Harrumpf!

     Yet again, our corner grocer -- part of a chain headquartered in the Southeastern U.S. -- has failed to stock corned beef brisket for New Years.

     It never occurs to them.  Cabbage?  Sure.  Blackeyed peas?  Absolutely.  But no corned beef.

     They were weirdly out of both eggs and eggnog, huge empty swathes in the cooler.  So today, I'll go on a last-minute search for both corned beef and eggs.  Hoping for a nice, big brisket but I'll eat the canned stuff if that's what it takes.  Beef that is; canned eggs are right out, and they never have the good sense to make up the pickled ones with beets as is right and proper.

Night Visitor

     I woke up about four this morning to a calling owl: "Who who who-who?  Who who who-who?" Over and over, with undertones of the sound of someone blowing air across the open top of a big ceramic jug, questioning and slightly spooky.  The sounds were deep enough to be a Great Horned Owl, but the pattern is more like the Barred Owl.

     We've had a family of owls in the neighborhood for several years.  In the spring and summer, they make an assortment of sounds that remind me of tropical birds, and I have seen them holding flying lessons for young owls in our alley, swooping from one power pole to the next.

     It's a gift to have these raptors in our neighborhood.  When I was young, any kind of owl or hawk was a rare sight.  Little screech owls would occasionally use the patio of my parents' house to stride around and raise a ruckus, but it was uncommon.  They've come back and now I often see red-tailed hawks at the North Campus and a half-dozen big, black vultures that soar over the intersection of Kessler and College Avenues in the evenings.

Unplanned Supper

     Holiday schedules have been askew this year.  Tam had a last-minute house-sitting job that put my Christmas week menus out of sync -- and gave me an excuse to grill a couple of nice steaks for us on Christmas day, a treat that has become rare since meat prices went high during the pandemic.

     The steaks were very good, which I will chalk up to our grocer and the use of hardwood lump charcoal.  But you probably know how to grill a steak to suit yourself, and if you don't, I encourage you to experiment.

     I stumbled into Saturday with hamburger stroganoff fixings -- except for the mushrooms; I'd planned it for earlier in the week, and the mushrooms had ended up as a side for the steaks.  I had a poound of nice ground chuck, carrots and celery left from earlier, and a couple of cans of mushroom bisque.  I asked Tam to pick up leeks; she's not a big fan of regular mushrooms and twice in one week would be too much.

     The ground chuck browned and drained, with a little salt and pepper; I pushed it to the sides of the pan and sauteed sliced carrots (three colors!) in the center, then sliced celery and finally the leeks.  There's a trick to leeks; they're muddy.  You rinse them off, trim them, cut off the root part of the bulb and finally split them lengthwise, rinsing each half from the root end towards the ends.  I chopped them up, added them and sauteed until translucent.  One can of mushroom bisque added moisture and flavor without being overwhelming.  I had mine with a little Peri-peri rice.  It was really good for such a simple group of ingredients.

Furniture!

     I'm presently busy replacing my bedside cabinet.  I had an inexpensive one with an engineered-bamboo frame and cloth-over-cardboard drawers.  It bordered on being too flimsy, despite added stabilizing pieces, but the worst problem was that Holden the cat found the fabric irresistible for scratching, far superior to his scratching post. Despite corrugated-carboard guards, he managed to demolish half of one drawer front.

     So when I found a slightly larger cabinet that appeared to be exactly as wide as the space between my bed and my bedroom bookshelf, I bookmarked the page and kept returning to it for a couple of months.  Eventually, my disposable income was far enough ahead of the (inexpensive) price and I bought it.

     It is all pine and arrived as a flatpack, with eight drawers to assemble and a lack of pilot holes for the screws.  I improvised a corner clamp and built it over the spare time of several days off, and today is installation day!  It is an exact fit to the space, and so far, I have been able to get my Kindle/iPad Mini boom (the base takes a 7/8" hole, easy enough with a brace and old-fashioned bit) and outlet strip installed, wires rerouted, and I'm sorting through the contents of the old drawers.  There's enough extra room that I can get all my only slightly defunct eyeglasses and spare clip-on sunglasses in one drawer -- important, because I rarely buy new frames: they're expensive and the kind of 1930s/40s wire frames I prefer go in and out of fashion these days, most often "out."  Also important because I lose track of the clip-ons in their anonymous black cases when they are scattered over my desk, dressing table and elsewhere.

     So far, I'm a wireless keyboard or two ahead, plus my spare pocketknife (needs repair), a couple of flashlights and a set of wired earbuds.*  I think my Freewrite Traveler will find a home in this cabinet, too.
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* I have used a number of storage solutions for corded earbuds and while the various cute cord-winders and cases are nice, the best way to store and carry them is in a medium-sized prescription pill bottle.  It protects them and keeps dust out; it can bounce around in your purse or briefcase, glovebox or desk drawer, and they're ready when you need 'em, as good as the day you packed them up.  You can hank the wires up neatly or just stuff 'em in the bottle. 

Fracture Lines

     Who would have thought the techbros and the populists would split over H-1B visas?

