Got up early this morning because at some point it's more uncomfortable to lay in bed than to get up and start moving. Got some early blogging done and then went for my walk early because I was scheduled to got another COVID shot this morning. Went with Pfizer this time, because I'd had the Moderna last time and it always kicks my ass. Better to alternate the two.

I don't know if there's some new CDC guidance, but I'd gotten a text from my Publix pharmacy that another shot was recommended for those over 65, and we're getting ready to do some travel anyway.

I enjoy the early morning walks because of the sky and I encounter fewer people. Pretty soon they'll be essential because it'll start getting hot and humid in the morning, and the sunshine gets brutal.

Anyway, got my jab and now to get on with the rest of the day!

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:28 Tuesday, 9 April 2024

I saw this piece in The New Yorker, and bought the book. Started reading it last night, and it's almost too on the nose. Trump is never mentioned, but you might as well be reading today's news.

I know it's also unfashionable to compare Trump to Hitler, but wow. It's not that they're the same, it's that they use the same techniques, the same sort of appeals and possess the same indifference to failure. They just don't quit. I guess that's a virtue sometimes.

And the same sorts of people, those with power and privilege and limited scruples, delude themselves in the same ways with regard to how to deal with people like Trump or Hitler.

This is from Anne Applebaum back in 2020. The page loads in my browser with most of the pictures missing, but the text is all there.

History is a luxury of civilization. A kind of human existence that has the cognitive surplus to record and analyze the past. History will judge, but I'm not sure for how long.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:20 Tuesday, 9 April 2024

I know it's fashionable to dismiss the threat of catastrophic climate change, or overshoot in the matter of the dynamic system that is our civilization. "Ok, doomer," has replaced "Ok, boomer" as the dismissive put-down of choice. "People have always been predicting 'the end of the world.' It's still here!"

"Technology!"

"Innovation!"

But...

The problem with science and risk management is that science is very conservative, and "the market" likes to minimize risk. Usually that means being "skeptical" of science. The question risk managers should have been asking themselves wasn't, "Could it really get that bad?"

It should have been, "How much worse is it really likely to be?"

I'm less certain today that we could have prevented this, even if we began acting in 1992. Maybe put it off by a few decades, but we'd still be confronting planetary limits, if not climate ones, eventually. Before the end of this century.

But I am happy to point out that Republicans and their corporate masters are the most proximately responsible parties for the astoundingly shocking lack of action of any kind. Not that blaming them does anyone any good. I just hope they understand their responsibility, though I doubt they will and I'm certain they won't accept it.

These are the happy thoughts that come to mind as I read stuff like this.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:01 Tuesday, 9 April 2024

On that happy note, allow me to direct your attention to James Reeves' A Staggering Kind of Stillness, at Atlas Minor.

All we have are moments to live.

What's wrong with this one?

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:15 Tuesday, 9 April 2024

The history of batteries is fascinating, and I'm reading Charged: A History of Batteries and Lessons for a Clean Energy Future by James Morton Turner (University of Washington Press. Kindle Edition). One of the things I was surprised to learn, though I suppose I shouldn't have been, was that AA batteries take roughly 160(!) times more energy to manufacture than they produce in their lifetime. And that recycling them often uses more energy than it saves (transportation). Since the removal of mercury from the battery cathode, they're environmentally harmless in a landfill. The whole recycling push was because of mercury, which is no longer part of the battery chemistry.

What I'm trying to learn now is the relative cost of NiMH rechargeable batteries. They're not addressed in this book, as he focuses on the history of lead-acid, AA disposables and lithium-ion, with the materials extraction environmental costs.

I'm also reading DIY Lithium Batteries: How to Build Your Own Battery Packs by Micah Toll, not to "build my own," but to learn about them from a practical sense. The more I learn, the happier I am that we installed the mini-split ac in the garage.

We run our Powerwalls in the Tesla recommended mode of maintaining a 20% reserve capacity. This means we often go to the grid for power sooner than we'd otherwise have to. But it also acts as a whole-house UPS, with about 5kWh of battery reserve in the event of a power outage. It also helps preserve the useful lifetime of the batteries, where by "useful," I'm referring to maintaining as much capacity as possible for as long as possible, while still making practical use of them. The hybrid hot water heater and induction range also help in that regard by being lower current demand appliances, and now the dryer is lower demand as well.

At this point, I think the highest demand service in our house now is recharging the RAV4 Prime. I've tried to schedule trips such that the car is back in the garage early in the day when it can be recharged from solar and/or battery, though now I think it's perhaps at least as smart to allow it to charge from the grid. (We would still net-out positive as solar production that wouldn't go to recharging the battery after charging the car would most likely go to the grid, and that high current flow is not an issue for the batteries.)

