Strange Up Salem

08/24/2026

There's a 90% chance of a very strong El Nino condition in the Pacific this fall and winter, and a 69% chance of it being the strongest El Nino ever. The climate outlook for Oregon is for warmer than normal temperature from October 2026 to June 2027, with basically an equal chance of higher or lower precipitation for most of that period. But if the El Nino is the strongest ever, predictions become iff'y, since there's no historical record to base them on. Climate change is at work here.

El Nino is coming. A story in the Oregonian describes what El Nino is and what its usual effects are. An El Niño event occurs when central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean temperatures become unusually warm, shifting weather patterns across the globe. Historically, El Niños have caused severe he...

08/23/2026

Wow. On the outside of the box that Tayst coffee pods came in, I learned both the secret of happiness and of good karma!

08/21/2026

The Democratic Socialists of America have some really bad ideas, like abolishing the presidency and supreme court. But social democracies such as those in Scandinavia aren't socialist. They're capitalist with strong social programs like universal health care and free education, funded by high taxes. I believe Americans are much more in favor of us becoming a social democracy than a socialist state like Cuba.

I have no idea why any reasonable citizen of our country would want to be a member of Democratic Socialists of America. Take a look at their program. It isn’t a holdover from some bygone day. It was developed between April and June 2026, just a few months ago. It’s full of crazy ideas. Like… e...

08/19/2026

Our country is so politically divided, it's great to see a national consensus on one important issue: dislike of data centers. Most people hate them. I feel that Democrats are more likely to benefit from this in the midterm election, since Republican candidates tend to be more corporation-friendly and Trump has taken a hands-off approach to regulating AI and data centers.

The United States is so politically divided, it’s wonderful that Democrats, Republicans, and independents have come together on one important national issue: dislike of data centers. This image illustrated a Comment by Benjamin Wallace-Wells in The New Yorker’s “The Talk of the Town” feature...

08/17/2026

I was blown away by a highly engrossing talk by Yuval Noah Harari about how AI will impact the future of humanity. You can see the You Tube video in this blog post, where I also share a summary of Harari's main points that a commenter on the video posted. Harari is an amazingly creative thinker who brings a historian's perspective to present-day reality.

Today a friend emailed me a link to a You Tube video where Yuval Noah Harari talks about AI in an amazing fashion that only a historian with his breadth of knowledge about how the past of humanity intersects with the future of artificial intelligence could pull off. This graphic provides an overview...

08/15/2026

Yesterday I found my 1996 high school graduation speech that I thought I'd lost. I was struck by how closely it mirrored conditions in the United States today, 60 years later. I've copied what I titled "The Corruption of Despair" into this blog post. Give it a read. See if you agree that while much has changed in our country, a lot has stayed the same. Sadly.

I had one semester of college French. So one of the few French sayings I know is Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. “The more it changes, the more it is the same thing.” That was the thought I had after I found my 1966 graduation speech at Woodlake Union High School (go Tigers!) in ce...

08/13/2026

While there's a place for extremes in life, by and large I'm a fan of moderation. In the realm of AI and data centers, this means a middle way between Anything Goes and Everything Stops. Here I share some thoughts about that middle way, sharing an excerpt from a recent New Yorker article that had some wise observations about how we should manage AI and data centers.

Though I’m not a Buddhist, I like the notion of a Middle Way — which traditionally avoids the extremes of asceticism and sensual indulgence. After all, most things in life seem well suited to moderation, a Goldilocks approach to life. Goldilocks went inside. First she tasted the porridge of the ...

08/11/2026

It was painful to watch Trump lie his way through a description of today's executive order about childhood vaccines. Nothing he said about the dangers of vaccines was true. The combination MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine is safe; vaccines don't cause autism; and no child gets a soda bottles worth of vaccine at a single doctor visit.

Sometimes I see Trump saying something ridiculous and I get angry. Other times I’m amused. And frequently, like today, I’m embarrassed to be a citizen of a country that elected an incompetent idiot as president. Watching CNN on my iPhone as I was exercising on an elliptical machine at our fitnes...

08/09/2026

Decided it was time to update how I'm liking my Tesla, now that I've been driving it for about nine weeks. In short, more than any other car I've driven in the 61 years since I got my driver's license. One reason is that the Tesla chauffeurs me around 95% of the time, thanks to Full Self-Driving (Supervised). I give 19 other reasons in this blog post.

Having gotten my driver’s license at 16, I’ve driven lots of different cars in the past 61 years (from that you math wizards can figure out how old I am). This makes the title of this blog post a huge endorsement of the 2026 Tesla Model Y Juniper — a car I’m liking much more than I thought I...

08/07/2026

I'm really pleased that Mai Vang is pursuing a write-in campaign to remain the Ward 6 city councilor. City officials treated her unfairly by ignoring the residency requirement in the city charter, even though Betsy Vega, her opponent in the May primary election, lived outside of Ward 6 for 107 days in the previous 12 months. If you live in Ward 6, write in Mai Vang on the November 3 general election ballot. Wherever you live, consider donating to Vang's write-in campaign.

Mai Vang was treated badly by city officials when they made a screwy decision that despite Betsy Vega failing to meet the residency requirement to be a Ward 6 city councilor, Vega’s narrow victory in the May election over incumbent Mai Vang should stand. I described why this decision was so unfair...