Out with the old…

 

…and in with the new.

I don't make New Years resolutions any more. They're a waste of energy and I don't have that much to spare.

Some people, though, do. There was a woman at the drugstore this morning stocking up on quit-smoking patches. Good luck to her.

And to you, if you're playing along.

As far as what's coming is concerned, The Economist takes a dour view…

America’s presidential election will be so poisonous and polarising that it will cast a pall over global politics.

…while the Wall Street Journal seems a little more upbeat.

We won’t even pretend to know all the things generative AI will do to our devices, our jobs, our lives—and our elections. But we promise you won’t be able to escape it. We’ll see other things too: the decline of the dreaded password, a boom in cleaner energy, increasing regulation around kids on social media, and more.

Who knows?

2024 is halfway around the world by now and coming fast.

Let's find out. 

Hanging in Illinois

States set to enact new laws on guns, pornography, taxes and even fuzzy dice

Starting Monday, police [in Illinois] no longer will be allowed to pull over motorists solely because they have something hanging from the rearview mirror of the windshield. That means air fresheners, parking placards and, yes, even those dice are fair game to hang.

Not all the news is bad. 

Some people are getting impatient

 

Check in Economy Class

Boeing Urges Airlines to Inspect 737 Max Planes for Possible Loose Bolts

Boeing has urged airlines to inspect all 737 Max airplanes for a possible loose bolt in the rudder-control system after an international airline discovered a bolt with a missing nut while performing routine maintenance, the Federal Aviation Administration said on Thursday.

According to some of the rowdier newspapers I read there are a lot of nuts rattling around in airliners these days. 

One of them may be seated in your row. 

578 inches of fish…

 …won the Wisconsin State High School Ice Fishing Championship in 2020. The 2024 contest is scheduled for February 16-17 on the Mississippi River at Lacrosse. 

If, that is, there's ice to fish through. Just the other day, the New York Times reports…

Ted Bonde, the president of the Wisconsin Interscholastic Fishing Association, said ice-fishing competitions in much of the state had been pushed back at least a week as wintertime anglers waited impatiently for the cold to set in.

In fact the entire Midwest, the Times informs us, is confounded by unseasonably warm weather so far this winter [winter arrived last week – ED.]. "Ernesto Londoño reported from St. Paul, Minn.…he managed to walk his dog, Hugo, wearing a T-shirt on Christmas Day." 

It hit 42ºF in Duluth. Which is about what it was where I am, but I'm not there.

Hanging on

 

Name the exact moment…

After this year, we’re all majoring in Taylor Swift

I was unaware of the depth of Swift scholarship until I arrived at Indiana University’s Buskirk-Chumley Theater on a lovely fall morning — and picked up a schedule that offered lectures such as “Aesthetic Jurisdiction, Parasocial Engagement, and Negative Space Intellectual Property in the Taylor Swift Fandom.”

…you realized you were just plain too damn old.

[Out of free links for this month: The quote is from an article by Emily Yahr in the current web edition of The Washington Post.]

Desktop

 

Looking forward to a retro new year.

In Las Vegas, all about the numbers

Las Vegas weddings could hit record on New Year’s Eve thanks to ‘specialty date’ for 2023

For better or for worse, a wave of couples saying “I do” in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve could set a record for the city’s busiest wedding day ever.

That’s because 12/31/23 is known in the massive Las Vegas wedding industry as a “specialty date,” thanks to the repeating 1-2-3 1-2-3 pattern, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

Somebody, somewhere, must be making odds. 

The jolly old elf

 Sure, why not?

If there was ever a way to avoid work…

My grocery store…

 …is sort of like Brigadoon. It only opens on Sunday once every seven years. Those would be the years Christmas falls on a Monday.

I have extra grocery shopping to do for Christmas because my job is to make the family Christmas dinner (my sister does Thanksgiving, so that works out fine). And I actually thought about doing it today, the shopping, because I like to start with fresh stuff.

But I chickened out.

What if I got distracted somehow (it's been known to happen) and didn't get checked out before closing time? Would I be stuck there until it opened up again in seven years?

I got all my groceries yesterday. It'll work.

Let 'em eat cake

The English-Muffin Problem

The economy is hot, but the people are bothered. Americans think the country is in dreadful economic shape despite strong wage growth, low unemployment, and steadily declining inflation. We know this from survey after survey. What we don’t really know is how people formed those judgments. To find out, The Atlantic commissioned a new poll. When the results came in, one finding jumped off the screen: Americans are really, really unhappy about grocery prices.

Or muffins. Either way. I seem to recall this ended poorly last time.

Of course, that was in another century and in a land far away.

“Don we now our gay apparel, Fa la la la la, la la la la.”

Raunchy celebrity party in Russia draws outrage over ‘nude illusion’ theme

The guests paid a hefty entrance fee of about $11,000 to frolic in outfits of flesh-colored mesh, lace and lingerie, with Ivleeva wearing a diamond body chain worth about $250,000 and one guest, the rapper Vacio, paying homage to a 1980 Red Hot Chili Peppers record cover featuring the band members wearing nothing but a sock.

'Tis the season. Woohoo.

"When the song ["Deck the Halls"] was originally written in the 16th century, 'gay' meant something different than how we use the word today," a random blog helpfully explains. In case you were wondering.

You weren't wondering, were you?

Ed ("Slow Eddie") Burke…

One of Chicago’s longest-serving Democratic lawmakers convicted of racketeering, bribery and attempted extortion

…also known in the Windy City as "The Emperor," has been convicted of…well…

The 79-year-old Democrat was convicted on 13 of the 14 charges leveled against him in a 2019 federal indictment accusing the veteran Chicago City Council member of using his position to steer business from private developers to his law firm.

At the New York Post they think this is news, the poor dears.

[The moniker "Slow Eddie" was necessary because "Fast Eddie" was already taken by one Edward Vrdolyak, another Chicago alderman, who earned his prison time for tax evasion.]

Money bites back

China’s Millionaires Are Worried. That’s a Problem for Wall Street.

[Story from Apple News+ or, if you have a subscription, the Wall Street Journal.]

For years, banks including Citigroup, JPMorgan and UBS competed hard to win business from China’s giant pool of wealthy people.…

But three years of stock-market declines in mainland China and Hong Kong, a wave of bond defaults in the real-estate sector and the faltering performance of China’s economy have dealt a huge blow to the business model of these banks.

Oops. 

There are days I'm really happy I never took a course in economics. Ignorance is bliss.

