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Posts posted by Gus Van Horn blog

  1. An Early Friday Hodgepodge

    Spring break with the wife and kids, and other travel/family obligations will occupy me over the weekend and into next week. I plan to resume regular posting here April 7, although it is possible I'll be back earlier.
    ***

    1. If -- after having to rid your person of metal objects -- you then wondered how the headphones inside an MRI machine work, wonder no more.

    Hint: It's not the same technology as the sound-powered telephone, another neat piece of low-tech wizardry.

    2. A couple of years ago, I replaced my laptop with a Framework computer so I could upgrade components over time or make simple repairs.

    I'm quite happy with it so far and, because there is a hacking culture among Framework users, I tentatively plan to replace the guts of my desktop with Framework components whenever that need arises. (Folks share instructions, specs for 3-D print parts they need, and do other things that make it easier for not-quite-hackers like me to join in the fun.)

    As always with such things, I keep an antenna out for interesting news, and have found a someday/maybe project (video) that is too neat not to share:
    In this video, I will go over why I felt the need to create my custom portable all-in-one computer. Thanks to #framework I was able to put together something that's super easy to assemble and reproduce.

    I generally use my #dygma Defy split keyboard, but working around my Macbook Pro's keyboard was always a pain, especially on flights and other places with limited space.

    One of the options I considered was a Lenovo Yoga, but I wanted something more repairable. My wife thought of the name Flying Lotus, which I really like, but like I said in the video is not for everyone...
    At the link are the video showing how he made this, the many uses and advantages his design opens up, and a link for kit parts to make one for yourself.

    3. A little over a decade ago, this Arsenal fan was overjoyed to see the English Premier League become widely available over cable in the United States. Streaming services eventually plugged whatever gaps there were in cable coverage of the Premier League, as well as other competitions: Now it's possible to see just about any game live one has time to watch.

    Just when I thought I couldn't be any more spoiled as a fan, I learned of the many podcasts by more knowledgeable fans. My favorite is the Arsenal Opinion Podcast which is a near-perfect mixture of analysis and entertainment for me. I follow that one regularly.

    My second-favorite is FourFourTwo, which is all about tactics. I don't regularly go there, but it's really good, as exemplified by the below embedded podcast about the tactics of Arsenal's "Invincibles" undefeated team of '03/'04.

    There has never been a better time to be a soccer fan.


    4. Recently, I noted that I had learned about NewPipe, an open-source software front end for YouTube, whose interface is even more frustrating to use on a mobile device than on a computer.

    Having now used it on walks and on errands for a week, I highly recommend NewPipe.

    Who would have thought being able to easily find what you know is out there, pick up where you left off listening, or even (gasp!) be able to put your phone in your pocket while listening might be desirable features in a streaming app?

    (Snark aside, it's possible some "update(s)" changed default behavior to become less usable. My wife's iPhone version of YouTube can run with a locked screen, after all. But if that's the case, why should I stick with something whose maintainers are that incompetent or capricious?)

    To install the Android version, I recommend verifying and installing F-Droid, and using it to install and update NewPipe.

    Incidentally, you can dodge many of the annoyances of YouTube on a regular computer by using an instance of Invidious.

    (Believe it or not, although both of these tout being free of commercials, that isn't at all why I use them. I do not object to commercials, as long as I can otherwise conveniently find and enjoy what I came for.)

    -- CAV

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  2. Defending Ukraine against Russia is not automagically the same thing as being in league with Klauss Schwab and the WEF.

    ***

    Today's GOP is not only not your father's GOP, it's much closer to his Democratic Party, with the lone exception being its full embrace of your great-grandfather's Christian prudery.

    Today alone, we have the increasingly nutty Issues and Insights -- within recent memory a redoubt of relative sanity on the right -- hawking pacifist Tulsi Gabbard as Vice-Presidential material:
    Gabs.jpg
    Image by Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons, license.
    The Samoan-American, a U.S. Army Reserve lieutenant colonel and decorated combat veteran, showed her plucky streak, and her inclination to think independently, while speaking in December at Turning Point USA's Americafest. She cautioned that "the future of our country is at risk." Her former party, she said, in language similar to that she used when she announced she was leaving the Democrats' fold, is "under the complete control of an elitist cabal of war mongers who are driven by cowardly wokeness." [links omitted, bold added]
    Following the links shows Gabbard also smearing Nikki Haley as a "neocon" and railing against "this ongoing proxy war against Russia."

    And since today's GOP has no real identity -- except as supposedly the opposite of whatever the Democrats happen to be at the moment -- this makes Gabbard a darling and automatically makes suspect stopping Russia's incursions against the West.

    To its small credit, even Issues and Insights can tell that Gabbard isn't a lockstep Trumpist.

    That said, it speaks volumes that the GOP is having trouble admitting that, despite Ukraine's imperfections and the fact that the Democrats somewhat support it, perhaps a proxy war now can be a good way to avert a real one later.

    This would entail seeing Russia as the threat to the West that it is. And after seeing "An Obsolete Alliance Turns 75" in Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, all I can say is Good luck with that from today's conservatives:
    That the West felt entitled to dictate the forms, structures, and ideologies of the post-Cold War world was palpable to Russians and the rest of the world. It never occurred to anyone in power to ask what gave "the free world" the right to determine the forms of government, economy, and social mores in countries that were not their own. It was taken as a given that the West had such a right, and a condescending, patronizing, arrogant attitude was pervasive in the corridors of power in Washington. [bold added]
    (1) This sounds like a leftist discussing the alleged "right" of pestholes during the Communist era to vote themselves into slavery. (2) And I guess we're supposed to not ask what gave Russia the right to just go in and take over neighboring countries?

    The piece is littered with errors and deserves criticism on multiple fronts (particularly using capitalist to describe either of Russia's oligarchic, post-communist political economy or that of the mixed-economy West), but my short, hot take is this: If you wanted to read a piece by a Democrat defending Russia against NATO, back when Russia was communist, you can get the same flavor by reading this piece -- against NATO, now that Russia is against "woke," never mind that their "woke" includes our enlightenment-era institutions as well as the leftist cancer that has, I admit, infected NATO.

    Russia has designs on the rest of Europe, and its threat will need to be addressed sooner or later. Whatever the merits of continuing NATO, it is fortunate that, whatever its flaws, it's still around now that Russia and many other authoritarian regimes have become actively belligerent.

    I would hazard a guess that bureaucratic alliance with less-than perfect allies is better now than no such alliance at all.

    During the Cold War, Ayn Rand, who emigrated from Russia, and saw that it had far more wrong with it than just communist rulers, said:
    Observe the double-standard switch of the anti-concept of "isolationism." The same intellectual groups (and even some of the same aging individuals) who coined that anti-concept in World War II -- and used it to denounce any patriotic opponent of America's self-immolation -- the same groups who screamed that it was our duty to save the world (when the enemy was Germany or Italy or fascism) are now rabid isolationists who denounce any U.S. concern with countries fighting for freedom, when the enemy is communism and Soviet Russia.
    Today's right uses globalism in a similar way: to smear as leftist, woke morons anyone who is concerned about what Russia is doing.

    -- CAV

    Link to Original

  3. If Venezuela's Chavista regime held actual elections, they would probably lose the next one, according to a recent Wall Street Journal profile of Corina Yoris, the 80-year old grandmother whose 10-party coalition carefully vetted her and applied for her to run as their standard-bearer against Nicolás Maduro, the leftist dictator of Venezuela.

    This they did after their previous candidate, Maria Corina Machado, was blocked from running:
    Though respondents to a poll by the American company ClearPath Strategies haven't heard of Yoris, the results clearly showed that Venezuelans want change -- reflecting previous polls by other companies. In the past decade, the economy contracted 80% as oil output fell precipitously, and inflation at one point hit 2 million percent.