They're warrantied for 80% capacity at 10 years, but that doesn't mean they're useless when the capacity dips below 80%. Rather than replace them, I'd probably look to add another battery.

It's forecast to be an active hurricane season, and I'm skeptical that northeast Florida enjoys some permanent geographical advantage in terms of hurricane risk. In the event of a near-miss that left our place habitable but without power, air-conditioning becomes the "vital load," not only for comfort but for keeping the humidity down in the house to prevent the growth of mold.

The "Storm Watch" feature of the Powerwall software will actually charge the batteries from the grid prior to a major storm event, and switch to grid power for the duration. If there's a large or long outage, we'd enter the problem with a fully charged battery, and hopefully the clouds pass with the storm and the array keeps the batteries charged, though it may take some additional care and attention on our part.

So I'm pretty confident in terms of our preparedness. We'd have to monitor cloud cover and our power consumption in the event of an extended outage, but I'm pretty sure I can keep the important things running, chiefly AC and refrigerator, though, really, if we lost the food in the fridge, it wouldn't be catastrophic. I think the AC is only truly "vital" load, especially as we get older.

Anyway, started out with AA battery facts, ended up with aging in place in a hurricane-prone state. What's up with that?

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 05:21 Tuesday, 9 April 2024

My brother sent me this shot last night after I'd already gone to bed. He went up to Tupper Lake in the Adirondacks to view it and had an excellent view.

We observed it in the shadows cast by the tree in our front yard, and in the output of our solar panels.

My friend and former neighbor went to Arkansas to observe it and sent me some nice shots. My sister in Buffalo had some clouds, but caught glimpses and enjoyed it with neighbors.

Moving on...

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 05:16 Tuesday, 9 April 2024

I've accomplished exactly one thing so far this morning, in the 90 minutes I've been up. I did manage to move the Make Web Link action in PopClip to the left side of the bar, so it's more readily accessible. It was simply a matter of accessing the menu bar interface, selecting the Actions tab (looks like a jigsaw piece), clicking the pencil icon (edit) at the bottom, and then dragging the little textured button icons to the left of each action. (Apparently you can do that without hitting "edit.")

(I used PopClip to create that link.)

I spent some time (over an hour) looking at Automator and Mail actions. I thought I might try to make log entries automatically, but I'll have to think about it some more. Automator is pretty slow looking for email.

Went a little crazy yesterday and ordered some more electrical stuff. Mostly a bunch of cable adapters. The Bluetti has 5525 connectors for 12vdc out, but not everything that uses 12vdc uses 5525 connections, so... adapters. Bought some pigtails too. Most of this stuff is low wattage, but I'll have to pay attention anyway. You never know and this stuff is pretty inexpensive.

The Kill-a-Watt meter arrived yesterday and I learned the toaster oven uses about 1700 watts when making toast. More rigorous investigations will be forthcoming. The first of two cables I need to connect the Neebo 100W solar panel to the EB3A arrived, verified it will connect to the panel. This is another arena where there are a plethora of connectors, and it can get pretty confusing.

I'll be glad when the eclipse is over. I am interested in the performance of the solar panels, but I'm really not thrilled about a total eclipse anymore. Maybe I'm just getting old.

Anyway, started this post then went on my walk and kind of forgot about it. It's almost 11!

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:21 Monday, 8 April 2024

Garret mentions that the power company in Boulder, Colorado is prophylactically ("You're screwed," get it?) shutting down power due to forecasted high winds. This brings to mind my current obsession, batteries.

I think electricity essentially created modernity. To be sure, much of it happened before Faraday and Maxwell (and Volta!), but electricity was the accelerant that facilitated the explosion of modernity and the human population, chiefly through the expansion of information bandwidth, but through all its other uses as well.

I love batteries, but "it's complicated."

We have two Tesla Powerwalls installed and together with ~7KW of solar panels on the roof, we're ~86% self-sufficient in electricity and 100% carbon-neutral in home energy consumption. (We produced more electricity than we consume and export the surplus to FPL. To date, that surplus has also been greater than the amount we consume from FPL when solar+battery can't meet our demand.)

For nearly all of our replaceable battery-operated devices, i.e. the ones using standard AAA, AA, C and D cells, I've switched to rechargeable nickel metal hydride batteries. I use C-cell shaped shells (C-cells C-shells down by... Never mind.)

But lately I've been looking at these "solar generators," and considering what utility they may represent for us, well, me mostly.

