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.

Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle after the ad below.

New to Wordle? You can play it at the New York Times, and here are some thoughts on how I go about solving each day's puzzle.

First Letter: A

Wordle 1728 Hint

Hint: The post-consumption state of food.

Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle after the ad below.

New to Wordle? You can play it at the New York Times, and here are some thoughts on how I go about solving each day's puzzle.

First Letter: E

Wordle 1727 Hint

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

Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle after the ad below.

New to Wordle? You can play it at the New York Times, and here are some thoughts on how I go about solving each day's puzzle.

First Letter: S

Wordle 1726 Hint

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

Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle after the ad below.

New to Wordle? You can play it at the New York Times, and here are some thoughts on how I go about solving each day's puzzle.

First Letter: T

Wordle 1725 Hint

Hint: Today's Wordle is actually rather shallow.

Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle after the ad below.

New to Wordle? You can play it at the New York Times, and here are some thoughts on how I go about solving each day's puzzle.

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.

Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle after the ad below.

New to Wordle? You can play it at the New York Times, and here are some thoughts on how I go about solving each day's puzzle.

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.

Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle after the ad below.

New to Wordle? You can play it at the New York Times, and here are some thoughts on how I go about solving each day's puzzle.

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.

Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle after the ad below.

New to Wordle? You can play it at the New York Times, and here are some thoughts on how I go about solving each day's puzzle.

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.

Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle after the ad below.

New to Wordle? You can play it at the New York Times, and here are some thoughts on how I go about solving each day's puzzle.

First Letter: G

Wordle 1720 Hint

Hint: Insomniacs count them.

Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle after the ad below.

New to Wordle? You can play it at the New York Times, and here are some thoughts on how I go about solving each day's puzzle.

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.

Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle after the ad below.

New to Wordle? You can play it at the New York Times, and here are some thoughts on how I go about solving each day's puzzle.

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."

Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle after the ad below.

New to Wordle? You can play it at the New York Times, and here are some thoughts on how I go about solving each day's puzzle.

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.

Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle after the ad below.

New to Wordle? You can play it at the New York Times, and here are some thoughts on how I go about solving each day's puzzle.

First Letter: S

Wordle 1716 Hint

Hint: Lucky (but unlikely to happen again).

Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle after the ad below.

New to Wordle? You can play it at the New York Times, and here are some thoughts on how I go about solving each day's puzzle.

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.