The Curmudgeon Speaks

The Democrats from the House during the Trump Presidency obviously conducted several investigations typically calling Republican witnesses to address inappropriate actions of the President and associates. I found the claims to be reasonable and the evidence credible. The evidence available from concrete sources (recorded calls, video evidence, and documents) were not faked and related to attempted extortion for political gain and attempts to pressure public officials to change votes as counted by public officials. While those asking the questions were Democrats, the witnesses and those who were under pressure were not affiliated with that party.

Now, the makeup of the House has changed and the Republicans are now investigating concerns of their own. The first target is Dr. Fauci who served during the Trump administration as the Director of the National Institute of Health. Fauci had an impressive resume both as a researcher and administrator, but somehow became a target perhaps for disagreeing with positions taken by the Trump administration in response to COVID.

As I understand the concerns the Republicans have advanced, they are proposing that COVID may have escaped from a Chinese research facility and may have been manipulated with the cooperation of researchers from the U.S. before this accident. The claim is that both the source and the collaboration of U.S. researchers have been purposefully covered up.

I must say this seems far fetched and I am perplexed as to what would motivate a particular party to cover this up. Why would the party not in power feel the need to do this? Why would the party not in power somehow have been in collaboration with an agency such as the NIH? The only thing that occurs to me is the general distrust of big government.

Dr. Fauci said he will be glad to testify. Aside from having the listen to the inane comments that typically are generated by antagonistic questioners before actually asking a question, I expect Fauci to offer a knowledgeable presentation of both the science and international collaboration that is involved in addressing serious diseases.

Musk’s new Twitter is annoying me. I understand that businesses can set their own rules, but being honest about what these rules are seems a fair expection.

I have encountered another issue. I create blog content aimed at educators. When I post to one of these blogs, the blog automatically announces that a new post has been generated to Twitter. Fewer and fewer folks make use of RSS readers so I see this as necessary. Twitter responded to one of the announcements in the following way.

There is nothing sensitive about this blog post which announces and gives some information about a new Mastodon client that displays in columns the feeds from multiple Mastodon instances. The issue for Twitter is that Mastodon is a competitor.

I have maintained a blog since 2016 describing our travels. I post there more frequently than on this blog and decided to provide a separate source people can explore depending on their interests.

We will be in Kauai for about two months and have been spending time here to take a break from the Minnesota winter months. It is quite a contrast.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JSFjQqSLlUY

So, if you are interested in our travel experiences you are invited to explore.

I have been baffled lately by the number of GOP politicians I see in my Twitter feed. There are few that I follow, but my feed lately has been dominated by the GOP politicians and the GOP organization complaining about Biden’s documents and Buttigieg’s computer failure grounding planes. I take the time to explain the misinformation in both positions, but I get tired of repeating myself.

This problem recently seems to have grown much more severe. I have an easy way to combat the frequency of tweets from those I don’t follow. You can use Twitter in chronological order or to prioritize top tweets. Chronological order will show you the tweets from those you follow in chronological order and other content will follow if you keep scrolling. I want to see the Tweets from the people I follow and not the tweets selected by Twitter’s algorithms. On your desktop, you should see a “star” symbol in the upper right-hand corner of the Twitter screen to change this setting.

I have trying to locate this adjustment on my phone (iOS) and have not been able to find it. Finally, I did a search and found that Musk has changed this feature. So, it wasn’t my imagination, Twitter has been modified for the iPhone and offers less control over what users view.

I have been exploring the educational and hobby opportunities in hydroponic gardening now for a couple of years. In the late fall, I plant tomatoes and lettuce so we can have salads using our own produce. The tomatoes are just ripening now.

We have been interested in the potential of solar energy and decided to add panels to our home. We don’t really have high electric bills and were told when the panels were installed that we should not really expect to see any income from our investment. In part, they can make such predictions from an understanding of your normal consumption of electricity and the orientation of your roof. They were correct. In a good month (June in the example that follows we covered about half of our consumption).

After the first few months, I started to wonder what would happen in the winter expecting the panels to be covered by snow producing no electricity. This turned out to be partially the case, but so far snow depth of several inches with moderate temperatures has eventually slid off the panels. Perhaps a more important issue has been the frequency of overcast days we experience in the winter. You produce some electricity on a cloudy day, but not much. Clouds and snow can mean nothing generated for the day.