    The poll showed that an opposition candidate backed by Machado would win 49% to 27% for Maduro.
    Even a candidate who doesn't have her support would squeak out victory over Maduro, 35% to 27%, the poll shows. And though Maduro's regime has jailed political activists -- including seven of Machado's campaign workers -- the poll shows that 76% of opposition and undecided voters want a chance to cast a ballot. [bold added]
    The candidate, unlike the two incoherent old men running for President in the United States, is someone I might support.

    For one thing, she advocates free markets:
    Yoris is opposed to socialism and communism; she says that the free market regulates prices, that communism was responsible for the death of millions and that the ideology resulted with Venezuela becoming divided.
    For another, she is in full possession of her mental faculties, unlike her American counterparts, and uses them more effectively than most people do at half her age:
    Corina_Yoris_VoA.jpg
    Image by Voice of America, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
    Asked what she, as president, would do for Venezuela she recalled the democratic years when the country, though flawed in many ways, appealed to immigrants escaping Latin American dictatorships and hardship in southern Europe. "I want to give Venezuela what Venezuela has given me," she said. "I could study in this country. I could educate my children in this country. I could do all manner of things in this country."

    While not a politician, Yoris said she has taught classes on logic and such esoteric disciplines as the philosophy of argumentation, where she has delved into the concepts of Chaïm Perelman, a Belgian who was one of the 20th Century's most renowned argumentation theorists, and British philosopher Stephen Toulmin. Two years ago, she was named by civil-society groups to serve on an opposition-led commission, which was responsible for organizing the primary elections last year that Machado won by a wide margin.

    ...

    "I'm totally for Madrid, and people laugh a lot about this," said Yoris, who during a recent match tweeted out: "This is a scandal! The referee ends the game and takes a goal away from Real Madrid."

    And though she fires off messages about blackouts and the work of Albert Camus, she also takes photos of the fog-covered hills, flowers and fruit stands overflowing with Venezuela's bounty. She explained that her desire is to show beauty. "It's a message of joy because we've been submitted to a very ugly dark cloud," she said. "So I try to send out a message of optimism, and I take photographs of my surroundings." [bold added]
    Oh, and she is also much more benevolent than the two bitter old men we have here.

    Sadly for Venezuela, the Maduro regime, scared of this kind, elderly lady and the optimistic, sunny view of the world she represents, has, predictably, blocked her election bid, like the cowards that they are.

    -- CAV

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  4. John Stossel reminds us of the government's inappropriate, authoritarian response to the Covid pandemic:
    They complied with teachers unions' demand to keep schools closed. Kids' learning has been set back by years.

    Politicians destroyed jobs by closing businesses. Some shutdown orders were ridiculous. Landscaping businesses and private campgrounds were forced to shut down.

    Both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden sharply increased government spending. Trump's $2.2 trillion "stimulus" package, followed by Biden's $1.9 trillion "American Rescue Plan," led to so much money printing that inflation doubled and then tripled.
    I recall being much more worried about what the government might do than about the illness itself at the start of the pandemic.

    I was right to be concerned, and Stossel is right to remind us of those dark days.

    But I would continue just about where he left off when he reminds us that Sweden, which had one of the more sane pandemic responses, did not go on to become the object lesson so many journalists assured us it would.

    Yes, some countries dealt more or less appropriately with the pandemic, but which ones, and what did those countries get right or wrong? It's one thing to learn not to repeat a mistake, but that isn't the same thing as knowing the right course of action.

    In that vein, I recommend reading (or re-reading) A Pro-Freedom Approach to Infectious Disease, a white paper by Onkar Ghate of the Ayn Rand Institute, which is discussed in the video embedded below.

    In the episode of New Ideal Live embedded above, Ben Bayer interviews Onkar Ghate of the Ayn Rand Institute and Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert, to discuss Ghate's recent paper "A Pro-Freedom Approach to Infectious Disease," linked above.

    The paper begins in part:
    Government's public health goal in the face of a novel respiratory virus like SARS-CoV-2 is to remove the threat posed by carriers of the virus -- primarily by testing, isolating and tracking those carriers. Trying to save every life from a novel virus whatever the cost, or to balance some people's lives against other people's livelihoods, is not a valid public health goal. Apart from testing, isolating and tracking, government should issue only voluntary guidelines and then leave us each free to take the countermeasures we individually think necessary in the face of the new reality.

    To accomplish its proper public health goal, the government must catalog the severity of various infectious diseases and then, for severe infectious diseases, it must have the ability to test, isolate and track contagious individuals. All of this can and needs to be carefully codified into law.
    The above would have lead to a very different course of action than most governments actually took, but it is one that would have made the pandemic much more bearable, and likely far less deadly than it turned out to be.

    -- CAV

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  5. A Friday Hodgepodge

    1. I mentioned finding a sandwich shop that sells muffulettas shortly after we moved to the New Orleans area.

    Wanting to know more about the origins of this local sandwich, I found an article about the Central Grocery, where Italian immigrants created it over a century ago.

    From the article:
    muffuletta.jpg
    Image by Richard Martin, via Wikimedia Commons, license.
    Around this time, someone -- perhaps Lupo himself -- dreamt up the muffuletta. Culinary origin stories are often difficult to prove, but it's hard to find a more compelling tale than the one his eldest daughter Marie Teresa recited to countless customers, as well as in interviews and her own self-published cookbook, Marie's Melting Pot. French Market Sicilian vendors, as the story goes, congregated at Lupo's for lunch, where they ordered trays of salami, ham, and cheese, a few spoonfuls of olive salad, and a wedge of bread. The grocery lacked tables and chairs, so the diners settled for seats amid the barrels and crates, precariously balancing their lunch trays on their knees. Lupo, whom everyone called "Toto," a common Sicilian diminutive for Salvatore, eventually offered to stuff all the ingredients inside a sliced muffuletta loaf. Soft and sesame-seeded, round and flat, the muffuletta, a common Sicilian bread likely named for the mushroom cap, or muffe, it resembles, seemed custom made for sandwiches.
    While I am happy to know that Central Grocery's muffulettas are available for purchase, the website tells me that my pilgrimage to the original store will have to wait for the completion of repairs to the damage Hurricane Ida dealt it.

    2. Speaking of immigration, something this foodie liked about H-Town back in my Houston days was the fact that I could get good Tex-Mex and good Cajun/Creole food, even in grocery stores:
    Houston is very cosmopolitan and has heavy Cajun and Creole influences already. I can and do buy roux, andouille, and boudain in ordinary supermarkets here. Crawfish, fresh seafood, and good, cheap restaurants (of all varieties, including Cajun) abound.
    Nearly two decades (!) since Katrina hit New Orleans, it's a little bit like that here now, with many of the Hispanic workers who helped rebuild the area after that storm putting down roots here.

    That said, it's not exactly the same. Whereas Houston had a Brennan's location and (I think) a Copeland's, I'm not finding old favorites from Houston here, and my itch for Tex-Mex has remained un-scratched so far.

    To be fair, I did walk into the grocery last weekend to the pleasant suprise of them selling boiled crawfish by the pound just inside. I never got that in Texas.

    Or, to put it more positively, I get to explore some more and possibly come up with some more recipes.

    3. Sticking with Texas for a bit, there is an interesting piece in Atlas Obscura about a desk that decades ago, some college students hauled to a hilltop in western Texas so they could study in the magnificent solitude afforded by the view:
    They would spend their afternoons and evenings studying at this spot and taking in the great views offered by the west Texas sun and expansive plains and mountains extending in every direction. One of the students decided to bring a notebook and wrote a note in it. When he returned later, he discovered that someone had

    Today, the notebook kept in the desk's drawer offers visitors the chance to write to other visitors and reflect on what it means to leave a mark and make a statement in such a place at whatever moment in time they happen to be there. Completed notebooks from the Sol [sic] Ross desk are kept at the Archives of the Big Bend...
    I never made it out to Big Bend, while I was in Texas, but a friend of mine from grad school once spent a week there alone to collect his thoughts.

    Now, I can see why.

