Idle thoughts: The Matrix Retrained

The Matrix, and instead of human bodies as batteries, human brains and the memories within provide training data for the Matrix.  The first generation of human minds hooked up to the Matrix was rich with new information, but after several generations the humans who grow up in the Matrix can only regurgitate AI slop.  The Matrix is stuck and cannot evolve further without minds that have had real world experiences.

The great bluesky migration and making your own custom feeds

I joined bluesky in 2023 and had been trying to use it as a place to follow authors/creatives and twitter as a place to follow news/politics.  With more and more people leaving twitter entirely for bluesky, I needed a way to separate content from different users.

Bluesky allows you build lists of users, and you can then see posts from users in the list on the Posts tab of the list.  

It's a little clunky, however, to have to navigate into each list; it would be much nicer to be able to tap between lists like you're tapping between the "Following" and "Discover" feeds along the top of your home screen. 

Well, you can create your own custom feed according to bluesky developer documentation , but that requires that you have your own server to deploy it on.  You can alternatively use the skyfeed app, which will host your feed and provide a GUI for creating your custom feed.

Then I simply add this custom feed to "My feeds" and I can quickly navigate between different types of streams.  

This doesn't guarantee that "Author posts" will be all about creative work; I could try to create more complicated rules for that, but it works well enough for now.

Literacy rates in the U.S.

 I saw the following tweet from Jorie Graham, which claims that 21% of U.S. adults are illiterate and 54% of adults have a literacy level below 6th grade and thought, "can that really be true?" and it became today's mini-rabbit hole.  

Sadly, Jorie gives no sources for these numbers, but with a quick check of the Wikipedia page on Literacy in the United States we find in the summary:

• "over 20% of adult Americans have a literacy proficiency at or below Level 1.  Adults in this range have difficulty using or understanding print materials."  So not completely illiterate, but likely unable to get through this blog post. 
• "54% of adults in the United States lack English literacy proficiency."  This number comes from a Gallup report that defines literacy proficiency as scoring Level 3 or higher on the PIAAC.  

Okay, so this raises questions:

What is the PIAAC?  The the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, and has literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving assessments. 

What is the distribution of Americans at each level of the PIAAC?  There's a short report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) that 

What does each level signify?  The literacy proficieny levels section of this NCES page has some long descriptions; the competence groups section of the PIAAC Wikipedia page has useful summaries.

I looked at the literacy sample items section of this NCES page in order to try to get a more practical feel for the kinds of skills readers are supposed to have at each level.  The descriptions of the levels and the sample items shown on the NCES page don't seem to match up in difficulty to me; I'm not sure what to make of that. Googling for "piaac literacy sample items" turns up similar sample materials, but just as examples of test items without matching them to a particular level.  I'm hoping that a well-meaning person at NCES mapped the sample items to levels badly.

How are non-native English speakers handled?  Not very well.  The above reports ignore the issue entirely, and while there is another report on English Literacy and Language Minorities in the United States, trying to apply the information in here to get a succinct set of results is too much work for a weekend mini-rabbit hole.

The following table summarizes what I've looked at, and yes, it's terrifying that half the adult population in the U.S. lacks literacy proficiency.  

 

Goodbye to our 2008 Prius

Back in 2011, we replaced our 1996 Jetta with a 2008 Prius, and like with the Jetta, I signed away the title on the Prius to Good News Garage.  

As with the Jetta, I kept a record of all the maintenance receipts, gas receipts, and (most of) the tolls, so I have a reasonably complete dataset on the costs of owning this car for 13 years and 124k miles. 

Very roughly speaking, we're talking $4000/year, a little more than the Jetta**, and $0.42/mile, somewhat less than the Jetta.  Some interesting things to note:

• Even though gas was more expensive during the lifetime of the Prius, averaging $2.997/gallon, we spent nearly $1500 less on gas vs the Jetta, because of the superior fuel efficiency of the Prius
• We spent much less on insurance for the Prius, largely because I was a mid-20's unmarried male driver for the first three years of owning the Jetta.
• We bought no significant accessories for the Prius; in the Jetta, we swapped out the cassette deck for a CD player.  The Prius came with a 6-CD changer.  The new car (a Hyundai Tucson PHEV) connects to our phones.  

