and concisely knocked down the entire structure of genocidal lies.

The media and Deepstate will continue to lie, but the truth-tellers are gaining strength.
  ¶ 10:50 PM

  Fake surprise
Trump pulls the usual "surprise" pardon of a turkey, and the usual "surprise" visit to the troops.

I want a president who will REALLY surprise us by shooting the turkey and bringing the troops home.

Humans are omnivores, not cannibals. We're supposed to kill and eat birds. We're not supposed to kill and eat innocent foreigners.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 1:59 PM

  More objective history
Still speaking of a strictly objective approach to history... KSHS has added a big pile of letters related to Charles Curtis.

Curtis was a Topeka politician of native origin, who ended up as Herbert Hoover's VP. He could have been the first and only truly natural-born president if Hoover had ever offended Deepstate enough to get accidented or suicided.

Many of the letters are from Howel Jones, who was Curtis's political godfather at the start of his career in 1895. Jones encouraged Curtis to serve the native people, and also encouraged him to serve the Santa Fe. Curtis did a good job of both.

Modern observers would have a cognitive dissonance attack. On the one hand he was Die-Verse "before his time", and on the other hand he was a Corrupt Corporate Toady.

No CD, no conflict. Curtis was simply a normal non-heroic politician representing his OWN constituents.

He wasn't "before his time". Representing the tribes wasn't unthinkable in the 1920s, wasn't forbidden by pre-modern Nazi Neanderthals. Most of his legislation was passed into law.

Why was his legislation passed? The Santa Fe was based and owned in Topeka, not in NYC. Legislation that helped the Santa Fe brought in more tax money and more jobs for Topeka. Quid pro quo, as we say now.

In modern times quid pro quo is explicitly defined as treason. In modern times normal political trading is obsolete because the tribes now own the casinos that own the states. Everything is a mob now, everything is a monopoly now, nothing requires negotiation or balance between competing forces.

= = = = =

Later thought: Madman Lincoln was also owned and godfathered by the railroads. His career was also a quid pro quo. Lincoln burned down half the country and killed 1/5 of the people. Curtis improved conditions for the tribes. Same quo, different quids.

Labels: From rights to duties, Pluponents

  ¶ 10:35 AM

  Even?
ZH clickbaits the widespread snowpocalypses and snowmageddons this week, which used to be called "winter".

There were even reports of blizzard-like conditions in Spokane, Washington, which on Tuesday, led to a massive pileup involving more than 100 cars.

Clearly the NYC boys who write ZH have never been west of the Hudson. Like all NYC, they think Spokain (rhymes with rain) is a rainy suburb of Seattle.

The pileup happened because a small unpredicted convective cell hit suddenly on an otherwise dry day. Spokane drivers can handle snow pretty well, but no driver can handle snow when it pops up unexpectedly. You're zooming along at 70, and then ICE!

The Weather Bureau here, never very good, is losing competence quickly. As it happens, this cell was right over the Bureau's office, so they should have SEEN it if not predicted it.
  ¶ 10:05 AM

  More from Debo
In previous item I hrefed this as an example of Angie Debo's objective approach to history. I think it deserves to be pulled up as a reprint.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

I've been noticing something lately while re-reading those wonderful WPA Writers Project books.

Example from Oklahoma, p 388:

WYNONA is at the approximate center of the old Osage culture, and for a long time ancient customs and rites could best be studied there. One of these, "Sending away the Spirit", was held the fourth day after the death of a warrior at a selected tree, the bark of which was cut away by the master of ceremonies and the surviving warriors. When the tree trunk stood bare it was stained red, and as a symbol of the spirit of the dead man, was bidden to travel with the God of Day on its endless journey.

Another ceremony for the dead warrior took place on the return of the war party to the town. Within sight and sound of the tepees, they sat down in a circle and began to wail for their lost companion. Then from the town came the master of ceremonies and the people; and in the smoke of fragrant cedar boughs the warriors, their cast-aside clothes, weapons, saddles -- even their horses -- were purified. All their discarded property was then distributed to those of the three clans of the Osages who took part in the rites.

