Wordle 1736 Hint

Hint: A smooth operator on a slippery surface would constitute two uses of this adjective.

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First Letter: S

Linux Bleg

Instead of getting overly technical, in this post, I'll just point you to Sk's explanation at OSTechNix of what all the systemd merge of Pull Request #40954 -- adding a "birthdate" field to userdb JSON records --  entails and why some people find it concerning.

I'm one of those people. Specifically, I consider the "slippery slope" argument compelling. Yes, the field is "voluntary" for now ... BUT!

1. It's being done specifically to facilitate "compliance" with surveillance state laws; and
2. Having that "compliance" hook installed at all will just encourage more such laws and eventually some kind of process that switches the field from "voluntary" to "mandatory" and comes with some kind of intrusive method for ensuring the supposed accuracy of the information in it; and
3. The birthdate field is NOT encrypted, so any attack that grabs data from JSON records will reveal that personal info to the attacker.

IMO, that's bad from two standpoints. First, it's a surrender to / empowerment of the surveillance state apparatus; second, the "mandatory" and "verification" elements, when they arrive, will mean more bloat and less efficiency in systemd itself.

The two main OSes I use -- Linux Mint and Raspberry Pi OS -- have systemd as their system/service manager (ChromeOS, on my laptops, uses Upstart).

So -- does anyone reading this post happen to use a Linux OS that doesn't incorporate systemd? And if so, what you think of it? I prefer a Debian fork to more ... sui generis ... distros, but I'm willing to consider the latter.

It's Not Really About the $25, @LPNational

Yesterday morning, I received an email.

Subject line: "Your receipt from Libertarian National Committee."

Content summary: "CiviCRM every 1 year(s) USD25.00."

Went and checked: Yes, there was a debit card charge for $25 to the Libertarian National Committee.

Having authorized no such charge, I filed a support ticket with LPHQ, on the generous assumption that this was just some kind of data processing error.

Response:

Hi Thomas, 

I was able to cancel your yearly recurring membership for you, so you won't receive further charges in future billing cycles. 

If there is anything else you need help with, please let me know!

My reply:

[T]here was no recurring membership to cancel. I paid dues one time (after having manually renewed and/or been a monthly pledger for many years), and didn't authorize any recurring charges.

Haven't heard back.

I'd still like to believe that this was just an error.

But if it was just an error, the obvious response would have been a refund, or at least an offer of a refund.

It's not really about the $25. It's about taking the $25 without permission, and about treating/counting me as a "sustaining member" of an organization I don't want to associate with at the moment.*

Mistakes get corrected. If it's not corrected, it's just theft, and I'm definitely willing and able to deliver more than $25 worth of pain in the ass to the LNC over it.

Has anyone else out there noticed recent unauthorized debit/credit card charges from the LNC? If I'm the only one, then it looks like a mere mistake, just poorly handled. No biggie. If it's not a mere mistake, on the other hand ...

* My position for some time -- recently publicly reiterated -- has been that I won't go back to financially supporting the LNC until and unless they take steps to recover the funds embezzled by the former chair. If they do that, they'll probably get a monthly contribution, totaling considerably more than $25 a year, from me.

Wordle 1375 Hint

Hint: When you leave this desert watering hole, don't look back in anger.  

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First Letter: O

Wordle 1734 Hint

Hint: Where celebrities usually go (instead of to jail) after e.g. a DUI.  

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First Letter: R

The Iran War: Possible Silver Linings?

No, I don't go for the Broken Windows Fallacy in the form of "if you look at it a certain way, war actually makes things better." But I do at least try to emulate the Life of Brian finale song:

So, two ways in which the idiotic war on Iran might benefit Americans:

1. According to various polls, the US population's support for continued kow-towing to every demand from the Israel lobby has cratered over the last couple of years, and this war seems to be accelerating that trend. Even as soon as the mid-term elections, American politicians may no longer believe they can only get elected if they pledge undying and total loyalty to that hostile foreign power. That could end up saving American taxpayers billions of dollars per year in welfare checks to the Israeli regime, not to mention significant numbers of American lives the next time Netanyahu demands human sacrifices to his regional power plays.
2. Until very recently, most regimes in most wars eschewed (at least in public) the practice of attempting to kill the political leaders of their adversary regimes. The US has been an exception (see e.g. Saddam Hussein and Moamar Gaddafi), but even the Russian and Ukrainian regimes have held to that (while accusing each other of not doing so). The open bragging about taking out e.g. Khamenei may be bringing that era to an end. If the Iranians can pull a tit-for-tat by taking out Netanyahu or Trump, or even some of their subordinates, there won't be any straight-faced grounds for complaint about it ... and that will probably cause future politicians to think about whether they're willing to put their own skins at risk by playing the war card.