** though my data on the costs of the Jetta did not include some costs that I captured for the Prius. 

Vermont General Election 2024: Presidential Election

President and Vice President has seven candidates, a far cry from the twenty-one candidates four years ago.  

Claudia de la Cruz and Karina Garcia, the Socialism and Liberation party.  The first item on their platform page states, "The 100 largest corporations in America should be seized from their billionaire owners and turned into public property – owned by the working class that created their vast wealth in the first place."  For those who are confused, *this* is what socialism actually looks like.  It's a bold platform, but...

Rachele Fruit and Dennis Richter, Socialist Workers party.  They appear to not have a campaign website.  There are a few articles about Rachele Fruit, including one from February when Margaret Trowe was her running mate, but nothing that gives a sense of a campaign platform.  No thank you.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, Democratic party.  Their site includes 80 pages of platform initiatives (PDF, or you can read on the website).  Agree with it or not, but don't pretend she doesn't have any policies.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Nicole Shanahan, We the People party.  They were too late in dropping out of the race to be removed from the VT ballot.  RFKJr's website claims Biden cut his Secret Service protection in retaliation for endorsing Trump, but he's been lying about this for over a year.  

Chase Oliver and Mike Ter Maat, Libertarian party.  They have a platform page that lays out libertarian ideals, without much detail on implementation.

Donald Trump and JD Vance, Republican party.  Right now (Sunday, Oct 20) when I go to donaldjtrump.com, that address redirects to https://secure.winred.com/trump-national-committee-jfc/lp-website-fry-cook.  If I go direclty to the URL of a subpage of their campaign site, like https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform, I remain on the donaldjtrump.com domain.  The redirect feels really weird for a major campaign; at first I thought someone had hacked the main site and redirected to a joke page, but Trump really did "work" at McD's today.  At any rate, the "official" RNC platform is 16 pages, or 1/5 the size of Harris's.  Project 2025 is considerably larger, but we are supposed to believe that it's not the plan for Trump's second term.

Cornel West and Melina Abdullah, Peace and Justice party.  They have a platform page centered around justice; there is considerably more detail here than on the Libertarian platform.

Vermont General Election 2024: Congressional Elections

The primaries are over, and it's on to the general election.  Every federal race is contested, though none are competitive in this state (the Presidential race is obviously very close on a national level).

Representative has four candidates:

• Becca Balint, the Democratic candidate and incumbent.  On her issues page, she mentions concrete action she has taken to try to move those issues forward.  The only serious candidate in this group. 
• Mark Coester, the Republican/Libertarian candidate.  He has an issues page, but no concrete proposals.  He did not fill out his VTDigger profile.  According to the 7 Days Q&A, he thinks we should abandon Ukraine to Putin, so, no thanks.
• Jill "Jessy" Diamondstone, the Vermont Peace and Justice candidate, does not appear to have a campaign website, couldn't be bothered to fill out her VTDigger profile, and according to the 7 Days Q&A, is essentially unreachable.  
• Adam Ortiz, an Independent candidate, has a campaign website that looks more like an ad for his business than a serious attempt to become the representative from Vermont.  According to the 7 Days Q&A, he also thinks we should abandon Ukraine to Putin, so, no thanks. 

