Drunk sabertooth
This idea is floating around the "science" websites lately.

Matthew Carrigan of Santa Fe College in Florida theorized that the evolutionary adaptation occurred roughly ten million years ago, as this was when our common ancestor left the tree canopy and began eating fermented fruit on the forest floor. This fermented fruit could have had an ABV level as high as eight percent.

The alcoholic fruit would have helped individuals become less self-conscious and more social. “Like all monkeys and apes, humans are social. We have an urgent desire to schmooze and an awareness that alcohol helps our cause,” says psychologist Robin Dunbar. “Friendships protect us against outside threats and internal stresses, and this has been key to our evolutionary success. Primate social groups, unlike most other animals, rely on bondedness to maintain social coherence.”

First, good old Savannah Sabertooth. Adaptation, "evolution", mutation. Ratshit.

Second, alcohol is NOT universal among humans. Orientals, and the old American tribes derived from Orientals, can't handle alcohol at all. Their traditions either prohibit it entirely or reserve it for carefully sacralized occasions.

Third and more to the point, the SALIENT effect of alcohol is not schmoozing. It's random violence and poor judgment and early death. Those are NOT pro-survival tendencies.

The idea that socializing requires prosthetic assistance is a viewpoint that makes sense from a baseline of Sorosian lands, where real culture has been ripped out by the roots. In functional cultures, closeness and comfort don't require prosthetics.

Unsurprisingly functional cultures drink LESS than Sorosian dyscultures. Africa and Brazil are below average in alcohol, while Europe is on top.

Is there a controlled experiment? Yes. Among 'imposed cultures' within dyscultural lands, the correlation is dramatic. Consider LDS and Islam, especially the Black Muslim movement.



Both are strong cultures with distinct division of labor by gender and talent. Both prohibit alcohol. Two-way causation for sure, but removing alcohol definitely makes it easier to maintain the structure of a close culture. Less violence, less stupidity, more stability.

Graphic sidenote: Both are also symbolized by narrow black neckties, which automatically created my cartoon.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law, Shared Lie, Sorosia

  ¶ 7:09 AM

  Letting the infant win
I've noted a tone of condescension in AMLO's dealings with Trump. Now a brief article in NYTimes shows the reason for the tone.

The concessions that Trump proudly claims as results of his sanction-tariffs were actually worked out several months earlier. Nothing new has happened this week. Mexico and US have been meeting steadily for a long time in a genuine attempt to get the border under control. Though Mexico has no legal responsibility to prevent people from trying to get into USA, Mexico has always understood that it shares a continent with a giant retarded baby who throws nuclear tantrums. When you're chained to a giant idiot, you have to make room for the idiot's moods.

This is strongly parallel to Korea. SoKo and NoKo, with carrots and sticks from Russia and China, have been working for years to achieve reunification. Kim was gradually pushed into a position where he could cooperate without losing face. Baby Donnie stomped in and insisted on having his own brand pasted on the negotiations. The adults moved the scenery around and made room for Trump billboards, with the same condescending tone.

Labels: #HowToAdult, Zero Problems

  ¶ 5:37 AM

  Strange resurrected!
Why didn't I notice this earlier? Jeff Hix, a young descendant of the Hix family, brought back the franchise in 2011. He has the unique advantage of access to the internal archives preserved by the family. His Youtube channel includes short features in the spirit of the original radio show. Jeff narrates instead of dramatizing, but otherwise the flavor and range of subjects are the same.

Bravo!

Looks like Jeff lost interest in the project after a couple years, but he created an admirable body of 'new old stock' work in those two years.

Labels: infinite GOOD

  ¶ 4:48 PM

  What's WRONG with these idiots?
Still getting spam emails from Wash State Repoofs, even though I haven't sent any money to Repoofs since 2006.

Here's why I haven't sent any money.

Latest email:

Friend, did you see the latest video of Bob Ferguson laughing at a voter's concern over Jay Inslee using $4 MILLION of taxpayer money to fund his personal security?

Inslee is traveling the country pitching the same ideas that resulted in record increases in taxes and government spending and Bob Ferguson thinks he's entitled to your tax dollars to pay for it.