Are those two possible salutary effects worth the costs? No. The war is still a net loss to anyone who's not a member of the elite political class. But they're at least something.

Wi-Fi: The Problem Should Have Been Obvious

A couple of weeks ago, I started experiencing really bad Internet in the pop-up camper "home office."

I guess you could call the problem "intermittent," but the intermittent part was when I just wasn't online. The rest of the time, it was just slower than it should have been, tended to drop out for a minute or so, etc.

I asked around the house. No, no one else was having new problems either with wifi or with Ethernet-cabled Internet (Tamara's laptop always seems to have problems getting a good wifi connection, and did at the old house and regardless of location in the house as well, but those problems hadn't worsened so far as she could tell). So it wasn't a problem with Starlink or with the router.

My next focus was on the wifi "extender" I bought to make sure I got strong signal out at the camper. Re-setting that didn't seem to help. Maybe the extender had just gone bad?

I also ran some tests with multiple computers to make sure it wasn't just a problem with my "daily driver" machine's wifi apparatus. Nope. It was universal, at least within the camper.

Then, a couple of days ago, I realized something ...

The problems started, I think, around the time that I flipped the insulating foam board I use to enhance climate control in the camper "shiny side out" to reflect head outward now that the weather is warming up (during what passes for winter here in north central Florida, I had it "shiny side in" to make it easer to keep the office warm). That outward-facing aluminum foil, one piece of which is pretty much directly between my computers and the extender, was probably acting as a radio wave reflector, reducing the signal strength reaching my desk.

Duh.

So I bought a cheap USB adapter with an antenna, which arrived yesterday afternoon, plugged it in, and voila, normal Internet again. I haven't noticed it falling below 60% signal strength since, and usually 70% or higher.

Wordle 1733 Hint

Hint: The only way I can think of to be generous/sufficient with today's hint is to let you know that today's Wordle is the adverb form of a synonym for generous/sufficient (so now you know the final letter). 

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First Letter: A

Also, the New Chromebook is Better Than I Thought

Before my recent trip (for a backgammon tournament), I purchased a new (to me) 14" Chromebook because I felt like the 11.6" screen on my old one was just too small to get much work done. But even though it's newer than the old one, it also felt slower than the old one, for the obvious reason that it has half the RAM (4Gb v. 8Gb). So I took the smaller one on the trip, and kind of regretted doing so. Trying to get work done was really annoying.

Yesterday, Tamara had a medical procedure that required me to sit in a waiting room for an extended period so that I could drive her home (they won't release you post-anesthesia without a driver). I broke out the "new" Chromebook, let it it do its software updates, etc., and took it with me.

It performed reasonably well, and the bigger screen was a great relief to my eyes. I didn't have to put it through its full paces (writing columns, extensive editing, etc.) -- I just tracked down and bookmarked content, mostly -- but it was about a thousand times less unpleasant than the smaller screen.

Before I travel again (I've got nothing immediately planned), I may bust it open, remove the write-protect screw from the SSD, put it back together, and install a fairly light Linux distribution on it. I still like real Linux better than ChromeOS.

I may also (or instead) see if I can get it to treat my little HDMI projector as a second monitor. That would not only give me two work screens in e.g. a hotel environment, it would let me use the thing to stream the media I want to watch instead of whatever channels the hotel happens to offer.

My Next Likely Office Equipment Purchase

Lately I find myself more concerned with ergonomics than with electronics. For example, I purchased a little "clamps to the edge of the desk" arm rest that takes a lot of strain off my forearm/wrist.

This morning, for the first time, I considered getting a pair of "monitor arms," and I think I will do that the next time I turn some Bitcoin into Amazon gift card credit (or when someone decides it's time to send me something from my Amazon Wish List).

That I haven't done so before is mostly because I overlooked their main use case.

I always thought of them as space savers, and since I tend to keep my desktop surface minimally occupied and efficiently organized, I already have plenty of space. Every time I try to optimize for space, I feel like it was a waste of time and money. Another square foot of desk space makes zero difference to my quality of office life.

But this morning it finally and belatedly occurred to me that using adjustable arms would do more than free up desktop space currently occupied by risers.

As I age and my vision gets (thankfully pretty slowly) worse, I might want them closer. When I want my chair further back or closer, or want to sit up straight vs. lean forward vs. lean back, I might want them closer or further away; higher, or lower; perpendicular to or tilted vis a vis the desk surface, all of which would amount to "grab and reposition" with monitor arms, but would require extensive remodeling at present (with the monitors on bases, sitting on risers, sitting on the desktop).

