Shunning the Cross?

This is one of two new statues that find a home at Temple Square in Salt Lake.

What's startling to me about this one is the clear display of the cross -- something that's typically been anathema in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Some in the church get sniffy and say they worship the living Christ, not the Christ on the cross. But I kinda feel like we've got to take the full package and ought to acknowledge more in the church that we do outwardly recognize the sacrifice the cross represents.

I'm not going to get tangled in culture -- because culture is about all it is, frankly. When I see someone wearing a cross, or see cross-centric statuary, I'm not bothered by it. The cross is an important, powerful symbol to most Christians.

The lack of crosses -- whether by culture or doctrine, and I'm not sure which holds more sway -- is part of the package of anti- or skeptical-Mormon thought out there. Our outward symbols are odd: the angel Moroni atop the temple, statues of Joseph Smith all over the place. Not that they're wrong; they're doctrinally and culturally significant to us. But I don't think it will hurt our chances if we allow a cross or two to slip into the culture.

I served a mission for the church in France. I loved visiting the churches, from the little parish churches to the grand cathedrals. The history, the architecture, and the deep symbolic meaning in the many depictions of Jesus Christ with and on and without the cross brought significant meaning as I strove to understand the culture and beliefs of the people I served. I won't say I understood everything, and might at times have mocked things. But I was a callow youth who should have been a better ambassador of Christ than I was.

One Case of Tile Left

Made progress today - again - on the basement bathroom. I'm down to one case of tile, so I may have to sneak over to Lowe's to see if I can snag a few more pieces. I might have enough, I might not. We'll have to see. But it is about as high as it's going with some additional trim pieces, so maybe not.

And that's good, because I'm utterly sick of this project.

When I posted this on Facebook, Meta AI offered to answer the question "Why is Brian getting sick of the project?" I'm not really sure they delved the depths of the possible answers:

An Old Lady Fart

A Matchpoint Drive Playlet:

Me: [In the study, reading a book while the rest of the family watches Dr. Who in the next room.]

Alexa, on the desk behind me: FFFFRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPT. That was an old lady one. Ask me if you want me to give you a cheek-wobbling fart.

Me: [Stunned silence.]

Liam and Michelle deny all knowledge of the Old Lady Fart delivered by Alexa.

I have to wonder if Isaac Davidson is somehow involved . . .

Checklist, Check

I'm trying really hard to read and enjoy this book, but the authors are making it *really* hard.

I'm generally not a fan of war fiction. There are so many true stories out there to read there doesn't seem to be a need to get into the fiction end of things. I have, however, made some exceptions, and found some pretty good stories out there.

This is not one of them. I'll finish, but there's not much of a chance I'll get past Book One; this is apparently a series.

I appreciate that writers - myself included - may make checklists as we plan the stories we write, but this book's principal shortcoming is that it wears that checklist on its sleeve.

Americans training in England where they're "oversexed, overpaid, and over here," check.

Spunky member of the crew killed needlessly by his own hubris, check.

Friend of the spunky crew member brooding in resentment, check.

Leader grappling with his own personal demons that he keeps in check because he's the leader, check.

New love interest for the leader, identified in wartime, kissing him out of the blue because it's on the checklist, check.

Member of the French Resistance popping into the story randomly, sometimes interacting with the group, sometimes not, in a subplot that still may be paid off but you never know, check.

War-weary surgeon in a proto-MASH refusing to evacuate the hospital because there's a bomb nearby because his patients "will" die if they evacuate versus everyone "could" die if they're there and the bomb goes off, check.

I'll predict a few more as we go along; I still have about 100 or so pages to read:

Longtime friend of the leader who also went into dangerous work killed heroically in action, check.

Resentful friend of the dead spunky crewmember either

a. Killed in action, mirroring the death of his spunky friend, or,

b. Forged into a new leader despite himself by the leader he blames for his friend's death,

check.