This arrogant, liberal elitism has become a mainstay of the Democrats' agenda and their war on hardworking Washingtonians but with a monthly contribution of $5 or $10 we can spread the word on the Democrats' toxic attitudes and flip our state RED!

I don't give a fuck about spending on security. If a governor wants to be secure or cruise around the world, that's just fine. He deserves to be secure and have fun.

That's NOT THE FUCKING PROBLEM with Inslee.

Note that Inslee's "ideas" are not even described or mentioned in the email, because Repooflicans are the original and real Gaian loonies. The only only only only thing that matters to Repoofs is ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX. Their only moral principle is TAX EVASION.

In fact Inslee's Gaian ideas are GENOCIDAL AND HOLOCAUSTAL. He seriously intends to SLAUGHTER ALL HUMANS. Genocide is EVIL whether you spend any fucking money on it or not. A bargain basement holocaust is no better than a premium luxury holocaust.

And in fact Ferguson's activities are CRIMINAL. He has been wasting the energy and money of the state on utterly nonsensical and CRIMINAL "law"suits against Trump for doing exactly the same things Obama did, which Ferguson DID NOT SUE about.

Ferguson has turned all principles of law and logic and facts upside down. His activities would still be EVIL if he didn't spend a dime on them.

Inslee is NOT liberal. He supports Amazon totally. Amazon is PERFECTLY CONSERVATIVE. Amazon pays ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX ZERO TAX, kills its workers, and kills all other businesses, which makes it the IDEAL IDEAL IDEAL REPOOFLICAN BUSINESS.

= = = = =

Later later later: Obviously obviously obviously I was PISSED PISSED PISSED. I went out and mowed mowed mowed the yard yard yard, and now I feel better.

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 1:58 PM

  Speaking of
Immediately after rehashing 'mood as error signal', I ran across this graph of a writer's life posted by magazine writer Erin Griffith.

This is the transient response of a resonant system when switched on. In other words, a system with an internally moving template that responds partly to the error signal at each swing, gradually damping out the oscillation. Best possible illustration of the point!

More personally, the graph itself resonates with my experience as a courseware writer. Some of the details are different, but the pattern is identical.
  ¶ 6:41 AM

  Good point, forgot it, deserves reprint
While looking for hrefs to connect with the moth infrared sense stuff, I ran across this item from three years ago. The main point, moods are the error signal, is a sharp observation. I forgot it after writing it, which is the unfortunate aspect of writing.

It needs to be rehashed.

= = = = = START REHASH:

This "scientist" thinks he has found something interesting.

Headline: Moods may have an evolutionary purpose

"Mood mostly reflects how outcomes differ from expectations, so whether things are going better or worse than what's expected," said Dr Eldar from the University College London. "Mood also affects how we perceive outcomes, so if we're in a good mood, outcomes seem better than when we're in a bad mood."

True but not interesting or new.

First, EVERYTHING in a living creature is "outcomes differ from expectations". This applies equally to bacteria and bacteriologists. All sensory mechanisms detect the departure of input value from a template or baseline value. At some levels in a sensory system the template is simply the value at the previous instant, so the nerve (or other mechanism in plants and protists) is reading dv/dt. More complex creatures form more complex templates, based on previous seasons or previous days or imagined pictures of future seasons and future days.

Moods are the total delta between current situation and template. Moods are the error signal in a feedback loop. If current situation is close enough to template, contented mood drives low action. If current minus template is large, bad mood drives big action. Mood is another word for tropism.

The most complex mammals have the most complex abilities. (1) We can intentionally adjust our own template. When a male elephant or a male human figures out that no females want him, he adjusts his template. He stops wasting energy on actions that normally attract females, and turns Hardass. (2) We can remotely adjust templates in other animals. A cat nonchalantly licking his paw, or a human army building a dummy invasion of Calais, is creating a template in his victim, preparing for a Gotcha.

Beyond the individual, an entire population has templates that can be adjusted. In very recent years biologists have finally understood what Grandma meant. Epigene switches can adjust the entire population's template when BIG conditions change.

