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Rainy start to the Sunday but hopefully it won’t last โ›ˆ

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I guess not every day can be sunshine and rainbows. Yesterday was beautiful but I didn’t want to burn any expensive gas in the SuperDuty and warm the planet. That’s for next weekend in Vermont.

Good morning, Happy Sunday. It would have not been a good weekend to head out to Vermont to camp, at least today, though yesterday was quite beautiful, though I took is slow. โ›ˆ Started out yesterday riding down to the Town Park, and doing some work for an hour. ๐Ÿ‘ฉ‍๐Ÿ’ป The came back home, read, watched some Youtube videos. Rode down to Hannaford got $30 in groceries, came home, cooked some lunch, then rode out to Five Rivers. ๐Ÿ“š I had hoped going out to Five Rivers I could have picked up some zucchini and summer squash, but already that season is beyond us. Didn’t want to run the SuperDuty at all yesterday so the gas lasts through Thursday. โ›ฝ I thought about taking the Nature Bus to Thacher Park but by the time I was back from Hannaford and looking at bus schedule it was too late. Plus I’m still cheesed about the driver refusing to let me take the bike on bus earlier in the summer. In the past, they always let the rule slide. ๐Ÿธ

I am switching up into autumn mode, having picked up a bag of 16-bean soup, and are baking bread this morning, keeping an careful eye on the stove and oven to verify no malfunctions. ๐Ÿ‘จ‍๐Ÿณ No problems noted in cooking. I tried to clean up any spills in the oven, and the stove smoked a bit but I figure today’s the day to test things out, with the windows being open and things being cool, and me not rushing around this morning to get to work. I was planning to bake zucchini bread but that’s not going to happen, but I might get carrots on Monday if I stop at Wally World before work to use in pancakes and bread for the rest of week. ๐Ÿฅ• I like the extra fiber that displaces and moves along some of the carbs of bread. Plus plain whole-wheat bread is just mushy.

A lot depends on the weather today, but this morning I plan to do some cooking, reading. At noon time I’ll go to the library to use the Wi-Fi and maybe look at some of the programming books. ๐Ÿ’ป I should think about learning another programming language this winter or maybe using Python more. R is fine, it’s the backbone of much of my work but some things are slow and clunky in it, even if tidyverse is great for data processing and ggplot2 remains a killer app for programmatically making diagrams and maps. ๐Ÿ—บ

Tomorrow I will take the SuperDuty into work, somebody asked to be shown the old truck on Monday, I’ll confirm today, and also visit my parents on Monday before they leave for vacation. I’ve been digging around for clothes to wear, tomorrow I’ll do my wash at my parents house. ๐Ÿ‘• Working remote and being up at camp I’ve been needing to change my clothes less frequently. Plus it’s that time of year where I can wear both the long sleeves and short sleeves throughout the week. But I’m really getting down to the dregs of clothes at this point. โณ I enjoy spending time with my parents as I know there is only a limited amount of visits left. And you never know how many there are. ๐Ÿคท‍โ™‚๏ธThings seem okay, but things can go downhill quick. Mom keeps saying she hopes to live to see the end of Trump presidency. But that’s not far away. The 2026 election cycle is rapidly winding down to a close.

Thursday if it’s not too wet I want to head to Vermont after my Thursday meeting. Work remote either from camp or probably the Bennington Library on Friday. ๐Ÿ• Saturday do some hiking – I wouldn’t mind doing Bald Mountain again, or I could do Harmon Hill, ride to the ATV trail from camp then hike back from there. Or maybe research other hikes. I also really enjoyed the trail at the Robert Frost Historic Site and should look to see if there are other alternatives. ๐Ÿ” It doesn’t seem like there is a lot of options for rail trails in Bennington unless I drive down to North Adams, though just riding along Prospect Mountain Road is pretty delightful. ๐Ÿšด‍โ™€๏ธ

I’ve started to do a deep dive into truck undercoatings. I know a lot of people swear by Fluid Film and Woolwax, but it’s going to be like $750 to have it professionally done and it only lasts a year or two before it washes off. Is it worth it? ๐Ÿ’ธ I got over 14 years out of Big Red before the rot destroyed the frame. But you do see a lot of old SuperDuties rotting away in farm fields. But how long should a truck last? 14 years from now I’ll be seriously looking at retirement, and maybe I won’t want an F-350 in retirement. Maybe something more of cruising if I decide I don’t want the off-grid life? ๐Ÿ Or maybe I’ll want a diesel? Or will the electrics be so good at that point, gas prices so high, and climate crisis so severe that it only makes sense to get rid of the SuperDuty? I have no idea what the world will look like in 2040. ๐ŸŒŽ It’s not like in 2011 I could have imagined that my next truck would have been an F-350. And the SuperDuty frames are a lot better painted and protected then the Chevy trucks – and much heavier steel being a 1-ton HD truck compared to 1/2-ton truck. I need to think about it some more. โ„๏ธ Salt season ain’t far away.