Other than some possible cable management issues to resolve and some minimal expense (about $45 for the pair I'm looking at), the idea just seems infinitely superior to my current setup.

Do any of you use clamp-on monitor arms? If so, what's your opinion of how much better or worse they are than monitors sitting on a surface?

Wordle 1732 Hint

Hint: If you grab something, give it a hug, then fasten it to something else, you will have done today's Wordle three times.

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First Letter: C

Wordle 1731 Hint

Hint: In film, think On the Waterfront as opposed to, say, The Odd Couple.

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First Letter: D

About Time

Per The Verge:

You can download Chrome for Linux, and you can download Chrome for Arm devices — but if you’ve got a computer running Linux on Arm, not so much! Now, Google says it’s finally bringing Chrome to ARM64 Linux machines in Q2 2026, following Chrome for Arm Macs in 2020 and Chrome for Windows on Arm in 2024.

I'm not going to try to sell you on Chrome.

I happen to prefer Chromium -- which Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Brave, and Vivaldi are (or in some versions have been) based on.

Chromium is more naturally private (it doesn't send analytics data to Google), and it's open source for those who want to customize.

On the other hand, Chromium can be a little more work -- it doesn't come with some media codecs, etc. pre-configured and the updates are manual rather than automatic.

There are also, I understand, some browser extensions that demand Chrome rather than Chromium to work, but the reverse is also true -- Chrome does the "walled-garden" thing to keep you from running extensions Google hasn't approved.

The reason I say "about time" is a market thing. Low-end Arm Linux may not be a huge market segment, but its occupants are people who tend to throw money at offerings within the segment. They're always buying special add-ons, accessories, etc. that will work with their machines where generic stuff from Best Buy might not. Why would Google leave money on the table by making it harder to identify and reach those users more directly through its proprietary browser?

I guess there are counter-arguments to be made. Is someone whose "daily driver" PC is a Raspberry Pi really that likely to want Chrome? In this day and age, running a low-end Linux PC is kind of an attitude indicator, and that attitude problably correlates strongly with anti-Google sentiments. Those machines, in addition to Chromium, can also run Brave, Vivaldi, Firefox, etc. So maybe it really is an afterthought kind of thing.

Wordle 1730 Hint

Hint: Numbers and letters indicating, respectively, what year of school students are in and those students' performance.

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First Letter: G

Applicable(?) Aphorisms #10

"Truth alone triumphs; not falsehood." (Hinduism, Rig Veda 10.16)

True, false, good, bad, useful, not so useful, etc.? Discuss.

My thoughts:

True, or just aspirational? The sentiment seems to be universal or nearly so, not just across religions but among humans. We want to believe that the truth always comes out sooner or later and that when it does come out, it defeats falsehood and evil.

I'm not sure it's true, but I do hope it is.

Wordle 1729 Hint

Hint: The only time you probably think about it is if you happen to sprain it.

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First Letter: A

Wordle 1728 Hint

Hint: The post-consumption state of food.

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First Letter: E

Wordle 1727 Hint

Hint: The nose knows (the answer to today's Wordle).

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First Letter: S

Wordle 1726 Hint

Hint: Picture a stuffed bear ... wearing lingerie.

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First Letter: T

Wordle 1725 Hint

Hint: Today's Wordle is actually rather shallow.

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First Letter: S

Garbage In, Profits Out?

I've had reason to think about garbage a bit recently, and that resulted in an idea. I don't know if it's a good idea or not, but it's an idea.

Why have I been thinking about garbage recently?

Prior to buying the new house, we rented, on a fairly standard residential street. Right on the edge between being "suburban" and "rural," in that the lots are large (an acre) and so it's not especially densely populated, but it's a pave street with frontages not far from the homes. So we had "garbage service." It was built into our lease (the obvious reason being that the landlord didn't want cheapskates just piling their garbage out back and leaving it).

Now that we own, the system looks like this:

You can have garbage pickup priced into the property tax bill every year. It's about $300 a year for a standard residential size dumpster cart.

Or, with an  ID/driver's license linked to an Alachua County address, you can just take your garbage directly to the dump with no "tipping fee."

We elected not to pay for pickup, because instead of a real residential street we live on, more or less, a game trail (some dirt/sand ruts generously given a street name), and in order to have the stuff picked up, we'd have to drag it a good quarter mile to the nearest paved road.