     One of the worst downsides to "move fast and break things" culture is that it often breaks people; as soon as computer software (and, earlier, hardware) moved from labor-of-love people who slept under their desks* to a profit-making venture, hard-crunch work with long days and no time off was more rule than exception.  It was expected.  At the best employers, it came with perks: outstanding and well-stocked break rooms, comfy "decompression areas," a tolerance for eccentricity that went way, way out.  But it does break people, and one of the reasons for the proliferation of tech firms in early/middle computers and software was people just getting up and leaving, to-hell-with-this-I'll-work-at-my-own-pace.  You can see it now in commercial rocketry/space exploration: the big core firms emit a constant churn of engineers, scientists, technicians and managers who have been ridden too hard for too long and bail out, taking their overlooked or lost in the scrimmage ideas with them.

     And to support that kind of turnover, you need a constant influx of talented, educated people willing -- happy! -- to work twenty-hour days and sleep under their desks.  Not all of them are from here, and it could be that a cozy sleeping bag under a desk looks better from Tashkent, Nairobi or Mumbai than it does from MIT.

     So the techbros are all about the H-1B visa and how it allows them "to hire nonimmigrant aliens as workers in specialty occupations or as fashion models of distinguished merit and ability." (Hint: they're probably not hiring fashion models.)  The populists, on the other hand, are not so happy about the folks from faraway places with strange accents, unfamiliar religions, unexpected complexions and unusual foods.  Besides, they themselves could have been rocket engineers or code hackers (et geeky cetera), if only it wasn't for the long hours, tricky mathematics and need to hyperfocus; it isn't fair!  --Their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers stuffed the first generation of NASA nerds and card-tricking IBM-machine hackers into lockers, and gave suspicious looks to the likes of Feynman and Oppenheimer ("not our sort," you know), but never mind all that.

     There's big mad from the populists and snotty condescension from the techbros, while the nerds doing the actual work keep on doing the actual work.  They'd get a lot more done if their bosses weren't assholes and the locals didn't keep treating them like nerds.  I know what they'll do: sleep under their desks and put in long hours, doing the work; some of them will bail out, by and by, and hang up their own shingle, and some of them will be the basis for the next generation of people who get things done, probably becoming asshole bosses in the process.  I have no idea what the various factions and personalities of MAGAworld will do next, but I fully intend to pop myself some popcorn while I watch.
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* I use "sleep under their desk" as shorthand for the kind of ludicrous devotion to the task at hand that goes way beyond any paycheck: you're doing it because you love it, you love the process and you want to see how it turns out.  BTDT, and the thing is, the task does not love you back, your boss has no real grasp of the nature of your devotion and finds it weird, and once it's done, it's not yours.  You've spent months or years at it and now it's someone else's; you have nothing to fall back on while you look for the next thing.

Radio Drama

     The NBC radio series X Minus One did an adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's Requiem that is well worth listening to, a very good telling of the story.  Their version of Murray Leinster's First Contact, on the other hand, misses the point.  They make up for it with A Logic Named Joe, based on the 1946 Leinster story that describes massively networked desktop computing devices that have replaced telephones, televisions, encyclopedias and so on -- with, eventually, unexpected social consequences that the story solves but we're still living with.

Merry Christmas Day!

     Or whatever holiday wishes apply to you and yours.  I hope your celebrations are enjoyable.

     Several comments to my previous holiday post went a little political, and y'know what?  No.  Not for these couple of days.  Let us do as millions of our fellow Americans and billions of other Earthlings do, and put forth a convincing fake, at least, of getting along.  We will have plenty of time for helmet-fire freakouts in the coming 363 days, no matter who we are or what we believe.  You can count on it.

     The high road gets you to the destination just as well as the low road, and you stumble through a lot less mud along the way.

Leftover Ham

     Last night, one bag of leftover ham contributed to some of the best Hoppin' John I have made in some time.  With a double handful of assorted cherry tomatoes chopped up, half a red onion, diced, and multicolor bell peppers from the grocery ready-to-go cooler, two small cans of Hatch chilis, a box/large can of finely chopped tomatoes and a mostly-drained can of blackeyed peas, the ham thawed in the microwave while I sauteed the fresh vegetables with some Cajun spice mix, and once it all came together, ten minutes simmering with a bay leaf was all it took.

Merry Christmas Holidays!

     I'd like to take this Christmas Eve to wish each and every one of my readers -- yes, even the ones who send me angry and/or snarky comments -- the happiest of winter holidays, whichever one(s) they celebrate.  Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Joyful Kwanzaa, best solstice wishes* and so on: Happy holidays!
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* The solstice has been and gone on the 21st, but it's the thought that counts.  The fact that the solstice falls so close to these winter holidays is no accident: the turning of the year has been important to humans for as long as we've been humans and we are darned well going to mark it.  It's an open feast: more holiday for the other guy doesn't mean any less for you.  Get out the good dinnerware and dig in!

Steamed Ham?

     Why not?  I bought a ham for Christmas, a big spiral-cut ham, intending to bake it in the grill.  Events led me to cook it this weekend instead of waiting until Christmas and the weather was cold and blustery, so I got out my biggest stewpot, set up the rack, and started the ham cooking over a half-inch of water.

     I added a little hot honey, garlic and ginger to the glaze, figuring it was mostly going to melt off and add to the steaming liquid.  The ham was precooked -- spiral-cut ones often are -- so it only needed two and a half hours.  I added potatoes, carrots, celery and onion for the last hour, and sliced mushrooms for the last half hour, and added water as needed.

