... and I try not to do that too often, but today is the last day of the month, and ...
This is my 118th post of the year.
Which means that, in the first two months of 2023, I've now put up as many posts as I did in 2004, the first year of this blog (granted, I only started KN@PPSTER in September of that year; it was a four-month period, so I'm only blogging twice as much), and a good deal more than the 79 posts I published in the entirety of 2007.
Yay, me!
Of course, the daily Wordle hint means my base/minimum is 365 posts per year, and I'm shooting for at least 550 (a number I've only exceeded once, that being last year).
By all means, let me know what I'm doing well, what I'm doing badly, what I'm not doing at all that I should be doing, etc., in comments.
"When an agency comes out and says they're leaning this way but with 'low confidence?' I mean, how do you interpret that?" Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, told Axios. "The question is: 'Why did you even put it out there?'" he said.
Low confidence generally means questionable or implausible information was used, the information is too fragmented or poorly corroborated to make solid analytic inferences, or significant concerns or problems with sources existed.
In answer to Osterholm's question:
The Department of Energy "put it out there" because someone with influence over the US Department of Energy wanted to keep the lab leak hypothesis alive.
Note that I refer to it as a "hypothesis" rather than a "theory."
A theory is testable and falsifiable.
The lab leak hypothesis is not a theory because it's not testable (the Chinese regime isn't going to suddenly open up all its facilities and records) and because it's not falsifiable (even if the Chinese regime disappeared today and US inspectors went in with all the access they wanted and dispositively concluded that there was no lab leak, those who want to believe there was a lab leak will continue to believe there was a lab leak).
Absent testability and falsifiability, all those who really care about getting it right have to go on is Occam's Razor: "When presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction, one should prefer the one that requires fewest assumptions."
It takes a number of assumptions about subjects of research, techniques of research, and lab security practices to get to "lab leak."
The only assumption it requires to get to "zoonosis" is the assumption that the SARS-CoV-2 has the same origins, and infected humans by the same means, as most infectious diseases.
Does that mean the lab leak hypothesis is false? No. It just means that in the absence of evidence for it, there's no particular reason to fixate on it. And a "low confidence" "assessment" from a state apparatus with at most an extremely tangential role in such "assessments" doesn't change that calculation.
I'm not going to poison the well by characterizing Adams's views as stated in the controversial episode of Real Coffee with Scott Adams. Here's the episode so you can decide for yourselves, and I guess we can discuss it in comments if you really want to:
If you don't want to patronize YouTube (and in case Adams's channel there gets the kibosh), here's a Rumble link (the embed function gave me problems).
What I am going to do is consider the matter from the vantage point of business strategy.
I will start with an assumption that may or may not be correct, but which is reasonable. That is, I will assume that Scott Adams likes to make money. I'm not saying that's all he cares about, or even that he'll do anything and everything that might get that result. Just that he probably prefers larger positive cash flow to smaller positive cash flow (and definitely to negative cash flow).
Taking that assumption as a given, how does he make more money by doing this than by not doing it?
Well, let's start by talking about Dilbert. It was a popular comic back when newspaper comics were popular, not just in newspapers but in coffee table books, on shirts and mugs, etc. In the 1990s and the oughts, you couldn't pick up e.g. a for Dummies book on 1) computers or 2) management without finding a Dilbert frame at the beginning of each chapter.
That last one is worth some quote goodness, emphasis mine:
Lee Enterprises, an Iowa-based media company that owns nearly 80 daily newspapers, is transitioning to a 'uniform set of offerings' with its comics, puzzles and advice columns, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a Lee paper. ... The shift made headlines when cartoonists such as “Bizarro” creator Dan Piraro and “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams said that they had lost Lee client newspapers. Adams said he had lost 77 papers.
The thing that made Adams famous, and made him money for a long time, was heading downhill as a profit center long before last week.
And the whole time that was happening, Adams was busy making himself both a successful book writer in various business, self-help, and persuasion niches and a popular Internet talking head who thrives on controversy.
It's not an Underpants Gnomes business plan:
Be controversial
?????
Profit!
Every time Adams says something that really is, or can be painted as, tendentious or bizarre, he both sells subscriptions, merch, etc. to those who love it and/or him, and monetizes the views of the haters who come to check out what he said.