We were going to just make a trip to the dump once a month -- it's only about five miles away -- but haven't had to yet, because one of my daughter's employers said "hey, we always have extra room in our dumpster, just bring a bag of garbage and/or recycling here each day you work, no problem." That keeps us pretty much caught up. We may make a trip or two to the dump each year if we have e.g. large appliances that lie down and die or whatever, but for the most part we're good.

That got me thinking, though:

There are a lot of people in this area who live on crappy rural "roads" (some of them shouldn't even be called that), and who have to either haul their stuff to the dump or drag it a significant distance for pickup.

Or, and I see this happen, quite a few of them seem to just "small bag" their trash --  every time they buy gas or stop at a convenience store, they drop it in the trash cans there. I'll see people pulling four or five plastic grocery bags out of their cars and cramming them in while they're parked next to the pump. It seems like a bit of a bother, but if it saves them $300 a year or having to go out of their way to the landfill, I get it.

I suspect most of the people in the area who live in "a pain in the ass to deal with pickup" areas still actually shop for groceries instead of having everything delivered.

And I suspect Walmart at least, maybe Publix and others, produce enough waste that they already run their own fleets of trucks to haul dumpsters to the landfill instead of just contracting that out.

So, why not use garbage disposal to attract customers?

Set up a dumpster system with a scanner. When a customer pulls up and scans a receipt from the store (maybe there's a minimum purchase requirement), the dumpster unlocks and they throw your trash in there. Not a little plastic grocery bag, a real full-size trash bag.

Since the big stores are presumably already invested in the infrastructure -- dumpsters, trucks, and people to do the hauling -- it's just a matter of scaling up some and creating a payment system (the payment being "you shopped here").

For some customers, being able to just drop their trash off when they shop instead of paying the county, visiting the dump, dragging dumpsters over long distances, etc. might well make the difference when they where to buy groceries.

Would that "pay for itself" and then some in terms of increased store patronization/profits? I think it might.

That Thing I Mentioned Yesterday

Reader Morey Straus did the work -- I just think it's a great thing and want to promote it. The site is headed Mavericks and Sycophants, and what it measures is  "how often a member [of Congress] breaks from bipartisan agreement — the moments when the Borg collectively wants a Yea, and someone votes No anyway."

The big takeaway from the data is independence of party leadership: How often a US Representative or US Senator says "the party leader/whip say everyone has to vote X, but fuck that, I'm voting Y."

The designations are a range running from "mindless drone" to "lone wolf."

Interestingly:

In the House, the Democratic Party has absolutely none of the two most "independent" categories, "Rebellious Streak" and "Lone Wolf," while the Republicans have 11 "Rebellious Streak" and one "Lone Wolf" (you can probably guess that last one). "The Squad" makes a lot of noise but doesn't really color outside their party's line to any great degree. 

But in the Senate, it's the other way around -- the Democrats have nine "Rebellious Streak" and four "Lone Wolf" Senators who frequently buck party leadership demands, while the Republicans have a grand total of one in either category, a "Lone Wolf" whose identity you can probably also guess.

There are probably clues in this data as to differences in party organizational dynamics, how campaigns get funded/supported (or killed), etc.

And the bottom line on individual congresscritters is that you can tell how often "yours" votes in the interests of his or her party organization versus maybe ... just maybe ... "representing" something else (maybe your desires, but more likely his or her own desires or the desires of the lobbyists offering the best cocktail parties, junkets, paper bags with cash, etc.).

Enjoy -- and thanks for doing this, Morey!

Wordle 1724 Hint

Hint: You'll want to hurry through today's Wordle, unless you need a break to eat some cornmeal pudding.

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First Letter: H

Teaser Post

One of the readers here at KN@PPSTER is working on a project I think many people will find interesting.

We talk a lot about Republicans, Democrats, etc. ... but there's a spectrum in Congress of how often any given member votes "party line" (that is, as instructed by "leadership") versus casting a vote that demonstrates independent contrary judgment.

The project in question tries to measure that last one.

As you might guess, the data are kind of disappointing -- "representatives" tend to "represent" their parties far more than necessarily "representing" their constituents.

On the other hand, you might find yourself surprised at the "independence" levels of particular congresscritters.

When the reader lets me know it's ready for public viewing, I'll let you know and link to it. I consider it a pretty exciting endeavor!

Blast From The Past -- Non-Coercion: Concept and Context

Occasionally, I notice that something I wrote a long time ago is either hard to find, or just no longer available, in the place where it was published. This piece was originally published in 2001 by a now seemingly defunct New Zealand Objectivist magazine, The Free Radical. Later, I hosted a copy of it myself at one of those "make your own free web site" places, which has seemed to be on its way out of business for years and where it's still technically available but pretty difficult to find. So I'm re-publishing it here. Blogspot being Google, and Google being likely to last for a long time, I'll consider it reasonably well-preserved. Whether its of any value or not is your judgment to make.

