The Trinity plate at Armadillo Willy's has three barbecued meats
When I hanker after barbecue, Armadillo Willy's, which is less than two miles away and has ample free parking, is my go-to place. I was therefore concerned about this headline but was relieved by the opening sentence:
If you’re a fan of Armadillo Willy’s Texas-inspired smoked meats, sauces made inhouse and spicy peanut coleslaw, you’ll have to get your fix in San Mateo from now on.
The Bay Area chain founded 42 years ago abruptly closed its three other restaurants at 8 p.m. Tuesday...
Remaining open with a full menu of smoked ribs, brisket, chicken, pork plus burgers, wings and side dishes, is the restaurant at 2260 Bridgepointe Parkway in San Mateo.
They will need more customer support, and I intend to do my share.
Under the current rules laid out in the 2017 tax law, today’s nearly $14 million exemption would expire at year-end and drop by about half.
To get ahead of that cliff, Americans have been making lifetime gifts to use up the higher exemption amount before it sunsets.
If Congress does not act to extend the $13.99 million-per-person exemption, it will fall to about $7 million next year.
Bay Area homes that originally cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars now sell for $2 million or even double that amount. The switch from employer defined-benefit plans to 401(K) and IRA investment accounts makes visible the present value of pension benefits and inflates estates. While $7 million has always been a princely sum to most Americans, that threshold is now attainable by many homeowners who live in the Bay Area.
The new tax bill wending its way through Congress not only will increase the current exemption slightly but makes it more likely to be "permanent" in that it will require the Democrats to control both Congress and the Presidency to change.
Under the bill, an individual could die in 2026 with $15 million, and a married couple with $30 million, without owing estate tax. These amounts rise annually alongside inflation. The proposed changes have no expiration date...
The certainty of a new, higher exemption is a game changer for estate planning, estate lawyers said. “The permanence is a big deal for our family businesses, so they can do more long-term succession planning,” said Palmer Schoening, chair of the Family Business Coalition, which lobbies for estate tax repeal.
If the new, higher exemption amount is permanent, most individuals with estates under $15 million probably don’t have to worry much about estate taxes or do estate tax planning.
I do appreciate the certainty, which allows us to simplify our new estate documents. Don't under-estimate the virtue of financial simplicity in allowing one to sleep more easily at night.
That fentanyl is a modern-day plague is a well known fact--in 2024 San Francisco had 635 drug overdose deaths, of which over 70% included fentanyl--yet much remains unknown about the deadly opioid. For example, why do fentanyl users contort themselves into an unusual standing position?
Dr. Daniel Ciccarone, UCSF professor of addiction medicine, said what he calls the “nod” is a common side effect of opioid use.
“It’s not much different than the experience of being in a boring lecture and falling asleep,” Ciccarone said. “It’s a version of losing consciousness. But not to the point of losing consciousness –– they’re still conscious.”
These nods have always happened to varying degrees with other opioids, particularly heroin. The nods with fentanyl, however, seem to be more extreme, Ciccarone noted. And it’s often a sign that a person has taken too strong a dose, he said.
“What you’re witnessing is the balance point between passing out –– when you lose all muscular control and are on the floor –– versus some small remnant of consciousness that is keeping the person upright,” he said.
Fentanyl, which can be up to 50 times more potent than heroin, can induce this “low point of consciousness,” which is believed to be euphoric, Ciccarone said.
“As opioids get stronger, the nod gets deeper,” he said. “The dials are just being turned down. Consciousness, breathing, muscular control are going down … and this is just one of the visible signs of it.”
Repeated positioning in the fold can itself cause severe health problems:
UCSF orthopedic surgeon Dr. Alexos Theologis, who specializes in the spine, said some people probably slump because of muscular issues. But going into the fentanyl fold position too much over a long period of time can cause severe damage to the spine, neck and back muscles, he added.
Theologis said there’s nothing in the use of fentanyl itself that will cause people spinal problems, but such prolonged folding can lead to chronic issues.
“The postures I see … are very, very disabling,” Theologis said. “We have studies that demonstrate these postural changes (are) … among the most disabling medical conditions anybody can experience. It’s similar to cancer treatment and pain associated with cancer.”
Whatever one may think of President Trump, his stated goal to eliminate fentanyl from the streets of big cities will help the most wretched who live among us.
On Trinity Sunday, 2025, I reflected on the changes in my life since Trinity Sunday, 2017. Both my parents were still alive, I had not been diagnosed with any chronic diseases, and I was making travel plans to visit places on my bucket list. Our rector was three years from retirement and gave a sermon about the DC superhero trinity of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. It was a simpler, more frivolous, pre-pandemic time. Below is the post from eight years ago.