It's good to read these books, though. Inspires me to do better. Checklists are fine, but ya gotta bury them. And a lot of that could be done by showing, rather than telling. Put near all of the resentment in the character mentioned, for example, is delivered in dialogue, rarely in action. I keep forgetting the resentment is there because we don't see it in action, we only hear it occasionally in the dialogue.

UPDATE: Finished. And this is what came to pass (slight spoilers if you don't have the checklist):

Resentful friend of the dead spunky crewmember forged (very preliminarily) into a new leader despite himself by the leader he blames for his friend's death,

The Dreams are Back

There for a long time, I had no dreams.

And by dreams, I mean the weird middle-of-the-night stories the ol' brain produces, from the frightening to the silly to the mundane.

Why are they back?

I gave up caffeine for Lent.

Not necessarily gave up, but certainly cut back.

I'm down from three or four cans of Diet Pepsi a day to only one with caffeine, the rest without.

I should cut it completely - the Pepsi as well as the caffeine - but that'll have to be more gradual.

I'm less jittery now. Getting better sleep. The lack of caffeine has affected my ordinary cherubic demeanor, but even that effect is lessening.

I'm not ready for any blimp attack drills, but it's certainly been better with less caffeine in the system. Because I like my stupid dreams.

It does mean this: I may have to go back to setting an alarm. Before I cut back on the joy juice, I slept much more lightly and was almost always up on time. Now I hit a good bout of deep sleep right around 5 am, and I have to be up by six. That's been tougher.

Beware the Bot Exhaustion

So, I think we're mostly aware that fake news - and fake news purveyors - are a real thing. And while the Venn diagram of such may occasionally include legitimate news outlets, the biggest problem by far are the Joe Six-Packs and Betty Housecoats we encounter on social media.

Only less dangerous than these are the actual real people who believe what the propaganda farm bots post and spread around.

That probably includes me. And you. Nobody is immune.

So we really, really need as individuals to be very careful in believing what we see online. As Benn Jordan says at the conclusion of this video:

"At this point in time, you should always be asking yourself if social media users or features are separating you from your own instincts or logical conclusions because this isn't political; the goal is not to make you support a particular party or candidate. The goal is to make you constantly question your own convictions by filling your entire world with conspiracy theories. The goal is to make educating yourself about your surroundings and questioning what's real or not so exhausting that you're too worn down to care that there's lead in your childrens' drinking water. You're too worn down to care that the American life expectancy has dropped below the average of some developing countries. What politically-oriented problems are bigger than those things?"

Media literacy has entered a new era, and we've got to be really vigilant lest we fail.

What an Odd Thing to Say

I can't read the New York Times story on this, but it sounds like an up-and-coming author won't be coming anymore as accusations of artificial intelligence use are being leveled at her and her work.

In sum, author Mia Ballard's "Shy Girl" - a horror novel outside my area of interest - might be as much as 78% written by artificial intelligence.

Of course, that's a dicey measurement.

AI detectors look at patterns to determine if writing is machine produced, using the same kind of large language models that AI uses, so there's lots of ickiness to go around. I teach at a university in its English department, and we're cautioned about using these AI-detectors as there are plenty of things that trigger the AI detectors that aren't necessarily AI.

I started watching the "Frankie's Shelf" video at this link from Jezebel, but as it clocks in at nearly three hours, there's no chance in hell I'm going to finish it all.

But the evidence presented is telling.

The cover on her self-published book was ripped off from another artist.

There's odd formatting issues throughout the book - something you might chalk up to the initial indie publishing of the story - and readings and analyses by sleuths from Goodreads to the New York Times detect AI patterns throughout.

The author, in her defense, claims it was a developmental editor who introduced AI to the story. And that seems an odd thing to say. Surely an author, whose reputation depends on the words he or she writes, would read anything doctored by an editor and notice enough differences to send up their own red flags before pushing that publish button.

Whether or not that's true should be easy to determine: A draft of the novel before the editor got it could be examined to see if it has the tells of artificial intelligence. I highly doubt that will come to pass.

