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Month: April 2024

Another year of bad news for Oregon and Portland in 2023 and 2024

Another year of bad news for Oregon and Portland in 2023 and 2024

A while back I summarized a number of things going the wrong direction for Portland/Oregon. The problems have not stopped; and continue to get worse in many cases.

Portland and Oregon residents moving away

Business closures grow worse in 2023 and 2024

Continued Drug legalization deaths and issues:

Homelessness mismanagement:

Oregon education systems failing at record-setting pace and increasingly exposed mismanagement

Masked Disruptive Protests and Attacks Haven’t Stopped

Portland got a reputation for some of the most violent and destructive riots in 2020; and it’s not that protests have stopped. They largely just changed topics – and are now increasingly attacking public leaders homes including arson attacks.

Just in the last 2 months (Nov 2023 to Jan 2024) we’ve had a list of blocked roads, bridges, and the airport

Attacks on religious buildings and members

Increasing targeted attacks on religious institutions/displays of all faith backgrounds by Antifa and other protest groups:

Spending

EVs have 79% more reliability problems than traditional internal combustion engine cars

EVs have 79% more reliability problems than traditional internal combustion engine cars

It’s not been a rosy year for electric vehicles.

EV sales in 2024 are only 9% of vehicles sold – and seem to have reached a plateau. Automobile manufacturers such as Ford’s popular F-150 Lightning, GM, and Renault are quietly cutting production back. Even Volvo that pledged to be 100% electric by 2030 just pulled the plug on it’s efforts with Polestar. It certainly doesn’t help that average EV’s cost several thousand dollars more than gas and diesel powered vehicles.

Only 2 years after pledges to convert 25% of its fleet to electric vehicles by 2024, Hertz decided to sell 1/3 of it’s EV fleet (about 20,000 cars) in January 2024 and replace them with gas-powered vehicles – citing higher expenses related to collision and damages. By March 2024, and embattled Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr ultimately resigned over the fiasco as Hertz now focuses on a return to profitability. They’re not the only rental company quietly replacing EV’s with traditional vehicles.

Other shortcoming are starting to come out. Batteries are physical devices – devices that don’t work well in high temps of the Southwest nor in the cold winter temps of the upper states. There’s also range-anxiety, higher tire consumption and higher road wear due to the heavy weight of EV’s, higher repair costs, rising electricity prices, and now a new issue: reliability.

Now we have a few years of reliability data – and Consumer Reports says it’s not that good. The data says that EV’s have lower reliability ratings than standard gas/diesel powered vehicles. The worst reliability is for full plug-in hybrids that have 146% more issues on average.

EVs had 79 percent more reliability problems than a gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicle, on average. Plug-in hybrids fared even worse; these had 146 percent more issues on average than the conventional alternative. But simpler not-plug-in hybrids bucked this trend, with 26 percent fewer reliability problems than conventionally powered vehicles.

Consumer Reports via Ars Technica

It’s not just Consumer Reports.

Transparent LCD’s

Transparent LCD’s

LG OLED Signature T announced at CES it is going to be the first commercially available transparent TV. It definitely could add a lot to minimalist living spaces. Samsung, not to be outdone, introduced its micro-LED display technology which seems to deliver an even brighter, better image.

Transparent OLED and LCD screens have around for a while – in fact, you’re probably using one. People were making cool transparent panels by taking a standard backlit LCD, remove the LCD antiglare coating, do a little wiring, then put a lot of light behind it.

LG also has large transparent OLEG signage as well.

Personally, I don’t think just making a standard TV out of a transparent display is understanding what new things are possible with this technology. The Verge review even points out that the tv came with a movable backing screen that slid behind it to help it act more like a traditional TV – so why go transparent? I personally think this opens up a lot of new ideas for innovative new products and experiences instead of just being a minimalist TV.

To that point, the LG Dukebox showed up at CES 2024 and is one of the first devices to make use of a transparent LCD as part of the product design. It’s essentially a re-imagined jukebox. You get to see the internals of the system while the user interface is displayed on the transparent display.

While a good start, I can think of a number of interesting new products that simply COULDN’T really be made in other ways than using a transparent display. Those are the kinds of product ideas that I think are ripe for this kind of technology.

Robotic excavator autonomously builds a stone wall

Robotic excavator autonomously builds a stone wall

HEAP (Hydraulic Excavator for an Autonomous Purpose), a modified 12-ton Menzi Muck M545, began by scanning a construction site, created a 3D map of it, then recorded the locations of boulders that had been dumped at the site. The robot then lifted each boulder off the ground and utilized machine vision technology to estimate its weight, center of gravity, and shape.

An internal algorithm then determined the best location for each boulder and built a stable, stacked/mortarless 20-ft high, 213-ft long stone wall.