As a final precaution, the returning warriors marched in procession around the encampment in order to establish a line across which the spirit of death could not pass.

The ceremony is moving and thought-provoking, but I'm really focusing here on the descriptive style.

Consistently in those WPA books, local beliefs are reported in the same objective and journalistic tone as local events. The God of Day exists for the Osage, so he's in the story just as the dead warrior is in the story.

Or putting it differently, events recorded in human minds are treated with the same respect as events recorded in court documents. Hillbillies and Osages and Bankers, all tribes deserve the same respect, all deserve the same judgment of good and evil.

Modern "journalists" have lost this unity. The God of Abraham is absent and the God of Day is absent. Only Gaia, the Goddess of the Bankers, is present.

For moderns, human beliefs and human observations do not exist. They are unfacts.

Processed facts exist. Processed facts fall into two categories: (1) The demented gaga ravings of black-robed demons with "law" degrees; (2) The outputs of intentionally defective computer programs using intentionally corrupted data. These products are the only facts.

= = = = =

How do we return to the unity of the past? How do we merge internal human observations, including those commonly regarded as religious, back into the realm of objectivity without losing the purpose of science?

= = = = = END REPRINT.
  ¶ 9:48 AM

  Land of heterodoxy
The JFK assassination specialists have been highlighting the work of Beverly Brunson, a writer and poet who lived in Baxter Springs. In the '60s she did a huge amount of research and developed some theories that later turned out to be valid.

The modern specialists are surprised to find an unorthodox thinker in flyover territory. They shouldn't be surprised. That part of the world was FULL of seriously original thinkers and writers. I've been highlighting Alphia Hart in Enid.

An earlier parallel to Brunson was Angie Debo, who lived in the tiny town of Marshall. Like Brunson, she did the NYC bohemian thing for a while then returned home. Like Brunson, she retained bohemian habits while doing strictly objective and empathetic historical work. She was the main writer of the WPA Guide to Okla, taking over the whole project after the original team got tangled up in typical leftist ideological squabbles.

I met Debo in 1970, when a history prof at Phillips invited her to give a lecture on Okla history. The prof was a firm Republican and Debo was a firm Socialist, but they were friends on the neutral ground of objective history. Debo was about 80 at the time, a small intense passionate woman who knew the facts and knew how to tell them clearly and sharply.


(My little graphic salute to Baxter Springs.)

Are there still any unorthodox thinkers around there? Not much evidence on the web.
  ¶ 5:41 AM

  Done.


This year's courseware is DONE.

Now I can relax for a while and play with graphics and electronics until I get restless for a real PURPOSE again.

Labels: Entertainment

  ¶ 3:10 PM

  Always good drama
The Dresden jewel heist is an irresistible story, especially because jewel heists are extremely rare nowadays. In earlier decades, real crime and stories about crime focused on diamonds and jewels as a portable compact store of value. International jewel thieves were supposedly the most prestigious criminals.

Why is jewel theft rare now? No obvious reason. Insurance companies have ALWAYS done a good job of recording and tracking major private and public collections. The advent of Big Data has made their tracking even more efficient. A recent article (in Atlantic?) showed that reselling diamonds is no longer worth the trouble even within legal channels. Diamonds are only 'liquid' for the original cartel retailer, not for the buyer.

Why were these hugely valuable Crown Jewels so easy to steal using century-old methods?

ZH has the answer.

The pressure is on for the police to find the stolen jewels, since the Saxon state government neglected to insure the collection (very un-German of them), leaving the state on the hook for the loss unless the gems are recovered unharmed.

It's not just the loss. Insurers force clients to adopt good security. Even ordinary home insurance requires fire extinguishers and deadbolts. Insurance for major value gets seriously strict.

If the museum had been German, or just SENSIBLE, they would have paid for insurance and received the added benefit of enforced and well-advised security.

= = = = =

Speaking of crime vs crime drama, this dude could probably make more money playing a criminal on TV than being a real criminal. Compare him with this '50s actor. Same face.