And Hachette, her publisher in the UK and would-be publisher in the US, should have detected the AI, but clearly the idea of a new novel got in their eyes. Only after the NYT analysis did they pull the plug.

Cadfael for Writers

Yet another lucky find at the local thrift.

A good book for aspiring writers to read, as we get to see Cadfael, a beloved character, develop. We get to see Brother Jerome, fully developed in his righteous smarm. Peters used the stories in this book - in my opinion - to develop Cadfael as a character, bringing in other characters after Cadfael was fully formed. So very instructional.

And the stories are great, though the denouement of the third was a bit abrupt.

A Weasley Way to Meet Constituents

Mike Simpson, a word:

Got one of your robocalls tonight announcing RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW you're doing a telephone town hall and that I should stay on the line to be connected to participate.

This kind of call is a fancy way to say "Hey, I *tried* to meet with my constituents, but, yanno, they didn't stay on the line to participate, so it's on them."

No, sir, it's on you.

You caught me at an inconvenient time. I was just heading into a Scout meeting and could not attend your telephone town hall, as much as I might want to do that.

If you're sincere in wanting to meet with your constituents - and of that I have my doubts - you'd schedule your telephone town halls enough in advance that your constituents could plan for them, not have to drop everything they're doing RIGHT NOW in the hopes of having the blessed opportunity of maybe possibly asking you a question as long as it's not too inconvenient to answer.

Representative Russ Fulcher schedules his telephone town halls and gives his constituents ample notice of them. You should learn from that example.

Do better, congressman. Do better.

NOTE: I sent him this in Facebook Messenger, and posted it on my wall. Will update if I get any response. Which I also doubt will happen.

Cranky Textee

 

Got this text last night.

I seriously hope my last missive was delivered, too, but I doubt it.

Why not respond to an anonymous - well, it's from "Sarah," so I guess it's not *totally* anonymous - text?

Because who are these people? Why do they want me, L.H. Puttgrass, Pundit for the People, to respond? Will they ask a bunch of questions and weed out any answers that don't fit with the narrative they're pushing? I don't know. But likely.

I'm sure they think telling us in advance who they are might spoil the answers they get, so that's why they're mum.

So they get nothing from me. There's so much dishonesty out there, and I'm a paranoid and suspicious bastard, so no thank you.

Ghosts of Nixon

This is the operative statement. All other statements are inoperative.

~Ron Ziegler

Why is our president such a maroon?

He Amused Himself with His Monkey, Part Infinite

 

I'm trying, book, but when you tell me characters are sitting around outside smoking and talking in one sentence and then in another not too far distant tell me there's enough rain and lightning there to menace the airplanes they're watching, I have a hard time paying attention to the story.

Some Give All

In the annals of bathroom remodels, some dog toys give all.

Our Carport Took A Trip on Mother Nature's Rocket Ship

So the carport I set up a few years ago - borrowed from Isaac - because I was tired of tripping over it in the garage and I needed more space for either workspace or to store crap, took a backflip over our fence today, thanks to some rather strong winds we've had over the last few days.

We had wind gusts of 75 mph on Thursday, and Liam and I had to go out to the carport that night to batten down the hatches.

This map is showing a gust of 58 mph for today, which I doubt was the biggest wind we had today.

The mess damaged our fence, breaking one of the fence upright and snapping an old post I kept from the old fence but clearly should have replaced. So now I get to do that this summer.

Low-Stakes Fakery. or is it?

Stumbled across this on the Facebooks this morning:

Sure, sure. The Idaho Potato Museum does exist. Its is indeed in Blackfoot.

However . . .

Most of what's in this photo is fake.

First of all, I don't believe this actual intersection exists, at least not in a location that would have this serious amount of directional signage on it.

Then there's the signage . . .

Blackfoot doesn't have a directional arrow.

US Highway 39 is in the east, specifically Alabama-Tennessee-Kentucky.

Nowhere in the national or state highway code are there red signs indicating states on highways.

