"Once people realized my glasses were full of tech, conversations often took a turn for the awkward — and they mostly unfolded the same way:"

"'Are you recording me?' (No, I’m not.) 'Where are the cameras?' (There aren’t any!) 'You’re really not recording me?' (No!)... Most of the time, people chose to take me at my word and the conversation continued (if a little icily.) Even in tech-heavy San Francisco, casual chats with people I have known for years sometimes turned tense after the glasses’ true nature were revealed. When asked, the most common reason people gave for why interactions took a turn for the awkward was a lingering concern that the glasses were listening anyway — even though they weren’t. The other big reason some people didn’t seem thrilled was a surprise: They thought I was ignoring them.... My wife still sometimes thinks I’m reading news headlines through the glasses even when I’m looking right at her.... [It's hard] to stay fully present with someone when a neon-green notification slides down in front of your eyes.... Some of these social issues may iron themselves out over time.... Until that happens, though, wearing smart glasses can make moving through the world feel a little socially graceless."

Writes Chris Velazco "I spent months living with smart glasses. People talk to me differently now. Eyeglasses are being augmented with screens, artificial intelligence and the power to unnerve people. We tested a pair to see how" (WaPo).

There's also this video. The most interesting part of that is Velazco's admission that his favorite use of the technology is to view inspirational messages that he has chosen for himself, such as: "You can do anything. You have what it takes. Just BELIEVE."

Imagine someone talking to you in person, looking in the direction of your eyes, but actually reading bullshit they've loaded into their glasses. May I suggest the inspirational message: Stay in the moment. Be spontaneous. The person in front of you might be a fully engaged HUMAN BEING!

"Of course the Little Spotted Kiwi isn’t spotted very much! Otherwise, it would be called the Frequently Spotted Kiwi."

A comment at the Metafilter discussion of the RNZ article "Little spotted kiwi found on New Zealand's mainland for first time in 50 years" ("Knowing kiwi pukupuku have survived this whole time in our takiwā is incredible. We are extremely excited and looking forward to working with DOC to secure the future of kiwi pukupuku").

While I'm on the subject of New Zealand birds, let me link to this from a few days ago: "First the dire wolf, now NZ’s giant moa: why real ‘de-extinction’ is unlikely to fly": "[B]irds are harder to 'de-extinct' than placental mammals. One would need a surrogate egg to bring chicks to term, and for many moa species there are no eggs from living birds big enough to house a developing chick. In this case, artificial eggs would need to be developed.... Genetically engineering a tinamou or any other birds in this group to create a moa hybrid would be... much harder than genetically engineering a grey wolf. And in any case, this would not recreate a moa, but merely something that may look like a moa. As one critic put it, it would not have the mauri (life force) of a moa."

I asked Grok to give me more about "mauri" in this context. From the answer: "As one expert reaction put it, 'Genetic tinkering with the fundamental features of a different life force will not bring moa back,' highlighting that mauri cannot be replicated through science alone; it is an irreplaceable, holistic quality tied to the species' natural history, whakapapa, and place in the ecosystem. This critique underscores broader ethical concerns in de-extinction debates, including cultural heritage, interdependence with nature, and the limits of human intervention in restoring extinct beings."

"Many of the counselors and campers didn’t have phones on them: Campers were not allowed access to technology..."

"... while counselors could have them only during select nights and moments during the day, and Ms. Clement said she had always thought of that as a benefit, part of the atmosphere that went with being along the river. 'You don’t know how much of a joy it was to be unplugged,' she said."

From "As Texas Flood Raged, Camp Mystic Was Left to Fend for Itself/Flash floods surged through in the middle of the night, but many local officials appeared unaware of the unfolding catastrophe, initially leaving people near the river on their own" (NYT)

Ms. Clement = Nancy Clement, an 18-year-old counselor, who escaped the flood.

Also: "The county does have access to a private system known as CodeRED that sends out alerts to residents’ phones, but it is not clear to what extent it was used. At 4:22 a.m., a firefighter asked on an emergency channel if there was 'any way we can send a CodeRED out' to residents in the town of Hunt, where Camp Mystic and the Presbyterian camp are located, 'asking them to find higher ground or stay home,' according to a report by Texas Public Radio. But it appears that the first CodeRED did not go out for about an hour. Louis Kocurek, a resident of the town of Center Point, told The Times that the CodeRED text message he received had come in at 10:07 a.m. Sheriff Leitha said he could not say why the alerts had not been issued earlier."