    4. After yesterday's mention of a compilation of Machiavellian triumphs at Ask a Manager, I recommend another compilation, titled "Mortification Week." A sample:
    If you lived in New England during 2020, you were not only dealing with the pandemic but also a large amount of stink bugs. During a Zoom call, a bug flew into my hair while I was on camera. My colleagues got to see me scream, flail, and proceed to fall out of my chair. The recording of this moment still makes the rounds once or twice a year, though I have learned to laugh along with it.
    Also amusing are entries involving typos and auto-correct.

    -- CAV

    Link to Original

  6. In a compilation of reader submissions for what she calls "Machiavellian Triumphs at Work," Alison Green presents the following crafty solution to a problem that would drive me crazy if I had to deal with it:
    cube_farm.jpg
    Image by Teepetersen, via Wikimedia Commons, license.
    The Voicemail

    Had a sales guy at my first job in the late 90s who used to take ALL his calls and listen to ALL his voicemail on speaker. LOUDLY. We were a small company with a cube farm. This was the days before caller ID.

    So one day some of us called when we knew he was out and left a voicemail saying something along the lines of "Hi Fergus, I went to my doctor and the rash is all cleared up."

    He never listened to his voicemail on speaker again. [formatting in original]
    Assuming this guy ignored polite requests or direction to stop blasting his office-mates out of their minds, this is a perfect solution: Either he did not know or did not care that everyone would hear things he'd rather they not hear.

    Now he knows and cares, even if he remains unable to realize that his office-mates' ability to get work done is also in his best interest.

    The whole list is amusing, although not necessarily reliable as a how-to guide for navigating tricky situations. For example, the person who "accidentally created a shadow government" might have found life more bearable that way, but the boss getting "80% of her job [done] and ... the entire department" run for her was still getting paid to do so, while this subordinate wasn't getting any credit.

    -- CAV

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  7. "Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby." -- Penn Jillette

    ***

    Lately, articles about the increasing percentage of Americans who aren't "religious" -- like this and this -- have been popping up.

    Please consider the italicized quote above any time you encounter one of these.

    Why?

    Because (1) In today's increasingly tribalistic, anti-individualist Zeitgeist, it would appear that the first impulse is to lump together any group of people to which one can apply a label. (2) So many people lack intellectual rigor that many labels are next to meaningless, anyway.

    The first piece, about "nonreligious" people includes some whose stated beliefs include all the hallmarks of religion; they just aren't enrolled in a church:
    Although he doesn't believe in organized religion, he believes in God and basic ethical precepts. "People should be treated equally as long as they treat other people equally. That's my spirituality if you want to call it that."
    Indeed, somewhere, buried in the piece, is the closest thing it comes to offering its own definition of "nonreligious:" They. Really. Don't. Like. Organized. Religion.

    Given how "the nones' diversity splinters them into myriad subgroups," don't expect to be able to learn anything meaningful from the rest of the piece.

    Even the second article, about "atheists" talks about people I'd say are actually religious:
    Fran%C3%A7ois_Barraud_Le_Philat%C3%A9liste.jpg
    Image by François Barraud, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
    Atheists also have different interpretations of what it means to not believe. While nearly all self-described atheists don't believe in the God described in the Judeo-Christian Bible, 23% do believe in God or some other higher power or spiritual force in the universe, according to a Pew Research Center report published in January. [bold added]
    With that much latitude in the term, it is ridiculous to wonder -- as the article starts out doing -- why more atheists are reluctant to volunteer that fact about themselves.

    The negative stereotypes and bigotry on the part of many religious people don't help, but if a term has been emptied of all meaning, why bandy it about?

    I am an atheist, and would describe myself as circumspect, but not shy about it. I reject nearly everything about religion, especially professing to believe things absent evidence, and equating morality to a set of supernatural orders that have nothing to do with reason or life on earth. These two things are direct threats to a life proper to a rational animal.

    If I have a realistic chance of making my world a better place by challenging these evil practices, I will do so. (This is the not shy part.) If doing so will change nothing, except expose me or loved ones to harm by bigots or actual thugs, I will not. (This is the circumspect part.) Self-sacrifice is against my moral code.

    But simply saying I'm an atheist, or I'm not religious at all is only the start of a conversation.

    Religion is not the only alternative out there for moral guidance or reflection. Not adhering to religion is not the only aspect of my thinking and my personality.

    Stating that I am an atheist is thus something that I would hope would at least provoke thought in another, and perhaps require a conversation on my part. The person hearing that from me, or the occasion calling for me to say this, has to be worth it.

    I find the widespread need to "come out" as something that is so common today both sad and puzzling. Our culture causes most people to feel alienated because it is increasingly blind to or disdainful of the individual. Many people yearn for some measure of visibility, and aren't getting it. But past a certain point, it is puzzling that many people have such a weak sense of themselves that they will compromise on almost anything to "belong."

    I'm not sure what to say about that, except, perhaps to advise that one should well understand one's reasons for disclosing one's beliefs, or not. Fashion is probably the worst reason to do either.

    -- CAV

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  8. Over at Hot Air, Jazz Shaw discusses the decision by Democrat strategist Hal Malchow to go abroad in order to end his own life on his own terms, before he loses his mind to Alzheimer's Disease.

    Before this story broke, I was unaware that even in American states that have legalized physician-assisted suicide, the laws apply only to people with a fatal condition who will die in a few months.

    Malchow, after seeing his mother deteriorate with the disease, got himself tested for its genetic markers and discovered that he would eventually succumb to the same fate:
    Euthanasia.jpg
    Legal Status of Euthanasia Worldwide. (Image by Michael Jester, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)
    Malchow returned to the vow he had made half a life earlier about what he would do when Alzheimer's arrived: "I knew that if it happened, I was not going to let all this play out to the end." He had seen how responsibility for his mother had fallen on those around her, and he believed it would be unfair to his wife, Anne Marsh, who already suffered from multiple sclerosis. Several American states, including New Mexico, permit physician-assisted suicide under so-called death-with-dignity laws, but all require a candidate to have a fatal condition with only months left to live. Malchow did not qualify and had no interest in living until he did. "What's the point? You know, why sit around the house and watch a little piece of your brain disappear every day?" he says. "And the ordeal for the caretaker is terrible." [bold added]
    Malchow had to travel to Switzerland to do something that should be a matter of making one's intent legally clear, settling one's affairs, and going to a hospital.

    This should serve as a wake-up call to anyone who would want the option to end life on one's own terms in the event of a catastrophic illness that involves a lengthy period of deterioration.

    Legal protection of the right to seek out assistance in suicide faces two major obstacles, one a legitimate concern and one not.

    Malchow's story mentions one along the way:
    Last September, Malchow contacted Dignitas, a nonprofit advocacy group that facilitates assisted death, to begin making arrangements. He had to submit a two-page autobiography -- a task, he imagined, to ensure he'd deliberated on his options and was not acting impulsively -- alongside medical records that a Swiss psychiatrist reviewed to grant a "provisional green light" to proceed with planning. [bold added]
    Because the law exists to protect the individual's rights, it should be non-trivial to exercise this right, because of the possibility of a momentary lapse of sound judgement or pressure from, say, relatives hoping for an early inheritance. These are legitimate concerns, and it appears -- contrary to theocratic smears -- that jurisdictions that recognize this right have accounted for them.

    And speaking of theocratic smears, Jazz Shaw brings up the other, illegitimate obstacle:
    Some will argue that this decision is in defiance of God's will and that he will pay a price for it. Perhaps you are correct, but that's a chance that Hal is willing to take and none of us truly knows for sure. Others may wish to turn away because the story is too painful to contemplate. But it's one that we will all face sooner or later unless we are suddenly and unexpectedly swept away from this mortal coil in an accident or otherwise. [bold added]
    They may argue, but the argument is based on an arbitrary premise that has no place as a basis for law. Or, as I said last year:
    It think it is clear why the "rights are a gift from God" crowd opposes physician-assisted suicide: It is because they imagine that it displeases a being (that they imagine out of whole cloth), and their whole conception of morality begins and ends at a list of commands having everything to do with "pleasing" this being -- and nothing to do with reason, with living on this earth, or with happiness.
    If the law permits euthanasia, and the state is barred from ordering executions, then anyone worried about offending an imaginary being can choose to continue suffering.

