Archive for 2024

Vote for Kamala Harris. Then, Get Out the Vote for Kamala Harris.

Let’s do this one more time, everyone.

Today is election day in America. It’s time for America to move past the incredibly unfit Donald Trump, and time to send Kamala Harris to the White House as America’s first female president. America, let’s do this. Here’s how:

If You’re Registered, but Haven’t Voted Yet

Please, get to the polls and vote for the only sane choice, Kamala Harris for president.

If You Aren’t Yet Registered

As of 2024, 23 states (plus Washington, D.C.) allow same-day voter registration, including several key battleground states:

A map showing states where same-day voter registration is available.

So if you live in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Washington, D.C., Wisconsin, or Wyoming, you can vote today even if you’re not yet registered.

Visit vote.org and make sure your voice is heard.

If You’ve Already Voted

Hey, me too! It felt good, and it’s a good start, but there’s still more we can do. Me, I’m getting a spiffy new haircut, in preparation for…phone banking?! Using my phone as a phone is gross, but I’ve nevertheless signed up to get out the vote for Kamala Harris.

Now, I’m peer pressuring you to do the same. Join my pain, so Trump doesn’t happen again. Click this link to get started.

“Don’t worry if you’ve never made phone calls with a campaign before. Each training starts with a 20 minute training session that has tech support to help ensure you have a seamless experience, followed up by 90 minutes of talking to voters.”

Let This Be The End

3 Trump elections in a lifetime is approximately 300 too many. Let’s make this the very last one, and have it end in Trump’s clear and humiliating defeat.

A Monster Assembled Entirely From Human Flaws 

“[R]arely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.”

British writer Nate White has Donald Trump figured out:

Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

Put more simply, Donald Trump is trash, and trash goes in the trash. Here’s hoping that tomorrow, America consigns Donald Trump to the rubbish bin of history.

I continue to urge my American readers to get out there and cast their vote for Kamala Harris, and then help others vote too. Visit vote.org to get started.

Damn the Constraints of Our Universe 

Infinity is a mirage.

If you were somehow counting on the infinite monkey theorem to help you accomplish something, a pair of Australian mathematicians have some bad news:

“It is not plausible that, even with improved typing speeds or an increase in chimpanzee populations, monkey labour will ever be a viable tool for developing non-trivial written works,” the study says.

Back to the drawing board.

The Tomato Aurora 

Also, what the hell is a tomato “factory”?

“Seymour! The northern lights are out!”

“No, mother. It’s just the local tomato factory.”

A reddish glow in the sky
It does have a strange beauty of its own.

I believe I would enjoy a whole “area person disappointed” series.

Let’s Expect More From Ourselves

To err is human. To cover your ass with AI is not divine.

This week, Apple has unveiled a set of artificial intelligence features to the world. The new Apple Intelligence functionality is being touted with two new commercials that pitch a smartphone as a substitute for being attentive and caring. Like that idea, the ads are awful.

The more depressing of the two spots features a wife scrambling to cover her ass after forgetting her husband’s birthday.1 While the children give their father thoughtful gifts to express their love, she stands in the kitchen making faces:


What is this awful face?

In slapdash fashion, the woman instructs her phone to make a slideshow of “woodworking with kids”. After it’s completed the task, she presents the result completely unchecked, for her husband to view. As the ad ends, she walks away in smug slow-motion, with a look that says “Phew! My phone saved me from having to put more than 13 seconds’ worth of thought into my husband’s birthday, which apparently it forgot to remind me of. Isn’t that great?!”

It’s not. It’s a sad, dehumanizing message. It didn’t have to be. Though Apple Intelligence has not wowed me thus far, AI photo collections look wonderful. Letting folks relive the past by surfacing forgotten images could be incredible. This, however, is anything but.

I don’t know, maybe a message of “You’re a lazy shitheel, but thanks to your phone, you can hide the truth!” will sell iPhones. Even if it does, however, it sure shouldn’t make anybody feel good.


Footnotes:

  1. The ad is archived here. ↩︎

Please, Let Him Be Hoist With His Own Petard 

The petard in this case is “racism”.

Over the weekend, Donald Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City. There, “comedian” Tony Hinchcliffe disparaged multiple minority groups, including Puerto Ricans. That might prove to be a problem for the Trump campaign, because a whole lot of Puerto Ricans live, and here‘s hoping, vote, in swing states. Pennsylvania is one notable example.

A chart showing hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans living in swing states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina
[Image credit: Politico]

It almost seems like spewing vile, racist rhetoric could actually turn out to be a losing strategy. Wouldn’t that be something?

We’re one week away from the polls closing, so here’s my continued plea to my American readers to get out and vote for Kamala Harris. Visit vote.org to get started.

Democracy Dies in Cowardice 

Hold Jeff Bezos’s beer.

Not to be outdone by Patrick Soon-Shiong and the Los Angeles Times, billionaire Jeff Bezos has apparently also killed his paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris. Declaring the paper’s lack of an endorsement just 11 days before the election is a breathtaking act, one which can only be viewed as political, no matter how much the publisher tries to cover his ass with nonsense excuses. It’s also something I simply can’t stomach. Though I’ve long been a Washington Post subscriber, that ended on Friday.

A cancellation message for the Washington post

In addition to cancelling, I took the time to write to the paper about this, because it matters.

Today, I learned that rather than endorsing Kamala Harris as the paper’s editors intended, the Washington Post would not be endorsing a candidate in the 2024 US presidential election. My understanding is that this is a direct result of interference from owner Jeff Bezos. Allowing ownership to interfere with editorial in this way is a cardinal sin.

