Worshiping the Rainbow Flag is a “Jewish value”

by philg

Recent email from the guardians of the Jewish faith in our corner of South Florida:

The organization’s web site says “Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County embraces a culture of diversity and inclusivity in accordance with our Jewish values”.

This is a little confusing because we are also informed that worship of the sacred Rainbow Flag necessarily leads to support for the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”), which seeks to destroy the Zionist entity that is beloved by many Jews. See, for example, “Queer people organizing in solidarity with Palestine continues to grow”:

LGBTQIA+ solidarity with Palestinians has a long, rich history, and it’s growing despite years of Israeli pinkwashing”)

Queer Palestinian people have always been the leaders of their own resistance against Israeli apartheid, and non-Palestinian LGBTQIA+ people around the world have supported the call to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine for decades.

During the [January 6 Queers for Palestine event in Maskachusetts], Yaffa, queer Palestinian-American performance artist Juliet Olivier, and queer Palestinian-American author and activist Hannah Moushabeck spoke about how indigenous peoples around the world were queer before colonists brought homophobia to their societies and warned that bringing up transphobia in Palestine in response to “Free Palestine” is simply a distraction, much like any other answer to “Free Palestine” other than “yes.” They also noted that Palestinians don’t care if their oppressor can live as openly queer or not and that needing to meet basic needs like food, water, and shelter means that Palestinians cannot turn their attention to other needs like working for queer liberation.

It’s also confusing because it is unclear how the “G” part of 2SLGBTQQIA+ is “in accordance with Jewish values” if the Torah is part of “Jewish values” (“the biblical book of Leviticus, which prohibits sex between men” said the New York Times in 2018).

If we can solve this apparent conundrum I hope to see everyone at the parade on Sunday! (Why isn’t the parade during the sacred festival Pride Month of June? Unlike FIFA soccer, Pride isn’t a cause for which people want to die of heat stroke.)

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Science: there has never been a worse time to be 2SLGBTQQIA+ in the United States

by philg

A Scientific American article, as presented by Apple News:

There are “unprecedented threats” against American children who identify as 2SLGBTQQIA+ (I won’t hatefully exclude some categories, as the headline authors did by citing only “LGBTQ”). In other words, it was better to be gay in the 1950s or 1850s compared to now.

The article in Scientific American contains the “unprecedented threat” language in a subhead:

Families Find Ways to Protect Their LGBTQ Kids from Serious Harm—Physical and Mental—after a Flood of Discriminatory Laws

Hostility toward LGBTQ kids, enshrined in hundreds of new bills, has put families with such children under unprecedented threat, raising risks of suicide and physical attacks

Hate has spread beyond Florida and Texas:

She had moved her family three times over the past six years. Her house in New Hampshire was shot at—possibly by someone aiming at thce [sic] rainbow signs in her front yard. In 2022 she fled to Massachusetts, which seemed to be safer for her child, Grey, who is transgender. But whenever she hears the words “safe state,” a thought pops into her head: “Austria felt like a safe place in World War II, too.”

For the time being, Grey feels like they are in a good place mentally. (For their personal safety, the names of young people and their parents in this story have been changed.) They have found a community that sees them for who they are and a state that allows them to receive the gender-affirming care they need.

On a recent trip to Piedmont and Berkeley, California I was informed that there is more hate than ever in California and the U.S. generally and it is all the fault of Donald Trump, despite his departure from a position of power more than three years ago. I asked for how many more years Trump could be blamed, but received no answer.

How many of us are hated because of Donald Trump? At least 1 out of every 4 young Americans, according to Science:

Given the large number of young people who identify as LGBTQ—about 25 percent of high school students are not heterosexual, according to a 2021 survey…

Science says that states that reel in the 2SLGBTQQIA+ should expect to have a population in poor mental health, though this is not because of anything inherent to the 2SLGBTQQIA+ lifestyle:

Compared with other kids their age, LGBTQ youths are at higher risk of numerous mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, substance abuse, self-harm and suicide. These health issues have been largely ascribed to minority stress, the consequences of social sources of tension that come with a marginalized identity. These stressors are not an innate part of an LGBTQ identity. Rather they emerge from experiencing repeated prejudice and powerlessness.

