SAM: Spending $20 Million to Talk to Men

(Jack Ohman/S.F. Chronicle)

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."

Musk: Something More

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.

It's Not the Size That Counts

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.

Memorial Day Tragedy

It's possible to smile at the headline. However, once the scope of the tragedy is made known, humor evaporates.

 

Gelson's Market parking lot in center

California dad dies during driving lesson with his daughter

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.

It's Now Okay to be a Stiff

(Illustration: Brown Bird Designs/WSJ)

Good posture is about more than looking good; there are long-term health benefits.

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.

Memorial Day 2025

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

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.

Goodbye, my friend, till we meet again.

Old School

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.

AI: Please Stop Talking

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.

California: Saved from the Disaster of its Own Policies

Gavin Newsom speaks against the Senate vote (WSJ)

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.

Leave the Sign, Take the Cannoli

(Photo by Bukaty/AP/WSJ)

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.

Its Hair Was on Fire

The SF apartment fire in March, 2024 (Mercury News)

Removing ticks from a dog set a five-story apartment building on fire.

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.

Has Austin Peaked?

Downtown Austin, 2022 (American Statesman)

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.

Giving Thanks for President Biden

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.

Artificial Education

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]

(Illustration from Kent State U.)

There’s a Good Chance Your Kid Uses AI to Cheat

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.

The Trump Doctrine

President Trump with Qatari Emir Sheikh
Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani (carnegie)

President Trump has upended so many norms and protocols that it's difficult to distinguish those actions that have long-term consequences from those that serve as short-term distractions for his opponents. One such distraction was the gift of a Boeing 747 by Qatar to the Air Force, which made it easy to overlook the President's fleshing out of the "Trump doctrine" in his trip to the Middle East. [bold added]

Mr. Trump is offering a form of foreign-policy realism rooted in good commercial relations and a focus on negotiating peace and stability. He doesn’t much care what kind of government countries run as long as they want good relations with the U.S. He’s looking for deals, even with enemies. He thinks mutual interest in prosperity can overcome even strong ideological differences—and he has no interest in promoting American values, including liberty or democracy.

...He says he wants peace above all else, and the test will be whether his deals with adversarial states are short-term expedients or longer-term strategic victories. His deal with Iran, however it goes, will tell us something about his plans for China as well.

Mr. Trump’s aversion to ideology—to promoting U.S. values—led to the biggest mistake of his trip, which was a needless attack on his predecessors. He praised the sparkling new cities of the Arab countries and claimed they are solely the handiwork of those nations.

American foreign policy has always been marked by the tension between realism and idealism. (An example of the latter is JFK's inaugural address:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.)

President Trump attributes recent U.S. foreign-policy failures to "nation-builders" and "interventionalists." His move toward realism is popular and is likely to last through his term.

Rice: A Few More Precautions

Rice safety graph from Healthy Babies Bright Future

Twelve years ago we switched back to white rice because brown rice was found to have higher levels of arsenic. Additional research has now shown that the safest rice is uncooked white rice grown in California [bold added]

The type of rice and how it’s grown and processed can impact levels of arsenic and other heavy metals, experts say. Brown and wild rice often contain the highest levels because the milling process used to create white rice removes the outer layers of the hull, where heavy metals are concentrated.

Lab testing found purchased samples of US-grown brown rice contained 151 parts per billion of heavy metals — 129 of that due to arsenic. Arborio rice grown in Italy, which is typically used to make risotto, and white rice grown in the Southeast US (often labeled as simply “USA”) were almost as high in total heavy metals as brown rice, the report said.

Arborio rice from Italy contained 101 parts per billion of arsenic — total heavy metal load in the purchased samples was 142 parts per billion. White rice grown in the US contained 95 parts per billion of arsenic, with a total heavy metal count of 118 parts per billion.

Basmati rice from India, jasmine rice from Thailand and California-grown sushi and Calrose rice (a form of sushi rice) were at or below the 100 parts per billion levels set by the FDA for arsenic in infant rice cereals. However, the Indian basmati and Italian Arborio varieties contained the highest average levels of cadmium.