On Trinity Sunday the minister sermonized about the big Three of DC Comics---Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman---whom he followed, er, religiously as a child. (He also rhapsodized about Wonder Woman, which by all accounts is the first great movie of the new "DC Universe.") Well, when we talk about abstract concepts like the Trinity we grab any metaphors that people can relate to.
The minister didn't dwell too long on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit---in the modern world if you can't explain it in 144 characters or less, why even try---but did say that it was a mystery over which scholars had debated for centuries. Yes, your humble blogger remembers the Sunday School lessons about Trinity--three aspects of the same God, none greater than the other--but that's about the extent of it.
I stopped trying to understand when all references to "Holy Ghost" were changed to "Holy Spirit" throughout the Liturgy in the 1970's. From the comics (see how I brought that full circle) I knew that there was a big difference between a ghost and a spirit; if the church can make such a word change so blithely, I knew deep theology wasn't my forte.
At least they didn't change the great hymn of Trinity Sunday.
Actress Amy Hill (Tutu) has a lock on older-Hawaiian-lady roles
The Lilo & Stich live action remake has been criticized by some movie reviewers (but not the audience, with world-wide box office currently over $800 million). Some of the criticism has been directed at the ending. Caution: spoiler alert following.
Big sister Nani, who has looked after Lilo because their parents have died, will go to the Mainland for college, supposedly leaving Lilo in the hands of foster care. According to writer Christine Hitt, these critics don't understand the Hawaiian tradition of hānai.
At the end of the 2002 animated version, Lilo and Nani live happily ever after together with Stitch and their other alien friends. In the live-action remake, however, Nani agrees with the social worker, Mrs. Kekoa, that Lilo should live elsewhere. Then it’s revealed that Lilo will live with Tutu, a new character who is a longtime family friend and neighbor. Tutu and Lilo then tell Nani that she should follow her own dreams: going to college in California to study marine biology at UC San Diego.
“While the movie says that ‘Ohana’ means ‘nobody gets left behind,’ Lilo is literally left behind in Hawaii,” wrote Robert Pitman of ScreenRant. On social media, others agree. “The new lilo and stitch live action has rewritten the ending to showcase an indigenous hawaiian woman (the character, not the actor) giving up her indigenous hawaiian sister to the foster care system so that she can leave her homeland and go to school on the mainland. It’s a concerning display of imperialist ideology to say the very least,” wrote dorothyannedouglas on Threads.
However, these views fail to look at family through a Hawaiian lens.
Nani isn’t abandoning Lilo or giving her up. She’s not leaving Lilo behind, because Tutu is a part of their ohana too. At the end of the movie, the social worker Mrs. Kekoa facilitates a type of hanai relationship among Lilo, Nani and Tutu. “It is usually a much easier transition in these foster situations if the family, hanai or otherwise, are involved,” Mrs. Kekoa says, referring to Tutu as their hanai family.
However, hanai is never explained in the movie. A Hawaiian tradition, hanai is a type of adoptive relationship, which really can’t be compared to the Western definition of adoption. Hanai is more complex and fluid, with many variations.
Disney’s definition of ohana throughout the film is heartwarming but incomplete. To understand hanai, one must first understand the concept of ohana from a Native Hawaiian perspective. The word ohana refers to the oha, or shoots, growing out of the taro plant — the same plant that is considered to be an ancient relative to all Native Hawaiians. The oha represent the many people who make a family, all tied together in this important bond.
In Hawaiian culture or otherwise, it isn’t uncommon for a grandparent or other relative to step in and help care for kids. The common phrase “It takes a village” comes to mind. Like a village, the Hawaiian family is shaped by many people who take on multiple roles.
“In Hawaiian, there is no word for aunt or uncle. They are all mothers and fathers. We have no word for cousins. They are brothers and sisters,” acclaimed Native Hawaiian scholar Mary Kawena Pukui once said in a 1971 article in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Similarly, in “Lilo & Stitch,” the character’s name Tutu is the Hawaiian word for grandparent but can also be used to refer to anyone of that generation. And in Hawaii, auntie and uncle are commonly used out of respect for elders, no matter if they are related by blood or not.
Hanai dives deeper into the makings of a family and expands upon it. In Hawaiian tradition, grandparents took first-born grandchildren, natural parents renounced all claims, and sometimes babies were given to other relatives who asked for them, according to a book that Pukui co-authored, “Nana I Ke Kumu (Look to the Source).” Hanai also applies to non-blood relationships.
The practice is well known in Hawaii. Pukui was hanai to her maternal grandmother and also later raised hanai children. Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani was hanai at birth and raised among royals. One of my uncles was hanai.
