Bashing head into wall, trying to troubleshoot website issues. So if this gets cranky sounding, it’s just me (I’ll get into it later in the Around the Ranch part…)
Best stick to the grindstone in moods like this: So let’s start with GDP:
Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 3.3 percent in the second quarter of 2025 (April, May, and June), according to the second estimate released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP decreased 0.5 percent. The increase in real GDP in the second quarter primarily reflected a decrease in imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, and an increase in consumer spending. These movements were partly offset by decreases in investment and exports.
Now, backed up with GDP we also have the latest Fed Money supply figures to ponder – because this is the stuff that will push around the Velocity of Money at M2.
M2? Didjah Say M2???
Here’s “math that matters” to us: Seasonally adjusted M2 this week is 22,115.4 where a year ago it was holding 21,098.0. You divide the ‘big one by the little one’ and presto! The MONETARY INFLATION rate. Which is? 4.822 percent.
LAST MONTH’s numbers were 22,021.4 and 21,065.6. If your pencil hasn’t fallen in your coffee yet, it should. Because last month, the annual rate of monetary inflation was? 4.53725 percent.
Think back now: Who told you “Smells like there’s a stealth QE in play, don’t it?” Um…yeah… well, so the Fed has cranked it up a notch.
If the year-on-year GDP is not up to this, (it won’t be), the difference will hurt. Your standard of living, nar as we can figure it, gets dialed back a percent, or so a year. Reason? To keep you in check.
See most people have one big asset in Life – their home. When you don’t own it outright, it allows you to leverage – making money off inflation. I’m too grumpy this morning to roll through the whole litany of factors, but people who have to rent for a living as sheep and people who own homes have a leg up on them. But it’s all very hush-hush, you see? Because no one from IRS or whoever bothers to tell you that “If you don’t own an inflation-adjusting asset, you’re screwed over time.”
Well, this is time and now, Old Uncle George lays the second layer of goo on this morning’s crap sandwich, right? Profits…
Real gross domestic income (GDI) increased 4.8 percent in the second quarter, compared with an increase of 0.2 percent in the first quarter. The average of real GDP and real GDI increased 4.0 percent, in contrast to a decrease of 0.1 percent in the first quarter.
Profits from current production (corporate profits with inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments) increased $65.5 billion in the second quarter, in contrast to a decrease of $90.6 billion in the first quarter. (When M2 goes up, it ALL goes up…)
And because we have so much fun (going blind from financial jerkoffs like this) let’s heap on the dismal with a report on new unemployment filings, shall we?
Let me see: Nvidia was a nothing burger so today we’re off to Nasdaq futures flat as Nvidia slips on China market uncertainty…God this is fun, ain’t it?
Let’s hit the headlines and see if we can line up a few more reasons to sign up for rehab, shall we?
Whee! (‘re screwed)
Will the COVID-19 fallout ever end? Fired CDC director says RFK ‘weaponising public health’ as more leaders quit agency. Little coverage of the counter-notion, namely that RFK, Jr is simply trying to turn medicine into health not a money-machine for big pharma and insurance execs, but hey…we just report ’em as they roll… (We are still pissed that insurance – once meant to spread risk, has been greedified and turned into a way to milk, not risk share…but like I said earlier, I’m grumpy today.)
Gee, these waterfront property acquisitions are a bitch sometimes, as any Developer in Chief knows: No end in sight to Gaza war as Trump discusses day-after with Blair and Jared Kushner.
You’ll have to pardon our referencing Truesome and Grump as the clickbait tag team for the foreseeable future: Gov. Gavin Newsom teases that ‘coin’ is coming to online store.