Non-Coercion: Concept and Context

Every so often, the debate between philosophical Objectivists and political libertarians kicks up. This seems to be one of those periods -- perhaps inspired by the recent publication of David Kelley's The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand -- and "Libertarianism and Moral Disintegration" (Joseph Rowlands, Free Radical #46) incorporates a fairly standard orthodox Objectivist line of attack on libertarianism.

The point at which bayonet meets barbed wire is, of course, on the principle of non-coercion. This is the area where libertarian politics and Objectivist philosophical tenets intersect.

To the Objectivist, non-coercion is a principle derived from a specific set of underlying standards, applicable to politics in the philosophical sense, i.e. to relationships between multiple individuals.

To the libertarian, it may be that as well -- but not necessarily, and if so, not necessarily derived from the same set of underlying standards.

The problem, of course, is that Objectivism is an all-encompassing philosophy, a set of ideas ranging in application and scope from metaphysics and epistemology to ethics and esthetics and, yes, politics. Libertarianism, on the other hand, is a specifically political movement.

This distinction is of the utmost importance, because within it lies the proper resolution of the debate.

"Although properly founded in morality," says Rowlands, "the non-coercion principle is not a moral code. It is a political principle derived from a moral standard. By treating this moral principle as a complete moral system, the libertarians create a number of problems for themselves."

And that is where Rowlands begins his fall into error. For libertarians, as such, don't treat non-coercion as a moral code. They treat it exactly as Rowlands or any other Objectivist does: as a political principle.

Let me say this again, for emphasis: non-coercion is a political principle, not a moral code. Libertarianism is a political movement, and as such seeks the adoption of its binding political principle -- non-coercion -- as the standard of political behavior.

Concept formation is key to understanding. A concept is defined in terms of its essentials, not by any stray factors that may be found in various examples of the concept in reality, but not in others. While some tables are square, "square" is not an essential element of the concept "table." There are round tables, oval tables and octagonal tables.

Libertarianism, in its essentials, is a political movement, based on non-coercion as a political principle. Are there some libertarians who also adopt non-coercion as their root moral principle? Yes. There are also libertarians who don't. There are libertarians who derive their moral principles from the ideas of Kant, Mill, Rothbard and, yes, Rand.

Libertarianism is not defined by the non-essentials, i.e. the differing moral bases of those who call themselves "libertarian," any more than "grocers" are defined as a concept by whether this cashier attends church or that produce clerk admires modern art. Grocers are those who work in the grocery trade. That is their essential defining characteristic. Non-coercion as the common political principle is the essential characteristic of libertarianism.

But how can this work? Does not a principle require a rational underlying framework of support from which that principle is derived?

In a word, no -- at least not on the level that we speak of here.

Humans eat, and they rely substantially on a class of persons mentioned above -- grocers -- to provide food in trade for their consumption. The Objectivist does not ask (at least most don't) if the produce clerk likes modern art or if the cashier attends church. The Objectivist does not storm out of the store after catching the store manager browsing Sartre in the toilet stall.

The Objectivist recognizes that all he has any right to expect of the grocers is that they provide groceries of acceptable quality and price pursuant to voluntary agreement. As for anything else, he rightly accepts them as autonomous and not only entitled, but required, to exercise their independent, unforced judgment and arrive at the answers to other issues as best they can.

Libertarianism provides political activism and work on the same basis as grocers provide sausage and cauliflower. Unless the libertarian movement as such becomes engaged in philosophical debate ranging outside the political, Objectivists have no legitimate grounds to identify the non-political philosophical beliefs of particular libertarians with the concept of libertarianism.

Which brings us back to another problem with Mr. Rowlands's examination: "Some libertarians believe they can use the fact that libertarianism is practical as their moral justification. This is untenable without a moral foundation. Why is practicality good? Only morality can decide. Only a morality based on life can translate to the practical being good."

On the contrary, Objectivism holds that practicality and morality are ultimately one and the same: that context and long-term analysis will always reveal the practical and the moral as dictating identical courses of action. In the case of Objectivism versus libertarianism, the unification of practicality and morality is evident:

Libertarianism and Objectivism share a degree of common ground -- agreement on political principle. This common ground offers a practical basis for Objectivists to introduce their ideas to individuals who are already in partial agreement with those ideas. The introduction of Objectivist ideas to others is a moral goal, based on long term self-interest in creating a larger community of rational individuals.