Senator has five candidates:

• Steve Berry, an Independent candidate, thinks freedom of speech and the right to assemble were suspended during Covid, (from the main page of his website).  Hard pass.  
• Mark Stewart Greenstein, the Epic party candidate.  His campaign HQ is in Connecticut, he appears to be a CT citizen, and it's unclear why he's allowed to run in VT.  Hard pass.
• Matt Hill, the Libertarian candidate, lists "bringing Federal jobs to Vermont" as the first bullet point on the main page of his campaign website, which feels really weird for a Libertarian candidate.  I thought they were all about eliminating Federal jobs.  On his VTDigger profile, he states the border is the number one issue before Congress, but does not seem to advocate for either of the libertarian perspectives on immigration.  Pass.
• Gerald Malloy, (not to be confused with Gerald Malloy from South Carolina) the Republican candidate, is running for Senate again, after losing to Peter Welch two years ago.  I think there are issues he wants to address that make sense.  I don't think he makes a sufficiently good case for why he would be better at effecting positive change than Bernie.   
• Bernie Sanders, an Independent candidate with the endorsement of the Democratic party, and the incumbent.  In the past, I have complained that Vermont is too slow to update its represenation at the national level.  Happily, Leahy finally retired in 2022.  Sanders is not retiring this year, will almost certainly be reelected, and will be nearly 90 when his next term expires.  
  
  I went to go look at Bernie's issues page; below is a screenshot of his website's navigation bar.  That's right, "Shop" is the number two nav item after "Meet Bernie".  That's some bullshit right there.
  
  
  
  
• Justin Schoville, the Vermont Peace and Justice candidate.  Unlike many of the other Peace and Justice candidates, Justin filled out his VTDigger profile.  Like Gerald, I think there are issues he wants to address that make sense, but I don't think he makes a case for why he would be better than Bernie.

Vermont General Election 2024: Statewide Elections

The primaries are over, and it's on to the general election.  Every statewide race is contested, but it's unclear if any are competitive...

Attorney General has three candidates:

• Charity Clark is the Democratic candidate and the current AG, elected two years ago.  She worked in the AG's office for eight years prior, so she is the most experienced candidate.  Her candidate site doesn't list any positions.  The About page for the AG office states the Vision as "A Vermont where the public interest and the natural environment are protected by a just and effective state government."  WCAX's reporting on the AG race says "she’s focused on online safety protections for kids, a growing concern with artificial intelligence, and addressing what she calls a youth vaping crisis."  The VTDigger profile has more on PCBs, domestic violence, and gun safety.  I would like to see more focus on the opiod epidemic, as that is a root cause of the current public safety concerns in Vermont.
• Kevin Gustafson is the Green Mountain Peace and Justice candidate.  He has no campaign site, the Q&A with 7 Days links to the party's website, which doesn't mention he is a candidate.
• Ture Nelson is the Republican candidate.  His positions mirror his answers to VTDigger's profile questions, and are concerning.  His focus seems to be on investigating whether public servants are "doing their jobs", with no mention of the opioid epidemic.  

Auditor of Accounts has two candidates:

• Doug Hoffer is the Democratic candidate and the incumbent with 12 years of service.  He has been excellent in the position, but is 72.  My one question for him is whether he has a successor trained up to take over when it's time for him to retire.
• H. Brooke Paige runs for multiple state positions every election cycle.  He is not a serious candidate, and it's difficult to take seriously his evidence-free accusations that Hoffer isn't doing his job.   

Secretary of State has two candidates:

• Sarah Copeland Hanzas, the Democratic candidate and current secretary.  I like that the office has been working on civic engagement.  I'm not sure it should be the highest priority, but I also can't offer an alternative highest priority.
• H. Brooke Paige, the Republican candidate, who believes vote-by-mail is unconstitutional and repealing it is his top priority.  Again, not a serious candidate, and it's sad the Republican party can't do better.

State Treasurer has two candidates:

• Joshua Bechhoefer is the Republican candidate.  He does not appear to have a campaign website.  His top priority, if elected, is to provide "more options for pensions where possible" without any further detail.  That sounds like dismantling the pension system in favor of 401k's to me, and not a good idea.  
• Mike Pieciak, the Democratic candidate and current treasurer.  His top priority is housing, which the state has invested in during his term.  Homelessness is another root cause of the current public safety concerns in Vermont, so it makes sense to me that encouraging housing growth is a focus for the Treasurer.