Labels: Entertainment

  ¶ 5:41 AM

  Fake good idea
Article in EdWeek on applying math to "civics".

Not as bad as it might be, but still a lot of sneaky advocacy.

= = = = =

Example:

As a concluding assignment, students must use the data they’ve analyzed to write a paper as if they were campaign strategists for the Republican or Democratic party: Which constituency would they target to win a particular contest?

It’s not always an easy activity to teach—most students haven’t quite grasped the concept of the electoral college before the lesson begins—but by now it’s so highly anticipated that every fall, students ask Strole when they get to do “the political party thing.”

Apparently they're assigned to take one side or the other, like traditional debate class, so it's not strictly partisan.

BUT 1: Adolescents always prefer the currently fashionable version of "left", so this is really serving the D party.

BUT 2: If you're doing strictly objective analysis, you have to start with Manweller aka plain old reality. Partisan rhetoric is fake. Actions are identical. Campaigns have no effect on attitudes.

= = = = =

Worse example:

Recently, for example, her school had just installed some solar panels. So Strole adapted a Mathalicious lesson that teaches algebra expressions within the topic of solar power. She asked students to do a cost analysis on the costs and benefits of sticking with electric versus purchasing or leasing solar panels—and even whether the school’s solar energy production was on track to help the city meet the United Nations’ goals for renewable energy by 2030. Then they had to write a memo for the district’s energy manager and the mayor on what other steps Fishers would need to take to reach that goal.

Here the class is OPENLY partisan, taking the currently fashionable "left" position, which is STRICTLY CONTRARY TO MATH. If you're really doing math on this subject, you have to start with the FACTS of power grids. Solar is only beneficial for small installations in remote places. When power grids are forced to include solar and wind, the net result is ALWAYS more coal or natural gas. This isn't politics, it's plain PHYSICS. The class is advocating a CONTRAMATH position simply because it's fashionable.

Labels: Experiential education, Real World Math

  ¶ 5:04 AM

  Manweller corollary
ZH highlights a small academic study of the "Russian" "trolls".

Unsurprisingly, the study finds that nonexistent things had no effect on attitudes.

Hidden in the middle of the discussion is a MUCH BIGGER finding.

Indeed, a recent study indicates the net effect of most political campaigns is probably zero. If the most sophisticated American campaigns can’t really influence voters, why should we expect the Russians to be anymore successful?

Campaigns have no effect on attitudes.

That's a BIG statement.

When you know how things work, you aren't surprised. Good old Manweller. Elections have no effect, so campaigns have no effect.

The population is divided into two distinct groups.

1. Partisan bots who obey MY SIDE and MY PARTY mechanically, and insult and mock OTHER SIDE and OTHER PARTY mechanically. Campaigns don't change the attitudes of this group because their attitudes can't be changed; but campaigns DO bring in money from this group, which is the real purpose of campaigns.

2. Normal humans who have learned from experience that elections have no effect. We may have started as partisans, but at some point we NOTICED that the candidates on MY SIDE and the candidates on OTHER SIDE are precisely identical. Campaigns have no effect at all on this group.

Labels: Experiential education

  ¶ 3:56 PM

  Unique design... did it sell?
A unique radio design from a 1925 trade journal at American Radio History.

I've never seen this before on paper or in person. A one-tube receiver packaged something like a telephone. The tube seems to be horizontal, held in place by the screwed-on bezel, so you can see when it's lit and replace it fairly easily. The batteries are external, connected to the binding posts on the right, which defeats the purpose of a self-contained sealed package.



Did they sell any? The ad claims to have sold 2500 of the crystal version.

I looked at some pages featuring collections of similarly obscure radios, and didn't see any of these.
  ¶ 10:05 AM

  Backwards
McAfee is HARDASS realist about some things, but his Libertarian ideology gets in the way of realism.

This morning he says:

A free society is one in which those who are different or unpopular are as safe as those who are not.

Exactly backwards. If you want odd and unpopular people to be safe, you need either a STRICT culture or STRICT law enforcement.