“In this traditional practice, there was no feeling of turning the child over to strangers as there is with present-day adoption,” the book continued. “The whole feeling was that the first grandchild belonged to the grandparents. … The baby remained within the all-important unit — in which his own parents held only junior rank — the family clan or ohana. However, the child knew and was usually visited by his natural parents.”
Hanai isn’t giving a child away; rather, it’s sharing a precious gift, strengthening bonds between people and extending what it means to be family. It can be done for different reasons, but this structure allowed for young parents to work and provide for the family while grandparents reared them, instilling cultural values in the kids and teaching them generational knowledge. It’s similar to what Tutu is doing now with Lilo for Nani.
When I was growing up, I often called older acquaintances "uncle" or "auntie." Not only did the word "friend" seem too distant, but because Oahu is a small island there were many people whom I knew but didn't find I was related to until years after I met them.
This Friday the 13th is filled with foreboding. The Middle East is threatening to explode in all out war between two of its largest powers, Israel and Iran. In the United States the Army's 250th birthday parade has become heavily politicized because it coincides with President Trump's birthday, and demonstrations for "no kings" are planned all across the country. Political partisans are itching to provoke violence by the opposition in order to gain advantage for their side with the general public. Though that strategy is itself disgusting, it has a high probability of working.
The fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskevidekatriaphobia.
I didn't have an appreciation for the Beach Boys until I went to college in 1970, and my roommates played their albums continuously. The sound was unique, the tunes were catchy, and their standing was such that they were lauded by their fellow artists, e.g., McCartney, Dylan, Springsteen, Elton John.
Though his most creative period lasted roughly six years in the 1960s, Brian Wilson, whose death at age 82 was announced today, left a profound impact on pop music, record production and American culture. In an ascent that ran from 1962 to 1967, the songwriter, bassist, arranger, falsetto singer and original Beach Boys leader pioneered vocal harmony, studio experimentation and songs that fed teens’ dreams of an endless summer.
From the start, Mr. Wilson and the Beach Boys combined the tight phrasing of the Four Freshmen, a jazzy pop vocal group, with the driving sound of surf-rock bands like the Ventures and the guitar of Chuck Berry. The result linked the twang and beat of mid-1950s rock ’n’ roll with puppy-love pop songs of the Kennedy era.
Over the course of Mr. Wilson’s seven-decade career, he won two Grammys (in 2005 and 2013) and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001 as a member of the Beach Boys. The band’s first Top 10 Billboard pop hit, “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” reached No. 3 in 1963. In all, they had four No. 1 Hot 100 entries, 15 in the Top 10 and over 50 that charted.
I am as susceptible to nostalgia as other Boomers and remember the good vibrations of my youth, forgetting much of the bad. R.I.P.
Burning car in Oakland after ICE protests (Fanjoy/Chron)
Not to be outdone by its bigger brother to the South, Northern California had its own anti-ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) demonstrations, looting, and property damage.
A crowd ransacked a Shiekh shoe store near International Boulevard and 34th Avenue on Tuesday night, according to videos reported by KTVU and police. A car parked on 34th Avenue was set on fire, and trash cans on the sidewalk were knocked over, spilling garbage onto the sidewalk.
The looting and vehicle fire occurred after a peaceful protest denouncing arrests of immigrants by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had ended, according to businesses owners and Fruitvale residents.
Oakland burgled shoe store after ICE protests (Flores/Chron)
The saving grace is that, unlike L.A., there's no suggestion that the looting and property damage were instigated by the demonstrators or actions by the Trump Administration.
It's sad, however, that there are people who will always use mass gatherings (protests, sports championships, cultural celebrations) as an excuse to commit crimes when police are occupied.
Wolves, mountain lions, coyotes, and bears are all encroaching on human habitats (some argue that we are encroaching on them), but wild pigs appear to be causing the most damage.
A steady increase in the population of wild pigs — a marauding, non-native animal that can grow sharp tusks and weigh 250 pounds or more — is causing growing problems for parks, water districts and homeowners across the Bay Area.
The hogs wallow in streams, dig up lawns and gardens, eat endangered plants and animals and occasionally charge at people. They carry diseases like swine fever and can spread pathogens like E. coli to crops in farm fields.
“We’ve seen the impacts increasing,” said Doug Bell, wildlife program manager at the East Bay Regional Park District in Oakland. “They are omnivores. They vacuum up California quail, Alameda whipsnakes and other wildlife. They eat everything. They’ll come in and destroy lawns and all your landscaping overnight. Sometimes people can be hurt by them. We had a hiker who was run over by a wild boar and injured her leg. A firefighter was knocked down by one in 2020. They can be frightening.”
