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Emperor Sonos S2 has no clothes?

by philg

We have a bunch of 15-year-old Sonos gear that doesn’t comply with the new Sonos S2 religion. I thought it might be nice to upgrade the whole house, especially because the 10- and 12-year-olds don’t have phones with which to control music in their respective bedrooms. They could use a Sonos Era 100 or Era 300, for example, with voice control. (Senior Management quickly realized that there was a flaw in this plan, which is that Sonos doesn’t have parental controls. The 10-year-old could select gangster rap, for example, from the typical streaming service or SiriusXM.)

I picked up a $479 Era 300 as an experiment and used a Sound Level app on my phone to try to make sure that the volume level was equalized between the Era 300 and the legacy gear.

The Era 300 is Dolby Atmos-compatible, which sounds great until you realize that the popular music streaming services don’t generally provide Atmos content (it’s more for video?). A listening panel of two adults and two kids was assembled and concluded that a single Era 300 in my home office doesn’t sound obviously better, though maybe brighter, than an old Sonos Gen 1 Play:5, which has an eBay value of about $100. For listening from a desk chair, both of the magic Sonos devices were easily defeated by a pair of 13-year-old desktop Audioengine P4 speakers ($250) driven by a 10.5-year-old Windows 10 PC via optical S/PDIF through a NuForce Dia desktop DAC/amp with a mighty 18 watts of power (maybe the heir to the discontinued NuForce would be the USB-driven 50-watt AudioEngine N22?).

Admittedly, the near-field monitor comparison isn’t fair since the Sonos devices are intended to fill a room with sound. That said, I wonder if Sonos’s best idea wasn’t Sonos’s first idea: a networked DAC/amp that drives conventional bookshelf speakers. If one is content with the deprecated S1 gear, these amps, e.g., ZP120, are available on eBay for about $100 vs. $800 for the functionally similar latest version. The Era 300 weighs 10 lbs. and it’s what the typical person would stop at in one room. The old Sonos ZP120 is 5 lbs. A cheap Sony bookshelf speaker weighs 10 lbs. So it’s 10 lbs. of gear vs. 25 lbs (10+10+5).

(The latest amp is 125 watts/channel vs 50 or 55 watts on the older units, a difference of just over 3 dB in SPL. You could either content yourself with the roughly 100 dB max SPL that you’d get with an low-sensitivity speaker (85-87 dB) and 50 watts or get some high-sensitivity speakers (Klipsch, JBL, Triangle; I got some Klipsch outdoor speakers rated at 95 dB for our modest back yard).)

I also tested the Era 300 against a 20-year-old Sonos ZP100 amp driving 30-year Radio Shack Optimus LX5 bookshelf speakers, which have ribbon tweeters (!) and are available on eBay for $50-80/pair (originally $200-300/pair). The Radio Shack speakers, each of which weighs just 7.5 lbs., were separated by about 6′, which no doubt helped. The $150ish combination of decades-old used gear absolutely crushed the fresh-from-the-box $479 Era 300.

If you had the space, you could buy a used ZP100 or ZP120 and a couple of brand new tower speakers (about 100 lbs. total) for less than the cost of two of these wimpy Era 300s.

Maybe it’s worth paying $5,000+ to upgrade a house from Sonos S1 to Sonos S2 because the voice control, which runs locally on the device, is so convenient? Sadly, no. It failed at simple requests, such as “Hey Sonos, play Mozart string quartet” or “play Beethoven Pastoral piano sonata”. It works for volume up/down, but so do the physical buttons on legacy Sonos S1 gear.

Maybe it’s worth paying $5,000+ to upgrade a house from Sonos S1 to Sonos S2 because the S2 app is so much better than the S1 app? In my limited trial I didn’t find anything to love about the S2 app. One purported selling feature for the latest Sonos devices is that they can function as Bluetooth or AirPlay speakers. But if your primary use case is Bluetooth or Airplay there are much cheaper options than Sonos.