If you haven’t figured the world has tipped and is now in free-fall, might you want to gander this? The Trans Shooter Epidemic Exposed: Deep State’s Sinister Cover-Up and Why Patriots Must Shine the Light to End the Madness… Instead…let’s not mention the elephant in the room, right? According to federal officials and court records, the suspect, 23-year-old Robin Westman, is a transgender woman who legally changed name from Robert to Robin as a minor (petition filed 2019; granted 2020). Police have not tied gender identity to the motive. Of course not… For now there’s no link, but we are also mindful that “peer review” is a process hijack that has left the world spinning in, oh, global warming and oh so much more….
But rather than plain speaking, how about we just turn the war coverage back on? Rescuers race to reach victims after Russian strikes pound Kyiv, killing at least 15, including four children.
There, all better….world back to normal.
ATR: Starlink, Straight Keys and BS Dependencies
Up since 2AM and working on the website today. This is getting to be a pattern…
I was sitting down to work on the site again most of Wednesday. Turned on ads again (sick of paying server hosting out of the beer money. I was head deep into it: trying to keep the whole digital shitteree running long enough to get something finished, and what happens?
Starlink decides to burp.
The feed goes sideways, but not in the “in Ure face” way. Subtle-like. The logins start tripping over each other, and I’m left wondering if I’m in some new tech-war crossfire between Microsoft’s Edge and Firefox. It’s not the first time, either. The pattern is becoming clear: Starlink throws me curve balls, Viasat isn’t much better but it’s a different set of weather interrupts, so I can deal with that. Meanwhile, the old DSL landline circuit? Rock solid. Slow, sure, but steady as a metronome. Or, a mushroom.
That’s where the comparison started to chew on me.
See, I’ve been on the air (doing the ham radio thing) for more than sixty years with a straight key in my hand, sending code across oceans. Sixteen words per minute, sure, I can chat at twice that, but for writing things down, 16-20 words a minute is lush. Steady as a heartbeat. Japan, Europe, South America — you name it, I’ve worked it. Even worked countries that went obsolete, too: Rhodesia, Burma and there was more…
Those signals got through because the fundamentals were solid. The wire was copper, the current was steady even when bounced on the F2 Layer; the radio was built with iron and glass. You could trust the glow of a tube and the hum of a transformer. You didn’t need a firmware update to make it work. When you “pounded the brass” the whole table changed tone – that’s what happens when an old school linear amplifier stutters gulping current on key down…
Now look at the digital world I have to live in. Dear God.
Three browser updates, a plug-in to the Urban or Peoplenomics Content Management Software? The whole system can crash and burn on a dime. When it does, it’s a time-sink.
This week, a plugin sneezed, and my site feed disappeared.
The operating system decides it’s time to “improve security,” and suddenly I can’t log in without fighting through a dozen prompts.
Listen now and you’ll hear it: I’m sounding an ALARM!
We’ve built a society on top of layers of dependencies, each one a potential point of failure, and we call it Progress. Uppity comes with Updates, It’s like…oh shit…having to change a hub cap on your car every other day just to be able to drive it safely.
Crazy!
The old rigs never lied about what they were. They either worked or they didn’t, and if they didn’t, you could smell the resistors warming to the smoke point. Or see the plate glowing a nice dull red on key down. Today? It’s all invisible errors buried under invisible layers, and you just sit there hoping the satellite handoff doesn’t boot you out of your own dashboard. Good luck getting real, actual help from Support.
But I don’t get MAD about it, anymore,. It’s kind of hilarious, really. On a good day, I can work Japan with a straight key about the same speed most people text. That’s half a century of experience, and the signal still gets through, because physics hasn’t changed. But put me on Starlink with two browsers open, trying to update UrbanSurvival, and suddenly it’s like threading a needle in the dark. Though I could roll with “pissing in a hurricane” if you’re a traditionalist. The irony writes itself. But honestly? It shouldn’t.
Let’s focus on The Big Lie.
We’re supposed to be living in an era of high-speed, high-tech, always-on connectivity. And sure, the bandwidth is there — when it works. But the reliability? The trust factor? Not even close. I never had to wonder if my old Eico or the old Johnson Pacemaker was secretly at war with my Hallicrafters. They just did their jobs. Today, Edge and Firefox seem to trip over each other like two drunks in a bar fight, and I’m left holding the bill. Yeah, it’s happened a time or two, sure, but now?
