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.
Yes, there's some ego involved. I have a Finance MBA (though it's 50 years old) and am a long-retired CPA, but I should have at least a high-school-level knowledge of personal finance, right?
Right, though I confess I would probably have gotten wrong a question about crypto.
One silver lining to having a health condition is that the sufferer may be eligible for a disability placard.
My mobility is sufficient so that I can walk, albeit slowly, from "normal" parking spaces; the real advantage to having a placard is that sometimes the only spaces that are open are for the disabled. This is not too important for most errands--I can come back later--but I definitely need to make medical appointments on time. During last month there were at least three instances where I needed the blue sign to park at the doctor's office.
Having a disability placard, IMHO, is a privilege, not a right. We will only use it if I'm in the car, which is the law by the way ("It is important to remember that you are the only person who can use your DP parking placard or DP License Plates").
About half the time I see placarded cars where no one appears infirm, where everyone can walk vigorously to and from the vehicle. Well, appearances can be deceiving; there have been tremendous advances in physical therapy!
“Many young men feel like their lives are lacking in structure, purpose and connection,” said Richard Reeves, president of the nonpartisan research organization the American Institute for Boys and Men. “It turns out that churches have 2,000 years of experience at providing these things.”
These efforts appear to be paying off. Women in the U.S. have long been more religious than men, but lately the gender gap in religious affiliation has narrowed. Surveys show that women are leaving the pews, partly in response to the church’s handling of sexual-abuse scandals but also because they are increasingly suspicious of institutions that reinforce traditional gender roles. Men, meanwhile, are staying in the fold.
Among younger Americans, men are more religious than women for the first time in modern history. In a 2024 survey of Americans aged 18 to 29 by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), 64% of men and 60% of women said they were religiously affiliated. A decade ago, 65% of men and 71% of women said the same.
[Pastor B.J.] Holt has noticed an uptick in young men coming to the church with more questions than answers about how to live a meaningful life—or just get through the day. “We’re trying to impart guidance on a generation that’s hungry for that,” Holt said.
Finding purpose in one's life is not about casting hither and yon for new truths but taking the time to find what's worked in the past and asking whether it can work again.
The "gender gap" in the minds of some observers (not all) manifested itself in the 2024 elections, with men voting overwhelmingly for Republicans and women likewise for Democrats. This week the Democrats allotted $20 million to find out how to talk to men.
On Wednesday night, the San Francisco Democratic Party weighed in, endorsing the idea as well. The resolution noted that Donald Trump got 56% of the votes of men aged 18-29, and that “addressing the challenge experienced by boys and men is not only a moral imperative, but is essential to fostering a more inclusive and responsive political movement that truly speaks to the needs of all individuals, and countering the resultant rise polarization and disinformation.”
...The New York Times reported last week that the plan “is code-named SAM — short for “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan” — and promises investment to “study the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces.” It recommends buying advertisements in video games, among other things.
“Above all, we must shift from a moralizing tone,” it urges.
Yes, that's going to win over the men. "Inclusive and responsive political movement" and "gains attention and virality in these spaces" are precisely how guys talk to each other in the locker room and neighborhood bar.
How about leaving men alone and NOT talking politics 24/7? That's got a better chance of improving your poll numbers rather than working on your "messaging."
Elon Musk has been attacked from all sides during his time at the Dept. of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in Washington. Interest groups are fighting to keep every dollar of over-$6 Trillion in annual government spending, while shareholders in his companies want him to return to tending his businesses.
Elon Musk's last day as a temporary government employee was today, but he may have a few ideas about how he wants to spend his time that don't include Tesla or SpaceX.
The Tesla Diner under construction (Jessie Alcheh/SFGATE)
Elon Musk continually surprises with his list of priorities, but I doubt that many had Tesla Diner on that list.
But there’s something … different about the diner under construction at Santa Monica Boulevard and Orange Drive in Hollywood. For one, it’s got a striking two-story silver Space Age design and electric car charging stations aplenty. Large outdoor screens are set to show movie clips. And then there’s the mercurial owner, controversial Tesla and SpaceX CEO and Department of Government Efficiency architect Elon Musk...
