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  1. 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: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. -- CAVLink to Original
  2. 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! -- CAVLink to Original
  3. 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. -- CAVLink to Original
  4. Writing at The Hill, Juan Williams contends that voters hoping to legalize abortion are a force to be reckoned with in the upcoming election: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. -- CAVLink to Original
  5. 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: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. -- CAVLink to Original
  6. 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:"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. -- CAVLink to Original
  7. 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.) 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. -- CAVLink to Original
  8. 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: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. -- CAVLink to Original
  9. 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 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. -- CAVLink to Original
  10. 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.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. -- CAVLink to Original
  11. 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: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. -- CAVLink to Original
  12. A Friday Hodgepodge 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. -- CAVLink to Original
  13. 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. 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. -- CAVLink to Original
  14. 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. 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. -- CAVLink to Original
  15. An article about social media laws being scrutinized by the Supreme Court summarizes the stakes as follows: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. -- CAVLink to Original
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