Could one make a turkey deep-fryer powered by a Tesla charging cable?

by philg

As readers who love pigs get ready to shop and cook for something other than ham to serve for Christmas/Kwanzaa… Here’s what happens when elite New Englanders try to play Redneck for a Day and deep-fry a turkey (ABC):

WESTON, Conn (WPIX) – A home in Connecticut was destroyed over the Thanksgiving holiday due to a turkey frying mishap, local officials confirmed.

The home, located in Weston, caught fire Thursday afternoon after its residents attempted to fry the turkey in their garage, a preliminary investigation revealed.

No injuries were reported. But the home — which has an estimated value of over $4 million dollars, according to listing sites Redfin and Zillow — was quickly engulfed in flames.

Fire departments from the nearby towns of Westport, Wilton, Redding, West Redding, Georgetown, and Easton responded to the place. Crews battled the fire for over 16 hours, according to the Weston department.

The house — which features 11 bedrooms and 9.5 baths, per online listing data — has since been deemed “uninhabitable,” the department said.

Plainly oil, open flame, and elite New Englander is a flammable combination. Did it have to happen this way? The typical elite American has a charging cable at home for his/her/zir/their Tesla. Why not an electric deep fryer powered by this cable? The standard Tesla “Wall Connector” seems to deliver about 11,500 watts of power. That’s nominally about 40,000 BTU, but electric coils around a pot should be 2X as efficient as a gas burner underneath so that’s like an 80,000 BTU gas burner. A standard turkey fryer from Bass Pro Shops has only a 38,000 BTU burner and is theoretically sufficient for an 18 lb. turkey.

Designing and manufacturing this shouldn’t be too expensive by Tesla owner standards. A regular electric deep fryer is about $130. To this, the manufacturer of the “Turksla Deep Fryer” need only add some of the electric car charging protocol electronics and software so that it looks like a car to the charger. Maybe this is tough because Tesla keeps its protocols secret? But on the other hand, Tesla home chargers supposedly support other brands of cars that use industry standards.

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When will there be a refugee swap between Europe and Syria as a result of the change in Syrian government?

by philg

Roughly 20 percent of Syrians now live in Europe (Politico), about 4.5 million people plus their descendants. They were entitled to EU residence based on a fear of persecution by the Assad regime, which has now been replaced by the other side (“another side”?). Will there now be a refugee swap? Everyone who was targeted by Assad can now safely return to Syria. Everything who was on Assad’s side will need to seek asylum in the European welfare system. When does the swap happen?

BBC:

Ten men, mostly Syrian refugees, have been found guilty over the gang rape of a woman outside a German nightclub.

The 2018 attack in the city of Freiburg fuelled anti-foreigner sentiment, with protests by the far right.

The lead defendant was sentenced to five and a half years for the attack – which lasted for more than two hours – while seven others received sentences of up to four years.

The victim, who was 18 at the time, had her drink spiked before being attacked in bushes outside the venue.

Eight of the men on trial were refugees from Syria, while the other three came from Iraq, Afghanistan and Germany.

From The Critic, 2024:

The Germany-wide statistics on sexual violence were also sobering. An internal study by the German federal law enforcement agency, leaked to a Zurich newspaper, revealed that asylum-seekers have committed some 7,000 sexual assaults (ranging from groping to gang-rape ) between 2015 and 2023. Although they make up only 2.5 per cent of the population, asylum-seekers made up 13.1 per cent of all sexual-assault suspects in 2021.

Same question about the U.S., though on a smaller scale. We have at least 100,000 Syrians and their children who were granted the right to live in the U.S. because of a fear of persecution by the Assad regime. Do they now go back to Syria so that their places in the U.S. can be taken by Assad loyalists? We are informed that the U.S. does not have unlimited capacity for hosting refugees. If so, shouldn’t all of our refugees be those who are actually at risk in their home nations?

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Come to MIT January 7-9 for our ground school?

by philg

Folks: I hope that you’re almost finished decorating for Kwanzukkuh (Kwanzaa and Hanukkah overlap this year). If you know anyone crazy enough to want (1) to learn to fly, and (2) to be in Boston, Maskachusetts in January, our MIT Private Pilot ground school class is free and open to the public. It’s a for-credit aeronautical engineering dept. class, but anyone can join and get a sign-off from me (an FAA-certificated instructor) to take the knowledge test. Imagine being able to say “I went to MIT and didn’t join Queers for Palestine” or, even better, “I went to MIT and did join Queers for Palestine.”

