asciilifeform: the phoundation backport crap needs to go
asciilifeform: what is really needed is the experiment suggested by mircea_popescu (or was it davout?) where difficulty-outlier blocks are shot on sight
asciilifeform: for some reason they never seen to forget to put on pants when walking out the door
asciilifeform: punkman: odd. i know of no car recent enough to come with a remote button, that doesn't beep/flash when locked/unlocked
asciilifeform: reversals get taken straight from the merchant's account.
asciilifeform: punkman: flashlight... was a case study of "innovation" and "green" << the meat puppets responsible should be condemned to spend the rest of their days in oubliette, with only nyt to read, lit only by that flashlight.
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: engine where the piston was really just a magnet-bearing shuttle zipping back and forth through coils << i once saw a flashlight based on this principle. a real bitch to charge - much time and sore muscle spent in changing direction. but this would work beautifully for a liquid-piston stirling engine (see last night's thread).
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: phun phact: there are still a few hundred thousand idiots renting landline handsets in usa from lucent (who inherited that subdivision)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: Modems waren damals in Deutschland noch verboten, mit Ausnahme der teuren Mietgeräte der Bundespost << this was SOP in the national telco monopolies of that period; most famously, in usa, where all line equipment, incl. handsets, was considered property of bell co.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: 2) client companies of the state wish to be important. the market tells them to stuff it 3) government steps in... <<< see also the famous example of syntex corp. in mexico (carl djerassi!) - first mass-production of synthetic progestins, then nationalized, then gone - 'bad luck!'☟︎
asciilifeform: incidentally, one of his first (or perhaps first?) works is a description of a voyage he took, to visit the major capitals of the communist world
asciilifeform: inks too much and gets involved in brawls. No, the Real Me is an immaculate conception, untouched by human conduct: it is that unassailable core of virtue that enables me to retain my self-respect whatever I do. What I am is not at all determined by what I do; and insofar as what I do has any moral significance at all, it is up to others to ensure that the phenomenal me acts in accordance with the Real Me.'
asciilifeform: 'Violent criminals often use an expression auxiliary to “My head went” when explaining their deeds: “It wasn’t me.” Here is the psychobabble of the slums, the doctrine of the “Real Me” as refracted through the lens of urban degradation. The Real Me has nothing to do with the phenomenal me, the me that snatches old ladies’ bags, breaks into other people’s houses, beats up my wife and children, or repeatedly dr
asciilifeform: 'the knife went in, the gun went off'
asciilifeform: t. dalrymple (retired british shrink, wrote a number of hilarious books on psychology of criminals - and civ. decay overally) had a thing on this
