Alaska Question

 On British Smuggling, The Hays Code, and Art Under Tariffs One reason I started this blog was that I occasionally go down random rabbit holes on specific topics for other projects, and there's nothing else to show for the byproduct of my research. One recent topic I dove into was the history of smuggling along the British coast. I didn't think it all that interesting on its own to write about. Then the tariffs came, and my research suddenly felt very relevant. My deep dive took several turns, and while there are plenty of names and dates I could recite about who was smuggling what, the more interesting parts included poetry by Kippling and a Hitchcock film, but I'm getting ahead of things. For starters, there was a lot of smuggling in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was practically its own industry. Up and down the coast, there were secret bays and hidden cellars where gangs moved contraband. Why? Tariffs. Taxes were paid on imported goods, so if someone could b...

 On The Final Meeting of the Roman Senate Nobody knows when the Roman Senate had their final meeting. The Roman Senate was once the most powerful governing body in the world, or at least it was according to the Romans. Then Rome became an Empire. The Senate didn't go away when that happened, but its power diminished. It continued to decline as the power of the Emperor grew. The Empire fell to the Goths, and the Senate, still in existence, continued to dwindle. However, even then it didn't go away entirely. By the early Middle Ages, the once mighty Senate of Rome, the very one that once dominated the known world, was little more than a social club. That's right, the organization that was a direct continuation from the days of the republic continued to meet and have opinions, but those opinions were meaningless when it came to setting policy. The ruling Emperor didn't even live in Rome anymore, and territory in Italy was being passed around to various states like the Lomb...

 On the Software for a New CNC Router An organization I run, Juneau Makerspace, has recently gotten a new CNC router, a big machine that will carve shapes out of wood from a digital file. We had our first class on how to use it the other day and it was my first introduction to the new machine. I've used older ones, so I was familiar with the process, I just needed to learn the ins and outs of the new software. All of that is just prologue to compare the old software I first used to the new version. The interface of the old software was meant for people who knew what they were doing. You had to set measurements and values yourself and were responsible for making sure the machine was cutting where you wanted it. The new software had a detailed step-by-step process built in that prevented the user from moving on to the next step without completing the current step, either by inputting they had done it or a sensor on the machine showing it had been completed. This was great as it meant...

 On Surviving the Great Internet Outage of 2025 I'm calling it the Great Internet Outage of 2025 at least until the next one. The going conspiracy theory is that it was somehow Musk who cut off the internet to Juneau, Alaska a few days ago to try and get more people onto Starlink. Probable? No. Would he do it though? Probable. The exact moment I noticed my connection was down was when I spotted a notification from a Discord channel dedicated to my favorite podcast, "The Film Reroll." As the podcast uploads very irregularly, an update from that discord meant either there was a new episode, or something worth noting had happened to one of the hosts. So I clicked. The post didn't load. I checked my connection status. The internet was out. I could only watch as the YouTube video I had up playing music slowly reached the end of the buffer. Then silence. I immediately checked my phone to see if it was just my computer, my router, or a bigger problem. Cell service was out. T...

 On Avatar Being the Next Star Wars or Marvel Maybe Star Trek is a better comparison. It's the twentieth anniversary of Avatar: The Last Airbender. The not-quite-new Avatar Studios under Nickelodeon has announced their next series, Avatar: Seven Havens. Avatar Studios was established in 2021 to make more Avatar shows. A few years ago they announced there would be some movies too. As for any of these pieces of media to actually materialize, it feels like they've been frozen in an iceberg. Over the past twenty years, there have been books, comics, games, and an ongoing Netflix adaptation of the original show. There were even Lego sets around the original run of Avatar. What's missing are more actual movies and shows. Basically, Avatar is getting the franchise treatment, but for some reason really slowly, almost hesitantly. The original Avatar show is perhaps the greatest animated show of all time. It's the greatest I've ever seen, but I admit that's a limited samp...