We operate the Powerwalls in a 20% reserve capacity, as recommended by Tesla. Now, I don't know if this is a good faith recommendation as a "best practice," or a fancy way of hiding battery performance issues. Ostensibly, the Powerwalls are warrantied for 10 years to maintain at least 80% capacity. There are "optimal" ways to use batteries that prolong their useful life, and I'm not sure if our demand cycle is "optimal." I do know that air conditioning the garage (which didn't significantly increase our overall energy consumption), is likely the best thing I could have done to prolong their useful life. It often got over 110°F in the garage. I began by insulating the garage door which got sun all afternoon and essentially became a heating element radiating into the space. That helped by several degrees, but it was still hot. We installed the mini-split and then insulated the ceiling above the garage. That was more expensive than it should have been because insulation companies don't like to do "small" jobs. The garage is quite comfortable now, year-round.

In any event, I think there may be an occasion when our solar+storage solution might be insufficient and the grid unavailable. One way to improve the situation would be to reduce the load on the Powerwalls. I'd open circuit breakers in non-essential rooms, leaving just the HVAC, garage and kitchen energized (for the refrigerator). I'd probably also raise the thermostat to 78°F (cooling), where we normally keep it at 77°F.

Mitzi is heading to San Diego in a week to spend two weeks with her new grandson. I will take the opportunity to play with the power and gather some data on household loads with all rooms offline except the kitchen.

But in that scenario, it would also be useful to be able to continue to use the internet and wifi. So I'd need a power supply for that.

I bought a Bluetti EB3A Portable Power Station. I have a combined cable modem/wifi router device. It takes a 12v DC input from a wall-wart, and I'll want to see about doing a direct DC connection (a matter of the right cable connector) and avoid the inverter-to-rectifier losses. With wifi enabled, I'll be able to monitor the level of the Powerwalls and the load they're seeing.

I may lower the thermostat to simulate the higher temperatures and increased loads during the summer months. Hopefully, six to eight hours should be sufficient to give me some idea of how much energy just those loads use.

I know it'll just be "some idea," because in the summer the stucco radiates heat into the house perhaps as much as it radiates it into space. The AC runs all through the night. That's another effect of altering the composition of the atmosphere, where higher concentrations of greenhouse gases, to include water vapor, impede radiative cooling at night.

But I'll at least have some idea. I've also ordered a Kill-a-Watt power measuring device (the 4400, not the fancy new one that supposedly computes costs), so I can get some more granular data on things like the toaster oven, the TV, the devices in my office and so on.

I figure the EB3A will be useful at my workbench, and I'm planning to take it with me to the garden to run the glue gun so I can glue the string lattice I placed between two garden poles for our sugar snap peas and pole beans. It's tied to them now, but they're metal poles with enamel paint, so I expect them to slide down as weight gets added. I used it the other night to charge my 14" M3 MBP while I was using it on the couch. It's lightweight at about 10lbs and has a carry handle, so it's like having an outlet wherever you want one for loads up to 600W. (Not sure how much the glue gun takes, but I guess I'll find out.)

Anyway, might be smart to look into batteries. We're all preppers now.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:58 Sunday, 7 April 2024

I finished the previous post and set out on my morning walk. As I started, I wondered if Mark Anderson would be offended by what I wrote. I briefly considered turning around and writing this post then, but reconsidered and pressed on.

Lots of nuance in the "editorial voice" can be hard to convey in text. This morning's post was written in a lighthearted tone, almost joy, because I'd set out to learn something about PopClip, and hopefully make something useful (Success!), but ended up learning more about Tinderbox along the way.

And I wouldn't have learned anything without the valuable resource that is aTbRef. It's an enormous project, over many years, covering an application that has been evolving constantly over that time. Mark and I have corresponded about aTbRef and how it is structured and what aspects may have sometimes hindered its utility. So he's very open to making it a better resource.

And given the size and scope and duration of the project, it's unsurprising that, here and there, bits of guidance may no longer be strictly operative. But, in my experience, that has been very rare, and Mark likes to point out that guys like Jack Baty and I turn up the those corner cases with some frequency because we're actively working with the app. Michael Becker is another.

It's possible to learn Tinderbox just by playing with it. It rewards commitment. But once you achieve a certain level of understanding, and an appreciation for what is possible, you want a resource for quick answers. That's often the forum. But I also want to try and figure stuff out on my own, as it's more likely I'll actually remember how to do something if I figured it out on my own. (Not always the case. Repetition is necessary, and sometimes I don't need to do something more than once.)

That's where aTbRef comes in, and it is a wealth of useful information and guidance. And as I've mentioned to Mark, it requires close reading, as it's a reference and not a tutorial. And as this morning's exercise has demonstrated again, it's always worthwhile to read to the end of the article. I always enter the proposition that all I want is an answer to my issue. Sometimes, there's more than one. So "read the whole thing," as they used to say in the blogosphere.