The California-grown rice had the lowest overall heavy metal content — 65 parts per billion, with 55 parts per billion from arsenic — making it an excellent choice to reduce overall exposure, [Jane] Houlihan said.

Consumers should be wary, however, of precooked rice, including instant (one-minute and five-minute rice), parboiled (10-minute rice), and ready-to-heat-and-eat packaged rice, she said.

“Studies have shown the processing used to create instant rice can create additional toxins, and the ready-to-heat products are cooked inside the plastic containers, potentially releasing toxic chemicals,” Jane Houlihan said.

The report also says that arsenic and heavy metals can be reduced by soaking rice for at least half an hour, not just rinsing it. This step requires just a little more planning, and we'll start doing it immediately.

The Perfect Egg

The "perfect" boiled egg (Di Maio/WSJ)

Your humble blogger will go through some time and effort to acquire good food, but I don't love boiled eggs enough to spend over half an hour preparing them:

A group of Italian scientists has cracked the secret of how to boil a perfect egg.

The catch? It takes 32 minutes, two containers of water held at different temperatures, and a fastidious chef moving the egg between the containers every two minutes...

The scientists aimed to cook an egg evenly throughout. The conundrum was that an egg’s layers—its yellow yolk and white albumen—cook at different temperatures. Eaters risk a chalky yolk if they want a fully cooked white, or a runny white if they want a creamy yolk.

Transfer eggs between pots every 2 minutes

To achieve perfection, [Prof. of materials engineering Ernesto] Di Maio’s group, aided by mathematical models, simulations and experiments, invented “periodic cooking,” a method that calls for starting an egg in a pan of boiling water, leaving it there for two minutes, transferring it to a bowl of tepid water at 86 degrees Fahrenheit for another two minutes, and repeating the cycle eight times.

That’s 16 steps.

The goal is to keep the yolk at a consistent temperature of around 149 degrees Fahrenheit while still cooking the white, which usually needs to reach 185 degrees Fahrenheit to cook.

This is the ideal task for our first AI robot. It will never lose count of how many transfers it made and will make each transfer at the two-minute mark. It will do the job I won't do and do it better than I could ever have done it

Coyote Ugh-ly

Coyote at Holy Cross cemetery, Colma

Coyotes are neither threatened nor endangered, but there is an ethic against killing them despite their increasing encroachment on human habitats. And thus far evidence of coyotes attacking pets or children is anecdotal and has not prompted widespread corrective measures.

Nevertheless, here's another report that is potentially disturbing.

On a weekend visit to her mother’s grave at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma, Erin Haley found herself staring out the passenger’s side window of her car, trying to make sense of the scene unfolding near one of the headstones.

There, in broad daylight, was a coyote digging into the soft soil next to one of the markers. Occasionally, the canine would stop what it was doing, startled by a squawking crow or a passing car. Then, it would return its attention to the ground, continuing to sift through the dirt.

...but it’s unlikely the coyote had morbid intentions. Peter Marlow, communications director at the Archdiocese of San Francisco, which oversees the cemetery, told SFGATE its maintenance team has noticed gophers and ground squirrels running around in the area, which in turn draw coyotes that like to chase and hunt them down.

Marlow said the maintenance team has “a process” for removing the rodents and has already refilled the hole in the ground dug up by the coyote.

“We realize how disturbing this looks, but we want to reassure people that the State code governing depth of burials helps protect their loved ones, as do the concrete burial vaults that are used to protect the caskets,” he said in an email.

Wildlife experts say that coyotes' likely targets are burrowing rodents, not human remains that are probably too much work to dig up. However, as we have seen so far this century, the science is rarely settled.

Stanford Medicine

Charging stations can be found in every building

Since the beginning of 2024 family members have often used the medical facilities at Stanford. We have availed ourselves of the services in neurology, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, dermatology, oncology, radiology, and early drug development, as well as the laboratories and emergency rooms.

