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Save the Basement, Get Rid of the Bookmarks: Tuesday Trash Day

June 24, 2025 1 Comment

There was a fire drill at our apartment today.

Well, it added up to a drill. I imagine someone was sneaking a doobie somewhere in our non-smoking building, and the alarm went off. Instead of the blattering klaxon I was expecting, the alarm system started hectoring me like an ex-wife about where to go and what to do when I got there. Brave new world we live in.

Anyway, my wife and I, a couple of neighbors, and the four hundred or so dogs our neighbors own, stood on the curb for a spell. The fire station is within shouting distance. They sent all kinds of vehicles. A Fire Rescue truck rolled up. Out popped two little girls. They put on the entire firefighting getup, including masks and breathing tanks. They looked like they were wearing their dad’s clothes. If they fell over, I doubt they could have stood up under their own power. They carried Halligan Bars, which is the greatest demolition tool ever, but looked too heavy for their slight frames. They went in the front door, wandered around a bit, and wandered back out a while later. We wandered back in, and never did figure out exactly what set off the alarms.

My, how things have changed. Several of my relatives are/were firemen. They are robust fellows. They had to pass a very rigorous physical and mental examination to become firemen back in the day. As I recall, they had to be able to lift and carry a 200-pound (ostensibly unconscious) person to pass. I’m a fairly large, fairly robust man. I would have had a very hard time passing that fireman’s examination. But I guess Save the Basement is now the official policy of fire departments everywhere.

On to this week’s browser bookmark cleanout!

A federal judge sides with Anthropic in lawsuit over training AI on books without authors’ permission

Federal judge William Alsup ruled that it was legal for Anthropic to train its AI models on published books without the authors’ permission. This marks the first time that the courts have given credence to AI companies’ claim that fair use doctrine can absolve AI companies from fault when they use copyrighted materials to train large language models (LLMs).

At this point, I trust judges as much as Quija Boards. But reading and remembering things is not plagiarism, no matter how thinly you slice the silicon wafers.

World’s Largest Wildlife Bridge Spanning 10 Lanes of 101 Freeway Is Nearly Complete

Mountain lions are the main conservation focus of this wildlife bridge. The big cats are territorial, and being locked in by freeways limits their roaming range and biodiversity. Without the crossing to expand their habitat, SoCal cougars could be extinct within 50 years. They also continue to be killed by vehicles.

I predict fewer poodles in Agoura Hills.

Fossil found in Texas may be one of the most complete yet

The genus name Eryops means “drawn-out face,” and megacephalus translates to “large-headed,” referencing the animal’s broad skull. Its wide jaws and palatal teeth suggest it could not chew and instead swallowed prey by tossing its head back, similar to modern alligators and crocodiles.

Click on the link to see the happiest dinosaur ever.

Deloitte’s US employees can now buy $1,000 of Lego on the company’s dime to boost their well-being

The Big Four professional services firm has updated its long-running well-being subsidy program to include “Legos and puzzles” on a list of items that Deloitte will reimburse, internal policy documents seen by Business Insider show. The firm has long offered eligible US staff an annual subsidy to spend on one or a combination of subscriptions, equipment, and experiences. In 2021, the firm doubled the allowance from $500 to $1,000, an internal webpage shows.

Before I could even shave, I remember wanting a driver’s license, a car, a house, a wife, some kids, a boat, and several bartenders who knew me by name. These supposed adults want legos, and want their new mommy, Deloitte, to pay for them.

Greek man sentenced to prison for running a private torrent site 10 years ago

A 59-year-old living in the Greek city of Piraeus was recently sentenced by a local court to five years in prison, a €10,000 fine, and an additional €1,800 in legal costs. According to reports, the man was involved with a popular Greek BitTorrent site more than a decade ago. The website is long defunct and does not appear to have provided him with significant financial gain.

I’m of the opinion that basically no non-violent crimes should be punished with jail time. At the top of the list of things no one should ever go to jail for, torrenting movies has to be right up there.