Maybe that’s the lesson: the more complex the systems, the more fragile they become. I’m still coping well because I moved on to Domain Walking years ago. I see the complexity bubble for what it is. Not a “digital Savior” more like the electric can opener that keeps not working when you’re hungry and in a hurry. You had one, right? I know, you don’t need me to riff on my Downsizing book.
We’ve built this whole digital economy on a stack of updates, patches, and kludges. You know life has passed you by when you’ve gone from a “hot fix” being a beautiful woman in a bar to something Microsoft force-feeds after the 3878 SSD update mess.
It’s all going to go. Just a matter of when. I reckon it will be fast. Meanwhile, the old boat anchors in the ham shack will still be lighting up the bands long after the satellites fall out of the sky. That’s not nostalgia talking, that’s just a plain assessment of what’s reliable and what’s not.
Like some damn fool, here I went through the ritual this morning. I sat down for pre-op — update this, reboot that, virus definitions changed? Clear the cache, trash the spam directories and those can all kiss my butt. The whole time I’m praying it all holds together just one more day.
Old is good, coming up on 80 in a couple of years. I’ll still remember a time when all it took was a key, a hunk of wire, and a little patience. Maybe a hammer. But in the end – no time at all? The signal always got through.
Today’s digital hangover? A story of dependencies and bullshit. The more we depend on invisible layers, the more bullshit we get. And the HTML Highwaymen, Source Code Snipers, and…oh, what’s the point.
If you want proof, just ask my straight key. Fifty years on, it’s still the most dependable connection I’ve got. And if I need a hot fix? I’m going to Elaine. We see how Bill’s plan’s working out.
Write when you get rich (assuming we have one more round of digital daylight ahead…)
Holiday’s coming. I’ll be the guy at the package store with an armload,
George@Ure,net
“It’s all going to go. Just a matter of when.”
Thanks.
King Crimson – “Indiscipline”
I do remember one thing.
It took hours and hours but..
by the time I was done with it,
I was so involved, I didn’t know what to think.
I carried it around with me for days and days..
playing little games
like not looking at it for a whole day
and then.. looking at it.
to see if I still liked it.
I did.
I repeat myself when under stress.
I repeat myself when under stress.
I repeat myself when under stress.
I repeat myself when under stress.
I repeat..
The more I look at it,
the more I like it.
I do think it’s good.
The fact is..
no matter how closely I study it,
no matter how I take it apart,
no matter how I break it down,
It remains consistant.
I wish you were here to see it.
I like it.
King Crimson – Indiscipline (Live At The Warfield Theatre, 1995)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FbYmMXE6Lw
“Maybe that’s the lesson: the more complex the systems, the more fragile they become.”
Absolutely …
The more complex a system the more potential points of failure; when one link fails it potentially starts a domino chain of events.
Recommended `Thinking in Systems` – D. Meadows, `Bak’s Sand Pile` – Lewis, and also maybe `Are your lights on?` – Weinberg
But then again I’m probably preaching to the choir …. LOL
Vodka!!!
“3878 SSD update”
The problem isn’t the update itself but the force. I’ve complained in this forum about MS update. The MS EULA says I have no say in the matter if I want to participate.
U.S. .gov is taking Intel. Soon Intel chips will be made from the material Russia used for that famous car company. I don’t get it.
Nationalizing farms bad. Nationalizing Intel good.
I have a “glitch” in my hearing aids. Sometimes one or both will work and sometimes not. Sometimes I can hear my turn signals, other times not. I replaced my old hearing aids about a month ago because the batteries only worked about 10 hours a day. It was no suprise to the technician, having seen problems with this brand. I had insurance and they were under warranty, so not a big deal. The replacements are not insured because I was told I would want an upgrade in a couple of years. A couple of years turned out to be a couple of weeks. It looks like I might be buying a new pair next week.