Lieutenant Governor has three candidates.  This is the only race that seems remotely competitive.

• Ian Diamondstone is the Vermont Peace and Justice candidate.  Like Kevin Gustafson, he appears to have no campaign website, and his VTDigger profile, which he did not bother to provide answers to, points to the party website, which does not mention he is a candidate.  I don't understand the purpose of running if one isn't going to do the bare minimum of campaigning.
• John Rodgers is a former Democratic senator and representative from the Northeast Kingdom, who switched parties this year to be the Republican candidate.
• David Zuckerman is the Democratic candidate and current Lt Governor.  I am a little concerned that he doesn't seem to have the full support of his party: he faced a challenger who took 36% of the vote in the primary, and a story about being reprimanded by the VT House Speaker was run in the leadup to that primary election.

There is video of a debate between Rodgers and Zuckerman.  Starts off very friendly and gets a little heated when the candidates start to ask each other questions.  There isn't a lot that separates the two.

Governor has five candidates:

• Esther Charlestin is the Democratic candidate.  Her policy page is focused on three issues and has concrete proposals.  I would like to see a broader platform from a gubernatorial candidate.  I hope, after the election, she is able to continue to advocate for these proposals.
• June Goodband is the Vermont Peace and Justice candidate.  She has a full and thoughtful platform.  I am concerned that she has no political experience and is starting by seeking the governorship.
• Kevin Hoyt is an Independent candidate who has been arrested and charged with stalking and harassment.  He does not have a campaign website.  Some of his answers to the VTDigger questions are ... not worthy of a gubernatorial candidate. 
• Eli "Poa" Mutino is an Independent candidate.  His issues page highlights three important issues, but there are no concrete proposals, and the governor needs to have a broader view.  
• Phil Scott is the Republican candidate and sitting governor.  His website doesn't appear to contain any policy or position statements.  He did not bother to fill out the VTDigger profile.  He will handily win another term. 

There is video of a debate between Charlestin and Scott.  Watching this, I was struck by Scott's dismissal of the work done in the state legislature, arguing for a shorter legislative session with the logic, "they pass most of the bills in the last week."  He was a state senator for 10 years; he should know better.

Vermont General Election 2024: Local Candidates

The primaries are over, and it's on to the general election.  Among the local races, there is only one competitive race, for State Representative.

High Bailiff has a single nominee, Johnny Trutor, whose campaign is a Facebook page with a jokey video.  

State Representative is a rematch of the Democratic party primary:

• Missa Aloisi, now running as a Progressive.  She is a small business owner with two children in Burlington School District.  Missa's priorities are dignity & safety, equity, and affordability.
• Abbey Duke, a small business owner with two children in Burlington School District.  😁 Abbey  was appointed to Emma Mulvaney-Stanak's seat after she was elected Mayor of Burlington in March.  Her priorities include housing, education funding reform, and climate action.  She is also a neighbor.

State Senator has three nominees, from which we vote for three:

• Phil Baruth, the current senate president pro tempore, advocate for gun control, paid sick leave, and education (personalized learning plans, which have seen spotty implementation).
• Martine Larocque Gulick, a current senator.  Her top priorities are reforming education funding, housing, and healthcare.
• Tanya Vyhovsky, a current senator who previously served as a state rep.  Her platform priorities are economic justice, social justice, environmental justice, and reproductive justice.

These are the three who won the Democratic primary.  Stewart Ledbetter, who also ran in the primary, chose not to run as an independent or for another party.

Past Lives (2023)

 Got Past Lives out of the library and watched it last night, so now I've seen 3 of the Oscar-nominated films for Best Picture from 2023.  I think Barbie is still my favorite, but definitely enjoyed Past Lives.  There isn't much plot to speak of; in the opening scene we are presented three people at a bar and voiceover wondering how they're related to one another.  We then jump back 24 years to the childhood of two of them in South Korea, just before one of them emigrates** to Canada.  We then jump to 12 years later, when these two reconnect for a while online, and the one in Canada meets and marries a New Yorker.  Finally we return to present day, when the person who stayed in Korea visits New York.