Here’s a strange one: a Floridian considering fleeing has “passports ready”. Where in the world is more friendly to the 2SLGBTQQIA+ than a Democrat-ruled U.S. state, such as California or Maskachusetts?

Another parent, a single father to a 12-year-old trans boy in Florida, says he can no longer protest anti-LGBTQ bills, because it raises risks of repercussions for his child. “You always balance out your ideals, your principles, your goals as a citizen with the needs of your family,” he says. He has developed an exit plan in case his home state becomes even more hostile. He has passports ready and is prepared to quit his teaching job and start his own company, moving to another state or abroad if necessary. Being able to think about leaving, a privilege he recognizes many parents do not have, has bolstered his mental health.

That said, even Maskachusetts isn’t safe, according to Science:

Yet even now, in an apparently safer place [Massachusetts], she and her husband still find themselves trying to protect Grey from the news, transphobic relatives and hostile people on the street. Recently the three of them went for a walk through their city. Tamara noticed that they had fallen into “bodyguard mode”: one parent in the front, one parent in the back and their only child in between.

Circling back to the original topic, is it Scientifically correct to say that hostility toward 2SLGBTQQIA+ ideas and people is “unprecedented”?

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Robot to rake and clean a Zen garden?

by philg

Happy First Day of Spring! If you’re in a northern lockdown state it is presumably time to think about gardening.

On a recent visit to Morikami, an enormous-by-Japanese-standards Japanese garden run by Palm Beach County (see Should Palm Beach be renamed Elba? for some background on the donor), it occurred to me that a great university robotics project would be an affordable machine that could maintain what stupid white people call a “Zen garden” (karesansui or “Japanese dry garden” is the correct term). It’s incredibly labor-intensive to pull out the leaves and re-rake the stones. Even in a country with open borders it would be very expensive to have a Zen garden at home that was maintained to a Japanese temple’s standard.

Here is a photo of the primary Morikami dry garden:

There are also some smaller areas and sections that use this material/technique:

The leaves need to be picked up a lot more frequently than the stones need to be re-raked, right? Does that mean that an aerial drone is required to pick up the leaves without disturbing the raking?

Using expensive industrial robots to rake the gravel has been done, but the video below shows them working in a leaf-free indoor environment:

What would it look like to build something that a consumer who wanted a backyard Zen garden could afford? With fat enough tires could the leaf removal be done without disturbing the raking? Or maybe if the raking is done by robot the right answer is to forget the drone and do a drive-around leaf removal and then re-rake every morning at 6 am.

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Democracy in Florida today

by philg

Today was our presidential primary. From CNN, an example of how democracy is supposed to work from the party that says its sacred mission is to preserve our democracy:

And a baffling result from the Party of Tyranny (TM):

How does Nikki Haley, who has never tried to do anything for Florida, get more votes than Ron DeSantis, who has worked hard (and, if we believe the meager net worth on his financial statements, honestly) on behalf of Floridians for about 10 years (first in Congress, then as governor)?

I went to the local branch of the Palm Beach County public library system to vote today. The parking lot was packed at 1:45 pm and I took this as a sign of citizen engagement. It turned out, however, that the cars were parked at the library because people were using the library part of the library (despite CNN and NYT informing us that books are banned in Florida). Voting was in a community room and there were booths sufficient to accommodate more than 20 voters in parallel. The three poll workers told me that I was Voter #25… for the day. I’m grateful for the work that Ron DeSantis has done in his job as our governor, so I put in a thank-you vote.

For Irish readers, a snapshot from Sunday evening’s St. Patrick’s Day block party in our MacArthur Foundation-created development (Abacoa):

A week earlier, Abacoa hosted the Jupiter Irish Fest, complete with about 25 performers from the local Irish Dance school.