London’s Largest Ancient Roman Fresco Makes for the ‘World’s Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzle’

Han Li, MOLA’s Senior Building Material Specialist, spent three months reconfiguring the artwork with the help of a team of researchers. He explained that pieces had been jumbled together when the building was demolished, so figuring out how the fresco was originally composed took a lot of tinkering and patience. “It was like assembling the world’s most difficult jigsaw puzzle,” he says.

I’d love that job.

The No. 1 AI Jigsaw Puzzle Generator

JigsawCat is an innovative online platform that combines AI art generation with jigsaw puzzles. Our service allows you to create beautiful, unique puzzles using various AI art models, or challenge yourself with puzzles created by users from around the world. It’s a creative way to blend traditional puzzle experiences with modern technology.

You can practice up before you take a crack at any Roman ruins.

Better an Absence of Men Than Imperfect Men

Later, after the communist takeover in Cambodia, Pol Pot and his boys would line suspected class enemies up against a wall and speak French to them. If they reacted (indicating they understood and were therefore rich/educated) he’d have them shot.

I wonder if anyone in France would understand French at this point.

Amazon aims to reach ‘tens of millions’ more small town and rural customers with same-day delivery

Amazon is also using machine learning algorithms to predict which items will resonate with Prime members based on their unique needs in a given area. This includes stocking a mix of the most-popular and frequently purchased items and “products curated to fit local preferences like wild bird food in Dubuque, Iowa, travel backpacks in Findlay, Ohio, and after sun body butter in Sharptown, Maryland,” Amazon said.

I don’t shop online much. Is “body butter” used by cannibals?

Bezos vs Venice: Will the billionaire’s wedding sink in the Italian city of love?

One of the richest men on the planet is holding their home “hostage”, they say – to the Venetians, this isn’t so much of a destination wedding but an occupation. Residents and activists say that the nuptials – and the pure extravagance planned for the celebration – are set to turn their home into a “playground for the wealthy”.

I wonder how long it will be until Jeff takes his second gondola ride under Venice’s famous Bridge of Sighzable Divorce Settlements.

Well, that’s it for today, folks. Feel free to kvetch about the selection in the comments.

We Just. Found Out. They Have. The Bomb

June 23, 2025 1 Comment

We watched Wag the Dog again last night. It’s a blast.

There are only a few people extant who can write dialog like David Mamet. He was kinda alone up there for a while, but then guys like the Coen brothers came along and passed him in the breakdown lane. I think you have to wander back to Coppola to find writers who write this kind of drama, or comedy, or whatever you want to call it. It still sounds like real people talking, almost endlessly, without being boring.

Mamet got stiffed on the credit for writing the screenplay for Wag the Dog, an amusing twist considering the way the movie plot ends up. Some talentless woman got hired to adapt the original book, and the script ended up in the round file. Director Barry Levinson hired Mamet to fix things, and he wrote the whole thing. Levinson wanted to give him the credit. The people who decide such things insisted that the woman not only had to share writing credit, she had to be listed first. Levinson pitched a fit over it with the writer’s guild, but ultimately backed down.

If you’ve seen the movie, you can verify that David Mamet wrote 100% percent of the dialog. You’d know it without being told. Since the movie has no action (it’s a movie about talking about things that don’t happen), dialog represents 100% of the movie. Mamet comes to Hollywood via the New York Stage, so he was the perfect guy to write a movie script about people jabbering at each other in conference rooms, back seats, living rooms, bedrooms, and planes. The movie covers about 7,500 miles as the crow flies, from D.C. to Los Angeles to Nashville and back, and still feels manages to feel claustrophobic. But then again, it’s a movie about people who have never been outdoors during the daytime, and never miss it.

Mamet invented the character of Stanley Motss, who is the whole movie when you get right down to it. How Dustin Hoffman didn’t win an Oscar for it is beyond me, although the Academy  is famous for picking the only hair in a wedding cake most years.

Mamet invented Sargent Schumann, too. He invented all the stuff that happens in Nashville, and almost everything that happens in Hollywood. In short, he has more right to claim credit for the whole story than Larry Beinhart, the author of the book the movie is supposedly based on, never mind Hilary Whatshername.

