These low-resolution (1280×768) displays were tweaked during coronapanic by adding touch sensitvity (a mixed blessing in a machine that is subject to turbulence), but essentially Garmin has been offering the same system for 17 years… until today. The web site for Garmin AXIS doesn’t offer any resolution spec in pixels, which is disturbing, and it continues to mention panning and zooming (not the best activity for a pilot trying to control aircraft attitude!). Maybe Garmin actually hasn’t caught up to 1080p, a place that HTC managed to get for its Android phones in 2012.
Why does an airplane need box after box of avionics given that a modern smartphone has an AHRS, a GPS, multiple radios, a high-res display, a massive database of charts, and nearly everything else that anyone would want in an aircraft panel? I haven’t made it all the way through the 23-minute launch video, but I don’t think resolution is mentioned:
For those of us limping along with late-1990s Garmin 430s, the beauty of this new Garmin system is that the capabilities of the insanely expensive and absurdly low-res GTN750Xi nav/com (about $25,000 installed; offers to show approach plates, but they’re unreadable) are folded into the back of the display. It looks as though the financial savings could be significant. The PFD with all of the features of the GTN750Xi is priced at roughly the same cost as the GTN750Xi. From Sarasota:
Presumably two of these “fattened displays” would be required for a Cirrus or similar “real IFR” aircraft so as to have a backup GPS, 2nd COM, etc.
This is, of course, ugly news for Brand A. Avidyne only a year ago got its retrofit reasonably-modern larger-but-low-res PFD/MFD certified. The Avidyne system needs high-cost high-bulk connector-rich separate nav/coms, which Garmin has now folded into the backs of their PFD/MFD.
Photos from Day 2 (yesterday) of PBI’s reincarnation as DJT (“Donald J. Trump International Airport”)…
A nod to Donald Trump’s famous passion for fine art:
Purely functional signage:
Note that the (1988) terminal remains dedicated to Navy fighter pilot David McCampbell, who became famous by shooting down airplanes (maybe not the best possibility to remind passengers of as they check their bags?) and then retired to Palm Beach County:
The history of the airport is preserved:
The renaming is a rather bizarre turn of events given that Trump has been the airport’s worst enemy ever since he purchased Mar-a-Lago, notably in obstructing the expansion of 10R/28L to accommodate “real airplanes” and, thus, add flights (now it is just 3214×75′ vs. 10001×150′ for 10L/28R). Mar-a-Lago is indeed almost directly in line with 10R so Trump’s fight against the airport wasn’t irrational. This article describes a history of conflict going back to 1995:
A 1995 lawsuit by Trump over airport noise ended with the county agreeing to lease Trump the land where he later built Trump International Golf Club. A 2010 lawsuit by Trump over airport noise was dismissed.
Here’s the geometry that makes the conflict inevitable:
Happy World Population Day, except to Elon Musk who says that humans are going extinct and should have more children, while simultaneously Elon refuses to make a Tesla self-driving minivan. In honor of this glorious day, set up after the Earth’s population reached 5 billion in 1987 (due to population collapse, Earth now has only about 8.2 billion humans (or maybe 10 billion)) , let’s take a look at a population on the other side of an ocean from us…
Gemini says Climate Change is real. Prompt and answer:
Is Climate Change real from a European perspective? I.e., is Europe hotter than it was 50 years ago and is it almost certain to become yet hotter 50 years from now?
Yes and yes. From a data-driven, scientific perspective, the physical reality of climate change in Europe matches both of your conditions.
When I asked Gemini “Create a poster for Americans to show solidarity with European heatwave victims by turning their thermostats up from 72 to 74” (no mention of skin color), it produced the following:
Note that the U.S. is a mixture of skin tones while everyone in Europe seems to be nonwhite. Could this reflect Gemini’s belief that European leaders have chosen a Climate Change adaption strategy of replacing their heat-intolerant subjects with imports from Africa and the Middle East who are, presumably, accustomed to hot weather.