For those who are passionate about social justice, the big advantage of the latest Sonos gear is that one can listen while being 2SLGBTQQIA+ (photo from the Sonos home page):

One can also listen and set up while being Black:

I’ll try to end on an uncharacteristically kind note. I’ve probably purchased about 20 Sonos devices over the past 20 years and I think only one has died. On the third hand, this solid reliability record makes the latest $700 Sonos more vulnerable to competition from a $100 previous generation device sourced via eBay.

Related:

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Nobel-grade Science as a career

by philg

From the author of Chaos Monkeys:

My former PhD advisor got the Nobel Prize (John Clarke at Berkeley). It was without question the dullest work I’ve ever done in life and should have left earlier.

Related:

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Two-year anniversary of the Gazans’ October 7 attacks

by philg

It’s been roughly two years, almost to the hour, since Gazans streamed across the border fence to rape, murder, and kidnap Israeli civilians (more than 800 murdered):

The Gazans also took hostage and/or murdered people from other countries, e.g., Thailand (which recognized a sovereign State of Palestine in 2012), killing at least 79 non-Israelis. Examples from the BBC:

We’re informed than the Gazans have had no food, no electricity, no shelter, and no Internet for two years. Here are some recent photos from UNRWA (all of the fighters and “civilians” who perpetrated the October 7 attacks were graduates of UNRWA schools and some UNRWA employees directly participated in murders and kidnapping) of children who haven’t had any food for two years:

They’re playing their violins, undamaged after what we’re told has been “carpet bombing”, and sitting/standing within an apparently undamaged school, after what we’re told has been specific targeting of schools (UN) by tanks, artillery, and 500 lb. bombs:

Instead of foraging for scarce food after two years of “famine”, the kids are encouraged to expend extra calories by running around (on a perfect-condition patio surrounded by perfect-condition walls?):

See also this video, posted September 20, 2025, of Gazans who’ve received “10 million health consultations” at the clinic, in which PCs are fully powered and everyone seems to be of normal weight.

The Japanese and Germans felt defeated towards the end of World War II and were in no mood to continue the war or start another one. Based on the photos, videos, and interviews coming out of Gaza, there is no indication of any Gazan believing that the Gazans have been defeated. The New York Times followed up with 100 out of the 700 Gazans they’ve interviewed since October 7, 2023. Not a single interviewee mentions wanting to abandon the goal of destroying the Zionist entity. Nobody wants to surrender, recognize Israel, or release hostages. What Gazans want, it seems, is a victory over Israel at a lower personal cost, e.g., via emigration to Europe or the U.S. and letting the Gazans who stay in Gaza carry on fighting.

The Hamas leadership, consistent with popular opinion surveys, explicitly says that everything since October 7 has gone better than planned (CNN):

The question for today is where we think the Gazans will be in two additional years. Let’s suppose that the answer to Government restart or Hamas deal will happen first? is “Hamas-Israel deal”. The fighting in Gaza ends tomorrow. What will the Gazans be doing two years from now? Will any still be living in tents? How many attacks will Gazans have perpetrated against Israeli civilians, e.g., by firing rockets? (The fighting can continue long after the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) signs a deal because the Hamas folks can legitimately say that they don’t control Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Army of Islam (Jaysh al-Islam; “has called upon Muslims to carry out lone wolf attacks against Israel”), Jaysh al-Ummah (“Jaysh al-Ummah has criticized Hamas as being too moderate and not focused enough on Islamist projects”), the Abdul al-Qadir al-Husseini Brigades, the Sheikh Omar Hadid Brigade, or a rebooted Jund Ansar Allah.) What percent of Gazan GDP will be money extracted from U.S. taxpayers, who’ve historically been the biggest enablers of the Gazans’ military efforts (by being the biggest suppliers of cash to fund all of the basics, e.g., shelter, food, health care, education, etc., and thus enabling Gazans to spend up to 100 percent of their productive energies on preparing for a river-to-the-sea liberation)? Will the Gazans have launched another October 7-style attack? (my prediction: no, because it will take closer to 4-5 years to rearm and for the Israelis to become complacent)

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Pre-Mamdani Election Reading: King of Kings

by philg

King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson is a new-ish book that is relevant to the upcoming election of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (one more month!).