He just sacrificed Dilbert on the altar of his current ventures, and it's easy to see why: Dilbert was already on life support, because newspaper comic strips are on life support.
He'll probably make more money in the next month on e.g. Locals than he would have made continuing to produce the strip for the next year and selling it to a publication base in terminal decline. Less work, more money. The controversy is more profitable than the comic.
Which is not to imply that he was insincere in what he said, or even that the sacrifice was coldly, carefully planned in advance. But he clearly wasn't so worried about keeping Dilbert in "going concern" status that he felt the need to watch his words. And he probably knew that this kind of moment was coming sooner or later.
A dollar he makes this way spends just as well as a dollar he made the other way.
Keep America Beautiful is a non-profit originally created by, among other groups, several government agencies.
The Ad Council has a long history of working directly with government.
And, for a long time (including the time period covered here), the Federal Communications Commission required radio and television stations to allocate a certain amount of airtime to "public service," which in practice meant running ads created by the Ad Council ... including this one it created in cahoots with Keep America Beautiful.
Keep America Beautiful claims it's transferring the "rights" to the ad to the National Congress of American Indians, which in turn "plans to end the use of the ad and watch for any unauthorized use."
Even if "intellectual property" was a thing, this ad wouldn't qualify as IP. It was created by government-funded entities for use in government-required programs. It's inherently in the public domain -- "public property."
I neither need, nor intend to request, anyone's permission to use it in any way I damn well please.
I'd heard about Delta 8 THC. I'd heard from friends who used it that it was useful for e.g. focus and concentration. And from other friends that it was just good for getting high. A little bit of online reading had emphasized the "focus and concentration" aspects.
So, I happened to be in a store that sold Delta 8 gummies, two for $4.95, yesterday, and made an impulse buy.
And, naturally, popped one into my mouth on the way to the car (I wasn't driving).
Then I pulled out my phone to do reading on recommended dosages, so as to know whether I should pop the second one.
The quick-phone-search consensus seemed to be "try a first dose of 15mg ... more experienced users might go 50-80mg."
The gummy I'd just eaten was 60mg.
Starting 30-45 minutes later, I got the "focus and concentration" bit out of it. I just generally felt more alert. Not in a psychedelic "in tune with the universe" way or anything like that. Just more awake and focused on stuff.
That lasted maybe an hour. Then I got 1) really physically tired and 2) really mentally unfocused in a distracting way that made it impossible to just go with (1) and have a nice nap.
I now have one 60mg gummy left. It's cut in a convenient square shape, so when I decide to use it again (not during the day on a weekday!), I'll probably cut it in half, then cut one half in half again, so that I hopefully (if the Delta 8 is well-distributed through the substance) have two 15m doses and one 30mg dose.
I'll start with a 15mg dose, and decide at some point into that experience whether or not to augment it with another 15mg (and use the 30mg dose another time), or just to save 15mg for later and maybe cut the other 30mg down to two 15mg doses, or maybe just decide at some point in there that Delta 8 just isn't for me.
This morning, I de-registered it from my Amazon account, un-plugged it, put it away, and returned to that bedside table space to my 4th Generation Echo Dot (not an affiliate link).
Why?
Let's start with what I liked about the Echo Show first. I liked that I could have it bring up my entire Kindle library on the screen, so that I could just tap the title I wanted Alexa to read me to sleep with. I liked that when I had it play a song, it would scroll the lyrics on its screen.
Two things I did not like, in ascending order of importance:
I never could figure out how to intentionally get it to shut its screen off so that I didn't have light shining in my face all night. Sometimes it would go off, sometimes it wouldn't, and nothing I tried with settings seemed to have any effect on that. Not a terribly big deal, since I generally wear a sleeping mask (lately, one with Bluetooth headphones built in!), but whenever I wanted to sleep without that mask on, annoying.
The big, big, big deal was that it often just couldn't seem to hear me when I addressed it. Sometimes not at all, sometimes not well. Once again, that was intermittent and I couldn't figure out why. I tried changing its position on the bedside table. I tried changing my position relative to the device -- vertically, laterally, and in terms of distance. Sometimes it couldn't hear me ... but the Dot in the living room, a good 25 feet away, on the other side of a wall with a door nearly shut between me and it, could.
