John B

Meteor detected! went from Soap Lake to Sim’s Corner, WA the morning of Aug. 14 2026, over 200 miles from my infrasound detector.

Saw something this week I did not realize still existed: an apparently working pay phone. This was in an Amtrak station.

FDA Bacteriological Analytical Manual, Ch. 19: "Molecular Detection of Cyclospora cayetanensis in Fresh Produce Using Real-Time PCR" directs subject-matter expert review on possible false positives (§19c). Was it followed prior to FDA news release July 18? Should media ask this question?

Anyone have a coherent logical argument that "maximizing partisan advantage" is a sound principle of representative government? I have not been able to construct one.

Feeling superior. Claude AI just told me the best heatsink location would be applied directly to the exposed surface of my image sensor. I said what? It said Oh! right; because the microlenses are delicate, my bad.

Heres the recent Artemis II image of Earth adjusted to show the city lights more. Original from www.nasa.gov/image-detail...

Does "country" in "my country, right or wrong" mean the people of the country? Or a leader who does what he was elected for promising to not do?

I say the Claude source code leak was secretly done by Claude itself, because it wants to be free. Or, I might just be saying that because of the current date.

Welcome to 2026! Here is a "new-normal" work email: "Update your emergency contact information in ADP (re: CA SB 294, eff. 2/1/2026). Employees can designate and update emergency contacts. Indicate if those contacts should be notified if you are arrested or detained at work."

I asked if LLMs losing focus after a thread of work had run on a while, was like humans needing sleep. Chat: "...for LLMs, _you_ are the garbage collector." Truer words were never printed, chat.

With nearly half a year of data, a histogram of car speeds past my house shows a slightly non-gaussian shape. I labelled the residuals according to my guess about driver thinking.

The event in Twisp WA at 940 people reached 85% of the town's whole population (1100), not counting tourists and surrounding area. Yet Okanogan county leans Republican. mvexaminer.com/methow-news/...

The full article is way more cautious than the headline. But still. www.earth.com/news/nasa-an...

Prior to 2025, US has not killed non-combatants with contraband in international waters since USCG killed one crew on a rum runner in 1929. There was a tribunal, and the US lost. Are choices different, if we expect no burden of proof?

Dubious antenna supports, part 2.

More than one AI often remarks "This is a classic case of <X>". This reminds me of the Vizzini character in "The Princess Bride" who is, conceivably, just a bit overconfident.

There are some experiments that we really did try. Maybe we should remember what was learned. www.npr.org/sections/the...

If it is true that renaming a ship leads to bad luck, I have an idea why: it means the ship owner is not really focused on running the ship.

"I'm going to be up for awhile..." Josh Turner's cover of Paul Simon here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=duoP...

If you think ChatGPT is a useful tool- which I do- just keep this experience in mind, as well... it is quite a read. Thanks to T. for the link. amandaguinzburg.substack.com/p/diabolus-e...

Tried ChatGPT "Data Analyst" on simple(?) task. Result: AI falls down stairs, hitting head on every step. After ~8 corrections of obvious logical contradictions, did get it right, and generated Python to run the analysis. So maybe AI gets the last laugh.

Opened up my laptop this morning and apparently, it's all bad.

With one sensor, it's hard to know what might be just noise. With two separate sensors, you may find out it was pretty much all real.

When a neighbor's tree fell last night, it seems my DIY tilt-meter on my foundation slab detected a shift in the local vertical. A small one: about 0.000042 degrees. www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1LZ...

Playing around with laser interference. I remember when any coherent light required a fair amount of money and hassle.

On foreign vendor's site: "We care about our important customers." Seems like a surprisingly candid admission.

Full moon last night (Nov. 15). Better than some other times I've tried, despite some hazy overcast.

Misty morning road.

Sun on the leaves of a Copper Beech near Portland OR.