In both the opening and closing sections, the book explains that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, the Religion of Peace. The world’s terrorists are Christian, white, Hindu, and/or Jewish. The pages in between describes Iranian Muslims burning alive other Iranian Muslims, in the name of Islam, for the un-Islamic act of going to the movies (Cinema Rex fire, in which hundreds died).

As with Mamdani backers, elite progressive Iranians who had thrived under the Shah were eager supporters of the Islamic Revolution proposed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (they imagined that he would defer to credentialed elites when he picked ministers). Part of their motivation seems to have been jealousy that members of the Shah’s inner circle were getting far richer than they were (kind of like elite New Yorkers who aren’t in rent-stabilized apartments are jealous of those who are and New Yorkers who earn $300,000/year are envious of those who earn $30 million/year). Like Andrew Cuomo, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, last in the line of 2,500 years of monarchy, was fond of partying with young females. Another parallel is that the current U.S. government is accused of being disorganized while the author describes the Carter administration as exhibiting “colossal incompetence”. The author blames Jimmy Carter and friends for Iran becoming an Islamic dictatorship, rather than transitioning to a post-Shah parliamentary democracy, and also for the U.S. Embassy being held hostage for more than a day. The book describes Ayatollah Khomeini’s initial reaction to the embassy takeover as a direction to get the students out immediately. After Jimmy Carter signaled a willingness to negotiate rather than threatening a traditional military response to what the author describes as an “act of war”, the Ayatollah changed his mind and told every Iranian to support the “students”. Carter was, therefore, the cause of the 444-day “crisis” (the world’s longest prior to the Maskachusetts, California, and New York governors’ states of emergency for coronapanic?). Carter eventually transferred to Iran $25 billion in today’s mini-dollars (previously frozen assets) to secure the hostages’ release.

The author says that American Democrats were happy to see the Shah go and the Ayatollahs take over partly because of false information about the Shah promulgated by non-profit organizations and U.S. media. Amnesty International, today famous for its anti-Israel propaganda, said that the Shah was holding 100,000 political prisoners when, in act, the number was less than 3,000. The Shah and agencies under his command had executed roughly 100 opponents of his regime over the years, but U.S. media reported that thousands of Iranians opposed to the Shah were being killed. (The book notes that thousands of Iranians were ultimately killed for their political views, but nearly all of them were killed by the Islamic government that took over from the Shah.)

Iran is a fascinating case study in how far an empire can fall. The Persians were empire builders in the same league as the Romans and Chinese. They got taken over by Arabs during the Muslim Conquests and lost their religion (Zoroastrianism) and could no longer use their own language for religious purposes. After about 1400 years of Persian-style government, which was tending towards westernization, combined with Arab-originated religion they ended up with an Arab-originated government (Islamic theocracy). The Arab-inspired theocracy took over shortly after the Pahlavis and friends celebrated 2,500 of Persian Empire. Today the non-Arab Iranians are the primary military supporters of Arabs (since the 1960s, calling themselves “Palestinians”) fighting to destroy the Zionist entity and they suffer much of the Israeli military action formerly directed at Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan.

The Islamic Revolution in Iran is a fascinating study in how westernized elites who’ve been huge beneficiaries of a system can turn against it.

Fun fact: Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was a qualified Boeing 707 pilot who often flew left seat until the plane was in cruise. Not-to-fun fact: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1974 and died 1.5 years after fleeing from the Islamic Revolution in Iran. In other words, the Iranians who hated the Shah needn’t have done anything to get rid of him other than wait a couple of years.