June – generated $64

December – generated $4.20

This image shows one set of panels (the other is on a different section of roof). You can see what I mean by the snow eventually sliding off the panels by comparing the panels to the depth on the adjacent area of the roof.

There are many data collection and analyses options associated with solar and this represents a project-based learning opportunity for educators.

It was the day before Christmas. I went to the dump. The guys were all working. Made me feel like a chump. …. [creativity ends]

I have taken nearly this same photo several times, but my dump buddy was not wearing his suit this year. Thanks Google photos for finding what I was thinking of from my collection of thousands.

If there is a message in this insight, it is one of appreciating opportunities and good times. Our year included a few negative experiences, but mostly life was good and we end with everyone well. We hope it is the same with you and yours.

We are spending the holidays at the lake place with Josh/Lynn and Todd/Jess and kids. Kim/Jim, Sid and Frankie will be joining by Zoom. The weather has been very wintery, but too cold for all but necessary outside activities. Great for photos and watching the holiday movies and football games. We save “Emmit Otter’s Jug Band Christmas” for this evening.

Happy holiday.

If I have hobbies, they would be technology and photography. Some time ago, my wife invested in an Indigogo project that combines both. The Bird Buddy is a bird feeder that contains a camera triggered by nearby moving objects. Such objects are intended to be birds. Think of one of those video doorbells positioned inside a bird feeder.

The camera captures pictures of these birds and sends them to your phone allowing you to keep copies of the birds you photograph. The system makes use of artificial intelligence that attempts to identify the birds and provides some facts about range, habits, and diet. The identification works pretty well. You can set the system up to post the images to social media, but I would find regular posts of birds in my account annoying so I don’t.

The following images show the Bird Buddy and pictures of a male and young female Cardinal our Buddy captured. The images are high quality.

I think we have captured pretty much every species we see in the winter. Now, it is fun to see just what interesting poses you get. The Spring should bring some new visitors.

I call this one “chubs”.

I wonder if you begin to appreciate the value of history as you put in a few years and begin to have a little history yourself. I don’t remember much from my exposure to the history that is required as part of my high school education. It was probably one of those subject areas to which I was indifferent and did what I had to in preparation for examinations. I purposefully avoided history courses in college and favored other areas of social science to meet requirements. Sociology and psychology seemed more practical and I eventually pursued graduate degrees in psychology.

The notion that history repeats itself is frequently offered as a rationale for the universal study of history. I guess this is valid, but how does anyone decide which parts of history are relevant? The cumulative nature of history means that the options are pretty much endless and happening on useful examples seem rather random. I now dabble reading a few things here and there that others recommend.

After that lengthy intro, this post is a recommendation for a podcast offered by television personality Rachael Maddow. Rachael’s capabilities as a researcher and storyteller make the time investment both enlightening and entertaining. The podcast, Ultra, describes the history of an attempt by the ultra right to install an authoritarian government in the United States during World War II. With the assistance of Germain Nazi agents, politicians and at least one religious leader with a large radio audience supported and encouraged multiple extremists groups (America First, The Christian Front) that organized, secured significant stock piles of weapons, and engaged in sabotage of several munition plants. Politicians were using the franking privileges provided as a benefit of their office to distribute propaganda developed by German operatives in an effort to undermine the war effort and overthrow the U.S. government. The Justice Department found it difficult to investigate and Senators were able to remove DOJ personnel working on prosecutions. Scary stuff and a lesson to those in present time assuming the U.S. political system is immune to the efforts of bad actors. Substitute the Internet for mass mailing and popular radio personalities, different actors within a hesitant DOJ, other radical organizations as substitutes for America First and The Christian Front, Russia rather than Germany, and different politicians seeking power and wealth and the circumstances of the 1940s could be our present environment.

The true story is as engaging as popular political thrillers and spy novels I admit to having consumed. Presently the most popular podcast in the country, there are presently eight episodes each of which is approximately one-half hour in length. The link I provide above takes you to a website that provides links to the episodes and provides additional images and documents associated with each episode.

When you get older you may have to find different ways of doing things. Back in the day we went to football games outside when the temps approached zero. Now, I get cold when I sit through a game in the 30s.

Yesterday, the temps were in the teens, but Cindy and I came prepared. Electric socks and gloves. Supposedly 5 hours on a single charge. I tool the conservative approach and did not turn on the power until the game and then on the low setting. Cindy used hers during the tailgate and ran out of power during the 4th quarter. The conservative approach kept me warm to see the disappointing loss at the end of the game in comfort.