EASING INTO THE 21ST CENTURY: Tesla Cybercab Robotaxi First Ride: Surviving a Trip in Tesla’s First Self-Driving Car. We didn’t ask what to do if the Cybercab started veering off-course. But we didn’t need to. “Yet myriad questions remain about the Tesla Cybercab’s viability. If its abilities are founded on software similar to the Full Self Driving system we frequently use on surface streets and highways, that’s overtly sketchy if there’s indeed no way for a human to intervene should the need arise. Our Model Y’s Full Self Driving constantly makes decisions that range from careless to dangerously moronic. It forces us to stay vigilant and remain ready to catch it out when it, for example, enters an intersection as the light turns red and creates gridlock, or misreads a speed limit sign and aggressively decelerates in the middle of flowing freeway traffic.”
Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds
October 14, 2024
NEWS YOU CAN USE: A Brief Guide To Pistol Compensators.
A DELICIOUS REMEDY FOR BEACH EROSION: Can walls of oysters protect shores against hurricanes? Darpa wants to know. Oysters are making a comeback in many places, though we aren’t yet back to the ship-grounding oyster reefs of the old days.
SIGNS AND PORTENTS IN THE HEAVENS: NASA says comet expected to put on show in Earth fly-by.
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Breakdancers risk ‘headspin hole’ or lump on scalp, study warns.
TEACHABLE MOMENT: Okeechobee Officials Who ‘Mistakenly’ Banned Guns Face Consequences.
TROLL LEVEL: GALACTIC OVERLORD.
Trump challenges Kamala to a cognitive test 🤣 pic.twitter.com/Yz7L20vc9r
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 14, 2024
21ST CENTURY ESPIONAGE: Drone photographer pleads guilty to Espionage Act charges: Graduate student Fengyun Shi is the first to be convicted under this section of the Espionage Act. “Fengyun Shi, a Chinese citizen and graduate student at the University of Minnesota, was arrested in January after a drone he was flying got stuck in a tree in Newport News, Virginia. A suspicious resident called the police and Shi was questioned before abandoning the drone and fleeing. After the FBI seized the drone and pulled the images off it, investigators discovered that Shi had photographed Navy vessels at multiple shipyards in Virginia. One of those shipyards, in Newport News, was actively manufacturing next-generation aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. Both of these types of vessels contain classified components.”
CULTURE OF IDIOCRACY: Top Oregon official put on leave for allegedly prioritizing ‘qualified’ job candidates over ‘gender identity.’
A diversity, equity and inclusion expert had her former boss placed on administrative leave for reportedly prioritizing merit over personal identity when hiring new employees, according to a report.
Megan Donecker, who formerly served as the Oregon Department of Forestry’s DEI strategy officer, complained about the agency’s management, criticizing her boss Mike Shaw for looking “beyond gender and identity in hiring, seeking only candidates most qualified for the job,” OregonLive reported.
Shaw served as the agency’s second-in-command under State Forester Cal Mukumoto until he was placed on administrative leave on Aug. 6 after Donecker filed a formal complaint against him, the Daily Mail reported.
Donecker reportedly first took issue with Shaw when he advocated for a careful approach to DEI, comparing rapid changes to speeding on “an icy road.”
Her picture is at the link, and is exactly what you’d expect. But there’s a bright spot:
Oregon widely implemented DEI initiatives following the political unrest in response to George Floyd’s killing in 2020, prompting racial justice protests that swept the nation — and raged for more than 100 consecutive nights in nearby Portland.
But residents have slowly begun pushing back. Clackamas County in Oregon announced in January that it will dismantle their nearly $830,000 a year diversity, equity and inclusion office, calling it an “unnecessary expense” that “only foments friction.”
Well, that’s certainly true.
DIVERSITY PROBLEM: Zero Republican professors found in 6 departments at Florida State U.
HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY: Many in the West will demonstrate their fierce originality and intellectual independence today by condemning Christopher Columbus using the same shopworn cliches they used last year. For those of a different bent, I recommend Samuel Eliot Morison’s Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus which takes a somewhat different position. Here’s an excerpt:
At the end of 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through studying the pagan past. . . .
Yet, even as the chroniclers of Nuremberg were correcting their proofs from Koberger’s press, a Spanish caravel named Nina scudded before a winter gale into Lisbon with news of a discovery that was to give old Europe another chance. In a few years we find the mental picture completely changed. Strong monarchs are stamping out privy conspiracy and rebellion; the Church, purged and chastened by the Protestant Reformation, puts her house in order; new ideas flare up throughout Italy, France, Germany and the northern nations; faith in God revives and the human spirit is renewed. The change is complete and startling: “A new envisagement of the world has begun, and men are no longer sighing after the imaginary golden age that lay in the distant past, but speculating as to the golden age that might possibly lie in the oncoming future.”
Christopher Columbus belonged to an age that was past, yet he became the sign and symbol of this new age of hope, glory and accomplishment. His medieval faith impelled him to a modern solution: Expansion.
Morison’s book is superb, and I recommend it highly as an antidote to the simplistic anti-occidental prejudice of today — which, as Jim Bennett has noted, has roots that might surprise its proponents:
This is primarily an effect of the Calvinist Puritan roots of American progressivism. Just as Calvinists believed in the centrality of the depravity of man, with the exception of a minuscule contingent of the Elect of God, their secularized descendants believe in the depravity and cursedness of Western civilization, with their own enlightened selves in the role of the Elect.