Just get through today and then…

The 2023 winter solstice arrives at 10:27 p.m. Eastern time

On Thursday, we turn the corner toward longer days and a bit more sunlight. Dec. 21 is the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year in Earth’s Northern Hemisphere. On Friday, we’ll start gaining a few seconds of daylight again.

…on toward Spring, woohoo.

 

So draining then, really?

The nation’s capital, built on water, struggles to keep from drowning

At risk are the national treasures housed inside the Federal Triangle, the low-lying area between the White House and the Capitol, home to 39 critical government facilities, $14 billion in property and irreplaceable artifacts of America’s history.

Or maybe find a nice place in Nebraska? 

Maybe

Poll Finds Wide Disapproval of Biden on Gaza, and Little Room to Shift Gears

It is unclear how much the criticism of Mr. Biden will translate into votes for Mr. Trump, or anyone else, given the admitted disaffection of young voters sympathetic with the Palestinians. Voters under 45 who say they disapprove of the president’s policies on Gaza are also more likely than young voters who approve of his policies to concede that they did not vote in 2020. Such youthful critics are picking Mr. Trump over Mr. Biden, by 16 percentage points, but they may not vote.

This seems something like whistling past the cemetary to me.

 

Tourists be tourists in Pisa

 

[Stolen from AP's "Oddities" section.]

Water, water everywhere…

 …and every drop for sale. Or soon to be.

China’s Richest Person Made Billions Bottling Pristine Water

Reports Bloomberg Businessweek via Apple News+ (the web version is here)…

More than 1 million tons of fresh water pumped from Wuyi’s primeval forests arrive each year at the Nongfu Springs facility, where it’s bottled, topped with the company’s signature red caps and trucked to convenience stores and supermarkets in the region.

 What's rare becomes expensive (Water is a Girl's Best Friend?) and clean, potable water is becoming rare everywhere,

The statute of limitations…

Boston Tea Party turns 250 years old with reenactments of the revolutionary protest

…on polluting Boston Harbor has probably run out by now for the 1773 crowd and I suppose the guys who did it yesterday had some special dispensation but until I know for sure it's run out for me I am not going to mention ever doing such a thing myself, no indeed. 

And if I did…

Tea for the reenactment was supplied by the East India Co., the same British company that was at the center of the raucous dispute.

…and I am not saying I did, let's be clear about that…it would likely have been plain old Lipton.

During the historic event, protesting “taxation without representation,” members of the Sons of Liberty and others boarded East India Co. ships and dumped their valuable haul — some 92,000 pounds (41,700 kilograms) of tea worth nearly $2 million today — into the murky waters of Boston Harbor.

And definitely not that much. 

Only just a pinch.

After 500 years, chemistry comes for Christmas

The Toxic Truth About Your Christmas Tree

Today, that ancient tradition is a booming business that employs nearly 100,000 people, garners close to $2 billion in revenue, and harvests 25 million to 30 million natural Christmas trees annually.

It's about the pesticides, fungicides, and whatevercides used to grow them. Maybe dangerous in your living room — maybe — and maybe a little less maybe in the fields where they grow.

"A review of the Christmas-tree-related complaints made to the Oregon Department of Agriculture over the most recent five-year period reveals considerable anger and frustration," Wired says. (About 30 percent of Christmas trees grown in the U.S. are grown in the Pacific Northwest.)

"There are greener choices available," the magazine says.

Greener than a Christmas tree?

What? Moi?

Are you a morning person? You may be a Neanderthal descendant.

Yes. I am a morning person. Also magnificent noses are common in my family (almost said "run" there, but thought better of it) and I wear clothes. All of which (and more) are Neanderthal traits according to this WaPo story. (The scientific paper is here.)

Somehow I'm suddenly dreaming of eating a big, juicy steak. I wonder if that…

Mouse escapes (sort of)

Mickey Mouse will soon belong to you and me — with some caveats

The copyright on Mickey Mouse — the original "mischievous, rat-like, non-speaking boat captain" version of the famous rodent, at least – will expire on the last day of this year and the critter will enter the public domain. It's been 95 years since Mickey's first appearance in the short film, "Steamboat Willie."

More modern versions of the character will remain under Disney's control.

Other well-known works due to enter the U.S. public domain in 2024 are a Virginia Woolf novel named "Orlando," a film featuring Charlie Chaplin called "Circus," and "The Threepenny Opera," a musical play by Bertolt Brecht.

In our modern world…

…this is news.

Delegates at UN climate talks in Dubai agree to ‘transition away’ from planet-warming fossil fuels

"Delegates stood and hugged each other," reports AP.

United Nations Climate Secretary Simon Stiell told delegates:

"Whilst we didn’t turn the page on the fossil fuel era in Dubai, this outcome is the beginning of the end.”

 Let's remember this is the twenty-eighth such annual UN climate talk.

My math is a little rusty, but if it took 28 years to get to a beginning…

But no mention of wind, it seems

A little-noticed (by me at least) highlight of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) now winding up in (yes) Dubai* was a panel discussion entitled "Responsible Yachting. Today & Tomorrow." 

“Yachting benefits from the beauty of the oceans. And I’m excited and fascinated to be working with Sunreef Yachts because they are trailblazing sustainable luxury yachting," said one Nico Rosberg, clean-yachting enthusiast and partner in a yacht-building company, as reported by MSN.

Battery-powered yachts with sustainable interior finishing are high on the list of yachting improvements we can look forward to.

*Maybe COP29, if there is one, should be held in Afghanistan or Bangladesh. Just a thought.

All this time and I didn't know, really…

 …what foolscap is. Until I just happened across it looking something else up.

It's a piece of paper of a certain delightfully vague size — "usually 8 x 13 inches" in the U.S., says Merriam-Webster, implying that it's otherwise elsewhere.

Also — and this is the really cool* thing about looking something up — I ran across a quote referring to "thwarted megamergers and private-equity acquisitions."

Last week I sat in on a computer class in which a woman asked what "megabyte" means. The answer to that one is also delightfully vague. A megabyte is 1024 kilobytes, or 1,048,576 bytes, or, as it is commonly used in non-geeky geek talk, a million bytes. (A megameter would be exactly a million meters but that's a whole nother thing. Don't ask.)

A megamerger is not a million mergers: It's a single merger, but it's really, really big.

*And don't even think about looking that one up unless you've got some time on your hands.

[The else I was looking up was "based."]

Stop! You've been worrying about the wrong thing!

Chinese garlic is a national security risk, says US senator

Senator Scott also goes into much detail about the different types of garlic that should be looked into: "All grades of garlic, whole or separated into cloves, whether or not peeled, chilled, fresh, frozen, provisionally preserved or packed in water or other neutral substance."