If you look up the synopsis of the book, Beinhart’s American Hero, it’s a convoluted muddle, a short bus Bourne movie crossed with a Mexican wrestling match. The only kernel of an idea was faking a war to distract from a political problem. In the good old days of real Hollywood, a hack like Beinhart would have gotten a check for $1,000 for the idea, never be heard from again. But Beinhart was grinding an ax over Bush senior’s possible re-election, so he was in with the in crowd.

The movie as it turned out was far more prescient than that. Bush was long gone and Slick Willie made the new plot not only plausible, but on the nose. Hewing too close to actual current events made a lot of people in the punditry mines nervous, so the movie was praised pretty cautiously, and basically ignored at the Oscars. Mamet and Hoffman were robbed. But it’s always better for people to wonder why there is no statue of you, instead of why there is.

The premise of the movie is that if you’re not cynical, you’re not paying attention. And no matter how absurd the Washington/News/Hollywood cabal gets, the stakes are very real.

So watch Wag the Dog, and laugh because something funny is going on, in every sense of the word. And also remember: Skepticism is only the first step on the long road to cynicism, padawan. So bring a change of clothes, and plenty of benzedrine and grappa.

Beware Jupiter in a Hockey Goalie Oufit

June 19, 2025 2 Comments

In 1962, a British scientist named P.S.M. Blackett published a think-tanky treatise called Studies of War, Nuclear and Conventional. It was a revised compilation of assorted articles he wrote going back to the 1940s. Blackett was an interesting fellow, if somewhat obscure. I’m not sure you can call a Nobel Prize winner obscure, but I just did. He was another one of those fellows that thought that being good at math made him good at politics, and everything else for that matter. It’s a common affliction, especially these days. Truly smart people know that Mr. Spock is a fictional character, and the world runs like a carnival, not a Swiss watch.

Blackett coined a somewhat obscure term that’s quite useful. He called it the Jupiter Complex. He warned against imagining yourself as righteous gods, raining down thunderbolts on your evil enemies. It’s a practical as much as a moralistic warning.

“If a scientist may be forgiven for mixing his classical
metaphors, one might think of the earth-bound soldiers as
becoming beguiled by the sirens’ song of then airmen col-
leagues, who, spiritually intoxicated by flight at 50,000 feet
in a jet bomber with an H-bomb in the bomb bay, sang of the
ease with which they could keep erring mankind in order by
threatening them (as if they were Jove himself) with atomic
thunderbolts. This Jupiter complex of the airmen came to
dominate disastrously the military thinking of much of the
Western world and was an important factor in bringing
about the present Western inferiority in conventional
weapons.”

Blackett warned that on top of the kinds of destruction involved, especially with atomic weapons in the mix, the real problem was that it wouldn’t work. At first, the air force was just a part of the army. My father was in the USAAF, for instance. Army Air Force. But the air force fought for primacy, and what with rockets and bombs and missiles becoming so powerful, politicians stated to look on them as the primary source of military power.

“The rise in the West of the doctrine of winning wars
quickly and cheaply by air attack on the enemy’s war-making
capacity rather than against his armed forces arose out of the
long struggle of the early military airmen to break through
the military conservatism of the soldiers and sailors. This
struggle convinced them, probably at this time rightly, that
the air arm would remain backward technically if left under
the control of the army and navy. Air attack on the enemy’s
war-making capacity rather than his armed forces provided
a military role for air power which could be exercised in-
dependently of the two older services.”

It’s useful to crack a history book once in a while and look at the effectiveness of Jupiter Complex bombardments of military and civilian targets since the Second World War. Japan tried it at Pearl Harbor. It didn’t turn out the way they planned. Another example is the firebombing of Dresden, still remembered mostly because of Vonnegut’s high-school required reading book about it. Dresden was only one of many such raids which heaped destruction on Germany, but were essentially worthless to stop German war production, or even affect their will to fight on. America dropped atom bombs on Japan to close out the war, but Japan still had to be occupied. The firebombing raids that preceded Fat Man and Little Boy were just as devastating, but didn’t force a surrender. The US dropped a lot of ordnance while island-hopping in the Pacific, but they still needed amphibious landings with lots of casualties to win the war. Bombing alone couldn’t do it.

