Why isn’t the Ring camera smart enough to notice that a garage door has been left open?

by philg

We live in the glorious age of AI. Here in our concrete block hurricane-resistant fortress we have a Ring camera in the back of the garage pointed at the door. It’s called “Garage” in the Ring app. Why isn’t it smart enough to wake up once every 30 minutes and, if appropriate, notify us that the garage door has been left open for half an hour? That doesn’t seem like a huge ask of our future robot overlords.

There’s an “AI” company here in Palm Beach County called Levatas that claims to be able to do stuff like this. Amazon/Ring presumably also has plenty of smart programmers. They claim to have delivered AI recently. Why haven’t they done the basics?

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Stuart Air Show 2024

by philg

In honor of Veterans Day, a few snapshots from this year’s Stuart (Florida) Air Show…

First, let’s see what can be done with the latest and greatest iPhone 16 Pro Max. The “5X” lens (120mm-equivalent) works out reasonably well for very large aircraft and for formation/smoke displays:

Things quickly get pixelated with cropping:

How about using the Canon 800/11 lens profiled previously here for air show work? Here’s the heritage flight:

Maybe one of the positive things that will come out of the Election 2024 Nakba is that Donald Trump will bring back the A-10 Warthog:

Mike Goulian (yellow) and his former protégé Rob Holland (red/Black) were there. The 800mm lens is actually too short for these tiny planes unless one gets (white?) privileged access to a press stand. Heavily cropped:

Every glider needs two jet engines, according to Bob Carlton (the “Foxjet” pilot):

Getting back to the machines that impress everyone except the Houthis… the F-22 (see this lecture about F-22 fly-by-wire from our MIT class).

How about a show version of the F-16?

(If Greta Thunberg hadn’t been busy with a Queers for Palestine rally she would have no doubt objected both to the gratuitous waste of Jet A fuel and the fact that the F-16 is the workhorse of Israel’s air force.)

How about some relics of the old days when the objective in war was to actually win? P-51, T-28, and MiG 17:

Let’s finish with Nathan Hammond, whose night airshow performance is always the highlight of Oshkosh, and Bill Stein:

The Stuart airport (KSUA) is about to get a huge boost from the Trump Dictatorship v2.0. Any time that Trump spends at Mar-a-Lago the PBI airport will become painful to use. The (fuel-selling) FBOs at PBI will be as angry on January 20, 2025 as AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib.

Separately, seeing all of this military hardware makes me wonder what our military is for. If our borders our open then any enemy can order its troops to walk across our southern border and then attack the U.S. from the inside. That said, I am impressed with the bravery of every veteran who has flown a military aircraft, in which there are usually plenty of ways to get killed without enemy involvement.

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California vote counting vs. Florida post-hurricane power restoration

by philg

It’s five full days (about 120 hours) after the Election 2024 Nakba. The folks in California who say that they know how governments should operate have counted 72 percent of their presidential ballots (New York Times):

Let’s compare this to the numbers in Power restoration after Hurricane Milton. Recall that Milton was a Category 3 storm that hit Sarasota, St. Pete, and Tampa, knocking out power to 4 million “customers” (a household of 3 people would be just one customer). I didn’t stay organized to capture a number for how many were still out exactly five days after the hurricane made landfall, but four days afterward roughly 500,000 customers were still out, which means that more than 87 percent had been restored. Six days following landfall, roughly 190,000 customers were out from the original 4 million affected.

So.. Ron DeSantis-led Florida restored power after a Category 3 hurricane at a much faster pace than California has been able to count votes. (Florida also did count votes, but there aren’t any interesting statistics from that process because it took just a few hours.)

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The fascist dictatorship looms, but Democrats expect to overpower it in 2026

by philg

Friends on Facebook who have posted for 6-9 months about how the election of Trump v2.0 would mean the end of American democracy are now posting about how they expect to retake the U.S. in 2026 and 2028 via selecting candidates who aren’t as brain dead as Biden-Harris-Walz.

The mind of the typical Democrat seems to be summed up in this tweet from Kerry Kennedy, sibling of the traitor RFK, Jr.:

Yesterday was a bad day for our country, for our democracy, for our economy, for our party, for our family, and for ourselves. I’ve lived through 15 presidential elections, and this is not different because it is amplified or more extreme, but because it is fundamentally different. We are facing an incoming president and administration that have developed multiple, detailed plans for a fascist takeover of every department of the federal government. … But I’ve felt beat down before. And despite all of this, I’m confident we will survive. … We have two years until midterms, when we can make a comeback.

