50 thoughts on “An open thread”

  1. Granddaughter #1 has a birthday this month. Her birthday doodle is done.
    http://mcain6925.com/obsidian/Charlie-birthday-12.pdf
    She’s getting the money indirectly. She inherited my narrow palate, which causes all sorts of teeth alignment problems when all the adult molars come in. I’m covering the orthodontics bill to spread her palate now, which has to be done before the upper jaw bones finish fusing.

  3. As long as I can remember, when bad jobs numbers come out, the President reacts by talking about how he will act, or how he wants Congress to act, to get the economy back on track. Today, when a bad job reports came out, the Presidential response was to fire the (non-partisan) head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
    Shoot the Messenger at its finest.

  4. Also, ensures that in the future, reliable statistics and actual facts are harder, or impossible, to come by.

  6. The BLS has been struggling a lot as of late, most all of it caused by staffing shortages. They’ve stopped collecting inflation data in a number of places as well and are imputing (modeling) a lot of the data for those measures. This from June, but getting more play at the WSJ in the last few weeks:
    https://www.npr.org/2025/06/05/nx-s1-5424367/inflation-data-cpi-government-job-shortages
    The vandalism of the federal government continues apace. It’s not being shrunk and drowned, it’s being given the Khashoggi treatment and leaving one bag at a time.

  7. The WH is now lobbying not only for the Nobel Peace prize but also the one for economics for teaching the world trade economics. The ‘shooting the messenger’ to deal with job numbers should bolster that claim even more.
    But why rely on those commie Swedes (and worse: Norwegians) for prizes? The US should come up with their(!) own presti(di)gous awards that a POTUS approved committee could award to the worthy (in particular POTUS).
    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/white-house-lobbying-nobel-prize-trump-takes-farcical-turn-rcna222492

  8. Open thread, so I found this (about and with an extract from Max Bennett’s A Brief History of Intelligence) on the origins of human language, its relation to AI and other aspects, interesting. Also, it sent me down a rabbit hole about Kanzi, whom I had completely forgotten:
    https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/the-one-weird-trick-that-gave-humans?utm_source=substack&publication_id=54748&post_id=169644176&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=false&r=w2vx&triedRedirect=true

  11. Care to elaborate on that, Charles?
    Most likely something to do with the Chomsky-Westheimer theorem, but you know Charles….such a joker.

  12. Well, the one who is best able to whisper sweet nothings in a potential mate’s ear is likely to have better mating success…
    Here are two articles and a book that make the case for sexual selection pressures having an impact on language development.
    “The article argues for a hybrid model where early language evolved through natural selection for collaboration, followed by sexual selection for displaying superior intelligence, leading to the development of modern, expressive language. It emphasizes sexual selection’s role in driving the “supercharged” nature of human language compared to other primates.”
    The evolution of language by sexual selection
    “Miller discusses how language may have evolved as a sexually selected trait to display cognitive abilities and intelligence, serving as a courtship tool. This review article explores the idea that verbal creativity and eloquence signal genetic fitness.”
    Sexual selection for indicators of intelligence
    “The book argues that many human cognitive traits, including language, evolved through sexual selection as displays of intelligence and creativity to attract mates. Miller posits that language’s complexity and expressiveness serve as fitness indicators in mate choice.”
    The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature

  14. It seems like the lit there is suggesting that sexual selection *might* have a role in development of language, but given that the evidence shows that more intelligent mothers have lower infant mortality rates, it could be that it’s actually natural selection having an effect that looks like it could be sexual selection – that is, it’s not the selection of mates that is the mechanism for the trend, but rather the survival of the offspring that is the driving mechanism. I’d guess it could be kind of hard to tell if it is mate/mate communication or parent/child communication that is the dominant factor. Seems like a bit of a black box and a set of assumptions.

  15. I wish I could remember where this observation came from, which was that when you have (as many languages do) ‘gender-indexed’ speech, the mother, as care-giver, has to be fluent in both, in order to teach male children how to appropriately communicate. This would obviously have a great impact on a lot of other things that one could speculate on, but probably impossible to prove.
    I tend to think that all languages have some sort of gender-indexed differences so these effects are going to exist in all cultures, but it is the accretion of cultural behavior/norms rather than something in the chromosones.