So why has this opportunity been perpetually scorned, wasted and even evaded, ever since Ayn Rand's initial, irrational tantrum on the subject?

Irrationality -- the failure to properly apply reason to the facts -- becomes immorality when it is volitional (i.e. when it is based on a refusal to apply reason to the facts, often even a refusal to acknowledge the facts). The only question remaining is whether Objectivists fail to make common cause with libertarians through error -- or through evil. I have too much respect for too many Objectivists to immediately assume the latter, but decades of irrationality demand either correction or repudiation.

Wordle 1723 Hint

Hint: Today's Wordle is both a kind of room and an activity people wanting favors might engage in if politicians tend to walk through that room.

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First Letter: L

Walkin' (After Midnight?)

After finding that the walk up Stone Mountain last weekend actually wore me out some, I resolved to get back to the old "10,000 steps a day" routine, and so far so good.

It being Florida, there's already mowing to do, and I've been pushing the old electric mower around.*

I've also got the guitar-playing bug again, probably because I'm listening through the full run of Cocaine and Rhinestones. So I broke out my old workhorse guitar -- an Epiphone PR-100 I bought 25 years or more ago -- and I've been strolling and strumming. Basic stuff: "Your Cheatin' Heart," "Big Iron," "Act Naturally," etc.

I probably won't go walkin' after midnight while playing/singing "Walkin' After Midnight." The neighbors are fairly distant, but the neighborhood is also very quiet. Wouldn't want to bother anyone.

But I'm getting my steps in and getting re-acquainted with the fretboard after a break of probably a year or more. A lot of my music gear is still stored in boxes; rather than try to figure out which boxes, I'll probably order some new strings and package of picks. I'll start looking for all my stuff when I decide I'd like to plug into an amp. Which will definitely be a daytime thing.

* I don't have the John Deere riding mower that was left by the previous owner in running shape yet (the neighbors assure me that it was running as of only a few months ago, the crankcase has oil in it, etc., but I need to see if the battery will take and hold a charge; if not, I'll be getting a different riding mower. I do need to walk, but mowing 1.7 acres with a push mower? Nope.

Applicable(?) Aphorisms #9

"Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire." (Confucianism, Analects 15:24)

True, false, good, bad, useful, not so useful, etc.? Discuss.

My thoughts:

Well, here we are, back -- for the fourth time, I think -- to a variation on the Golden Rule. Sometimes it's phrased positively (do unto others rightly), sometimes negatively (do not do unto others wrongly), but the "behave on a criterion of the desirability of prospective reciprocity" thread seems to run strongly through nearly every major religious and philosophical school.

I can see why. Most people, myself included, see it as very sound practical advice, and morality and practicality, rightly understood, are corollaries (for a helpful take on the error of treating morality/practicality as a dichotomy, see this excerpt from Galt's Speech in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged).

Wordle 1722 Hint

Hint: Today's Wordle is in fashion, at least for the moment.

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First Letter: V

People Should Be More Careful About What They Wish For

I'm no fan of Kristi Noem, going back to the COVID days when she only started screeching "FREEEEEDOOMMMMM!!!!" after she asked South Dakota's legislature for plenary/dictatorial powers to lock the state down in the name of "public health" and they told her no. By the time she climbed atop the US heimatschutz food chain, it had already long been obvious that Noem's only continuing agenda is promoting Kristi Noem.

But while seeing her get fired -- er, "promoted" from a cabinet position to a powerless "diplomatic" sinecure -- might feel satisfying, it probably comes with more negatives than positives.

The most obvious immediate negative is that Trump throwing her under the bus will give a few Democrats the cover they want to agree to a DHS funding bill instead of keeping that agency at least partially closed.

The most obvious long-term negative is that her replacement may be more competent and less easy to get Americans to hate.

There probably won't be fewer ICE/Border Patrol gang murder victims, but the new shot-caller will tut-tut, agree that there must be "investigations," etc., instead of immediately yelling that anyone the US government murders is a "domestic terrorist."

Which will mean less resistance from the general public, which will  probably mean more abductions, murders, etc., with fewer repercussions for the perps, than if Noem had kept the job.

She was the single best ongoing advertisement for abolishing ICE, disbanding DHS, etc.  I'll miss her value in that role.

Wordle 1721 Hint

Hint: When there's an accumulation on or in something, making it sticky on the outside or clogging up the inside, you might use this word to describe that state of affairs.

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First Letter: G

Wordle 1720 Hint

Hint: Insomniacs count them.

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First Letter: S

It Just Seems Really Weird Is All

Today, 53 US Senators voted against being US Senators.