The Libertarian utopia is 'Lord of the Flies'. That was the whole point of the story.
  ¶ 4:31 AM

  Man Wei La Hao?
It will be interesting to see how China implements Manweller's Rule. The Hong Kong election was allowed to happen, and the results haven't been instantly annulled. The results are STRONGLY against Beijing, with 90% of the HK parliament now held by "pro-democracy" candidates.

Manweller, of course, says that elections are never allowed to change things. An election that would yield actual change is always deleted or ignored.

The US application of Manweller takes three forms:

1. Preplan the election. Insure that no REAL pro-change candidates get anywhere near the ballot.

2. If a pro-changer accidentally gets elected, through an oversight or typo in the forms, blackmail him into submission or Unperson him with scandal. In extreme cases, accident him or suicide him.

3A. For referenda, use "courts" to overturn incorrect results.

The British version of 3 is more subtle.

3B. Instead of acting on the referendum, fuck around for years doing exactly nothing.

So far China has already missed step 1, at least on the surface. China's social credit system should make 2 easy, literally automatic.

Will be interesting to watch. The simplest hypothesis is that the "pro-democracy" candidates are all fakers, Pied Pipers like Trump. After they're in office they will show their true colors.

  ¶ 10:58 PM

  Annual annoyance
Every time the book + courseware is published, the publisher sends out a pile of free samples of the book to all authors. Most academic authors are professors, and they're supposed to distribute the samples to their colleagues. I doubt if this really happens.

It certainly doesn't happen here, since I'm not a prof and don't have colleagues. Normally I open one of the boxes and keep one book for a souvenir, then toss the rest. Since I never use the souvenirs, this time I just hauled the boxes directly from the front porch to the trash bin.

Wasteful, and even worse than wasteful. At my age hauling a heavy box is a bit risky. If the ground had been snowy, it would have been risky for any age.

I think the wholesale price of the samples is deducted from royalties. (This was true for previous publisher; don't know if it's true for current publisher.) Aside from the waste and risk, I'd rather not pay for samples that I can't use.

No point in asking for an exception. The previous publisher was a giant rigid NYC bureaucracy that couldn't make exceptions, and my current publisher is a small struggling company that would be unnecessarily burdened by setting up the exception. I'm just hoping that someone who works for some publisher will read this, and rethink the practice for ALL authors. Make it voluntary instead of automatic.

Labels: modest and stupid proposal

  ¶ 1:20 PM

  Pecking out of the shell
Strategic Culture, the only reliable source of real history, has an unusually self-reflective article.

Patrick Armstrong asks why he bothers to write the truth.

On the other side of the divide are the writers and readers of the WaPo/NYT/Economist/Guardian established media. They also generally agree with what they read, approve of each other’s writing and nod their heads in agreement. They are in their comfort zone.

Two solitudes – two bubbles. An agreeable agreement bubble for each: different bubbles to be sure but the same warm comfortable feeling of reassurance that they’re well-informed.

So what’s the point of writing? I already agree with you, you already agree with me. Our readers are here because they also agree. Writing becomes a mechanical operation, moving along a pre-determined course. No minds are changed, no minds are even engaged.

The well-informed person will be less often surprised than the poorly informed person.

Yup. I like to put it a different way, focusing on HOW-knowledge and skills:

When you know how things work, you don't need details.

Armstrong then asks how people discover alternate bubbles, how they peck their way out of the shell.

Which brings me to my final point and the answer to the question of why do we in the Strategic Culture Foundation stable and the many other new media sources do it. Why do we spend hours obsessing, researching and writing if all we’re doing is painting the inside of our bubble? It is very unlikely – we’ve all tried it and we’ve all failed – to reason the consumers of the establishment media out of their assumptions. They weren’t reasoned into their complacency and they won’t be reasoned out of it. There is little chance that some conventional believer will stumble across some piece in any alternative source and change his mind.

But people do change and our audience is growing. How can that be happening if we change no minds?

Because the individual makes the first step on his own.

How did I take that first step beyond the two fake "sides"?