I have come to depend on the hearing aids being sinked to my phone and amplifying the speech. I enjoy having sound going through the hearing aides for YouTube videos. So quickly I became dependent on these tools. I hope the technician can fix them next week, but the receptionist warned me that I might need to order new ones.
I can’t fix even minor hiccups on my computer, leaving it for my daughter to fix. I’m impressed that you have both the knowledge and the patience to wade through technology and software issues.
I also want to comment about being able to test out of curriculum in college. Went I got my first Masters degree in Special Education I was required to take a course in Rehabilitation. I asked to test out and take another Education course but I was refused. I was working in rehab at the time and had been a Caseworker, a Job Placement Specialist, and a Vocational Evaluator. I could have taught the course and frequently corrected the teacher. It was such a waste of time and money but I complied to obtain my degree.
“Your standard of living”
The bailouts. There’s a link below indicting $WMT has to lock-up socks do to theft. In war commanders tell the enlisted to keep their socks changed. So are everyday Joe’s stealing sport socks for sport or are desperate folks trying to keep their feet dry?
“This is so sad”: Walmart is officially locking up socks now
“Why don’t they just lock the front door?”
https://www.dailydot.com/news/walmart-locks-up-socks/
We’re conditioned to believe
Stealing socks = bad
Stealing pension funds = not their fault – bailout
Here’s more grift:
Inside the USAID Fire Sale
“One of the more surreal knock-on effects of the gutting of USAID is that the U.S. government is now holding a massive fire sale for mosquito nets, water towers, printers, iPads, chairs, generators, defibrillators, textbooks, agricultural equipment, motorbikes, mobile health clinics, and more. Until recently, these items supported the 5,000-plus foreign-aid projects that the Trump administration has now canceled.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/inside-usaid-fire-sale-215825277.html
GSA Auctions…. ?
hotshot in washington being hassled by ICE
Federal agents arrest firefighters working on WA wildfire
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/federal-agents-arrest-firefighters-working-on-wa-wildfire/
Hopefully they will be picking up that DICK Blumanthal – ya know the big bad Army War Fighter. Heard he might of been with a Ranger Unit in Iraq/Trashganistan – a real friggin hero..
Pharma Bro Dick and his partner in Crime, Pharma Bro Berndog
truth,
Thank you for retrieving this story from the burn pile, but sorry to hear you are hot under the collar. One imagines federal agency staff dropping f-bombs during frontline operations could be offered sensitivity training once emotions cool down.
Let us not forget a lesson brought to us by msm during the LA fires early this year. The State of California did not shy away from acknowledging that some 30% of its wildfire fighting force is comprised of incarcerated individuals. They risk life and limb for the princely sum of $10 per hour. Probably their command of swears in form of adjectives, nouns, and verbs might make a sailor blush.
According to a 2024 “Fox News” report, Washington state offers a more forward-thinking compensation structure. Inmates skilled and competent to work with a front-line firefighting team can earn minimum wage of $16 per hour plus overtime.
Let’s join DJ George in studio whose kindly chopped out the blue bits from request lists for polite listener contentment. Here we go with some Pink Floyd “Relics” to help sharpen ear palates:
“Careful with That Axe, Eugene”.
So with a 4.8% (lets just say 5%) run rate for the year concerning inflation, how in the **** (first letter can either be ‘F’ or ‘H’) does Trump expect Powell to cut next month??? That would be insane at this stage in the financial game.
Rates need to be at 5%, at the minimum, and above that in order to legitimately beat inflation and stay ahead.
Just my two cents….
You realize you have just taken your resume out of the Lisa Cook replacement pile, right?
Locking up socks?
Because they are fearful of de feet!
Toe jam stinks!
Darn It, I was going to say that..
“ The operating system decides it’s time to “improve security,” and suddenly I can’t log in without fighting through a dozen prompts.
