Category: Uncategorized

Post #1199: This one simple hack eliminates 99% of disinformation!

I have a simple, humble request to make of our mainstream media:  If you must have comments on your stories, please randomize the order in which comments are shown.  Or, if not, do anything other than show the first-written comments first.

I was looking at a perfectly reasonable story about the current COVID-19 outbreak in Florida today, on what turned out to be the ABC News website.

And immediately following the story, in the comments section, were four pieces of what was clearly professionally-written disinformation.  Clearly working from a common pool of talking points.  Tightly written so as to hit as many hot-button issues as possible.  Obviously designed to deflect attention from the current situation in Florida, and by inference, the Republican governor of Florida.

I can only assume that whatever organization that is responsible for those comments has bots that look for newly-published on-topic articles.  They then strive to be first in line with comments.

And as a result, everyone who reads the actual news article and bothers to look at the comments is also reading that disinformation.  Lies and misdirection clearly aimed at nullifying the actual news coverage.

And so, ABC News ended up lending its entire new apparatus the forces of disinformation.  For free. 

This is really stupid, and needs to be stopped.  We have enough problems without allowing the purveyors of nonsense to piggyback on legitimate news sources.  For free.

At the minimum, if comments were shown in some random order, that would prevent organizations from hawking news articles and placing their previously-composed disinformation pieces first in the comments section.  Such a policy would not only dull the high impact of that disinformation currently has, it would reduce the incentives to publish those professionally-written comments in the first place.

Anyway, I’m just pointing this out.  My observation is that a policy of showing comments in the order written is just asking for your platform to be used by the aggressively for-profit disinformation industry.

Even if you can’t get rid of them entirely, you can certainly structure your website so as not to encourage them.  And to make it more expensive for them to keep their taking points in front of your viewer’s eyes.

In in that context, the last thing you want to do is let whoever gets first crack at the comments to get the most prominent spot in the comments.  And yet, that’s what ABC News appears to be doing.  You’re letting the enemies of information use your resources, for free.  And no matter how you slice it, that’s just plain stupid.

Post #1024: I just got my first smart phone, and I’m beginning to understand what’s wrong with America.

Sometimes there is value in being an outsider.

I’ve just gotten my first smart phone.  I guess I’m only a decade and a half late to the party.

But as a result of my tardiness, I am now deeply weirded out by things that I assume all Americans now simply take for granted. Continue reading Post #1024: I just got my first smart phone, and I’m beginning to understand what’s wrong with America.

Post #1023: Next N95 mask purchase

Currently, I’m wearing the Kimberly-Clark N95 duckbill, on sale at Amazon for $52 for a bag of 50.  This was my choice for an N95 mask purchase, for several reasons:

  • Solid evidence that these are genuine (read the Amazon comments).
  • Reputable US manufacturer (Kimberly-Clark)
  • Reputable seller (Amazon), available from other reputable vendors.
  • Industrial mask not suitable for hospital use (NIOSH-certified but not FDA-certified)
  • Cheap, at $1/mask.

When you add all that up, what that mostly means is that there’s not a lot of profit in trying to counterfeit these.  Continue reading Post #1023: Next N95 mask purchase

Post #891: Cardboard, again

This is an intermediate step in the production of a D-I-Y aid for wheelchair users.  The background can be found in Post #886 and Post #887.

The question is, just how hard is it to make a lightweight cardboard object capable of supporting a person’s weight? I know that it can be done, in theory.  But sometimes you just have to see it to believe it.

The answer is, it’s not hard at all, to make a cardboard structure that will stand up to the weight of an adult.  Hence, the brief piece of performance art below that I call “fat man stepping on a cardboard box”.

 

What you see above is an example of the “structural grid plus envelope” method for creating corrugated cardboard structures (Post #887).  Except I didn’t even bother to create a grid. I just tossed in a bunch of strips, cut to height, and folded into “V”s.