The link I included above is to the site map, which bookmark resides permanently in my Favorites bar in Safari.

So, please don't infer criticism of Tinderbox or aTbRef in the previous post. Quite the opposite. It's fun to "figure stuff out," overcome a challenge and accomplish some desired goal. And I had fun this morning.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:28 Sunday, 7 April 2024

Inspired a bit by MacOS X Guru's use of TaskPaper and its command palette, I thought I'd add an extension to PopClip for the Tinderbox menu command "Make Web Link."

In my case, I had previously created a keyboard shortcut for Make Web Link, control-option-command-L. That works, but as it happened I seldom used it. Since I must highlight the anchor text in the $Text of the post, PopClip appears automagically anyway, so I read about how to create extensions to PopClip (link above), and figured I'd give it a try.

It worked. Very nicely! It's at the end of the choices, so I'll want to look at how to move it to the front, but so far, so good.

Now, a brief Tinderbox digression. In the paragraph at the bottom, I wanted to include the text of the PopClip extension. PopClip uses YAML to parse extensions (I have no idea what any of that means), and # is used to denote a comment (Ignore it for processing purposes, although "ignore" is a process.) But Tinderbox uses a few characters like #, and * to create Quick Lists. So if I use # at the beginning of a line of YAML, it exports from Tinderbox as the numeral "1." as the first element of an ordered list.

At first, I thought I could change the text font to Code, which would essentially "escape" all the text from HTML export processing. Wrong!

The last line of the immediately preceding link is,

If you want to use $HTMLMarkupText but have paragraphs starting with *, # or • you can just set $AutomaticIndent to false. This essentially suppresses Quick List functionality.

So I went to Displayed Attributes and added $AutomatiIndent and set it to false. Checked Preview in this post, and there was the numeral 1 again. Still. Whatever.

So, more prowling around in aTbRef, where I found this discussion.

The relevant line there being:

If the $HTMLListItemStart and $HTMLListItemEnd attributes are empty, all quick lists, as defined by lines starting with an * or a #, are disabled and content is exported verbatim (i.e. including the * or # markers).

So that's what I did in the "LIst" pane of the "HTML" pane of the Inspector window. This had the desired effect, and the # appears below at the start of the extension.

But...

That same page also includes this, which would have been helpful right from the start:

To stop a quick list character at the start of a line from being interpreted as quick list markup, either:

Nevertheless, why didn't turning off $AutomaticIndent work? Searching for the attribute $AutomaticIndent takes you to this page, with a red(ish) (salmon?) banner at the top that says $AutomaticIndent is deprecated. Which suggests that the line in the Exporting Code Samples entry I linked to above (See: "Wrong!") should be deleted.

There are five (six, now) links in this post, and I used the PopClip extension on each of them, and it worked flawlessly ever time. I could probably add a "pause" and Return key press and have the whole process automated. Maybe later. Here's the link for PopClip if you're interested. I use it a lot.

The text of the extension is this:

#popclip Tinderbox make web link

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:42 Sunday, 7 April 2024

I'd planned to take it easy this morning after yesterday's effort, but I noticed it was 48°F this morning so a brisk pace was called for anyway.

Pace was 12s faster, 1bpm higher heart rate.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:11 Friday, 5 April 2024

"You've got mail!"

Read a nice note this morning from the pseudonymous MacOSX Guru who pointed out that, "Chris Guidotti is the person who designed the template for the [blog]".

Error noted, and corrected, G! Mind if I call you G? (Ever seen the movie Holy Man with Eddie Murphy? One of my favorites.)

G notes that he's a reader (Thanks!) and enjoys the photos and the Tinderbox posts. (Not the apocalypse posts??)

Anyway, nice to hear from a reader, especially if it's to point out a correction.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:22 Friday, 5 April 2024

It was cool enough this morning that I could wear my sweatshirt and my vest. I like the vest because it has pockets, one of which can hold my sunglasses and another which is large enough to hold the E-PL7. This leaves my arms free.

Yesterday I tried to walk at a faster clip, and my pace was 17'49" per mile. That's with the E-PL10 hanging from a sling behind my back. It was 68°F with 93% humidity too, which I've learned has a significant effect on my pace.

Today, with the E-PL7 in my pocket, my pace was 16'18" per mile. And the temperature was 53°F and 84% humidity. Despite that, my sweatshirt was was damp when I got home.

Average heart rate yesterday was 118bpm, today it was 130bpm.