Listen now and you’ll hear it: I’m sounding an ALARM!
We’ve built a society on top of layers of dependencies, each one a potential point of failure, and we call it Progress.”
No worries, George! AI will fix everything! AI will monitor your connections and seamlessly make system updates and upgrades, all resulting in just one teensy dependency – delegating all actions to AI.
Stealthy as the process may be, it is becoming increasingly evident that Big Tech is gradually wrapping its AI tentacles around the entire electronic comm/digital infosphere. What that results in 5, 10 or 20 more years is still up to us. Short of lighting-off a few dozen nukes, humanity needs to act, and rather soon, or a ‘Matrix’ like future looms.
George : saw Urban Survival was struggling, it’s a glitch in the Matrix? Nah, software developers. We test a site with gobs of OS / Browsers but, the apparent glitch-maker is desire to move everyone off PCs and onto Mobile. Everything new is designed for mobile.
My AV kit now takes (3) clicks on big yellow buttons to do what was one click per function. Progress? Hardly. This is a site fed subscriber cash, not needing clicks at all. I suspect desire to rely on auto-setting vs. manual.
Soldier on. Remember, it’s always darkest before … it gets really dark.
Or the train arrives? Or, the dawn. Pick one.
Egor
ps – not to be a spoil sport but, no worries about adverts here. I never see ’em
My engineer friend used to say:”It’s always darkest just before it goes completely black!”
re: btw- ‘Sir Rich’ -will suffice, tyvm!
Folks,
Perhaps hunters be on the lookout for a Servant’s laptop lately absent from the president’s desk. Despite such potential 404 setbacks, sharpened pencils lay in view ready for dictation. An unperturbed president uploaded a photo-op gallery to his public social media channel. Holding smartphone as microphone, readers were informed he had separate conversations with the EC and Turkish presidents.
Tourism to Ukraine remains surprisingly resilient. Outgoing Chief of UK Forces, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin KCB ADC, stopped by the presidential office with his replacement in tow. (Sir Tony apparently enjoys leisure as Vice-Admiral of the Royal Navy Sailing Association.) Going forward, one might anticipate trip reviews from Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton KCB ADC FReng. When not flying about, apparently Sir Rich publicizes a desire to “do more sailing”.
George
Reading today I just realized you have become the Brock Yates of Ham Radio. Too bad there is no Public General Interest magazine for you to write at every month. Its something that neophytes like me would read over and over and look at the ads numerous times before buying, sort of like me in college with Stereo and Audiophile, and in the 1990s with Maximum PC, after it had become a Window mag instead of Maximum DOS.
All my stereo gear upstairs in the spare room came from careful selection of what was on the bulletin boards at the Student Union. My son says you can’t buy anything that sounds like that (good) now. My little Electro-Voice 25W integrated amp for the early 1960s not only sounds way more powerful than it is but it sill is my go to headphone amp.
My earlier computers were the same way, and then parts added from wandering in the aisle of the Computer shows in NE atlanta suburbs Now they are all laptops but all have either SSDs or M2 drives and the RAM maxed out.
A guy I worked with commented after four of us went to lunch in my car that “I realize that your car has had stuff changed to make it “your car.””
I said back, We are all engineers. “We are supposed to be “Gear Heads, aren’t we?” Now I don’t know a single young male engineer that changes his own oil. The female engineers have never had to do that. I asked one in school how she liked and got by with her summer internship on an oil platform in the Gulf. She said she would pick up the biggest stilson wrench on the deck and put a puzzled look on her face and three deck hands would rush to do her job for her. She would bat her southern bell eyes at them and smile and say thank you very slow. Worked every time.
Really, its time to start a new web feature for the Golden Years. “Key and Driver? ” “Antenna and Track?” Which of your Ham Friends could play David E. Davis and fire you every few months only to hire you back when we readers complained enough. That and a movie of the radio equivalent of the Cannonball Run and you could retire rich.
We would all miss you though.