     The meat thermometer showed it had reached the necessary temperature at the end of the cooking time.  About half the slices fell right off the bone when I went to lift it out.

     It was good, flavorful and tender.  The vegetables turned out well, too, not overly sweet but touched with ham flavor.  Tam and I enjoyed it.

     Cleanup was slow: a ten-pound ham is a lot of meat.  I saved a slice for breakfast and still ended up with three gallon-sized freezer bags of meat, each enough for Hoppin' John or bean soup, plus a bag of meat and vegetables that can be reheated for supper.

     It's not a conventional way to cook a ham, but it worked out.

Touched By Time

     There was a visitor to Roseholme Cottage yesterday, someone I had not seen since before the COVID-19 pandemic, the man I refer to here as the Data Viking.  We went to High School together.

     For years, he has lived in the far north of Indiana, driving down to Indianapolis to visit and go to the big gun shows.  Most of that went by the wayside while everything was screwed up.  We kept in touch via e-mail and I was looking forward to resuming our old routine.

     It's not going to happen.  A month and a half ago, his e-mails stopped arriving.  I've been increasingly busy at work and assumed he was, too.  Instead, he had an adverse health event that necessitated an abrupt retirement and relocation halfway across the country to live near his adult son.  He's in generally good health but his vision was affected.

     Three weeks ago, I got a short, "Call me at..." e-mail from him with an unfamiliar area code and thought, "Uh-oh, my old friend's e-mail has been hacked."  I called anyway, using my employer's firewalled, computer-based phone system: they've got super-duper antivirus, after all.  But it was indeed my old friend, who explained his changed circumstances.

     A death in his ex-wife's family brought him back through Indy with his son over this weekend, and they had a few hours to spare, so he arranged to be dropped off and we spent several hours getting caught up.

     It may be the last time I see my friend.  We'll stay in touch by telephone, though neither of us is much for long phone calls.

     For my generation, there is considerably more sand in the bottom of hourglass than in the top.  There is a lot I still want to do, and no better time than the present to start doing it.

Third Time Winner

     I still think the process would go better if the light, heat, air-conditioning and water shut off in the Capitol and all the House and Senate office buildings any time the lack of a budget resulted in a fed.gov shutdown.  It would give Congress a positive incentive.

     Nevertheless, they did manage to cobble together a continuing resolution that keeps things running, while including almost none of the sparkly stuff Representatives, Senators and President-elect Trump wanted.  What was left out included plenty of items that will be fodder for opionators on both sides of the aisle, from children's cancer research funding to scrapping the debt limit.  The process exposed fracture lines in the GOP coalition, and they can be sure their pals across the aisle were taking notes.  Nevertheless, the CR received commanding majorities in both House (366 - 34 - 1, with all 34 noes from the Republicans) and Senate (85 - 11).  With 15 Republicans and 14 Democrats out in the House, Jasmine Crockett of Texas voted "present" and balanced the scales.  Likewise, the four missing or not-voting Senators were split.  The absent wouldn't have tipped the vote anyway.

     It's a hell of a way to run a railroad, but the feather-ruffling is at least evenly distributed, and they can all scamper off to holiday celebrations, secure in the knowledge that they managed to kick the can far enough down the road that the incoming Congress won't have to take it up again until springtime, at which point it will once again be a sudden and wholly unanticipated emergency, because Congress has the memory of a goldfish when it comes to the fiddlin' details of paying the piper, and they think you do, too.

Dog Catches Car

     Dog catches car, realizes he cannot drive: I don't admire Speaker Mike Johnson; he's got a tendency to smirk when he's putting the screws to political opponents that grates on me.  But I'm feeling sincerely sorry for him this morning: he put together a continuing resolution that would keep the lights on in Washington, one that didn't entirely suit him but that he -- and, he thought, his party -- could accept, and one that could even bring a few Democrats on board in the House and get through the Senate.  And then President-elect Trump and his new advisor Elon Musk pulled the rug out from under it.  Ouch!

     It's happened before -- remember the compromise deal on border issues Mr. Trump had them pull the plug on after it was all but done?  Mike Johnson soldiers on.  This time he set to work and turned out a new, slimmed-down continuing resolution he thought could still get enough votes while not displeasing the incoming administration.

     The new, slimmer CR tanked.  174 for, 235 against, 1 abstention, 5 empty seats -- and another 20 out sick, playing hooky or too hung over to show up.  38 Republicans joined 197 Democrats in voting no, in a chamber where the majority party can't give up five votes if the opposition isn't going along.  The reasons for the noes varied, but it doesn't matter: this continuing resolution is a goner and Mike Johnson has got to relight his candle and sit back down at his desk next to Bob Cratchit to put together another try.

     You can work out who's playing Scrooge yourself.  It looks like Social Security and Medicare will keep sending out checks, but if you're in the process of signing up for benefits (etc.), that could be delayed.  Air traffic controllers (and other government workers) won't get paychecks, but they're still supposed to show up for work (Uncle Sam typically makes it good later, but how would it work out for you if several paychecks in a row were held up?  Same for them).  Often the fun stuff gets shuttered -- national parks and monuments.  And, for some reason, nutritional aid programs, food for mothers with babies, has about a month to run before the larder becomes empty once the Federal government shuts down.  I guess it's real hard to hear hungry babies in the House and Senate offices, and unlike retirees, they don't vote, call or write letters.