The personnel, equipment, and buildings are uniformly excellent. If we must be critical, we have experienced an occasional slip-up in scheduling, probably due to growing pains from Stanford Health's multi-billion-dollar expansion program.

But the greatest drawback, IMHO, is something that Stanford can't do much about, namely the difficulty getting to its facilities quickly. The tony Peninsula towns Palo Alto and Menlo Park have blocked traffic improvements, so cars must traverse the same local streets as they have since World War II. Getting from the freeways to Stanford can be heavy going, especially when one considers the growth in the Silicon Valley economy.

Nevertheless, we'll live with the inconveniences. Both Stanford and UCSF have world-class medical facilities, and we know people who fly here for treatment. The quality of medical care is one benefit of living in the Bay Area that we don't often hear mentioned.

Mother's Day, 2025

On Mother's Day we had flowers delivered to my 101-year-old mother-in-law. Helen is a marvel. She is fully mobile, lives at home with one of her daughters, and texts us regularly about her day.

She wants for nothing material and is satisfied just hearing from us. I'm old school and like writing her physical letters. She says that she likes to re-read them, which one rarely does with electronic communications.

Happy Mother's Day, and many more.

Rancho Palos Verdes: Unlikely Ally

Homes in Rancho Palos Verdes (Getty/SFGate)

Three months ago we wrote about the slow-moving disaster in Rancho Palos Verdes, where some homes are sliding toward the ocean. However, the slippage has slowed for an unexpected reason.

Recently, though, the rate of failure has slowed somewhat, giving new hope to those on the edge. And it’s thanks to an unlikely ally: drought.

At a May 6 city council meeting, Rancho Palos Verdes geologist Mike Phipps explained that the land movement across much of the peninsula has stabilized (or at least decelerated) recently. “Mr. Phipps believes this is largely due to significantly below-average rainfall through April,” according to a news update on the meeting from the city’s website, which added that “winterization measures” last fall and “ongoing dewatering efforts” have also contributed to the slowdown. Since the start of the rainy season back in October, the region has received only 46% of its average seasonal rainfall total this year.

In California we're lucky to have had three wet winters in a row, but in Rancho Palos Verdes that's too much of a good thing.

We Still Live in Plato's World

The Cornford edition (1973) is the one I used

I first opened Plato's Republic in eighth grade, tackled it again in high school, and spent over a month on it in college. A half-century later its popularity persists :

Plato’s most far-reaching work is today his most widely read, indeed the most widely assigned text by any author at America’s top universities (according to a 2016 study by the Open Syllabus Project, a non-profit group that surveys college curricula). That’s surely what Plato hoped to achieve as he composed his “Republic.” From stylistic clues we can tell that he kept revising the work through most of his adult life (that is, through the first half of the fourth century B.C.), far longer than any of his other 30-odd dialogues.

An ancient Greek anecdote, perhaps apocryphal, holds that just after his death a tablet was found on which, in his last hours, he had been reworking the opening sentence of the “Republic.”

In my humble opinion we--at least those of us in the West---still live in Plato's world. We assume that Forms exist, though none of us have seen them in reality (we know what the Form of a "dog" or a "chair" is, though none of us have seen perfect specimens of either).

Many, including your humble blogger, believe that our perceptions of the world are like Plato's shadows in the cave. There is an underlying truth that our senses alone do not grasp; do not mistake the shadows for reality.

And the current disenchantment with education is not so much a turning away from Plato's path to virtue as it is disappointment about what education has actually become: a tool for blinkered indoctrination into identity politics and tribal grievances. Education, as it is today, is as far removed from the Socratic method and free inquiry as a paint-by-numbers manual teaches art.

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” ― Socrates

“Americano…”

Pope Leo XIV stands in front of the altar at the Sistine Chapel (Sforza/Reuters/WSJ)

Against expectations, the conclave of cardinals elected a Pope who was the first ever to be born in the United States:

The election of the first-ever American pope stunned the crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square, defied betting markets and shattered an assumption that the church would never hand its highest office to a citizen of the world’s leading superpower.