Related:

  • Ebrahim Yazdi, U.S.-educated founder of the Muslim Students Association, who became the interpreter for Ayatollah Khomeini in Paris for the foreign journalists who showed up unable to understand Farsi and who didn’t bring their own interpreters (Yazdi considerably softened Khomeini’s anti-West/anti-Jew message while interpreting). Yazdi imagined a progressive Shah-free future for Iran with an Islamic flavor and ended up falling out of favor with the government of Mullahs. He was ultimately imprisoned.
  • Reza Pahlavi, the Shah’s son, has been living in the D.C. suburbs and received pilot training from the USAF (his web site)

Grok’s attempt at showing Mayor Mamdani in an Iranian ayatollah’s robes:

Ayatollah Khomeini:

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National Museum of the US Air Force, Hangar 4

by philg

One reaches the museum’s last hangar by walking through the “missile gallery”:

The principles of rocketry are explained and the museum notes that the New York Times ridiculed Robert Goddard in 1920 and finally apologized in 1969.

Here’s part of the Newspaper of Science’s editorial:

There’s a plaque honoring the founder of Boeing, but no mention of the fact that FDR’s federal government forced its breakup in 1934 due to its alleged monopoly power. Nor is Boeing’s subsequent career as a real estate developer mentioned in which he restricted ownership in his new neighborhoods to whites (he anticipated the Harvard University research described in 2007 by the New York Times in “The downside of diversity”: “the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.”).

The fourth building of the museum contains some impressive items, including the enormous North American XB-70 Valkyrie, Mach 3 predecessor of the B-1 bomber.

My favorite, though, was Wile E. Coyote’s space sled:

The Apollo 15 command module in which Al Worden orbited solo:

Here’s a smiling but unsuccessful competitor to the F-35:

The museum holds a collection of Air Force Ones dating back to FDR, but my favorite is Eisenhower’s:

On the way out of the museum, Outstanding Airmen of the Year are recognized:

A separate area is maintained by the National Aviation Hall of Fame and I was pleased to see Frank Robinson honored (he looks quite tall standing next to the R22!):

A substantial portion of the gift shop is dedicated to Rosie the Riveter:

There are some beautiful memorials near the parking lot set up by various units and retirees of the Air Force:

Here’s one for the Kanye West fans:

Thus concludes my coverage of the 2025 trip to the USAF museum in Dayton, Ohio. Allow at least a full day for the experience.

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Positive thought for the day: our mortgage rate is 0.425 percent

by philg

“Inflation Held Steady at 2.7% in July” (WSJ). We secured a 3.125% mortgage for our house early in 2022. Thus, the real interest rate on the money we borrowed is 0.425%. That’s a cheerful thought! We could take the money that we borrowed for the house and put it into a money market right now and get a 1% annual profit! Mark Zuckerberg could pay a mortgage for his $110 million compound for less than $40,000 per month in real terms. (Of course, it is still smarter to rent because property tax, maintenance, etc. are ruinous and the mental load of maintaining a house is better spent on productive activities.)

Here’s how state-sponsored NPR reports on the inflation that the Wall Street Journal describes as “steady”. It’s all doom and gloom thanks to the evil dictator who is taking away the state sponsorship that NPR claims they don’t get.

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Will Zohran Kwame Mamdani eventually restore Constitutional Equal Protection to New Yorkers?

by philg

NYC landlords aren’t big fans of almost-certain-to-be-incoming-mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani. In particular, Mamdani’s promise to “freeze the rent”. “NYC Developers Gripped by Hysteria After Mamdani’s Sudden Rise” (Wall Street Journal):

New York City’s developers and landlords are in a mad scramble to block from City Hall the socialist who wants to freeze rent.

Mamdani is pushing for a host of housing changes to try to ease costs for renters. While he seems to have softened his stance toward working with private developers more recently, at the top of his list is still a controversial rent freeze on the city’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments.