Donald Trump will be a dictator. As commander of the U.S. military, the FBI, etc. he will have practical powers to implement a police state that previous dictators worldwide could never have dreamed of. Yet at the same time, there is no doubt that free and fair elections will be held in 2026 and 2028 during which time Democrats can regain power.

(Separately, Democrats tell us that intelligence, conscientiousness, and criminality aren’t heritable. Thus, there is no reason to expect children of the unsuccessful to be unsuccessful themselves and any lack of success must be attributed to racism, xenophobia, etc. At the same time, political wisdom is heritable, which is why we should listen to advice from children of famous Democrats.)

Speaking of the Democrat mind, let’s check out what their thought leaders have had to say. AOC in 2021 wanted to “end minority rule … end the filibuster, expand the court” to “protect our democracy”:

Here’s one from Ilhan Omar in which she would “save our democracy” by abolishing the filibuster and also making sure that whoever won the popular vote would be the new dictator:

CNN on the popular vote:

Rashida Tlaib agreed that the minority party in the Senate should be stripped of all power and whoever happens to be in the White House should appoint 4,8,12, or however many more additional Supreme Court Justices are necessary for Justice:

Will these wise females, all of whom were wisely reelected by their constituents, spend 2025 working toward expanding the Supreme Court and abolishing the filibuster?

How about the “thought followers”, i.e., my friends in the Northeast and California who do and think whatever the New York Times tells them (e.g., “Biden is not senile”; “be enthusiastic for Kamala now”). One Trump alarmist said that the peasants should now “organize” (how many dictatorships have been overturned by a peasant rebellion?). A Manhattan-based doomsayer:

Which brings us to 2016, the last time I felt the way I feel this morning. Nearly all the polls predicted Hillary Clinton would beat Trump to become the first woman president. … hopefully the Democrats will analyze and learn something from this experience and put forth stronger candidates in the future.

The people who said that 2024 would be the last election in the U.S. if Trump were elected now say that they’ll offer “stronger candidates in the future”. Stronger candidates for what? Student council presidency? HOA board membership? The smartest people in America told us that there wouldn’t be additional elections for the House, Senate, or White House in the event of a Nakba (Trump victory).

Related:

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Getting into law school: Go to the most grade-inflated college you can find and cram constantly for the LSAT

by philg

College application season is upon us. A tip from a brilliant young litigator with whom I recently worked (as a software expert witness, not in the law mines themselves!)… “Rankings of law schools look at undergraduate GPA and median LSAT score and, therefore, law school admissions look at the applicant’s GPA and LSAT score.” What’s his practical advice? “They don’t adjust the GPA for how rigorous your undergrad school was. You’re better off going to community college or majoring in ‘studies’ at Harvard than going through an undergrad program where you’d have some chance of getting a B.”

If the undergrad program is so undemanding that straight As are guaranteed, how should the prospective lawyer spend his/her/zir/their time? Cramming for the LSATs! Imagine working with those prep books and prep classes starting the summer before freshman year of undergraduate!

Despite the young lawyer’s mention of Harvard, it turns out to be only America’s #3 college for grade inflation. The school with the highest average GPA is Brown. (source) Of course, for either school the 18-year-old should be sure to pack a keffiyeh and Queers for Palestine banner (also useful once the scholar arrives at the elite law school; see the recent Instagram post by Berkeley Law students regarding the “Palestinian Genocide” (exacerbated by one of the world’s highest rates of population growth)).

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Escape jury duty with a positive COVID test result?

by philg

I recently testified as an expert witness at a trial where the judge told prospective jurors to expect 4-6 weeks of service during which they’d be hearing about dull technical subjects. One lady mentioned a vacation that she’d booked and paid for prior to being summoned. She had receipts for her airline tickets. I was 100 percent sure that she’d be excused. Of course, I was dead wrong. Speaking of dead, though, what stops a juror from developing COVID after a few days of what promises to be an interminable trial? If the court (a government agency) adheres to the CDC religion (from another government agency) and allows the juror to stay home for five days, he/she/ze/they misses five days of testimony and therefore must be excused in favor of an alternate. After the five days of quarantine-at-home are over, the juror embarks on the paid-for-and-planned vacation.

From a malingerer’s point of view, the era of coronapanic is an ideal one (for jury duty and anything else, e.g., the in-laws’ in-laws’ wedding). He/she/ze/they can say “I drove to CVS, donned a sacred Fauci-approved mask, bought an at-home test kit, used it in my car in the parking lot, noted the positive result, and threw out the contaminated materials in the CVS sidewalk trash can so as not to bring a biohazard home.” The surveillance video, if pulled, and credit card records would confirm the story. If an investigator camps outside the purported COVID victim’s house and makes a video of the victim being apparently healthy that only reinforces the #AbudanceOfCaution displayed by the juror.