But by Thursday, the 69-year-old Prevost had become the natural choice for the cardinals secluded in the Sistine Chapel. For weeks, they had searched for a successor who offered continuity with the late Pope Francis’ dream of an inclusive and humble church—but who showed more deference for Catholic tradition and stronger managerial skills to run a financially strained city-state of global reach.

Even before the conclave began on Wednesday, a geographically and ideologically diverse bloc had come to understand that they had among them an all-rounder who checked those boxes.

The longtime bishop of Chiclayo in Peru was from the U.S., but of the global south. Many of his supporters described the polyglot prelate with the same four words: “citizen of the world.” Years of missionary experience had lent him a reputation as an advocate of the poor and marginalized. He had served in the heart of the Vatican, but not long enough for its frequent scandals to taint him.

A person who checks all the boxes rarely makes the best leader. Let's hope that Pope Leo overturns those expectations as well.

Not Just for Nerds

Jacques Marie Mage - Dealan $870

Always on the lookout for status symbols that I can afford, these "beefy" eyeglasses can be purchased for under $1,000.

Founded in 2014 by French designer Jerôme Mage, Jacques Marie Mage (JMM) handcrafts super-luxe frames in Japan in limited runs. While it offers a range of unisex styles, its signature remains the dark, square, acetate designs (see: the black Dealan and Molino models). Weighty at about 50g, and accented with precious-metal details, these eyeglasses and sunglasses might as well be collectibles, with prices to match: They currently range from $770 to $2,400. You do not forget these in a cab or accidentally squash them while sunbathing.

In recent years the sculptural, subtly logoed designs have become the status glasses in certain circles of wealthy, fashionable men...

With its beefy black frames nodding to the ’50s and ’60s glamour of rock ’n’ roll and film stars from Buddy Holly to Marcello Mastroianni, the brand is staking a claim on a classic style. Stylish celebs including LeBron James, Michael Fassbender, Jeff Goldblum and Denzel Washington have sported the glasses.

The culture has moved on; beneath the Clark-Kent look may just lie a Man of Steel.

Climate Change: Let's See if They'll Buy That Reason for Higher Taxes

My 2016 rented condo would have been subject to the tax.

Hawaii raised its hotel tax from the current 9.25% to 11% "to combat climate change."

The hotel tax is slated to jump from 9.25% to 11% beginning January 2026, specifically to combat climate change, according to the bill. Lawmakers say the increase will generate between $85 million and $100 million a year. Funding from the tax will be used to prevent effects from climate change like coastal erosion, flooding and wildfires, factors that many regions across Hawaii are vulnerable to, [state Rep. Adrian K.] Tam said at Friday’s meeting. The tax would also apply to tourists visiting the islands via cruise ships.

[Gov. Josh] Green has long been in favor of charging a $50 fee from tourists to enter the state, but various versions of the bill that have included a flat fee have died, since some lawmakers said it would violate the constitution’s protections for free travel, according to the Associated Press. Increasing the lodging tax was a compromise.

It sure is lucky that the science of global warming climate change came around to justify increasing the tax on beleagured tourists. After all, "coastal erosion, flooding and wildfires" had been occurring long before Captain Cook dropped anchor in 1778, but maybe the rubes will believe that driving their SUVs made the problems worse.

Meanwhile, thank goodness I have relatives that let me crash on their couch.

Prisoner of Trump's World

Alcatraz, 2006

Its prison closed in 1963, and Alcatraz has since become one of the most popular tourist attractions in the Bay Area.

Visitors can wander through the Gardens of Alcatraz, peruse the Big Lockup Exhibit, or take a night tour where one can “enjoy the beauty of a sunset silhouetting the Golden Gate Bridge” as well as “experience a cell door demonstration.” Over the years, Boy Scouts have clamored to hold overnight campouts in the infamous isolation cells of D Block. Athletes compete in prison-themed events, including a canoe race circling the island and the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon.

Donald Trump demonstrated the power of the Presidency's "bully pulpit" when he called for the Alcatraz prison to be rebuilt and re-opened.