    I find it interesting that the same religion that condemns suicide was fine with "Kill them. The Lord knows those that are his own," back when it held power. Those who claim that death and suffering are God's will bring exactly those things to those who will not fight against them.

    They did it on a grand scale in the Middle Ages, and they do it now, every time someone who would want a dignified end to an inhuman future is denied that end by a superstitious taboo enshrined as law.

    -- CAV

    Link to Original

  9. Ed Driscoll, one of the bloggers at Instapundit, is fond enough of pointing out times when the left is at cross-purposes that he frequently starts off such posts with "Annals of Leftist Autophagy." There are now dozens of these, and it is conventional wisdom on the right that the left is a mess.

    The American right, having fallen under Donald Trump's sway, has -- from praising Trump as an Alinskyite and blaming "society" for bad behavior, all the way to embracing central planning -- increasingly been aping the left. And, like progressives were doing for a time to centrist Democrats, MAGA Republicans have been primarying traditional Republicans.

    This last has reached the point that even some MAGA Republicans can see a problem: The Speaker of the House is asking members of his party to stop primarying each other:
    RINO.jpg
    The more they purge or alienate normal people, the more trouble the GOP is going to have winning elections. (Image by odder, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)
    "I've asked them all to cool it," Johnson told CNN at the House GOP retreat in West Virginia last week. "I am vehemently opposed to member-on-member action in primaries because it's not productive. And it causes division for obvious reasons, and we should not be engaging in that."

    "So I'm telling everyone who's doing that to knock it off," Johnson added. "And both sides, they'll say, 'Well, we didn't start it, they started it.'"
    This is rich, coming as it does from someone selected for his blind loyalty to Trump, because the behavior is motivated by blind loyalty to Trump:
    "I would love nothing more than to just go after Democrats," [Matt] Gaetz, who led the charge to oust McCarthy, told CNN. "But if Republicans are going to dress up like Democrats in drag, I'm going to go after them too. Because at the end of the day, we're not judged by how many Republicans we have in Congress. We're judged on whether or not we save the country."
    Gaetz is one of the most slavishly loyal Trumpists there is, and remember that, in the minds of his faction of the Republican Trump Organization Party, if you aren't one of them, you're a RINO or worse -- a Democrat in drag.

    Thanks, Matt.

    An election is supposed to be how the people select the best among a variety of choices, and if Republicans weren't numbskulls, they would (a) define a positive agenda to run on besides whatever Donald Trump wants at the moment, and (b) welcome competitive races, even if it means someone who doesn't completely toe the party line gets elected.

    But appreciating that point would mean understanding that American political parties are actually coalitions, and that alienating people who might agree with part of what you want to accomplish might impair your ability to do anything you want to accomplish.

    One wonders if pointing this out, however indirectly, as Johnson has, will bode ill or well for his future in whatever the Republican Party has become.

    If the Democrats were not so awful, it would be easier to cheer on the inevitable result of this kind of attitude -- non-MAGA Republicans and independents who want a decent alternative to Democrats getting fed up and staying home, or voting for the Democrats in disgust.

    Perhaps Americans should send the following message to the GOP: If you're going to call me a Democrat for the sin of not worshipping Donald Trump, I guess I'll play the part.

    But then again, perhaps that won't be necessary, per the last several election cycles.

    -- CAV

    Link to Original

  10. A Friday Hodgepodge

    1. Some time back, the New York Times bought Wordle from its inventor. Having heard the new owners were going after clones of the popular word game jogged my memory of the existence of the game Don't Wordle.

    This non-clone has a different object: Make it through six rounds without guessing the word correctly.

    It's harder than you might think.

    2. On her Substack blog, Claire Evans discusses art inspired over time by scintillating scotomas in her post "Brighter Than a Cloud:"
    Perceptual distortions are difficult to measure, but they can be approximated in paint and pencil, which makes migraine art a powerful diagnostic and scientific tool. The earliest depictions of migraine phenomena were illustrations made by physicians who happened to be migraineurs themselves, like the German ophthalmologist Christian Georg Theodor Ruete, who illustrated the three successive stages of his own "flimmerskotom" in 1845, and the 19th century British physician Hubert Airy, whose ink renderings wouldn't be out of place in the Wellcome's migraine art collection.
    Occasionally experiencing these myself, I have to say I wish English had borrowed the German term for these unchanged.

    Also worth noting are a link to an extensive British collection of migraine-inspired art and mention of the only Oliver Sacks book I have not yet read, Migraine.

    3. If you live in certain small parts of North America, this year is going to bring you a double blast of cicadas: Adjacent broods of 13- and 17-year cicadas will be emerging at the same time.



    4. I found the title odd: "The Best Multi-Tool for Every Job." I thought: What? Isn't that like looking for an expert jack of all trades?

    But what the article does is list the best such tools for certain niches, like keychain-sized:
    Tools: Needlenose pliers, wire cutter, knife, package opener, scissors, flathead driver, crosshead driver, bottle opener, tweezers, file

    It would be wrong to compare the Gerber Dime to most full-size multi-tools. After all, it only weighs a shade over 2 ounces and occupies as much space as a Bic lighter. But when we compare the Dime to similar keychain-size multi-tools, it continues to surprise and charm.

    The spring-loaded pliers are strong enough to pull staples from a 2-by-4, and the crosshead driver tightens loose, irritating screws. Because the Dime attaches to a keychain via a split ring, we frequently call on the bottle opener between camping trips and cookouts. A hidden set of tweezers and a pair of scissors are welcome additions too. The build quality remains up for debate, and we question whether the Dime's portability sacrifices durability, but Gerber's limited lifetime warranty puts our mind at ease. Even though most of us carry a full-size multi-tool, the Dime is a welcome addition that exceeds expectations.
    My favorite memory of being glad I carried a multi-tool -- a Swiss Army Knife in this case -- was to facilitate the small, informal picnic after the ceremony for the wedding of a friend, for whom I was best man.

    Whoever planned that picnic hadn't thought to bring a knife!

    -- CAV

    Link to Original

  11. Over at Slate is a decent, albeit left-slanted analysis of how "third-party candidates" might affect the 2024 election. It makes its most interesting point midway when it discusses the erosion in support such candidates suffer in the two-party system as Election Day rolls around.

    The piece then offers an interesting possible exception to that historic pattern, though:
    [A]lthough there are good reasons to think that third-party support will crater as Election Day approaches, it isn't guaranteed -- especially not if Kennedy in particular is able to stay visible throughout the cycle by participating in televised debates and scoring press coverage that goes beyond treating him like a spoiler. And that means we're all facing another round of vote-shaming and counter-vote-shaming as panic about third-party spoilers sets in, especially on the left... [bold added]
    I agree that a third-party candidate could overcome that pattern, but doubt it would be Kennedy, an all-purpose kook whose anti-vax nuttiness should repel most lefties, and whose far-left positions should repel most disgruntled conservatives.

    In short, I think the longer he talks, the more he will turn people off who initially reach out to him out of desperation or the faint hope that nobody could be as bad as either major party candidate: RFK, Jr. is best-of-breed from hell worse.

    The candidate for Trump/Biden to worry about will be the No Labels candidate -- if they can find one.

    The bar in this election is very low: To appeal to the silent, disgusted majority, No Labels need only put a non-geriatric someone on that podium who is halfway reasonable and can offer easily-grasped arguments for an anodyne agenda that only has to contrast with the worst parts of Biden's economic platform and Trump's theocratic/nationalist one.

    It's a low bar. But the fly in the ointment is that, so far, No Labels is having trouble finding a politician who recognizes opportunity when it comes knocking.

