When Commerce Secretary Hoover got Congress to create the FCC's predecessor in 1927, it explicitly required spectrum allocation to be based on "the public interest", overturning the private property rights common law had been developing. This was done at the behest of the new radio network cronies. This led to all sorts of censorship, eventually enshrined as the fairness doctrine. The FCC also flexed its muscles to delay FM radio, cable TV, cell phones, color TV, WiFi, and I forget what else, by 10-20 or more years.

There's a great book on this, "Political Spectrum", by Thomas Hazlett. A good review: https://www.hoover.org/researc...

Huh. I coulda sworn mine had the crank. On the other hand, maybe they only promised it for later delivery and I barely used it after a few days experimenting, since it was so limited, and eventually tossed it along with a lot of other eWaste.

Many many years ago, I bought an OLPC, actually a pair, one for me, the other they sent to Africa or some other place. I do not remember the year even vaguely. I do remember it had a crank to windup and charge the battery. I bought the two because (from memory) the purpose of the laptop was strictly limited:

* Carry all textbooks on one laptop, instead of having to walk miles to school and back with a heavy backpack.

* Have modern eBook textbooks, not fifth generation hand-me-downs which had been written in a different language for a different country. This was certainly important for indoctrination in local history and culture, but it even applied to math textbooks, whose examples could well use cultural aspects which were literally foreign.

* Be rechargeable with that windup crank for kids whose homes had no electricity.

* Use a screen to read those books instead of having to stop using them after dark or by candles or oil lamps.

In particular, I had never heard that they were meant to teach computer science. It might have been a nice side effect, but I did not think it was any kind of a primary goal. The primary goal was to help young children learn.

If they plan to actually generate movies in Saudi Arabia, their morality police are going to restrict them heavily. I doubt most of the rest of the world would be interested for long.

If their plan is only to make the software, will those contracts ban anything forbidden by the Saudi morality police? Will the software have hidden restraints? It would be easy to detect forbidden scenes. It might not be so easy to detect more subtle restraints, such as ideological bias.

I'm convinced of it. You'll supply a script, cast, and style and it will generate the movie. At some point, you will also be able to interact with the movie, talking to the characters ("your other left"), talking to the generator ("skip this scene").

Famous actors will sell their personas, famous writers will sell scripts, famous directors and producers will sell styles, but I think most people will pay less for B-list and C-list and Z-list content that they can tweak to get something different every time.

You will also be able to add your overlays to scripts ("more cowbells"), personas ("more witty") and styles ("fewer explosions"), and you will be able to add random variations.

It's going to be fantastic. Hollywood democratization will be like a breath of fresh air.

I've been using a TCL NXTPAPER for reading for a couple of years, and haven't used my kindles since. The screen has no glare at all, none. It's night right now, can't tell you about reading in bright sunlight. I haven't found a phone yet which is any fun in bright sun, so this NXTPAPER is probably not great either. But none of my house lights drown it out.

I have one, #11 I believe, which I use instead of Kindles. Zero glare, zero lag while paging. Works OK for general use too, but it beats the pants off Kindles and all other tablets I've tried for readability. Had it for a couple of years now.

When I was a kid, we too had stupid things. Besides elephant jokes (how many elephants can you fit in a VW Beetle? Five -- two in the front, two in the back, and one in the glove box), the dumbest joke I remember was to run up to a friend fast and breathless and demand "Guess what!" as if you'd seen a UFO or fire engine run by, then shout "Langendorf bread, that's what!" and run away cackling like Kamala Harris.

https://reason.com/volokh/2025...

It's a legal blog with a legal perspective.

How gullible are you, and how gullible do you think I am, or anyone else?

They've been screaming for decades that 1.5C is the panic point, and 2.0C is right out. There's your tenths.

They claim they can predict the global temperature in 75 years within a tenth of a degree. How much more accuracy do they need?

Answer: they don't, unless their models are so inaccurate that the claims of knowing the temperature 75 years from now are false.

They lie.

Cattle in Greenland is historical fact. I learned it in grade school and a simple google finds all the confirmation you need.

The 97% fallacy is also easy to verify.

You lie again.

Again: rebut my assertions and claims, or you are a fraud. If all you do is skirt the issue and claim to be right and I am wrong, without any evidence but the sound of your keyboard, you are a fraud.

Explain where I have confused climate and weather. You didn't, and you won't, because you can't. You make arguments with nothing to back them up because you don't know what you are talking about, and because you don't want to risk anyone rebutting your claims.

That's also why you didn't rebut a single one of my claims. You don't believe your own claims. You are just another climate alarmist yelling at the clouds and wearing an onion on your belt.

Your faux-concern is so touching -- and fake, as you well know.

I'm glad you at least recognize you treat people as stereotypes instead of pondering what they say and responding as if you had actually read and understood what they say. You may eventually cease to be a stereotype yourself some day.