Join ARRL and get QST magazine to get your ham radio yah-yahs!
“Too bad there is no Public General Interest magazine for you to write at every month.”
There is — It’s called “Usenet.” I believe the problem is not a location or format issue, but a time issue…
_____
“Now I don’t know a single young male engineer that changes his own oil. The female engineers have never had to do that.”
My daughter (mid-30s) is the only person in her peer group, male or female, who can (and does) change her own oil and can (and has) changed a tire. Sydney Sweeney has a weekly podcast, where she works on her (Gen-2, I think) Mustang. I am hoping she gets a following from Millenials and kiddies, and they figure out
(a) there’s no shame in honest dirt and
(b) it washes off…
Wow
I just tried to send this and got first a message that there was a database connection error, the a screen that said 503 error.
I was able to get it back and copy it to Word, or I might not have sent it at all rather that retype from memory.
Interesting when it was inspired by you fulminating about software verses ham radio.
Double complexity quadruble proplems..
Janne from finnland
Janne, well, the math ^ looks right!
Kivaa päivää,
Egor
Wow
I just tried to send this and got first a message that there was a database connection error, the a screen that said 503 error.
I was able to get it back and copy it to Word, or I might not have sent it at all rather that retype from memory.
Interesting when it was inspired by you fulminating about software verses ham radio.
No it is not s Dupe, it is doing it again here, forst an “error connecting to database” Message then the 503 error message.
Hmm
~ Its Power is Complete. ~
The Emerald Tablet.
Yo Mr AntiFragile,
I do believe youse were all over this as malarkey. Perhaps if one were to look in a mirror, one might catch a glimpse of an LG ?
There aint no Merc retro action this month, so me thinks the LG diagnosis is prolly SPOT on.
What is an LG youse might wonder ? Have a listen to at the link below, might just be half of the “residents” on board here are LG’s, their easy to id, they kinda stick out in group, dont ya know.
LG -https://youtu.be/RjtmKIWa4tY?si=WzeBnA3VNCFsnTin
Here in the Emerald City where the yellow brick road leads you too.
The first line of the Emerald Tablet is,
Truth! Certainty! That in which there is no doubt!
Today, I am no longer propelled forward in life by a detroit desiel. A New anD Greater Engine moves me forward.
In a few hours my lady and I are heading up to the High Limit Races just past Mount Vernon, Washington. 3 days of racing 1300Hp winged race cars.
The Highest Winning Purse on the West Coast for that kind this Saturday Night.
In one hand I hold the Ace of Clovers and in the other the hand of an Irish Girl. Whooooooo Loves loves loves me! We are a perfect Match.
They dont make music like this anymore and A.I will never make music like this,
Que: ~ One in a Million ~
https://youtu.be/kgIRClKD4RI?si=ou5r6lkGGJUKrk_s
Guns and Roses.
F1 – de Movie with B. Pitt, 1st movie I have been to in a theater in years..kids convinced me it was good Summer fun.
Not bad, not bad at all, I was entertained to point of thinking I got my moneys worth. Key to all personal movie ratings, a good ending . F1 has a good ending, a good story and awesome Formula 1 racing scenes, kinda get inside the Racer and Engineering Team interplay and conflicts.
vroomvroom
Red
Yellow
GREEN!
LFG Racing!
a midget won last night! RICO ABREU. i didnt know he was a midget. he fastest midget on the planet. super nice guy. i heard alot of good stuff about him.
https://www.skagitspeedway.com/press/article/180462
Hey Len, The 2024 Australian National Champion is here racing. He is fuckin fast. he did really well last night. we were all very much impressed.
after the Prayer over the races they sang the Australian, Canadian and US National Anthems.
none of them as fast as #13 who came 100th of a second from breaking the all time track record last night durring hot laps.
I Win with God within.
Here in the Emerald City where the yellow brick road leads you too.
The first line of the Emerald Tablet is,
Truth! Certainty! That in which there is no doubt!