Why not just resign if they don't want their jobs?

The salary (base $174k, more for "leadership") and benefits are pretty good, but  the issue of raises comes up and people are big mad about how much they already make, some of them always come out to whine about how they could be making more in the private sector and are "making a sacrifice" to "serve the public," the poor babies.

Where's the "sacrifice" in collecting that salary and those bennies, then just saying "nah, don't wanna, got stock trades to mess with" whenever it's time to actually do some work?

Seen In Atlanta

I suspect these are pretty limited to very densely populated "urban core" areas at the moment; I've never encountered one in Gainesville:

It's a delivery robot. Obviously size/weight limited to things like food or small Amazon packages, and presumably distance limited by battery life and terrain limited to environments with decent sidewalks.

The increasingly visible shift toward robots for local delivery, janitorial tasks, etc. has a lot of people upset, including some in my own immediate family/friend circle. They're taking people's JOBS!, etc.

My knee-jerk reaction is to recall that at every previous point in history, increased automation has resulted in:

1. Increased productivity; followed by
2. Lower per-unit prices; followed by
3. More jobs for humans because the first two mean that more people can afford the stuff being produced.

I've seen that in action at least twice.

When I worked at a boat trailer factory in the late 1990s, the assembly line employed, IIRC, 10 human welders. When six robotic welders were installed, five humans got laid off (or at least moved out of welding positions). But within a year, there were 12 human finish welders needed to keep up with the more basic output of the six robots. We were building more trailers because the company was selling more boats. I suspect that the "robot welder" thing had also been implemented at the company's boat plants, such that more boat/trailer combos could be produced at lower per-combo labor cost, which allowed prices to come down and more people to finally afford boats.

When I worked at a food plant in the late 1990s, the company replaced two people "dumping glass" bottles onto the hot sauce bottling line with one robot. That ended up creating four new positions -- an additional forklift driver position at each end of the line and two extra workers inspecting, taping, and stacking cases on pallets to be taken away. I happened to notice that the retail price of the product came down substantially, just as it was getting more popular anyway ("buffalo wings" were really catching on) ... which then resulted in an additional entire shift of production, with an entire additional complement of human workers.

Will the current wave of robotics and automation produce similar results, or have we reached a tipping point beyond which fewer and fewer humans will be involved in almost every design/production/shipping activity?

If the latter, will that result in some kind of socialist "Universal Basic Income" scheme, or will the human "working class" be starved off or otherwise liquidated to just leave the wealthy enjoying a robot support system, or something else?

As for the political end of things, automation and robotics and AI were always going to get better and better, but it seems to me that things like 1) minimum wage increases and 2) demands that gig workers be treated as employees rather than contractors provided big incentives for faster development. If you make it more expensive and less convenient to hire humans, those who need labor will look harder for ways to not need to hire so many humans.

Wordle 1719 Hint

Hint: Larcenous activity.

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First Letter: T

Might as Well Open These Questions Up for Everyone

I suspect reader GregL will have some informative comments on the subject, and I'd like other readers to both have the benefit of those comments and the ability to weigh in as well, so ...

After attending the backgammon event this weekend, I'm considering buying a physical backgammon set. I usually just play online, but I think I want to get at least a little more serious about it, and if I ever want to attend another tournament and maybe enter an "intermediate-level" event, I'd like to have more experience at things like setting up the board, calculating the pip count in my head, actually handling the checkers, etc.

I suppose I could buy one of those el cheapo Walmart sets for kids ("90 games including chess, checkers, backgammon, etc., etc.") but that wouldn't really serve the purpose.

The sets I saw at the tournament, both in use and for sale, were nicely constructed "briefcase" sets with heavy, sometimes metal-rimmed, checkers. That's what I'd want to be accustomed to using.

On the other hand, the sets for sale at a vendor booth went for $500, and I'm not going to spend that much.*

It didn't occur to me to get measurements of the sets I saw. Most of them seemed pretty large. Amazon seems to sell sets ranging from 15" to 25", which I'm guessing refers to the measurement of one set of ends (the ends where the checkers, cube, etc. are stored).

So, my questions:

• Is there an obvious board size that's "best," particularly for a set that might be taken to, for use at, a club or tournament event?
• Is there a "reasonable/usual" price range for a set that's well-made, but not necessarily "high-end?"
• Is there a brand that has a good reputation for making quality boards, etc. within that "reasonable/usual" price range?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

* Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against "high-end" boards/sets. If I expected to get really into the game and go schlepping off to club matches every week, I'd probably go for one, at least eventually, because they presumably don't get all scuffed up, etc. as quickly, and some of them are, well, works of art. But I doubt I'm going to be one of those players.