    -- CAV

    Link to Original

  12. Writing at The Hill, Juan Williams contends that voters hoping to legalize abortion are a force to be reckoned with in the upcoming election:
    Jimmy__Barbecue__Cherizier_2024.jpg
    Nativist Republicans hope to cash in on this gang leader's recent rise to power in Haiti at election time. (Image by Voice of America, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)
    It was the biggest issue in the 2022 midterms, halting a promised "Red Wave," of Republican victories. Last year voters in Virginia gave Democrats the majority of the state legislature after Republicans backed a 15-week ban on abortions.

    And this year, abortion rights are likely to be on the ballot in several states where activists are pushing to make abortion access a right in the state constitution. Some of those states are critical to the outcome of the race for the White House, including Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

    States with lots of Republican voters, including Kansas and Ohio, are among the six states that have already voted to approve state constitutional protection for abortion. In fact, so far, voters have backed abortion rights every time it has been on the ballot. [links omitted, bold added]
    Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump, who helped cause Roe vs. Wade to be overturned with his Supreme Court appointments, is hoping nativism and xenophobia will come to his rescue:
    Trump is trying to cloud over the abortion fight by loudly demonizing immigrants. The only way that can work is if most of the country joins in the immigration hype.
    This, Williams suggests, is due to the economy not being a clear win for him in this election.

    I don't think Williams is completely right. Although Trump certainly doesn't deserve more trust on the economy, I think he probably still has that to a degree. That said, I think Trump is definitely working to make the non-crisis that is immigration into the centerpiece of his campaign, at least in part to distract from abortion and his general unfitness for office.

    It will be interesting to see how this strategy pans out. People concerned about abortion are unlikly to forget the issue. Maybe some who are concerned about abortion (and believe "Honest Don" when he claims to want abortion legal up until 16 weeks) and worry about importing Haitian gangs might vote for Trump -- but also Democrats for Congress.

    -- CAV

    Link to Original

  13. Lately, Republicans have been working overtime to show that the Democrats hold no monopoly on passing bad legislation in the name of helping "the children."

    For example, several "red" states, including Utah, have passed laws requiring age verification to open social media accounts. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has challenged Utah's law.
    FIRE's suit argues that the law violates the First Amendment, pointing out that it forces social media companies to restrict users' access to protected expression. Additionally, FIRE argues the law's age verification requirements amount to an unconstitutional prior restraint on free expression.

    "What Utah has done, and what other states are doing, is to try to impose sort of a magic bullet solution to the whole question of youth mental health," says Robert Corn-Revere, chief counsel at FIRE. "In its rush to address what really is the latest moral panic, the state brushes aside what is a nuanced problem and chooses censorship as the presumptive solution to how it addresses these issues, ignoring the individual differences and the diverse needs of families in the state."
    The response to this challenge has been for Governor Spencer Cox (R) to delay implementation of the law until October ahead of repealing and replacing the law with what sounds like an equally bad measure.

    It is disturbing to consider some of the voices this law might have silenced:
    Hannah_Zoulek_17.jpg
    Courtesy photos of Hannah Zoule, one of the plaintiffs, by Guillaume Bigot, via FIRE.
    Plaintiffs Lu Ann Cooper and Jessica Christensen co-founded an organization called Hope After Polygamy that connects individuals who are members of, or who have left, polygamous communities with educational resources, often through social media. They know all too well that at-risk youth will disproportionately shoulder the law's harmful effects. The new rules hinder minors' ability to find support and connect with people outside their existing circle, a key feature of social media for vulnerable youth who lack such support at home and school.

    "I was raised in an abusive polygamous family being groomed and coerced to marry my first cousin when I was only 15 years old," said Cooper. "Since escaping, I've used social media to provide resources to others in difficult or dangerous situations. This law will only hurt children in similar situations."
    I am grateful that the good people of FIRE have taken up their cause.

    -- CAV

    Link to Original

  14. A Vox article about the Boeing safety scandal cites the following example of what it calls the FAA "get[ting it] right about airplane regulation:"
    air_travel.jpg
    Image by Kenny Eliason, via Unsplash, license.
    The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) strongly recommends that you get a separate, secured seat for even a very young child below the age of 2 -- but they haven't banned the practice of carrying your child on your lap in your own seat.

    ... I've seen this policy criticized. "A kid being held would have been torn from the hands of their parents, and they would have been sucked out the plane," aviation safety expert Kwasi Adjekum told the Washington Post, referring to what happened to Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on January 5. The National Transportation Safety Board has repeatedly recommended that the FAA ban lap children. [links omitted, bold added]
    The FAA doesn't ban the practice because car travel -- which many people might choose if lap children were banned -- is much less safe than air travel, even when children are held on a lap rather than in a separate seat.

    The author praises this as an example of big-picture thinking and she is correct that the way the FAA chose to regulate does improve overall safety.

    But I have argued in the past that such examples of regulations that mimic rational behavior often fail to account for the cost of lost individual freedom inherent in the uncontested premise that it is appropriate for the state to do our risk calculations for us.

    Indeed, thanks to the regulatory state, we are lucky lap children aren't outlawed. I'd prefer not to leave something like that to chance.

    I will grant one cheer for the FAA on this matter: So long as we are saddled with a regulatory state (rather than advisory bodies), the least it can do is base its laws on hard science and err on the side of liberty. But the fact that we have dual agencies in disagreement should illustrate the peril inherent in the regulatory state.

    That is the big picture that the entire regulatory state misses, but which our founders well understood and hoped to protect us against when, long ago, they declared:
    The only legitimate purpose of government is make sure that these individual rights are protected...
    I, for one, would rather make up my own mind about what is safest for myself and my children, than have my safety and my options hemmed in by the whims of bureaucrats.

    In the big picture, the best way for the government to protect my safety would be for it to protect my freedom to look after myself.

    -- CAV

    Link to Original

  15. A Friday Hodgepodge

    1. Before we moved, I had been working to incorporate more walking into my routine, with the goal being about five hours each week.

    I'm close to having that routine back, but trips into New Orleans looked like they might make that challenging.

    One day, I had to go to a mall to pick up a gift for my wife's birthday only to discover that the store would be closed for another 45 minutes after I'd arrived. Circumnavigating the mall while timing my walk, I found that it took about half an hour.

    Since the mall is on the way for almost any trip I might make into town, I have a good way to get in half an hour of walking when I go to town, regardless of the weather, as long as I plan for it.

    2. The area code for my cell phone number happens to be one of the top three that criminals use for scam calls starting with the first few digits of the target's number.

    A week or so ago, I accidentally picked up such a call and was blasted with at least thirty more in total that day.

    Annoyed that my phone doesn't simply have the ability to block calls from entire area codes, I found an app that gives me this capability, and spares me other garbage calls via crowdsourcing, as well.

    CallControl also allows whitelisting of numbers that might otherwise be blocked by such rules.

    3. Cooking has been a hobby of mine for a long time, so I have built up quite the repertoire over time.

    But when we had kids a little over a decade ago, lots of those delicious things went unmade for a long time, mainly due to the time constraints inherent in our routines.

    Since the move, our routine has been very different, and that has allowed me to go back and rediscover some things. One pleasant surprise was that there were several things, dirty rice among them, I thought nobody would like that much turning out to be big hits.

    This has really helped me be able to send a variety of hot lunches to school with my daughter, who hates bread and has mostly bread-heavy choices at her school cafeteria.

    (Her idea for packing hot lunches in the first place has now not just gotten me out of that jam, but led to these rediscoveries.)
    au_lait.jpg
    Image by Tim Boud, via Wikimedia Commons, license.
    4. Back in our St. Louis days, we lived within walking distance of the Loop, and I liked the option of being able to walk over to a non-Starbucks cafe with my laptop and work or think for awhile.

    Ever since we left, doing that has involved at least a 20-minute car ride each way.

    But now, we're in a more walkable area and that includes being within walking distance of a couple of non-Starbucks cafes.