Today, I am no longer propelled forward in life by a detroit desiel. A New anD Greater Engine moves me forward.
In a few hours my lady and I are heading up to the High Limit Races just past Mount Vernon, Washington. 3 days of racing 1300Hp winged race cars.
The Highest Winning Purse on the West Coast for that kind this Saturday Night. There can be only One.
In one hand I hold the Ace of Clovers and in the other the hand of an Irish Girl. Whooooooo Loves loves loves me! We are a perfect Match.
They dont make music like this anymore and A.I will never make music like this,
Que: ~ One in a Million ~
https://youtu.be/kgIRClKD4RI?si=ou5r6lkGGJUKrk_s
Guns and Roses.
Communications Technology:
My oh my, your comments today took me back to my youth.
Learning to manually typset out of the tray without looking, blocking it up and then throwing it on the old Platem Press and producing a full page of typeset output in an hour. (originally used a manual Platem Press with a foot pedal later an electric powered one).
Those were not as fast as my grandfather’s electric mimeograph machine (which he used for business and politics) that could produce thousands of copies in a night when something big was happening but the output looked more professional (of course if you had a VariType typewriter you could do wonders with making your mimeograph work look almost as good as that of a typeset regular printing press (he had a VariType typewriter to use if needed) – just don’t make any typing mistakes though when cutting your master!! or you have to start typing the master ALL OVER again! LOL ).
Later I upgraded my mass communicating printing skills to working for a daily newspaper that still used a lead roller rotary press!! What a monster! Already nearly 70 years old when I was there, but worked like a charm doing a daily production run of 8 to 10,000 of 16 collated, cut and stacked newspapers an hour. Now THAT was the MOST MODERN mass communication of 1900 … but still working hard in the 1960’s early 1970’s!!
OH those old style manual typist linotype machines needed for that type of printing were a DREAM for any Rube Goldberg type person. Moving parts everywhere as all the individual type pieces were grabbed and dropped into the tray so that they could then be cast by the machine into an individual line of lead type!! (I am sure lead poisoning was a typical thing with those linotype typists)
When it was finally replaced at the newspaper by ganged Gross Offset Presses the printing plant lost a huge amount of it’s charm, to me at least, but NOT to the front office.
The big savings being getting rid of the rows of maintenance heavy linotype machines, both manual with typists and auto fed with data from the wire service machines, that were necessary for producing the lead type needed for the manual blocking of each page so that the cardboard master could then be made which was necessary for the hot casting of the individual page lead rollers (which slid into the old newspaper press).
The Gross Offset Press was not any faster than the old lead roller press wrt papers per hour of output, actually was considerably slower,… but it did allow about 20 people to be laid off since now they could do almost everything on the production side, including page layout, electronically versus manually. Shoot those Gross Press units even allowed color to be printed, though since that required the use of multiple units of the press (one for each color on the same piece of paper) the number of pages in the paper for that day’s run had to be reduced.
Ah … now THAT was the way people did mass communication just 60 years ago!! Physical newsletters via a printing process (for something like Urban Survival), physical newspapers, physical magazines, There is something about REAL INK versus just electrons on a screen that still appeals to me.
Had the chance to go into the newspaper business on the edictoriial /management side when young and as much as l loved the business I turned it down since already by the early 1970’s I could see the writing on the wall as to where that industry was going. (guy who took the job I was offered later became the Editor of the lead newspaper for the Scripts Howard chain … alas a great position in a dying industry – though Scripts Howard itself is a still a big media company)
Electronic communication vs the old style Physical Paper communication … are we better off with the change that has occured, or worse off?
“Listen now and you’ll hear it: I’m sounding an ALARM!
We’ve built a society on top of layers of dependencies, each one a potential point of failure, and we call it Progress…
“…We’ve built this whole digital economy on a stack of updates, patches, and kludges…
“…It’s all going to go. Just a matter of when. I reckon it will be fast. Meanwhile, the old boat anchors in the ham shack will still be lighting up the bands long after the satellites fall out of the sky. That’s not nostalgia talking, that’s just a plain assessment of what’s reliable and what’s not.”
