Friday Notes (Oct 25, 2024)

It’s been a slow month here, this is only my second post, and it could be the last. (This month, I mean, not forever.) One thing that has become clear to me is that Substack Notes is too much of a time sink. I’ve been learning to tear myself away from it.

I’m sure I’ll keep posting there, though. I’ve been updating some of my older posts and republishing them for a new audience. I wrapped things up here on computationalism some time ago, but now I have an excuse to revisit and distill those thoughts.

As for this blog, at least for now, there’s always Friday Notes.

I’m committed to putting one out every month until the pile is completely gone, either from being used or from discarding. The older some of those notes get, the less relevant they are.

I also committed to posting every other Monday on my programming blog, The Hard-Core Coder. That’s one reason I’ve posted less here. As with most technical writing, software design posts take more effort than banging out an opinion or writing about a topic I have discussed often with others.

Another is that, as just mentioned about computationalism, I feel I’ve covered some topics pretty well (if not to death) and have nothing to add (unless something new comes along). That seems the case with most of the key topics I’ve written about. And I’ve lost my taste for book and film review, except in extraordinary cases (good or bad, though I don’t submit myself to bad much anymore).

Which pretty much leaves just opinion pieces and technical or math rabbit holes. I’ve been trying — mostly unsuccessfully — to switch to more of a chatty “dear diary” mode for years. Now it seems the main space left, so maybe I’ll finally get there.

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At the very least, this gives me an away space to talk behind Substack’s back. As with most things, the more you know it, the more you come to know its pros and cons.

And Substack is certainly not without its cons. Software development is a bit one. (Sadly, a problem with WordPress I’ve complained about futilely for years. Bad software is endemic.) Recently, Substack stopped allowing blank lines between paragraphs in both Notes and Comments. That was fixed within a few days. Then Thursday, Substack began showing all images and videos as:

The explicit content in question:

WTF, Substack? The quality testing leaves a lot to be desired.

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As the Note above says, I hosted my pal Bentley this past weekend. We had a great weekend, perfect weather, but it is marred by Bentley ending up with some ticks on her I didn’t even realize were ticks. I noticed the little black bumps on her belly but thought they were parts of her, like a similar little black bump on the front of one of her back legs.

She must have picked them up very early, maybe on our first walk. Had they suddenly appeared later, I might have paid more attention. Instead, I wrote them off as just more signs of aging (she’s eleven now). Even the next day when I noticed they were irritated, I wrote that off as from the way she rubs her belly on the carpet (which definitely needs to be shampooed one of these days). She has allergies, so I didn’t think much of it.

Now I’m kicking myself for not paying more attention. Ended up giving BentleyMom a lot to have to deal with. Turned out there was a third tick on Bentley’s neck. Damn, I thought we were safe from ticks in mid-October. Apparently, word of mouth, they’re bad this fall. Poor Bentley. If she’s ever allowed to come here again, she’s going to get a thorough examination after every walk, I don’t care how deep the snow is outside!

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I’m not very good with riddles (and generally can’t remember jokes), and I’m not saying I didn’t need this one explained, but I do think it’s rather good:

What has four letters, sometimes has nine letters, and never has five letters?

(Hint: It isn’t actually a question.) For some reason it reminds me of the bar gag where you ask someone if they can think of a word with three ‘u’s in it. When they almost certainly get stuck, you can commiserate with them, saying that, after all, it is a pretty unusual word…

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I think another reason I haven’t posted much is the distraction of the pending election. Will it be the champagne of celebration or the daiquiris of despair? Will Americans actually vote for fascism and a wannabe Hitler? How supposedly responsible and educated adults can stand behind this man is surreal and beyond me. And I don’t mean the voters so much as the party members.

Apparently even billionaires and large corporations are afraid to take a strong stand for fear of retaliation, either purely economic or actually violent. This is where the enabling for the sake of winning has taken us. A long way from our stated American values, a long way from our founding Constitution, and a fucking long way from sane rational citizenship, democracy, and decency.

I think many people are holding their breath to see what happens. And wondering what the inevitable aftermath will be if (or, dear God, please let it be when) he loses and refuses to accept it. The ideal would be a massive Blue Tsunami, an undeniable mandate, but if the polls are at all accurate, we don’t seem close to that happening.

I hope for a November Surprise in the form of that Blue Tsunami, or at least a clear win, and it’s hard to think of much else these days.

Here’s a YT video with an excellent overview of the stakes from Legal Eagle:

The video has a thorough listing of the myriad reasons why it would be impossible to support, let alone vote for, Trump in a sane world. I think history is going to be harsh on those who, despite all the evidence, still did so.

The worst thing about all this is what his continued support by a large segment of America says about us and the US. This is a massive failure by what was once seen as clearly the greatest country in the world.

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For no other reason than that another baseball season is over, here are three charts:

Some folks are concerned about the steadily rising rate of homeruns, but others see it as a draw for the fans. Everyone loves seeing a good homer. Some of the bumps may reflect “live ball” eras while some of the dips may reflect “dead ball” eras or times when a change to the pitcher’s mound altered the dynamic in favor of the pitcher (in response to batters doing too well — the goal is evening the odds).

