Judge pauses parts of Trump’s sweeping executive order on voting
More sanity from the judiciary.
AI models can learn to conceal information from their users
This should not surprise anyone. The whole notion of “alignment” (convincing increasingly-powerful AIs to follow human-set rules) is a pipe dream, because of increasingly clever models and bad human actors who don’t care about such things.
Finished: Townsend of Lichfield, by James Branch Cabell 📚. This volume of Cabell’s collected works starts with an essay explaining why the actual book Townsend of Lichfield was never written. It then proceeds to collect a bunch of Cabellian miscellany: prefaces to other books, bits of verse, short stories, court documents. This is far down the rabbit hole and likely appeals to almost no modern readers. But I enjoyed it nonetheless.
Finished: Imperial Woman, by Pearl S. Buck 📚. Next up in my trip through Buck’s major works is this romantic novel of Tzu Hsi (these days usually rendered Cixi), the last Empress of China. I suspect there is more romance than history here, but it’s a sweeping story that I knew nothing about, so that doesn’t bother me.
Finished: Conquistador, by S.M. Stirling 📚. This alternate history is one of several that Stirling has written with the general theme of “what if modern technology and military in a new world?” In this case there’s a silly MacGuffin that gets 30 ex-soldiers to a copy of the earth in 1946 where Europeans never visited the new world. A coup-in-progress drives the plot forward, but there’s always the impression that the author is just having too much fun world-building to care as much about the story.
“Me! Me! Pick Me!”
Olympus E-M10 IV, M.Zuiko 60mm f/2.8 Macro lens @ f/6.3, 1/25s, ISO 640. Along the Fisher Creek Trail.
“Fungus Family”
Olympus E-M10 IV, M.Zuiko 60mm f/2.8 Macro lens @ f/10, 1/3s, ISO 800. Along the Fisher Creek Trail.
“Trail Ends Here…for now”
Olympus E-M10 IV, M.Zuiko 14-42 kit lens @ 14mm, f/9, 1/60s, ISO 250. Waldo Lake Wilderness somewhere around where Fisher Creek Trail is supposed to be.
Are watermelon seeds the next breakthrough in plant-based milk?
I think the word “milk” has jumped the shark at this point.
“Dodgy Bridge”
Olympus E-M10 IV, M.Zuiko 14-42 kit lens @ 14mm, f/9, 1/15s, ISO 2500. Crossing Fisher Creek at the edge of the Waldo Lake Wilderness.
Finished: The Weight of Glory, by C.S. Lewis 📚. Lewis remains my favorit Christian apologist, and this collection of sermons and addresses from the WWII era was a delight. I especially enjoy “Transposition” which gives much food for thought about our imperfect understanding of religious matters.
Finished: The Harrad Experiment, by Robert H. Rimmer 📚.
Finished: The Harrad Experiment, by Robert H. Rimmer 📚. I was given this copy of the “Sex Manifesto for the Free Love Generation” (as the cover banner proclaims) by a friend’s girlfriend in High School (did I miss something? I’ll never know.). Hadn’t reread it for decades. Well, this story of a co-ed college that encourages premarital sex was certainly exciting for a pubescent boy, but these days, it’s pretty weak sauce. The ending political manifesto, about taking over some state in the PNW to educate a whole generation of free-loving self-actualized people, seems especially quaint now.
Tesla earnings plunge 71 percent in first quarter
As my children say: “sucks to suck.”
Finished: Taj Mahal by Diana & Michael Preston 📚. This one turned out to be much more than a history of the Taj - the authors place it in the context of several centuries of Moghul dynastic politics. This was history I knew nothing about, and was interesting to learn.
Team Trump Drafts Dystopian Plan to Get Women to Have More Babies
Surprise, surprise - Dobbs was not, in fact, the end of state control of the uterus.
Finished: Immortality Inc. by Robert Sheckley 📚. Sheckley wrote absurdist SF, and I find myself rereading his novels every five years or so. This is one of them. (Mindswap is probably his best, though Dimension of Miracles is in the running too).
Trump blasts Supreme Court while arguing trials for migrants ‘not possible’
Well this is chilling: the President is saying flat-out that due process is too much trouble. This is not just an issue for Venezuelan gang members. Due process is your (and mine) main protection against jackbooted thugs kicking open our doors and rendering us to a US-funded gulag in El Salvador in the middle of the night.
Finished: Is Paris Burning? by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre 📚. The story of the liberation of Paris in 1944, with most attention focused on French general DeGaulle (who comes across as an egocentric jerk) and German general von Choltitz (who comes across as a reluctant hero - but I think his own memoirs were one of the primary sources here). Popular rather than scholarly, but it did fill in some gaps in my knowledge of WWII.
In other “how stupid do they think we are?” news: Emmer disagrees with Van Hollen, says Abrego Garcia was given due process
Presumably Mr. Emmer would feel differently if it were his ass in a gulag in El Salvador.
Alito says the recent Supreme Court order barring further flights under the Alien Enemies Act was not “necessary or appropriate.”
Except, you know, there were buses full of migrants on the way to the airport.