     This was just a stopgap to keep the lights on.  Come the next Congress, the GOP's House majority will be even smaller; they'll have the Senate by a margin almost as precarious as the present Democrat (plus Independent) majority.  If they're still stuck trying to pass a continuing resolution, it's not going to be any easier.  Mr. Trump thinks he's got a mandate, winning the popular vote by less than two percent.  You can argue that one out with him, bringing in the Electoral Collage (or not) as suits you, but nobody got a mandate in Congress; they're going to have to find compromises if they want to do anything at all.

     Hey, you know who else doesn't get paid when the Feds shut down?  The Feds who work the border!  You'd think that would matter to the party that has put such an emphasis on border security.  I guess not.

Well, This

     This browser is working, so I'll stick with it for a while.

I May Have Done It

     Between having to "refresh" Firefox and my battered Android phone (a backup number) not getting notifications, I may have knocked out Blogger access on my desktop computer.

     This is not at all fun.

Did You Elect Him?

     I'm sure it wasn't me.  Try as I might, I have no recollection of Elon Musk being on my ballot this past November, so he must have been on yours.  I can't figure out what the office might be -- Grand Vizier?  Privy Councillor? -- and I wonder if the alternative choice might not have been better than the relentless self-promoter and all-around weirdo, for all that he's done a great job making space travel less expensive, electric cars zoomier and electric trucks, well, you can't win 'em all.

     Nobody elected him to run the Federal budget, not even at the Go/No-Go level.  That's up to the House to start, the Senate to finish and the President to Yea or Nay, period.  They screw up the process routinely all by themselves, which is why they have been scrambling around, trying to pass a continuing resolution to keep the bills paid and the paychecks coming before the 2024 clock runs out and the incoming Congress has to do business in the dark without even free coffee.  They didn't need any outside help in making a mess of it.

     I am not a big fan of Donald Trump, but he did, in fact, win the election, and after January 20, 2025, he and his Cabinet (and whoever else gets invited in to kibitz) will have their own chance to make their own mess.  Until then, they can wait their turn.  But remember: money stuff starts in the House, finishes in the Senate and then the President (who can indeed ask for advice) lets it stand or vetoes it.  That's the rule and they wrote it down in ink, right there in the U. S. Constitution, long, long ago.

The FCC And The PEBCAK POTUS

     The structure of the actual commission that runs the Federal Communications Commission is simple: there are five Commissioners, no more than three of whom can be from the same party, and they serve five year terms that can be informally extended to seven and a half years if they aren't replaced.  The President appoints them, the Senate confirms them (or doesn't, though it's rare), and the President gets to pick which one gets the Chairman's seat.

     For over-the-air stuff, the Commission's basic mandate is to regulate the operation of actual transmitters, those devices that fill up the limited RF spectrum with signals.  It's different for every service, from the few remaining Non-Directional Beacons and maritime services down below the end of the AM band -- remember AM radio? It's kind of still there, barely --  up through amateur radio and shortwave broadcasting, low-band communications, FM and television broadcasting, VHF and UHF comms, cell phones, terrestrial relay services (mostly digital stuff), satellite radio and TV and so on.  When it comes to broadcasting, the FCC licenses individual radio and TV stations, not networks or group owners.  Each spot on the dial in each location comes with a license -- or a big old Federal fine.

     President-elect Trump's incoming FCC Chair has big plans -- or at least big talk -- about knocking "the networks" into line, but he's got less direct power over them than his sponsor appears to believe.  The FCC can be expensive and annoying to the stations the networks own directly.  Those are relatively few, though in the biggest cities -- think New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Boston and so on.  But they're not the biggest owners; that would be Hearst, E. W. Scripps Company, Sinclair (probably the largest, avowedly conservative and has the greatest number of ABC stations) and Tegna, Inc.  None of these companies own only stations affiliated with just one network; Tegna's got the biggest block of NBC stations (22), but owns ABC, CBS and Fox stations as well; each of them owns stations that carry the four largest TV networks -- so it's tricky for the entity that licenses stations to go after a network: networks are not, themselves, licensed by the FCC.  Each and every one of these very large companies (think billions, not millions) has lawyers by the barrel-full; they have all formed in the course of long strings of acquisitions, mergers and divestments.  Legal sparring with the FCC (and other regulators) isn't just a thing they do, it's a part of what they are.

     Most of these station-owning companies avoid overt politics and editorialized content, other than Sinclair, and even Sinclair is careful where they tread: they're all in the business to make money, and they will follow the money remorselessly, wherever it leads.  The FCC may be able to cost them a few bucks, if they do something the new Chairman deems worthy of reproof  -- but most of their attorneys are already on the payroll, and enjoy an opportunity to keep busy.

New Jersey Drones?

     Here's the SF writer explanation: they're time-traveling camera vehicles, here to record momentous events.

     Momentous events are rarely fun while they're happening.  If I lived in the areas with the most reports, I'd go elsewhere.

     Of course, it could just be the result of population density and a recent change in FAA rules that allows drones to operate after dark -- but there's no fun or profit in that, is there?

