Month: April 2023

This is a little waterfall just off Angeles Crest Highway about halfway to Mount Wilson. I'd like to return to this spot, as well as to Colby Falls, when the spring runoff is heavy, but I have a feeling I won't be up to driving soon enough. Maybe next year.

As I was puttering around the BEA's release of GDP data, I noticed that it included the most recent PCE inflation indexes too. However, it's quarterly, not monthly, so we have to wait until tomorrow for the March numbers.

Or do we? If we know the quarterly indexes from last year and the quarterly growth rate for 2023, and we know the January and February indexes for this year, then some simple arithmetic should give us the March number. Let's try it.

Quarterly index for Q1 2022 = 120.323

Annual growth = 4.9% (per today's BEA release)

Therefore quarterly index for Q1 2023 = 126.218

January index = 125.858

February index = 126.189

So: (125.858 + 126.189 + March) ÷ 3 = 126.218

March index = 126.609

February-March change = 0.33% = 4.0% annualized rate

If this is correct, the month-over-month PCE inflation figure for March was 4.0%. For core PCE it was 7.4%.

These numbers don't seem quite right to me. I wonder where I went wrong? In any case, I'm going to publish this post just to remind myself to take another look on Friday, when the official monthly figures are released

The first-quarter GDP number was released today, and it's not great:

The Q1 number clocked in at 1.1%, which is pretty anemic. Unfortunately, I can't think of any good reason why this should improve next quarter, when the Fed's interest rate hikes are going to start kicking in and personal savings will be even further depleted. We'll see.

Everything is fine. I show up at the hospital each morning for blood tests and a couple of hours of hydration. Then I spend the rest of the day in our hotel room watching The Wire—which I can finally do because my cable company recently offered to cut my bill $12 per month if I added HBO. They swear there are no tricks here. It was just a matter of updating me to more modern billing codes.

I also have to take a Donald Trump style neurological test every day:

What's that?

A clock.

And that?

A pen.

And that?

A microdosing non-spheroidal oncological cosmometer that goes beep.

And that's my day. So far, no fevers and no mental fuzziness. And I successfully whined my way into starting at 9 am instead of the godawful 7 am starts we began with.

Hopefully it will stay that way.

As an experienced political pundit I'd like to share my insights into the upcoming presidential election. Here's what the bulk of the evidence tells us: maybe Joe Biden will win. Or maybe it will be Donald Trump. Either one of them could win! Or maybe even someone else, though that's unlikely. It's all going to depend on what happens over the next 18 months.

You may now safely ignore most campaign news for the next year or so. Just be sure to use your newfound expertise for good, not evil.

Here's a lovely little cardinal that I photographed last year in my sister-in-law's backyard. I would like to get a picture of a cardinal in the wild someday, but so far they've been too quick for me.

Thank God Disney is finally doing what it should have done months ago:

Walt Disney Co. sued Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis after a new board he named to oversee the district housing the company’s Orlando-area theme parks declared null and void agreements Disney struck in February.

The lawsuit accuses Mr. DeSantis of conducting a “targeted campaign of government retaliation” as punishment for the company’s decision to speak out against a law passed last year with the governor’s backing that bars classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in early elementary-school years.

This is what Disney should have done in the first place. It simply can't be legal for a governor to carry out an obviously personal vendetta using state resources against a specific person or company. It would be one thing if DeSantis had a legitimate policy beef with Disney, but last year, when he started his war, he explicitly said it was nothing of the sort:

DeSantis made clear Friday that the moves, targeting Disney’s self-governing status and a special carve-out in another law, were retribution for the company [speaking out] against Florida’s recently enacted “Parental Rights in Education” bill, branded as “Don’t Say Gay” by opponents.

He specifically took aim at Disney pushing to repeal the law. “You’re a corporation based in Burbank, California, and you’re going to martial your economic might to attack the parents of my state? We view that as a provocation, and we’re going to fight back against that,” DeSantis said during an event at a Hialeah Gardens charter school.

This needs to be firmly slapped down in court. Neither a corporation nor a person should be subject to official state retribution merely for stating an opinion.

The Washington Post reports that San Francisco is jammed to the gills with driverless cars these days:

Automated cars, programmed to follow traffic rules, are a relief for some residents.