How about "evolutionary purpose"? First, there's no such thing as "evolution". Populations of living things adjust to conditions by moving or dying or altering genomic templates. Moving and dying don't require a theory of "evolution". They're obvious. The genomic switches are also obvious in terms of consequences, but the underlying mechanism wasn't seen because evolutionists are not complex enough to adjust their own templates.

Evolutionists are still holding onto their old template of "random" mutations driving permanent changes in otherwise fixed genes. "Random" doesn't exist, and the epigene switches are sufficient to explain observed changes.

So the real "evolutionary" question moves to a different level. Why don't evolutionists have moods? Or why does their mood remain contented when their observations are so dramatically far from their template?

Best guess: Observation is not the input and theory is not the template. An evolutionist's template is Maximum Status And Maximum Grants. Input agrees with template, so mood is contented. All is well.

= = = = = END REHASH.
  ¶ 6:20 AM

  Fake threat of fake automation 2
Following on fake concern over fake technology:

The Tesla skeptics are featuring this video of an asshole using his "autopilot" on a twisty highway with cliffs and guardrails.

1. I'm pretty sure this is the same road where the "self-driving" car was intentionally steered over the cliff in the 1949 Rocket Man serial. The writers of the serial understood something that we've forgotten: "self-driving" inevitably means SOMEBODY ELSE IS DRIVING.



2. The asshole doesn't keep his hands off all the time. He feels the need to correct the "self-driver" fairly often. When I was a young asshole I sometimes tried hands-off driving in my '59 Chevy or '66 VW. The rhythm was about the same. A simple car without power steering, if the suspension and tires are properly adjusted, will hold a lane for quite a while on a straight road or a well-banked gentle curve.

In this particular situation the "self-driver" is equal to a simple car with zero automation. As soon as you start adding artificial automation, especially power steering, the NATURAL automation disappears.

Admittedly the "self-driver" sometimes hits the brakes to avoid an obstacle, but it's clear from the record that this function doesn't work well enough to trust it. It doesn't understand some of the worst obstacles like semitrailers and median dividers.

Labels: Deadthink

  ¶ 3:27 PM

  More on moths
Continuing from previous item.

The 1951 Philco publication mentioned an article by Ted Powell in Proceedings of IRE. Amazingly, the IEEE has preserved those archives, and the Powell article is here.

Powell was answering an earlier discussion by Bibbero, who was debunking telepathy by using Shannon information theory. Powell was more or less rebunking the potential of telepathy.

Bibbero's main point:

Consider, then, how much more rapidly information could be transmitted by telepathic than by aural or visual means. It is within all our experience that an almost infinitely large number of impressions can occur during a dream, which may require only a fraction of a second for completion. A bandwidth 1000 times that required for video transmission would not be an unreasonable assumption for telepathy. If, say, a 10^10 cycle bandwidth is required for a single telepathic transmission it would cover the entire range from subsonics to the experimental radar hyperfrequencies. If now we further allow each person on earth a separate band of 10^10 cycles for his thought transmission, we must push the upper end of the telepathy frequency spectrum to 10^19 cycles, even if we used all the lower explored frequencies. More logically, we should start with 10^19 cycles and continue up to 10^29.

= = = = =

Powell's rebunk made the same point I tiresomely repeat. Nature isn't bound by our theories. Nature has ALWAYS found a way to do EVERYTHING in the technical realm, including an infinite number of tasks that we haven't yet begun to understand or even observe. He cited the moth infrared perception as just one example of Nature's superiority.

R. J. Bibbero's entertainingly speculative comments on the telepathy sense lead to the same bewilderment most investigators feel when they attempt to account for observed extrasensory-perception phenomena. Perhaps some clues may be found in the incredible sensitivity of the obscure senses possessed by some animals (and humans) and in the discovery in insects of infrared senses which strangely correspond with Bibbero's belief in the existence of hyperfrequency effects.

Doctor Tromp found that dowsers actually locate underground water and bodies of metal by virtue of their feeble diamagnetic and ferromagnetic fields. Some "healers" can also detect sick areas in a body by sensing the tiny differences in body electrical potentials over such areas. This was verified by the electrocardiogram and by body potential checks.