Saturday Dinner, Sunday Brunch

      Saturday, we watched another episode of Rogue Heroes* and enjoyed a pork roast.  A four-pound Boston Butt, in fact, which I floured, browned and simmered for more than four hours over Tom Yum Chicken Bone Broth, adding chunks of peeled Granny Smith apple early and then potatoes, parsnips, carrots, celery, white onion and Portobello mushrooms.  It was falling-apart tender -- and I have leftovers for two more meals.  The broth is an excellent match for pork with apple.  The TV series is an excellent match for anyone who enjoys well-told WW II history with a touch of informed imagination.

     This morning, another experiment: I have had a packet of microwaveable "Organic Super Grains, Smoky Southwest: sorghum, quinoa, amaranth, and pearl millet" on the shelf for some time.  With a buildup like that, it was going to either be amazing or inedible, and I am very pleased to say it is amazing.  I diced and browned a half-sized can of Spam with some chopped-up orange grape tomatoes (enjoy them while you can: "Bahama Bombs" are a Canadian import), put just a dash or McCormick's curry powder† and a little smoked paprika on it, and stirred in the just-microwaved grains.  When it was time, I pushed it all to the sides and scrambled a couple of eggs, mixing it all together and adding some cilantro (be sure you like it first!) and parsley.  This is as good a breakfast bowl as anyone could wish for, flavorful but not hot.

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* This BBC series, SAS: Rogue Heroes in the home market, tells the story of the formation and early years of the Special Air Service, which requires very little dramatic invention: the men involved were brilliant and a bit off-center, the kinds of men who flourish in wartime and ferment when idle.  Remarkably well-acted and well-cast, after we watched the first episode, I turned to Tamara and remarked, "They made a TV series for you!" The early SAS, along with the Long Range Desert Group, was one of the inspirations behind the TV series Rat Patrol -- but the reality is more incredible than any sanitized (and highly Americanized) 1960s TV program.
 
† I will point out,  as I have in the past, that "curry powder" is not, strictly speaking, an Indian condiment; it's a British or Anglo-Indian mixture of Indian-type spices, and varies widely from one brand to another.  It's good stuff, especially for those of us who don't have ready access to (or knowledge of) the full array of Indian spices, but get to know how hot/sweet/piquant your local varieties are, and understand it for what it is.  McCormick's works well with U. S. Southwestern flavors, so I was confident in using a little of it here.  One thing you will not find in most kinds of curry powder is salt -- which makes it ideal for anything that's already salty.

Saturday Breakfast

     I had a Poblano pepper left from last night's quick scratch chili* and extra mushrooms from the batch for this evening's pork roast, so I diced the pepper and three medium Portabellos, and added them to canned corned beef hash.

     Started out with a 50/50 mixture of Italian-seasoned Panko breadcrumbs and masarepa pre-cooked cornmeal in the skillet, added a little more Italian-mix seasoning and smoked paprika, spooned in the hash/Poblano/mushroom mixture with a little onion powder and dried parsley, smoothed it out, let it cook a little and broke an egg over half of it.  I let that cook under a lid until the egg was mostly done, then took the cover off and gave it almost ten minuted over gradually increasing heat.

     The end result was tasty without any hot sauce or other seasoning.  Tam takes it without egg (and with Tobasco) and it's good either way.
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* There are multiple ways to make this, depending on what your grocer has ready.  Count on a half-hour before the simmering, if you work quickly.  I used their chopped fresh onions and sliced red/orange/green bell peppers (diced), with a Poblano I diced and some nice orange cherry tomatoes.  Started with a couple of Chorizo sausages squeezed out of their casing and a pound of ground chuck, seasoned with chili powder; drained well, pushed to the sides and added the chopped onion, tomatoes and bell peppers, followed  by the Poblano, and when I was happy with it, added a snipped-up Piparra pepper, two small cans of mild chilis and a can each of crushed and cubed tomatoes.  Three bay leaves. a tiny smidge of ground cloves, a hint of Cajun seasoning and more chili powder to taste, covered and left to simmer for ten minutes, stirring at least once: chili enough for three meals, and better after it's been frozen and reheated with whatever extras I might add.  It'll cook down thicker if you simmer it longer.  You build this around as much fresh ingredients you can find ready to go -- the other market I go to often has fresh diced onion, diced mixed peppers and pico de gallo, ready to go -- and then fill it out with canned and dried stuff.

A Reminder

      It's "Move fast and break things," not "Move fast and break people."

Normalizing The Abnormal

     FBI Director -- and, incidentally, Republican -- Christopher Wray says he's resigning for the very best reasons:  "I've decided the right thing for the bureau is for me to serve until the end of the current administration in January and then step down. My goal is to keep the focus on our mission [...]."

     I'm calling BS.  President-elect Donald Trump wants his extreme loyalist Kash Patel running the FBI and Wray is ducking out before he gets splattered with the weirdness.  A lot of others in the Federal government are doing the same.  Maybe they're hoping to be around to pick up the pieces after it all goes smash; maybe they just don't want to get any of it on them.  Possibly they're hoping it's only four years, the norms and guardrails will hold, and afterward, things will go on much as they have.

     Hey, could be.  I'd be delighted if that was the outcome.  I'd even be happy if the incoming Trump administration wrought their promised land of milk and honey, though my happiness will be greatly tempered if they implement their more Draconian proposals in the doing.