Last night was the final straw.
"Alexa, play songs by Phish."
From the living room: "Playing Kiss, by Prince."
Loudly so that the living room device would be sure to hear: "Alexa, stop."
"Alexa, play songs by Phish."
"Playing songs by Kiss."
Sitting up in bed: "Alexa, stop."
Standing up next to the bed for another angle toward the microphone: "Alexa, stop."
After shutting off a nearby fan that I thought might be producing interference: "Alexa, STOP."
Several more minutes of that, and no, it's not that I'm some kind of big Phish fan, but I feel like maybe I ought to be and occasionally take their stuff for a sleepy-time spin.
Maybe someday I'll look at a newer model of the Echo Show and read the reviews carefully to see if this is a common/ongoing problem. For now, I'll just manage without displayed libraries and lyrics so the fucking thing may actually hear me and give me what I ask for.
Around the wide world, all cultures share a few key features. Anthropologists debate the precise extent, but the basics are always there. Language. Tools. Marriage. Family. Ritual. Music. And penis-stealing witches.
New policy at Twitter, and it's not Elon Musk money-grubbing. Or, rather, it's not Elon musk unreasonably money-grubbing.
After March 20, if you want to protect your Twitter account with two-factor authentication, you'll have to:
Become a Twitter Blue subscriber; or
Choose a method other than SMS text message for your second authentication factor (the first one is your username/password combo).
Why? Because, according to Musk, fake SMS messaging schemes are costing Twitter $60 million a year.
There are free alternatives -- here's a Wired review of "authenticator apps" -- and there are relatively inexpensive hardware keys like the one I just ordered (not an affiliate link). I had a YubiKey that I got as a subscription premium from Wired a few years ago, but it went missing.
I didn't order the new one for Twitter specifically, btw -- I just finally decided the YubiKey wasn't going to turn up and that I should get a new thing instead of having to click "choose alternate method/send me a text" on Facebook for the rest of my life. Now that I've ordered the new one, the old one will no doubt magically reappear. Welcome to my life.
If you log into various services via phone, an app might be the better choice, since most of the hardware keys seem to be USB-A. Since I use Twitter, Facebook, et al. almost exclusively from my desktop or, when traveling, a laptop, the hardware key makes sense.
This particular hardware key costs less than two months of Twitter Blue, and the devices can be used on many platforms. So "you can authenticate via text message" isn't really a Twitter Blue selling point for me.
Hint:You might find a t-shirt touting your favorite band at one of these in traffic areas of your local mall. If it's a moral location, that favorite band might be R.E.M.
Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle after the ads below.
Unless this one is some kind of repro -- and I don't think it is -- a hellaciously great yard sale deal. This sale was a landlord "nothing over $5" cleanup affair (they were hauling stuff out and deciding if it was worth trying to sell or should just be thrown in the conveniently parked dumpster), and because the guy couldn't break a $20, we got it and a couple of pieces of clothing for four bucks.
It is -- or at least seems to be -- a 1955 Silvertone 6887 acoustic archtop.
No bridge or strings, but the tuning machines and tailpiece are intact. Neck looks nice and straight, too.
I've added an inexpensive bridge of the correct type, and D'Addario Gypsy Jazz strings*, to my Amazon Wish List in case anyone wants to help out with this project. No biggie either way, but I'm in one of those "awaiting a new debit card because a bunch of suspicious charges appeared and had to be disputed" situations, so it would likely be a week or two before I'd order them myself.
Update, Sunday: Crypto's doing well this weekend and I needed a couple of other things, so I used a little to buy an Amazon gift card from Bitrefill(yes, that's an affiliate link -- if you spend $50, each of us gets $5 in BTC) and get the bridge and strings ordered. Now for research on the best adhesive ...
* For some reason, I get a real Django Reinhardt vibe from this instrument, even though Reinhardt favored the Selmer.
Today I learned several new things, but I'll start with the negative one:
I learned that I probably don't like goat vindaloo.
I say "probably" because I've only had one tiny two-bite portion of it, from one place. Maybe I got a bad half-ladle-full, or maybe that particular place isn't very good at making it, or maybe the cook was having an off day. But I'm unlikely to try it again because there are so many things I do like that I don't feel much need to re-try things I probably don't like.