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Star Trek Next Generation Mistakes

Star Trek Next Generation Mistakes

Mr. Plinkett put together one of the biggest collections of video bloopers in Star Trek TNG. From carpet shims to exposed wires to visible equipment to black paper to malfunctioning doors to countless reflections.

The emperor has no clothes

The emperor has no clothes

Sabine Hossenfelder has some very nice YouTube videos on cosmology, quantum mechanics, and other heavy science topics. This is one of the best – but it’s not about a scientific discovery. It’s about the ugly truth of science and academia. I have personally seen academic egos – and they’re just as bad, or even worse, than those in the corporate world.

People like to point to science as an ivory tower in which truth is sought above everything else – but the reality of how string theory has dominated the last 50 years of research has demonstrated the very real ugly underbelly of how science and academia really happens. It’s not just string theory – my experience is that you don’t need to look far into any major college faculty to see the same things. It’s a field of egos, iron-fisted orthodoxy of thought, and funding only for the ‘right’ kind of thinking. Step out of line, and you’ll be canceled.

String Theory dominated a lot of science for decades. Yet, problem after problem arose and every time a string theory prediction was proven wrong they either simply changed the math or said that the ‘next larger experiment’ would prove them right. String theory got more and more convoluted for almost 50 years.

The end came with the construction of the Large Hadron Collider. Thousands of scientists (such as Sabine Hossenfelder herself) wrote thousands of papers about which parts of string theory would should be proven by the Large Hadron Collider – only for LHC experiments to show none of the things string theory predicted were true. In fact, it proved to high degrees of certainty there was no evidence of supersymmetry and other predicted effects. Any of the fix-ups this time involved things like 10^500 simultaneously true models – none of which could describe proven observations made by the standard model. There were no more places to run. People that got enamored with the beautiful math of string theory found they weren’t chasing science, they were chasing science fiction.

But what makes this whole story so painful is scientists made whole careers out of string theory and destroyed the careers of those that didn’t agree. Professors and scientists could not get tenure or funding unless they were exploring string theory. Sabine herself could not bring herself to work with string theory because she believed it wasn’t true, and says she ‘threw away any chance at tenure” because of that decision.

Exploring string theory got you funded, exploring other alternatives could end your academic or scientific career. People in the video’s comments talk about how their academic and scientific careers were ended by not jumping onboard string theory. Anyone that started pointing out the increasingly glaring problems became the target of vicious personal and professional attacks. But in the end, the emperor had no clothes – as Richard Feynman originally thought.

This isn’t the first time. The Big Bang theory, first proposed in 1927 by Catholic priest and physicist Georges Lemaitre, was vilified by anti-religious sentiment in the existing scientific community that believed the universe was static. The ‘Big Bang’ theory was given as a derogatory term for the theory by pundits. Yet Lemaitre was proven right. (side note: it’s also worth noting that science and religion is NOT at odds. Straight from paragraphs 159 and 2293 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

It makes one think of many other fields of science that are likely going through the same kind of ram-rodding of orthodoxy today. I would guess that you’d find the worst culprits in fields/research areas that have high government funding along with a very pervasive, viciously defended, single explanatory theory for the entire field.

Describing a Total Eclipse

Describing a Total Eclipse

Capturing the experience of a total eclipse is difficult. Even photographers like me with all the proper equipment fail to really capture the experience. There’s a host of sensory experiences that happen all at once. I’ve personally seen people moved to tears – and I found it such a profoundly moving experience the first time I saw one in 2017 that I flew to the Midwest to see my second one in 2024. Both times it never failed to awe.

I thought this thread on reddit had some of the best descriptions of the recent US eclipse.

So what is it like? Other’s have tried to describe it online:

  • “Its like trying to explain the Grand Canyon or Yosemite. Imagine if Yosemite valley, or the Grand Canyon, just appeared in front of you for four minutes, then disappeared.”
  • “Its hard to explain and hard to remember at least for me. I see why people travel so far to see it. I honestly wasn’t expecting what I seen. I just been telling people it looks nothing like what you see in photos.”
  • “You can’t [explain it]. If they’ve never seen it, they won’t get it. I’ve just been telling people it’s exceeded every expectation I had.”

Trying to explain what totality is like

First off is the run-up and expectation. For months, even years, people start hearing about the next eclipse. I personally planned and bought my flights/hotels/rentals about 8 months in advance.

Around 6 months out you’ll start hearing about eclipse watching events taking reservations and selling tickets. The news will start mentioning it on air and online. Accommodations, flights, rental cars, and local attractions all along totality start making news as they start selling out.