Calling the prison a “symbol of law and order,” Trump on Sunday said he is directing the Bureau of Prisons and other federal agencies to rebuild Alcatraz to house “America’s most ruthless and violent offenders.”

However, the reasons for its original closure haven't gone away.

It operated as a maximum-security facility for nearly three decades, closing in 1963 because of millions of dollars in needed repairs and the expense of hauling all supplies, including fresh water, to the facility by boat. Alcatraz was tiny by the standards of most federal facilities, never housing more than around 275 prisoners.

President Trump is too much of a cost-benefit realist to take his own proposal seriously. IMHO, he did it to provoke Democrats and direct their attention from his other policies. [bold added]

Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco...call[ed] the president’s idea “unhinged and terrifying.” Trump wants to turn Alcatraz “into a domestic gulag in the middle of San Francisco Bay,” Wiener wrote on social media.

Some Democratic strategists recognize the President's maneuver as a distraction. [bold added]

But Trump’s Sunday evening social media post about the idea follows a well-honed strategy that the president has been deploying for years. He makes outlandish claims and goads the media into writing stories debunking or criticizing them, which focuses the national conversation around his preferred topics.

Centering the news cycle around the idea that he wants to crack down on crime could keep Americans’ focus on an issue that’s politically advantageous to him, experts say.

“He picks outlandish topics that he thinks will be popular with the general public, but unpopular with Democrats and maybe the educated Democratic elites, in the hopes that they criticize it,” said Gabriel Lenz, a political science professor at UC Berkeley. “That keeps an idea, an issue, a topic where he thinks he has an advantage in the news.”...

Longtime Trump adviser Steve Bannon calls this strategy “flood the zone.” It’s how Trump grows his popularity among everyday Americans, Bannon says.

"Flooding the zone" is a term that originated in sports. For example, if a team sends enough pass receivers to an area, it becomes impossible for the other team to cover each one.

Calls by wiser heads to ignore the Alcatraz distraction fall on deaf ears, because as Scott Wiener has demonstrated, some Democrats can't help themselves.

Conclave: Life Imitates Art

Figuring that a fictional account of a papal conclave would be more entertaining than real life, I watched the movie Conclave on Amazon's Prime Video this weekend. The film had political intrigue, dirty tricks, messages from the late Pope and deep diving into cardinals' personal histories. One by one the leading candidates withdraw because of these revelations.

Luis Antonio Tagle

Pietro Parolin

Apparently I was too quick to dismiss real life.

There have been whispering campaigns against the front-runners—Cardinal Pietro Parolin, a 70-year-old Italian and career diplomat, and Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, 67, of the Philippines. The aim is to make them living proof of a conclave adage: He who enters a pope, leaves a cardinal.

Parolin, for good measure, has shown he won’t be pushed around. Since the deliberations began, he has revealed the existence of not one but two letters from beyond the grave by Pope Francis, excluding one of the cardinals from the sacred vote.

By the end of the movie a Pope is elected, but only after some twists, turns, and an inspired speech. I doubt that we will experience such drama at the real conclave, but as we have seen so far, life is full of surprises.

Warren Buffett Retires

Warren Buffett and Greg Abel (Tullo/WSJ)

94-year-old Warren Buffett will step down as Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway:

Buffett said Saturday at Berkshire’s annual meeting that he plans to step down as CEO at the end of the year and hand the reins to [Greg] Abel. In his 60 years of delivering stunning investment returns and folksy wisdom, the 94-year-old has been the glue that binds together Berkshire’s collection of businesses—from Dairy Queen and Duracell to railways and insurers—at a time when big conglomerates are out of style.

Abel will inherit the challenge of overseeing that wide-ranging empire, while living up to Buffett’s seemingly impossible-to-replicate record in stock picking—something even Buffett has struggled to do in recent years...

A former accountant from the Canadian Prairies who joined Berkshire through its acquisition of a utility in Des Moines, Iowa, Abel helped build Berkshire Hathaway Energy into one of the company’s biggest businesses through a series of acquisitions and investments.