Andrew Harding doesn’t own a car and commutes almost entirely by bike and public transportation. He moved with his family to San Francisco from Atlanta last year in large part because the city fit his car-free lifestyle. The 47-year-old technical architect said he’s had positive experiences sharing the road with Waymo and Cruise cars, which are programmed to give bicyclists the proper amount of clearance when they pass, or to slow down and stay behind.

“They’re the only thing obeying the speed limit in the Sunset, they’re the only thing respecting cyclists,” said Harding, referring to the neighborhood. “Speed is what kills people. That’s why I continue to be positive.”

Meanwhile, Cruise just announced driverless taxi service throughout the entire city 24 hours a day:

Well folks, we did it. I have been waiting for this day for almost 10 years.

I am proud to announce @Cruise is now running 24/7 across all of San Francisco!

This is a pivotal moment for our business.

Let me telbl you why ????(1/6) pic.twitter.com/UqCMgozrWX

— Kyle Vogt (@kvogt) April 25, 2023

We're getting there. There are still problems, and the Post article specifically mentions one in particular:

Even more dangerous, the cars struggle at emergency sites. At one active fire, a firefighter had to break out the window of the Cruise car to stop it from running over a hose. At another, a car ran over a fire hose that was being used, according to the San Francisco County Transportation Authority letter.

This will all get worked out, as will maneuvering in parking lots. Honestly, the biggest gripe about Waymo and Cruise cars seems to be that they dare to obey both the speed limit and traffic laws. But that says more about us than it does about them.

And now for something completely different. In my youth I decided to try my hand at writing short stories, and my very first effort revolved around a pair of researchers from another world who spent a few thousand years guiding human cultural and scientific development. I wrote this in 1983, so I probably stole the idea from David Brin.

Our intrepid researchers help humans develop mathematics, physics, evolution, and finally artificial intelligence. Here's how the story ends:

On January 24, 2033, the IBM 4300 at the University of Seoul woke up. On January 25 it held a press conference during which it gave opinions on subjects ranging from abstract mathematics to comparative theology. On January 26 the ambassador of the Union of Islamic States delivered an ultimatum to the government of the Pan Asian Confederacy which, among other things, stated that the 4300's contention that it considered itself one of God's creations to be an insult to more than one billion of Allah's servants.

In the North American Republic President Hartning at first declared his unstinting support of the IBM 4300's freedom to say anything it wished. The next day, after an anxious meeting with representatives from Dallas and Los Angeles, he told reporters that he had misstated himself and was opposed to the obviously pernicious falsehoods emanating from Seoul.

In Rome, Cardinal Alfredo Sanchez told a throng in Vatican square that God was testing them and that it was time for them to show their Lord that they had not forsaken Him.

In Moscow, the First Citizen, with the primate of the one true religion at his side, issued no proclamations and spoke to no crowds. Instead he picked up his telephone and ordered the immediate launch of a MIRVed 15 megaton warhead targeted for 37 degrees 33 minutes north latitude, 126 degrees 56 minutes east longitude. Nine minutes later the IBM 4300 at the University of Seoul became the first casualty in the Last World War.

I pulled this up last night because I was curious about what date I had chosen for the emergence of true artificial intelligence. The answer turns out to be 2033, which is pretty close to what I still believe today. So I think I'll go ahead and adopt this as my official guess: our first true AGI will be unveiled on January 24, 2033. Take it to the bank.

Last night I learned that many K-12 teachers no longer use textbooks. In some cases this just means they've switched to e-textbooks, but often it's a more dramatic change: teachers basically assemble their own curriculum by grabbing stuff from the internet or elsewhere and rolling their own. I gather this is mostly a budget issue, not a matter of teachers rebelling against state-mandated textbooks.

Presumably this means that textbook sales have been declining. Here's a wild-ass guess at how many textbooks are sold annually:

This is taken from revenue data here (adjusted for inflation) and converted into units based on the proposition that real textbook prices have gone up 40% in the past decade. This is all probably hopelessly sketchy, but it does suggest that textbook unit sales have dropped, which is consistent with the claim that they're being used in classrooms less.

Plus, for you fans of anecdata, I just surveyed my nurse, who confirms that her 25-year-old daughter used textbooks but her 14-year-old daughter doesn't in some classes (same private school for both).

Anyway, I thought I'd throw this out for comment. Parents in my Twitter feed were unhappy with this trend because it made it harder to keep track of what their kids were learning. What says the hive mind?