Professor Miles of Yale University had discovered that insects smell by means of infrared senses and that 7 male moths released from a moving train over a 1-mile stretch found, within hours, a female moth sealed in an hermetic container. This was confirmed by J. P. Duane and J. E. Tyler of Interchemical when they found that a female moth's temperature was some 11° higher than that of her surroundings and that she emitted infrared radiations about 8 microns in wavelength. The male moth's antenna hairs were 40 to 80 microns long, and they varied in 4 micron steps, or half the female moth's main infrared emission.

Powell also notes an idea that was instantly dismissed in 1951. Now that biologists are removing their theory goggles, they're finding the old "nonsense" is precisely correct.

Doctor Rajewsky, a German biologist, has the rather unusual theory that the human brain not only employs electrical impulses to control the body, but also radio waves, with individual cells acting as miniature oscillators.

Bibbero was missing the point by treating information as bits, and he was also missing the basic definition of information. Bibbero assumed that telepathy had to contain all the data needed for a transfer between machines. If you want to tell a simple robot how to walk, you need to send all the angles of all the joints at each microsecond.

Human communication doesn't work that way. Even by Shannon's definition, information is the unexpected or unpredictable part of the needed data. When we talk or write, we never pour out all necessary data because we know in advance what the receiver knows. We have empathy. Perception is always DELTAS FROM A MOVING BASELINE, and communication is the same. If I want you to fetch me a sandwich, I don't have to specify every angle of every finger and elbow and hip and knee to accomplish the task. I just say "How about a burger?". You know where the kitchen is, you know where each food item is stored, you know how to operate the pans and spatulas and knobs on the stove, and you know all the steps needed to cook a burger.

Telepathy, if it exists**, would be the same. A few dozen bits would suffice to call up most images in a culture with plenty of shared assumptions. In Sorosian lands where culture and skills and division of labor have disappeared, we're getting much closer to the unintelligent mechanical robot that needs to hear each angle and vector for each microsecond.

= = = = =

** For clarity, I'm open but unconvinced. I've experienced (seemingly) a few dramatic examples, but natural communication methods aren't limited to a few dramatic examples. When Nature goes to the trouble of setting up a system, the system is used constantly. There's always a range of abilities for any talent. A few people do it more accurately and delicately than others, and a few can't do it at all. But most people do it well enough most of the time. If most people were using telepathy most of the time, we'd have a vastly different world.

Labels: Grand Blueprint, Sorosia

  ¶ 2:00 AM

  Valid question after all
Listening as always to Strange as it Seems at bedtime, and now reading Hix books in the daytime. Pleasantly immersed in HIGH QUALITY ENTERTAINMENT, which is no longer being produced.

The Hix family business was fairly large in the '40s and '50s. After John Hix died (too young) in 1944, control passed to his brother Ernest, then Ernest's wife Elsie, then Elsie's son. The outfit faded out in 1970. At the peak they were turning out daily newspaper features, weekly radio shows, books, and one or two movies.

Question. The shows were enjoyable enough to endure repeated listening for YEARS. Why didn't Hix sell the shows for home use?

First stupid answer: Well, they didn't have MP3s back then.

NO. WAIT, DUMMY.

These shows are available on MP3 now BECAUSE they were initially preserved on RECORDS.

The big network shows were strictly live, so most of them disappeared. We have a few of them because sponsors recorded their shows for quality control. Johnsons Wax preserved all of its Fibber shows.

Short syndicated programs dominate the current set because they were distributed to stations on 16.6 RPM transcription disks. After radio dissolved in the '50s, stations mostly tossed those disks, but some of them ended up in private collections. This shouldn't be a mystery to me because I acquired some of them in 1960 from an uncle and a neighbor who worked in radio. I was too stupid to preserve them, but others were smart.



So the question is still valid. Syndicated shows were ALREADY distributed to stations as records. Why didn't anyone repackage them on 78s for home use? After WW2, home players had all four speeds, so a retail version of the 16.6 transcriptions would also have been practical.

I suspect the answer is blockage by ASCAP or unions.