[But somebody from McGill University adds…

Spreading human sewage on fields that grow crops doesn't sound appealing, but it is safer than you might think

…in case you're wondering.]

Every year on December 7th…

 …I hang up my Christmas stocking. My Mom made it for me in 1941. She stitched the date on the back, and sewed a stars-and-stripes ribbon around the top.

December 7, 1941, is, of course, the date of the attack at Pearl Harbor.

Information warfare is real

And virulent. And being waged aggressively over conflicts around the world. And like any other form of warfare it spills over in calamitous ways.

From the Washington Post:

Researchers revealed takedowns by platforms including Facebook and Twitter — now called X — of more than 150 bogus personas and media sites, and suggested that the accounts might have been created by the U.S. military.

Not might have been. Were.

Some of the accounts taken down included a made-up Persian-language media site that shared content reposted from the U.S.-funded Voice of America Farsi and Radio Free Europe. One fake account posted an inflammatory tweet claiming that relatives of deceased Afghan refugees had reported bodies being returned from Iran with missing organs. The tweet linked to a video that was part of an article posted on a U.S.-military affiliated website.

And more.

The question is, and remains, if we can't wage modern war without violating our own principles, which do we give up.

And are you sure?

Wait a minute. What?

It Could Be a Vast Source of Clean Energy, Buried Deep Underground

Governments and companies worldwide have been betting on hydrogen as a cornerstone in the fight against climate change. A multibillion-dollar industry, backed by billions more in subsidies and private investments, has sprung up…

Apparently, says some guy from the U.S. Geological Survey, “There are many other places around the world where similar finds could also be made, and people are looking at it because it really could be impactful.”

So why are we spending…

I remember the W Bush one once claiming hydrogen-powered automobiles were the remedy for global warming but that idea got dropped like a hot…errr, warmed…potato. Or so it seemed. But now…?

I'm confused. And not just about that. About this, too:

In Lorraine, the scientists said their tests suggested that 46 million to 260 million metric tons of natural hydrogen could be lurking beneath the coal mines.

How much hydrogen does it take to make up a ton? I mean, the stuff is lighter than air, isn't it? It floats. How do you even weigh it? 

This is all way too much for a Monday morning.

Football rules

Especially this time of year, after a five-day Thanksgiving Football extravaganza and into the conference championships, bowl games, playoffs, and Super Bowl [finally crashing into February, the cruelest month] it's football that becomes the national sport.

From a recent NYTimes Magazine story:

Football is, by far, the most popular thing on TV. Last year, according to Nielsen, 83 of the 100 most-viewed telecasts were N.F.L. games, including 19 of the top 20.

…

The crown jewel of TV football is “S.N.F.” [Sunday Night Football] Last year it registered a 12th consecutive season as prime time’s top-rated show, at least according to NBC’s interpretation of Nielsen metrics. Its average viewership in 2022, 19.9 million, including the audience watching on streaming services, bested the top scripted show, the Western drama “Yellowstone,” by more than eight million. That audience has impressive demographic breadth: One-third is Black, Latino or Asian; 36 percent are women. At a time when cultural fragmentation and streaming are transforming the very idea of TV, “S.N.F.” is something like the last consensus choice, the proverbial hearth around which the nation assembles each week.

 Time to stock up on popcorn. At least.

What is it with Italians and towers?

‘Leaning tower’ in Italy on ‘high alert’ for collapse

The report, which was published on November 15, confirms that the tower has been in an “inescapably critical condition for some time,” and suggests that previous interventions, including a “hoop” of steel rods and cables around the base in 2020, have aggravated the situation.

And no, it's not the famous one in Pisa. It's one you've never heard of…well, I've never heard of…in Bologna.  

Who knows where else?

Fool me once…

Surging U.S. Oil Production Brings Down Prices and Raises Climate Fears

With concerns over climate change growing, Joe Biden, during his 2020 campaign, promised to stop drilling on federal lands and federal waters offshore. He also pledged to accelerate the transition to renewable energy and electric cars to drastically reduce the emissions responsible for climate change.

[Article from The New York Times.]

Don't try swimming the wrong way in Mass

The Great, Fishy Massachusetts License Plate Fiasco of 1928

According to the state’s Motor Vehicles Department, a plate marking the state’s fishing industry had some fishermen upset about the design: a green background with the year, a small fish and an abbreviation of the state’s name along the bottom in white, under the white plate number. According to the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles website, the fishermen thought the fish, which was supposed to represent a cod, was too small and looked more like a guppy. It also appeared to be swimming away from the word “MASS.”

 

Looks like a guppy to me.

Slamming into the season

Twenty-five days, Siri tells me. And the neighbors have put up Christmas lights on their front porch.

It's not a splash display: It's a fringe of little white lights around the edge of the porch roof. But they're there and that's what counts.

They'll be on this house pretty soon too, I imagine. About the same, but colored. Until Easter. Or so.

The weather may change a bit from year to year, but that does not.

Monday at last

One of the strangest things about being retired is that weekends still feel like weekends and holidays like holidays, even though they're not much different than just regular days. Except a few.

Take last week.

Thursday there was football in the afternoon. The next day, same thing. The next day must be Monday, right?

Wrong. The next day was Saturday. Who knows what Sunday was.

Today is Monday. Finally. I'm sure. I looked it up.

And this evening da Bears play.

No escape from the day after that.

But what if they said…

"Some participants felt they fell back on familiar talking points, said a White House official familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private exchange."

[From a Washington Post story this morning about…well…doesn't matter.]

…what if they said "from a White House official who can't be trusted"?

Which this person clearly is.

Would that change your understanding of a story?

We'll settle for wet

Precious water: As more of the world thirsts, luxury water becoming fashionable among the elite

“Having the right stemware, drinking at the right temperature, pairing it with food, celebrating with water – all those kinds of things are important.”

At $6.00 each, an average laborer in India can afford a bottle a day. 

The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things

Solar geoengineering is becoming a respectable idea

Critics argue that the example of sucking carbon dioxide directly from the air—another technology which does not yet exist at any useful scale, but which nevertheless underpins almost all long-term emission-reduction plans—shows that countries will seize on anything that allows them to avoid painful emissions cuts. People more open to the idea retort that geoengineering could be used to buy more time for those emissions reductions to happen, and keep temperatures lower in the meantime, an idea they refer to as “peak shaving”.

The Economist reports on a seemingly pretty wacky thing called "solar engineering" which involves pumping the stratosphere full of reflective particles to cut down on the amount of sunlight, hence heat, that reaches the surface of Earth.