Or at least that’s the claim. Strikeouts have also been on the rise overall, but the bump in the 1960s does seem to match a decline in homeruns that same decade. And note the strikeout bump in the first two decades in comparison to the lowest rate of homeruns in history. They switch in the 1920s as MLB tried to rebalance the odds.

I include walks (BB, base-on-balls) because homeruns, strikeouts, and walks comprise “the three true outcomes” of an at-bat. “True” because in all three cases the outcome does not put the ball in play (which creates a chance for outs on loaded bases). As the chart indicates, the BB rate hasn’t changed much in 120 years. As with homeruns, it is lowest in the first two decades when pitchers were kicking ass.

I was hoping for either a Royals-Mets World Series or a Tigers-Mets one, because the Royals and Tigers are AL-Central teams like my Minnesota Twins. My loyalties, in order, are MN Twins, AL-Central teams, American League teams (except the Yankees or Astros), MLB teams, Earth teams, Milky Way teams. Depending on who’s playing. There is also that I like seeing wildcard teams upset everyone by going all the way.

Mets because I was born in NYC but hate the Yankees. And while I lived in Los Angles for almost two decades, I can’t say I was ever a Dodgers fan. I don’t care much for big-market teams with tons of money for buying championships.

So, I’m decidedly “meh” on a Yankees-Dodgers World Series.

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I know I’m a geek, but my bucket list goes like this:

• Volcano (as shown on TV)
• Tornado (been near, but never seen one)
• Hurricane (but I was only four)
• Earthquake (several in LA; nothing major)
• Forest Fire (several in California from a distance)
• Tsunami
• Great Conjunction [see Christmas Star]
• Aurora (more than once; spectacular!)
• Comet (damn, damn, damn)
• A big Meteor (not that big, though)
• Meteor Shower (often looked; always disappointed)
• Eclipse (several partials; one over half)
• Full Eclipse (could have; decided to stay home)

Somehow floods and mudslides aren’t on the list. A sense they aren’t for spectators, maybe? No natural event is, though (except perhaps volcanoes from a safe distance). The ones on the list are not things to go see but things one is suddenly caught in. Absent burst dams, floods happen more slowly.

Still, the line is fuzzy, so it’s interesting I don’t include floods and mudslides. Not visually interesting enough? Just tragedy with no “wow, mother nature can be jaw-dropping” component? Floods are more like someone left the taps open.

And tsunami was the last item added, an afterthought to the initial list. Is it about water? But I love being in and on the water and have no particular fears about drowning.

If anything, I’d remove tsunami before I’d add floods and mudslides. It feels as if it’s related to the human cost, but then why earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes? (I always want to add “oh, my” to the end of triplets like that. I semi-resisted this time.)

The reason for the list was several futile evenings trying to spot the damn comet. I found myself thinking about memorable events I’d seen or not seen.

What does it say that my bucket list is natural disasters and astronomical events? A cynic with his head way beyond the clouds? Yeah, kinda fits…

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I re-did one of my favorite Venn diagrams:

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Every once in a while, I have encountered the term “truck farm”, and each time I’ve wondered exactly what it meant — why “truck” farm? Because it only produces enough for one truck?

Bumped into the term the other day and thought, “Isn’t it about time you looked the damn thing up?”

From the Wikipedia entry for Market Garden:

The word ‘truck’ in Truck farms does not refer to the transportation truck, which is derived from Greek for “wheel”, but rather from the old north French word troquer, which means “barter” or “exchange”. The use for vegetables raised for market can be traced back to 1784 and truck farms to 1866.

Huh. Nothing to do with trucks at all.

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Why isn’t “intriguing’ spelled “intreging”? I always misspell it like it sounds.

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It’s pumpkin beer season. Not for me, though. I don’t think gourds belong in beer. I have too much respect for the Gourdians. Given what we know about them, they almost certainly love beer, so it just seems wrong to put them in beer.

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In the last Friday Notes, I wrote about the uptick in views here and on my programming blog. Regarding this blog, I wrote that traffic “is up to well over 100 (always silent) views per day.”

Apparently, the first rule of traffic uptick is not talking about traffic uptick, because this past month traffic declined and averaged less than 100 views per day. But even if average views drop to 80 per day, that’s still an increase from the norm.

Maybe my charts scared them off. Speaking of which:

The Babylon (Anime) post seemed to be dropping off (was even zero one day), but it revived and continues to get views. Not really showing a tail-off, at least so far. In a very short time, it has become my 14th most viewed post (As usual, because no comments or likes, I suspect people come to grab the images).

Over on my programming blog, the Full Adder Code post is tailing off:

This is more the sort of thing I see on those occasions a post goes “micro” viral. A big spike where (I’m guessing) someone liked a post enough to pass it around or post it followed immediately by a bunch of views as people checked it out. These taper off quickly, sometimes with a long tail, I assume because people check out the post and aren’t impressed enough to pass it on themselves. The long tail comes from the trickle of people following the original link and not being impressed.

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Vote Blue, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

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