Anyway, I stopped to take a few pics. This was the only one I really liked, even though it's kind of a nothing shot. I'm much more conscious of the time, so I don't do much in the way of composition or checking the exposure. I may just stop carrying a camera when I'm making a significant effort to exert myself on my walk. Maybe make two walks a week "camera" walks or something.

This was at the clubhouse, which is slightly post-midpoint. It's convenient because I pause the workout on my watch and hit the head and I'm much more comfortable on the second half of the walk. (It's 3.2mi overall.)

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:40 Thursday, 4 April 2024

It's been quiet over in Jack Baty land. It turns out that I didn't have the frequency for Jack Baty/Scribbles dialed into NetNewsWire. Corrected. (That is a lovely UI, BTW.)

Anyway, thought of Jack this morning when I read this over at Bicycle For Your Mind. I feel the same way about Tinderbox, although reading that piece now makes me want to play with TaskPaper, which I also own and probably have since its release or nearabouts (which is apparently not really a word).

I like reading about people using applications that they love. It inspires me, or "gives me ideas," to be less precious, about what I can do in Tinderbox, and Chris Guidotti gave me a bunch of those this morning. Like Mike Hall did in Interstitial Logging, which has a place in "Don't Forget" in Captain's Log.

I need to log those ideas and figure out a path to implementing them.

I wonder if how I might have used Tinderbox as a younger man, if it were available. I used ThinkTank, probably the first outliner available on any personal computer. It appealed to me as the best way to write the kinds of things I wanted to write on a computer. I had a word processor (Only one!), which was pretty highly regarded for its day, PIE:Writer, but I mostly used it to transcribe the oral proceedings of administrative discharge boards, which was work I could have had a legal yeoman do, but I wanted to "play with my computer." It was really work and I didn't do it for long.

But for organizing plans, ThinkTank was brilliant and that did feel like play. I'd bring an outline into a meeting, pass it around, mark it up as the meeting went on. Then I'd go back to my little Apple //c, type in the annotations and changes, print it out and hand that in to the word processing center and they'd turn it into a document, a notice. We didn't have computers on our desks back then, but I bought a //c just to have a computer on my desk.

Anyway, not sure where I'm going with this and I've got to take a walk.

But I enjoy reading posts like Jack's and Chris's and Mike's. Now I need to make some notes.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:26 Thursday, 4 April 2024

Google remains evil.

It's just that amid all the other despicable things going on by tech companies (X, Meta), Google seems, I don't know, less evil by comparison.

Still, evil.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 17:53 Wednesday, 3 April 2024

Like this time.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 17:52 Wednesday, 3 April 2024

This morning I wanted to try and focus on walking at a brisk pace. I often feel as though I'm walking briskly, making an effort, and yet some neighbor walking his dog will pass me. Part of it is my stumpy little legs, I'm sure. The other part is the sheer mass they're compelled to propel. But some of it has to be form, I think.

I nearly always carry a camera. Usually a mirrorless DSLR on a sling with a sizable, albeit lightweight, lens mounted. It rests at the small of my back when it's not in use as that leaves my arms free to swing as I walk. If I pick up the pace a bit, it'll begin bouncing around and that's unpleasant.

If I carry a rangefinder-style camera, it's usually on a wrist strap. That's usually effortless to carry, but I can sometimes feel the asymmetry in my shoulders as this ~1lb pendulum swings from my wrist.

This morning I thought I'd try something different. I put the E-PL10 (lightweight rangefinder-style mirrorless) on the sling. Less weight equals less bounce if I increase the pace?

Well, yes. But, it's a terrible way to carry the camera if I plan to use it. It's a much smaller body than the OM-1 or E-M1, and so the strap kind of interferes with the grip. It does ride well. But if I'm planning on walking at some vigorous pace, do I really want to be taking pictures?

Conflicted.

Anyway, I only took a handful and kept only two. Not sure either one qualifies as a "keeper," but this caught my eye this morning, so I'm sharing it.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:42 Wednesday, 3 April 2024

Mitzi posted our old dryer for sale on Facebook (Marketplace?), explaining why we were selling it. We have a neighbor who is something of a know-it-all. (Which is really irritating to those of us who actually do know everything.)

Well, he decided to tell us that our heat pump dryer won't save any energy, and may end up using more energy than our conventional dryer. That they were only suitable in Europe where they don't rely as much on air conditioning and where it's often difficult to install vents because of older construction.

Because he's an insufferable know-it-all, he cites references. In this case, it was a 2015 study about energy conservation interventions in some south Florida homes. I know all this, not because I'm on Facebook, but because Mitzi is and she shared it with me. Doubt about the wisdom of our purchase was unspoken but detectable. She wanted something to reply to him.