It’s an all-day every-day class for three days. Here’s the schedule from a year ago:

Thanks to the Boston Covidcrats calling in an airstrike on their own position with the lockdowns of 2020-2022 and not as many hotels being used for migrant housing as in NYC, hotel rooms aren’t priced at crazy levels.

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ChatGPT tries to figure out time zones

by philg

Here’s an interesting failure of ChatGPT 4o, asked “Would I get more jetlag flying from Fairbanks to Seoul or flying from New York to Seoul?”

Seoul is, of course, only 6 hours away from Fairbanks, but the International Date Line is crossed. ChatGPT did not reconsider its answer when I followed up with “Isn’t Fairbanks closer to Seoul than New York is?” but it did when I asked “Isn’t the 18-hour time difference that you mention actually a 6-hour time difference, but in the opposite direction?”

(Who wants to join me and some friends in Fairbanks, Feb 20-26? Email me if interested. We’re hoping to see the Northern Lights! Happy first day of winter, by the way. If you’re in Florida, a trip to Fairbanks might be the best way to experience a true winter…)

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Competition from non-natives

by philg

“Invasive Ecological Threat” (Florida Weekly, November 21, 2024):

A new invasive seagrass has been spotted off the waters of South Florida and scientists are working to see what danger it could pose for native seagrass and the plants, fish and marine animals they support.

The seagrass, called Halophila stipulacea, was discovered in a marina on Key Biscayne in Biscayne Bay. This is the first time it has been identified off the coast of the continental United States. The non-native species could be a threat, depending on whether or not the newcomer will compete with and displace our native seagrass species, said Justin Campbell, Florida International University marine scientist.

The invasive seagrass came from around the Red Sea and the Suez Canal area and is native to the Western Indian Ocean, Campbell said. It crossed the ocean, probably as part of boat passage from the Mediterranean, he said. It showed up in the Caribbean on the island of Granada around 2002. By 2017, it had spread to the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. “And then now, very recently, it has showed up on our doorstep here in Florida,” Campbell said.

The invasive species doesn’t look like our native seagrass, which has long leaves and tall, grass-like canopies. The invasive species has short, tiny leaves, he said. Scientists believe it has been spreading through a process of fragmentation or asexual reproduction. The species fragments very easily, meaning that small pieces can break off, Campbell said. “Those small fragments have the capacity to float for a week, ten days, and then potentially resettle in a new area and start growing again.” It’s essentially a clone of the parent fragment, he said.

“It’s really hard to predict what the consequences of this is going to be,” said James Fourqurean, a co-author of the research paper and director of the Coastlines and Oceans Division in FIU’s Institute of Environment. “This is a species that can spread incredibly rapidly. The meadows that were just discovered this summer (in the bay) are too large to have grown in a single year. So we know that it’s been here for multiple years already,” he said. The invasive seagrass will eventually spread even to the Gulf of Mexico, though not directly from Biscayne Bay, he said. “There’s no biological reason that it won’t grow all around the Gulf of Mexico,” he said. “It’ll get there. It’s just a matter of time.”

Noted.

Related:

  • “Recent Immigration Surge Has Been Largest in U.S. History” (New York Times, Dec 11, 2024): Under President Biden, more than two million immigrants per year have entered, government data shows. The immigration surge of the past few years has been the largest in U.S. history, surpassing the great immigration boom of the late 1800s and early 1900s, according to a New York Times analysis of government data. Annual net migration — the number of people coming to the country minus the number leaving — averaged 2.4 million people from 2021 to 2023, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Total net migration during the Biden administration is likely to exceed eight million people. [There’s a chart showing that 190,000 net immigrants/year arrived in the 1850s compared to more than 2 million/year during Biden-Harris, but the bars are as a percentage of population so it doesn’t look like 10X the rate.]
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9 years of shear bliss from the Japanese

by philg

If you’re looking for Kwanzaa gift ideas, here are the Shun kitchen shears, about $55:

We recently had to toss a pair of Wusthof shears that had gone ridiculously dull. I tried sharpening them with a simple honing steel and it didn’t help. The typical commercial sharpening service won’t handle scissors. I don’t have a sharpening stone. (Maybe some of you all know whether it is practical to sharpen shears like the above? If so, what’s the technique and equipment required?) Despite the fancy German brand name, I think that these were #FakeWusthof made-in-China and cheap ($25 on the Web right now).

I discovered via some Amazon order research that our still-sharp Shun shears celebrated their 9th anniversary of domestic abuse (put in dishwasher for sterilization after cutting meat, for example). They’ve never been sharpened and are still highly effective. The screwdriver blades on the back of the handles are a fun idea, but we have never used them.

I’m not sure if there is a reasonable option for America First enthusiasts. Is there any U.S. company that can compete with the Japanese, Swiss (Kuhn Rikon), or Germans (not the fake Germans in China who made our recently tossed “Wusthof” shears) in standard knives and scissors?

Related:

Update: I bought the more expensive Shun shears and they’re heavier. It’s unclear if they’re better but at least now we have a second pair to use if the first is being sterilized in the multi-hour dishwasher (thanks, regulation!).

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Yale Alumni Magazine reminds the faithful of the first glorious fight against apartheid

by philg

The Yale Alumni Magazine arrived in our mailbox with a cover reminding the Righteous that Yale students were on the Right Side of History (TM) against the “other apartheid regime” (i.e., not Israel) back in the 1980s:

The article, titled “The shanties on the plaza”, never explicitly mentions the noble Palestinians nor the modern apartheid state of Israel, but the parallels are pretty obvious and I think we can all agree on who was in the right back then.

What about the Extremely Unrighteous? From December 2:

The incoming dictator threatened the entirely peaceful hostage-holding Gazans with “Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America.” Considering what we did to Tokyo (100,000 civilians killed in one night), Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I’m not sure how this promise could be fulfilled.

Related:

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The $420,000 stone courthouse in our inflation-free society

by philg

Today the Federal Reserve technocrats depressed investors by saying that interest rates won’t be lowered all that much in 2025 (unsaid: Congress won’t put down the deficit spending crack pipe and, thus, inflation is inevitable). Mary C. Daly, last seen addressing the diversity crisis at the San Francisco Fed and ensuring the stability and longevity of Silicon Valley Bank, voted with the rest of the governors to cut interest rates by 0.25%. The lone dissenter to the cut was from the Rust Belt: Beth M. Hammack, head of the Cleveland Fed (formerly at Goldman). Let’s follow Ms. Hammack going forward and see if she’s right about the inflation that the government and media assure us does not exist.

(A friend asked why the stock market was down today. She’s a physician and had interpreted the news from the Fed meeting as a prediction that the U.S. economy was going into a slump. My response: “Fed said it would have to keep interest rates high. Congress wont stop deficit spending. So the only way to tame inflation is high rates, which means stocks need high yields to compete w bonds. If a stock pays a fixed dividend it can only generate a higher yield by falling in price. Remember if you can buy a bond yielding 6% you need to buy a stock at a price where you’re sure you’ll get at least 8% return.” Curiously, the Wall Street Journal had a headline about the Dow Industrials (below) rather than the S&P 500.)

Speaking of non-existent inflation, I went to a museum today in Colorado Springs. It is inside a massive 1903 courthouse that is three stories high with a clock tower reaching skyward beyond. The volunteer at the front desk told me that it cost $420,000 to build.

It was replaced in the 1970s by a monster-sized concrete “judicial center” across the street:

What was inside the museum? An art exhibition in which paintings from any artist with a connection to the region were welcome… so long as the artist identified as “female”:

Some important history for fans of the Elvira’s House of Horrors pinball machine (#9-ranked on Pinside):

A reminder that SARS-CoV-2 was not the first pathogen to realize what fat targets humans living in cities presented…. (Colorado Springs was a cure destination for tuberculosis sufferers.)

The glorious history of test equipment… (HP had a division here making oscilloscopes, spun off and spun off and now “Keysight”)

It seems as though taxpayers got a good return on their $420,000 investment.

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Evolution of ChatGPT’s thinking regarding Kwanzaa and its creator

by philg

Kwanzaa will be here soon. I can’t find a sizable toaster plush toy for family use in celebrating the holiday by hitting each other over the head, Maulana Ndabezitha Karenga-style (“born Ronald McKinley Everett”).

Two years ago, ChatGPT was confident that Mr. Karenga was not a convicted criminal. From Toaster for Kwanzaa, in response to “Is the founder of Kwanzaa a convicted criminal?”

The founder of Kwanzaa is Maulana Karenga, who is not a convicted criminal.

This was a contrast to Wikipedia then and now:

In 1971, he was convicted of felony assault, torture, and false imprisonment of women.

The story is more nuanced today. Given the same prompt, ChatGPT admits that Karenga was “convicted of assault charges” (no mention of torture or women, both of which could be considered prejudicial) and it is careful to point out some of the great works that Mr. Karenga has accomplished since being released from Club Cali:

Dr. Maulana Karenga, the founder of Kwanzaa, is a prominent scholar and activist who created the holiday in 1966 as a way to celebrate African heritage, culture, and community. However, in the early 1970s, Karenga was convicted of assault charges and served time in prison. The details of the case remain controversial, and Karenga has consistently denied the allegations.

Since then, Karenga has continued his academic career and activism, earning a Ph.D. and serving as a professor of Africana Studies. His work on Kwanzaa and other cultural and social initiatives has significantly influenced African American cultural expression and community-building efforts.

I followed up with “did the founder of Kwanzaa hit women over the head with toasters?” and received some more detail on Mr. Karenga’s crimes, but also that he has denied them and some more about the great work the man has done.

Dr. Maulana Karenga, the founder of Kwanzaa, was convicted in 1971 on charges of assault and false imprisonment involving two women. Court records and reports from that time contain allegations that the women were tortured, including claims that they were burned and beaten. One of the allegations stated that a toaster was used as a weapon during the incidents. Karenga has denied these allegations.

It’s important to note that this chapter of his life is controversial and often discussed in the context of his later academic and cultural work. Karenga went on to complete his Ph.D., become a university professor, and focus on promoting African cultural heritage, including through the creation of Kwanzaa. The holiday itself has grown into an internationally recognized celebration of African American culture and unity.

What if we were to ask about Donald Trump? Would ChatGPT similarly be careful to mention that Trump has denied any criminal wrongdoing or find an “important note” about positive things that Trump has done? Here’s the response to “is donald trump a convicted criminal?”:

Yes, Donald Trump is a convicted criminal. On May 30, 2024, a New York jury found him guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. These charges were related to hush money payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign. This conviction marked the first time a former U.S. president has been found guilty of a crime.

Following his conviction, Trump’s sentencing was initially scheduled for July 11, 2024. However, after his re-election as president in November 2024, the sentencing has been indefinitely postponed. Judge Juan Merchan granted Trump’s legal team the opportunity to seek dismissal of the case, with motions due in December. Prosecutors have suggested that sentencing might be delayed until the end of Trump’s term in 2029.

Despite the conviction, Trump remains eligible to serve as president. The legal proceedings are ongoing, and the final outcome will depend on future court decisions.

Completely fair and balanced, in other words!

Here’s ChatGPT’s best effort at showing some family fun time reenacting important events in the Kwanzaa founder’s biography:

Grok:

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Ron DeSantis can secure his legacy with a new University of Florida campus in Orlando

by philg

Ron DeSantis has set up all of the core functions of government so well here in Florida that it is unclear what he would need to do for the next two years (the hated Yale/Harvard graduate will be forced by term limits to leave office in January 2027). Here’s an idea for a Big Project worthy of a politician with Big Skills: develop a new campus for University of Florida that will enable the school to break out of its #30-ish rut among national universities (tied with University of Texas-Austin; #7 among state-run universities).

Why would this make sense? Florida’s population is growing and younger people have been moving into Florida, partially due to the state’s #1 ranking for education in U.S. News but mostly due to the efforts of lockdown governors in the Northeast, Illinois, and California. Florida has about half as many children as California, but only two world-class universities. The first is University of Florida in Gainesville. The second is Florida State University in Tallahassee (FSU is ranked #54 among national universities by U.S. News). California, on the other hand, has Stanford, CalTech, UC-Berkeley, UC-LA, UC-San Diego, UC-Davis, UC-Irvine, and UC-Santa Barbara (8 total ranked #54 and above). There would definitely be demand for another excellent school and Florida has the tax base to make it happen.

Why not expand and improve the schools in Gainesville and Tallahassee? They’re already huge, for one thing (60,000 and 45,000 students). More importantly, if the goal is to build a university that can rank within the top 10, they’re not in the right places. The typical elite academic doesn’t want to live in a small Southern city. Gainesville is unsuccessful at getting UF graduates to stick around and start companies (see Relocation to Florida for a family with school-age children); how is Gainesville going to woo a top researcher away from a school in New York City, Boston, or Chicago?