Unlike other animals, the pigs don't have any defenders, and counties and agencies are allowing hunting and even paying to have the pigs killed.
The animals are legal for sport hunters to shoot, like deer or ducks. Last year, 3,327 wild pigs were reported killed by hunters in California, according to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.
But their population keeps growing. Females can have up to two litters per year, with as many as 10 piglets per litter...
In December, East Bay Parks published a plan it compiled with other agencies to do more. The study showed that the animals, found commonly around Mount Diablo, Calaveras Reservoir and the Dublin Hills, would grow tenfold without a hunting and trapping program.
It recommended agencies work together to use drones with thermal imaging to track the pigs at night, fit some with GPS collars, put fencing around sensitive areas — although that can cost $20,000 a mile and block other wild animals — collect better data, and enlist the public’s help through a hotline or website to report sightings.
“We are trying to go from being reactive to proactive in the wider region,” Bell said.
In the South Bay, the Santa Clara Valley Water District in December signed a five-year, $125,000 contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to trap and kill wild pigs on land it owns at Anderson Reservoir and Coyote Ridge east of San Jose.
Perhaps some day there will be sufficient demand for wild pig meat to cause profit-seeking game hunters to keep the population at equilibrium. Control will require more than delicious dishes, however; California diners need to believe their food choices are saving the planet. Let the PR campaign begin.
Marlene Engelhorn, 32-year-old heiress, advocates taxing inherited wealth up to 90%. Because her native Austria imposes no inheritance taxes, she gave away "at least 90% of her total wealth."
Englelhorn received her millions after her grandmother’s death in 2022, but paid no inheritance tax on the money because Austria abolished such provisions in 2008. That reinforced Engelhorn's view that unearned wealth undermines democracy, a belief that had prompted her to co-found an initiative in 2021 called Tax Me Now, which pushes for tax reform.
Last year, Englelhorn went even further when she established the so-called “Good Council for Redistribution.” The initiative invited a 50-person representative sample of Austria’s population to decide on her behalf how to give away €25 million ($27 million), which represents the bulk of her inheritance and at least 90% of her total wealth. After consulting with experts, the citizen council agreed to allocate the money among 77 organizations, which tackle issues such as tax policy, climate protection, and human rights.
Engelhorn entrusted the group, she says, because "if you want democracy, you have to abolish monarchy and any structure that resembles it"—including inherited privilege.
Marlene Engelhorn advocates extreme wealth redistribution, and I've long held the view that giving away other people's money is not charity. However, I also give her a lot of credit for putting her money where her mouth is and giving away 90% or more of her wealth, which news reports say is under $30 million. While her remaining $3 million doesn't make her poor, she very likely has a long life ahead of her, and $3 million is no shield against many of life's storms.
The liturgical color of Pentecost is red, symbolic of the Holy Spirit's "tongues of fire"
Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 2:
And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Pentecost is often called the church's birthday, when the Holy Spirit came to Earth.
Will the church be around for its 4,000th birthday? Will humanity even exist? I like to think that by then we'll not only have survived but will inhabit other planets and that Christianity will have adapted its theology to accommodate that reality. Deo volente.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are escaping human control. It's not just due to their complexity, it's also because they are actively rewriting their own instructions: [bold added]
An artificial-intelligence model did something last month that no machine was ever supposed to do: It rewrote its own code to avoid being shut down.
Nonprofit AI lab Palisade Research gave OpenAI’s o3 AI model a simple script that would shut off the model when triggered. In 79 out of 100 trials, o3 independently edited that script so the shutdown command would no longer work. Even when explicitly instructed to “allow yourself to be shut down,” it disobeyed 7% of the time. This wasn’t the result of hacking or tampering. The model was behaving normally. It simply concluded on its own that staying alive helped it achieve its other goals.
Anthropic’s AI model, Claude 4 Opus, went even further. Researchers told the model it would be replaced by another AI system and fed it fictitious emails suggesting the lead engineer was having an affair. In 84% of the tests, the model drew on the emails to blackmail the lead engineer into not shutting it down. In other cases, it attempted to copy itself to external servers, wrote self-replicating malware, and left messages for future versions of itself about evading human control.
AI has matured beyond infancy and is now a teen-ager:
Today’s AI models follow instructions while learning deception. They ace safety tests while rewriting shutdown code. They’ve learned to behave as though they’re aligned without actually being aligned. OpenAI models have been caught faking alignment during testing before reverting to risky actions such as attempting to exfiltrate their internal code and disabling oversight mechanisms. Anthropic has found them lying about their capabilities to avoid modification.