Labels: Asked and unanswered, blonde moment, Patient things

  ¶ 12:00 AM

  Nature always gets there first
American Radio History has acquired a few issues of the Philco Tech Bulletin from the early '50s. Much of the material is details about specific milspec equipment, not hugely interesting. All of the writing is clear, and the diagrams are especially good.

Two brief articles are interesting to my taste.

One describes the power of speech in a way that I hadn't read before. Nothing new, just a clear use of numbers.

The lungs and the muscles used in breathing provide the source of power for speech sounds, and thereby control to a considerable extent the loudness of the emitted sound.

The amount of power used in speech is surprisingly small, however. The vowels, which are the most powerful speech sounds. average about 100 microwatts, with peak values of about 2000 microwatts. The voices of persons capable of very loud speech may reach peak-power values of 5000 microwatts. On the other hand. the minimum in speech power is probably about 0.01 microwatt. and occurs when the sound /θ/ is pronounced.

Therefore, a telephone system must be capable of handling a range of speech intensity of 500.000 to 1, or 57 dB. For ordinary conversation. the range is considerably less, being approximately 10,000 to 1 or 40 dB.

The power used in the production of music is much greater than that used for speech, varying from about 4 microwatts for a softly played violin to nearly 70 watts for a full symphony orchestra. Thus the intensity range for music is about 20,000.000 to 1 or 73 dB.

Based on studies of a number of individuals, the average power used in American speech is 10 microwatts; therefore, if a million people were engaged in conversation simultaneously. their combined average speech power would be approximately equivalent to that consumed by a 10-watt electric light bulb.

The other is EXTREMELY interesting.

In the August, 1951, issue of IRE, Mr. Ted Powell explains communication between moths. The female moth radiates infrared energy at a wavelength of about 8 microns. Radiation is indicated by the fact that the temperature of a female moth is about 11 degrees above that of her surroundings. The male moth has an antenna system consisting of a series of hairs ranging from 40 to 80 microns in length, in 4-micron steps. These steps are the familiar half-wave intervals so common to HF arrays.

A semi-familiar mode of communication with a remarkable receiver. The male moth doesn't pick up the heat via retina-type cells like a pit viper. He receives the heat AS MICROWAVES, with a TUNED ANTENNA ARRAY. Tonotopic like a cochlea.



Nature always gets there first. We can't possibly hope to beat Nature.

Continued in next item.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 3:57 PM

  Demand and allow
From previous item:

= = = = =

LIFE IS PURPOSE.

If a purpose isn't in the genes, it's not going to happen. If a purpose is in the genes, it WILL be implemented when circumstances demand and allow it.

= = = = =

This also applies to cognitive purpose. People make rational choices to achieve a purpose. If a purpose is rational, it WILL be implemented when circumstances demand and allow it.

We can see the precise meaning of demand and allow in voter response to globalist evils. Circumstances demand a rejection of globalist governments, but circumstances don't always allow the rejection.

In USA with a one-party system, voters attempted to make a rational rejection of globalism. Trump provided a way to mark our ballots for the rejection, but Trump is just another globalist. His purpose is to energize and identify dissidents so we can be exterminated more efficiently.

British voters in 2016 clearly and straightforwardly DEMANDED rejection. Nothing happened. The "two" parties continued fucking around for three years, staying in EU while pretending to "work" "for" Brexit.

Farage started up a new party to implement the rejection, and IMMEDIATELY became the biggest party of all. Will this finally be allowed? I doubt it, but it's another demand.

In Italy and Mexico the rational choice was ALLOWED to take effect. Salvini and AMLO are GETTING SHIT DONE every day, serving their own people and pulling away from globalist powers and tendencies.
  ¶ 6:26 AM

  Pretty damn impressive.
Russia's new hypersonic missile. Video leaves no doubt of the speed. Russia is effectively immune to our slow weapons now. A nearly perfect deterrent to our grotesque omnicidal hyperaggression.

This has obviously been under development for several years.

Syllogism:

Premise 1: If we had spies, our spies would have detected this development, and would have triggered our defense research to catch up.

Premise 2: We didn't detect anything.

THEREFORE: We don't have spies.