The Tesla diner project has been in the works since 2018, when Musk announced on what was then Twitter that he was “Gonna put an old school drive-in, roller skates & rock restaurant at one of the new Tesla Supercharger locations in LA.” Progress has been slow since that first public idea, but lately, tidbits about the space have been trickling out on social media. The announcement of [Eric] Greenspan as chef was first floated on X and picked up later by the New York Times. In March, Sawyer Merritt shared on X that the “diner will feature a ‘1950s retro charm, dazzling neon lights, the unmistakable scent of freshly grilled burgers & hand-spun milkshakes.’” Merritt also noted the launch of a Tesla Diners Instagram account, which remains post-free...
The restaurant’s alien-spaceship design, courtesy of Stantec, is growing more visible by the day, despite the fencing and security around the busy corner lot. In late 2023, the restaurant was still very much a steel shell, but recent photos reveal that the building has not only been topped out but is already filling up with furniture and other finishing touches. Large movie screens affixed above the chargers are roughly in place, and word is that the screens will show films for 30 minutes, or the time it takes to charge a car.
It may have the tastiest burgers and unique decor, but I doubt that was enough to excite Elon Musk. There is undoubtedly something more to Tesla Diner.
A 175 sq ft ‘Snug Single’ room at the Kimpton Fitzroy London (IHG/WSJ)
In more than half the cities I visit I like to spend my time out and about, so I'm favorably inclined toward this lodging trend.
Party-of-one rooms...represent a growing category in the hospitality industry, serving everyone from the odd-man-out on group trips to solo jet-setters looking to save. Many such units barely clear 175-square-feet, but in big-city destinations where sightseeing rather than in-room lingering tops the to-do list, they work.
If it's clean, comfortable, quiet, and has fast WiFi, I'm good.
A California father died in a crash on Memorial Day while he was teaching his 15-year-old how to drive in Orange County, police said.
The father, identified as 64-year-old James Politoski, was being driven by his daughter, who has a driver’s permit, Lt. Jesse Schmidt with the Laguna Beach Police Department told SFGATE.
In a social media post, Laguna Beach police said the driver crashed through a fence from the parking lot of Gelson’s Market in Dana Point. The car then plummeted down an embankment on Coast Highway between Wesley Drive and Montage Resort Drive. The preliminary cause of the crash appears to be confusion between the brake pedal and gas pedal, Schmidt said.
Laguna Beach police arrived at the crash at around 2:45 p.m., and the father was pronounced dead at the scene. The daughter was transported to Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo with significant injuries, police said.
As of Wednesday morning, the teenager was in stable condition at the hospital and expected to survive, Schmidt said.
Learning from my dad and uncles, I got my Hawaiian driver's license when I was 15. I also taught a couple of people from my generation back in the '60's and '70's.
When it came time for my son to get his license, I realized that I didn't have the requisite knowledge, nor could I handle the aggravation. We enrolled him in lessons, and he passed the driver's test on his first try. I encourage any person trying to get his license to sign up for personal instruction; it is money well spent.
Beyond basic aesthetics, good posture—an erect, balanced bearing—determines the ease and efficiency with which you move your body. Less well-known is that good posture is also essential for optimal circulation, respiration, digestion and bladder function. Increasing evidence suggests it also improves cognitive ability and enhances your mood.
Moreover, when you hold yourself upright such that no bony or soft tissue is catching, compressing or straining, it sets you up to maintain your physical fitness, freedom of movement and independence as you age. Physical therapists and geriatricians agree that a stooping posture doesn’t have to be the inevitable consequence of getting old.
And don't ignore the psychological benefits:
A 2023 analysis of posture research going back more than 20 years revealed that there is a significant bidirectional relationship between depression and a slumped posture. Another study showed that participants who maintained an upright posture while in a stressful situation reported higher self-esteem, better mood and less anxiety, compared with participants who slumped. Furthermore, better posture is thought to foster a sense of vitality and pleasure, improve cognitive performance, increase rate of speech and reduce self-absorption.
Only a small fraction of Americans sign up for military service or finishing schools. It's too bad that these institutions are regarded as passé, because their matriculants do learn good posture.
The colombarium at the National Cemetery of the Pacific, Punchbowl crater.
My father and his five brothers who wore the uniform during World War II are no longer with us, but I think of them often. Their stories are over, but they are not finished, in that what we consider is important about them has changed over time.
At 21 I had just moved to Palo Alto, while at that age Dad was about to complete his tour of duty in Yokohama. At 22 I was married, while Dad had yet to meet the woman to whom he would be married for 67 years. We can spend several pages more on comparing life milestones, but one thing Dad and his brothers will always--but I will never--have is their military service.