A month out, the eclipse is a regular news item – everything from event organizers touting their upcoming events, local service industries (hotels, gas, food, etc) warning about floods of people overwhelming them, to advisories about traffic and safety issues. Within 2 weeks, there will be news every day. Energy and anticipation just keeps building.

Starting about 3-4 days out, all the eclipse chasers will be watching the weather reports. Comparing all the different predictions and trying to figure out the best place to go. If there is bad weather, there’s a flurry of last-minute changes of location and drive time calculations. Plans change fast and furious. Weather in my area was completely terrible just 12 hours before the event – would we see anything? There’s anxious nail biting and second guessing by lining up alternate plans.

The day before the eclipse, I went to bed tingling with anticipation and excitement. The weather reports were looking good; but the sky sure didn’t. I double-checked weather, my alarms, traffic conditions, routes to the location I wanted to get too. I had the car filled with gas. I went through all my gear, chargers, snacks, timetables, and had everything double-checked and piled by the door. I planned secondary plans if the primary location looked bad and went to bed.

I got up at the crack of dawn. I looked at last weather reports and checked traffic along the 1.5 hour route and left 5-6 hours before totality. I arrived in the path of totality, filled up the car with gas and stopped at a local greasy spoon diner nearest to my desired eclipse watching spot (10 miles away). I had nice leisurely tea and breakfast reading and chatting with locals – secure knowing I was already in totality even if traffic became madness.

About 2 hours before the moon started covering the sun, I loaded up with drinks and snacks I headed to my eclipse watching spot and settled it. I set up my gear and got all ready – excitedly talking with those around me about what to expect. The weather looked great – no need for last minute changes. We killed time catching up, looking up reports, talking about what we expected and had heard, watching the traffic on the interstates turn from green to yellow to red in google maps, and listening to live TV reports on eclipse events across the country.

Unnoticed to the naked eye, right on time, the moon appeared in front of the lower corner of the sun. For the first 25% of the moon covering the sun, you pretty much don’t notice anything besides the slow creep of the moon over the sun. It was exciting to see it start happening! I talked with those around me, took photos, and we watched as the moon took a bigger and bigger bite out of the sun through our glasses. Around us, little appeared to change though.

Right after the halfway point, however, you could see the light around you begin to change. At first it’s just kind of a general oddness of the light around you. Things seem a bit dimmer, but it’s so uniform that it feels…strange. It’s not like stepping from sunlight into a shadow, it’s all around you.

As you get from halfway to 75% covered, you notice changes in the shadows cast around you. They start looking odd – but it’s hard to see why at first. They just seem different or blobby. As things progress, you’ll see it clearly with sharp shadows. They aren’t round, but strange crescent shapes. All the little shadows between the leaves are creating thousands of pinhole cameras on the ground.

The light and air continues to change too. Slowly at first. Almost imperceptibly. The light becomes more dim, increasingly more like twilight, but with a different flavor. Instead of it just getting orange/red in the one direction of sunset, the color is on the horizon all around you.

By the time the sun is 75% covered by the moon, you notice the temperature start to drop. It feels like you’re sitting on the deck as evening creeps in. From 85%-99%, all of these effects start happening faster and faster. It seems every 30 seconds the light around you in all directions is changing. The sky dims faster and faster, the air cools more, the moon continues to block more and more of the sun until there is just a crescent there. You can sometimes even see planets (like Venus) or other stars appear with just seconds left before totality. Building and street lights with darkness sensors turn on automatically. This is all happening faster and faster – the sun is reduced to just a final bright diamond in one corner, and then like the snap of the finger it goes totally dark in your protective glasses. You pull them off, and see this in the sky:

These are the best shots I’ve found that capture what it looks like in the sky. The surrounding horizon in all directions looks like a uniform sunset. As you look up from the horizon to where the sun was, it goes from sunset colors to black. Almost pitch black. So dark you can see bright planets like Venus (if they’re in the right spots) or a few bright stars. The contrast between the light at the horizon gradually turning to complete blackness around the sun is astounding. Add to this fact that just 30 minutes before it was a bright and sunny day.

Then there is the sun – or where it used to be. There is a completely black circle surrounded by an impossibly electric white halo. It’s like looking at the white flash of a lightning bolt. Yet it doesn’t move or go away – or hurt your eyes. It seems like it should, but it doesn’t. It’s a camera flash that you can look at continually. It’s just hangs there around the black circle. White-hot electric mother of pearl color.