Given how easy it is to spin this kind of yarn, how is it possible to keep a jury together for more than a week or so? If your answer is “most people are honest,” I invite you to look at the $123 billion in coronapanic fraud that was taken out of taxpayers’ pockets (state-sponsored PBS). One attorney with whom I spoke says that juries stay together week after week because they develop the same kind of bond as soldiers in a war or disaster victims.

Note that, in the below graphic from the Church of Fauci, “your symptoms are getting better” is entirely subjective and impossible for anyone else to falsify (fatigue and headache, for example, are on the official CDC list of COVID symptoms).

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My mom’s aide ain’t Black and ain’t an immigrant

by philg

I decided to conduct a Scientific poll this evening around our kitchen table. My mom is 90 and came over from assisted living accompanied by an aide. The aide is an immigrant from Haiti via the Dominican Republic. She probably gets paid about $20/hour and lives in the Democrat stronghold of West Palm Beach, Florida (our own town of Jupiter is, unfortunately, majority-Deplorable/garbage). So that the kids might be exposed to a diversity of political opinions, I asked her if she was eligible to vote and, if so, for whom she had voted and if she was happy with the election outcome. “I voted for Trump,” she said. “Harris didn’t do or say anything in the last four years while she was in office.” In other words, by Biden/Democrat standards this Haitian-born lady ain’t Black and ain’t an immigrant.

There’s more bad news… she has a high-school-age son… who is a Trump supporter as well. Could it be that elite Democrats picked such a bad candidate that their choice has caused a Long Republicanism disease among young people?

How about the unionized public school teachers? I would expect them to be reliable Democrat voters. They’re supposed to reveal their personal political views, but our 5th grader suspects at least some of harboring sentiments in favor of smaller government(!) and Donald Trump.

My post-election Facebook post (if only they had a “defriend count” on a per-post basis!):

How much truth is there in the therapy/pacifier angle? “Harvard Professors Cancel Classes as Students Feel Blue After Trump Win” (Crimson):

At 7 a.m. on Wednesday, Sophia R. Mammucari ’28 woke up to a phone call from her mom — and the news that Donald Trump had been officially reelected.

“I still had some hope that she was going to win by a small amount. And then I woke up this morning, and that’s not what happened,” Mammucari said. “I probably cried for like an hour.”

Economics lecturer Maxim Boycko wrote in a Wednesday email to students in Economics 1010a: “Intermediate Microeconomics” that the course’s typical in-class quizzes would be optional.

“As we recover from the eventful election night and process the implications of Trump’s victory, please know that class will proceed as usual today, except that classroom quizzes will not be for credit,” Boycko wrote. “Feel free to take time off if needed.”

“At an Upper West Side synagogue, Jews gather to ‘sit shiva’ following Trump’s win” (Jewish Telegraphic Agency):

Congregants at the Upper West Side synagogue B’nai Jeshurun had gathered for a post-election prayer service on Wednesday night, but the congregation’s senior rabbi, Roly Matalon, understood that they had really come together for a different kind of Jewish gathering.

“We’re sitting shiva,” Matalon said to a crowd of about 100, including both members and guests. “Sitting shiva with a sense of loss, of grief.”

The synagogue characterizes itself as “inclusive”. In theory, they’re not “Reform”, but they seem to have two females who call themselves “Rabbis”, one of whom is the author of Faithfully Feminist: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Feminists on Why We Stay. (Would one good reason for a Muslim feminist to “stay” Muslim be that leaving Islam is punishable by death?)

Related:

  • In case someone is looking at this 10 years from now… “Biden: ‘If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black’” (CNN)
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Leftover Inflation?

by philg

We are informed by the Biden-Harris administration and media allies (“America’s fight with inflation has been won”, noted the Guardian a few days ago) that inflation has been vanquished. I wonder if there is a significant “leftover inflation” yet to come, though, from companies and people who neglected to raise prices or who were locked into long-term agreements during the core years of Bidenflation. The guys who push buttons at container ports recently won a 62 percent raise (ABC). Boeing workers recently won a 43 percent raise (NYT). A friend who owns an expensive-yet-crummy compound of wooden structures in Vermont (and a Grenadier INEOS that he loves) and rents a cottage out was just hit with a 100 percent increase by his long-time cleaner. I myself was recently hit by a 33 percent increase by the cleaner of the Harvard Square condo that I still own and rent out via AirBnB (cleaning cost up 60 percent compared to 2019). AT&T workers recently won what might be a 30 percent wage increase (wages boosted plus health insurance contributions lowered; the union).