So I read the study. I'm not qualified to speak to the validity of the study methods, but it did seem flawed to me. One of the data points that they relied on was that the temperature in the laundry rooms of homes with interior laundries spiked when clothes were being dried, up into the 90s in many cases. This obviously adds additional heat load to the home's HVAC system.

But the product they were using in the study was a Whirlpool ventless hybrid dryer. It had a heat pump for "eco" mode, but it also had a resistive heating element for those users accustomed to shorter drying times. It was also a typical American 7 cubic foot dryer. What wasn't clear to me from the data, was how often the resistive heating element was used. And a resistive heating element is not only going to heat the air going into the dryer, some of that will be radiated into the room, in addition to any radiant heat from the heat pump.

In any event, the "combined efficiency factor" for this 10-year-old product was 42% less than the LG we purchased (3.7lbs/kWh vs. 6.4lbs/kWh). I don't know if that's because of some consideration of the resistive heating element, or advances in heat pump design. In any event, the LG is much more efficient.

I gave Mitzi a blurb pointing this out and he responded something along the lines, "Well, time will tell." I later learned that he'd just gone through a laundry upgrade and considered and rejected a ventless heat pump dryer on the basis of that 2015 study.

He then felt it was necessary to point out that the largest electrical load in the home, after air conditioning, is the hot water heater and had we considered replacing that with a hybrid model? Mitzi was pleased to reply that we did so the day we moved in.

Anyway, all this did compel me to do some additional reading about washers and dryers. Mitzi is less keen on replacing her washer now, but she said she won't veto it if I do so, which means it's on my nickel. I read that these ventless dryers are almost always sold as pairs with a washer, often to be stacked, but also because of the size difference. It does look rather odd, such a small dryer next to our huge washing machine. But also because these heat pump dryers are even more efficient with the higher efficiency front-loading washers, that run at 1400rpm or greater during the extraction cycle.

We have a top-loading LG washer because Mitzi prefers those to front-loaders, and it spins at 950rpm during the extraction cycle. I've always thought that the clothes felt pretty "dry" coming out of the washer. For most of my life I'd been using the cheap, low-efficiency washing machines and clothes were definitely wet when you put them in the dryer. Our LG is rated as a "high efficiency" washer, it measures the load and only adds enough water as necessary to accommodate the size of the load. And I think 950rpm is still much higher than a conventional washer, and so more water is extracted.

But I'm inclined to "do my best," so I told her I'd go ahead and get the matching washer for the dryer when we get back from our summer vacation. It's back-ordered right now anyway, and we have something of a busy travel schedule coming up. When we get back, we'll have time and resources to do it properly. She can decide if she wants to stack them and remove one of the cabinets and maybe install a sink in the laundry room.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:33 Wednesday, 3 April 2024

I wonder if I should have a glossary in the marmot that explains what I mean when I use certain words.

When I write "existential," I'm not referring to "existence" in the context of the human species. I'm afraid we're like cockroaches, we'll be hard to make extinct. I'm referring to this present civilization. A highly advanced, technology dependent, resource-intensive civilization that supports a population of 8 billion people.

Without this present civilization, we couldn't support that number of people.

And soon, we won't.

That's not a conspiracy. It's just a sober consideration of the facts.

At some point, probably before 2100, certainly not long after, there are going to be far fewer people on this planet.

How we get there is the critical question. There may be humane paths, but taking them is the problem.

People, especially authors, like to point out that there have been "doomsday" predictions for as long as this civilization has existed, and yet it's still here. They like to believe that the present predictions will likewise prove baseless as well. Paul Ehrlich wasn't wrong overall. The "green revolution" occurred where we could employ technology and resource-intensive agricultural methods to feed a burgeoning population. That works as long as you have resources, chiefly energy, though fertilizer and water and a stable climate can't be overlooked.

Some optimists like to point out that birth rates fall as standards of living rise, and that many parts of the world are experiencing problematic population declines. (But don't want immigrants.) So the thinking is economic growth will elevate standards of living, women will have fewer children and populations will decline naturally. Non-violently. Not through starvation and deprivation.

That's assuming there are enough resources remaining to offer that level of economic prosperity to the parts of the world that lack it, and that we can do so without inducing catastrophic climate consequences. (Personally, I'm not convinced 1.5°C of warming is "safe." We're not quite there yet, and things are looking pretty dire already.)

So, it's a race. The optimists don't believe it's already over, and we lost.

If they're right, they have an extremely narrow path.

We shall see, I'm afraid.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:19 Wednesday, 3 April 2024

Watched the first episode of the PBS limited series, The Invisible Shield. It was both fascinating and depressing. I was also not exactly thrilled with the editing. Apparently documentary series now have to be edited like action movies, with constant visual changes every 2-3 seconds. It's fatiguing.