One thing I've recently decided to try doing is making small, single dietary changes instead of big, sweeping ones.
About ten days ago, I decided to give up beef. Permanently? I don't know. I kind of doubt it. For one thing, there's no specific health/nutrition factor in the decision. I just decided to do it, for as long as I feel like doing it, because REASONS. And to try some new things while I'm not having some of my go-to old things. Hence the Indian buffet.
I've been watching a thing on IndieGoGo, and wondering how it compares with my increasingly beloved ATOPNUC Mini PC (not an affiliate link).
It's the PicoPC (not an affiliate link), and it looks pretty interesting. But the model with 8Gb of RAM costs twice what I paid for the ATOPNUC with 8Gb of RAM. Is it worth it? Let's compare.
CPU: The PicoPC seems to have a slightly better CPU (Intel Celeron J4125) than the ATOPNUC (AMD A9-9400). Here's a benchmark comparison.
Footprint: The PicoPC is a little bit smaller than the ATOPNUC, but we're talking about machines that are all smaller (much smaller) than a carton of cigarettes, so I'm not sure that's wildly important..
SSD: The PicoPC base 8GB Ram model comes with a 256Gb SSD, as opposed to the ATOPNUC's 128Gb offering.
Wireless Connectivity: Both machines offer Bluetooth and dual-band wifi.
Ports are where things change dramatically in favor of the ATOPNUC.
Each machine boasts four USB 2 and 3 ports (two of each on the ATOPNUC, three 3s and one 2 on the Pico).
Each machine also offers an SD card reader.
But the Pico only has one HDMI out port to the ATOPNUC's two.
And the ATOPNUC includes an Ethernet port, while the Pico doesn't.
It's not so much that the ATOPNUC is a "better computer" than the PicoPC as that it's a "better computer for me."
I run two HDMI monitors, so I like having two HDMI ports (especially since there are no other video-output-specific ports on either machine).
And I use Ethernet in preference to wifi, so I obviously want an Ethernet port.
I wouldn't turn down a slightly better CPU or more storage, but I don't need either of those things, and certainly am not interested in paying twice as much for a machine that doesn't meet my video and Ethernet specs.
But the PicoPC might be a "better computer for you." In which case, you should check it out.
Over the years, I've tried a number of meal replacement shakes, with an eye toward regulating my blood sugar, regularizing my eating times, etc. Most of them seem to be full of sugar, full of carbs, taste kind of meh, and leave me feeling at least as hungry as I was before I drank them.
Soylent's "Creamy Chocolate Protein Nutrition Shake" is pretty high-carb (36 grams), but low-sugar (1 gram), has a low glycemic index (18), tastes good, and actually leaves me feeling reasonably full for quite some time.
I'd tried it a time or two before and liked it, but the other day I found a really good deal on a case of 12, and plan to make an evening meal of one for the next couple of weeks ... maybe even permanently.
Evening is my biggest problem eating time frame. I don't want to eat closer in toward bedtime than three hours or so, but I'm not good at planning real meals in advance and often end up just waiting for Tamara to bring home fast food or something from the store to cook that I suddenly thought of about the time she got off work, which has me eating right before bedtime. The shakes solve that problem. I know what I'm having, and I know when I'm having it.
I've been trying remind myself to eat something reasonable, like a bowl of oatmeal/cereal or a piece of fruit, for breakfast, and I'm keeping to that to at least an "okay" degree. With one of those shakes at the other end of my daily eating cycle, any flying of my dietary freak flag will necessarily take place in the middle of the day. And will probably mean some exercise if I decide to get frisky, since I don't keep e.g. Philly cheese steak sandwiches around the house. At the moment I'm shooting for a daily intermittent fast of at least 12 hours (no eating before 6am or after 6pm), and will try to slowly work up to 16 or even 18.
I haven't tried Soylent's "Mint Chocolate" variety, but I did look at the nutrition label. No Charles Heston problems.
Very few people use Bing. I knew it wasn't as popular as Google, but I didn't realize how huge the differential is until I clicked on a Statista link in an article by Cory Doctorow at The Atlantic: Nearly 90% of web searches are done through Google, less than 10% are done through Bing.
I've got Bing set as my default search engine -- if I type something other than a URL in the top bar of my browser, it returns Bing results*, and when I open a new tab it's Bing I see.