The above-cited increases in costs must eventually be reflected in higher prices to consumers for (a) goods that come in via container ports, (b) airline tickets, (c) vacation rentals, (d) Internet and cable TV service. And the higher costs faced by consumers should lead to demands for higher wages in a classic Jimmy Carter-era wage-price spiral (I always predict this and, until the Biden-Harris-Whoever-Has-Actually-Been-Running-The-Country administration, was always proven wrong).

Today the wise minds of the Federal Reserve who at least partially authored Bidenflation will set interest rates. Readers: Who wants to predict what they announce and, more important, what official inflation (which doesn’t include most of the stuff that you’d spend money on, e.g., buying a house) will be on July 15, 2025, by which time the rate set today might have had some effect.

My prediction for the CPI released on July 15, 2025 is 3 percent. I’ll schedule a blog post to check this! Meanwhile, if you have 100,000 Bidies to spend on a 1970s tech Land Rover Series III-style vehicle made by a British billionaire who is a tax refugee living in Monaco… the Grenadier:

The above is the web site of the SE Florida dealer and features the rocky terrain that might be encountered on Ocean Drive in Miami Beach.

Update: The Fed did the expected thing and cut its rate by 0.25 percent.

Related:

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Florida Election Report

by philg

Before looking at Florida, let’s check to see what a correct vote would be:

Our ruling elite picked Kamala Harris more than 92 percent of the time.

How about down here in the Swamp? Thanks to the Lockdown Governors of the Northeast and California, who exported their conservative freedom-oriented residents to our peninsula, Florida is no longer a swing state. So it wasn’t surprising that Donald Trump prevailed over Kamala Harris by 56:43 (NYT):

Bigger government tends to favor city-dwellers and, therefore, it was surprising that Miami rejected the Democrat religion 55:44. Maybe it was a mistake for Kamala Harris to tell the residents “If you don’t vote for me then you ain’t Latinx”?

Who in Florida does love bigger government? The folks who work for the state government! The two counties up around Tallahassee voted Democrat 65:34 and 60:39. Orlando and Fort Lauderdale weren’t too far behind. Palm Beach County was evenly balanced with 49.9:49.2 in favor of the correct candidate.

Our fossilized senator Rick Scott, for whose retirement I pray daily (maybe somehow he can retire and Ron DeSantis can appoint himself to the job? Or DeSantis can quit his job and get Jeanette Nuñez to appoint him to fill the vacant Senate seat?), beat his Democrat opponent 56:43. Our Israel-loving Hamas-hating Congressman, Brian Mast, beat his teenage opponent, Thomas Witkop, 62:38. I’m not sure how political parties get these sacrificial lambs to agree to run in hopeless races.

The majority of Floridians (57-ish percent) wanted to turn Florida into a Massachusetts-style paradise in which abortion care and marijuana were available on every street corner. However, the state constitution amendments (3 and 4) that were on the ballot required a 60 percent vote to pass. (Abortion care in Florida would have been available through fetal “viability”, which is about 21 weeks from a medical point of view but somehow there is a legal fiction that viability occurs at 24 weeks. I don’t think that Florida would have permitted abortion care at 37 weeks if one doctor thought it would improve the pregnant person’s mental health, as is legal in Maskachusetts.) Being a redneck had 67 percent support so a “Right to Fish and Hunt” amendment passed. An amendment to change school board elections to partisan failed, garnering an insufficient majority of “yes” votes at 55 percent. (I’m pretty sure that all school board members in Palm Beach County are Democrats, but it is impossible to tell for sure due to the lack of this kind of amendment.)

I haven’t seen any race in Florida that was decided by one vote and, therefore, it is literally false for anyone to say “Your vote counts” or similar. Any given individual could have stayed home to enjoy Xbox games and the outcome would have been the same.

Unlike in our former suburb of Boston, the public school system here doesn’t seem to be offering grief counseling to students.

As I type this (Wednesday at 3:47 pm), California, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, D.C., and Alaska, at least, still hadn’t counted even 90 percent of their presidential votes, something Florida (population 23 million) managed to do within two hours after the polls closed. There are 52 “not yet called” House races, none of them in Florida.

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Post-Election Horror

by philg

If the election didn’t provide enough horror and dread… A trick-or-treater who showed up at our house last week:

(note the bandage on his ear)

And here’s my 90-year-old mom meeting a chainsaw killer with Costco chocolates. Mindy the Crippler is ready to provide backup. Not in frame: three of Regina’s grandkids (9, almost 11, and 15), all of whom had an epic evening.

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