     But neither one of those is the cautious bet.  Maybe trying to sit it out is workable, if you have money in the bank and a place in the country, but for us more or less average types, it's a scary ride.  I'm coming up on retirement, and while I never expected it to be a mainstay, I've counted on receiving a steady pittance from Social Security when the time comes -- a pittance the GOP wants to take an axe to, and even if they don't, their tax reductions for the hyper-rich will inevitably result in benefit reductions for Social Security recipients a few years later.  It's baked right into the law.  Oops.

     It's one thing to stick good Party members in key roles -- of course incoming Presidents do that, and there's a certain amount of quid-pro-quo for some of the sinecures.  But most of the appointees are competent, even if you or I or the person across the aisle doesn't think much of their politics, and the rest know when to shut up and let their staff do the work.  That's not the vibe I'm getting from Mr. Trump's choices; they're a grab-bag of partisan loudmouths, TV hosts, big donors, family members and hangers-on, largely without high-level experience (if any) in the divisions, departments, bureaus and embassies they're being installed to run.

     This is a recipe for chaos.  The only good side is that things are likely to be too fouled up for the new Administration to do as much deliberate harm as Mr. Trump and his sidemen have promised.  Unfortunately, the inadvertent harm will probably be at least as bad.

     I don't like making dire predictions; I'd rather wait and see, and call it out when the mess is obvious.  But a whole lot of people in a position to see further ahead are bailing out, and that's not a good sign.  Especially if you haven't got a parachute.

"[Browsername] Is Installing Updates And Will Crash In A Few Minutes"

      Any more, I approach browser software updates with trepidation.  About half the time, the improvements break or substantially change functions I have become used to.

     The one I use most often is in some kind of slow-motion war with Windows; I paralleled it with an in-ecosystem browser I don't like as well, so that I'll have something as an immediate backup, with my Macworld devices (used mostly for writing and other fun) as the reserve.

     MDM730 or Telix, it's not.

"Robin Hoodie" Was Never Going To Be A Folk Hero

     It wasn't in the cards.  The UHC CEO assassin wasn't going to be a folk hero or even a comic-book (graphic novel!) vigilante.  Sane people, good people, don't shoot another person in the back unless that person presents an imminent threat to human life.

     Americans kill one another quite often, and on little provocation.  We're doing so less these days -- but we're still doing it.  And if it seems even a little justified -- how many stats have I seen about insurance claim denial rates in the last few days, with United Health Care heading the list -- a lot of us will chime in, or at least nod, or maybe just shrug.

     The fact remains that you've got to be seriously off-axis to commit that kind of murder; in fact, being some kind of nut (not to get too technical) appears to improve the odds of success, as I have written about before when discussing political assassination attempts.

     Did the killer's actions hold up a distorting mirror to the feelings of many Americans about the health-insurance industry?  Undeniably.  Just don't confuse the myth/legend/story with the facts.

     Murder is wrong.

     Running your business in such a way that a plurality (at least) of the people who hear about your murder express positive or neutral feelings about the crime is wrong, too.  It doesn't justify the murder -- but it ought to be food for thought.

He's Doing It Again

     In a recent TV interview, his first since winning election to the Presidency, Donald Trump opined that the members of the House January 6 Committee ought to be in jail for "what they did."  When pressed, he accused them of destroying evidence.

     That would indeed be awful and potentially unlawful behavior -- if they had done so.  In fact, they did not.  You can go browse most it for yourself.

     Some things are under review and may be redacted -- in addition to the public spaces, the U. S. Capitol building is a warren of back corridors, unobvious private offices, hidey-holes, connecting tunnels and so on, including the places where members of Congress and staffers took refuge on January 6, 2021.  There are obvious security concerns with publishing specific data.  Many people still don't realize how close we came to having a Congressperson, staff member or even the Vice President beaten up or strung up that day, but there's nothing to be gained and much to be lost by providing a map for the next attempt.

     Pardoning the rioters is undeniably one of the powers of the office of the President.  I think it would be regrettable, but it wouldn't be illegal.  Going after then-members of the U. S. House of Representatives for doing something well within the powers and purview of their branch of the Federal government is a very different matter.  You may find the J6 Committee infuriating, heroic or boring, but it wasn't illegal.  They didn't kick down any doors, break any windows or take a steaming dump on a House member's desk.  None of them assaulted Capitol police.  The J6 rioters did that, at the instigation, if not the direct behest, of Donald Trump, who was at the time President of the United States of America.

     Pretending otherwise is a fool's game.

One Down, 87 To Go

     It depends on how you count them, but there were almost 90 autocratic governments on Earth yesterday, and today there's one less: Assad isn't running Syria any more.  (Present whereabouts unknown; a plane carrying him may have gone down, and no one is looking very hard.  Update: The Russians say he's been granted asylum in Moscow.  He was their boy in the Middle East for a long time, so it's not unlikely. )

     What comes next?  It's hard to say.  What newscasts are calling "Syrian rebels" is a a polyglot bunch, and the largest bloc, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has palled around with both the "Islamic State" and al-Qaida in the past.  They haven't run with either since 2016; guessing if that was a matter of wanting less crazy or more is an exercise for pundits and intel professionals.  Junior partner is the Syrian National Army, a collection of at least twenty-eight groups;* some sources say at least twenty-one of them have received U. S. assistance in the past, against IS and related threats, but we've been known to hand out goodies to almost anyone who'd smile and promise to fight Communists, Islamic extremists and the like.†  Some of SNA's roots go back to the "Free Syrian Army," and Turkey has been one of their main sources of support, despite the occasional armed squabble.