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Does everyone in Gaza love, or at least agree with, Hamas?

by philg

Question: Wouldn’t Hamas be finished in a few days if the typical Gazan were anti-Hamas? Presumably, the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) couldn’t survive amidst civilians if they were hostile to the cause and told the IDF where to find the Hamas members, tunnel entrances, etc. Although we are informed that Gazans ran out of power in October and don’t have Internet, every video from Gaza shows people using fully charged smartphones and posting to social media. Thus, it would be easy for a Gazan who disagreed with Hamas to drop a dime on the nearest Hamas platoon.

In a November 2023 poll, about 13 percent of Palestinians had a “very negative” view of Hamas and 10 percent had a similarly negative view of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. I wonder if these numbers are way too high. If even 10 percent of “civilians” disagreed with the Hamas goals of defeating the IDF, eliminating the Zionist entity, liberating Al-Quds, and establishing a river-to-the-sea Hamas-ruled Palestinian state then that is way too many potential snitches for Hamas to relax.

How can the poll numbers be reconciled by the fact that, apparently, nobody in Gaza is cooperating with the IDF? There are people who don’t like Hamas in particular but agree with most of Hamas’s goals?

Note that the righteous estimate support for Hamas among Palestinians at approximately 0 percent, which would be even tougher to square with Hamas continuing to thrive right next to the IDF. Our greatest intellectual, for example, says “The overwhelming majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. And Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people. In fact, they’re also suffering as a result of Hamas’ terrorism.” If the typical Gazan thinks that he/she/ze/they is suffering, as Joe Biden says, why doesn’t he/she/ze/they drop a dime on the source of the suffering? If no dimes are dropped, shouldn’t we infer that Joe Biden is incorrect regarding Gazans suffering as a result of Hamas?

Related:

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Housing Justice in Berkeley, California

by philg

Here’s a photo of an unhoused person sleeping next to a classic Volkswagen Microbus used to advertise the availability, for those with money, of sparkling new apartments:

Housing is a human right, say the folks who live in the Bay Area, but somehow they never reduce their personal consumption in order to build housing for the unhoused.

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Claude vs. ChatGPT on pit bulls vs Golden Retrievers

by philg

A recent New York Post story, “3-month-old baby mauled to death by family pit bull in NJ”:

I asked Claude, Anthropic’s $7 billion baby, whether the choice of pit bull was unwise:

We have a 3-month-old baby. We want to get a dog. If the baby’s safety is our main concern, should we adopt a pit bull or a golden retriever?

If the baby’s safety is the main concern, it would be advisable to adopt a golden retriever rather than a pit bull when getting a dog for your home with a 3-month-old infant.

While it’s true that any dog can potentially bite if mishandled or improperly trained, certain breeds are generally considered better suited for homes with small children. Golden retrievers are renowned for their friendly, gentle, and patient temperament, especially around children.

On the other hand, pit bulls were historically bred for blood sports like bull-baiting and bear-baiting, which has shaped their tendency toward aggression if not properly socialized and trained from a very young age. Even a well-trained pit bull’s powerful jaws can inadvertently cause severe injury to a fragile infant during play or accidental incidents. …

ChatGPT, on the other hand, is strong on political correctness. Genetics, whether dog or human, does not determine intelligence, personality, behavior, etc.:

When considering adding a dog to a family with a young baby, the primary focus should indeed be on safety, alongside the temperament, energy levels, and size of the dog. It’s important to note that individual dogs can have personalities that differ from the general characteristics of their breed, but there are some general tendencies worth considering. … Pit Bulls, a term often used to describe a variety of breeds including the American Pit Bull Terrier, the American Staffordshire Terrier, and others, can also be loving and loyal pets. They are known for their strong attachment to their families. … Socialization and training are crucial for Pit Bulls, as with any dog, to ensure they are well-behaved around children and other animals.

Ultimately, the decision should be based on thorough research and consideration of the specific dog’s personality and the family’s lifestyle and ability to meet the needs of the dog. Consulting with a veterinarian, a professional dog trainer, or a breed rescue organization can provide additional guidance tailored to your situation. Regardless of breed, bringing a dog into a home with a baby requires commitment to training, socialization, and creating a safe environment for all.