If that works, as sloppy as that is, it’s going to be a piece of cake to make a set of steps capable of supporting a seated adult.

In fact, the challenge here wasn’t even in supporting the weight.  The biggest challenge was getting those strips cut to a uniform width, so that the weight would be evenly distributed.  But even with all the sloppiness, it’s obviously no big deal to construct something out of cardboard that will support the weight of an adult.

 

Post #785: It’s time for the Ultimate Jeopardy Power Players Tournament.

Source:  New York Times.

We had to put up with the President bragging about passing his mental exam (“the duck says quack, the cow says _____”).  Now the Republicans are attacking the mental state of what’s-his-name, the Democratic Presidential candidate.  Pretty much every arm of the Republican propaganda apparatus today features a story on the mental decline of that old white guy running for President.

I say, it’s time to put up or shut up.  We need a person of unassailable stature to settle this once and for all.  We need the ultimate Jeopardy Power Players tournament: Presidential Jeopardy.

Alex Trebec, the host of Jeopardy, more-or-less single-handedly revived that show some years after the Art-Fleming-era Jeopardy went off the air.  And, to someone who has watched both, Trebec’s version of it is a substantial improvement over the Fleming era show. Not just for the production values, but for the rules governing the basic operation of the game.

We’ve had many variants on standard Jeopardy, including, most notably, Celebrity Jeopardy and Power Players Week.  So it’s not like the idea of Jeopardy tournament for Washington insiders is new.  I’m just suggesting they kick it up a notch.

If Mr. Trebec has one more show left in him, I say, let’s skip all the meaningless braggadocio and disinformation.  Let’s make it real.  What say we get an objective assessment of just how slow both of our Presidential candidates are.  On live TV.  For the entire world to watch.  One last round of Power Players Jeopardy.

Let’s make it a true daily double.

I’m going to miss Trebec-era Jeopardy.

Post #618: Blue skies, a followup

White Clouds in Blue Sky ca. 1996

My wife found the definitive article in the Washington Post.  I’m not crazy, the air is significantly cleaner now, thanks to lockdown.

That article also has links to research suggesting that long-term exposure to “PM2.5”-type air pollution (fine particulates) explains much of the variation in coronavirus death rates across the country.

As I noted in an earlier post, Italian research points vaguely in that same direction.  Wuhan had notoriously bad air pollution, as did the hardest-hit region of Italy (the Po Valley).  And air quality in New York is not so good.  And, to be honest, that doesn’t bode well for DC.

So the sky really is better-looking these days.  And if the Italian analysis is right, the reduction in particulates helps slow the spread of disease.  But our long-term exposure to particulates likely increases the mortality rate among those who fall ill.

 

Post #497: Lions Club Fund Raisers

This is the second of a series of articles on things unrelated to the Town of Vienna

This article is about another holiday tradition in my household.

Long-time residents of Vienna expect to see the Vienna Lions Club selling Christmas trees this time of year.  They set up in the parking lot of the former Safeway, next to where the Southern States used to be.  (Translation:  Walgreens).  I’m a late-in-the-season tree buyer, so sometimes I can get a tree there, and sometimes — as is the case this year — they’re sold out before I even think about buying a tree.

But my favorite Lions holiday tradition comes via the Fairfax Lions Club.  Around this time of the year, every year, they have an old-fashioned citrus sale.  By that I mean, they bring up a truckload of citrus from Florida and sell cartons of fruit right off the truck.  This one takes place where the Hechinger’s used to be, at Fairfax Circle.  (Translation:  Home Depot).  Theirs just ended, but they’ll have another on in the spring.  If you have an interest, you can sign up for an email reminder on their website, or you can attend a similar sale by the Falls Church/Annandale Lions on Saturday, December 21.

Putting aside that the purchase of citrus at these sales helps a worthy charity, I like the Fairfax Lions Club citrus sale for five reasons.