But it's still worth watching, and I'm looking forward to watching the two remaining episodes.

It brought back a lot of unwelcome memories, and it is profoundly troubling. I think the internet has been a net loss for humanity. While I'm certain it has brought about many useful things, I think it has also empowered the very worst of us.

We face existential risks from climate change, resource depletion and loss of the natural world, these are all magnified by the extraordinary power of the internet to sow chaos.

Perhaps it's possible to believe that "all people are basically good," but put a smart phone in their hands and watch what happens. It's not that everyone becomes a conspiracy theorist, or a hyper-partisan, but enough people do that the result is paralysis or chaos.

Paralysis and chaos that represent opportunity to the very worst of us.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:07 Wednesday, 3 April 2024

I asked ChatGPT what the heck these things are called:

Those yellow, bumpy pads at crosswalks are called "truncated domes" or "detectable warning surfaces." They are designed to assist visually impaired individuals by providing tactile feedback, indicating the boundary between the sidewalk and the street.

Shot it with the black E-PL7 the other morning. Didn't shoot anything this morning. Shot so many kite and cedar waxwing shots that I made too much work for myself. Just concentrated on walking briskly this morning.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 12:01 Tuesday, 2 April 2024

Mitzi does the lawn care around here. It was part of the deal moving here. I bought a condo because I despise lawn care, and I made it clear I wasn't going to do it. She agreed, and for the first few years we had various services take care of our lawn.

They all suck.

Now, I'm against lawns as a general principle anyway, but it's a shame to spend money on them and still have them look like crap. These "lawn care professionals," don't care about your lawn. They spread every weed, fungus and parasite from every other lawn they damage to yours. They scalp the grass, break your sprinkler heads, foul the air and create the most godawful racket.

So Mitzi takes care of the lawn, and she uses all-electric lawn care tools. I tried to encourage her to use Makita brand products, since I already have a bunch of 18v Makita batteries and their chargers!

But, no. She did her research and decided on a particular brand of mower. Separate battery. She did buy a Makita string-trimmer (weed whacker), and tried to use it for edging, but she hated it. So she bought a dedicated edger from the same manufacturer who built the mower. But, smaller tool, smaller battery.

Different charger.

I wanted to recover some space on my workbench so I built a 24" shelf to hold all the chargers. They fit with no room to spare.

Now she's decided she can't stand the Makita string-trimmer, so she's going to get the Stihl. (I think all string-trimmers suck, and she'll be unhappy with the Stihl before long too, but I can't tell her that.)

Different charger!

I bought a 36" shelf, and I'm going to try and fit it in where the 24" shelf is.

But I also just wrote to the National Institute of Standards and Technology and asked them what they're doing about standardizing battery operated portable tool charging connections and chargers. They may not be the right people. It might be the Federal Trade Commission, I don't know. But it ought to be an international standard anyway.

I also wrote to ACEEE (American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy) and asked them what they're doing to encourage development and implementation of an international standard for portable tool battery connections and chargers.

This is madness. Every manufacturer wants to use its own proprietary battery connection to try to lock you into their tool line. Personally, I like Makita tools and I'd find a way to live with their products simply to avoid the proliferation of chargers. But Mitzi does the chores, so she gets to choose. I just have to figure out how to make it work.

But it's insanity.

I'm sure my little web-form communiqués will be little more than farts in a tornado, but at least I feel as though I did something.

Won't have to worry about it for long. But still. Every time I turn around I'm reminded of how monumentally stupid capitalism is and that stupidity is why we're going to lose this civilization.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:52 Tuesday, 2 April 2024

Mitzi does the lawn care around here. It was part of the deal moving here. I bought a condo because I despise lawn care, and I made it clear I wasn't going to do it. She agreed, and for the first few years we had various services take care of our lawn.

They all suck.

Now, I'm against lawns as a general principle anyway, but it's a shame to spend money on them and still have them look like crap. These "lawn care professionals," don't care about your lawn. They spread every weed, fungus and parasite from every other lawn they damage to yours. They scalp the grass, break your sprinkler heads, foul the air and create the most godawful racket.

So Mitzi takes care of the lawn, and she uses all-electric lawn care tools. I tried to encourage her to use Makita brand products, since I already have a bunch of 18v Makita batteries and their chargers!

But, no. She did her research and decided on a particular brand of mower. Separate battery. She did buy a Makita string-trimmer (weed whacker), and tried to use it for edging, but she hated it. So she bought a dedicated edger from the same manufacturer who built the mower. But, smaller tool, smaller battery.

