AGW finally explained

Not much different than many sociopaths like Anna Delvey operate, show up, be of at least average intelligence, be somewhat conventionally attractive (being white often helps), act totally confident and self-assured and like you already know everyone who's everyone and belong wherever you are. Act like your mark should be really fortunate to have made your acquaintance. Proceed to confidently tell them exactly what they want to hear.

I was approached by an old-time grifter in an upscale coffee shop once several years ago during the Bitcoin blowup. Said he was organizing a big sports conference/meet-and-greet in Vegas and a bunch of Red Sox from the 2004 season would be there, I can get you first-run tickets for

2 grand usually 4 grand, opportunity of a lifetime and all that. And I do like my baseball.

Had me going for a while and I took his card but then some things started to not add up. His story changed when I talked to him the next time and he started touting that some bigger name players were gonna be there, too big for it to be believable. Yeah I'd believe you could get Mark Bellhorn on short notice but not Big Papi these stars were too big for some coffee-shop hustler.

Did my due diligence on him and I didn't like what little I was able to pull up thru social media searches, looked like fictitious info with only the bare minimum of a professional profile/real life person attached, just enough to maybe reassure older people who don't know when a social media profile smells like bullshit info.

and called a few hospitality biz contacts I have in Vegas and asked about if they knew of such an event, you've gotta schedule anywhere to hold an event in Vegas of that size months in advance. No such thing. Kept on looking more and more like a racket, maybe to pump "investor" money into Bitcoin and then refund with some excuse after a month or so keeping the profit.

Well I'd have liked to meet even Mark Bellhorn, too bad. At least I kept my cash. These people can be very convincing even to otherwise fairly intelligent folks as I like to think I am. If you don't do your homework...

as an aspiring engineer I tend to be rather sensitive to things that seem too good to be true. Here I am in my Sox hat and here's this guy who just _happens_ to have this great deal for me with respect to another favorite thing of mine besides engineering. Isn't that interesting.

Goes for women as much as men. I'd take everything an "anti-feminist" woman told me with a grain of salt, too. So you're a woman and...opposed to rights for women? Isn't that kinda like a pro-slavery black man? Hmmm...

absolutely. Fools do not learn

NT

NT should know. He's a perfect example of the problem.

John Larkin may not be a fool, but he's equally incapable of learning. He has decided that climate change denial propaganda is the disinterested truth, and hasn't yet managed to find out that it isn't.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Reminds me of a post on a pre-internet BBS from a math genius in Portugal named Joao Pedro. Somebody asked what is the purpose of fingernails, and he said the purpose of the rest of the body is to facilitate the reproduction of fingermails.

People who don't understand control loops usually push on the wrong nodes.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

Donald Trump and trade wars. He does act the way the righties like to think that lefties behave.

Right-wing thinking isn't exactly high quality or relaible, but it is predictable.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

... based on dogma instead of understanding.

NT

A dogmatic assertion. John Larkin's assertion is bit too vague to let anybody understand exactly what he's talking about - a "node" can actually be a variety of things.

He might have meant knob or button. "Change the wrong input" makes more sense, but may not be what he had in mind.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Mo says we're wrong. Cats invented us to feed them.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

Probably incorrect.Larger cats - lions, tigers and the like - do eat humans when they get the chance - and may have been one of the selective forces that favoured humans who could cooperate well enough to team up and take down a lion.

In reality, cats discovered us and learned how to train us to feed them. This is a neat trick, but falls short of invention.

The contrast is between inventing a novel circuit and getting a patent on it, and recognising a circuit that will do the job you want and making money out if it.

John Larkin is strangely incapable of seeing this distinction.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney