Category: Uncategorized

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:

Happy Bodhi Day for those who celebrate. Gemini says the following about this holiday:

Bodhi Day commemorates the day Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha, or the Awakened One. The name Bodhi comes from the Sanskrit word for enlightenment and the species of tree under which the Buddha meditated.

Nonviolence, or ahimsa, is a core principle of Buddhism and is central to Bodhi Day celebrations … Some Buddhists observe vegetarianism on Bodhi Day to practice non-violence and compassion.

“Woman killed by her own pit bull in Roxbury was “heart and soul” of family” (CBS, last month) is a story about a Maskachusetts woman who won’t be celebrating Bodhi Day:

Brady-McGinnis was mauled by her pit bull Buddha outside their home on Dennison Street in Roxbury around 4:30 p.m., according to McGuire. … Investigators said the dog also attacked Brady-McGinnis’s husband as he tried to save her and two Boston police officers. All four were rushed to the hospital. Brady-McGinnis died in surgery, according to McGuire.

ChatGPT failed to generate an image of a Buddhist pit bull named Buddha, but Grok obliged:

Related:

• “Pit bull that fatally mauled 4-year-old girl in San Joaquin Valley was her ‘playful’ family dog” (Los Angeles Times, September 8, 2024): Zoey Hawkins loved to sing and dance, especially in her Cinderella dress, and she loved to play with the family dog. Since Zoey, 4, was adopted two years ago, she and the pit bull were constantly together. … An investigation found no evidence of neglect or criminal wrongdoing, and the dog had no history of violence or aggression, said Elizabeth Jones, the department’s public information officer. … “She and the dog were inseparable,” Vargas said. “They played with each other, they were around each other and the dog was always super playful. We have literally no clue why the dog did this, or turned on her in this way.”

From the $2 trillion/year federal Department of Health and Human Services today:

Today is Pearl Harbor Day, in which we remember that the Japanese attacked American military installations in Hawaii on December 7, 1941 (2,403 total killed, nearly all military, in response to which we killed nearly 1 million Japanese civilians via aerial bombing, including 100,000 in one night over Tokyo; will the Queers for Palestine protest this “disproportionate” response today?).

Let’s look at the most recent major war on U.S. soil, one that we started and fought against an indifferent viral foe. “Increases in Myopia Progression in Kids Tied to the COVID Pandemic; Closure of schools and cancelling of activities likely played a role” (MedPageToday) is a new-to-me wrinkle in the old coronapanic story of “cure worse than the disease”.

In the overall cohort of over 2,000 children in this retrospective observational study, the change in mean spherical equivalent from 2020 to 2021 was 2.2 times greater than the change from 2019 to 2020 (0.42 D vs 0.19 D), reported Rebecca Mets-Halgrimson, MD, of the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and colleagues in the British Journal of Ophthalmology

… it’s important for clinicians to understand the impact of screen time and near work on myopia progression, particularly in younger age groups …

Looking at the prevalence of myopia grouped by age, 8-year-old and 17-year-old patients had the greatest increase compared with baseline. When grouped by refractive error, children with low myopia (-0.5 D to -3.00 D) showed the greatest change in mean spherical equivalents in 2020 to 2021.

The choice of language is interesting. It is not the Covidcrat-ordered lockdowns and school closures that caused 8-year-olds to suffer lifetimes of impaired vision. It is the virus (the “pandemic”) that killed 80-year-olds that attacked our children. Also, before coronapanic we couldn’t have imagined that there was anything wrong with parking kids in front of computer/tablet screens for 8-10 hours per day. Our understanding of Science is constantly evolving (except when the Science is settled).

Related:

• “COVID lockdowns led to spike in kids’ vision problems, 1 in 3 now nearsighted, study finds” (from the Deplorables, September 2024): Myopia can progress rapidly during critical growth periods, particularly in children and adolescents, Chen noted. … “Prolonged indoor living reduced outdoor activity for children and adolescents while increasing screen time, potentially exacerbating the ocular burden on this population and worsening the myopia crisis.”
• ChatGPT’s response to “generate a picture of an extremely near-sighted child using a personal computer” is below. (Gemini refused to do this so we can’t see what a nonbinary child of color would look like in Coke bottle glasses.)

What do the folks who run the de Young Museum gift shop think that their California customer base wants to read?

Here’s one categorized as “Art Theory & Criticism”:

(Just now, I reviewed the photos that I took inside the museum. No Black women appear in any of the galleries.)

A few more about the victimhood category of “women” more broadly (so to speak):

The author who is an expert on mansplaining (Rebecca Solnit) also happens to be an expert on planetary physics:

What about people with more advanced gender IDs than simply “woman”?

The museum offers a Land Acknowledgment. What about the Indigenous?

How about all-purpose #Resistance?

Related:

• A true artist can sell his crack for $1 million

Today was my last morning in San Francisco.

Unhoused folks, whom the rich locals say they want to help, in front of the Rolex store and the safe deposit vaults for said Rolexes:

Outdoor maskers were everywhere, but the iPhone 16 Pro Max hasn’t proven to be a nimble tool for street photography so I managed to photograph only a few of the roughly 15 whom I saw on a morning stroll:

This picture below has the following conventional elements for San Francisco: an outdoor masker (cheap surgical mask rather than an N95); a vacant storefront; some unhoused people; a Trader Joe’s.

The rivers of cash flowing into AI seem to be helping the city’s luxury retailers. Example:

Our hotel was right next to a BART station and BART goes all the way to SFO. What did The Google say about driving vs. BART?

Matt Gaetz is in the news, condemned by Democrats for purportedly having had some sort of sexual encounter with a 17-year-old female when he was in his 30s. What if Gaetz had sex with a 16-year-old male? San Francisco might consider naming one of the SFO terminals after him. I flew out of the Harvey Milk Terminal 1 (previously covered here):

(Above, note that we won World War II due to “womanpower”. Also note the N95 mask over a beard (Californian in a green jacket; a bit tough to see due to the fact that the photo is so heavily cropped).)

CNN:

According to the late San Francisco journalist Randy Shilts’ biography of Milk, “The Mayor of Castro Street,” Milk began a relationship with Jack McKinley, a 16-year-old runaway, while living in Greenwich Village. Milk was 34. Their relationship has long been a source of controversy. The age of consent in New York was raised from 14 to 18 in 2017. McKinley died by suicide in 1980.

Finally, although I hate to brag (in fact, nobody hates to brag more than I do), here’s something that I did while on JetBlue:

In recent conversations with Democrats in California, New York, D.C., and Maskachusetts they’ve volunteered their feelings regarding the High IQ Party’s recent loss of power. I’ve also checked out their Facebook and X feeds.

Typical and eloquent: “What’s WRONG with Americans?” The poster owns a $2.1 million home in Berkeley, California, holds a taxpayer-funded job that requires a master’s degree, has a husband who earns money at a technical job, has a nonbinary child (1 out of 2, I think, so only a 50 percent rate of identification with the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community), and is passionate about cats and foster kittens. She will never compete with a low-skill migrant for a job nor an apartment for rent. I responded by pointing out that low-skill immigration is economically harmful to the working class, citing a Harvard study that is consistent with Econ 101 (albeit inconsistent with the Democrat Religion in which Our Lady of Open Borders performs miracles of raising wages and lowering rent every time a migrant walks across), and therefore another explanation was that some American voters are differently situated than she is. She and her friends doubled down on how the only reasonable explanation for a Republican vote was stupidity and/or immorality. I cited the example of my mother’s Haitian aide who voted for Trump. Did the white Berkeley Righteous want to say that there was something wrong with this Black immigrant? Answer: defriending. (Just like when my friend’s daughter asked the “male feminist” (button) social studies teacher in Lincoln, Maskachusetts why companies didn’t hire only women in order to earn higher profits after the teacher asserted that women do the same jobs as men for 80 percent of the salary. Answer: Detention!)

Part of a subsequent text-message exchange with a friend who was part of the Facebook conversation:

I think this is an example of how Democrats failed to understand that peasant Americans might be turning against them. Democrats live in bubbles where they almost never interact with anyone who disagrees with them or where disagreeing with the Democrat dogma is punished so severely that dissenters stay quiet. 

If California ever finishes counting its ballots (slower pace than Ron DeSantis restoring power after Hurricane Milton!) we will likely find that there are some Trump voters even in Berkeley. But they are never going to put out a lawn sign or mention their Love that Dare Not Speak its Name in casual conversation.

The result is an asymmetry. The working class understands [let’s call her Nina] and her point of view as a homeowner and holder of a job that requires an advanced degree that undocumented migrants and their descendants are unlikely to ever earn. But Nina will never understand the working class.

(This reminds me of what a wise gringa in Corcovado, Costa Rica said about parrots: “They understand our language, but we don’t understand theirs.”)

Here’s a typical Democrat on X highlighting “Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won?” (Democrat-run The New Republic), which points out that a majority of Americans were apparently fooled by lies in “right-wing media”. As Democrats were not fooled, that makes non-Democrats… stupid.

My mom recently had lunch with a Radcliffe ’55 classmate. The 90-year-olds, both in poor health, talked about their fears of an impending Trump dictatorship. My mom’s friend heaped derision on the Americans who had voted “against their interests” for Trump. She expressed sorrow that would-be-Assassin #1 hadn’t killed Trump. I successfully refrained from pointing out that a change of government in D.C. isn’t the biggest risk faced by a typical 90-year-old.

It’s interesting that that Democrats claim to be the Party of Empathy, a quality in which all Republicans are sorely lacking, and can’t put themselves in the shoes of a working class American for even a few seconds. On a recent Uber ride from Stuart, Florida back home the driver was an immigrant from Colombia who had voted for Trump in hopes that further low-skill immigration would be curtailed. Having never tried to make a living as an Uber driver, I don’t think any of my friends could fathom the man’s desire to not see the labor market flooded with new arrivals. Nor would they understand why he doesn’t want to pay higher taxes and/or receive fewer government services so that college graduates can fly to Europe instead of paying back their student loans.

Here’s a beautiful one. An election prophet says that his/her/zir/their prophecy of a Kamala-Tampon Tim victory did not come true because the electorate was irrational (i.e., stupid) and misled by misinformation/disinformation spread by Elon Musk.

Surveying X, we find the old reliable explanation for why not everyone supports Democrats:

(If a Trump dictatorship is all about misogyny that raises the question of why there wasn’t/isn’t more solidarity among the sisterhood. As in 2016, the Trump 2024 campaign manager identified as a woman (she’ll now be his Chief of Staff). A Representative who identifies as a woman just agreed to be Trump’s UN Ambassador. Why are people who identify as “women” helping Donald Trump against the interests of those who share their gender ID?)

Readers: What are you hearing from your Democrat friends? As noted above, mine are saying that they knew tens of millions Americans were stupid and easily fooled by Fox News and similar, but they made a mistake in underestimating the number of stupid Americans.

One of our neighbors recently suffered a massive flood in their house due to a burst sink supply hose:

Readers: What material do you think we’re looking at here? A vinyl or rubber inside pipe surrounded by braided stainless steel?

All of our houses in this sub-development (within Abacoa) are 20 years old so it is possible that this supply hose had been waiting to fail for 20 years. This plumbing company says to replace the supply lines everywhere in the house every ten years, but also implies that five years is the correct interval:

The general rule of thumb is to replace all your supply line hoses every 5 years as a preventative measure to protect your home against any potential leaks. But since braided supply lines have a rubber core, we recommend that they can be replaced every 10 years.

The Fluidmaster Pro supply lines have a 10-year warranty, which presumably means that replacing after 7-8 years would be smart. A set of two is less than $20, I think, so it wouldn’t cost a lot to hit all of the sinks and toilets in a house.

Does anyone reading this have a Moen Flo AI overlord water shutoff device in his/her/zir/their home? If so, I would love to hear about it in the comments. It seems as though it would have potential to generate hassles, e.g., Family Member A is in the house taking a shower while Family Member B is outside topping off the pool, which looks to the Flo like a one-hour massive leak (it is possible to tell the Flo to sleep for a bit while one is doing something unusual with water). The Flo can be installed outdoors so long as there is an electric outlet nearby and it can latch onto 2.4 GHz WiFi (I think we can meet those requirements).

Another potential source of paranoia is erosion of copper supply lines by hot water recirculation. Apparently the pump has to be sized exactly right, which involves a lot of calculation (example). In an innumerate society such as the U.S., the inevitable result is a lot of houses being built with big pumps thrown at the recirculation system.

What do readers think about the Intel Arrow Lake CPUs, which are officially released as of today?

It’s time for me to build a new PC. What’s a good parts list? The current desktop was about $2700 in pre-Biden dollars (without a monitor). Adjusted for official CPI, that’s roughly 3,650 Bidies today. So maybe I should spend $3,650 today? On the third hand, official CPI seems to be a fraud and we have a new need to train AI models all day every day. So maybe the budget should be $4,500 of which $1,000 should be spent on a graphics card?

I’m not a gamer, so the plan is to try to get by with motherboard/CPU graphics until the Nvidia RTX 5000 series is available (I could use my old GTX 980 graphics card if need be). What’s a good parts list, without monitor or graphics card, for a PC built with the Arrow Lake CPU? My dream would be to have mostly USB-C ports, room for a few hard drives in addition to sizable M.2 C: drive (do I need a heatsink? 8 TB? 4 TB seems to be the cost-efficient choice (per-TB), but I’m sick of having to figure out what to move off my pathetic 1 TB C: drive to one of the big mechanical drives), maybe 64 GB of RAM (current box has 32 GB and it is almost always enough). Or is the answer that everyone with taste uses AMD and that $6,000 is a more reasonable budget in our inflation-free economy? (I want to be buried with this Windows desktop so it should last at least the 10 years that the previous one did.) If I configure an Adobe Premiere Pro non-RAW editing machine over at Puget Systems with some of the above hardware it is quoted at $7,200 with an RTX 4080 graphics card.