Cyberpunk author Neal Stephenson wrote a novel called Termination Shock that involves such a scheme. I can't say how it ends because I never finished it. Sounded a little sketchy, though.

The Walrus appears in a Lewis Carroll poem, The Walrus and the Carpenter, which includes this stanza:

The time has come,' the Walrus said,

      To talk of many things:

Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —

      Of cabbages — and kings —

And why the sea is boiling hot —

      And whether pigs have wings.'

[H/T Shawn]

I've been assured…

 

…that this will all melt off by April. Or May, at least.

Could not be more right

Cocktails Are Sandwiches Now: Deal with it.

This latest development — cocktails that are identifiable (to an almost shocking degree) as literal liquified sandwiches — chiefly suggests only one thing: The end is near.

Geezers have fun too

Not just kid play: Toy companies aim more products at older adults

“It’s an ageist notion that everything that we design for older adults needs to serve some kind of cognitive purpose instead of just designing games for them to have fun,” some guy named Walter Boot said.

There's always somebody. 

Still, bigger Scrabble tiles might be a good idea.  

When's the last time you were called vibrant?

 

Oh well. Closed anyway.

Back to the future

The Invisible War in Ukraine Being Fought Over Radio Waves

Electronic warfare has been a feature of wars for more than 100 years. During World War II, the British mimicked German radio signals to deceive targeting systems that bombers used, which Winston Churchill popularized as the “battle of the beams.” In the Cold War, the Soviet Union invested heavily in electronic weapons to gain an asymmetric advantage against the missiles and planes from the United States.

A nerd-worthy article in today's NYTimes.

Probably not the first bad bet made in Vegas

F1 off to rough Las Vegas start. Ferrari damaged, fans told to leave before practice ends at 4 a.m.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Las Vegas Grand Prix had a bumpy opening when the first practice of the $500 million Formula One race was halted nine minutes into the session Thursday night because Carlos Sainz Jr. ran over a water valve cover that badly damaged his Ferrari.

It appears these supercars can not drive on…well…streets.

If they can't handle a water valve cover, whatever that is, they will never be racing down my block. Not for a whole nine minutes, at least. 

Of course my block is not nine minutes long, so there's that.

But if it comes down somewhere near you, let us know

Starship lost during second test; SpaceX says it likely self-destructed

NASA is investing $4 billion in the vehicle, which it intends to use to land astronauts on the moon as part of its Artemis program.

Article from the Washington Post, here. 

The machines are having a bad day, it seems.

Horsing around in the sky

Plane forced to return to airport after horse escapes crate

The plane was headed to Belgium from New York but did a U-turn roughly 90 minutes after its departure when the animal got loose.…

As the plane made its way back during the incident last Thursday, the pilot said he needed to dump 20 tonnes of fuel, "east of Nantucket", a popular enclave for the rich near Massachusetts.

No word on whether the seatbelt sign was lighted.

[H/T Shawn] 

Let's all try to keep a straight face here

The Fox Forecast Center is monitoring the arrival of a cold front and a storm system off the Eastern Seaboard that are expected to end the Northeast’s streak of beautiful weekends.

… 

We had two dry weekends in a row in the Northeast.

Thanks for the memories, NYPost.

A distinction without a difference

Supreme Court Adopts Ethics Code After Reports of Undisclosed Gifts and Travel

“For the most part these rules and principles are not new,” the court said, adding that “the absence of a code, however, has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the justices of this court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules.”

The headline has been in just about every paper by now, with slight changes (this one's from the NYTimes)…and the story's about the same too. Right down to mentioning, four or five graphs down, the code makes no mention of any kind of enforcement.

Of course these people…the people subject to this code…are jurors, aren't they, and one would like to believe the most distinguished jurors in the land. And one would just naturally expect them to be of high moral standard.

Wouldn't one?

?

 

Some guys just can't catch a break

He wasn’t ‘Kenough’: Mattel’s Ken snubbed by National Toy Hall of Fame

Though Ken was chosen as one of 12 nominees up for induction, Barbie’s sidekick lost out to baseball cards, Cabbage Patch Kids, the Fisher-Price Corn Popper and Nerf foam toys.

["Kenough" is more than kenough for me but thanks anyway, WaPo.]

Losing to a Nerf has gotta sting.

Oh please, WaPo

Why companies are racing to build the world’s biggest bug farm

The quick growth of big, sophisticated facilities also signals that the industry is maturing beyond its larval state.

Really?

(Pretty good article, though. Worth a look.)

A public service announcement

Crocodile Bites Man. Man Bites Back.

Brandon Sideau, a crocodile management expert who keeps a database of more than 8,000 crocodile attacks, does not recommend biting as a first call of action.

Just so you know.

In some cases, though, it does seem to work.

It's not all about TikTok

NSA officials call out Chinese hackers’ stealthy and off-limits hacks 

“It is prepositioning, with the intent to quietly burrow into critical networks for the long haul,” Adamski said at the CYBERWARCON conference. “Let me be clear: These target entities are of no intelligence value. The fact that these actors are in critical infrastructure is unacceptable.”

Adamski is director of the NSA’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center. 

The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month…

An armistice is a formal agreement to end hostilities. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 1918, fighting in WWI officially stopped after Germany signed an armistice agreement with Allies earlier in the day.

In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation that changed the federal holiday’s name from Armistice Day to Veterans Day.

…is…well…tomorrow. 

But it's today too, "observed," because three-day weekends rule.

Anyway, the original meaning of the date should be remembered as well.

A little copywriting tip

The Hollywood strikes are over. Here’s when you could see your favorite stars and shows return

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Missed your favorite actors?

Never lead with a question that can be answered No.

 

I am not a climate denier

Last 12 months on Earth were the hottest ever recorded, analysis finds

Let's face it. We have a climate and it makes absolutely no sense to say we don't.

But that "ever recorded" part always makes me feel a little bit manipulated, somehow.

Oiloholics all

Nations That Vowed to Halt Warming Are Expanding Fossil Fuels, Report Finds

In 2030, if current projections hold, the United States will drill for more oil and gas than at any point in its history. Russia and Saudi Arabia plan to do the same.

 Double the oil the global warming threshold, whatever that is, allows, acording to a UN-backed report as described in this NYTimes piece.

For your What Has The World Come To file

 

Reality check

Israel-Hamas war misinformation is everywhere. Here are the facts

The first casualty of war is…well, we've all heard that one by now, haven't we? [Hint: It's the truth.]