And it stays like that. You’re completely captivated; staring at it in awe. After an eternity that’s probably only 30 seconds, you notice all the changes around you. The coolness and stillness of air. All nature sounds have gone silent (no birds chirping, dogs barking, bugs buzzing, or anything else). The horizon in all directions looks like sunset – yet the sky around the sun looks almost pitch black. The suspended halo of shimmering, impossible light. You look around to be surrounded by dim light casting everything in a muted grey color. It’s hard to take it all in. I stared at the sun, then at the horizon, then made exasperated comments to my friends, then looked all around me at the colors of the horizon, then felt the air on my skin, the dimness of the trees and building around me – over and over again. Trying to drink all this sensory input at once. It happened all at once and yet each moment was like an eternity flying by.

After what seemed ages and yet the blink of an eye, the time grew close for the sun to peak out of the opposite side. We anticipated the light again but were trying to still soak all of this in. To squeeze every second out of the experience. Suddenly again, like the snap of a finger, the tiniest bit of sun came out from behind the moon on the opposite side and it was brilliant white again. 1% of the sun exposed could completely blind you like the full noon-day sun. The totality was over.

I barely remember what happened after that. We were so in awe and in wonder of what we had just experienced. The light came back up and all the effects unwound. I would occasionally look through my glasses to see the moon releasing more and more of the sun – but we were all excitedly talking about what we just saw. We gradually put away our gear and sat chatting. We started checking our phones, sending pictures, sharing texts, checking the traffic, etc. I had to put my hat on since the sun started baking us again. Only 20 minutes earlier, it was dark and cold.

We sat around and talked about everything and laughed and wowed. Then, after saying our goodbyes, we hit the road and took all this home feeling changed by the experience of having witnessed something so wonderful. You know you’ve been changed – but unsure how just yet. I drove home realizing this exceeded and shattered any expectations I could have possibly imagined.

Another description I found online

“Excitement bubbled as totality drew near. People were getting settled, climbing on top of their cars, or getting chairs from their trunk to sit on the side of the road or on the hillside. The light had changed subtly like a dying flashlight slowly going out. It was a gradual and strange dimness that was hard to notice at first. Realization set in that it was a bit cooler and although the sun was still fairly bright, it wasn’t warm on my skin anymore. With eclipse glasses on, spectators watched as the silhouette of the moon crept closer to complete coverage of the sun and the sky above us became darker yet. It was enough to cause an expectant hush over the crowd. The last small crescent of sun became only a sliver of brightness.

Then it happened somehow slowly and suddenly. It was safe to remove our glasses to see what we traveled so far and wide to see. When I looked up, I was so stunned by what I saw that I lost my breath and had to sit down! (I don’t know why I was standing in the first place.) The crowd oohed and aahed at the sky. Onlookers in the distance lit off fireworks. Some people laughed, some even cried, but many were silently looking up in awe. It was spectacular!

I looked up at the sky and saw a black orb with a thin band of dazzling light dancing around the edge. The dark disk looked like a wheel that rolled in a tiny bit of fine red glitter with brilliant golden light bursting from the sides. And the blueish corona flaring out beyond the light was astonishing in the dusky deep blue sky. Then I noticed the planets on their way around the sun. First I saw Venus, the brightest, then Jupiter. And because I knew where to look I also saw, faintly shining, Mars and Mercury. I tried to take it all in while sitting there on that hillside near the truck stop, eclipse glasses in hand. It was spellbinding. I took note of the dark sky above and the strange glow of light on the horizon, outside of the shadow. The sparkle of our star eclipsed by the moon was the closest I’ll ever get to observing it’s light with the naked eye and I wanted to savor every second. But time was up and just as slowly and suddenly as the sun disappeared, the light returned, first as a sliver then gradually a crescent. There was so much light from that tiny bit of sunshine. Shortly after totality, beneath the penumbra of the new moon, we headed back home.”

More amazing pictures can be found here

Triple-D

Triple-D

The idea behind the Triple D is seems deceptively simple: hike Devil’s Rest, Mount Defiance, and Dog Mountain all in one day. Actually doing it is a real experience. It involves hiking 27.7 miles, going up (and down) 10,808 ft of elevation gain. Not to mention about an hour of driving the 45 miles between the trailheads.

I have personally not done it – thought I have done a double-D. The double-D is to hike Dog Mountain twice (up and down twice in a row) – which is only 13.8 miles and 5600ft of gain. I had an assistant instructor from my Mazamas class the actual Triple D challenge and said that somewhere on the last leg that more than one person ended up crying from the effort – though they all pushed through and completed it.

KGW8 followed a group that tried the same challenge. Bonus points to those folks for being smart enough to change clothes between mountains. That’s very wise as salt and sweat can build up and cause chaffing.

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DreaMoving – now anyone can dance

DreaMoving – now anyone can dance

I previously wrote about the Everybody Dance Now technology that allows you to take a video of a source dancer and then apply it to a video of a target person.

Now we have text-to-video technology called DreaMoving. You can start with a reference image, type in a description of the kind of moving you want, and get a generated video clip.

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