Note closely related, but I love the “feels like the inside of a McDonald’s Apple Pie” phrase:
Even though France is experiencing a heatwave that feels like the inside of a McDonald's Apple Pie, the Minister of Ecology is firmly against air conditioning.
Stingy bitch Monique Barbu said that A/C does nothing to address climate change and people should adapt to global… pic.twitter.com/0kyDoQOx2r
Also, European Union regulations require that animals being transported cannot be exposed to a temperature higher than 30C, perhaps with a +5C tolerance. The European Food Safety Authority, however, says that horses cannot be exposed to temperatures higher than 25C (i.e., about 20C cooler than temps inside upper-floor Paris and Berlin apartments when it was 40C outside?).
We stopped into Ketchikan, Alaska, our last port in the Great Land. The first thing I found was the MV Malaspina, an Alaska Marine Highway ferry launched in 1963 that I took in 1993. She’s a Jones Act survivor that remained in service through 2022. Her sister ship, MV Matanuska, was launched in 1962 and remains in service! Malaspina is used as seasonal housing now:
A former paper mill at the Ward Cove cruise facility has been turned into a massive souvenir mall:
Downtown was mobbed, as you might expect from 19,000 cruise ship passengers being unloaded into a town of about 8,000.
What used to happen on Creek Street (above right)?
Tired of cruise ship food? Here’s the line for lunch at 11:17 am. Keep in mind that all 19,000 tourists have been on unlimited 6 meals per day plus 24-hour room service.
Commercial fishing boats with the real money-makers behind them:
Walking for 20 minutes to the Totem Heritage Center, run by the city, gets one away from most of the cuise ship crowd. The museum reminds us that Native Americans are natural stewards and protectors of the environment from the rapacious white man. Curiously, when I was in Alaska in 1993 the clearcut forests on Native Corporation land was pointed out as a contrast to the National Forest, in which white administrators wouldn’t permit clearcutting.
There was quite a bit of fragmentation in the “late nineteenth century”:
White do-gooders today want young Native Alaskans to invest a huge amount of time and energy in learning their ancestral languages, now of no practical value:
I asked a local native what he thought about this. “It would be a lot better to learn Spanish or Chinese,” he said, “after learning English. Or maybe Arabic.” He pointed out that things were simpler in his youth when the white man wanted Indians to learn English and white culture. “There are so many immigrants from India, China, Vietnam, Latin America, the Middle East, and God knows where else that, in addition to our native culture we have to learn about languages, religions, and cultures from 10 or 15 different countries just to get through a day in the U.S.”
Speaking of keeping traditions alive, the local salmon hatchery is still closed for coronapanic:
A short walk down a creek passes by the Trail of Tears, updated for the 21st century: Married Man’s Trail.
The second facility for the city museum welcomes visitors with a land acknowledgement and pilots with an E6-B.
The local bookstore is next door and is ready in case a Black or indigenous (Palestinian?) 2SLGBTQQIA+ customer comes in:
Meanwhile, the store features a work by John Muir, a renowned racist (“advocated for white supremacy and promoting the race through eugenics, which called for forced sterilization of Black people and other minority groups”) who founded an anti-immigrant organization (“From 1989 – 1996, the Sierra Club had a national policy to greatly limit immigration”).
The kindness section of town: “Saving one cat will not change the world, but for that one cat … the world will change forever.” (Mindy the Crippler, our golden retriever, might adjust this slightly…)
The main shopping drag isn’t a bad place to prepare for Christmas:
It also works for hunting and gun nuts:
Back to our ship for the 1.5-day trip to Victoria, British Columbia:
What had ChatGPT recommended?
Norwegian uses Ward Cove, not the downtown Ketchikan docks. Ward Cove says the complimentary shuttle runs between Ward Cove and downtown Berth IV and takes about 20 minutes each way.
Do not assume Rainbird Trail is available. The Ketchikan Gateway Borough says Rainbird Trail is indefinitely closed because of the August 2024 landslide.