Paying respects to my uncles at Punchbowl
From 2011: Lately I've been thinking more about the generation that fought and won World War II. Today's problems are daunting, but they are nothing compared to what they faced--economic catastrophe and the destruction of nations. They secured the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity, in the words of the Constitution, and so shall we, if we remember our forefathers' example.
Diane Robertson and her signature roast pork, with Jerry Brooks of Hope Lutheran, San Mateo
My friend Diane Robertson passed away on Thursday after a short illness.
I was the coordinator for the church outreach program, and for 20 years Diane cheerfully gave her money and time to the dozen or so activities we supported. She manned the church's booth for the Foster City summer fair, made sandwiches for Sandwiches on Sunday, and bought Christmas presents for immigrant families.
She was one of the stalwarts for Home and Hope, a consortium of Peninsula churches and synagogues that provided emergency housing at their facilities. Diane liked to roast a pork shoulder or ham for the Home and Hope families, and I always went back for seconds of her dish.
She was a retired stewardess (don't call me a flight attendant, she said) for United Airlines, and she was fond of recounting the glory of air travel as it used to be.
Though we grew up thousands of miles apart---me in Hawaii and she in Canada--we found common ground in our humble origins and marveled how good our lives had turned out to be. We also shared a deep gratitude that prompted us to give something back.
In order to minimize cheating using artificial intelligence tools, colleges are requiring handwritten test answers in blue books:
Students outsourcing their assignments to AI and cheating their way through college has become so rampant, so quickly, that it has created a market for a product that helps professors ChatGPT-proof school. As it turns out, that product already exists. In fact, you’ve probably used it. You might even dread it.
It’s called a blue book.
The mere thought of that exam booklet with a blue cover and blank pages is enough to make generations of college kids clam up—and make their hands cramp up.
But inexpensive pamphlets of stapled paper have become a surprisingly valuable tool for teachers at a time when they need all the help they can get.
Your humble blogger is familiar with the argument that artificial intelligence will be so intertwined with their lives that students should be encouraged, not discouraged, from using AI to solve exam problems. I think the counter-arguments are stronger: 1) college is perhaps the last environment where students can be forced to think for themselves without the use of AI, and tuition monies would be better spent on thinking rather than looking up information; 2) how hard is it, really, to learn how to use artificial intelligence? An employer who thinks AI is both necessary and difficult can easily sponsor a one-day class for its employees.
Blue books were good enough for us, and they should be good enough for our grandchildren.
Waymo car in SF (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty/Axios)
The robotic-like speech of artificial intelligence has been criticized, but efforts to humanize such speech are also hard to get right. Google's self-driving car company, Waymo, is experimenting with AI chit-chat to improve customer experiences:
Depending on your tolerance for small talk, the lack of a human to talk to in driverless taxis like Waymo is either a feature or a bug. However, a new AI experience that debuted at the Cannes Film Festival foreshadows a reality in which chitchat might come to autonomous vehicles.
...The project was created by a team that includes Yamil Rodriguez, who combined his background in immersive theater with an interest in AI (and some grant money) to bring the project to life.
“Seeing autonomous taxis now, that used to be a place for story exchange,” Rodriguez told SFGATE. “I remember seeing ‘Taxicab Confessions,’ and that being such a place that felt safe, to share any wild story or even make up stories. Or taxicab drivers giving history of certain blocks or street corners. It feels like we’re evolving in such a way that story exchange between humans is being lost face-to-face.”
The AI “driver” speaks over 50 languages, and like many taxi drivers, is well-versed in pessimism. When I told her I lived in San Francisco as a journalist, the first thing she said was, “San Francisco’s a money pit without a tech job.” We went on to talk about a story I was working on about punk rock history, and she regaled me with a very generic anecdote another customer told her about visiting punk clubs in the Mission in the 1980s, then waxed about how much the city has changed. As you might expect from this type of demo, there were a few seconds of lag before each response, but the driver did seem at least relatively informed about San Francisco tropes. I didn’t go too deep into conversation before the gruff demeanor of the AI went into full force and told me in no uncertain terms to “get the hell out.”
It was an uncanny experience, and honestly, one that I hope doesn’t become commonplace.
For communications with machines I want them to confirm my instructions and nothing more. When we talk to human strangers we share personal information to learn about each other, but there's no such benefit when we converse with a machine. I prefer quiet and plan to shut off the talk feature when dealing with artificial intelligence entities.