Indeed. Nonetheless, Bennett thinks that a different Italian deserves the real credit. (Reposted from 2005, but it still fits.) [Doesn’t this leave you vulnerable to charges of recycling too? –ed. I prefer to think of it as “They came at us in the same old way, and, you know, we beat them in the same old way.”]
I post this every year, as it’s evergreen. The original link to Bennett’s column seems to have succumbed to link-rot, but I believe this is it.
Meanwhile, SpaceX and the other new space companies are doing their best to step into the role of Columbus in regenerating our culture. I hope it works. We need it.
Related:
Columbus did not interrupt a prelapsarian paradise.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Mystery Drones Swarmed a U.S. Military Base for 17 Days. The Pentagon Is Stumped. U.S. officials don’t know who is behind the drones that have flown unhindered over sensitive national-security sites—or how to stop them.
U.S. Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly wasn’t sure what to make of reports that a suspicious fleet of unidentified aircraft had been flying over Langley Air Force Base on Virginia’s shoreline.
Kelly, a decorated senior commander at the base, got on a squadron rooftop to see for himself. He joined a handful of other officers responsible for a clutch of the nation’s most advanced jet fighters, including F-22 Raptors.
For several nights, military personnel had reported a mysterious breach of restricted airspace over a stretch of land that has one of the largest concentrations of national-security facilities in the U.S. The show usually starts 45 minutes to an hour after sunset, another senior leader told Kelly.
The first drone arrived shortly. Kelly, a career fighter pilot, estimated it was roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour, at an altitude of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Other drones followed, one by one, sounding in the distance like a parade of lawn mowers.
The drones headed south, across Chesapeake Bay, toward Norfolk, Va., and over an area that includes the home base for the Navy’s SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval port.
Officials didn’t know if the drone fleet, which numbered as many as a dozen or more over the following nights, belonged to clever hobbyists or hostile forces. Some suspected that Russia or China deployed them to test the response of American forces.
Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat. Aerial snooping doesn’t qualify, though some lawmakers hope to give the military greater leeway.
The Ukrainians may have thoughts on how to stop unwelcome drones.
Meanwhile, via email, some thoughts from Josh Trevino:
Now, this is not new news to those paying attention. The War Zone has been covering drone-swarm harassment / overflight of U.S. military assets and bases in the United States for years now, to the extent that they have a whole story category on it.
What is happening is that the story is moving into mainstream press as the problem worsens. A few notes on this:
First: the WSJ story amply illuminates the profoundly stupid bureaucratic bumbling in the USG response to this, which is characteristic of states that do not wish to survive. Consider this passage:
“Homeland Security Advisor Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall convened the White House brainstorming sessions. One official suggested using electronic signals to jam the drones’ navigation systems. Others cautioned that it might disrupt local 911 emergency systems and Wi-Fi networks. One suggestion was to use directed energy, an emerging technology, to disable or destroy the drones. An FAA official said such a weapon carried too high a risk for commercial aircraft during the December holiday travel season. Others suggested that the U.S. Coast Guard shoot nets into the air to capture the drones. An official pointed out that the Coast Guard might not have the authority to use such a weapon in this instance.”
Second: when the big war kicks off, these swarms will be delivering munitions directly onto the targets they now only surveil, and in fact the practice for that mission is likely why they conduct operations now. This is a solid and cost-effective alternative to developing a strategic-bomber force.
Third: the likely bases for these operations are not exactly hard to discern. You have offshore platforms. You have unused or unmonitored land within the United States. And you have Mexico.
Fourth: it is probably mostly the PRC, which further illuminates the sheer insanity of allowing PRC nationals to work, study, and live in the United States.
Fifth: if you wanted further evidence that the United States Armed Forces is not really in the business of protecting the United States as such, well, here you go.
All this is very bad and a bill will come due.
Well, with half our political class on the Chinese payroll, I’m not betting on prompt action.
THIS IS A BIT TROUBLING:
He’s become the very thing he swore to destroy pic.twitter.com/cZQaDAYN58
— Dr Grayfang (@DrGrayfang) October 7, 2024
HYPOCRISY IS THE TRIBUTE THAT VICE PAYS TO VIRTUE:
Democrats spend every waking hour for 3 1/2 years demonizing white men and blaming them for all of society’s ills.
Then they spend six months drinking beer and posing with rifles to desperately win their vote. pic.twitter.com/ZEc4XmHgzR
— Eric Matheny 🎙️ (@ericmmatheny) October 12, 2024
ROGER KIMBALL: Fake Crowds, Fake Ads, Real Ridicule: A Week of Failures for Harris-Walz. “What we are witnessing is the panicked flailing of a campaign that is desperately attempting to recoup its lost initiative. The result is partly embarrassing, partly hilarious.”
October 13, 2024
OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China launches third high orbit internet satellite.
DOESN’T REQUIRE MUCH EQUIPMENT, EITHER: Isometric Exercise: Why This Workout Regime Is So Good For You.
HMM: Third Trump assassination attempt thwarted when armed man arrested outside Coachella rally, sheriff says. “The suspect — identified as 49-year-old Las Vegas resident Vem Miller — was caught at a checkpoint about a quarter-mile from the rally with fake VIP passes to the rally and fake press passes — as well as unregistered weapons, including a loaded shotgun, a handgun and a high-capacity magazine, according to the Riverside County sheriff’s office.”
OBVIOUSLY, THIS IS MORE PROOF THAT WE’RE LIVING IN A SIMULATION: The Universe Is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Proved It.