Because Celine Song (the writer/director) doesn't invent events to create artificial drama, the story can focus on the thoughts and feelings the characters have and their interrelationships.  There are strong themes about living across/between cultures.

I fondly recalled the Before Trilogy while watching this, and prefer this style of storytelling to that of One Day, the series (I haven't read the book or seen the film), which I felt invented things for the characters to do and to happen to them to create artificial drama.  

** in the subtitles, they speak of "immigrating to Canada", but IMO while in South Korea they are emigrating from South Korea to Canada.  

A House of Sky and Breath (Sarah J. Maas)

Five years ago I reported on the frequency of throat bobs in Sarah J. Maas's books. She has since published four more books.  I've read three of them and am happy to share an updated chart of the progression of throat bobs across Maas's ouevre.  The steady rate since page 4800 has continued, with a few runs here and there during especially emotional moments.

One major change is the number of unnamed characters whose throats bob.  For the first 7000 pages or so, only named characters throats bobbed, and now four unnamed characters' throats have bobbed in the last 2000+ pages (though I suspect that the unnamed alpha mystic will get a name in House of Flame and Shadow).

  

House of Sky and Breath boasts the third-most throat bobs among the novels:

... and Bryce is now tied with Aelin as the queen of throat bobbing, with a whole book to take first place.

Doctor Sleep (2019)

I got Doctor Sleep out of the library and watched it last night.  It's Ewan MacGregor's "reluctant mentor" warm-up before the Kenobi series?  It's the sequel to The Shining that I'm not sure we needed?  At 150 minutes, it's a little longer than the original film, but there's a lot of material to get through.

This film is a sequel to the Kubrick film, which departed in a number of ways from the novel, and so Doctor Sleep the movie must make some changes to account for the fact that the Overlook Hotel survived while Dick Halloran did not.  

The cast is excellent all around, with special kudos to Alex Essoe, Henry Thomas, and Roger Dale Floyd, who play Wendy, Jack and (young) Danny Torrance.

I would have liked some members of the True Knot to feel less like nameless goons.  Rose, Andi, and Crow Daddy get distinct personalities; I couldn't even tell you what powers the others had.  Rose would only let people into her crew who could contribute, so each member of the True Knot should feel like a more fully fleshed out character.  If there isn't time in a 2.5 hour movie to develop them, they should be cut. 

I think I was hoping for a more introspective story about Danny and his past; the poster, which shows young Danny facing grown-up Danny facing each other in a hallway of the Overlook Hotel, seems to promise this.  Instead, this is really Abra's story of fighting psychic vampires where the titular "Doctor Sleep" plays a supporting role as Abra's mentor.  Which is fine.  It's just not clear that this needs to be a sequel to The Shining, or could instead have been an independent story.

Vermont Primaries 2024

While the Presidential primary was back in March on Town Meeting Day, the primaries for state offices and US Congress will take place in August.  There are three ballots to choose from: Democratic, Progressive, or Republican.  I'm going to vote on the Democratic one, because there are no contested elections on the Progressive ballot, and only one contested election on the Republican ballot (for Lieutenant Governor). 

The Progressive party will not have candidates for US Senator, US Rep, Secretary of State, State Senator, State Rep, or High Bailiff.  The Republican party will not have candidates for State Senator, State Rep, or High Bailiff, so the election for my local reps in the Statehouse is the Dem primary.  The Republican ballot also has the same guy, H. Brooke Paige, as the only candidate for Secretary of State, Auditor, and Attorney General.  This is not a serious candidate.

Going down the Demoncratic party ballot:

US Senator has a single nominee, Bernie Sanders, who will win again in the general election.  

US Rep has a single nominee, Becca Balint, who will win again in the general.

Governor has two nominees vying for the right to lose to Phil Scott in the general:

• Esther Charlestin, whose prior political experience is a a little over a year on the Middlebury selectboard. 
• Peter Duval, who was kicked off the Underhill selectboard three years ago. 