  16. Taking a hard turn in a different direction:
    Headline in today’s Washington Post: “House issues subpoena for Epstein files”. Which is good to know. (And about time, considering how the Trump Justice Department has stonewalled.)
    But what got me was the subhead: “It’s unclear how the Justice Department will respond to the request.” Do you morons not know? It’s not a request. It’s an order! Not that the Trump administration recognizes the distinction.

  17. At the risk of stepping on wj’s comment, I’ll take another hard turn in a different direction.
    We mostly talk about politics and related stuff here, but sometimes share from our personal lives as well. Apologies in advance if this is inappropriate or unwelcome.
    Back in early June, I came down with COVID. After five years of somehow avoiding the stupid virus, it finally caught up with me. The week or so of having the active virus was definitely no fun, but was really (in my fortunate case) only incrementally worse than a bad case of the flu. Fever, headache, body ache. I drank a lot of fluids, took a lot of ibuprophen, ate a lot of Indica gummies, and basically slept it off.
    A few days after all of that, the post-COVID stuff kicked in. Profound fatigue – like, I would brush my teeth and need a rest afterwards – for about a week.
    And then, and continuing to now, intense myalgia. And weirdly specific – shoulders (can’t raise my arms), hamstrings, calves and shins. SImple things are painful. Sleeping through the night is out of the question, I have to get up every hour or two and walk around the house to shake off the cramping pain in my legs.
    None of this is meant as a complaint, really. A lot of folks get this much worse than what I’m experiencing. What it is, for me, is a wake up call.
    I’m within shouting distance of 70, and I’ve been remarkably lucky, health-wise. Never had a serious illness, never broken a bone, never had surgery, never had a joint replaced. Still have all my original teeth, for crying out loud. A very lucky guy.
    This experience has been my introduction to the world of chronic illness, and specifically the world of chronic pain. It’s been eye-opening.
    My wife suffered with PMR for about a year during 2023-2024, the symptoms of which are a lot like what I”m dealing with now. While I could sympathize with what she was going through, and picked up as much of the household stuff as I could so she could rest, I don’t think I really understood what she was experiencing.
    Now, I have a better idea.
    It has been a sobering, even chastening, experience. So many people live with this, or similar, for years and years. All their lives, in some cases. The best information I’ve been able to find about my stuff is that it should pass in “weeks to months”. Which sucks, but at least I know there is an endpoint to it. At some point, I’ll be back to an acceptable version of normal.
    I am, frankly, grateful for the almost-70 years of good fortune I’ve had, and oddly enough am grateful for the crap I’m dealing with now. I’ve had to cut some stuff out of my life because it’s just too hard to do right now, and that has been the occasion for a lot of reflection and re-focusing. Mostly, I’m learing the hard lesson of accepting limitations with grace, which is not something I’ve really had to do much of before now.
    It’s an interesting adventure.
    Anyway, I hope this isn’t TMI. These thoughts have just been banging around in my head for the last couple of weeks, and I felt the need to share them somewhere. I consider all of you friends, even if in the weird Internet age way of connecting with people online. I appreciate the opportunity to spill all this tea here, it’s actually helpful, and I appreciate your forbearance in putting up with the rambling.
    Better days, y’all! Onward and upward.

  18. Also, too:
    Do you morons not know?
    Yes, they definitely know. But for some reason, or collection of reasons, a remarkable number of people and institutions are amazingly reluctant to name things for what they are. At least, when it comes to Trump.
    What we’re seeing is the failure of the institutions that are meant to preserve constitutional governance and the rule of law. Not just failure, they seem to be actively running away from the responsibilities of their role in our grand experiment.
    Everybody is afraid of the bully. Nobody wants to upset the apple cart, even though the apple cart has already been smashed to bits and the apples rolled into the gutter.
    One way or another, the reign of DJT will end. I really don’t know what we will be left with.
    One thing that does seem to be clear is that everybody else on the planet is figuring out that a MAGA United States is a fickle and utterly self-interested actor, and are taking steps to deal with that. Among other things, some of them are discovering that they don’t really need us all that badly. We can be worked around.
    Another 3 1/2 years to go.

