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.

I Hope I Got the Stupid Finger Pointing Right

Getting ready to film my own stupid scam Internet video

Old Testament? Not my Favorite

I'll admit the Old Testament is not my favorite bit of scripture to teach.

A few weeks ago, my wife got to avoid teaching this particular tale from Genesis 9:

After the whole ark business, Noah gets a bit drunk and passes out in his tent, starkers. His son Ham comes in, sees the naked dad, and he and his brothers cover Noah up.

Upon awaking, Noah learns of the thing and curses Canaan, Ham's son. Grandkid gets cursed because his dad saw grandpa's ding-dong.

Even our lesson materials has this to say:

This week, I get to avoid talking about other drunken escapades where Lot's daughters get Dad drunk and have sex so he can have, well, I don't know I guess. Descendants? Because his daughters don't count?

Our materials say this is included to show origins:

So that'll be fun. I guess it does show that you could take the daughters out of Sodom and Gomorrah, but not Sodom and Gomorrah out of the daughters.

Anyway, this is what I feel like sometimes:

 

We have state legislators who want daily Bible reading to be part of the public school curriculum. Fine. But they have to read these parts too.

Are They *Really*?

The Guardian is trying to get me upset about the loss of trade paperback books.

Their story sez:

But the era of the “pocket book” is drawing to a close. ReaderLink, the biggest book distributor in the US, announced recently that it would stop distributing mass-market paperbacks. The decision follows years of plummeting sales, from 131m units in 2004 to 21m in 2024, and marks the end of a format that once democratised reading for the working class.

Romero, who grew up in the working-class, Latino and industrial city of Hialeah, Florida, says: “I don’t remember a bookstore. I had the library in Miami Springs across the bridge but in Hialeah around us, what was in walking distance because we didn’t have a car, was the Publix [supermarket] and sometimes we would get books from Goodwill [thrift store] as well.

“They had that democratic aspect to them where you can just find them anywhere and it always felt like it was the pick ’n’ mix candy-type store where there is something here for everyone, whether it’s the Harlequin romance novel or something very pulpy like a sci-fi or horror novel that you could quickly get.”

I'll admit: I don't remember book stores either. I mean, we had Pioneer Book, sure. But I was a big borrower from the library, and sneaked books off the classroom shelves in elementary school. While I do remember buying books from a grocery store as they describe here, they were exclusively Peanuts comic strip books.

When I was serious about buying books, it was the thrift store. Deseret Industries, one of our local thrifts, occasionally ran sales when they had too many books and I could come home with ten for a dollar. Those were heady days.

I still shop a lot there for books, abut also hit up used book sellers on the Internet as well. As far as I'm concerned, there is no book shortage.

I just bought a new little pile last weekend. It's fun.

COOKIE DOUGH!

 

I know that doesn't look like much more than a mixer churning away in a garage, but to us and Troop 1010, it's a big deal.

Since 2019, the troop has made cookie dough as a fundraiser. We've made the dough in a school cafeteria and the back rooms of the scout office and a regional restaurant, but those opportunities were closed to us.

We did score this mixer from the scout office, and Keaton and his Dad got an outlet wired for it in the garage of their new home. Best yet, the mixer works. So we can make the dough. Both kinds.

Help Me Sort This Out in My Head

 

Help me sort this out:

I've been a fan of Vangelis -- and by extension, a certain amount of synthesized music -- since I first heard the music as part of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" series.

Obviously, a lot of talent goes into synthesized music; it's not just computers doing the work. Though it is the computers helping the work to have beautiful and dangerous sounds to it.

I'm sure at the time there were people who weren't all that keen on synthesized music: "There's no skill," they'd say, as compared to learning how to make a violin sing, or dare I say it, a banjo plink."

But it's still there. Filling a niche that I'm glad synth music found.

I'm struggling with the battle against large language models and such. Though I agree there's rather a leap from creating "good prompts" that can produce prose that's actually worth reading.

But I dunno. Maybe I'm getting weak on this. Maybe in the future LLMs will find and fill a niche in writing and just be that small part of it that fills a distinct need.

I've seen writer friends experiment with LLMs and I have to wonder: Used right, they're not all that bad. There are certainly ethical concerns based on their use of electricity and their training based on plagiarized works of actual meat-spacer authors, that I won't deny. That's a big part that still keeps me from using LLMs in my own work. Maybe that's too big a leap to make.

But I'm not sure.

Still sorting things out in my head.