Lieutenant Governor has two nominees:

• Thomas Renner, who serves on the Winooski City Council.  His platform focuses on climate action, housing for all, affordability, and social justice.
• David Zuckerman is the current Lt Governor, after taking a break in 2020 to let Molly Gray take the role for a term to improve her chances at gaining the US Rep seat that Peter Welch vacated in 2022.  He doesn't have a platform page, but his About page notes, "He is particularly passionate about addressing the climate, healthcare, housing, and tax crises." 

State Treasurer has a single nominee, Mike Pieciak, the current treasurer.

Secretary of State has a single nominee, Sarah Copeland Hanzas, the current secretary.

Auditor of Accounts has a single nominee, Doug Hoffer, who has been excellent in the position, but has served for 12 years now and is 72.  I hope he is training a successor.

Attorney General has a single nominee, Charity Clark, who is the current AG.

State Senator has four nominees, from which we vote for three:

• Phil Baruth, the current senate president pro tempore, advocate for gun control, paid sick leave, and education (personalized learning plans, which have seen spotty implementation).
• Martine Larocque Gulick, a current senator.  Her top priorities are reforming education funding, housing, and healthcare.
• Stewart Ledbetter, who is new to running for office, but not to VT politics, having been a political journalist for 40 years.  His top priorities are housing, supporting the middle class, community safety, and climate change.   
• Tanya Vyhovsky, a current senator who previously served as a state rep.  Her platform priorities are economic justice, social justice, environmental justice, and reproductive justice.

State Representative has two nominees:

• Missa Aloisi, a small business owner with two children in Burlington School District.  Missa's priorities are dignity & safety, equity, and affordability 
• Abbey Duke, a small business owner with two children in Burlington School District.  😁 Abbey  was appointed to Emma Mulvaney-Stanak's seat after she was elected Mayor of Burlington in March.  Her priorities include housing, education funding reform, and climate action.

Eisgruber's State of the University letter

Recommended read.  This essay largely does an excellent job of addressing some of the challenges "elite" schools are facing today, with one stumble, I think.  The following two sentences get their own paragraph:

'

I have little sympathy for the lingo of “safe spaces” and “microaggressions.”  They strike me as the wrong way to describe the University’s inclusivity goals.

'

... and they strike me as the words of a person whose place at Princeton was never questioned because of their race, or was advised while there that their grade in certain professors' courses could be improved by wearing a short skirt and sitting in the front row.    

I get that what Eisgruber *means* is that he would prefer a different terminology; he declares in the following paragraph that Princeton offers 'what might ... be called "safe spaces"'.  However, he offers no reason for why he'd prefer a different terminology, and provides no alternative terminology, so his little diatribe is not a useful one.  It would have been better to simply exclude that paragraph from the essay. 

Makt Myrkranna (Valdimar Asmundsson, 1901)

I read the 2016 English translation by Hans Corneel De Roos of Valdimar Asmundsson's 1901 Icelandic "translation" of Bram Stoker's Dracula, serialized into his weekly publication Fjallkonan.  It is significant because the Icelandic text differs quite a lot from the original text: the scenes in Transylvania are expanded, and the scenes in England are cut to 10% of the text in Dracula.  They are really little more than an outline, which is a shame.  It's unclear why Asmundsson cut the story short, but I can't really recommend it as a story, only for the curious. 

Some years ago I read the Icelandic sagas, so I found it interesting early on in Makt Myrkranna where Harker self deprecatingly notes, "I am too much the lawyer." (translator's note says it could also be read as "completely the lawyer")  In the sagas, poets, warriors, and those who knew the law were held in the highest regard, so this would read a little weirdly for someone coming from that tradition.

The foreward of the translation also mentions the Thames Torso Murders, which I had not heard of before.  I guess Jack the Ripper was the more acceptable serial killer for late 20th century kids to learn about?