These days that's more the case than ever, given AI and more ancient tools like Photoshop, and with social media amplifying everything. 

Plus, all the parties to a war twist facts to their favor. Always.

Fortunately there are relable fact-checking sites scattered around the web: Use them.

Sorry, Dubuque, maybe next time

‘Amtrak Joe’ Biden is off to Delaware to give out $16 billion for passenger rail projects

The Democratic president is headed to Bear, Delaware, on Monday to announce more than $16 billion in new funding that will go toward 25 passenger rail projects between Boston and Washington, the White House says.

Granted, there's a lot of passenger traffic between Boston and Washington (and there are a couple of other cities, like New York and Philly, along the way). At least some of it goes by rail.

But there's more to the country than just the East Coast and California. Not that you'd know it if you lived there. 

(I've never lived in California but I've spent half my adult life on the East Coast. And I've liked it well enough. But I'm still a flyover-state kinda guy. And passenger rail needs a whole lot of work there too. How's that coming along, Joe?)

Gunpowder…

 …is described in an act of the Parliment of England, dated 1606, as…

"An Invention so inhuman, barbarous and cruel, as the like was never before heard of."

The act called for commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot, an attempt by one Guido Fawkes and sundry accomplices to blow up the House of Parliment when the King and other royal persons were attending. 

Although the law was repealed in 1859, the anniversary is still celebrated as Guy Fawkes Night and it's today, November 5.

Best laid plans

Look, Up in the Sky! It’s a Can of Soup!

"Drone delivery is unavailable during periods of high demand for drone delivery."

Also, mostly everywhere.

A New York Times story this morning notes the now decade-long effort Amazon's made to realize their vision of drone delivery. It's not going well.

 Which raises an interesting point.

“Having ideas is easy,” said Rodney Brooks, a robotics entrepreneur and frequent critic of technology companies’ hype. “Turning them into reality is hard. Turning them into being deployed at scale is even harder.”

We've all heard about the tech billionaires but nobody has much interest in all the people with easy ideas and almost-as-easy venture funds who've gone bust. Must be quite a few by now.

People just don't fly any more

Birds in North America will be renamed to avoid any ‘harmful’ historical associations with people

Birds in North America will no longer be named after people, the American Ornithological Society announced Wednesday.… 

“There is power in a name, and some English bird names have associations with the past that continue to be exclusionary and harmful today,” the organization’s president, Colleen Handel, said in a statement. “Everyone who loves and cares about birds should be able to enjoy and study them freely.”

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” Santayana said. Those who erase it entirely will forget it ever happened.

On getting high in France

Stranded on the Eiffel Tower, a couple decide to wed, with an AP reporter there to tell the story

When trapped at the top of a 1,083-foot (330-meter) tower, how can anyone say “No?”

 

Without comment

 This article from today's web edition of the Washington Post.

Whatever you think of it, you should think about it.

(And you're seeing it more every day, everywhere.)

Enlightenment at the Wall Street Journal

This morning's Apple News includes a Wall Street Journal piece about the massive mobs of Halloween tourists that jam into Salem, MA, in October every year (it's here if you can get here), which story reports as follows: 

Cellphone data shows visitors coming from as far away as Ohio, Texas and California.

Imagine.

Aside from its moderately disturbing reference to monitoring cellphone data, this sentence reveals a significant step forward in New York's view of the hinterlands.

In the middle years of a previous Century when I lived in NYC there was (maybe still is) a huge Post Office on 14th Street that had (maybe still has) three big brass mail drops — you know, those slots you stuff envelopes into when you want to get them mailed — in its lobby. One was labeled Manhattan. The second was labeled Bronx. And the third was labeled Everywhere Else.

(OK, really the third was labeled Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Out of Town, and Foreign. Which means Everywhere Else, doesn't it?)

So "Ohio, Texas and California" really fleshes things out.

Good work, WSJ.

Now do Nebraska.

(And Happy Halloween, by the way.)

On horrors yet to come

The Rigid World of French Cheesemaking Meets Unbound Climate Change

“We are studying all the aspects of cheesability,” said Philippe Thorey, trailing the large herd through the field at a government-funded experimental goat farm west of the town of Montélimar.

Note to Philippe: Just keep that spready one coming. 

With all this talk…

 …about Bidenomics working wonderfully and the U.S. economy getting better every day…

A new Department of Agriculture report, released Wednesday, paints a sobering picture of post-pandemic hardship with “statistically significant” increases in food insecurity across multiple categories. Using a representative survey sample of roughly 32,000 American households the report said 12.8% (17 million households) reported occasional problems affording enough food in 2022 — up from 10.2% (13.5 million households) in 2021 and 10.5% (13.8 million households) in 2020.

– Associated Press 

Going for gold (or green at least) — and more

First ever Florida Man games will feature beer belly wrestling and ‘evading arrest’ obstacle course

Among the contests planned for next February in St. Augustine, Florida, according to organizers, are the Evading Arrest Obstacle Course in which contestants jump over fences and through yards while being chased by real police officers; the Category 5 Cash Grab in which participants try to grab as much money [sic] in a wind-blowing booth; and the self-explanatory beer-belly wrestling.

Controversy equalizes the foolish and the wise

Love it or hate it, feelings run high over candy corn come Halloween

In the pantheon of high-emotion candy, the classic shiny tricolor kernels in autumn’s white, orange and yellow are way up there. Fans and foes alike point to the same attributes: its plastic or candle-like texture (depending on who you ask) and the mega-sugar hit it packs.

As any right-thinking person will agree, candy corn is the one true purpose of celebrating Halloween, never mind all the witches and the goblins. Stores should be stocked with it year-round but since they're often not, buy plenty of it now. It's got to last at least until those squishy chickens show up at Easter. (They're chickens aren't they? Or ducks?)

Could the Republicans be on to something there?

Aside from the pesky budgeting problem…and it is a problem, make no mistake…but aside from that, maybe we don't really need a House of Representitives much. Who misses it? Aside from a bunch of TV talking heads.

Maybe we should try shutting it down more often.

Might be a good idea.

But what can you buy with one?

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Federal authorities have released more details and unsealed charges in the theft of more than 2 million dimes earlier this year from a tractor-trailer that had picked up the coins from the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia.…

The indictment unsealed Friday alleges that after the theft, thousands of dimes were converted into cash at coin machines in Maryland or through deposits to at least four different suburban Philadelphia banks, the newspaper reported.

 Not much. Oops.

–Associated Press

"Mission Impossible" impossible

Next ‘Mission: Impossible’ delayed a year as actors strike drags on

At least right now.