As a result, I have cancelled my subscription to your publication. It’s important that you know the two things are directly connected.

Will Lewis, you claim that this is “returning to your roots”. That is a pathetic excuse for what is, at best, cowardice. Perhaps the most charitable interpretation of this is that both you and Jeff Bezos are afraid of the fallout, should a second Trump term come to pass. You should be, because we all should be. But to allow that fear to influence your editorial decisions, and to prevent you from making the endorsement your editorial team wished to make, is a sickening dereliction of duty.

Even in your piece, you said “in 1976 for understandable reasons at the time, we changed this long-standing policy and endorsed Jimmy Carter as president.”. What, in your mind, were those understandable reasons? Was Gerald Ford a fascist? Did he claim he would be a dictator on day one? Or seek to have generals like Hitler’s? Did he provoke an attempted coup? Did he do any of the incredibly long list of horrendous things Donald Trump has done? You know the answer, and I suspect in your heart, you know that this is wrong.

I hope the powers that be at the Washington Post can find their spines and do what’s right. An endorsement of Kamala Harris is, quite simply, a must. Anything less is kowtowing to Trump, and all the awful he represents.

Interestingly, the Post has published both pieces from their own staff ripping this decision, as well as scornful letters from readers. Approximately no one has been supportive of this hideous blunder. Perhaps that can be a lesson to other publishers out there.

In the meantime, it’s clearly time for another new motto for the Post. Of the options proposed by Slate back in 2017, “Vulgar Displays of Power” seems most apt.

In the meantime, I will once again urge my American readers to get out there and cast their vote for Kamala Harris, and then help others vote too. Visit vote.org to get started.

Inspiring Words 

He’s right. We ARE all going to be dead soon.

Speaking of the Boston Celtics, Boston.com has a collection of great quotes from their head coach, Joe Mazzulla.

A quote from Joe Mazzulla which reads “We're all going to be dead soon, and it really doesn't matter anymore, so there's zero pressure.”
[Photo credit: Boston.com on Instagram]

Whenever you’re feeling overwhelmed, just remember that we’re all going to be dead soon and it really doesn’t matter. Zero pressure!

One Cowardly Owner and One Valiant Journalist 

Two not-actually-that-radical proposals: Billionaires should not exist and news organizations should be publicly funded.

Earlier this month, billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, dictated to the paper’s editorial board that it would not be allowed to make an endorsement for president. As a result, editorials editor Mariel Garza has now resigned in protest:

Mariel Garza, the editorials editor of the Los Angeles Times, resigned on Wednesday after the newspaper’s owner blocked the editorial board’s plans to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent,” Garza told me in a phone conversation. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”

In case it wasn’t abundantly clear to the readers of this site, One Foot Tsunami endorses Kamala Harris for president in the strongest possible terms. Whatever your politics, the alternative to Harris is the staggeringly unfit for office Donald Trump. Given the reality of our country’s two-party system, a vote for Harris is an absolute must.

I urge my American readers to get out there and cast their vote for Kamala Harris, and then help others vote too. Visit vote.org to get started.

Don’t Expect Too Much From Apple Intelligence

You just keep trying to kick that football, Charlie Brown.

I live just down the street from the home of both the Boston Celtics and the Boston Bruins, TD Garden. Games, concerts, and other shows at this arena can impact me greatly, so I frequently want to know “What’s happening at the Garden tonight?”. For several years, answering this question has involved skimming through the TD Garden schedule. That does do the trick, but it’s more work than I’d like.

After updating my iPhone to iOS 18.1 and activating the much-hyped Apple Intelligence, I thought I’d give Siri yet another shot. With its new brain, I thought perhaps it might now be able to handle the task of finding and reading a calendar for me. Guess how that went!

First, I asked Siri “Who’s playing at TD Garden tonight?”. Rather than a direct answer, it kicked back a series of Google search results:

A Siri response to the question “Who’s playing at TD Garden tonight?”, which lists three web search results

To be fair, this reply does contain the desired information within its results. However, that requires parsing through them. It’s not the simple and definitive answer I’m after.

So, I tried again. In this particular case, I actually knew it was the Celtics home opener, so I asked “Do the Celtics play tonight?”:

A Siri response to the question “Do the Celtics play tonight?”, which shows their upcoming game against the Knicks

Here, I did get the type of single specific response I was after. And yet, even this was lacking in critical details. The home team is usually on the right in displays such as this, but there’s nothing that confirms that hunch. It could say “Knicks @ Celtics”, or detail where the game is taking place, but it does not.

Siri does in fact know the game’s location, as seen when I asked “Where do the Celtics play tonight?”:

A Siri response to the question “Where do the Celtics play tonight?”, which shows that Siri knows they’re playing at TD Garden

Siri knew the exact expected answer to this query, and thus it ought to have known the answer to my original query as well. And yet there I was, three questions in before finally getting the desired information.

Perhaps you’re wondering how ChatGPT would handle “Who’s playing at TD Garden tonight?”. The answer is “with aplomb”:

ChatGPT nailing the answer to the quesiton

Yes, it got it in one, and even tossed in details about the Celtics championship celebration. That’s the kind of answer I want from a personal assistant. It’s also the kind of answer Siri has simply never been consistent about providing. Over 12 years ago, I noted just how much Apple was over-promising and under-delivering when it came to Siri. Alas, if my experience is anything to go by, too little has changed.