Oh, and while there is a Highway 39 in the area, it's a state highway with a very distinct shield:

So this is clearly fake, for clicks. And that's annoying. Low-stakes annoying, yes, but annoying nonetheless. If people accept this kind of low-stakes fakery, how much fakery are we willing to accept?

This kind of fakery?

This one's a little better, but still obviously fakes. The incorrect shield for the state highway really stands out, as does the fake "TOURISM" sign and the wonderfully inconsistent, I guess that's supposed to indicate something about I-15 there? I'm not sure.

The real signage, for those interested:

They didn't steal his photo, but they did steal his text.

These kinds of things aren't hard to verify. But why verify, I can hear you screaming. The museum is real. Blackfoot exists. This is low-stakes.

Yes, it is low stakes. But they ratchet things up, you know. Accept l0w-stakes fakery and pretty soon you're swallowing something fake that's got a lot more import to it.

So beware.

Intelligence or Noise?

So this is interesting. In an attempt to understand the patterns in language in order to determine if signals from space contained intelligence or were the result of some natural phenomenon, linguists developed a model that, at the time, generated actual words using patterns detected deeper and deeper in generating - manually - letter combinations based on examination of what letter came next in real words..

This led, of course, to large language models, the root of today's artificial intelligence, and the booby traps therein.

So even if a signal is detected that passes the test of language vs. noise, it could still be noise.

CANCER TOILET!

California really wants me to know that some component of the new toilet I bought and installed last week may cause cancer or reproductive harm.

Don't care. Still gotta poop, man.

A Facebook friend made a dangerous wish:

Verdict: Duh . . .

You'll remember, loyal reader, that a week or so ago I embarked on a journey to read a book written by Albert Einstein meant to help the layman understand general and special relativity.

The verdict is in: Duh . . . 

I tried. I really tried.

Some of the concepts I recognized, such as relative motion over great, great distances making the speed of light "speed up" or "slow down" based on the perspective of the observer. I also recognized the idea that gravity bends light, and a few other things as well.

But when the book contains things that look like this, well . . . 

I'm certain if I really buckled down and studied I could get Ds in algebra all over again.

I'm such an Einstein.

Dark Sky at Night, Drivers Run Red Light

 

The Idaho Falls Astronomical Society* is pushing a petition to convince the city of Idaho Falls to adopt a local Dark Sky ordinance, with the aim of reducing light pollution in the area.

While I enjoy looking at the stars and other night phenomena myself, I'm not quite sure I can support this.

First of all - and maybe they look at this as a first step - it's not just Idaho Falls, but also Ammon, Iona, and Bonneville County they should be addressing, as there's plenty of light pollution to go around.

Addressing the issue on a county level makes more logistical sense, but I get the feeling they're either looking for the city to test the waters for a dark sky ordinance, or just aren't thinking big enough.

Also: This winter we visited Arizona, including Scottsdale, which has a dark sky ordinance. If it's truly being enforced there, I've got to say as a tourist I wasn't impressed.

The city is dark, natch. Meaning at night it's hard to see street signs, especially off the beaten path. We had to rely heavily on GPS navigation without the aid of many visual cues to get around. Combine this with what appears to be Scottsdale drivers' relaxed attitudes toward red traffic lights, the dark sky situation makes it interesting for visitors.

I also don't recall the night sky being any more visible there, though to be honest I was paying a lot more attention to the road since I couldn't see anything.

My experience is anecdotal, of course.

So I'll watch the local effort with interest, if not with much hope.

*Correction: The astronomical society is promoting the effort being pushed by the Southeast Idaho Dark Sky Alliance.

Curse You, Tiny Toilet!

Two of our toilets have been bad and have to be punished.

The story: The toilet in the kids' bathroom has been running for the last few weeks. I tried a new flapper, a new valve, but nothing was really working.

As I tinkered with it today I noticed a more serious problem: The toilet was leaking via the bolts that hold the tank to the bowl.