As Hollywood’s labor turmoil has continued, it’s increasingly upended release plans not just for movies this fall that want to wait until their stars can promote them, but some of next year’s top big-screen attractions.

Just one crisis after another these days, seems like.

Untangling the skein of history is a fool's errand

From the History Channel: 

King David ruled the region around 1000 B.C. His son, who became King Solomon, is credited with building the first holy temple in ancient Jerusalem. In about 931 B.C., the area was divided into two kingdoms: Israel in the north and Judah in the south.

Around 722 B.C., the Assyrians invaded and destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel. In 568 B.C., the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the first temple, which was replaced by a second temple in about 516 B.C.

For the next several centuries, the land of modern-day Israel was conquered and ruled by various groups, including the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Fatimids, Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, Egyptians, Mamelukes, Islamists and others.

From 1517 to 1917, what is today Israel, along with much of the Middle East, was ruled by the Ottoman Empire.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, an organized religious and political movement known as Zionism emerged among Jews.

Zionists wanted to reestablish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Massive numbers of Jews immigrated to the ancient holy land and built settlements. Between 1882 and 1903, about 35,000 Jews relocated to Palestine. Another 40,000 settled in the area between 1904 and 1914.

When World War I ended in 1918 with an Allied victory, the 400-year Ottoman Empire rule ended, and Great Britain took control over what became known as Palestine (modern-day Israel, Palestine and Jordan).

The British controlled Palestine until Israel, in the years following the end of World War II, became an independent state in 1947.

And of course there's more. War — or impending war — in the Middle East has become a staple of recent history. 

But the who-started-it squabble is lost in the sands of millenia. 

Manhattan's exclusive time machine

Forget Taylor Swift, a 120-year-old subway station is NYC’s hottest ticket

This fall’s 16 tours sold out in 20 minutes.

It was even crazier for the spring tours, which sold out in seven minutes.

One has to be a member of the New York Transit Museum to even have a chance, but a few good pictures of it is the next best thing. 

Better late than never

Overdue library book returned after 90 years, $5 fee forgiven

“I saw that the due date was the 11th of October, 1933,” said Wheeler Morgan. “I thought, ‘my God.’”

[ It was “Youth and Two Other Stories” by Joseph Conrad] 

Fish get a break

“Salmon are fascinating in that they are just constantly curious, and are always sort of probing and waiting to take advantage of a newly suitable habitat,” says Westley [some guy from the University of Alaska]. “What seems to be happening is that these Arctic rivers are just now starting to become suitable. I think about them as sort of being ‘hopeful’ colonists in past years, that maybe now either are successful—or are on the cusp of being successful—in terms of reproducing and establishing populations.”

–Chum Salmon Are Spawning in the Arctic; Wired.

Following up on yesterday's note here…

 …the New York Times this morning published a half-hearted mea culpa for getting the story about the Gazan hospital so wrong. Gee, they say, it's really hard covering news from war zones so we have to go with whatever random rumors we read on social media (or words to that effect…read it for yourself).

Folks, the news business…and it is a business, never forget…is not about news. It's about selling toothpaste (and, in the case of the New York Times, stuff from Gucci). Eyeballs are everything.

If they wait (this is not an excuse…it's an explanation) until they know what they're talking about somebody else will get your eyeballs and their advertisers' bucks.

It's hard to cover news from war zones. It's even harder to know what the news is.

In defense of shutting up

A guest editorial by Elizabeth Speers in yesterday's New York Times about the present blizzard of opinions concerning events in the Middle East, quoted here at length:

Knee-jerk social media posts are not what bother me most, though. Instead, it’s the idea that not posting is wrong somehow — that everyone needs to speak, all the time. It discourages shutting up and listening and letting the voices that matter the most be heard over the din. It implies it’s not OK to have any uncertainty about what’s going on or any kind of moral analysis that does not lend itself to presentation in a social media post. It does not leave time or space for people to process traumatic events in the sanctuary of their own minds or to gather more information before pronouncing a judgment. It pressures people who don’t have an opinion yet or are working out what they think to manufacture one and present it to a jury of total strangers on the internet who will render an instant verdict on its propriety.

 The entire editorial (assuming this link works) is here.

Read and listen.

So maybe…

Costumes, candy, decor fuel $12.2 billion Halloween spending splurge in US: A new record

…we could afford a billion or two on getting some of those "unhoused" people housed.  A silly idea, I know. But still.

Anyway, in case it helps, this from USA Today:

Top 10 Halloween costumes for pets

• Pumpkin 
• Hot dog
• Bat
• Bumblebee
• Spider
• Devil
• Cat
• Lion
• Ghost
• Witch

Why don't they ever say…

"a diplomatic official told The Post Saturday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss sensitive negotiations."

…according to some guy who obviously can't be trusted?

Just wondering.

Words want out

The word ‘But’ asks that it not appear in these sentences

The words “Nevertheless,” “Still” and “However” jointly concurred in “But’s” statement, though “Nevertheless” looked visibly tired and strained.

[Washington Post]

News of the day

Al Michaels calls Taylor Swift Travis Kelce’s ‘girlfriend’ during Chiefs vs. Broncos game

Also Sophie Turner unfollows Priyanka Chopra on Instagram amid Joe Jonas divorce.

And you thought there was nothing going on.

TGIF

Following up

Capt. Obvious in the New York Times

• Economic Diversity at Top Colleges: An expansive research project on admissions shows how students with parents earning in the top 1% attend selective private colleges at much higher rates than other similarly qualified students.

  We are shocked.

We…

New York Seeks to Limit Social Media's Grip on Children's Attention

New York State officials on Wednesday unveiled a bill to protect young people from potential mental health risks by prohibiting minors from accessing algorithm-based social media feeds unless they have permission from their parents. 

…meaning, emphatically, they (but we too, let's face it) pass laws and formulate regulations to avoid having to think about stuff. Or do anything, really.

What else could explain laws like this? How could they possibly be enforced? We can't enforce all the laws we already have. 

Meaning they.

Harry's hair

Prince Harry’s luscious new hair chopped by critics: ‘Looks like a fool’

Moving on with the important news of the day…

Some people just can't take a joke

A Danish artist who submitted empty frames as artwork is appealing court ruling to repay the cash

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A Danish artist who was given a pile of cash by a museum in northern Denmark to create a piece for its exhibition on labor conditions two years ago submitted two empty canvases — titled “Take the Money and Run.” The exhibit caused a stir.