For a forest walk, I’d look at Ward Lake / Frog Pond instead. Ward Lake Trail is described as a mostly flat lake-circumference trail, wide gravel, with bridges over Ward Creek. AllTrails lists Ward Lake as a 1.5-mile loop near Ward Cove, generally easy, about 44 minutes. That means you could combine: Ward Cove → Ward Lake/Frog Pond area → shuttle downtown → Creek Street/totems → ship
This was useless advice. The trailhead suggested by ChatGPT is a 3-mile walk from the cruise dock along a main road and there aren’t rental cars available at Ward Cove. As it happens, the rest of the family enjoyed a fishing excursion in a 6-passenger boat (plus the captain’s two Australian shepherds). It was too early for salmon, but they caught some rockfish and then had a bbq on an island. I didn’t join because it would have been much sitting in an uncomfortable boat (spoiled by the Norwegian Joy!).
Today is a dark day for billionaire Democrats who’ve been avoiding New York City and New York State income tax by living 183 days per year in Palm Beach. Their Gulfstreams are now parked at “DJT”, President Donald J. Trump International Airport. Google is #Resisting. If you say that you want to fly from an airport named after the worst U.S. president ever to one named after the best U.S. president ever (JFK gave us the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and open borders (Lyndon Johnson had to finish the last two)), Google Flights responds that nothing is available and that one must fly instead from “PBI”:
(Maybe because the IATA code won’t officially update until August? On the third hand, the site could silently fix the discrepancy and simply display flights from what is still “PBI” for baggage tags.)
Airnav’s budget is smaller than Google’s, but their site is fully up to date with today’s change:
Garmin pilot shows that a new FAA VFR chart is apparently available:
Where did the Huna Tlingit Indians forced by Climate Change to evacuate Glacier Bay circa 1800 end up? Just across Icy Strait in Hoonah. Right next to their town, after salmon canning became unprofitable, they set up a theme park for cruise ships called “Icy Strait Point”:
What did our AI cruise director suggest?
Icy Strait Point has a built-for-cruise feel, but it is also one of the better places for whale watching or kayaking because the tour boats don’t have to spend a lot of time just reaching wildlife areas. The port’s official site emphasizes the old salmon cannery setting and excursions tied to the natural setting and local history.
For a no-excursion plan, do the Icy Strait Point Nature Trail, beach, cannery area, and maybe walk/ride into Hoonah. The Nature Trail is short—about 1.1 miles, easy, roughly 0.5–1 hour—so it won’t satisfy your “couple of hours in forest” goal by itself. If you want a more substantial activity here, this is a good port for a guided wilderness hike, kayak, or whale-watch rather than improvising deep woods, partly because Chichagof Island is serious bear country.
Here’s the overview map:
We bought tickets from the ship for the Sky Peak gondola, which rises 1,600′, and arrived in the middle of a cloud for a bilingual talk by a tribal elder (not Elizabeth Warren):
Was waiting in line for the gondola worth it? 100 percent! Where better to practice outdoor masking than on top of a mountain in Alaska?
Remember to have your coffee before getting off the ship. The line for the shack at the top of the gondola wasn’t pretty:
The trail to a long boardwalk carried some warnings:
Who wouldn’t be happy to be out in the fresh air with a 12-gauge shotgun? One of these guys was from Indiana(!) and now makes his year-round home in Hoonah:
Were the guns necessary? The guides/guards said that the bears were all down closer to the water because there was an ample food supply down there during the late May time of our visit. The bear-free boardwalk:
The weather cleared when we got back to the top of the gondola:
There was a 30-minute line to get onto a free gondola that saves a 20-minute walk into Hoonah:
Hoonah with multiple ships in port is at least as crowded as Manhattan and with comparable restaurant waiting times.
Instead of waiting in the line, we hoofed it back to our ship and ate lunch on board.
I enjoyed seeing Serenade of the Seas, the Royal Caribbean ship that was home for me and mom on my very first ocean cruise (Baltic 2016). She’s also a product of Meyer Werft.