    It's nice to be able to do this again, and it's a nice bonus that I can order a café au lait without the person across the counter looking at me like I have a horn growing out of my head.

    -- CAV

    Link to Original

  16. I sometimes bookmark good advice in anticipation of wanting to be able to factor it in if my kids ask for similar advice later on.

    Bryan Caplan's "She's the One," on evaluating romantic partners, is a good example. Caplan wrote the piece in response to a reader's question, and he artfully combines his own life experience with his knowledge of markets to answer the question.

    And don't let our culture's hatred of capitalism cause you to dismiss that combination as inhuman or calculating: The piece is spot-on and very enjoyable to read and think about.

    He comes up with eighteen points, the last of which was probably my favorite:
    wedding.jpg
    Image by Álvaro CvG, via Unsplash, license.
    My 11-year-old daughter vocally opposes changing yourself to better please the marriage market. "You've got to be true to yourself," she declares, with poetic wisdom beyond her years. My reply: Sure, you should think twice - nay, thrice - about violating your conscience for romantic rewards. But what if the marriage market rewards changes that you yourself classify as self-improvement? When the marriage market rewards you for working hard, and you agree that you ought to adopt a better work ethic, hard work is "true to yourself." We're all flawed human beings, so you have plenty of room to self-improve with pride. And if women like you better as a result, that speaks well of them, not badly of you. [bold added]
    There are minor points I disagree with or have strong reservations about, as is the case with almost any advice I pass along. (At the same time, even those points are still thought-provoking.)

    For example, Caplan's assertion that all traits are heritable includes personality traits. This sounds deterministic to me, but still provides food for thought: If someone with an awful personality is raising one's children, that can rub off on them or otherwise cause it to be harder for them to develop in a healthy way.

    I highly recommend the piece both for its advice and the thinking it will invite.

    -- CAV

    Link to Original

  17. Regulars here know that I take issue with the way touchscreens are deployed in many (if not most) newer cars.

    Granted, they provide a viewer for a back-up cam, cut costs for controls, and allow for greater dashboard functionality through software.

    But because much of this software is written poorly and controls are indiscriminately moved to the touchscreen, the result is often a frustrating mess of poorly laid-out controls and nested menus that is a real safety hazard because many simple things drivers used to be able to do by touch, like adjust fan controls, now require them to take their eyes off the road.

    In today's nanny state, the first impulse most people will have will be to scream Force manufacturers to have buttons and knobs again! Not only is this an abuse of government, such abuses are at least partially responsible for the current predicament: American manufacturers are required by law to include backup cams.

    Since I have long opposed the government regulating every facet of our economy and frequently argue that whatever legitimate functions it wrongly arrogates into regulatory agencies could be done better by watchdog groups and the like, I am pleased to have an example of exactly this, and doubly so because this problem annoys me so much!
    [T]he automotive safety organization European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) ... says the controls ought to change in 2026.

    "The overuse of touchscreens is an industry-wide problem, with almost every vehicle-maker moving key controls onto central touchscreens, obliging drivers to take their eyes off the road and raising the risk of distraction crashes," said Matthew Avery, Euro NCAP's director of strategic development.
    And, much later:
    crash_lab.jpg
    Crash Hall of the IIHS, a non-government safety organization. (Image by Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)
    ... Euro NCAP is not insisting on everything being its own button or switch. But the organization wants to see physical controls for turn signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, the horn, and any SOS features, like the European Union's eCall feature.

    ...

    Euro NCAP is not a government regulator, so it has no power to mandate carmakers use physical controls for those functions. But a five-star safety score from Euro NCAP is a strong selling point, similar to the (American) Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's coveted Top Safety Pick program here in the US, and it's likely this pressure will be effective. Perhaps someone should start bugging IIHS [the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety --ed] to do the same.
    Yes.

    Although some automakers have been dialing back a little on this insanity, non-government watchdogs like the NCAP and the IIHS could help marshal market forces to improve automotive safety more quickly, not to mention help customers who want better options than touchscreens for everything.

    -- CAV

    Link to Original

  18. Editor's Note: Ars Technica substantially revised its coverage of this story, as can be seen in the screenshots of an archived version (left, below) and a later edition (right), which also changed the headline, but not the URL.
    ***

    Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025: Surge pricing test next year means your cheeseburger may get more expensive at 6 pm.

    As soon as I saw this headline at Ars Technica, I immediately thought that might be one of the shortest experiments in retail history.
    both_versions.jpg
    Screenshots of an archived copy of the original story (left) and the revised version (as of today, right) of the news as presented by Ars Technica. (The author believes these screen captures of a publicly-available web page are protected as Fair Use under U.S. Copyright law.)
    American fast food chain Wendy's is planning to test dynamic pricing and AI menu features in 2025, reports Nation's Restaurant News and Food & Wine. This means that prices for food items will automatically change throughout the day depending on demand, similar to "surge pricing" in rideshare apps like Uber and Lyft. The initiative was disclosed by Kirk Tanner, the CEO and president of Wendy's, in a recent discussion with analysts.
    The piece led that way when it came out, prompting me to think, This will cause anyone on a budget or with a small amount of cash on hand to go somewhere else.

    There's nothing inherently wrong with dynamic pricing, and I'm not a businessman, but it seems obvious that it's a bad strategy in this particular market: There is nonzero value to certain customers of having some idea of what they might need to pay before they get in a line to buy something.

    Glad to know what might be up, I made a mental note that, come 2025, I might wait out the experiment by going elsewhere.

    Liz Warren's reaction?
    ...Wendys [sic] is planning to try out "surge pricing" -- that means you could pay more for your lunch, even if the cost to Wendy's stays exactly the same.

    It's price gouging plain and simple, and American families have had enough...
    It should be plain from my initial reaction that the first sentence would be poppycock even if the news stories were accurate, which they apparently weren't.

    As for the second sentence, I'll leave a discussion of "price gouging" to others. But do note that usually, when rabble-rousers like Warren drop the phrase, they at least have the good grace to use it for something essential like fuel or food staples during times of emergency or general distress -- rather than minor luxuries like fast food lunches in a highly competitive market.

    As it turns out, even my modest annoyance was unfounded. (I blame our culture -- which does produce companies known for screwing their customers -- rather than capitalism.) In this case, though, Wendy's just wanted to be able to adjust prices company-wide in less than the six weeks its current technology requires, and sometimes to be able to offer surprise discounts.

    That makes sense to me, both as a customer and as someone imagining what someone wanting to make a profit might actually want to do.

    It's too bad so many on the left (and increasingly on the "right") limit their imaginations by assuming that businessmen are grasping and think only short-range -- neither of which is in their actual self-interest.

    -- CAV

    Link to Original

  19. An attorney, annoyed at the cacophony of clueless babbling about the court deliberations over Donald Trump's dubious immunity claim, explains (original thread) the "slow" timetable and identifies who is really to blame for the proximity of these proceedings to the election.
    ...Judge Chutkan deserves no criticism for this. Two months from filing to decision on a motion to dismiss in federal court is VERY FAST. Usually you are looking at six months or more. This case was expedited.

    Donald Trump had a right, under law, to appeal this ruling to the Court of Appeals and to stay the trial court proceedings while he did it. You may not like this rule, but it applies to ANYONE raising an immunity defense, not just Donald Trump.

    President Trump took his appeal and the court concluded briefing in JUST ONE MONTH, and then held oral argument on January 9 and decided the case February 6. This is LIGHTNING FAST. Most CoA cases take about a year to a year and half between commencement and conclusion.

    Further, the DC Circuit itself broke a norm to speed up the case further, and NOBODY criticized it for breaking this norm. It's a technical issue, but the "mandate" is the date on which a court of appeals judgment goes into effect.
    Dilan Esper's commentary on these "delays" that actually aren't goes on in some detail, and make for educational reading. (And it was good to see that I wasn't imagining things when I recalled the glacial pace of other court proceedings and thought this seemed fast by comparison.)