 On A Story About People Falling Over on a Family Trip After some political posts, I want to get back to some funny stories. A few years ago, my family took a road trip through Pennsylvania. Along the way, we stopped somewhere in the middle of nowhere at a covered wooden bridge. That was apparently the big thing to see in the area. An old bridge, but this one was covered with a roof. Very historical. Anyway, we weren't the only intrepid explorers of rural Pennsylvania who made the trip to see the old covered bridge. A group of twenty or so Vespa-riding tourists pulled up after us. Now, these were American Vespa riders. They were middle-aged and older, and not one of them had experience controlling a small moving vehicle traveling at medium speed in their lives. By the looks of them, bicycling was right out. When they had finished their tour of the covered bridge, they got back on Vespas, something that took some coaching from the tour guide. One lady, in an attempt to remain uprigh...

 On MAGA, Thought-Terminating Cliches, Cults, and the Real Meaning of "TDS" I recently had a very negative interaction with a MAGA supporter online, the details of which I won't go into here but are all still public on my Facebook page. Rather than focus on the hatred the person had toward my Jewish ancestors and myself, I want to focus on something he kept repeating, and something I've seen repeated recently by MAGA supports about anything critical of them, trump, or nazis. Funny how they already lump all those things together even if not relevant to the conversation topic. They write, or rather shout by typing in all caps, "trump derangement syndrome is real." The phrase is sometimes shortened to TDS, though that will always be The Daily Show to me, and The Daily Show is very, very real. If you want a more detailed explanation of the phrase, see its Wikipedia page here:  Trump derangement syndrome - Wikipedia . The short version is that it's used to di...

 On Felon 47 Being the New Pharaoh Akhenaten It's easy to make parallels of trump to Hitler and other evil dictators of the modern world as many have, but what about the ancient world? There are plenty of terrible kings of old that he can be compared to, but perhaps the one most associated with extreme change opposed by their subjects is Akhenaten, an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh that ruled from roughly 1353 to 1336 or 1351 to 1334 BCE. Already you can tell what we know about the guy is fuzzy. Some of that was intentional on the part of the ancient Egyptians who were slightly less ancient than him. Akhenaten is known for making quite a few changes in Egypt during his reign. He abandoned their traditional polytheism that was welcoming of lots of gods and instead forced a monotheistic worship of a god called Aten onto his people. He even changed his name from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten, which meant "One Who is Effective for the Aten." Worshipers of other gods were persecuted und...

 On Bothering to Watch Star Wars: Skeleton Crew The latest Disney+ Star Wars show has just finished up. Here's the spoiler free review: It was decent, a lot of fun 80's references, and it was better than most recent Star Wars shows. That's all there is to say about that. What's most noticeable about the show and what this post is about, is what's not there: the audience. Skeleton Crew is one of the least watched Disney% shows made. Scrolling the Reddit comment section, there were quite a few reports of Star Wars fatigue, plus uncertainties about the marketing. It's definitely a kid's show, especially compared to the other Disney# content they've made, but I do need to give them credit for making it an exciting adventure for kids, not a Star Wars show that tones it down to be kid-friendly. As for the rest of Star Wars being toned down, my explanation about how economics affects stormtrooper aim will need to be another post. The audience fatigue comes on t...

 On TikTok Getting the Ban I've never used TikTok. For me, social media is about following just people I'm interested in following, usually because I know them in real life or I like their work and not a means unto itself. I do use Instagram and every once in a while I get sucked into their TikTok knockoff, Reels. I've heard it's not as good as the real Made in China thing, but I get the idea. Lots of short bursts of dopamine. Creators eking out a living. The argument for banning the platform is that it's foreign and could be used against us. I don't dismiss that one out of hand. A social media platform being used against a group of people to further the interests of those who control it is a legitimate threat and should be dealt with. However, that applies to all social media platforms. The TikTok ban only serves to help their competitors like Musk and Zuckerberg. It does little to address the underlying problem. A few large companies have monopolized the socia...