MacArthur surrendered to the siren song of the Jupiter Complex. He wanted to nuke North Korea to break their back in a single stroke. It wouldn’t have worked, and cooler heads prevailed. Vietnam was a textbook example of the Jupiter Complex. Lyndon Johnson was famous for micromanaging the targets, and even the total bomb weights for America’s bombing runs on the north. He literally wanted to be Jupiter. You can make similar comparisons to the soviet, and then the American adventures in Afghanistan. Throw in Black Hawk Down for good measure. The Ukraine keeps trying it on Russia, to little effect.

Blackett thought the Jupiter Complex was a simple case of not thinking a military exercise through. If you look at an attack, especially a pre-emptive attack, what happens tomorrow is never figured in to the equation. It’s just:

Step 1. Bomb

Step 2. ??????

Step 3. They surrender

He didn’t think that would happen, and explained at some length why that was the case. And unlike others, he wondered what would happen on Day 2:

“In my view, no real military theory of the ” exercise of
true air power,” as it later come to be called by some British
writers, was ever achieved: in effect, what passed for one
was a theory of the exercise of air superiority, that is, how
best to destroy the enemy’s war-making capacity when the
enemy could not destroy yours. No complete theory of such
an independent strategy was ever formulated because it could
not be kept within the air force’s own province : for it would
have been necessary to include in it the passive defence of
one’s own civilian population. This is so because it soon
became clear that air attack on the enemy’s war-making
capacity generally led to attack on cities and so on the civilian
population. If the usual military principle had been adopted,
that of preparing to be attacked with the same weapons with
which one is preparing to attack an enemy, then the huge
cost of an adequate civil defence system would have had to
be incurred.”

Of course, in today’s world, the “adequate civil defence system” is just a bunch of anti-missile missiles, of very dubious effectiveness, with astonishing price tags, followed by telling everyone to duck. It’s the Jupiter Syndrome, only Jupiter is wearing a hockey goalie outfit.

Good luck with that.

So You Can’t Afford a House: Siete

June 18, 2025 6 Comments

Well, we’ve got a doozy for today’s version of So You Can’t Afford a House. This one’s in Millinocket, Maine. Take a peek:

There’s a 4-bed, 2.5-bath bungalow in there somewhere, behind the sumac and the aluminum siding. I’ll bet you it was a snug, pleasant little place 100 years ago when it was built. It used to have a pleasant porch, I’ll bet, before someone enclosed it to make one more room to watch television in. The jerkinhead roof is kinda neat design touch that was almost popular back then.

Let’s go inside:

These are the only two pictures of this, ahem, gem. So we’re not flying blind, exactly, but we are flying with coke-bottle glasses and a light bulb out. Let’s look at what little evidence is on offer. The exterior shot indicates the building is not currently on fire. That’s one for the plus column, there.

The interior information, while scant, is invaluable. There’s my favorite light fixture, the “landlord’s halo.” The pull chain assures you that you’re getting the real McCoy. The later reproductions have light switches. And this one is the coveted “double halo,” with two, hard to find fluorescent rings that buzz a bit and whisper, “rental property” forevermore. So far, so good. There’s a harvest gold range, in the Les Paul sunburst finish. Very nice. I can picture Carol Merrill standing next to it right now. Of course there are two reefers in there. Another good sign. One for food, the other for eight cases of Natty Ice, with a few sixpacks of White Claw on the door shelves. I don’t want to disappoint any potential buyers, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the walls are not actually covered with solid furniture-grade wood boards.  Just a hunch really. And the Congoleum might need a little more than some Mop & Glo.

There’s scant additional information about the property. It appears to have been turned into a duplex somewhere along the line. You could roll with that, or turn it back into a single family pretty readily, I’ll bet. I would, because finding two sets of people who want to live in Millinocket is a tough ask, as the realtors say. The joint has public water and sewer, so no problems hiding under the lawn to haunt you, but lord knows what you’d find in the basement.