  19. russell @01.08: definitely not too much info. It’s one thing to understand something intellectually, and another to understand it viscerally.
    Funnily enough, I have been grappling with a version of this for several weeks, not as a result of covid, but because of something that recurs every several years and is usually solved fast with a new and different orthopaedic pillow. The symptom is a lot of neck and shoulder pain, but the result is that I have been getting only pathetic amounts of sleep, usually only a few (3-4) hours in total a night, in several increments. I am continually exhausted, my brain is increasingly sluggish, and I’m now waiting in desperate hope for new pillow number 2. As I lie in bed, juggling three different orthopaedic pillows and trying a different position every few minutes (but never my preferred, natural sleeping position), I think about how a condition so apparently unserious can cause so much misery, and I think a lot about those people who have to live for years in constant pain from serious, intractable conditions, and how on earth they manage it. In my own judgement, I do not come out well from the comparison.
    So I feel for you, russell, even more than I would normally. I didn’t know that the new strains of covid could still have such effects. I only hope they end soon, and that afterwards your accustomed good health and fitness reasserts itself, and lasts for many more years.

  20. And then, and continuing to now, intense myalgia.
    Taking a Creatine dietary supplement might be helpful. It’s been around for a long time and is considered safe for most people. But you may want to check with your doctor first. Look for Creatine Monohydrate in the dietary supplement section of stores.
    “Emerging evidence suggests that creatine supplementation may benefit individuals experiencing myalgia (muscle pain) after COVID-19, particularly in the context of post-COVID-19 fatigue syndrome or long COVID. Here’s a summary of the relevant findings:”
    Creatine Benefits for Post-COVID Myalgia

  21. The symptom is a lot of neck and shoulder pain, but the result is that I have been getting only pathetic amounts of sleep…
    Creatine might help with both your pain and sleep deprivation. Some health pundits claim almost everyone over 50 should be taking it anyway.
    “Creatine is primarily known for enhancing muscle performance and recovery by increasing energy availability in cells, particularly in muscles and the brain. Its role in sleep deprivation is less direct but has been explored in some research. Here’s a breakdown based on available evidence:”
    Creatine Benefits for Sleep Deprivation

  22. Another 3 1/2 years to go.
    Other than possibly improving your mood, Creatine isn’t likely to help with 3 1/2 more years of Trump.

  23. Taking a Creatine dietary supplement might be helpful.
    Thank you Charles, I will look at that!
    I have been taking a CoQ10 supplement to help with metabolic function – apparently the virus can f*** up your mitochondria (!) – but it’s unclear if that is the root cause of my stuff. Cytokine storms are another possible cause, which the creatine may help with.
    Look at me! 15 minutes with Dr. Google and I’m a COVID myalgia expert!
    Other than possibly improving your mood, Creatine isn’t likely to help with 3 1/2 more years of Trump.
    LOL. Tru dat.
    And GFTNC, sorry to hear about your stuff. Nothing worse IMO than not being able to sleep, for whatever reason.
    Better days, y’all!

  24. Talk of neck and shoulder pain gets my attention.
    I’ve had neck pain and associated nerve symptoms in my hands and feet since October. In April I had decompressive surgery on my neck for degenerative cervical myelopathy. Since then I’ve been had shoulder pain to go with it, which gets severe with prolonged mild exertion – cooking dinner, for example.
    The surgeon is hopeful that some of these symptoms will moderate with time.
    It is, as Russell says, an eye-opener. I realise that people live with much worse than this from a much younger age. It’s an extraordinary and underappreciated achievement for them to keep going in those circumstances.

  25. Speaking of Trump: I was sitting in the Sheldonian Theatre on Saturday, for my daughter’s graduation. The Vice-Chancellor favoured us with a shortish speech about the university’s values, referencing the ceiling painting Triumph of Truth and Learning over Envy, Rapine, and Ignorance. In amongst the complex emotions I was feeling – joy for my daughter, grief for her mother who wasn’t there, faint religious hope that perhaps she was watching from on high, and concern for my elderly father alongside me – I reflected that Trump is firmly aligned on the side of Envy, Rapine, and Ignorance, and is, for the moment at least, triumphing over Truth and Learning.

  26. About a decade ago, I had frozen shoulder syndrome (adhesive capsulitis). First the left, then the right shoulder. I could only sleep about an hour and a half at a time. The pain intensified the longer the shoulder was immobile. Moving my arm would usually reduce the pain enough that I could sleep another hour or so.
    Using Dr. Google, I determined that I could pay someone thousands of dollars to cure it in ten to twelve months. Or I could endure it for ten to twelve months, and it would cure itself. Which I did, and it did.