From Aeschylus to X

Aeschylus, a Greek dramatist who wrote around 500 BC and a U.S. Senator named Hiram Johnson in 1918 are the two leading candidates among several in a spirited discussion of who first proposed truth is the first casualty in a war.

Whoever said it first, it's worth saying again today. Frenzied reporting from war zones is often incorrect, sometimes due to the proverbial fog of war and sometimes, regrettably, as propaganda. It can be quite a while, sometimes even years, before one figures out which is which.

So the flurry of impassioned reporting from the assembled media, the U.S. Congress (or whatever's left of it), and Elon's X needs to be taken with a judicious grain of salt.

My personal formulation: Believe half of it.

It's up to you to figure out which half.

CLARIFICATION: There's plenty of stuff swirling around about events in the Middle East that's obviously untrue, or at least highly suspect. But then there's this, for example, from The Washington Post this morning…"U.S. and Israeli government officials have given diverging assessments of Iran’s involvement in the violent incursion of Hamas militants into Israel…."

WAY too much news today

It's fascinating, in a morbid sort of way, how innovative we are at finding new ways — and reasons — to persecute each other.

In millenia of trying, we still haven't figured out how to live in the same cave. Or have we been trying, really?

One good thing, though: No Bears game today.

Oh no!

 From this morning's Washington Post: 

Amid concerns the rise of artificial intelligence will supercharge the spread of misinformation comes a wild fabrication from a more prosaic source: Amazon’s Alexa, which declared that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Where am I going to get my news now?

OK, right, it's serious, I guess. 

Jacob Glick, who served as investigative counsel on the Jan. 6 committee, called Alexa’s assertions nearly three years after the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol “alarming.”

And it's going to get worse. Buckle up.

{Alexa was apparently led astray by some demented answer provider. Alexa should be a little more careful about the company she keeps.)

If you have keys to the kingdom, the Washington Post story is here.

As it was, is it?

AI Chatbots Are Learning to Spout Authoritarian Propaganda

Seventy percent of the world’s internet users who live in places where the state has blocked major social media platforms, independent news sites, or content about human rights and the LGBTQ community,

And too many more lining up to join that club.

In the early days of the Internet there was a great deal of utopian optimism about the network's ability to surmount the restrictions of governments — note this Wired piece about John Perry Barlow and his Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace — but now things seem to be up for grabs. Barlow remains a little more optimistic than I.

But still there's hope.

We have not begun to see the silliness

Taylor Swift is ‘only person’ who could defeat Trump in 2024, ex-aide Alyssa Farah Griffin declares

[Story from the New York Post.]

Or…I hear the House is looking for a new speaker. Would they consider a singer?

This is nuts (and a little crazymaking)

The rudderless GOP careens toward 2024

McCarthy’s undoing leaves the only part of government Republicans control rudderless, making it harder to operate day-to-day, let alone tackle big challenges.

Stories all over the American news media (this one from Politico) go out of their way to imply it was the Republicans who caused chaos in the House of Representatives — a chaos so overwhelming it might end in shutting the whole country down in little more than a month — when in truth it was the Democrats who did that. Only eight Republicans voted with the Democrats to oust McCarthy. Two hundred and ten Republicans voted to keep him.

UPDATE:

Thursday, 10/5

This from a NYTimes editorial this morning:

The U.S. Capitol may be perched on a hill, but it is understandable why so many Americans look down on it.

One of the main reasons is that their Congress, which ought to be a global beacon of liberal values, continues to succumb to self-inflicted paralysis. How else can it be that fewer than a dozen lawmakers from the outer fringes of the Republican Party are holding one of the world’s oldest democracies hostage to their wildest whims?

On Tuesday a small group of Republicans effectively shut down all business in the House when they voted to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker.

And then, almost parenthecally:

Though 210 of 218 House Republicans supported him, he lost his job when just eight voted against him, joining all Democrats who voted.

Thereby giving the game away. 

The barbarians at the gate

 And no, I'm not talking about the U.S. House of Representatives although…now that I think of it, maybe later. But not now. Now I'm talking about AI.

The latest iterations of Apple's operating systems has AI infused into various corners — in Siri (which works for me, more or less) and in apps that require writing, such as Apple Mail and Messages. Those are the ones — the writing ones — I'm going to war with.

They are attempting to forecast what the next word or two will be in every sentence, and it bugs me they're so often right. That means it thinks what I'm going to say next is just what everybody else would say, and has said, ant that has to stop.

With a cup of coffee, maybe…

Dunkin' unveils $100 inflatable Halloween donut as tall as a person

The spider doughnut is an orange-frosted doughnut with a chocolate-glazed Munchkin decorated like a spider nestled in the middle.

 It's supposed to be scary.

Not too late

 It's Fat Bear Week

(Meant to note this yesterday but my reminder disappeared somehow. Thanks for the backup, Shawn 👍)

What happens to Yurchenko then?

Simone Biles makes history with Yurchenko double pike at worlds, will have it named for her

Biles is already the best in the world, a four-time Olympic champion who’s won more medals, and more gold medals, at the world championships than any other gymnast.

Yurchenko is a Russian gymnast who already has a bunch of vaults named after her, so maybe she can spare just one. This one is apparently the hardest one.

So that's clear, right?

It's Banned Book Week

 So read one.

Here are some good choices.

Preview

Two of the NFL’s best teams will meet Sunday in Orchard Park, N.Y., as the Buffalo Bills get their chance to slow the breathtakingly swift offense of the Miami Dolphins.

And perhaps the league’s two worst teams will square off in Chicago as the Bears and Denver Broncos vie to see who can get into the win column.

H/T Washington Post 

Also from the same newspaper:

The IEA predicts that the world will have to triple renewable energy capacity in just seven years to cut fossil fuel demand by 20 percent.

 Watch the Bills play the Dolphins and hope for the best.

A story with a happy ending

Hollywood Writers Reached an AI Deal That Will Rewrite History

In short, the contract stipulates that AI can’t be used to write or rewrite any scripts or treatments, ensures that studios will disclose if any material given to writers is AI-generated, and protects writers from having their scripts used to train AI without their say-so. Provisions in the contract also stipulate that script scribes can use AI for themselves.

 But there are still more stories to come. Also from Wired:

ChatGPT inches closer to feature parity with the seductive AI assistant from Her, thanks to an upgrade that adds voice and image recognition to the chatbot.