So how much does it cost? Go ahead, guess. I’ll bet you miss. For fun, I plugged the number into LLM Chad and asked it to make a list of things that cost the same amount as this Millinocket marvel. The list was long and amusing, but one entry took the cake. I was so surprised by it, I asked Chad if he was fooling, and to break it down for me:

Yes, a top-tier gaming setup could easily cost around $12,000, depending on the level of customization, brand, and peripherals you choose. Here’s a breakdown of what a high-end, professional gaming setup might include at that price point:

Total Estimate Breakdown:

PC: $5,000 – $6,000

Monitor(s): $1,000 – $2,000

Chair: $500 – $1,000

Keyboard & Mouse: $300 – $500

Audio Gear: $800 – $1,500

VR Setup: $1,000 – $2,000

Streaming Gear: $1,000 – $1,500

Desk & Accessories: $500 – $1,000

Total: Around $12,000 (with some variation depending on brand, features, and customizations).

So I guess the cartoonish diss that you’d rather stay in your mother’s basement in your underwear in a gaming chair covered with Cheeto dust playing Half-Life, than live in your own house could become a real life meme, because this house is only $12,000.

What’s wrong with Millinocket? Well, how much time do you have? It was one of the many towns in Maine that relied on the local paper mill for sustenance, and the paper mill closed in 2008. The town has been hemorrhaging population pretty steadily since 1970, down to its current 4,104 souls. You can find out something about Millinocket by watching American Loggers on Discovery if you want to. I have somehow resisted the urge to do so. I even resisted the urge to have the urge.

If you’re a single guy who is willing to pawn his gaming setup and head off to Penobscot County, you’ll be glad to know the local environment is salubrious enough to produce a Miss Maine winner. Unfortunately, that was in 1966. She may still be around, although she may wear her hair differently nowadays, and be hard to spot.

There’s not much crime in Millinocket. The latest year I could find stats for, 2019, reported 0 murders, 0 rapes, 0 robberies, and 1 assault in the town during the year. People shoplift and break into houses occasionally, so I’d keep an eye on that range in the kitchen if you move there.

So there you go. A house for less than a used car. 18 Birch Street, Millinocket.

Good luck. We’re all counting on you.

Moderately Cranky Tuesday Trash Day Roundup

June 17, 2025 2 Comments

Well, it’s Tuesday. Time for our weekly browser bookmarks cleanup. It’s only moderately cranky this week. Must be because there’s not a lot of things going on in the world to talk about right now. All quiet on the western front, as the saying goes.

Why, no, I don’t watch television. Why do you ask?

Money-Market Funds & CDs: Americans and their Piles of Interest-Earning Cash

The three-month Treasury yield is still at 4.36% currently, and has been in this range since the last rate cut in December. Yields of money-market funds (MMFs) closely track the three-month Treasury yield and remain in the 4.2% range, give or take, and are well above the current inflation rates, with CPI inflation at 2.4% in May. This puts the “real” yield on liquid ultra-low-risk cash at just under 2%, which seems to be an attractive proposition, and households keep pouring their extra cash into them.

This phenomenon is poorly understood. Regular people try to accumulate and save some of their money, and things like CDs just insulate them from the effects of inflation. Any increase is gravy. The stock market is a casino. This is dollars in a sugar bowl.

Microsoft locks Windows 11 user out, shows how easy losing data from forced encryption is

“Microsoft randomly locked my account after I moved 30 years’ worth of irreplaceable photos and work to OneDrive. I was consolidating data from multiple old drives before a major move—drives I had to discard due to space and relocation constraints. The plan was simple: upload to OneDrive, then transfer to a new drive later.

The sooner you learn that The Cloud is just someone else’s computer, the better.

For the first time, social media overtakes TV as Americans’ top news source

For the first time, social media has displaced television as the top way Americans get news. “The proportion accessing news via social media and video networks in the United States (54%) is sharply up,” the report’s authors write, “overtaking both TV news (50%) and news websites/apps (48%) for the first time.”