I was always out of the bubble in science, thanks to a lifetime of real experience and real experiments. When your hands and eyes know how the world works (including the world of academia and grants!) you can instantly dismiss theories that disagree with the world. The "global warming" fraud was easy to debunk, and other frauds and fashions like quantum quackery follow the same pattern.

Without real experience, I was firmly locked into the bubble in politics, and I'm still not all the way out. I'm still idiotically SURPRISED when those Soros "revolutions" turn out to be Soros.

First I unplugged the TV in 2011. No knowledge can penetrate when you're tied to the Fox injector or the CNN injector.

Then I started noticing patterns in the old radio programs I'd been consuming for many years, and in the old technical books and magazines I peruse to gain material for graphics projects. Because those publications aren't explicitly political, they don't get Rectified.

Maybe the biggest shock was finding our 1918 invasion of Russia, working WITH the Axis before Armistice, in an old Signal Corps publication. Our "history" texts and media never mention this invasion. Soon other patterns emerged, such as the clampdown in 1946. Just after VJ Day we were treating the atom bomb as open-source, helping other countries to acquire it for defense. A year later the topic was forbidden. We had decided (again) to treat Russia as the enemy.

The '46 turning point was also audible in radio news and entertainment. Before '46 most news was fairly objective, openly acknowledging that all sides are propaganda. Most entertainment was empathetic, respecting the differences between classes and types of people. After '46 news was one-sided; after '54 entertainment consisted of rich NYC types squashing Deplorables.

Strategic Culture writers like Ehret had already reached these conclusions, and they have the history skills to fill in more of the reasoning and details. So I read them. They don't always hit the mark; Ehret seems to think that Trump is not just a Pied Piper; but they hit it and expand it often enough to be worth steady reading.

Labels: Alternate universe, Shared Lie, skill-estate

  ¶ 11:49 PM

  FAKE then, FAKE now.
The indispensable American Radio History library has posted a peculiar brochure issued by KFRC in Frisco in 1950.

Title: How to survive the atom bomb.

Extremely detailed descriptions of how an A-bomb happens, and what to do at every second before and after the Russkis kill you. Far more gruesome and grisly than what we heard in school or the media in the '50s.



Detailed map showing how the Russkis can reach everywhere. The map realistically uses Arctic paths, not horizontal paths.



List of Enemies Within, compiled by Rep Harold Velde, "formerly with FBI".



= = = = =

Okay. Now the reality. Chart from Wikipedia, which is not known for anti-Establishment tendencies:



I've clipped out some of the middle, but the point here is 1950. We had 299 usable weapons and Russia had 5.

RUSSIA HAD FIVE BOMBS.

RUSSIA HAD FIVE BOMBS.

RUSSIA HAD FIVE BOMBS.

Russia couldn't even do the eight arrows on the map, let alone the dozens of cities shown as targets.

Why in the HOLY FUCK would Russia send even one of its weapons, when it could only destroy parts of a few cities, and we were GUARANTEED to reduce all of Russia to rubble?

The whole thing was

then, and it's still

70 years later.

We're still assuming that Russia is the sole aggressor, even after we invaded and occupied Russia TWICE in 1918 and 1990. Russia has NEVER attacked us, NEVER fired one bullet or bomb at us.

We're still making long lists of Enemies Within, and we're still letting FBI make the lists and determine what we think. And the Frisco types like Maddow and Lemon are still handling the media end of the fakery.

We DESERVE to be wiped out, but Russia won't do it.

Labels: malign misattribution

  ¶ 7:19 AM

  Seedscrapers
An interesting observation from ZH:

For years, we've cited some fascinating alternative forms of data, such as the Skyscraper Index, which was first elaborated by Andrew Lawrence in January 1999. The index is simple; the world's tallest buildings are often constructed or completed at economic turning points, right before or just as the downturn gets underway.

I've noticed a similar pattern in other realms.

The best expression of a technology or a cultural form tends to happen just after the tech or form has been replaced by another.

Houses are often remodeled just before a divorce, as the foolish husband's last futile effort to please the Insatiable wife.