Terrain Map: Light Pollution New York March 2024
Terrain Map: Light Pollution USA March 2024

What the AI Companies Want When They Demand Safety

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AI companies are talking about AI safety for two reasons:

  • Regulatory capture (criminalize and fine competition)
  • Make their products seem more powerful then reality

Lately concerns about AI safety come in waves. Usually the waves coincide with a slowing down of advancement of the technology. When models can’t grow much more powerful without using dramatically more electricity. Go to Congress and press, essentially lie to them, tell them we face grave danger should artificial intelligence be allowed to be developed independently by the free market and let the best product win.

If your product sucks or your up against technical limitation, then the next best thing to do is buy off the congress. Make it either illegal or very difficult for competitors to compete. Set severe criminal and financial penalties for whoever dare compete with your business in the name of safety. While making it seem like your product is all powerful even when it’s not. Drag up some nut case or fringe use, haul them off at gun point to jail to show that your right. We’ve seen this game played time and time again.

I’m a child of 1990s, I saw the hype and fear over the Internet. People will go online and learn to make bombs and buy guns illicitly. I am sure such things happen. But we also learned government censorship is near impossible, which is why despite all the government crackdowns, there is still a thriving market for child pornography, drugs and other contraband being sold over the internet. And as we learned with DeCSS and the attempt to keep the DVD decryption code off the internet, that was impossible, because if you ban it one country, you can simply download it from overseas.

Big AI – OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Meta AI – wants to dominate the AI space through centralized computing. And many in the government see nothing wrong with that, as it enables easy censorship subtly or otherwise, and provides a powerful surveillance platform as people interact with such platforms. Yet they know the real threat is locally run models, inferences not generated at distant mega-AI data centers but on home computers and laptops – especially as processors evolve and become more capable of the GPU-type calculations. AI learning done both on the local machine and using model weights downloaded from open sources over the Internet both domestically and foreign produced. DeepSeek is very problematic to Big AI, not because it’s final and only model weights freely available but because it’s the future.

Centralized computing and server farms were the model of computing back in 1950s through the 1970s. But then personal computing came along in 1980s, and while there was a shift back to centralization in the internet era with the growth of web apps and stores, people still like to own their own devices and do computing locally. Internet-dependent services depend on reliable and fast network connections, which sometimes break. But fundamentally, relying on remote computing means your dependent on the service continuing and not changing, that your data won’t be lost when a private business changes their strategy and pricing. No guarantees when it’s on the internet. And it could disappear at any minute.

Map: South Bradford State Forest
Map: Beaver Pond State Forest
Map: Neversink River Unique Area

What are the best options for controlling spotted lanternflies? ๐ŸŒผ ๐Ÿฆ‹

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When managing a spotted lanternfly infestation on homesteads and small farms, agricultural experts categorize approved chemical options into contact insecticides for instant knockdown and systemic insecticides for long-term control.

Choosing the right approach depends heavily on what crops you grow, where you apply the product, and your proximity to livestock or poultry. Contact insecticides like bifenthrin, zeta-cypermethrin, and carbaryl are widely accessible at agricultural supply stores and provide excellent immediate kill rates when sprayed directly on visible insect clusters on fencing, barns, or non-blooming trees. For an organic-friendly knockdown, natural pyrethrins derived from chrysanthemum flowers provide a quick kill but break down rapidly in sunlight. Because these contact chemicals are highly toxic to aquatic life and beneficial pollinators, experts heavily caution against spraying them near farm ponds, apiaries, or blooming flowers.

For long-term protection of valuable shade trees, systemic insecticides like dinotefuran and imidacloprid are highly recommended by university extensions. These chemicals are applied as a bark spray or soil drench, allowing the tree to absorb the ingredient into its sap so that lanternflies ingest it and die while feeding. This strategy is incredibly effective for creating “trap trees”โ€”such as the invasive Tree of Heavenโ€”to clear out massive swarms of adults before they lay their eggs in the fall. To protect honeybees and other pollinators, systemic treatments must strictly be applied after the tree’s bloom period has completely ended.

Safety is paramount on small farms, meaning most heavy-duty residential pesticides cannot legally be used on home vegetable gardens, small vineyards, or backyard fruit orchards. If the pests are invading edible crops, you must switch to organic contact options like neem oil or insecticidal soaps, or utilize products explicitly labeled for agricultural fruit production. Furthermore, if you keep free-ranging poultry or livestock, always verify the pasture grazing restrictions on the chemical label and keep all animals completely away from treated areas until the liquid has dried entirely.