If the people who pass me as I walk down the street are any indication, a solid minority are now getting their news from the voices in their heads.

Intel will lay off 15% to 20% of its factory workers, memo says

“These are difficult actions but essential to meet our affordability challenges and current financial position of the company. It drives pain to every individual,” Intel manufacturing Vice President Naga Chandrasekaran wrote to employees Saturday. He said the company is targeting job reductions between 15% and 20%, with most of the cuts taking place in July.

I’ve read plenty of corporate-speak in my day, but “It drives pain to every individual” sounds like something Conan the Barbarian would say before mentioning the lamentation of the women.

The $50 Trillion Prize: AI’s Real Stakes Exposed

Here’s what every AI company has admitted at some point:

They don’t fully understand how their models work
They can’t predict what capabilities will emerge
They don’t know how to solve alignment problems
They’re building systems they can’t fully control

And yet they want your trust, your money, and control over increasingly important parts of society. Would you trust a pilot who said, “I don’t really understand how this plane works, but hop in”? Would you trust a surgeon who said, “I’m not sure what this procedure will do, but let’s try it”? Then why are we trusting AI companies with civilization?

Says the guy with four booster shots.

The video calls section in cafes is the new smoking section

Then laptops were only allowed at specific 4 or 5 stools by the window. You felt distinctly unwelcome (but went anyway, it’s nice to be out of the house). Then, I was in a couple weeks back, they’ve surrendered. The window stool area is now dense nest of stools and counters and a new wedged-in shared table in the middle. You can probably jam 10 people in there now, shoulder to shoulder and back to back. This area is made for laptops, and people sit there all day yelling video calls on their head-mics, battery farmed knowledge work.

More like a pissing section in a pool.

Scientists detect light passing through entire human head, opening new doors for brain imaging

To achieve this, the team used powerful lasers and highly sensitive detectors in a carefully controlled experiment. They directed a pulsed laser beam at one side of a volunteer’s head and placed a detector on the opposite side. The setup was designed to block out all other light and maximize the chances of catching the few photons that made the full journey through the skull and brain.

Last time I went to the doctors he looked in my ear with his otoscope and clucked his tongue. “Is it bad? What do you see, doctor?” He said, “My diploma.”

Should Wyoming Ranchers Paint Zebra Stripes On Their Cows? Science Says Yes

Specifically, the scientists hypothesized that painting a zebra-striped pattern on domestic cattle would reduce the number of biting flies plaguing livestock. Biting flies are a more-than-annoying scourge for ranchers worldwide, including in Wyoming. Their findings were that the frequency of biting flies landing on the painted cattle decreased by over 50%. Furthermore, the cattle were more relaxed since they weren’t reflexively fighting off so many flies.

I’d do it strictly for the Lulz.

Cabinet to advise parents to ban social media before age of 15

Deputy health minister Vincent Karremans is expected to publish official guidance on the use of smartphones, which also includes a recommendation not to buy phones for children until they enter the final year of primary school, aged 11 or 12. Two weeks ago Karremans dismissed the idea of an outright ban on phones for under-14s, arguing it would be unenforceable.

Smart cabinet, there. I wonder what a credenza would say.

Amazon is reportedly training humanoid robots to deliver packages

Citing an anonymous source “involved in the effort,” The Information says that Amazon has almost finished constructing an indoor “humanoid park” at one of the retail giant’s San Francisco offices that’s roughly the size of a coffee shop. The obstacle course reportedly contains one Rivian van for training purposes, with Amazon aiming to have humanoid robots “hitch a ride in the back of Amazon’s electric Rivian vans and spring out to deliver packages.”

If they deliver a heavy package inside my apartment on a hot day, would it be good manners to offer them a nice cold glass of vaseline or something?

 

Well, there’s the bookmarks mulch pile for this Tuesday. Weigh in down there in the comments if your cabinet has any opinions it shared with you.

Month: June 2025

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sippicancottage

A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.

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