Why? Because Microsoft Rewards (affiliate link!), that's why. I've already redeemed my rewards points -- which I accrue whenever I search Bing, and for doing fun little things like taking quizzes and polls -- for one $10 Amazon gift card this year, and I'm close to my second.
I doubt that I'll manage $10 in Amazon gift credit per month 12 months in a row ($120), but I'll probably hit $100 for the year, anyway. Getting paid $100 a year to use a particular search engine is better than not getting paid at all. And I'm free to use other search engines when I think I'm not finding what I need through Bing. Which isn't that often.
I really don't understand why everyone isn't into getting paid to do what they're doing anyway.
* Anecdotally, I've found that when I paste the headline for a paywalled article into Bing, I'm more likely to get a link to a cached version of that article in the results than I am with Google.
I certainly encourage (in the hope of inducing) anyone and everyone who damn well pleases "to come to, enter, or reside in the United States." As a matter of fact, I'll do so right here and right now:
C'mon across that there "border," everyone! Welcome! Make yourselves at home!
But there's a condition in the provision: To be in violation of it, I have to do my encouraging/inducing while "knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law."
The "Supreme Law of the Land," aka the US Constitution (Article I, section 9; Article V; and Amendment 10), clearly and unambiguously forbids the US government to regulate immigration. QED, it is literally impossible for someone to come to the US in violation of law, and therefore impossible for me to know or disregard (recklessly or otherwise) that it's in violation of law.
I picked the Kansas City Chiefs to win the Super Bowl, and they did. That was the only game this weekend, of course. My performance in the FiveThirtyEight NFL Forecasting Game for the season:
377.2 points (FiveThirtyEight's model racked up 1047.4 points)
Better than 79% of players
2,064th place of 9,983 players
Maybe I'll be back next season. Maybe not. Guess we'll see.
I'd been using my latest $5 (or maybe less) thrift store/yard sale espresso machine for maybe a year, and the quality (strength of flavor, amount of crema atop the brew, etc.) was noticeably dropping the last couple of months. My guess, based on listening to the change in drip sound, is that it's not developing as much pressure as it used to. Leaky seal? I couldn't hear a leak, but something is going on with it.
Was the day finally here when I'd fell compelled to cough up major cash for a quality machine? Or could I find either 1) a quality machine at thrift store / yard sale price, or 2) another el cheapo, or 3) a used Nespresso or Dolce Gusto machine at a reasonable price, and switch to pre-made capsules?
The answer was behind Door #1! I was at my favorite thrift store yesterday and there it was: A discontinued model, the Krups Espresso Bravo, new in the box. For $20. Online, the little metal basket for the machine goes for that much, and even used machines of the model on eBay look to run $70 and up. It seems to have retailed new for somewhere between $170 and $250 when it was on offer.
Just had my first four shots (I didn't set it up yesterday, and this morning I decided I couldn't set up an espresso machine without first having some espresso to wake up, so I used the old one). Marvelous. The (so far as I can tell, 15 bars) pressure was obvious by the sound/speed of brewing. I'm pretty sure the old machine was 3.5-4 bars new, no telling what it was down to by the time I finally found a replacement.
I told Tamara that when we win the Mega Millions jackpot, we'll have an espresso machine with a large boiler, multiple pressure gauges, and a full-time attendant to make sure it doesn't blow up and take out an entire city block, which would constitute a significant portion of the house it will reside in.
One of the major talking points for the Mises PAC -- a Republican "infiltrate and neuter" operation that has taken over many state Libertarian Parties and took over the Libertarian National Committee last year -- has been that it represents "the Ron Paul Revolution." The group lavished praise on Paul, had Paul and Paul-adjacent speakers at its events, claimed Paul's endorsement, etc.
Now this, from the director of the Ron Paul Institute and co-host of the Ron Paul Liberty Report:
This is devastating. We pledge to never, ever work with the COWARD @LPNational@LPMisesCaucus Libertarian Party again. They are 100 percent dead to us. Don't dare pretend to be the party of Ron Paul. https://t.co/feUPxozPLR
Why? The Mises-PAC-dominated LNC is sponsoring an openly pro-war (as long as it's Russia prosecuting the war) rally in Washington, DC on February 19, and the openly pro-war (as long as it's Russia prosecuting the war) McAdams is upset about the removal of another openly pro-war (as long as it's prosecuting the war) speaker, Scott Ritter, from the schedule.