     You can tie yourself up in knots trying to sort all this out, and by the time you have, the situation will have changed.  None of them liked Assad, or the way he was running the country, and it appears that became a strong enough motivation that they were able to work together.

     It's an open question if they'll be able to continue working together, but we can at least hope.  If you're expecting the Syrian James Madison will come running down from the hinterlands, waving a draft Constitution well-suited to the people of that nation, don't hold your breath.  They might -- and it would be good news if they can -- manage to cobble something together that will hold long enough to make serious inroads against the starvation and misery that part of the world has become famous for.

     It says something about our species that the very cradle of human civilization has become a nightmare of failed states and warlordism, with refugees as the prime regional export.  It says something about us, and it's nothing pleasant.
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* At this point, the better-informed might be wondering, "What of the Kurds?"  They're wondering that, too.  They appear to have very little presence in the SNA.  Kurds are about ten percent of Syrian population and are likely to get what they usually get: short shrift.  The French, the British, the various Allied and UN powers, the local potentates and so on all overlooked them when they drew lines on maps, and it's one more smoldering problem in a place that has an oversupply of tragedies.
 
† And that's nothing new -- go read some early 19th-Century Letters of Marque issued by Congress for examples. A proxy war is a cheap war for everyone except the proxies.

Grist For The Mill

     I'm not alone in suspecting the extinct megafauna of North America were delicious -- and that humans may have played a part in making them extinct.  There's new evidence that tends to support the notion that big critters were what's for dinner.

     Woolly mammoth, giant sloth -- you get just one of those, and you've fed the whole tribe, and probably gained enough leather to clothe half of them or make a new tent.  Lots of useful bone and sinew, too.  Those hunts may have been our first team sport and maybe that's why spending a weekend afternoon watching the Big Game is so appealing to so many people.  Almost as good as a big hunt with all your pals, and the feast afterward.  Go team mammoth-hunter!

Packrattery

     A recent article about famous (infamous)* SF writer and screenwriter Harlan Ellison included a few photos of the late author's home, "Ellison Wonderland."

     Between that, the Bradbury Center's re-creation of Ray Bradbury's workspace and few pictures I have seen of Doc Savage creator Lester Dent's Missouri "House of Gadgets" home and Theodore Sturgeon's place, I'm convinced writers are packrats, gadgeteers and book accumulators.

     And if that's a requirement, I'm well on my way.
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* Ellison was a man of prodigious gifts, stunning feuds, deep friendships and absolutely over-the-line behavior.  He had a great many fans -- and so many sincere enemies that they formed an actual club.

So, About These Picks...?

     Is it just me, or is the incoming Administration largely a government of drunken (etc.) frat boys?  The Press keeps telling me they're "loyalists," or "Trump conservatives," but the real unifying factor appears to be a willingness to drink heavily, and to disregard social norms as applied to themselves while being harsh enforcers of conventionality for everyone around them (at least until they make unwanted advances on women, at which point all notions of modesty and fidelity cease to apply).

     This is a crew that gives every sign of believing Eddie Haskell was the real hero of Leave It To Beaver.

     Look, you may find elitist technocrats and nose-in-the-air PolySci wonks offputting, but a large proportion of them are earnest strivers, who put in a full day's work, a little overtime and keep thinking about the job on their commute home and all through dinner.  They're morally consistent.  When your staff has to carry your inebriated self back to your hotel room, fending off your pawing hands all the way, you're probably not Cabinet material -- in fact, you're probably not Assistant Manager at the corner store material.

     I guess we'll find out how things work with leering, "beer o'clock," C students at the helm.  P. J. O'Rourke tried to warn us.

"Num-bah, Plea-yiz?"

     I have had occasion to use my employer's fancy in-your-computer telephone system a few times recently (instead of my own cellphone, for which they pay a nice chunk of my bill) .

     It is about as unlike using a telephone as using a telephone could be.  I grew up on rural telephones, not too far removed from party lines.  I grew up with limited bandwidth, optimized for speech; with a certain amount of whooshing white noise in the background, not to mention blips and bleep from crosstalk, sometimes even distorted speech from another call muttering quietly.  And I grew up with "sidetone," the faint sound of your own voice from the earpiece of your phone, which you don't notice until it's gone.

     Every bit of that is gone with the app they use.  You can bring up a conventional keypad on the screen to dial numbers with, but the sound from the headset is pure hi-fi.  And the connection is so quiet that if you're in a still-enough place, you can hear your own heartbeat during pauses in the conversation.  What you won't hear is your own voice.  Maybe there's an adjustment for that; I haven't looked, but if I'm going to use this thing much, I'd better, because it's distracting.

     Living in the future is okay, but I'm glad I'm not a big desk telephone user.  The modern version is making me feel like I may have time-traveled a little farther than I'm comfortable with.

Colorful Alerts?