For fans of the costs of government regulation, a Jones Act Alaskan Marine Highway ferry, M/V Hubbard. She was built in Alaska and took 17 years from being “envisioned” to completion, i.e., enough time for the Chinese to build a few cities and associated shipyards for Neopanamax container carriers. The cost might have been as high as $100 million, including crew quarters that were added, for this Ketchikan-built 5,000-ton vessel that carries 53 cars. With her sister ship, in other words, the cost was higher than what our Chinese brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters charge to build a Neopanamax container ship of 15,000 TEU capacity and 135,000 gross tons. Do the Chinese need 17 years? ChatGPT says closer to 1 year, though this can stretch to 3-4 years depending on the shipyard’s backlog.
If we returned to Icy Strait Point we’d book a whale watch.
A migration enrichment story that ended badly for a native-born American (Fox):
Suppose that Bekhzod Asrarov hadn’t killed anyone. How was his immigration to the U.S. in 2024 expected to make existing Americans better off? He won a “diversity lottery” at age 40 during the Biden administration. Given that he couldn’t speak English and was just 25 years from retirement age, how was his presence in the U.S. supposed to make this a better country?
Why does the U.S. continue to operate this diversity lottery? The New York Times, reporting on a Harvard study, says that diversity makes us worse off. If the goal is economic enrichment, you’d think we’d be selecting immigrants for their ability to earn a high income here in the U.S., which someone who doesn’t speak English is extremely unlikely to do. There is no international law or treaty that, as far as I know, requires us to turn foreigners selected at random into U.S. citizens.
100 percent of Maine’s progressive females have apparently had sex with 100 percent-disabled (according to our government experts) Graham Platner. At least one of these females now says that Platner raped her, but the rape wasn’t as bad as continued representation in the U.S. Senate by Susan Collins, nominally Republican (Politico):
“One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was, the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person,” she said. “I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person.”
After some discouraging poll results regarding the November general election, it seems that the only way to protect democracy is for the person who won 72% of the primary vote (NBC) to be replaced by someone selected by a handful of elite Democrats (how will they find any who haven’t had sex with Mr. Platner?).
Platner could make $millions simply by betting on himself to stay in the race and then… staying in the race. Here’s Polymarket, for example:
Rules for one of the above options:
This market will resolve to “Yes” if Graham Platner withdraws from or officially announces his withdrawal from the 2026 Maine Senate election, or announces the suspension of his 2026 Senate campaign, by July 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to “No”.
What if Platner wants to be a billionaire rather than a multimillionaire? He could agree to withdraw from the race in exchange for $1 billion from progressive Democrat multi-billionaires, such as divorce plaintiff MacKenzie Scott Bezos.
(Maybe a deal with be done in secret and we won’t find out about until after the election when Platner hangs swastika flags from his new beach houses in Bar Harbor, Palm Beach, and other strongholds for Democrat elites?)
Update: Herr Platner actually did quit, but we have no idea if he is now sitting on $0, $10 million, $20 million, $250 million, or $1 billion from MacKenzie Scott Bezos. He leaves us with an exhortation to “Free Palestine”.
Just after “Free Palestine” is “Up the Hearts,” which ChatGPT says is a reference to a Portland-based soccer team that plays in a “third tier U.S. league”:
Besides the noble Palestinians, who is sorry to see Graham Platner, and all of his tattoos, go? The same people who couldn’t resist having sex with him: progressive females in Maine. “Why Some Women in Maine Are Mourning the End of Graham Platner’s Campaign” (NYT) depicts a 40-year-old who appears to be on track for the standard Maine “more tattoos than teeth” look:
Although she believes the woman, Jenny Racicot, who said Mr. Platner had raped her, she also believes, with just as much conviction, that politicians in Washington are corrupt. …. How else could it be that, after years of promises, she still could not afford medical checkups? With a deductible north of $10,000, she said she had to weigh whether a mammogram was worth the $450 price tag.
… As recently as late June, a slight majority of women — 52 percent — said they supported Mr. Platner, according to a New York Times/Portland Press Herald/Siena poll.