It wasn't overlooked, but one action the Senate took this week received less attention than other items in the news--for example the "big, beautiful" tax bill and the White House visit of South African president Cyril Ramaphosa--but it was nevertheless highly important to the future of the auto and energy industries in the United States. [bold added]
The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted to block California’s first-in-the-nation regulations that would ban the sale of new gasoline-powered passenger vehicles statewide in 2035, setting up a certain legal battle over the future of electric cars in the United States.
By a vote of 50-44, the Republican-led chamber voted to revoke permission that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration had given to California to set the rules.
In 2020 California banned the sale of new, gasoline-powered cars beginning in 2035. Because of California's influence as the wealthiest, most populous state, other states copied California's anti-fossil-fuel rules. Perhaps more importantly, automakers found it too costly to manufacture different models for the U.S. market and began offering only California-compliant models.
The Senate vote directed the Environmental Protection Agency to stop providing California a waiver, thereby negating California's ability to set its own environmental rules regarding gasoline-powered cars.
Your humble blogger has been opposed to California's fossil-fuel ban since 2021:
100% dependence on solar and wind power is nuts. Single sourcing of electricity and transportation systems should not be on notoriously unsteady renewable energy, especially during extreme weather events that knocked out power during the California wildfires and the Texas freeze.
Battery technology is improving rapidly, but it's not at the point where we can pull the plug on the oil and gas that run the vast majority of our cars and power plants. (For an example of how well government predicts construction of technologically advanced infrastructure, see California's high-speed rail fiasco.)
We have already seen the effects of the 2035 ban within California. Refineries that produce California's special blend of gasoline are closing because it is not worthwhile to repair or improve them. Maybe now refiners will reverse course.
California politicians won't admit it, but the Republican Senate may have saved California from the disaster of its own policies.
The question: is the mural over Leavitt’s Bakery "commercial speech" subject to regulation or is it art that is protected by the First Amendment? [bold added]
[The town of Conway, NH] had argued the mural was a commercial sign and in violation of the town’s zoning law, and told him to take it down or adjust the size, which at 91 square feet was nearly four times larger than allowed. [Leavitt’s Bakery owner Sean] Young fought back, saying the mural was art, not advertising, and that the town infringed on his First Amendment rights by trying to regulate its content. He filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the town and sought $1 in damages.
..The ruling, issued by U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante, came after a one-day bench trial in February.
Laplante said Conway’s enforcement of the ordinance was unconstitutional, and ordered the town to stop its efforts.
There are sound reasons for the regulation of commercial speech. Businesses could lie about the benefits, costs, or any other aspects of their products and services and skip town to avoid responsibility; such speech should not be protected by the First Amendment.
In the case of Leavitt's Bakery it's not clear why the public needed protection from the mural;
calling it a commercial sign seemed like a pretext to force the bakery to remove an image that some in the town didn't like. Cheers for the judge for putting a stop to legal over-reach.
Giancarlo was just trying to help. But he set the dog on fire, the dog set the couch on fire, the couch set the curtains on fire, and before long, residents of a five-story, 114-unit apartment building in San Francisco were fleeing for their lives down a fire escape amid a blaze that sent two people to the hospital.
That’s according to a fire department report filed as an exhibit in a wrongful-eviction lawsuit against the building’s owners.
“He tried to remove the ticks using a lighter, which accidentally lit the puppy on fire,” the report said.
The lawsuit was filed May 14 in San Francisco Superior Court by a couple who claim the building’s owners delayed work to repair their apartment after the fire, forcing them to live in a home-made trailer on streets around the Bay Area. It seeks unspecified damages.
A second-floor tenant told fire investigators she had adopted a puppy in Modesto, and after she brought it home, noticed it had a tick. The woman, whose name is redacted from the fire department’s report, said her friend Giancarlo decided to use a lighter to remove the blood-sucking parasite. It was just before midnight on March 12 last year.
Giancarlo — who is not identified by a last name in the report — told investigators he found many ticks on the dog’s stomach, and that he had experience using heat to get rid of ticks.
The dog, which Giancarlo said combusted as if something flammable had been applied to it, ran over to the couch, where the tenant tried to grab it, the report said. Her clothing and the sofa both caught fire, and the sofa set the curtains ablaze, the report said.
If you are a San Francisco landlord, not only can your tenants set the building on fire but you can be sued for "wrongful eviction" if you don't make repairs fast enough. Another reason to get out of San Francisco with all deliberate speed.