  27. In April I had decompressive surgery on my neck for degenerative cervical myelopathy.
    I think I’m beginning to develop it. 🙁

  28. I reflected that Trump is firmly aligned on the side of Envy, Rapine, and Ignorance, and is, for the moment at least, triumphing over Truth and Learning.
    Exactly right. But congratulations to your daughter, Pro Bono.
    It’s an extraordinary and underappreciated achievement for them to keep going in those circumstances.
    Agreed.
    Charles, thanks for Creatine suggestion. Will look into it.

  29. Sympathies to all the people with health concerns.
    My sister’s doctors are muttering about another joint rebuild/replacement. If you looked at our respective histories, I’m the one you would expect to have torn up/worn out joints and be getting replacements. But she’s the one who has had two knees, a hip, and a shoulder replaced, and an ankle rebuilt. She’s talking about having a couple of arthritic knuckles frozen, while all my hand/finger joints are fine. I sometimes doubt that karma payback is a thing, because I don’t deserve the joints I’ve been blessed with.

  30. But what got me was the subhead: “It’s unclear how the Justice Department will respond to the request.” Do you morons not know? It’s not a request. It’s an order! Not that the Trump administration recognizes the distinction.
    If the search bar here is any indication, I have twice mentioned politics and feud in Medieval Iceland in relation to discussions here. Once was in response to regime cleavage and the corruption of the Supreme Court, the second was in response to CharlesWT discussing libertarian capitalism as a governmental philosophy.
    Here’s number three, and to quote the Violent Femmes “Third verse/Same as the first.”
    Checks and balances only work if the people in charge actually care to follow the law. You see this all the time in Icelandic saga, when a goði [a political leader in a district] had enough sway over the local politics it was nearly impossible for anyone who was not allied with that goði to get satisfaction within the law, usually leading to extra-judicial solutions (bloodfeud) being pursued.
    Basically, you had to join a party to get enough power and influence as a collective to sway the local courts, and you had to have enough wealth and land to even be entitled to legal status in court. Tenant farmers were stuck with whatever their goði or their landlord decided, or else either leave and find a better landlord or take matters into your own hands and risk becoming an outlaw. (Jesse Byock’s Feud in the Icelandic Saga is fascinating reading. I pulled most of this info from his chapter on “Feudeme of Advocacy.” If you have no advocate, you are exposed to the whims of those with entrenched power.)
    This administration is definitely in the place where they think that no one exists with enough compulsive power to make them follow the law. It doesn’t matter to them if something is an order. They are going to force a confrontation and dare the opposing party to try to force compliance.
    Someone needs to find a way to enforce consequences or else we are in a de facto tyranny.

  31. russell and GftNC, you’re welcome.
    If you search for creatine on YouTube, you’ll find dozens of videos on it and how to use it.

  33. They’re a starting point. LLMs are much better, but can still make mistakes or make stuff up. YouTube videos vary from overhyped BS to good sources on what is currently known about a subject.

  34. This YouTuber seems to be honest and appears to have the chops to evaluate other YouTubers’ claims and medical studies. He has several videos on creatine.
    Physionic

  35. My new pillow arrived today. My fingers are majorly crossed. And for russell and Pro Bono too: may all our physical problems get better, since our political ones (Ubu, Gaza and Ukraine etc) show no immediate sign of doing so.
    Someone needs to find a way to enforce consequences or else we are in a de facto tyranny.
    Absolutely right.

  36. My new pillow arrived today.
    What sort of pillow? Decades ago now I was waking up with neck pains and bought a buckwheat hull pillow. The common complaint from people who feel it is “But it’s so hard.” The first time I tried it I sort of wiggled my head into it and got as far as thinking, “Yes, it seems rather…” before I fell asleep. Still using one, with no neck pain for years. All anecdotal endorsements are suspect, of course.