(Other than “corruption”, how could health care in the U.S. have become unaffordable? Econ 101 says that a great way to do it would be by legally importing at least 70 million patients, plus an unknown number of undocumented patients, into a country with a health care system designed for 200 million people.)
Regarding the $450 screening mammogram for a 40-year-old, that’s an American idea. The technocrats in the progressives’ dream society of the UK Caliphate say to start at 50-53. https://www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments/breast-screening-mammogram/who-breast-screening-is-for/ (50 seems to be the standard recommended age in most of Europe, including in France, Germany, Switzerland, the Islamic Republic of Ireland, the Islamic Once Again Republic of Spain, Norway, Sweden, etc.)
Here’s a report on the rest of our late May 2026 visit, planned by ChatGPT:
Take the free shuttle from the Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal into downtown; the terminal says its complimentary shuttle runs during port hours and averages about 10–15 minutes.
Then walk to Sitka National Historical Park. The NPS describes the park’s Totem Trail and Russian Memorial Loop as 1.6 miles total, through Sitka spruce/western hemlock rainforest, with vistas of Sitka Sound and the intertidal zone. Travel Alaska describes the Totem Trail as a mile-long path with 18 Tlingit and Haida totems, connected to the Battle of Sitka/Russian history.
This is the port where I would not book a standard bus tour. You can make an excellent day from shuttle + walking: downtown Sitka, St. Michael’s Cathedral exterior/interior if open, Totem Trail, beach/intertidal stops, and maybe the Alaska Raptor Center if the boys are interested.
Arrival:
Screenshot
Here’s Eurodam, capable of holding 2,000 passengers and looking like a personal yacht compared to Norwegian Joy:
Downtown includes a working marina:
As we walked toward ChatGPT’s suggested totem trial, it began to pour. We took shelter at a cost of $40 in the Sitka Sound Science Center, a one-room aquarium.
The aquarium maintains a full COVID-19 sub-site. Here’s my favorite page within the sub-site, “Thank you to the Sitka Assembly for supporting science” (September 28, 2021, a year after Ron DeSantis cruelly prevented local governments in Florida from enforcing mask orders (by banning fines)):
It’s a beautiful forest, even with the totem poles:
The visitor center is crammed with humans, many likely infected with respiratory viruses. The ranger, however, is protected:
Next stop was the ChatGPT-suggested Raptor Center:
On the way back to town, we passed a public school building. Their COVID-19 war never ended:
We walked by a lot of humble houses with beautiful flower gardens. This one made me nostalgic for Maskachusetts:
It apparently is possible to grow tulips in Florida. The bulbs, about $1 each, need to be refrigerated for a few months and then planted as annuals in December or January. Everyone who holds stock in any company valued at more than 100X earnings should be required to plant tulips!
(It looks like tulipworld.com, fireflyfarmandmercantile.com, and menagerieflower.com sell pre-cooled bulbs for Floridians who lack extra fridge space due to (a) no basements, and (b) the spectacular inefficiency of high-cost built-in refrigerators.)
Sitka was the principal town of New Arkhangelsk, the site of the transfer of Alaska after Seward’s Folly, and then the capital of the Department of Alaska/District of Alaska until Juneau took over in 1906. The Russian heritage lives on in a beautiful cathedral:
The gift shops that branded themselves “Russian” are now tempering that with public support for Ukraine:
If you need to decorate a corner of your living room…
My favorite local business? Flipside Arcade. Here’s my Google review:
Perfect spot to spend a couple of hours if it is raining (i.e., more or less any time in Sitka). The owner, Scott, is plainly passionate about preserving America’s pinball legacy. Machines are generally priced at whatever they might have cost when new, e.g., 50 cents/game for 90s microprocessor-based machines. Maintenance is excellent. Photo below is of a new Stern SPIKE 3 Pokemon machine being delivered.
(Remarkably quiet inside, at least if you’ve been accustomed to cruise ship crowds!)
How did ChatGPT do? Poorly, in my opinion. I’ve asked it a bunch of pinball questions. It should have suggested the arcade as a rainy-day possibility. ChatGPT’s ideas were similar to the overview one might find in a paper guidebook.