 On AR Glasses It's the middle of CES, the tradeshow where companies show off technology that will fall into one of three categories: Stuff that will never actually come to market, stuff that will come out but is completely useless, and stuff that will eventually become a product but won't do half of what was promised for several decades and by then an entirely new technology will have been developed that will make it obsolete. Anything labeled with "AI" will fall into all three categories at once. One piece of technology that's been promised for decades that I am both interested in and have no hope for being practical for a few more decades is AR glasses. AR, short for augmented reality, is where you can see through the glasses and they have a screen on them that you can use like your phone. That's different from VR glasses, which stands for virtual reality glasses. That's just a screen in front of your face, like your phone. The reason I'm curious ab...

 On Second Screen Content: I was suggested this YouTube video by the algorithm which I found quite interesting:  Slop Economics - YouTube .  The video is about the incentive of companies like Netflix to not produce quality movies, but instead produce things that are just good enough to keep people subscribed. The video refers to this as slop, and goes into detail, a bit wandering at times, about the economics of slop when it comes to streaming movies, video games, and music. The economics of the entertainment industry is something I always enjoy digging into and will probably come back to, but I wanted to focus on just one of the topics covered in the video, which is designing movies and TV shows to be watched on a "second screen." Second screen content is when a show is designed to be understood by a distracted audience. Netflix is now making their shows to be watched while you look at your phone. Any information shown is also explained in dialogue. A description of this...

 On a new pair of headphones that are no laughing matter: I recently got a new pair of headphones, and they're great, with one small flaw. When I buy something that I want to last I do my research. I compare every Reddit post and review site about what's the best on the market. I try to set a budget, and then I always end up upselling myself because I want the best. Well, I found the best with all the bells and whistles. I ordered it, and they arrived (weeks later. A day before I would have gotten a refund in fact, but that's not the point of this post.) I tried them on and they were, well, fine. They were fine. They worked, they needed a bit of breaking in to be comfortable, and there was a bit of delay with the audio from watching videos, but I could live with it. I started watching things online while wearing them, I am practically dedicated to late-night comedy shows, and then something strange started happening. Videos would randomly pause while I watched. It was simpl...

 On Patriotism vs Nationalism: There was an old Reddit post I can't find anymore where someone outlined the difference between patriotism and nationalism. I'll do my best to summarize and expand on that here. The post defined it as two ways you can love someone or something. One is healthy, wanting the best for them, and the other is abusive, wanting it to never change. Patriotism was loving your country like you loved someone you wanted the best for. You want them to grow and become the best they can be. You celebrate when they accomplish things and when they change to overcome problems they've faced. This requires being able to acknowledge the problems they face and mistakes they've made in the past. Nationalism is loving your nation like you love someone who you don't want to change. You're afraid they won't be the same person you fell in love with. So instead of acknowledging their flaws, you deny those flaws even exist. To a nationalist, they must be pe...

 On quality of life: This Reddit post was recently linked in the Best Of subreddit on Americans and their total disregard for quality of life: https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/1hqy2p0/uncomfortable_discussion_end_of_life_and_futile/m4totaj/ If you don't want to bother reading it, it's about how Americans don't consider how well their life is lived, they just work and suffer through it. All things are given monetary value and anything that doesn't create value is therefore valueless. It reminded me of brutalist architecture, where function is put above all else, and nothing is decorated. Perhaps there's more to brutalism than I'm giving it credit, but so much of what our lives revolve around is creating value for ourselves and others. But then there's art. Art, to be art, has no inherent value. It's words on a page or paint on a canvas. Sure there's business around it, but the value is not something you can weigh, count, or exchange. It has ...

 On finishing a jar of pickles: Every once in a while I add a jar of pickles to my shopping cart. At first, I eat them with my lunch regularly. Then I start to forget about the pickles. They slide to the back of the fridge and I don't grab one with my lunch. The last few dwindle down slowly until there are just two or three left. Then they wait. One of two things happen, either they get lost and forgotten, and on some day far in the future when I'm on a cleaning spree I toss out all that which has been left behind in the fridge, or I rediscover them while they're still good. If I find them again soon enough, they're consumed again with lunch in one last effort to finish the jar. One such jar of pickles was finished today. It's not something one normally considers an accomplishment. In fact, the effort it takes to clean, and thus toss out old pickle jars unfinished, may be a more laudable goal. However, it's a rare enough occurrence that to actually finish a jar ...