Agricultural experts generally agree that while home remedies like dish soap and vinegar can kill spotted lanternflies on contact, they heavily caution against widespread use because these mixtures can severely damage your garden plants.

Extension offices, such as the Penn State Extension, explicitly advise against using homemade concoctions on vegetation. While the intent to protect pollinators and birds is accurate and highly praised by conservation groups like Wild Birds Unlimited, household detergents are actually degreasers rather than true soaps. Applying them to flower gardens can strip away the protective waxy cuticle of the leaves, leading to severe leaf burn, dehydration, and plant death. Similarly, vinegar acts as a non-selective herbicide that will wither and kill any desirable foliage it touches.

If you want to use a DIY dish soap spray safely, experts recommend limiting its application strictly to hard surfaces like tree trunks, decks, or patio furniture. For your actual flower gardens, you can switch to commercially formulated insecticidal soaps or neem oil, which are thoroughly tested to kill the bugs on contact without harming delicate plant tissues.

If your primary goal is to completely eliminate commercial pesticides and save local bird populations, agricultural extensions suggest focusing heavily on mechanical traps and methods. Instead of chemical sprays, you can use physical removal strategies that have zero environmental impact on birds or beneficial insects. Sucking the lanternflies up with a standard wet/dry shop vacuum filled with a bit of soapy water is a highly efficient way to clear large clusters from trees and houses. You can also utilize safely designed circle traps wrapped around tree trunks, which capture hundreds of climbing lanternflies seamlessly. These mechanical methods ensure you actively suppress the invasive pest population while keeping your surrounding ecosystem completely safe for the local wildlife.

Map: Battery Diagram
United Steaks of America map: If each state could have only one meat, what would it be?

More days of extreme mental illness, delusions, wildflowers, cow shit and criminal conduct ๐ŸŒบ ๐Ÿฎ ๐Ÿ’ฉ ๐Ÿคช ๐Ÿšจ

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So I guess, as I toss the plastic container in the trash, imagining by next weekend will it will melt and burn up to nothing but some smoke, dioxin and furans. Don’t you know it’s a crime to your burn garbage at least in New York? Pennsylvania rednecks be like, we go to dump once a year with a bag of unburnables and get paid for the tin cans. As I parked my “small by SuperDuty standards” F-350 SuperDuty between those little electrics at the Five Rivers Nature Center to get the free wi-fi and work remote. Vermont next Thursday? I can smell them chopping and packing the silage at Preska’s down the road. Soon enough to be milk and milk products like that delicious cottage cheese, yogurt, milk, packaged in plastic and soon enough to be fire and criminal conduct. But it’s gone and not sitting in a landfill and those giant smelly heaps on the outskirts of every city for the next 10 million years.

I am like fuck with the gas prices going up yet again, but I still like my F-350 SuperDuty and with the backup camera, it was pretty damn easy to park my ginormous truck between the two electrics at Five Rivers and still enjoy wildflowers, working like a dog until 6 PM. ๐Ÿ…ฟ๏ธ Then looking at wildflowers. ๐ŸŒบ Auto adds and suppressions, please? ๐Ÿค– Goddamn it, the county board of elections in that county that really smell like cow shit, changed the file format yet again, renaming field names and changing the meaning of field values. Oh, but after all these years it’s not like I haven’t seen that format before. It’s just adjusting a few lines, typing |> many more times in R Studio. ๐Ÿ‘จ‍๐Ÿ’ปAnd counting down those days until November 3rd, the last day to vote. Colder weather, god damn it how much will be my gas and electric bill for my tiny rundown apartment this year that I keep at 48 degrees and stay marginally warm under the heated blanket. And freeze my ass off riding the bike to work. โ›„ Still need to get some plumber’s putty and plaster repair to patch some of the holes and cracks in wall of my apartment to keep a bit more of those 48 degrees in when the temperature plunges below freezing to keep the pipes from freezing. โ„๏ธ