When the inmates run the asylum

Amid GOP confusion, U.S. braces for ‘first-ever shutdown about nothing’

“We are truly heading for the first-ever shutdown about nothing,” said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. Strain has started referring to the current GOP House-led impasse as “the ‘Seinfeld’ shutdown,” a reference to the popular sitcom widely known as “a show about nothing.” “The weirdest thing about it is that the Republicans don’t have any demands. What do they want? What is it that they’re going to shut the government down for? We simply don’t know.”

–By Jeff Stein in The Washington Post.  It's paywalled…sorry…but the quote pretty much says it all.

File under Writing on the Wall

2024 NFL Mock Draft: Bears pick QB Caleb Williams with No. 1 pick

And so soon!

A relevant quote…

… from the book, The Dark Net, by Jamie Bartlett:

Transformative technologies have always been accompanied by optimistic and pessimistic visions of how they will change humanity and society. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates worried that the recent invention of writing would have a deleterious effect on the memories of young Greeks who, he predicted, would become “the hearers of many things and will have learned nothing.” When books began to roll off Johannes Gutenberg’s press, many suspected they would be “confusing and harmful,” overwhelming young people with information. Although Marconi believed his radio was helping humanity win “the struggle with space and time,” as his invention became popular, others feared that children’s impressionable minds would be polluted by dangerous ideas and families rendered obsolete as they sat around listening to entertainment programs. We don’t know if early Homo sapiens argued whether fire burns or warms, but you can hazard a guess that they did.

Be an optimist.

Sometimes, amazingly…

 …reading the instructions actually works.

I just spent half an hour vainly attempting to set up a Chromecast device, pushing buttons and flipping switches and muttering nasty words to myself and getting nowhere, and I was about to give it up for the evening and sleep on it (which inevitably means no sleep at all) when I suddenly had this strange idea:

Why not try reading the instructions why?

Who knew?

Slow

 Whoever decided that playing solitaire should be a race against time?

That's too much like work. I play solitaire to avoid work. I want to get points for doing it slow, not fast.

Is that too much to ask?

Wink, wink

"Nearly every aspect of Donald J. Trump’s life and career has been under scrutiny from the justice system over the past several years…", begins a story in the NYTimes this morning (for the record, it's here) referring to what must be one of the most convenient coincidences of all time.

The story goes on to describe a New York court's finding that The Donald's guilty of fraudulent business practices. 

Personally, I don't care if he cheated his bank — that's the bank's problem, not mine — I care that he cheated me.

And thee. And us all.

The (only) good news for the Chicago Bears…

…is that Taylor Swift was a prominent spectator at the game in Kansas City yesterday so a lot of people probably didn't even notice the Bears were there.

Or weren't.

Dropping off, going on

NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission: Asteroid sample lands on Earth

Back in September 2016, the federal space agency launched the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on a daring mission to snare a batch of rocks from the asteroid Bennu, located about 200 million miles away.…

The rocks were delivered to a desert in Utah yesterday (Sunday). The spacecraft is off again, on new mission already, to visit another asteroid.

It's not grammar, it's logic

The Supreme Court will hear a case with a lot of ‘buts’ & ‘ifs’ over the meaning of ‘and’

Federal courts across the country disagree about whether the word, as it is used in a bipartisan 2018 criminal justice overhaul, indeed means “and” or whether it means “or.” Even an appellate panel that upheld a longer sentence called the structure of the provision “perplexing.”

 It's also why we probably don't want Congress writing laws about computers just yet. (Or maybe about anything, come to think about it.)

Everybody who's ever written a database query for a mail merge should know this:

If I say I want to mail a letter to all the people who live in Easthampton and Westhampton what I mean is or, because nobody lives in both towns, which would be and. But I would get away with saying and because you would know what I mean.

Unless you're a lawyer. Or, it would seem, a Congresscritter. We will see what the learned Supremes have to say.

Not exactly nickels and dimes

President Joe Biden said in a release that "building a clean energy economy can and should provide a win-win opportunity for auto companies and unionized workers who have anchored the American economy for decades." –Reuters

Batteries take fewer workers to build than engines and transmissions; industry analysts project that the EV transition could shave 30 percent off the auto sector’s labor force. –Washington Post

Hard on the heels of President Joe Biden’s goal to spur the sale of EVs in the United States, the Energy Department will provide $2 billion in grants and $10 billion in loans to support the conversion of US automaker and supplier facilities into manufacturing centers for hybrid and electric vehicles. –CNN Business

The UAW should propose that each CEO be paid $152,771, the highest base pay for GS-15 federal civil servants. This is what the CEOs should be considered, because their companies have become appendages of government, implementing its policies. –George Will

Want to save the planet? Hold your breath.

 Seriously. When a human exhales, four percent of the breath expelled is carbon dioxide. There are 7.8 billion people on Earth. So if we all just held our breath…

OK, maybe that's a little drastic. But I'm tired of being told global warming or climate change or whatever we're calling it now is my personal fault. I will turn off the one little lamp I still have lit when somebody turns off Times Square.

In the end, George Carlin had it right: We don't need to save the planet. The planet will do just fine by itself. Without us.

Here he is, explaing the whole thing on YouTube.

Since "X" is not using "tweet" any more, we might get back to birds

Who’s that singing? As fall migration arrives, apps that ID birds by sound have taken off

As the annual fall migration begins across the Northern Hemisphere, apps like Merlin, which is put out by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, have caught on among birders and non-birders alike by revealing just how crowded with species our surroundings are.…

Other bird-identifying apps include the Audubon Bird Guide, ChirpOMatic, Picture Bird and Smart Bird.

Destroying everything will not come cheap

Inside the delicate art of maintaining America’s aging nuclear weapons

The U.S. will spend more than $750 billion over the next 10 years replacing almost every component of its nuclear defenses, including new stealth bombers, submarines and ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles in the country’s most ambitious nuclear weapons effort since the Manhattan Project.

As Dwight Eisenhower, a guy who knew, once pointed out…

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.…

When a bunch of billionaires and giant corporations…

CEOs tell senators: Time to regulate AI

…ask the government to regulate what they're doing, it means one of two things:

1) Stop us before we blow up the world (again)

or

2) We've got this; make it hard for anybody else to get some too.

In the case of AI, my money's on 2).

I'm not the only one who thinks that, I guess. In a recent Axios survey of 213 computer science experts from 65 universities, only 16 would trust Congress to regulate AI and only three would trust the private sector. Guess who wants to do it.

A lot of Americans, at least, seem to want it done.

A long line of technical innovations, from automobiles to airplanes, from telegraphy to telephony, radio to TV, and the internet itself started out as the province of dreamers and hobbyists and wound up commercialized, corporatized, and homogenized. And relatively safe. One imagines AI will wind up that way too.