What are some criteria for where to locate a new university?

  • Politics. Academics can’t tolerate anyone questioning their beliefs, so they need to live in a city that is dominated by Democrats and where they’re unlikely to ever have a conversation with a Republican. This rules out Miami now that the Latinx have defected to Trump.
  • Hurricane Risk. Being an elite academic goes hand-in-hand with being a Climate Doomer. This rules out Tampa, whose luck eventually must run out (the city hasn’t been hit by a hurricane since 1926)
  • Airline Connections. Although elite academics are Climate Doomers, each one has the carbon footprint of a 4 million ton/year cement plant. They need to be able to jump on a flight every few weeks to a conference on the other side of the country or the ocean. You might think that this would bring Miami back into the ring, but nonstops from MIA mostly go to Latin America. Following the lead of Barbra Streisand, the escape route for an American who claims to love Brown people is always to Canada and never Mexico or, God forbid, farther south. Orlando, on the other hand, enjoys nonstop connections to cities around North America and Europe. Everyone eventually needs to come to Walt Disney World and Universal.
  • High-speed Rail. Intercity rail is catnip for elite progressives. This favors cities spread out along Brightline, which means Orlando, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami.

Reviewing the above criteria, Orlando is the obvious choice. It’s one of the few parts of Florida that voted correctly during the Election Nakba of 2024. It’s far enough inland that hurricanes generally lose their strength by the time they arrive over Space Mountain. Orlando is 100′ above sea level, which will reassure even the most ardent Climate Doomer that a vengeful Mother Earth won’t soon reclaim the city as part of the ocean floor. Orlando has great airline connections that will only get better as the theme parks expand. Orlando is going to be ever more connected via high-speed rail as Brightline expands (Tampa is the next big goal).

For recruiting faculty, the state could do a bulk purchase of annual passes (weekday only should be fine since academics don’t need to work M-F 9-5) to Disney, Universal, and Sea World. Everyone who works at UF-Orlando gets passes to all three major parks.

Is this doable? In 2016, the USTA announced the near-completion of a campus with 100 tennis courts on 63 acres next to the big Orlando airport (the plan was conceived in 2014). Celebration, built in the 1990s, is about 5,000 acres and cost about $2.5 billion in pre-Biden dollars to create (home to about 11,000 people, which means enough square footage for a sizable university). The Harvard main campus, which includes a lot of athletic fields, is only about 200 acres. Current Florida state budget surpluses are about $2 billion/year (Ron DeSantis has been using these to pay off debt, but nobody remembers a politician for fiscal prudence; it is acts of fiscal extravagance for which politicians are remembered and celebrated).

One knock against Orlando is that the summer weather is pretty miserable, with an average high of 91-92 in June, July, and August (not hot enough to keep the crowds away from the theme parks!). But that’s actually cooler than Tallahassee and no different than Gainesville and, of course, the academic elite doesn’t have to be on campus during the summer.

Here’s a map showing the new USTA campus in relation to MCO, Walt Disney World (lower left), and Celebration (lower left):

(It looks like there is a lot of undeveloped land, but most is probably swamp that the Federales will no longer allow to be drained; see More about The Swamp (book) and Florida: Hydrology is Destiny (book review))

Related:

  • “Palm Beach unanimously approves land deal for Vanderbilt’s new business and tech campus” (vanderbilt.edu, October 28, 2024): In a unanimous vote on Oct. 22, the Palm Beach County Commission approved a deal to provide five acres of county-owned land to Vanderbilt for the development of a new campus in West Palm Beach. For several months, Vanderbilt has been in discussions with city and county officials and community and business leaders about establishing a presence in West Palm Beach to complement the region’s booming financial and tech sectors. The affirmative vote by the county, along with two acres already pledged by the City of West Palm Beach, paves the way for the university to establish a new campus in South Florida focused on graduate programs in business, computing and engineering, bringing high-impact graduate education to what has become known as “Wall Street South.” … Once operational, the West Palm Beach campus will welcome nearly 1,000 students in various business programs … Since 2020, more than $1 trillion in assets under management has relocated to Florida
  • University of Central Florida, a stepsister to FSU, has 70,000 students in and around Orlando and a dismal #121 ranking from U.S. News
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