ChatGPT’s advice seems particularly clueless regarding human nature. How many people consult “a veterinarian, a professional dog trainer, or a breed rescue organization” before adopting a dog?

Let’s go back to Anthropic’s Claude…

Prompt: Our neighbor has a golden retriever named “Mindy the Crippler”. Should we be concerned about her having aggressive tendencies?

Yes, I would be very concerned if your neighbor’s golden retriever is named “Mindy the Crippler.”

While golden retrievers are generally known for being friendly, gentle family dogs, a name like that implies the dog may have been trained for aggression or have exhibited aggressive tendencies in the past.

A few key reasons why that name raises red flags:

  1. “Crippler” is not a typical pet name, and connotes inflicting harm or damage on something/someone.
  2. Giving an aggressive name to a dog can actually reinforce and encourage aggressive behavior in that dog.
  3. Even though goldens are a typically non-aggressive breed, any individual dog can become aggressive if improperly trained or treated.
  4. You don’t know the history of how this particular dog was raised and trained by your neighbors.

While I don’t want to assume the worst, that name suggests at the very least poor judgement by the owners. At worst, it could indicate the dog has a history of aggressive behavior that has been reinforced rather than corrected.

For the safety of your infant, I would recommend speaking to your neighbors and expressing your concerns, especially if you plan on having your baby around this dog at all. Don’t accuse, but explain that the name worries you since infant safety is the top priority. See what they say about the dog’s temperament and history.

Related… “Bruiser” from Legally Blonde:

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Lucid releases dog mode and cars are available for immediate delivery

by philg

Scenes from a shopping mall in Newport Beach, California:

The salespeople explained that “Creature Comfort Mode” had been released on Friday, March 8. When could we get one of these Lucid cars for which a 1-2 year wait was expected? “If you’re paying cash, you can have the car today.”

Lucid hopes to join the Tesla charging network in 2025, we learned. In the meantime, I guess that means the car is limited to around-town use (see Top Gun slows down to 25 mph (across Florida by EV)).

Not every question was appreciated, e.g., “If you’re trying to symbolize present-day California, wouldn’t it make more sense to have a surgical mask and a vaccine syringe rather than a bear?”

The Fashion Island shopping mall had no fewer than four car showrooms: Lexus, Lincoln, Lucid, Tesla. I guess any of these places will seem cheap compared to the Whole Foods that is in the same mall.

Speaking of cars and Newport Beach, we saw a Z06 Corvette parked in front of our hotel:

We also saw a Tesla Cybertruck on the road, but the less said about that experience the better.

For those who’ve been reading about the death of California retail, a reminder that Newport Beach is not San Francisco:

(the jewelry store did have an armed guard, so I guess it wasn’t in a completely different universe compared to San Francisco)

I do hope that Joe Biden in the 5th or 6th year of his reign will issue an executive order requiring every shopping mall to have a koi pond:

In the bad old pre-koi days, the mall was a Boy Scouts camp:

Related:

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How does an LLM company spend $7 billion per year?

by philg

Anthropic, an OpenAI spin-off, raised $7.3 billion last year and will soon need to raise more money (NYT). Some of the money came from Effective Altruist and Biden supporter Sam Bankman-Fried (due back in court on March 28), but even if Mr. Bankman-Fried helped, it is tough to understand how any startup can spend $7 billion per year. Is the money for overseas contractors who will click thumbs up or thumbs down to train the model? For renting GPU time? Wikipedia says that the company had 160 employees in mid-2023 so each employee had to spend $44 million, the price of a starter home on Palm Beach.

Let’s see how well Anthropic’s Claude works. I previously asked ChatGPT “Write a college application essay that describes how race affected the applicant’s life” to obtain a document to facilitate a Supreme Court-compliant admission-via-skin-color. Here’s Claude’s answer:

Prompt: Describe an experience that helped shape who you are today.

Racing for Understanding

As a biracial kid growing up in a predominantly white suburb, I often felt like a square peg being forced into round holes. With a Black father and white mother, I looked different than most of my peers and had a unique perspective right from the start. Sometimes it felt like I was walking a tightrope, trying to find that delicate balance of fitting in while still celebrating my multi-racial identity.

