I enjoy the blog Notes From Disgraceland. It’s written in a high academic style and is often uneven. But when it’s good, it’s very good. A nice breakdown of what is happening in America, with lots of historical context. I will say he misses one point. Previous Oligarchs seem to mostly carve up existing flows of wealth, often natural resources such as oil or mining. What is happening in America seems to be a battle not over control of natural resources but over existing individual wealth, mostly of the poor and middle class. The battle is over who gets to exploit and impoverish essentially and entire country.

Sultans of Swindle: Oligarchy in 21st Century America

We recently moved to New Mexico and bought a house on a street named Sundagger Loop. I didn’t understand the reference until we caught a documentary on PBS about some building and carvings in a thousand year old site called Chaco Canyon. It seems the carvings and even the alignment of the buildings was used to mark the seasons. A bit like Stonehenge, but way more sophisticated. The Sundagger itself is a dagger-shaped light projected onto a carving that indicates the seasons. There is no actual dagger, just a piece of sunlight. The PBS documentary is available on-line.

The Mystery of Chaco Canyon

We just moved to Placitas, NM. This is just north of Albuquerque on the way to Santa Fe. We cut cable many years ago but still enjoyed occasional local TV (mostly news) using an Over The Air (OTA) antenna. Well, it seems here in Placitas, at least at our house, we don’t get any of the major networks. Just a single Channel 14 that has several offerings like Home Shopping Network.

I started looking around for ways to stream local Albuquerque channels but didn’t have any luck. I eventually had a look at the Plex Live TV service buried deep in the Plex menus. Now I have been a Plex fan for maybe a decade and have a lifetime subscription. But I really use it to organize photos, music and videos. It’s very good stuff so I’m not sure why I was so surprised at the quality of the streaming options. Lots of international news, home and garden shows and really just about anything you can imagine, with a minimum of junk.

This still didn’t give me local TV channels. The Plex we use is an app on Apple TV and I searched around for other streaming TV apps. Amazon Prime Video has an offering, but not much to recommend it. Then I found the PBS app which let’s me stream local PBS channel plus watch shows off-line. Pretty good stuff.

I moved to Texas in 1984 after college. I spent a few months or a few years in other places but Texas, specifically Austin, was home. It’s where I met my wife, got married and raised a family. I watched it grow and change, mostly not for the better. After the Big Freeze I decided it was time to go. That was four years ago, with the COVID pandemic slowing down all of our plans. Last week we finally sold the house in Austin and took off for Placitas, NM. Goodbye Texas.

Leavin Texas

Driving on the open highway in New Mexico, our Tesla Model 3 had multiple cruise control failures. I noticed that it was using adaptive cruise control, meaning it slowed down automatically when approaching slower vehicles. Neat. Didn’t realize this was a feature. Except at one point at highway speeds the car began to rapidly decelerate. It was about as scary as anything I have experienced. Like the brakes were jammed on, for no apparent reason. I briefly panicked and tapped the brake which turned off the cruise control and returned the car to normal operations.

There were several large trucks ahead of us, passing each other and I assumed that was the problem. I also assumed this was a rare event. I was wrong on both counts. A few minutes later, with no large trucks ahead of me, the car began to rapidly decelerate. With a bit less panic, I tapped the brake again and the car returned to normal.

We were on a blacktop road in the west on a clear sunny day and there were these “mirages” where the road ahead begins to look like water. This seemed to cause the deceleration. I (somewhat foolishly) turned on the cruise control again and within a few minutes it failed again. Not scientific but it seemed to be connected to these road mirages. A quick search shows lots of people having trouble with cruise control, some calling it unusable.

i will say it was a very, very dangerous situation. Maybe it’s the adaptive part. I really only want standard, old fashioned cruise control that keeps a constant speed. Hope I can just turn off the adaptive part and get normal cruise control operation.

25 years ago the company I was working for gave us all bottles of champagne. It sat on a shelf all these years. We are moving house and decided it was time to crack it open. Not bad.

I remember this well. It was probably a bit too technical for the average American, but to me it marked the beginning of the modern Surveillance State. We need more people like Mark Klein.

In Memoriam: Mark Klein, AT&T Whistleblower Who Revealed NSA Mass Spying

Interesting read about an even more interesting experiment.

Scientists Put A Human “Language Gene” Into Mice And Curious Things Unfolded