My mind has many nooks and crannies ... like an english muffin
Disorganization?
· ☕ 259  words politics  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
Just out of curiosity, I looked back at my phone and text messages over the course of the election season. I had two phone calls from campaigners before actual voting was possible and none after that. I counted 34 text messages from different groups campaigning for a democrat candidate, 32 of them for Biden, 27 of which thought I was someone named Sarah. I responded to each one, pointing out (1) I wasn’t Sarah; (2) I’ve had my cellphone number since 2006 so this is not likely some change of number faux pas; and (3) I had already voted on the first possible day by dropping of my ballot at the City Clerk’s office.
Tax Policy by Politicians? Who Knew?
· ☕ 830  words tax law  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
Warning: Tax geek post with no attempt to explain references for non-international tax readers. There was once a law firm at the forefront of partnership tax shelters. The actual statutory law was ambiguous to say the least and the partners at this law firm believed, in their hearts, that they were the ones who actually defined what the law and tax policy was in this area. Eventually the politicians change the law and the firm no longer exists.
Adding Insult to Self Inflicted Injury
· ☕ 218  words politics  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
As you know, the UK is leaving the European Union by choice (aka Brexit) regardless of the economic damage that is expected to cause. As a result, the UK will now have to setup customs import and export locations for goods getting shipped to and from the EU. As part of that project, they are building a 27 acre lorry (truck for the Americans) parking lot in Kent to handle backups from the port in Dover.
Guardian or Warrior?
· ☕ 829  words politics life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
A high school newspaper in Kentucky broke a story on October 30 about a training slideshow used by the Kentucky State Police urging cadets to be “ruthless killers[s]” and quoting Hitler advocating violence. By 4:15 PM that day, the Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear responded with the following statement: “This is absolutely unacceptable. It is further unacceptable that I just learned about this through social media. We will collect all the facts and take immediate corrective action.
Enough With the Name Calling
· ☕ 1565  words life politics  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
All the jokes and insults about the other side just make the polarization worse. So stop it. We are wired differently, we think differently we respond to different motivations. For example, one study Political Ideology and the Perceived Impact of Coronavirus Prevention Behaviors for the Self and Others indicates that conservatives apparently are more likely to wear masks if you point out it keeps them safer and less likely to wear masks if you point out it keeps others safer.
Think of the Children and Other Political Lies
· ☕ 78  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
If politicians actually believed in their pleas to ‘think of the children’, they wouldn’t make so many outright lies. Think of the bad example it sets. And that goes double for the people writing the lies in the political ads. Criminal defense lawyers are not allowed to lie for their clients. Why is it allowed in the political process? As usual, feel free to disagree using this contact link. My world view is a hypothesis, not a belief.
I Guess I Don't Match Lifewire
· ☕ 748  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
So, trying to keep myself from fixating on the political news, I asked DuckDuckGo for suggestions on random websites. One of the suggestions was from lifewire that claimed “cool websites to look at when bored”. It claimed “Whether you need to kill some time or you’re in the mood to laugh, learn, or be inspired, this list of cool sites is all you need.” It was a typical list with “what we like” and “what we don’t like”.
Changing the Clocks for Daylight Saving
· ☕ 251  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
Today I woke up at either 6:10 am or 5:10 am depending on whether I was looking at a clock that automatically reset itself for the end of daylight savings time in the US. I remember writing a song 20 years ago about the hassle of resetting all the digital clocks in the house. You had to hold down buttons and some of them didn’t go backwards or get faster, so you had to wait while it slowly advanced 23 hours.
Tax Law Changes Won't Bring Back Jobs
· ☕ 374  words politics tax law economy  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
I’m trying to stay away from taxes on this blog, but I was just asked again whether Biden’s tax plan would bring back manufacturing jobs to the US. I’m always a little disappointed when someone asks this question and particularly disappointed if that person is in the Federal government. It indicates that the person asking the question is so fixated on “taxes” that they have not stopped to think about all the other aspects and will be spectacularly unsuccessful.
Most Dangerous Jobs in the US and Where Do Those Numbers Come From?
· ☕ 3640  words politics life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
This blog is eclectic because I can get sidetracked by lots of different things. Yesterday was the origin of the word “scientist”. Today it is data sourcing and analysis. WARNING: This is a data analysis rat hole expedition. Someone made a comment to me that police were the 22nd most dangerous job in the US which triggered some recollection in my brain that I had seen a report where they were 16th.
Gender and the Origin of 'Scientist'
· ☕ 2508  words politics science  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
There is general agreement that the word “scientist” was coined by William Whewell (May 24, 1794 - March 6, 1866), a carpenter’s son who won a scholarship to Trinity College and eventually became the Master of Trinity College. He was a polymath and John Herschel described him as “… a more wonderful variety and amount of knowledge in almost every department of human inquiry was perhaps never in the same interval of time accumulated by any man.
Don't Track Me Like I Track You: Facebook Edition
· ☕ 570  words privacy  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
Facebook, one of the leading practitioners of surveillance capitalism, has apparently threatened New York University researchers for tracking Facebook’s political ads. The NYU researchers built a tool that allows 6,500 volunteers to keep track of what ads Facebook is showing them. The legal theory behind Facebook' threat is that Facebook’s terms of service say that you cannot use automated bulk collection of data from its platform and this tool constitutes automated bulk collection.
[Gender] in Pronouns
· ☕ 898  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
The 2014 Nebula Award winner for best science fiction novel was Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. It was interesting (sometimes pleasantly, sometimes horrifyingly) to watch reactions to the use of pronouns in the book. The main character and narrator natively speaks a language that doesn’t make gender distinctions in pronouns. (Finnish and Hungarian are similar in this respect). English, of course, does have gendered pronouns so to get the point across, the author has the narrator using feminine pronouns throughout the book except in dialog.