By 2018, Buffett had seen enough to put Abel in charge of all of Berkshire’s businesses outside of its insurance operations and add him to the board. Abel now oversees dozens of companies, including Benjamin Moore, Fruit of the Loom, Oriental Trading and See’s Candies. Buffett still runs the bulk of the company’s investment portfolio and makes decisions on how to deploy capital.

We can dust off all the cliches--Greg Abel has big shoes to fill, Why There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett--but one prediction is undoubtedly true: Greg Abel's strengths lie in operating Berkshire's many businesses; he will need assistance in making investment decisions.

Two lieutenants, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, each manage a portion of Berkshire’s stock portfolio, and some Berkshire watchers expect them to take on a bigger investing role when Abel becomes CEO.

“I don’t see anything in [Abel’s] background that would make him a good stock picker. That’s not where he got his chops,” said Robert Miles, who teaches a class on Buffett at the University of Nebraska Omaha. “My guess is Greg will be in charge of major acquisitions and capital allocation, but the investment managers already in place will continue” to oversee the equity portfolio.

Bill Miller, the veteran stock picker, advised Abel to follow the advice Buffett has long dispensed to individual investors: “Put most of the excess cash in an S&P 500 index fund,” he wrote. “Then let Todd and Ted actively manage the residual.”

Shasta Lake: No Drought Restrictions This Year

Shasta Lake, January 2025 (active norcal)

The state's largest reservoir is nearly filled to capacity:

Shasta Lake, about 10 miles north from the city of Redding, is at a surface level of 1,061.70 feet as of Wednesday, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which is just shy of its full capacity of 1,067 feet. That puts the lake at 96% of its total capacity, or 114% of its historical capacity for this time of year, according to the California Department of Water Resources.

Shasta Lake can hold about 1.5 trillion gallons of water, which can “cover the entire state of California in half an inch of water,” Colin McCarthy, an atmospheric science student at UC Davis who runs US Stormwatch, wrote in a post on X.

The reservoir began seeing a major jump in water levels after several atmospheric river-fueled storms brought heavy downpours during the holiday season. And last year, the reservoir also rose to nearly full capacity around the same period.

The capacity levels mark a notable comeback after a long-lasting, extreme drought period depleted the reservoir. Photos from summer 2021, published by Record Searchlight, a local media outlet in Redding, show the bone-dry lake with cracks and hardened mud.

Shasta Lake isn’t the only reservoir seeing exceptional water levels. Lake Oroville, the state’s second-largest reservoir, is currently at a surface level of around 891 feet as of Friday afternoon, according to the California Department of Water Resources, which puts the reservoir at 96% of its total capacity and 120% of its historical capacity for this time of year.

After three wet winters in a row California is lucky that its failure to build more water storage won't restrict residents' water usage...this year.

Lei Day 2025

May Day is lei day in Hawaii
Flowers and garlands everywhere…

The prizewinner (Star Advertiser)

While May Day was marked by angry protests on the Mainland, thousands assembled joyfully at Kapiolani Park.

The Mayor’s Grand Prize at this year’s 97th Lei Day Celebration in Honolulu went to Dale Mar T. Acoba.

Acoba wowed judges Thursday with his white lei kui made of hypericum and pearl yarrow, and took home the prize of $5,400. The city also named winners in 14 other lei categories.

Thousands of visitors flocked to Kapiolani Park in Waikiki for the annual celebration, which included the lei competition exhibit, along with music, hula performances by various halau, cultural demonstrations, and a local craft market.

The theme of this year’s celebration was Ho’okahi ka ‘ilau like ‘ana, meaning “wield the paddles together.”

The competition drew 137 entries in various categories based on the lei-maker’s age, lei style, color, and materials, according to city officials.

Following protocol, the fresh lei from the contest were taken to Mauna ‘Ala, or The Royal Mausoleum, and Kawaiaha‘o Church this morning, and placed on the graves and tombs of Hawaii’s alii.

Hawaii does May Day better.