While it's welcome news in and of itself that the Paul/paleocon cancer seems to be self-excising itself from the Libertarian Party, and while it's deliciously ironic that the actions of self-identified Paul cultists seem to have brought that self-excision about, it all probably comes too late to be of much help in salvaging the party for anything productive like, you know, libertarianism.
The folks at FiveThirtyEight, being all about data, came up with a Metric for Appraising Records, Indexed to Analyze Halftimes (MARIAH), to rank the "star power" of Super Bowl halftime show performers. The envelope, please: "Rihanna is the highest-scoring artist to ever perform at a Super Bowl."
Now, I've got nothing against Rihanna. I've heard of her. I've heard her voice and like it. I've definitely heard a song about an umbrella, although frankly the only version of it that really earwormed me much at all was performed by Fall Out Boy at (IIRC) the Grammy Awards show one year.
But I have to question any metric that ascribes more "star power" to her than to (among others) Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Aerosmith, U2, Paul McCartney['s doppelganger], Prince, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, The Who, Beyonce, or Madonna.*
Is Rihanna really that popular by comparison to those artists? I find it hard to believe.
* None of whom performed at my favorite Super Bowl halftime show performance (among those I've watched, which isn't many of them): The pretty low MARIAH-ranking Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2014. Love'em, but I'm willing to believe that on some notional "star power" metric, like name recognition or numbers of best-selling songs/albums, they're an outlier.
The writer's block is gone. I was able to knock out about a thousand words of fiction today.
Unfortunately, so far, it's not really interesting fiction. I was writing for the purpose of writing and to get some basic ideas down that I might be able to make interesting later.
"Later" probably meaning "once I've managed to track down a relatively high dose of a certain entheogen and spend a night with it outdoors next to a campfire." It's been nearly two years since I've flossed my brain in that manner. And said molecule/campfire are actually elements in what's not yet really a story, so it would also be, in addition to mental reorganization/housecleaning ... research.
I've been living with a character for a long time. The only thing I really have as an anchor for him is his name, which, for reasons that vary depending on the plots/themes I'm considering shoving him into at any given moment (hippy trippy doo parents? Witness Protection?), happens to have been lifted from a 1983 Malt-O-Meal commercial. What I've been doing today is trying to elaborate on his personality and habits, mostly stuff that doesn't really advance any particular plot, and I've finally fallen into just making him ... well, me ... in order to put words on digital "paper." Problem is, I'm pretty boring.
Kansas City Chiefs beat Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl
Why? Well, it's a religious thing. All the teams are interesting, but the Chiefs are the only team that, you know, matters.
Both teams list a number of injured players, but all their game statuses are "unspecified." And they'll have had two weeks to recover from minor injuries. The big attention, of course, is on Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and his high ankle sprain from three weeks ago (he played, and won, with that sprain in the conference championship; I'm guessing he's fairly good to go). Tight end Travis Kelce played two weeks ago with a back injury that didn't seem to bother him; hopefully he's back to 100%.
At the moment, my aggregate score in the FiveThirtyEight NFL Forecasting Game is 327.2 points for the season, putting me in the top 23% of players. Since my "money" is 100% on the Chiefs (FiveThirtyEight's model gives the Chiefs a 57% chance), this game will either add 50 points or subtract 150 points from that score.
I remain undecided as to whether I'll take any interest in the NFL next year. A very large component of that interest over the last few years has been sharing it with my brother, who died recently. We talked football several times a week. It was the thing we talked about all the time, and now that's gone. Our preferences were similar:
On the former site, I'm winning more games than I'm losing and my rating is slowly creeping up.
I hated the latter when it debuted, but it's gotten much better in terms of being able to get a game, etc. The chat is still screwy, but since I mostly use that to say "good luck" and "good game" anyway, no biggie.
What's better about the latter site than the former is that at the latter, your ratings points are based on entirely wins/losses, not janky "luck" and "error" algorithms.
One is, roughly, just an inability to write anything. Words won't come. Period.