How about this monster Samsung Neo G9 monitor? An attorney who mostly works from home sang its praises. It’s a big monitor with high resolution (the typical curved gaming monitor is a feeble 5,120 x 1,440 while this one is 7,680 x 2,160):

A 43″ 8K monitor might be nicer if one were available, but the predicted 8K revolution seems never to have occurred. The IP litigator who uses the above Samsung said that he sets it up to show four documents in portrait mode side by side. He’s programmed some Windows keyboard shortcuts using a free Microsoft add-on (PowerToys?) to zap windows to the left or right side. To avoid neck strain I think it would make more sense to use this with the document into which one was typing smack in the middle and supporting documents on the sides (i.e., 3-across instead of 4-across). The lack of a built-in camera seems bad. The inevitable result is a webcam perched on top blocking part of the screen with the bracket and trailing a USB cable? In the post-coronapanic all-Zoom-all-the-time-age why don’t monitors come with some sort of standard mount for a webcam if they aren’t going to include the webcam? Even a gamer needs a webcam for Twitch streaming or whatever, right?

Almost as exciting to progressives as a new COVID-19 vaccine… Apple has announced the iPhone 16 (two cameras/lenses) and iPhone 16 Pro (three cameras/lenses).

For us photo nerds, plainly, the 16 Pro is the only device of interest. I can’t figure out what’s different, though. Here’s what Apple says:

With iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, the world’s favorite camera gets even more powerful. Powered by A18 Pro, the upgraded camera system introduces a new 48MP Fusion camera with a faster, more efficient quad-pixel sensor and Apple Camera Interface, unlocking 4K120 fps video recording in Dolby Vision — the highest resolution and frame-rate combination ever available on iPhone, and a smartphone first. The quad-pixel sensor can read data 2x faster, enabling zero shutter lag for 48MP ProRAW or HEIF photos. A new 48MP Ultra Wide camera also features a quad-pixel sensor with autofocus, so users can take higher-resolution 48MP ProRAW and HEIF images when capturing uniquely framed, wider-angle shots or getting close to their subjects with macro photography. The powerful 5x Telephoto camera now comes on both iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, allowing users to catch the action from farther away, no matter which model they choose. iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max now take spatial photos in addition to videos to help users relive memories with remarkable depth on Apple Vision Pro.

For still photography, it sounds as though maybe the wide angle camera will yield higher resolution results (but is the lens good enough for that to matter?).

There is some new camera software, which makes the phone work more like a legacy DSLR:

Camera Control — a result of thoughtful hardware and software integration — makes the pro camera system more versatile with an innovative new way to quickly launch the camera, take a photo, and start video recording. It has a tactile switch that powers the click experience, a high-precision force sensor that enables the light press gesture, and a capacitive sensor that allows for touch interactions. A new camera preview helps users frame the shot and adjust other control options — such as zoom, exposure, or depth of field — to compose a stunning photo or video by sliding their finger on the Camera Control. Later this fall, Camera Control will be updated with a two-stage shutter to automatically lock focus and exposure on a subject with a light press, letting users reframe the shot without losing focus. Additionally, developers will be able to bring Camera Control to third-party apps such as Kino, which will offer users the ability to adjust white balance and set focus points, including at various levels of depth in their scene.

But maybe this will also work with older iPhones?

The company claims that they’re going to automatically generate blather suitable for emailing (“Built for Apple Intelligence”), but there is no evidence that they’ve tackled the “fill out a shopping/shipping form” challenge.

I guess I will buy one to replace my iPhone 14 Pro Max (recently failed and required a $219 new camera module at the Palm Beach Gardens, Florida Apple Store (a model of customer service, I have to admit!)), if only to enter the glorious USB-C era that Android users entered 10 years ago and to lord it over Android users (“I have AI and you have nothing”).

What’s a good example of a recent photo that I couldn’t have taken without the cameraphone? Here’s one from Costco that can be captioned “Starlink is everywhere”:

And here’s the Big Bang Bar pinball machine, one of about 200 made, at the Delray Beach Silverball Museum:

It’s unlikely I would have carried a serious camera into these situations, so here’s a shout-out to the engineers at Kyocera who pioneered the camera phone in May 1999 (eight years before Apple released the iPhone).

Related:

• A University for the People becomes an Apple Store (“Carnegie donated the library building [in Washington, DC] to the public. Now it can be used by any member of the public who can afford $1,000 for a phone.”)