Perhaps now, Grasshopper, you begin to see why I have things like an antique pickup truck? When I saw that 2009 Dodge Ram pickup in my local shop, it confirmed that I needed to own an antique vehicle. That frickin’ TRUCK, with its NINE ONBOARD COMPUTERS, on which a (genuinely) highly-trained and experienced mechanic was running a fabulously-expensive service invoice because between his 1.5 million dollar education and his hundred thousand dollar diagnostic console, he was spending DAYS, trying to sort out the problem and make those computers play nice with each other — and couldn’t.
The multilayered technology is wonderful, when it all works as-designed.
It is crippling unto death, when it doesn’t.
As you’ve noted, with each new layer come multiple new failure points, and geometrically more-complex diagnostics.
FWIW the Samsung Series Two (Sam2) has become the defacto standard in cash registers. I take an almost sadistic delight in chiding the customer service drone at any store or restaurant, when their Sam2e (or its card reader peripheral) shits itself and they can’t “ring up” merchandise or “check-out” customers. Oh yeah, did I mention the Sam2e and its periphs all do pushed updates by default and many of the card-reader manufacturers have made it really difficult to disable automatic updates? My local farm store is at “Day-4” of dealing with its latest update. Its card readers simultaneously stopped working, so ccard info has to be manually typed for every sale, AND the registers randomly “lose” orders, right around where the “subtotal key” function would be on a mechanical register — thus requiring that the entire order be “rerung.”
For entertainment purposes, I can only hope whomever writes that POS, POS software, updates it on Thanksgiving…
For US/PN purposes, I hope George restricts Windows to a single, offline computer that’s only used for stuff like Office, and runs his online stuff on Debian (or one of its offspring) and his CO-LO is running WordPress on (or switches to) Apache through Red Hat or Debian.
nah enough . your calculation of velocity stinks . everything stinks in your corrupt soviet state USSA . youll draw the lines up and up on that aggregate thing . ahh yous are all on it .the same side of the boat . permabull freak show . newsome is right buy corrupt coin
dumb as the rock you may have just crawled out fromunda, Chester..https://youtu.be/GxsuLBClBFY?si=5JZE-O_7512a0wZA
Hears a great investment idea; Buy GOLD, Buy Silver, Buy Palladium, Buy Platin.
That would mean youse would have to BUY back Ure Short Gold, the gutz out of which U were shorting not too long ago.
Thats okay, everyone looks stupid who Sold Phyz Gold short, ya do know what you can do with the Paper gold, no?
Man crushing on Newsome..seems “Bearish”…bwahahaahahahah
* I know, it aint easy being cheesy.
Being cheesy…G, your RFK Jr cheerlead shows you are still stuck in echo chamber vision, RFK Jr got big ties with $6.3 trillion Wellness Industry
‘ While Kennedy lambastes federal agencies he says are overly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry, he and some other figures of the “Make America Healthy Again,” or MAHA, movement—such as siblings Calley and Casey Means, Robert Malone, and Peter McCullough—have their own financial ties to a vast and largely unregulated $6.3 trillion global wellness industry they also support and promote.
Kennedy and those four advisers—three of whom have been tapped for official government roles—earned at least $3.2 million in fees and salaries from their work opposing Big Pharma and promoting wellness in 2022 and 2023, according to a KFF Health News review of financial disclosure forms filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and the Department of Health and Human Services; published media reports; and tax forms filed with the IRS.’
https://www.cspi.org/cspi-news/vested-interests-influence-muscle-rfk-jrs-hhs-its-not-pharma-its-wellness#:~:text=While%20Kennedy%20lambastes%20federal%20agencies,forms%20filed%20with%20the%20IRS.
and you believe the corrupt numbers?