From an early age, innocent questions from classmates forced me to grapple with complex issues of race and identity. The dreaded “What are you?” inquiry made me feel like the ultimate “other.” I never knew quite how to respond when kids pressed me to check one box: black or white.

At home, my parents did their best to honor and educate us about both sides of our racial heritage. We attended Baptist church services taking us straight into the heart of Black spiritual traditions. My mother struggled to tame my kinky curls while my father taught me how to defuse questions about my appearance with humor and confidence. Looking back, I realize my parents were doing the important work of helping me develop a positive self-image and sense of self-worth.

By middle school, I started to detect coded racial attitudes from some teachers and administrators. I felt unfairly profiled and penalized, receiving harsher punishments for minor infractions than my white peers. The message seemed to be that as a Black male, I was inherently problematic. That crushed my youthful spirit and planted seeds of resentment within me.

When we finally moved to a larger, more diverse city for high school, I felt liberated. At last, I could just be myself without constantly filtering my Blackness through a white lens. I became bolder in asserting my identity as a proud, multi-racial man. While I still had to navigate discriminatory speed bumps and rampant stereotyping, I gained critical tools for self-love and advocacy.

The older I get, the more I lean into my biracial heritage and the wisdom it has given me about our country’s grave racial divides and inequities. My goal is to help build deeper understanding, trust and resolution across all racial and cultural lines. My intersectional perspective allows me to relate to multiple worldviews, a skillset America desperately needs more of.

My multiracial journey has been one of constantly defining and redefining my identity on my own terms. In the process, I’ve become more compassionate, open-minded and determined to create a society of true equality and belonging for everyone. This pursuit of racial healing will be the driving force of my life’s work.

I tried ChatGPT with home repair. Let’s see what Claude says for the same prompt: “Our Bosch dishwasher stopped and is displaying an E25 error code. What should I do?”

(This answer is mostly wrong.)

It looks as though Claude’s knowledge is frozen in 2022 or early 2023. In trying to get Claude to take heretical points of view regarding race discrimination, part of the answer said that a decision from June 2023 was still in the future:

In the case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2022), the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether Harvard’s race-conscious admissions practices violated civil rights laws by discriminating against Asian American applicants.

While the Supreme Court has not issued a final ruling yet, during oral arguments several of the conservative justices expressed skepticism about continuing to allow race to be considered in admissions at all.

Despite the massive spending, in other words, Claude is not being kept up to date.

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How are things in mostly peaceful Haiti?

by philg

The 12 million people who live in Haiti are reportedly going through a rough patch. 100 percent of them should be entitled to asylum in the U.S. due to a reasonable fear of violence, yet the U.S. won’t simply run around-the-clock evacuation flights and ships. We insist that they somehow find their way to the U.S. border before they can claim the asylum to which they are entitled (see also Are we in Year 14 of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants? from a year ago). I can’t figure out how it is moral to make asylum contingent on being young, healthy, and wealthy enough to undertake an arduous journey. If it is a human right then all Haitians should get it. If it is not a human right then why does any Haitian get it?

Back in 2018, the righteous said that Haiti was an example of greatness (see below). Maybe not as great as Gaza under Hamas rule, but still pretty great. Yet none of them advocated revoking the temporary protected status for Haitians who were purportedly “temporarily” in the U.S. Haiti was great, in other words, “great” but not so great that anyone could be safe who traveled back to Haiti.

Here’s another conundrum… we are informed that immigrants, especially the undocumented, are entirely peaceful. Yet “security guards at [New York City] migrant shelters are being paid upwards of $117 an hour” (New York Post). Why are security guards needed if there are no criminal migrants? They’re protecting the peaceful migrants from the unpeaceful native-born Americans from which our criminal population arises?

Is there a point at which the challenges faced by 12 million people in Haiti could actually become worthy of United Nations attention (currently 99% focused on the 2.3 million Gazans who remain alive after the “genocide” perpetrated by Israel against 2.3 million Gazans)?

Related:

Also…

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