I can’t figure out how the U.S. patchwork of government-controlled housing prices meets the Constitution’s Equal Protection clause. American A chooses to refrain from work and lives in public housing and pays $0/month. American B chooses to refrain from work and lives in rent-stabilized or rent-controlled housing and pays whatever housing cost back before 80 million migrants were invited into the U.S. (60 million through 2015). American C chooses to refrain from work and is forced to pay market rates, i.e., fight with over 300 million humans for scraps. What’s “equal” about the government giving these three equally idle humans radically different housing options and prices?

It looks like Mayor Mamdani’s first act, after a huge Queers for Palestine rally, will be to freeze the rent on apartments that are already absurdly cheap compared to the market. But I wonder if that could just be a first step toward government control of all residential rents in New York City. If the government did step in to control rents on all NYC buildings that would be a tremendous step toward the Equal Protection that Americans are supposed to receive from their government.

We live in a democracy, otherwise known was “mob rule”. There are way more tenants than landlords. Nearly every American city is divided into those who are blessed by the government with free or cheap rent and those subjected to cruel market forces. Maybe suburban homeowners would feel some sympathy for landlords, but wouldn’t we expect a majority of voters in nearly every city to vote for government-set (low) rents? It seems like the kind of simple decision that voters in Maskachusetts earning less than $1 million/year were asked to make regarding raising tax rates on those earning more than $1 million/year (the constitutional amendment passed and, supposedly, the fatcats didn’t move).

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Can I please be fined $200 million by the federal government?

by philg

New York Times: “Columbia Agrees to $200 Million Fine to Settle Fight With Trump”.

The rich university will have to write a check to the U.S. Treasury for $200 million?

The university will pay the $200 million in three installments over three years.

Columbia receives about $1.3 billion in federal research grants annually, and the university said it would have all been at risk if it had remained on the White House’s blacklist.

Grant Watch, a project run by research scientists who compiled information on the grants pulled by the Trump administration, estimated that about $1.2 billion in unspent funding from the N.I.H. to Columbia had been terminated or frozen. Other federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation, also pulled grants.

If I’m reading this correctly, over the next three years the university will get $billions in funding, every dollar of which will generate a profit for the nonprofit, but the profit might be a little less than it would have been in some ideal world of profitability from the nonprofit organization’s perspective.

Where can I sign up to be fined $200 million?

How profitable is the nonprofit? From the research grunts:

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Being LGBTQ+ is a sign of mental health and also it is possible to plan a career in providing mental health services to the LGBTQ+

by philg

We’re coming to the end of Pride Month and there won’t be any additional 2SLGBTQQIA+ celebrations until July 6 when we celebrate Omnisexual Visibility Day (i.e., nearly a full week without a Pride-oriented holiday). Here’s a conundrum from X:

In one of the replies, the taxpayer-funded school notes “Damien will be returning to Brooklyn College this fall for a master’s in mental health counseling, aiming to become a therapist specializing in affirming, trauma-informed care for LGBTQ+ clients.” In other words, we are informed that (1) identifying as LGBTQ+ is not a sign of mental illness, and (2) it is possible to rely on a lifetime income stream from the poor mental health of people who identify as LGBTQ+.

Some images in case the above tweets are memory-holed:

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One-year anniversary of CNN proclaiming Joe Biden to be an intellectual giant

by philg

“Right-wing media figures are desperately pushing conspiracy theories about Biden ahead of the debate” (CNN, exactly a year ago):

… particularly over the last few months, MAGA Media has portrayed Biden as a senile, mentally incapacitated elderly man who cannot remember what he had for breakfast, let alone run the federal government. That might sound like an exaggeration to those who don’t tune in to Fox News or listen to talk radio, but it has been a real and constant theme in the right-wing media universe. … the stage also will afford Biden a unique opportunity to puncture the narrative he lacks the mental fitness to be commander-in-chief. That’s a worry for right-wing media figures, which risk seeing their bogus narrative about Biden being ripped up in real time.

A screen shot:

Related…

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