One, it’s a good deal on good fruit.  I paid more-or-less the same price for the two grapefruit pictured above.  The big one on the left is from the Lions, and weighs in at 17 ounces.  The smaller one on the right is from Giant Food, at just over 12 ounces.   So it’s analogous to buying your produce at the farmers’ market.  You get fresher, better produce, at a reasonable price, if you cut out the standard food distribution channels.

Two, it’s genuinely seasonal.  The timing of the sale reflects the timing of the peak citrus harvest.  In an era where there is no longer any seasonality to what’s available in the grocery store, that’s pleasantly quaint and reality-based.  You have a limited opportunity to buy fresh American citrus because … well, in fact, that’s when it ripens.  And that’s a throwback in an era when you’d be hard-pressed to name any item in the grocery store produce section that you cannot buy, in some form, 24/7/365.

Three, it doesn’t change, which I guess is the essence of a tradition.  Reliably, it’s two or three guys, selling boxes of fruit, off a truck.  No gimmicks, no apps, no ads, no glitz, no upsell.  Cash and carry.

Four, it’s part of a long-standing, area-wide tradition of wintertime citrus sales by charitable organizations.  In our area, charity citrus sales are so common this time of year that if you miss one, you’ve probably got another opportunity coming up.  So, e.g., the Falls Church/Annandale Lions are holding one on Saturday, December 21.  So you’ve missed the Fairfax Lions sale, but you could still pick up a box at the Falls Church/Annandale Lions sale.

Finally, this may soon be a thing of the past.  Ultimately, charity citrus sales are driven by the productivity of the Florida citrus industry.  But Florida citrus groves are being destroyed by “citrus greening”, a plant disease that only showed up in the US in 2005.

In fact, I was surprised to see the Lions selling this year at a reasonable price.  I buy red grapefruit from the Lions.  Here’s the recent trend in Florida red grapefruit harvest, using data as published by the USDA.  To me, that chart says, better get it while you can.  So for now, I’m thankful that I can continue this tradition for one more year.

 

Post #399: There will be coffee and doughnut in the staff room.

My wife used to email me that line, as a joke, on the anniversary of my  company’s founding.

The joke being “doughnut” (singular), because there was only one employee — me.

I got an email a while back, from a fellow who thought the articles on this website needed by-lines.  I scratched my head a bit at that.  Why should I add my name to the start of every article?  I never wrote him back.

This has now come up again, and I finally get it.  Some people seem to think there’s a team of writers turning out these postings on savemaple.org. 

To which my reply is doughnut (singular).

Savemple.org is blissfully free of team building exercises, staff meetings, performance reviews, consensus forming … and guest writers.  I write everything on this website.  Full stop.  If I can ever convince anyone to do a guest article, you’ll see a by-line. 

If somebody mentions something that I think is worth writing up, sure, I’ll do that.  Happy to steal an idea from any source.  But the research and writeup is solely mine.

And that’s the last you’ll hear of my annual doughnut.

Post 312: Tooting my own horn

I recently received a comment about this website to the effect of “nobody knows who I am or what I have done”.  And my immediate response was “that’s fine by me”.

I’m not here to toot my own horn.  I scorn people who are full of themselves but short on substance.  I loathe individuals who would use public forums to stroke their egos.  And so I try to lean in the other direction when possible.

That said, my wife has convinced me that there may be value in explaining a) what I have accomplished so far, with this website, and b) why I am capable of doing the difficult technical analyses that you may see posted here.

This will be the one and only time I do this.  And, in hindsight, I have fewer concrete accomplishments than I thought (or I have forgotten some), so this has been a good reality check for me.  Click the links if you care to read the writeup.

1:  Timely posting of recordings of Town of Vienna public meetings.

2:  Solid garage walls for MAC projects adjacent to neighborhoods.

3:  Wall behind the Wawa.

4:  Parking for Sunrise (a near miss).

5:  Increased public awareness of MAC zoning and its implications.

6:  Countered disinformation with objective analysis.

Brief biography.

 

Continue reading Post 312: Tooting my own horn