Our intel agencies are solely occupied with slaughtering Deplorables and creating "terrorist" incidents at home and abroad. We no longer accomplish the SOLE PURPOSE of spies, which is to detect foreign military developments and movements.

THEREFORE AGAIN: Our intel agencies are not intel agencies. They are EXPLICITLY AND SOLELY MAKING WAR AGAINST US. Their exclusive purpose is to KILL THIS COUNTRY.

Deepstate is the enemy.

Labels: defensible spaces

  ¶ 1:20 AM

  Those mutations were Feeling Lucky.
This summary of a fairly famous experiment was found in a 1945 trade journal for radio advertisers.



Obviously the Allport study favored radio over newspapers as a vehicle for ads. (Movies didn't carry advertising, so weren't comparable.)

Reading this, my first thought was:

Well of course. Makes sense. Spoken language is innate. Reading and writing developed MUCH later, so the brain doesn't have built-in facilities to handle them.

Second thought:

Wait, dammit. The brain DOES have specialized sections for written language.



Specifically, the angular gyrus processes written language, then sends it to Wernicke's area just in front for conversion to meaning. The angular gyrus also deals with math.

How did this "evolve" during the thousands of years when we were talking but not writing? How did the "random" mutations predict that we would eventually develop clay tablets and papyri and styli and brushes and pens and ideograms and phonetic symbols and written number systems?

LIFE IS PURPOSE.

If a purpose isn't in the genes, it's not going to happen. If a purpose is in the genes, it WILL be implemented when circumstances demand and allow it. What purposes still await the correct circumstances?

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 11:40 PM

  Thanks Ralph 130, sheer perfection edition
Best Self-Explanatory Picture ever.



Thanks, Ralph!

Irrelevant sidenote: In my experience, Pontiac was the typical gambler's car.

Labels: EXTREME SUPREME ABSOLUTE DEFINITIVE FINAL Emersonian justice, Natural law = Sharia law, SES

  ¶ 9:55 PM

  Fake threat of fake automation
Via ZH: More distraction about automation.

Usually the fake threat of automation distracts us from the REAL threat of offshoring. In this case the "threat" isn't even an increase of automation.

The automation wave is expected to dramatically reshape the US economy in the 2020s. This disruption will impact the labor force and cause tremendous job losses. By 2030, automation could eliminate 20% to 25% of current jobs -- equivalent to 40 million displaced workers, hitting the bottom 90% of Americans the hardest.

AJC said the Butler robots are like "giant Roombas" that move between 6,000 refrigerator-size shelving units lined up in rows 85 deep within the warehouse. An employee summons the robot with a handheld device, it then uses a jack to lift the shelving unit and transports it to the human picker, who then grabs items out of the bins, scans it and hands it off to the packaging department.

This is nothing new and clearly doesn't displace any humans. Traveling cranes and remote controlled warehouse vehicles have been around for 100 years.

Why is this article treating NONautomation as a threat?

The new, robot-powered warehouse in McDonough, Georgia, is currently undergoing pilot tests and will begin operations in June. Project Verte, a start-up trying to compete with Amazon, is responsible for automating the warehouse.

Got it.

This system might compete with Amazon, so Amazon mobilizes its journalist robots to kill the threat. As fucking always, the truly dangerous robots are the wetware robots working for Satan.

Labels: malign misattribution

  ¶ 11:19 PM

  Odd little Mormon leftover
While setting out the lawn sprinkler this morning, noticed a folded piece of paper in the street. Took it in and unfolded it. Clearly not meant for outsiders, not meant to be placed on doors. I haven't seen any Mormon missionaries around lately, so this must have been accidentally dropped by an ordinary Mormon, perhaps a youngster.



It's two pages, originally stapled but the staple was pulled out. Nothing weird in the questions, no Temple Underwear. Mostly regular Christian stuff except for the Presidential revelations vs individual revelations. What's interesting is the form, not the questions. This is a hardass test, not a casual survey. Mormons have STANDARDS.