Plants send out flowers and seeds when they sense trouble approaching.

Labels: Smarty-plants

  ¶ 12:54 AM

  Nothing 'dark' about these dudes
UncommonDescent pointed to a set of brief conversations among the 'Intellectual Dark Web', a group of thinkers who are allegedly anti-Establishment.

After listening to a few of them, my earlier vague suspicion is solidly verified. There's nothing remotely countercultural about this group. They're standard neocons, proudly labeled as such. Their view of God is purely modern.

Bret Weinstein, famously fired for alleged heterodoxy, is perfectly orthodox.

"We need to take evolution out of the driver's seat and replace it with our own ethical framework."

"The deity is a hack, a hack that functions" for the benefit of society.

Sheer hippie nonsense. Good behavior, behavior that helps the entire hive function, is written into our genes. Call it evolution or call it design, it's IN THE GENES. The authorities have often channeled and distorted this set of standards for their own evil purposes (such as bombing every country that displeases Israel) but the standards themselves are NOT a myth.

Darwin said it clearly. Selection prefers behaviors that keep the WHOLE POPULATION alive and strong, not NYC behaviors that enrich ONE INDIVIDUAL while destroying the population. Keeping the WHOLE POPULATION alive requires altruism and empathy, which is why we HAVE those capacities. If only humans had those capacities, maybe you could hypothesize that we made them up, but they appear in every social animal and plant, and they're a lot stronger in most non-human social animals.

As I repeat tiresomely, we have the logbook of God's experiments in the form of old wisdom and old testaments. The people who survived wrote down their recipe for survival. They told us what to eat and how to behave.

Every attempt to create our own ethical framework has led to GENOCIDE AND DISASTER.

Weinstein is such a perfect snowflake that I wonder if the usual story is right. Did the college really fire him for disagreeing with their views? Back in the '60s unpopular or insubordinate profs were often fired for "communism", which was easier to define than unpopularity.

Labels: Ethics, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 12:26 AM

  Semaphores done


Finally decided to button up and release the Semaphores set, made for Poser. Here's the item at ShareCG. The set includes six types of semaphore, with inside and outside scenes; and python apps to animate each system from text files. I'm hoping someone can use it for interesting animations.... or even better, catch the idea and build new real semaphore systems for interesting purposes.



= = = = =

List of blog posts about the set:

Russian 1850s

Chappe clock system and wing system [This is the main discussion.]

Dupillon (French) [I snuck this into an older item without properly describing it]

Six shutter (English)

More discussion of Chappe [Some alt-history]

Chatley (English)

Redo of Russian

Redo of DuPillon

Done. [This item]

Labels: defensible cases, Morsenet of Things

  ¶ 10:14 AM

  Sucker beyond suckers
Well, I thought this was the ultimate zenith of wacked-out cultist fandom for Lord Elon.

Nope. Unsurprisingly BBC takes it to the next stage.

The writer accepts EVERY WORD AND TRICK OF ELON'S OBVIOUS FAKERY as gospel truth, and asks why any truck buyer should stick with those neanderthal far-right KKKHITLERTRUMP primitive horse-drawn ordinary trucks when you could get an angelic universe-saving Tesla CYBRTRK instead.

But then this was written by Top Gear, a program that specializes in fakery and gimmickry. Takes a scamster to admire a scamster.

I wonder how many blackmail files Elon can mobilize against BBC? Considering the Andrew connection, probably a lot.

Labels: Carbon Cult, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 6:06 AM

  Why bulletproof?
Bulletproof is the big selling point for Elon's CYBRTRK.

Everyone (including me) has been mocking the fakeness of the bulletproof, but there's a deeper question.

WHY is bulletproof a selling point?

Elon's cultists are tech-monsters. Libertarians. Young males. A lot of them are Oriental or Hindu. All of them are well-educated, strong in math, short on life experience. They live precariously in high-rent areas surrounded by slums. They feel physically threatened, and perhaps they also sense that their wealth is on shaky ground, cantilevered by debt and subsidies and share-value Ponziness.