ChatGPT’s first cut at a day off the cruise ship in Skagway, Alaska (6:30 am-7 pm):
This is probably your most natural hiking day. Do Lower Dewey Lake in the morning; it’s a real forest/lake hike close to town and cruise piers, and multiple Alaska cruise hiking guides recommend it as one of the best port hikes in Skagway.
Then do the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park museum/historic district. The NPS says its Skagway historic-district walking tour is a 0.64-mile self-guided tour, and the visitor center/museum and restored Mascot Saloon are part of the park experience. This gives the boys context for the gold rush without sacrificing the active day.
Again, ChatGPT shied away from “overtouristing” by giving us a lightweight schedule. Pressed, it also recommended riding the White Pass railroad, which, as it happens, was a pioneer in containerization.
We ended up not doing the Lower Dewey Lake hike because the only time available for the railroad was mid-day, it took us a while to get organized in the morning, and the train ride took longer than expected due to a locomotive failure.
Walking towards downtown from the cruise pier:
Crossing the railroad tracks:
I remembered the town as sleepy when I visited in 1993. Here’s a photo from the absolute peak of the tourist season in 1993, July 25:
For comparison, May 2026 (well before peak tourism; looks like the weather improved, at least, thanks to Climate Change!):
Quite a few of the sidewalks were covered to Times Square densities:
Because it was Memorial Day, we used Google Maps to navigate to the “young men who left home and community to answer the call to help preserve peace and freedom in the world” plaque:
If they hadn’t been killed in wars they could have come home to drink at a brewery under the sacred flag:
The National Park Service explains the alternatives facing the “Sourdoughs” prior to the railroad’s construction:
The gold rusher had to bring a minimum of one ton of supplies up these trails in order to get through Canadian immigration. Unlike today, where being helpless and in need of four generations of welfare enhances one’s admissibility as an immigrant to Canada or the U.S. (as a “refugee” or “asylum-seeker”), the Canadians at the time didn’t want anyone who was likely to become a dependent. Therefore, they inspect a miner’s luggage to make sure that he had at least one year of food.
The railroad promised to change all that, but it wasn’t finished until the gold rush was over (Wikipedia), but the investors still made money because there were other resources, including copper, silver, and lead, to be pulled out of the Yukon. Uncle Sam stepped in to save the railroad from the Depression by taking over the system during the construction of the Alaska Highway in WWII.
Passengers in the uncrowded Alaskan wilderness ready to get on…
The trip starts fairly flat.
At a few points it is possible to see Skagway and any cruise ships docked there:
We sat next to a Mexican real estate developer. He and his wife were big Trump supporters because they believe that Trump will help quash the cartels that compromise safety within Mexico. They do not like their progressive president, Claudia Sheinbaum, due to inefficiency, cronyism, and failure to deal with organized crime. Although not Jewish, they dislike Sheinbaum’s support for Hamas and frequent condemndation’s of Israel for “genocide” (exacerbated in Gaza by rapid population growth). “Even if she were right about Israel,” the Mexicans pointed out, “what does the Gaza war, or any war in the Middle East, have to do with Mexico and Mexico’s problems?”
Here’s a reconstructed border shack where the Canadian government used to try to make sure that immigrants could be self-sufficient:
After one of our locomotives failed, a train in front of us sent back one of its two to help us up the final steep ascent. Then we used our own single locomotive for the trip back down to Skagway. Have faith in timber:
The term “Gold Diggers” has a different meaning here than in the lower 48. From the downtown bookstore:
We decided that the kids weren’t ready for this:
A fun souvenir:
How did ChatGPT do? Fair. The railroad trip is more or less essential, in my opinion, despite the extra sitting time. It’s the only way to experience the reason that Skagway exists, i.e., getting through the pass. Furthermore, it has to be booked well in advance because the trains fill up. There isn’t enough to do in downtown Skagway, even with a hike, to fill up a whole day.