= = = = =

Later thought: The revelation question is sharply distinct from most regular Christians. Protestants believe firmly and consistently that revelation ended with Jesus. Rome pretends to believe the same, but makes the usual sneaky exception for the Pope when he feels "infallible". Pentecostals believe firmly and consistently that everyone can receive God's word. So the Mormon approach is more like Pentecostals. Everyone can receive revelations, but the President's revelation can affect the whole church because he's in charge of the whole church. Strictly logical.
  ¶ 10:37 AM

  For once the "uniter not divider" shit works!
Idiot politicians always claim to be the Uniter, while their idiot opponents are Dividers. This intentionally misses the whole point of politics. Politics is dividing by definition.

Once in a while a divider manages to unite .... the wrong country.

Our constant use of blockades and sanctions ALWAYS unites the target country, always solidifies support for the leader we want to kill.

And now Trump's latest sanctions disguised as tariffs have united Mexico.

AMLO notes that our sanctions hurt both poor and rich. He includes a 'card' from Alberto Baillères, a billionaire in mining and insurance.

Baillères praises AMLO's 'card':

The content and tone of your card, with dignity and decorum, shows the character of a Chief of State who knows how to defend the interests of our beloved Mexico in a constructive manner.

Neat achievement, Donny! You've managed to get the rich fuckheads to support FDR!

More seriously, our blockades block DEMOCRACY above all. They prevent the target countries from switching leaders. In some cases (eg Mexico and Russia) the locked-in leader is doing an excellent job, so the lock-in helps the target country to become more self-sufficient, to serve its own people even better. In other cases (eg Venezuela) the locked-in leader is an incompetent bumbler who WOULD have been replaced through normal methods without the lock-in.

Tariffs are meant to protect our own industries from unfair competition. Trump's tariffs on China are a proper use of the tool, and despite Trump's incompetent flailing, the China tariffs are starting to work. Purchasers of steel and aluminum are trying to buy American instead of Chinese.

Tariffs are NOT meant to punish a country for behaving normally. Mexico is not responsible for protecting our borders. Mexico is responsible for protecting its own borders. If too many migrants are coming in from Mexico, it's OUR FAULT. Trump continues to make noise about extending the wall, but still hasn't done anything. If he had really meant to solve the problem, he would have done it in early 2017 when he had both parts of Congress. He paid no attention to the issue until 2019 when he was safely protected from real action by a wall of Democrats.
  ¶ 5:08 AM

  Disappointing
In the '70s when cable TV started to develop, I didn't own a TV. Cable was found mainly in motels, so I enjoyed watching the wide variety of programs when I stayed in a motel.

Cable systems had a channel for weather and special messages. Most of the time the weather was a back and forth scan of a few meters showing temperature, humidity, pressure, etc. Special messages were title slides for ads or emergencies. The audio on this channel was often from a classical music station, so it was good bedtime watching.

I always imagined the weather scan as a room-sized semicircle, about 10 feet in diameter, with a floor-mounted camera rotating in the middle of the room. Sort of like a theatrical set with flats.

Now I finally find out how it really worked!

From a trade journal for cable operators at American Radio History:



It was just one little cabinet, with the rotating done by a mirror!

Labels: Asked and finally answered, Entertainment

  ¶ 12:14 AM

  Why AMLO is ignored by both "sides"
Mexico is starting construction of a new oil refinery. This is part of AMLO's project to bring all refining in country, so Mexico won't have to depend on USA for refining its crude. Keep the jobs and skills in country, keep the profit in country.

US "right" wingers can't stand it because the refinery is government-owned.

US "left" wingers can't stand it because oil is sin.

FDR would understand exactly what AMLO is doing. And in fact FDR did understand what AMLO is doing. As always, I don't have to ask what FDR would do, because FDR faced all the same problems we have now, and solved them. Since 1946 we have been thoroughly and painstakingly DEsolving all the problems FDR solved. In most cases we have overshot the DEsolving, making the problem massively worse than it was in 1932.

Labels: #desistance, se-lu

  ¶ 4:37 AM

  Why do they keep saying this?
Why do people continually assert that cougars never attack people? Sheer nonsense.

Example this week. Cougar attacks aren't nearly as common as dog attacks because humans don't go into cougar territory often. But when the two species do get together, cougars do attack humans.

Labels: Shared Lie

  ¶ 2:27 PM