Different charger.

I wanted to recover some space on my workbench so I built a 24" shelf to hold all the chargers. They fit with no room to spare.

Now she's decided she can't stand the Makita string-trimmer, so she's going to get the Stihl. (I think all string-trimmers suck, and she'll be unhappy with the Stihl before long too, but I can't tell her that.)

Different charger!

I bought a 36" shelf, and I'm going to try and fit it in where the 24" shelf is.

But I also just wrote to the National Institute of Standards and Technology and asked them what they're doing about standardizing battery operated portable tool charging connections and chargers. They may not be the right people. It might be the Federal Trade Commission, I don't know. But it ought to be an international standard anyway.

I also wrote to ACEEE (American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy) and asked them what they're doing to encourage development and implementation of an international standard for portable tool battery connections and chargers.

This is madness. Every manufacturer wants to use its own proprietary battery connection to try to lock you into their tool line. Personally, I like Makita tools and I'd find a way to live with their products simply to avoid the proliferation of chargers. But Mitzi does the chores, so she gets to choose. I just have to figure out how to make it work.

But it's insanity.

I'm sure my little web-form communiqués will be little more than farts in a tornado, but at least I feel as though I did something.

Won't have to worry about it for long. But still. Every time I turn around I"m reminded of how monumentally stupid capitalism is and that stupidity is why we're going to lose this civilization.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:52 Tuesday, 2 April 2024

Florida was in the news again yesterday. Given the ongoing circus/horror show in this state, I'm surprised we're not leading the news every night.

The good news: The Florida Supreme Court decided that two citizen ballot initiatives, state constitutional amendments, will be allowed to appear on the ballot this fall. One is to codify access to reproductive health services, including abortion; and the other is for legalizing recreational marijuana.

The bad news: The Florida Supreme Court also let a six-week limit abortion ban go into effect. Which is bad news for women's access to reproductive healthcare, but it does have the salutary effect of placing what's at stake on the ballot in bold relief.

Republicans have held a monopoly on power in this state for over a generation. Having achieved power in the 90s, they wasted no time ensuring they'd hold onto it in perpetuity. This has had the effect of driving the Republican Party ever rightward, as the only way to win elective office, for the majority of offices, is to be more Republican than your opponent. Essentially winning the election in the primary. Today we have many elected officials who are little more than sociopaths, because cruelty, bigotry and indifference to suffering are character assets to Republican primary voters.

The success of citizen ballot initiatives in granting returning citizens access to the ballot gave them a scare, and they've been working very hard to make it near to impossible for citizen ballot initiatives to succeed, but they're not there yet.

I was worried a state supreme court that's as thoroughly red as its "elected" state government would grant Republicans' wish to keep those two measures off the ballot this fall, because they will drive turnout.

I don't know when, if ever, we'll get a chance to elect a truly representative government in this state, but at least we've been given an opportunity to help keep Trump out of office by mobilizing otherwise disaffected voters in the state.

As April Fools days go, I'll take it.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:54 Tuesday, 2 April 2024

Florida was in the news again yesterday. Given the ongoing circus/horror show in this state, I'm surprised we're not leading the news every night.

The good news: The Florida Supreme Court decided that two citizen ballot initiatives, state constitutional amendments, will be allowed to appear on the ballot this fall. One is to codify access to reproductive health services, including abortion; and the other is for legalizing recreational marijuana.

The bad news: The Florida Supreme Court also let a six-week limit abortion ban go into effect. Which is bad news for women's access to reproductive healthcare, but it does have the salutary effect of placing what's at stake on the ballot in bold relief.

Republicans have held a monopoly on power in this state for over a generation. Having achieved power in the 90s, they wasted no time ensuring they'd hold onto it in perpetuity. This has had the effect of driving the Republican Party ever rightward, as the only way to win elective office, for the majority of offices, is to be more Republican than your opponent. Essentially winning the election in the primary. Today we have many elected officials who are little more than sociopaths, because cruelty, bigotry and indifference to suffering are character assets to Republican primary voters.

The success of citizen ballot initiatives in granting returning citizens access to the ballot gave them a scare, and they've been working very hard to make it near to impossible for citizen ballot initiatives to succeed, but they're not there yet.

I was worried a state supreme court that's as thoroughly red as its "elected" state government would grant Republicans' wish to keep those two measures off the ballot this fall, because they will drive turnout.

I don't know when, if ever, we'll get a chance to elect a truly representative government in this state, but at least we've been given an opportunity to help keep Trump out of office by mobilizing otherwise disaffected voters in the state.

As April Fools days go, I'll take it.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:54 Tuesday, 2 April 2024