With friends like these …

Trump’s Argentina bailout deepens Illinois farmers’ woes

When I moved to Austin, TX in the late 1980s I had not heard of John Henry Faulk. It didn’t take long before I heard about him though. He was a comedian and entertainer from the previous era, and local hero. He had fought, and won, a lawsuit against the McCarthy era blacklisters in the 1950s. I read his book Fear On Trial about his fight, but today reading his Wiki page I find he was a more interesting character than I had realized. I had no idea, for instance, that he was in the movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

We often think the freedoms we enjoy as Americans were secured a long time ago. If fact they are never secure. They are fought for over and over again, by every generation. Here’s to Mr Faulk and everyone who fought the good fight for all of us.

After the attacks of 9/11, there was a push to increase surveillance of American Citizens. It needs to be mentioned that 9/11 was a caused by middle eastern terrorists, and there was probably little that domestic surveillance, ever massive illegal, wholesale surveillance of US citizens would accomplish. There were, however, real concerns about the possible abuse of such surveillance. The fact is such techniques were the hallmark of so-called Police States.

Yet, after 9/11 a program called Total Information Awareness (TIA) was begun. It was quickly de-funded but was more or less secretly continued for the next 25 years.

Today the capstone seems to be the private corporation run by Peter Thiel, Plantir Technologies.  I believe this was instrumental in finding fugitive Luigi Mangione and perhaps many others.  Now it seems to be the tool being used by ICE to identify their targets.  It also seems to be as unconstitutional and illegal as ever, maybe moreso.  From The Guardian (UK).

Documents offer rare insight on Ice’s close relationship with Palantir

Was chatting with some old friends in Texas yesterday and I mentioned that there isnt much BBQ in New Mexico but lots of barbacoa. I was just joking but realized the words were pretty similar. Turns out BBQ is Texan for barbacoa.

Barbacoa was later adopted into the cuisine of the southwestern United States by way of Texas. The word transformed in time to “barbecue”.

Today in a mailing from The Bite I learned about a local tradition called “matanza” (sorry no wiki page). It is a sort of village pig barbecue.

But in the New Mexican tradition of the matanza—an annual pig slaughter and feast—sharing with neighbors was what made the whole endeavor practical. Because even a single pig typically produces far more meat than a family could feasibly eat themselves, unless they were equipped with a heroic amount of freezer space.

One of my favorite quotes that I had occasion to send to my son this morning. From Axel Gustafsson Oxenstierna.

An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur? “Do you not know, my son, with how very little wisdom the world is governed?”

In setting up a local antenna and HD Home Run for my TV, I learned that the local Fox and CBS affiliates are actually the same channel, KRQE. They even broadcast on the same channel (digital 13.1 and 13.2).

Some of this is probably due to history and New Mexico being a large and sparsely populated state. The TV stations here are also unique in that they have a more or less statewide footprint. In fact, KRQE seems to also broadcast out of Durango, CO.

There was a time when a single owner of two local TV channels would have been unthinkable. Today I find the US news media all similar in tone and content, just with different emphasis on stories. I tend to get most most of my information from reputable international news sources such as BBC, El Pais, Al Jazeera and The Onion.

I saw a headline today that many on the far right, politically, are suddenly fearing gun violence. I won’t cite the article or discuss the recent events that led to all of this. All I can say is, welcome to America my fellow citizens!

It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say I left my home of several decades, where I raised my children, over fears of gun violence. I don’t live in the inner city and the people I feared weren’t people looking to rob me. They were my neighbors, many that I had known for decades. They were all fairly heavily armed and a few had grown increasingly belligerent, especially after COVID.

One night very late, just after the election, I heard a loud banging on the front door.  Bang! Bang! Bang! It occurred that my worst fears may be coming true.  You see, my family is Jewish.  I had imagined the possibility of Rwanda-style mob violence, where a few crazies on radio and TV declare Open Season on “the enemy within” and a slaughter ensues.  It seemed far-fetched, but maybe it was here.

I don’t own a gun so I figured the large kitchen knife was my best bet.  I looked out the window and didn’t see anyone.  I went down the stairs and saw no evidence of anyone outside.  Our front yard is large and exposed so I would be able to see anyone even if they were running away.  We also had a front door camera, so at least there would be some sort of evidence if the worst happened.

I went back upstairs and my wife was awake and had the bedroom light on. I said I didn’t see anything outside.  All of a sudden, the same Bang! Bang! Bang!  It sounded like banging on the front door but I knew that wasn’t possible.

It did sound like gunfire, but I’ve fired handguns and small rifles and I have never heard anything like this.  My wife texted the neighbors.  They also heard people banging on their windows.  It didn’t seem possible that people were running down the street in the middle of the night banging on doors and windows.  I still didn’t see anything outside.

One neighbor opined that maybe it was someone shooting feral pigs with an AK style rifle in the old quarry a block or two away. Seemed oddly specific. He was a hunter so I figured it was plausible. I had no idea those sorts of guns could be that loud.

As I said, I don’t own a gun.  Never have. Never intend to buy one. Mostly because they are just dangerous to have around.  But I also figured if I ever lived in a place where I thought I needed a gun, that it was time to move.

Clearly that time had come.  The house was already listed but we moved to sell it with a bit more urgency.  A few months later we live in a place one state over, in many ways quite similar to the place we left. Except without the crazy people and their guns.  I find I am much happier here.

The headline is a bit sensational, but a very good read. It’s technical but it’s a technical subject. The underlying theme is that the world is all about converting energy into stuff. How we do this defines the sort of world we live in. Today a new, cheaper, cleaner, quieter way is available. Will we keep propping up the old ways, even when it no longer makes any sense?

Shining The Light Of Truth On Fossil Fuel Madness

About a decade ago I was building GPU based grid computing for data centers. At the time NVIDIA had very little of the data center market. It was owned by Intel.

My group was using NVIDIA GPUs to speed up risk calculations for a large bank. It was about 5x cheaper than doing the same job with Intel CPUs. There was a risk, going with a small company like NVIDIA, but the savings were too good to ignore.

Intel made some moves in this direction, notably the Xeon Phi, but it was a “me too” solution, not much better or worse than NVIDIA. And since it was displacing 5x worth of Intel hardware, Intel had very little enthusiasm for the Phi.

Intel also had its own graphics accelerations (GPUs). Depending on how you counted it, Intel owned something like 99% of the GPU market. But these were on-chip GPUs, mostly in laptops.

There was an Intel GPU in a single datacenter part (this is all from memory) but it wasn’t exposed to programmers. It was only for Microsoft VDI remote windows desktops. I tried several times to get access from Intel but was rebuffed.

Long story short, Intel protected its lucrative data center CPUs, particularly from internal competition, and eventually lost to the external competition, NVIDIA. The old lesson: if you don’t cannibalize your own market, someone else will.

NVIDIA Leads GPU Market in Q1 2025 with 92% Share, AMD Drops to 8% and Intel at 0%

TL;DR: pecan groves are sucking all of the water out of the Rio Grande. They have been there for almost a century, but they seem to be a bad use of scarce water. The pecans are all exported and hire very few workers. Have seen similar stories in other places. From High Country News.

The Rio Grande’s pecan problem