Bulletproof makes sense in that situation, because buying a gun is

for a tech-monster. Owning a bulletproof vehicle that looks just like the SWAT team's trucks is their substitute for owning a gun. You get to feel like a cop, leaving you free to ignore the gross inequality that you're helping to create, and leaving you free to HATE actual cops who actually put their lives on the line to defend your Libertarian ass.

Moving to a less precarious job in a safer city with less inequality is thinkable, but such a move would put a cap on their imaginary exponential curve of income.

Labels: #bluelivesmatter, Shared Lie, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 1:13 AM

  Dreamy
Got curious to see how long it would take to model the new dreamy CYBRTRK.



15 minutes without looking at the dreamy original. Formed a heptagon, pulled its points in various directions, extruded, made wheel openings. Formed four more heptagons for wheels.

By comparison, a real car like Polistra's R8 takes several weeks to model. (And the R8 is among the simpler car shapes. I wouldn't dare try a swoopy shape like a '59 Chevy.)



Why is CYBRTRK dreamy? Here's why. I figured this would happen, and sure enough it was much worse than I imagined. Sucker Number One.

I've discussed this father-son comparison before. The son, also predictably, has a rational and well-informed discussion of the subject.

Recently the father retired from running his website. Since he retired the website has been a bit less active but a lot less biased. Perhaps we're seeing why he needed to retire.

Couple days later: He's doubling down.

Labels: Sucker Filter

  ¶ 2:16 PM

  Another giant Sucker Filter
Looking at Tesla's CYBRTRK.

My first thought, after a good solid MUCH-NEEDED belly laugh, was that it reminded me of a Science Fair project I did in 12th grade. I designed a circuit and ordered parts, then waited till 2AM on the morning of the display day to build it. Ended up with a PC board that had some parts in it, no possibility of functioning. I still blush with deep shame every time I remember it.

Someone else had exactly the same thought:

"Looks like somebody waited until the last day to start their science project!"

This is yet another fine Sucker Filter from Elon. Total incompetence, jabbed in your face. A design that can't possibly drive, can't possibly pass any safety test, can't carry anything, displayed with a loose wheel and a broken window.

If you're a big enough sucker to appreciate this, you're the sucker we want! And needless to say there are plenty of big suckers singing hymns of praise.

Later thought: Where's the GUILD? This ruins all American products. In the same week, Elon's rocket blows up while Flatearth Mike Hughes makes a good test flight. Elon's dream truck turns out to be a cardboard fake that couldn't possibly work even if it was real. We now look exactly like our old MYTHS about Soviet products. Or even better, our earlier MYTHS about Jap cars made from beer cans.

The REAL auto industry, along with the REAL tech industry, should work together to buy out Elon and force him to disappear completely from public view. GUILD.


= = = = =

And later again, a more precise analogy to Mike Hughes.


The Leata was designed and built by Don Stinebaugh and his four sons in Post Falls. Stinebaugh owned a machine shop and wanted a big project to train his sons properly. He built and sold a hundred or so Leatas before he ran out of money. The Leata wasn't beautiful, but it was a REAL CAR. It passed EPA pollution tests and NHTSA safety tests, and drove like a real car as seen in this video.

= = = = =

Still later.... Those knife edges would never pass NHTSA testing if NHTSA bothered to test. We know in advance that NHTSA will NOT test this because Elon owns all the regulators. That's the overwhelming advantage of Elon's Epstein and Mossad connections. No regulations, no laws.

Imagine leaning over the bed to load sacks of fertilizer. Of course you can't do that anyway because of the stupid fastback design, but if you tried it you'd bleed. Aside from chopping drivers and pedestrians to bits, there's a plain old mechanical reason why cars have relatively rounded edges. Metal fatigue. If those edges are bent sheetmetal, they'll tear and break in a week of real driving. If they're on a giant diecast block, they'll chip and crumble. If the block is bulletproof as Elon claims, the whole thing will be absurdly heavy. If they're separate panels, they'll let in water and air.

Labels: skill-estate, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 2:37 AM