One Reason I Haven't Moved to Substack

I've thought about it, not because I expect I'd make a bunch of money there or anything, but because it looks like a pretty useful platform (although, never having used it, I don't know how user-friendly it is on the back end where posts are authored/edited, etc.) with nice hooks for getting noticed/read (recommendations from other users to their audiences, etc.).

And, recently, I got a notification from Substack (where I'm a reader) that someone had pledged a pretty nice monthly contribution if I started writing there.

But there's one feature I keep waiting for (I just checked this morning) that doesn't show up.

It's a feature that I think would specifically attract "small earners" like me. People who are knocking down double-digit, rather than triple- or quadruple-digit, earnings per month.

That feature is being able to use your account balance to pay for your own Substack subscriptions.

That is, suppose I knocked down $10 a month for my own blog there, but instead of letting that balance build up until I wanted to withdraw cash, I could just subscribe to two other Substack publications, and the money would automatically be paid from my Substack balance instead of being paid for by debit card, PayPal, whatever.

That's not an unusual feature with "content creator payment platforms." Patreon has had it for years, and I've used it for years. It makes my life simpler and means less money going to payment processor fees by "well, I withdraw my money from Patreon, then I use PayPal to pay each of these x creators, and maybe those creators are withdrawing their money from Patreon and then paying it back in to other creators, etc."

It just doesn't seem like it should be very hard to implement, Substack is a "mature" platform (having been around for eight years now) that presumably has a team capable of implementing it, and it would also serve the purpose of keeping more money in Substack's system for longer, probably producing interest earnings for them.

So why isn't it there?

Wordle 1718 Hint

Hint: It's used to make (among other things) bed sheets and "paper money."

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First Letter: L

Fun and Interesting Weekend Trip

I spent the weekend at the 2026 Atlanta Classic backgammon event. Good time!

Why didn't I let people know I'd be in Atlanta so that I could get together with area friends? Because it was one of those things where MY schedule was unknown, and where the schedules of my traveling companions (reader GregL and someone else whom I won't name because I didn't think to consult  about naming) were even MORE unknown.  I couldn't know in advance where I would be, or what I'd be doing, at any given time, so I couldn't commit to seeing anyone either at the venue or elsewhere on a schedule I could expect to keep.

This was my first ever IRL backgammon event. In fact, I played more games of backgammon on a physical board (as opposed to online or on computer) this weekend than I had in my entire life before that.

I entered the "novice" tournament because I saw no reason to over-estimate my abilities and put down entry fees on something I'd quickly be eliminated from. These were events with substantial purses (well into four figures per tournament) and entry fees to match those purses; the people who play at that level are so far out of my league that it would have just been pitiful. I got to meet some of those people; there were a few who were definitely Big Deals in the backgammon community (which is just as quirky in its own ways as other niche/hobbyist/gaming communities).

In the low-entry-fee "novice" tournament, though, I did much better than I expected to. I doubted I'd win a single game, but I won three three-point matches and lost two, tying for second place. The winner got to a 4-1 record, meaning she could not lose versus other players' records, so the tournament automatically ended (I'm told this is a tournament scheme called "Swiss Rules").

Interestingly (at least to me), the only match the tournament winner lost was to me. There was no purse, but the winner did get a cool trophy.

In the in-between times, the three of us were able to eat at the original Chick-fil-A location (which is attached to its still-operating predecessor diner, the Dwarf House), maybe 1/4 mile from the event venue, and GregL and I managed outings to the spot where Margaret Mitchell was killed, and to Stone Mountain:

The trip was somewhat exhausting, and not just because of the 1 mile (each way) hike with an 850 meter elevation change at Stone Mountain. Since news and politics is what I do, I really needed to get some work done when Trump picked this weekend to launch Operation Forget About Epstein, Here Let Me Help with You Do That With an Iran Distraction. And I had to do that work on a laptop, which I don't like much. But it all worked out.

We got back to Greg's house about midnight last night, after which I had about an hour of motorcycling to get home, and went right back to work. I ended up with about two hours of sleep, so there's probably a nap in the cards today.

Wordle 1717 Hint

Hint: While not, strictly speaking, a vegetable, this green Nickelodeon favorite is edible.

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First Letter: S

Wordle 1716 Hint

Hint: Lucky (but unlikely to happen again).

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First Letter: F

Thanks For Asking! -- 03/01/26

March AMA! You -- boring pseudonymous trolls excluded at my discretion -- ask (in comments below this thread), I answer (in, or linked to from, comments). Enjoy.