So I thought I'd be clever and replace it with the toilet from the basement bathroom I'm remodeling. Of course that toilet was also leaking from the bolts, probably because the seal dried out from disuse.

So we went to Home Depot, bought a new Kohler, and installed it. We're on a leak check for the next 24 hours, but I'm hopeful that problem is fixed. Now I just have to buy a new toilet for the basement.

The Sock

Allow me to introduce The Sock.

It arrived sometime in the recent past under mysterious circumstances. I say mysterious because no one who lives here will claim The Sock as their own. Yet it still shows up in the laundry and after everyone has claimed their clean clothes, The Sock remains on the table, abandoned and forlorn, until someone gets tired of seeing it and deposits it in someone else's bedroom, only for it to resurface again in the laundry a few days later.

So if you need a sock, let me know and I'll happily mail The Sock to you. You'll have to pay postage to get it back if it shows up again in our laundry, though.

Blame "Captain" Kook

If I had a nickel for every story told in our house with this ending, I wouldn't have to work anymore.

Funny thing, though. I have it in my head that it was "Captain Kook's" treasure. That's how I always say it. But I guess that's mandela effect.

Work today was . . . weird. My boss was gone, and other co-workers were at an all-day training session, so it was oddly quiet in our little corner of the world.

It was nice. The quiet is something I miss the most from working from home. Aside from the occasional trip to take the dogs outside, work from home was pretty quiet. No interruptions. No forced small talk in the hallways or restrooms (by the sinks, never by the urinals).

We'll See; I'm Pretty Dense

When I saw this at the local thrift, I knew it was coming home with me.

Not because I think I'll be able to understand any of it -- I peeked into the book before I bought it and saw algebra equations. But I'm gonna try.

Thus far, I'm on shaky ground. I understand the metaphor of lighting striking simultaneously in two different spots on train tracks and the light from the strike we're choo-chooing away from arriving later (relatively later) than the light from the strike we're approaching. On our minute scale the difference is less than negligible, but at interstellar distances, yeah, it makes sense.

But boy, with the first two chapters focusing - I think - on teaching me that we exist in a comprehensible three-dimensional space nearly going over my head, my hopes of understanding the rest aren't high.

Moronic Algorithm

 

Me: [hides a dozen Facebook groups offering AI-craptacular views of the lunar eclipse and the recent planetary alignment.]

Facebook: Oh, you must want MOAR low-effort, craptacular AI-related astronomy-adjacent groups to see.

Seriously, the algorithm is a moron.

Paris Waltz

I stumbled across this video on YouTube over the weekend. I'm a big fan of classical music and spent a few hours Sunday evening listening to various piano music.

I had no idea this was a modern composition by an "unknown" until I started reading the comments because I was unfamiliar with the artist.

Gotta say, well done.

One commenter said it didn't sound particularly Parisian, and I had to beg to differ. It reminds me of Erik Satie for one, and definitely has that vibe. It's got a lot of wonderful color to it, warm, yet spiky, maybe like a spring drizzle. I'd go to a concert or buy the album to hear more of this music.

Honors and Benefits - But A Middleman? No Thanks.

So we are members of AARP. That is supposed to bring us benefits.

One of the benefits is tax preparation help.

And I guess AARP member beggars shouldn't be choosers, but I'm not exactly thrilled with the help being offered.

Apparently, we can go to their tax prep center and they'll do our taxes for free. I would much rather, however, have an AARP discount on tax preparation software so I can not only continue doing my taxes at home as I've done them for many years past, but also help me kids with their taxes using the same software, getting a lot of bang for my buck.

Because with free tax prep help, all I'm really getting is a chose and a social interaction I'd much rather avoid.

With a discount on tax software, I'm getting a chore and the ability to amortize the cost of the software over a minimum of three returns, thus helping more people and not involving an extra middleman in my taxitude.

I'd rather not be Gil in this situation, rocking back and forth with my pathetic bag of receipts awaiting the doom the AARP taxman bringeth. I'd rather see the doom come myself.