     This morning, I went to the Indiana legislature website, to see what they're going to be up to next year.  Remember, this is the deliberative body that toyed with setting pi to three; they're something like a too-trusting elderly relative, who must be diverted from answering the door when traveling salesmen come to call, or you'll find out the driveway has been "top-coated" with used crankcase oil or the front steps have been repaired with a mixture of sand, flour and water.

     It's too soon for the 2025 litany of pork, posturing and puffery.  Looking over what they tried and sometimes pushed forward in 2024, I came across a well-meaning example of...something.

     The idea behind it has merit, but it suggests we ought to step back and take another look: the legislature's got a bill in progress to introduce a "Green Alert" for missing veterans and service members.

     You might ask, why not?  We already have Amber Alerts for missing or abducted children, Silver Alerts for missing, at-risk seniors (and it's sometimes used for other people who need care) and Blue Alerts for police (no, I am not making this up -- presumably it's for hostage situations).  Most of these are embedded in the nationwide EAS system that goes over broadcast stations and the WEA (Wireless Emergency Alert) system that communicates with cellphones.  They use three-letter "Event Codes," generally defined by Congress, like "CAE" (Child Abduction Emergency) for Amber Alerts.  CAE is the oldest code of this type, and it works; it's helped locate many missing children.  One of 26 letters in three positions means there are a lot of possible codes.  Not all are mnemonic.

     Some of the proposed codes are intended to make a point: missing people get disproportionate media attention if they're young, white and female, so "Ebony Alert" and "Feather Alert" codes have been proposed.  This can be read as government signalling to media, more than joggling your elbow: when it lights up an EAS codec, radio and TV stations have to either pass it along automatically* or actually sit down and read the thing before making a decision about sharing it, an effort that often results in a news story, and the specialized code is intended as a reminder.  How you or I -- or a news editor -- react to it is highly subjective, and this might not be an area for subjectivity: lost, at-risk individuals deserve to be found, period, and that is worth lighting up your phone for half a minute or airing a twenty-second broadcast news story, no matter who they are.

     As a practical matter, all that is needed are alerts for "lost child" and "lost adult."  Details should go in the accompanying text message, to tell you and me if we should be looking for a four-year-old Native American child or a 60 year old law enforcement officer: it's supposed to be way to help out, not an overloaded "thin blue line" flag with a special stripe for each and every sliver of the population who might be at risk.

     P.S.  There are highly-specific geocoding numbers in the systems, too, which as a practical matter are steerable down to the level of counties.  (The code gets even more localized but cellphones and EAS codecs generally do not.)  Just like weather alerts, alerts for lost and missing persons are supposed to be coded for a limited area.  This helps reduce people getting alerts that don't apply to their location.

     P.P.S.  I am reminded that the Federal guidelines for issuing this type of alert on EAS or WEA are specific and strict, so while your Mayor or local law enforcement may hold a news conference and say they're issuing a gray and yellow-striped alert, a genuine, official version with its own event code is supposed to be a rare thing that had to meet well-defined criteria before it was sent.  Will that stop state and Federal legislators from making up new ones?  I sure wouldn't want to bet money on it.
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* Remarkably few EAS event codes are required to go on the air automatically, just national-level emergencies, a system that has been used for a "live code" test or two but never in earnest.  Most of the boxes treat national-level tests the same way, but the rest of it is set up for a human to look at and decide -- if there's a human around to do so.  If your local radio station is running every darned beep-beep-beep alert that comes across, there's probably a robot at the wheel.

Sandhill Cranes

     Of course, the cranes I heard Sunday were the Sandhill Cranes that pass through every Fall.  They stop for several weeks at the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area before continuing on from Wisconsin (etc.) to Florida.

     The Wildlife Area is up north of Lafayette, so the ones we see in Indianapolis have probably started the next leg of their migration.  From the posted DNR numbers, they haven't reached this year's peak population yet, so if you live around here, listen for their song when you're outdoors -- and look up!

Politicommentary

     You probably think I have something trenchant and/or pithy to say about Mr. Trump's picks or Mr. Biden's pardons, but here's the thing: it's all sideshow.

     These things don't have anything to do with the day to day running of the country right now, and even the parts that could affect it in the future are only possibilities.  I could probably start a nice helmet fire about all or part of it, but what good would that do?

     Time enough for the Senate to show me how they're going to react.  Time enough to find out who's going to pardon whom and how that's going to work out.

     Right now, the House needs to start looking under the Federal sofa cushions for spare change before the current piggy bank goes dry.  They've got to get it done before Christmas, or they're going to be sending out cards to their constituents in the dark.  I'm pretty sure the Pentagon has a back-up plan before they have to start working by candlelight, and I'm hoping the over-the-horizon radars and earth stations for the DOD spy satellites have all got fat UPSs on standby.  But you'd never know to watch the news: it's all clowns and animal acts.

Brunch Again

     Today was Brunch With Siblings day, and I'm pleased to report they are both as sibilant as ever.  We went to Good Morning Mama's, which for my money has better coffee and better service than where we'd been going, and a more interesting menu -- but I'm biased in favor of a place that serves home made corned beef hash.

     On the way home, I kept hearing what I'm pretty sure were cranes, a high-pitched, fluting, musical call, and could not spot them  Finally saw them in multiple vees and strings high, high overhead, so far up they were little more than dots.  But their song carries for miles, a marvel of the late Fall.