Rain is coming this evening into tomorrow, so this probably wouldn’t have been the weekend to go to Vermont to illegally burn plastic, smoke weed and drink beer, work remote out of the cab of my F-350 SuperDuty with gas prices pushing their way back up to $4.50 a gallon, โ›ฝ thank you Trump the asshole that doesn’t believe in global warming or international diplomacy in this year of extreme El Nino. ๐ŸŒŽ Maybe at least the snow won’t be so deep that I can get out all winter to places like Rennselearville State Forest, Donney Hollow, Charles Baker State Horse Camp and winter camp. ๐Ÿ• Assuming gas isn’t that insane. Have my fires, watch those labels melt and the bright yellow flames that quickly get the wet frozen wood turned into coals as a long winter’s night settles in. ๐Ÿ”ฅ Truth is maybe that’s all I need after being stuck at home last winter after Big Red was retired, finding roadside garbage bins and sending the plastic wrap to landfill through springtime. ๐Ÿ—‘ I guess I don’t really care about global warming, after all I did buy the F-350 and I don’t recycle much except beer cans for the deposit and the occasional metal can. ๐Ÿ—‘ Still I am very pro-renewables, because of all the money it brings to rural communities, how it does reduce emissions and global warming, and what a low-consumption hillbilly does out in the country, doesn’t really impact the planet like the millions who live in the endless cities and suburbs. ๐Ÿ Still I worry, is it all just a delusion to be saving for this off-grid cabin? Are the goats, hogs, cattle, the trash burner out back, the house free of complicated technology with a simple outhouse and solar system impossible? Will all my investments become something useful, or are unrealized gains unrealizable? ๐Ÿค‘

Could it just be delusions speaking? ๐Ÿคช I just got to enjoy the final years of my parents life. ๐Ÿง“ Going to visit them on Monday when I show the truck to save gas. โ›ฝ Truth is I know I will probably end up with my parents 5-acre grid-tied homestead in a few years as I know it’s end of their life and my sister has her house in Saratoga – their old house with it’s expensive oil burner fueling their leaky house, with neighbors nearby so I can’t burn much plastic garbage, but it agriculturally zoned, so I can have hogs and goats if I bring in enough feed – and cancel their garbage service in favor of hauling the things I don’t burn to transfer station. ๐Ÿฎ And I can get an electric car and work remote, maybe keep their internet, if that’s what I end up doing until retirement to that cabin in a free state. I do want a home that smells like hay, livestock and manure, maybe even a bit like silage or the occasional whiff of whatever debris needs burning. And heat with wood. ๐Ÿ‘ƒReal rural life, not just a plastic house that smells like cow shit. At least their house doesn’t that much vinyl crap, but far more then I’d ever want. Maybe I hate vinyl because my neighbors growing up their burned the scraps when they got their double-wide delivered. At least it’s not in mound on outskirts of the city. โ™ป๏ธ

There’s always next weekend, and maybe as soon as Thursday after the meetings downtown I can descend on Vermont to set up camp for four days of remote work. Bennington Library is good for that, and there are trails and places to hike. ๐Ÿƒ ๐ŸŽ„ Fires each night, not really legal to bring pot across state lines, but neither is burning garbage. I compost, and the wet stuff will go to my parents house to feed their land. Of course this is just a blog post about delusions and things change especially with the weather and gas prices to feed the F-350 SuperDuty. Maybe I’m just a cheap son-of-a-bitch but it feels good every dollar saved and invested as I imagine the hogs grunting in my backyard, the rumble of ATV and flames flickering out of burn barrel as none of plastic trash goes to landfill. ๐Ÿ Owning handguns and an AR-15, which I know the extreme mentally ill people aren’t supposed own, you know those who shop at Crossgates and stuff their plastics recycling bin full of garbage, waiting for the colored and poor to sift through it at the smelly old Garbage Recycling Plant off of South Pearl, that I ride by every day. Except when I’m up in woods smoking pot and burning shit. ๐Ÿ”ฅ I should go to the Town Park for the Wi-Fi, look and follow up on offers to buy Big Red, see if any of them are real, post this to the blog, and get on with my day. While I don’t love negotiating, in some ways I do, because you know it’s part of what I’ve done 20 years working on Capitol Hill. ๐Ÿค And continue to run data jobs and set targets.

I don’t burn any more fuel in the SuperDuty as I need the gas tank to last until Thursday, so I plan later on to ride to the grocery store. And maybe catch the Nature Bus to Thacher Park. ๐ŸšŒ Won’t bring my bike, but instead lock it up at trailhead or walk to bus stop, as who knows if the driver will let me bring the bike on bus. Maybe enjoy the views, read a bit. ๐Ÿ“ทAlso need to get to the grocery store and get some more fruits and I am still thinking about swinging by Meads Farm Stand and getting more zucchini or summer squash if they still have that. ๐Ÿ›’ Probably see if I can put off visiting Mom and Dad until Monday, to further cut down on trips. I guess I don’t have to save that much money, but dang gas is expensive once again especially with my big SuperDuty. ๐Ÿ˜ฒ It’s all the delusions, those hours over the years staring stoned into the melting plastic bottles and labels as they get those funny shapes and break into bright yellow flames. But I have work to do, and these words are just a filibuster. ๐Ÿ’ฝ

Map: Empire State Topography
Map: Empire State Color Relief