    What I really appreciate, though, is Esper, whom I take to lean left, lays the blame for the real delay exactly where it belongs:
    f you want to argue that a 5/24 decision is still too late, well, SCOTUS only controls the last 3 months of that delay. The rest of it? Blame the liberal Judge Chutkan and DC Circuit and ESPECIALLY the DOJ, who DIDN'T BRING THIS CASE FOR 2 1/2 YEARS!
    Or, as I put it the other day:
    alarm.jpg
    If your're serious, pull it now. If you're not, leave it alone. (Image by jstark7, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)
    In my uninformed opinion, I think if the Democrats were serious about their constitutional obligations, they would have been much quicker to establish that Trump was an insurrectionist (or not) on legal grounds, and found a way to hasten legal proceedings in that matter and the election tampering in Georgia. As it stands, they appear to be trying to time things to spoil Trump's election attempt. They are playing into his hands. [bold added]
    There is plenty of commentary from both political tribes in America to the effect that Trump and Biden need each other to run in order to have a chance to win.

    It bad enough that the Democrats, forgetting that Trump knows how to play the victim, decided it would help their figurehead win an election by saddling Trump with lawsuits during the campaign.

    It's much worse that they would play around with such serious charges in the process. If they believe the charges, they should have prosecuted earlier. If not, they shouldn't have leveled them at all.

    -- CAV

    Link to Original

  20. A Friday Hodgepodge

    jalapenos.jpg
    Probably not as hot as it looks... (Image by Thembi Johnson, via Unsplash, license.)
    1. Some time ago, I tried a new recipe that called for jalapeño peppers and was surprised that the ones I bought weren't that spicy.

    Memory jogged, I also remembered having nachos with cheese and sliced jalapeños at a sporting event some months before and thinking that either the peppers weren't hot or I was just inured to spiciness.

    I bumped into the answer recently within "Here's Why Jalapeño Peppers Are Less Spicy Than Ever" at D Magazine:
    The salsa industry, Walker said, starts with a mild crop of peppers, then simply adds the heat extract necessary to reach medium and hot levels. She would know; she started her career working for a processed-food conglomerate.
    The need for standardization in the salsa industry has led to the engineered, run-of-the-mill variety of the peppers being milder.

    Chefs wanting spicy peppers take note: You'll need to use other kinds of pepper or hotter breeds of the jalapeño, such as the Mitla or the Early.

    2. Voyager I, renowned for its great longevity as a useful space probe, may be done for. In "Death, Lonely Death," Doug Muir explains that a software problem has caused the spacecraft to "go mad," and that it may be impossible to fix:
    In December 2023, Voyager started sending back gibberish instead of data. A software glitch, though perhaps caused by an underlying hardware problem; a cosmic ray strike, or a side effect of the low temperatures, or just aging equipment randomly causing some bits to flip.

    The problem was, the gibberish was coming from the flight direction software -- something like an operating system. And no copy of that operating system remained in existence on Earth.

    ...

    [T]hey're trying to fix the problem. But right now, it doesn't look good. You can't just download a new OS from 15 billion kilometers away. They would have to figure out the problem, figure out if a workaround is possible, and then apply it ... all with a round-trip time of 45 hours for every communication with a probe that is flying away from us at a million miles a day. They're trying, but nobody likes their odds.
    This is sad news, but occurs within the context of a fascinating and awe-inspiring history of the probe.

    3. Thinking about how I would approach answering a question like, How many states contain counties larger than Rhode Island?, I learned that, there are counties larger than other states -- including Montana, if you count an unorganized borough of Alaska.

    I can't resist mentioning another item that popped up in that search: "Rhode Island as a Unit of Measure." It gets used a lot, and the next time I casually checked the news, I saw an article in the British press comparing the area of the wildfire in Texas to that of the state.

    My favorite bit of trivia? Hawaii is the smallest state containing a county larger than Rhode Island.

    4. If you've ever wondered what's wrong with the assertion that you could spell fish g-h-o-t-i, here's your answer.

    -- CAV

    Link to Original

  21. Someone I take to be a recent-ish graduate puts forth thoughts about paper note-taking, prompted by the project of scanning in old notes and other materials from college.

    The post opens in part with the following disclaimer:
    I realize there are entire online cultures of journaling and notetaking and notebook-buying, and I'm not here to compete with them. This is just what I do.
    The advice is very different from much of what I have encountered, but I found it well-considered and superior in certain ways to those cultures.

    I think the bullet points on preferring loose-leaf paper to notebooks are exemplary, because you get reasons along with the advice, which often contrasts with such standard fare as Use a Moleskine:
    • You can hand a single sheet to someone.
    • notes.jpg
      Graph paper, good. Bound notebook, bad... (Image by Glenn Carstens-Peters, via Unsplash, license.)
      You can rewrite a sheet later and put it back in the same order, instead of keeping or tearing out the bad copy.
    • Easier to cross reference a previous day without flipping back and forth. [This is because each page is dated at the top. --ed]
    • Easier to integrate with other material: pages you receive, homework you submit and get back.
    • Easier to purchase the same or equivalent paper over the course of years, rather than developing an eclectic assortment of different notebooks or, worse, a brand dependency.
    • Easier to scan.
    Coupled with the advice to use a standard size of paper and using a printer to create lines or a custom grid, it's easy to see how this can make keeping a notebook on paper and making an electronic archive much easier -- and less annoying to those of us who hate ending up with different paper sizes and other inconsistencies.

    The post is much more interesting than I expected it to be, and is replete with examples from the scanned-in notes.

    The next time I need to take paper notes I am likely to want to archive, I will be trying much of this advice.

    -- CAV

    Link to Original

  22. At the Daily Beast, Matt Lewis argues in a vein similar to others that Trump's primary victories are weak showings for someone who is effectively an incumbent, and claims that they portend problems in the general election:
    It's even worse for Trump than that. A Fox News voter analysis showed that 59 percent of Haley voters in South Carolina "say they would not support Trump in the general election if he were the nominee." And if you think this is unique to South Carolina, consider the fact that nearly half of Nikki's Iowa backers also said they wouldn't support Trump come November. [links omitted]
    Won't support doesn't have to mean will vote for Biden. The margins in the election are thin enough that sufficient numbers of a candidate's potential voters staying home in a few swing states can affect the outcome. When two fifths of a party's voters reject its incumbent and half of those won't support him in the general election, that's a problem, whether that party admits it or not.

    Lewis has a point, but it is worth considering what such dynamics might mean beyond the election. A thought experiment might help.

    Sure. It's easy for anyone not under Trump's spell to see Republicans and conservative-leaning independents staying home, but what if Haley were winning? What if she wrapped up the nomination?

    Consider the kind of invective Trump and his stooges have been hurling at members of their own party who dare have an opinion about anything that doesn't match Trump's: "Crybaby RINO NeverTrumper," "NeoCon," "the left's favorite Republican." Although there's a good case to be made that it is, in fact Trump who might as well be a Democrat, what do you think voters who equate anyone who isn't Trump (or blessed off by Trump) with a Democrat would do in a Haley-Biden contest?

    They'll stay home, and arguably be more likely to do so than Haley voters would -- whether or not they bought the inevitable claim that the election was "rigged."

    I don't recall where I first heard this, but I agree that American political parties are best understood as coalitions. Trump appreciates part of this and doesn't care much about another part. The part he gets is that it is possible to achieve a majority within a party and run away with its nomination. Since Republicans are about a third of the electorate, he needs fanatical support from only about a fifth of the total electorate to become the party's nominee and pretty much run things.

    GOP_Candidates_Since_Trump.jpg
    To Modernize: Replace An Available Candidate with Trump Likes Me, then hire an artist to caricature a charletan, a has-been, or a crackpot. (Anti-Whig Cartoon from 1848, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)
    The part he doesn't care about -- assuming he is (as he seems) motivated more by a desire to put his feet on the desk in the Oval Office and screw with his opponents than by any positive, coherent agenda -- is that for a coalition to last, it pays not to alienate members of that coalition.