Within the past five years major companies such as Oracle, HP, Tesla, and Wells Fargo have moved from the Bay Area to Austin, Texas. There are signs, however, that Austin may have peaked. [bold added]
Nearly five years after Austin, Texas, became a darling of the tech industry, luring companies out of California with the promise of lower taxes and a better quality of life, the city is now bleeding tech talent that is flowing back to the coasts.
A new report from venture-capital firm SignalFire shows that in 2024 Big Tech employment declined 1.6% in Austin, and startup employment fell 4.9%. Tech employment in Dallas and Houston also declined, along with cities like Denver and Toronto. Tech employment grew, on the other hand, in New York and San Francisco.
It is a shift from five years ago, when Texas seemed like a growing Sunbelt beacon for tech, luring companies like Tesla, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Oracle from California, and inspiring a number of remote tech workers and startups to follow them. But many of those companies have since laid off workers and Oracle actually relocated from Texas to Nashville, Tenn.
“I think that promise was never realized,” said Asher Bantock, SignalFire’s head of research. “This idea that it would become a new startup hub didn’t materialize.”
Return-to-office requirements combined with the burgeoning artificial-intelligence industry centralizing in Silicon Valley drew workers back West, while Austin’s fluctuating living costs and outdated infrastructure left new transplants frustrated, Bantock said.
It's too soon to say that one data point marks the beginning of a trend reversal. California's high taxes, regulatory regime, and housing costs haven't changed and for many businesses more than offset the benefits of staying. The large public companies aren't coming back, and it's a safe bet the ones that do remain in California have contingency plans to move if business conditions get worse.
Because California politicians don't feel compelled to change, I predict we'll see more departures from California in the next decade.
When then-candidate Trump was nearly killed last July, most Americans, not just Republicans, gave thanks to God, the universe, their lucky stars, or whomever one gives thanks to when disaster is averted. The Republic will survive the election of President Trump, but perhaps his assassination would have made its continuance problematic.
The Bidens after his diagnosis was announced (NBC)
And if Republicans are totally honest with themselves, they should give thanks that President Biden served his entire term of office. If he had been stricken--or had stepped down voluntarily--any time during the past four years, an incumbent President Harris might well have won the election. Yes, IMHO, there was a cover-up of Mr. Biden's deteriorating mental condition by Democrat insiders and the media, but he chose to cling to office, and for that choice, however misguided, Republicans should be grateful.
Today it was revealed that President Biden is suffering from advanced prostate cancer. So let's join the majority of Americans for whom politics is not the be-all and end-all of existence and pray for him and his family.
As a boomer, I am glad most of my life was spent before smartphones (the iPhone was introduced in 2007) or even the Internet. I learned how to write, solve problems without looking up the answer, and focus on tasks for hours without being distracted. Speaking of writing, here's another reason to be grateful that I received my education when I did, and yes, I would have been tempted to use artificial intelligence (AI) had it existed. [bold added]
A high-school senior from New Jersey doesn’t want the world to know that she cheated her way through English, math and history classes last year.
Yet her experience, which the 17-year-old told The Wall Street Journal with her parent’s permission, shows how generative AI has rooted in America’s education system, allowing a generation of students to outsource their schoolwork to software with access to the world’s knowledge.
Educators see benefits to using artificial intelligence in the classroom. Yet teachers and parents are left on their own to figure out how to stop students from using the technology to short-circuit learning. Companies providing AI tools offer little help.
The New Jersey student told the Journal why she used AI for dozens of assignments last year: Work was boring or difficult. She wanted a better grade. A few times, she procrastinated and ran out of time to complete assignments.
The student turned to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, to help spawn ideas and review concepts, which many teachers allow. More often, though, AI completed her work. Gemini solved math homework problems, she said, and aced a take-home test. ChatGPT did calculations for a science lab. It produced a tricky section of a history term paper, which she rewrote to avoid detection.
The student was caught only once.
We are now in the second stage of the AI arms race in education. Teachers are using software to detect the use of AI, and students are using AI to "humanize" their writing.
Students don’t want to be accused of cheating, so they’re using artificial intelligence to make sure their school essays sound human.
Teachers use AI-detection software to identify AI-generated work. Students, in turn, are pre-emptively running their original writing through the same tools, to see if anything might be flagged for sounding too robotic.
In the workplace of the near future, using artificial intelligence will be a necessary skill. It will also be important to have human workers who can think for themselves. I am very happy to be retired and will be neither a worker or supervisor in that environment.