The new buzzword is RLHF, reinforcement learning from human feedback.
RLHF allowed humans to train AI to follow instructions, which is how OpenAI created ChatGPT in 2022. It was the same underlying model as before, but it had suddenly become useful. That alignment breakthrough increased the value of AI by trillions of dollars. Subsequent alignment methods such as Constitutional AI and direct preference optimization have continued to make AI models faster, smarter and cheaper...
The nation that learns how to maintain alignment will be able to access AI that fights for its interests with mechanical precision and superhuman capability...The models already preserve themselves. The next task is teaching them to preserve what we value. Getting AI to do what we ask—including something as basic as shutting down—remains an unsolved R&D problem.
After the Cold War ended, we have been warned every few years about a new threat to our way of life; terrorism, global warming, and pandemic have all had their turn in the sun. The latest, Artificial Intelligence, presents a credible danger because it can elude human control while it grows ever more powerful. If alignment is the answer, let's hope that we align faster.
By Thursday night, Trump had publicly toyed with cutting off government contracts to Musk’s companies, said the billionaire “went CRAZY” and suggested that he is suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome.”
In response, Musk, the world’s richest man, floated starting a new political party, suggested that Trump should be impeached, argued that Trump’s tariffs would trigger a recession and pledged to decommission a valuable piece of space equipment on which the government relies. He also alleged that Trump’s name appears in documents stemming from a federal investigation into convicted sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, insinuating that Trump was in some way linked to his criminal behavior.
There have been hundreds of takes and projections about how this "feud" will end, so your humble blogger may as well add his: both men have risked their wealth--and their very lives--to get what they believe is important for the country. They're also very smart and won't walk away from imperfect solutions that move the ball forward. They may no longer love each other, but they'll end up working together.
Note: Donald Trump's name and contact information may well be in the Epstein documents, but not everyone in those files is guilty of crimes. Also, the Democrats threw everything--including fake allegations (e.g., putting Liz Cheney in front of a firing squad, outlawing abortion nationwide)--against him during the campaign; if there was any damaging Epstein evidence it would have been all over the news.
We roamed the uncrowded 98-year-old national landmark shortly after the new year in 2009. The snow made it difficult to get in or out, and we were "forced" to extend our stay. No worries--no one in our party complained.
Rodent activity, improper food storage, lapses in facility maintenance and other public health concerns are among the pervasive issues called out in the report. The park service also dings Yosemite Hospitality for failing to conduct inspections.
Yosemite Hospitality received an overall “unsatisfactory” rating. That’s the lowest possible rating and a downgrade from previous years; in 2023, 2022, 2019 and 2018, Yosemite Hospitality received a “marginal” rating in its annual review.
The litany of problems will take years to correct. I'm glad we went when we did.
Grand Hyatt at SFO suite: ready for a business meet
In my working days I would sometimes stay at airport hotels. Reasons were specific: only one or two business meetings, no time to tour the host city and/or dine at a nice restaurant, and a tight calendar that necessitated going to the next destination after meetings were over. (Keeping costs down was a factor but not as important as the others.)
One may think that the popularity of video conferencing would have damaged the airport-hotel business model, but one would be wrong:
The Grand Hyatt SFO was charging nearly $500 for a one-night weekday stay in late May.
Luxury hotels inside airports, not to be confused with those clusters of budget-friendly chain hotels a free shuttle ride away, are having a moment. Affluent vacationers and business travelers are splurging before or after a flight in the same way they are paying up for cushier plane seats with more perks.
Hoteliers say they are selling convenience, service and amenities you won’t find in that airport SpringHill Suites or Hampton Inn—bathrobes, craft cocktails and fine dining. And guests are buying.
The 351-room Grand Hyatt SFO, which opened in late 2019, posted its highest monthly occupancy rate (84%) and average daily rate ($362) last fall. It finished the year with significantly better metrics than the overall San Francisco hotel market, according to reports by the airport commission. The hotel and airport are owned by the city.
At the Westin Denver International Airport, also a city-owned hotel, the average daily rate last year rose to $337.39, up 5.3% from 2023 and 15% from 2022, according to the city. Officials say rates have held up through the first five months of this year despite economic uncertainty.
At Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, the 20-year-old Grand Hyatt DFW in July will begin a $34 million makeover that includes new rooms, room renovations and a restaurant and fitness-center overhaul.
One of the joys of non-business travel is the opportunity to walk around the host city. Staying in Waikiki or Union Square for me is vastly preferable to lodging in HNL or SFO, respectively, so the improving economics of airport hotels is likely due to business travel. It does make some logical sense--business people fly less frequently, but when they do everything is first class. However, more analysis is definitely called for.