    Indeed, if members of that coalition get nothing from being in that coalition, they will eventually disappear or go elsewhere. This seems a great way to run the GOP with an iron first ... and into the ground. See also: the last few election cycles, and, perhaps, the Whigs.

    -- CAV

    Link to Original

  23. An article about social media laws being scrutinized by the Supreme Court summarizes the stakes as follows:
    speech.jpg
    The owner of this auditorium does not "censor" when he decides who can or can't lecture there. (Image by Dom Fou, via Unsplash, license.)
    The justices will have to decide between radically different conceptions of what social media is. Are these platforms more like old-time phone companies: basically, open to everyone without filtering?

    Or, are they more like bookstores and newspapers, places that edit and curate information, that get the highest level of First Amendment protection?
    Or, as conservatives of the ilk who once whined about "fairness" in search results, are social media companies "public utilities" and, as such, subject to longstanding (but illegitimate) regulations?

    It is a shame that we have this longstanding abuse of government power on the books, because it muddies what should be a clear-cut case of the states of Florida and Texas violating the property rights of Facebook et al. by attempting to overrule their moderation policies.

    (That this was done possibly in reaction to federal government jawboning does not justify the states doing it or exempt the federal government from being barred from dictating content moderation policies.)

    The fact that a company grows large enough that it is commonplace for people to rely on it does not make its owners rightless or duty-bound at any point.

    It is a travesty to see government regulation of "public utilities" go unquestioned while the right to free speech is under trial -- by people at least some of whom understand what that is even less than they do property rights -- as witness the assertions that social media companies are "censoring" content.

    Censorship is an abuse possible only to governments.

    -- CAV

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  24. What do I think of President Reagan? The best answer to give would be: But I don't think of him... -- Ayn Rand
    ***

    Recalling the "Shy Trump hypothesis" -- a 2016 attempt to explain how Donald Trump was elected against the run of polling predictions, Slate considers polling data about the question of whether Donald Trump would lose votes in the event he is convicted at one of his trials.

    The article notes that while this hypothesis didn't hold up, it nevertheless raises the implicit question Will the voters who say they'd desert Trump if he were convicted really do so?

    The piece follows on by nitpicking in many words: how Clinton's impeachment affected whether people thought he should resign, whether voters are paying any attention to Trump's legal problems, and whether they might have forgotten what they dislike about him.

    I don't think much of or support either candidate, and this all looked like so much hand-wringing on the part of a partisan hack who'd have to find something else to write about if the Democrats had only chosen someone less ancient and unpopular to run against such an ancient and unpopular opponent.

    chads.jpg
    I'm guessing the author isn't a big-picture guy. (Image by Alan Diaz, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)
    For about 1300 words, this piece myopically speculates from polling data and yet misses three huge factors with much greater and direct bearing on the question of whether Trump's legal troubles will affect the election. First, since both parties have set things up to eliminate any deliberation in the process of choosing a candidate, there is already a binary choice between two terrible options. Is the left's partisan media so blinded by hatred for Trump that they don't see how awful Biden is, and can't conceive of others being equally blinded by hatred for Biden?

    Second, while Biden's foibles don't excuse Trump's, there is zero mention of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal or Biden's classified document incident. Many people are aware of both, and might understandably conclude that they have a "choice" between two felons/national security risks.

    Third, while I think Trump should stand trial for election tampering in Georgia and his role in the events of January 6, I think the civil trial in New York is a gross abuse of government on top of being politically motivated. I doubt I am alone in this, and I am concerned that if this perception doesn't already mar public confidence in the propriety of trying the two serious matters I just named, Trump will find a way to make sure it does.

    (In my uninformed opinion, I think if the Democrats were serious about their constitutional obligations, they would have been much quicker to establish that Trump was an insurrectionist (or not) on legal grounds, and found a way to hasten legal proceedings in that matter and the election tampering in Georgia. As it stands, they appear to be trying to time things to spoil Trump's election attempt. They are playing into his hands.)

    The article disclaims many circumstances of the election are unprecedented on its way to throwing the bone of hope to Democrats and others opposed to Trump. That is wishful thinking at best, and I see too many circumstances that are ripe to make Trump's unfitness for office look irrelevant to many voters.

    -- CAV

    Link to Original

  25. A Friday Hodgepodge

    1. "Why Can't Professional Philosophers Get Rand Right?," by Mike Mazza (New Ideal):
    What's going on here? To many twentieth-century philosophers, the gold standard for assessing philosophical merit was a concise deduction with informally defended premises. Especially in ethics, these informal defenses attempt to get the reader to accept that a premise is "intuitive" (or the implication of a deeper, intuitively true assumption). So, it's understandable that philosophers educated in this tradition would attempt to interpret someone outside of it as making gold-standard arguments; it's what they're comfortable with and trained to look for. Notice that Rachels and Rachels's first premise states a fact and then attempts to draw from it a common-sense or intuitively plausible implication: the individual is "of supreme importance." But Rand does not argue like this at any point in her case for egoism.
    Mazza indicates that parochialism, of which the above is only a type, is a problem even for those few non-Objectivist academics who have been sympathetic to Rand, and is right to call out professional philosophers, of all people, for falling into it.

    2. "Selfish Randsday to All," by Harry Binswanger (Value for Value):
    Randsday [the anniversary of Ayn Rand's birthday --ed] is for reminding ourselves that pleasure is an actual need, a psychological requirement for a human consciousness. For man, motivation, energy, enthusiasm are not givens. Psychological depression is not only possible but rampant in our duty-preaching, self-denigrating culture. The alternative is not short-range, superficial "fun," but real, self-rewarding pleasure. On Randsday, if you do something that you ordinarily would think of as "fun," you do it on a different premise and with a deeper meaning: that you need pleasure, you are entitled to it, and that the purpose and justification of your existence is: getting what you want -- what you really want, with full consciousness and dedication.
    I especially recommend visiting this post for the excerpt from Rand's The Fountainhead, which powerfully demolishes the trite, but deadly and wrong sentiment that it's easy to be selfish.

    3. "Portraying CEOs as Cartoon Villains," by Jaana Woiceshyn (How to Be Profitable and Moral):
    Villain.jpg
    Image by J.J., via Wikimedia Commons, license.
    When we see the news headlines about online sexual exploitation of children, experience daily the stubbornly high food prices, and witness job cuts, it is easy to take the governments' accusations at face value. No wonder the public distrust of corporations is high. But are the accusations based on evidence? Are corporate CEOs real villains, or are politicians just portraying them as cartoon villains, like the cold-hearted Scrooge McDuck or the conniving Mr. Burns in The Simpsons who stop at nothing to maximize profits?

    I argue the latter. Politicians are scapegoating corporate CEOs for the problems that ultimately the governments created.
    This dishonest practice has always been a hallmark of the left, but the right has moved from failing to even pretend to stand up for business to joining in.

    Indeed, such phrases as corporate media -- once a shibboleth of the left -- now get bandied about as if we're all communists now.

    4. "Has the Right Been Eviscerated by Trump?," by Peter Schwartz (PeterSchwartz.com, 2019):
    [Trump's] core constituency supports him unquestioningly. He calls them "my followers," and they attend his rallies, vote for the candidates he endorses and give him the adulation he desperately seeks. They have helped him co-opt the right. The better Republicans have been driven out and the worst ones entrenched. The few, isolated defenders of a free market have nowhere to turn for political support. There is no significant faction fighting against Trump's war on trade. Today, the right -- the intellectual leaders and the mass followers -- consists predominantly of nativists, who want to "make America great" by expanding the power of the state and regressing to the tribalism of centuries past.
    This post is even more relevant now than when I read it in 2019.

    And if the above isn't disturbing enough, news from the latest CPAC will more than underscore Schwartz's point.

    -- CAV

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