The other is, roughly, an inability to write something that comes together well -- for example, selecting and summarizing a news hook, staking out a position on the issues the hook gives rise to, and presenting arguments for that position in a coherent manner and to pre-defined length. In this example, writing the day's Garrison Center column.
I'm suffering from the latter kind. Which is not a terribly big deal. The world won't end if it's tomorrow before I can get my act together. On the other hand, I like writing to schedule, because when I get a piece done on time, I'm then mentally freed up to think about things other than getting the damn piece out on time.
The cure for both forms of writer's block, I believe, is to write. So that's what I'm doing here. And hell, I may go off on a jag of little blog bits, just to keep myself in the fight.
My exchange with OpenAI's "playground" site (which seems to be where you get sent now if you don't have an actual login account with its ChatGPT AI):
Me: What is the libertarian position on immigration?
OpenAI: Libertarians generally believe that individuals should be free to move across international borders and that governments should not be allowed to restrict immigration. They argue that people should be allowed to pursue their economic opportunities without the interference of governments, and that current immigration laws limit economic growth and opportunity. They also argue that individuals should not be discriminated against based on their race, ethnicity, or country of origin.
One of the things I do both for fun and to round up a little money or proxy for money is answer Google surveys on my phone. Each completed survey (usually 1-3 multiple choice questions) gets me anywhere from 10 cents to near a dollar in Google Play credit. I noticed this morning that my balance was getting close to $8, and it expires after a certain amount of time if unused.
Thing is, what to spend that credit on? There aren't a lot of apps that I find especially useful or needful, and most of those apps are "free" or, at most, "freemium." When it comes to music, I already have e.g. Amazon Music Unlimited, "free" Pandora and Spotify, plus of course YouTube. Not to mention my own small vinyl collection and Tamara's extensive CD library.
While I also maintain a reasonably large library of dead-tree books and a growing library of Kindle e-books, I figured I'd check out Google's book offerings.
Hey, an offer for $4 off any book priced at over $X!
And Thomas Pynchon's Bleeding Edge was priced at an insane(ly high -- I think of $5.99 as the highest reasonable price for an e-book) $12.99. Minus four bucks, that's $8.99, so it should end up costing me less than a dollar.
Except that Google Play didn't apply my Google Play credit, just the $4 discount. It charged me (via Google Pay) $8.99. Which is three bucks more than I was really interested in paying for it, though I'm glad to have it.
So caveat emptor to 1) Google Survey respondents who also 2) use Google Play 3) to get books. I'm not sure if you can't use Google Play credit for Google Play Books at all, or if you just can't use it in conjunction with a deal.
Phase 1: Start an AI chatbot site that is really just me fulfilling the requests I find interesting and replying "sorry, system under heavy load, please try again later" to everyone else.
In a very narrow technical sense, I remain a member of the Libertarian Party because I have not formally rescinded the certification which, according to the bylaws, makes me a member (read plainly, that provision would make me a member even if I never asked to be a member or notified the Libertarian National Committee of any desire to be a member). I haven't rescinded that certification because it does in fact reflect my position:
"I hereby certify that I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals."
I am not, however, a member in any meaningful sense. My Florida voter registration, as of last year, became "No Party Affiliation," and I declined to renew my "sustaining member" status by paying dues when that deadline came around.
And it's even worse than I thought. Yesterday, on Facebook, I wrote:
"From the LP perspective, it may be an anti-US-intervention event, which is not the same thing as an anti-war event but which, taken as a single value, is in keeping with the LP's platform."
But then I took a closer link above and see that the event specifically calls for US intervention in the war (Demand 2: "Negotiate peace").
The anti-US-interventionist position is that the US should butt out and shut up, not that it should throw its weight around in other regimes' disputes with "diplomatic" pressure. The war in Ukraine is a turf dispute between two rival gangs, and the US is a third rival gang. Pro-interventionists want the US gang to put its fingers on the scale on behalf of one gang or the other -- this rally has simply chosen a different gang to back than the US regime has chosen.
Some libertarians are upset that the rally features speakers who are "bad people," that the LNC chair helped put the thing together then post-hoc asked for sponsorship ratification by the LNC, etc. Your mileage may vary on those controversies. My problem with it is that it features pro-war speakers, and announces pro-war demands. It is an anti-libertarian rally. And the only thing about the whole thing that makes me glad is that I am not associated with it.