  37. For wj more than anything…
    Got the first toy version of my nonlinear “flattening” software running. Here’s the input image I’ve been using for testing. It’s a picture (converted to grayscale) of one of my old work notebooks. The notebook is “curled” in three-space and the camera is: (a) not centered over the notebook; (b) rotated relative to the notebook; and (c) not pointed at the center of the notebook.
    Here’s the output from the toy software. It’s an approximation of a scan at a bit under 300 dpi. In the current version I give the toy hints about where the corners are, but then it’s on its own. There are errors in the area where the curvature is most extreme. OTOH, in real life such areas are likely to be empty. I’m not unhappy with the result here.
    Lots of future work on illumination correction, among other things.

  38. I have serious problems with anyone whose handwriting is that good. And that goes double for anyone working in IT.

  39. I’ve dabbled in handwriting analysis over the years. What I see is someone who is fascinated by spider webs, likes oatmeal on the thinner side, and shaves against the grain of his beard. I’m about 97.341% sure about all of that.

  40. I used to have good handwriting. In my early teens, I read a book on handwriting analysis. I then made a conscious effort to change my handwriting to reflect the characteristics I wished to have as defined by the book. In the process, my handwriting improved. Not so much my character.
    It’s been so many decades since I’ve done much handwriting that I now struggle to make my block character writing legible.

  41. What sort of pillow?
    Michael, your story of the buckwheat hull pillow doesn’t surprise me. As far as I can work it out, for back sleeping the desired position is to have one’s neck fully supported but not raised, and one’s head somewhat lower to the point where that is achieved. Those kinds of pillows can achieve that, if you wiggle your head into it just right, as indeed did very over-stuffed goosedown pillows for me for a long time. But I think (after 30 years or so) I am long past that. Now it has to be pillows filled with different kinds and resistances of foam and memory foam, contoured in various ways that are just right for one’s particular needs. And it’s often, as it has been for me now, a system of trial and error, where you have to try with a particular new pillow for several days to be sure whether or not it’s any good.
    Unfortunately, I am now a side sleeper, and I have never worked out exactly what the ideal combination is for that. New pillow number 1 professed to be for both back and side sleepers, and was weirdly and alarmingly contoured, but it only seems to be (reasonably) good for back sleeping. The jury is still out on new pillow number 2, but it means I am currently juggling 4 different pillows!

  42. I am now a side sleeper, and I have never worked out exactly what the ideal combination is for that.
    I am a side sleeper. My buckwheat pillow is about three times the size of those little back-sleeping ones.

  43. Hmmm, I will take that under advisement in case new pillow number 2 fails. I didn’t know about little back-sleeping ones, I assumed normal pillow size. Is your pillow the same size as a regular pillow?

  45. Yes, same size as a plump standard pillow. Traditional Japanese versions are quite a bit smaller and thinner.
    I got mediocre marks in cursive penmanship because I insisted right from the beginning on straight up and down strokes instead of slanting it.
    Did anyone notice that the toy software actually did a nice job of flattening the notebook pages?

  46. Took a guided tour of the NCAR supercomputer facility in Cheyenne, WY yesterday. My son and his SO accompanied me. She runs a climate science group at the U of Wyoming. The computer, named Derecho, appears in the TOP500 list of world’s fastest computers twice. The CPU partition is #139. The GPU partition is #256. It’s one of the very few of the TOP500 machines where you can actually get into the machine room.
    It’s been too long since I’ve done my free-association questions thing, I’m out of practice. Did get a good run after asking about fire suppression in the machine room. (Water, with anti-corrosion additives.) What sort of fire detection? What else do the air sensors check for? Is anything else monitored that closely? How many sensors for all of that together? (120,000.) How does all of the sensor data get collected and sorted out?
    The supercomputer resources are provided free of charge to earth science researchers. I was assured by the docent that if I submitted a proposal, it would receive the same consideration as all the others. Except that U of Wyoming proposals get some priority, since the State of Wyoming contributes to the facility. I turned to my son’s SO and asked, “Do you need interns?” She paused and then answered “Paid or unpaid?” I never know when people are pulling my leg.

  47. “Paid or unpaid?” sounds to me like she could make good use of them, but has no budget to pay them. If you were serious, apply and find out.

  48. Just looked at Michael’s handwriting, really has a French feel to it.
    It’s common knowledge that the French are fascinated by spider webs, like their oatmeal on the thinner side, and shave against the grain of their beards.

  49. If you were serious, apply and find out.
    I would be the intern from hell on so many different levels :^)

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