ADDED: There is a second front-page NYT article today, and it's about what I think is an even more shocking problem: "Camp Mystic Cabins Stood in an ‘Extremely Hazardous’ Floodway":

"Through it all, Europeans tried their best to bear up, especially in places where air conditioning is still a luxury, or frowned upon."

"Some people worry about the pollution it causes; some older Italians just believe it’s bad for health."

From "Dangerous Heat Grips Much of Europe, With More to Come/A punishing heat wave broke records in southern Europe and hasn’t peaked yet in some places, prompting warnings to residents, employers and tourists to alter their habits" (London Times).

What is this belief held by older Italians... and could they be right? People love the comfort of air conditioning and at some point feel fiercely attached to it and resistant to hearing that it might be bad. Obviously, it's bad for the environment, but what about our health? 

But first, what exactly to the old Italians think? According to Grok, the idea is that you should keep you body in balance and not move it back and forth between hot and cold. And they speak of "colpo d’aria" or "colpo di freddo" — "blow of air" or "blow of cold" — as a cause of various pains and respiratory ailments. There's a mistrust of modern inventions and a preference for traditional ways, such as opening windows, fanning, and seeking out the shade. Natural seems better than artificial. 

Is there an element of truth in that... truth... or beauty?

I wondered if The London Times had ever talked about "colpo d’aria" in any other article. Answer: Yes, 3 times:

"The windmills are killing our country, by the way. The fields are littered with them. Junk. They get older and rusty and get bad...."

"It's the greatest scam in history. The most expensive energy you can buy. They are ugly. A friend of mine comes from Minnesota... He said it's unbelievable what happened.... The most beautiful fields.... I was so looking forward to seeing them again... and they had windmills all over them. These horrible structures.... these ugly horrible things.... I looked at this field that was one of the most beautiful places in my own mind and imagination. It's littered with this garbage. It looked like a junkyard, he said. Then you get different manufacturers, and [the windmills] don't look alike. And they're not painted alike. Different colors. Even if they're white, one's a beige-y white, one's a darker white, one's a lighter white. And they start to rust after four or five years. And then they start to wear out. And nobody takes them because you're not allowed to bury the props... There's a certain type of fiber, and if it goes the ground, we are all going to die. What bullshit this is! Okay?... What they do is leave them up.... Windmills all over the place. Tall ones, short ones, dead ones, they're all dead. Some are hanging over by a thread...."

Said Trump today.

 

You may not like Trump's aesthetics all the time. We were just talking about all the gold leaf in the Oval Office. But he is attentive to the details of the visual world. He's an aesthete. What kind of man cares that the windmills are not painted alike even if they are all white because one's a beige-y white, one's a darker white, one's a lighter white? He not only cares, he will calmly detail the problem of shades of white as if you are expected to notice the variations and become unsettled by them as he is.

You are expected to see it as part of what should concern the President of the United States, this discontinuity of the whiteness of windmills.

I like this about him. I think it matters how things look. These places that are beautiful in our "mind and imagination" need to be kept beautiful. Anyone who modifies the landscape owes us all a duty to take care of this beauty. I don't think this comes naturally to most politicians, but it's something that Trump slowed down to contemplate out loud. 

"I was trying to make a heart for him. I was too late."

Said Robert Jarvik, quoted in "Robert Jarvik, a creator of the artificial heart, dies at 79/He was the lead designer of the Jarvik-7, a controversial plastic and metal device intended to permanently replace an ailing human heart" (WaPo).

A handsome, tousle-haired man whose interests ranged from skiing and weightlifting to poetry and theoretical physics, he cited a personal motivation for his work on the device: His father, a physician, had died after open-heart surgery in 1976.

The first artificial heart, the Jarvik-7, was implanted in 1982. Perhaps, like me, you remember the name and occupation of the recipient: Barney Clark, a dentist. When he awakened from the surgery, he said to his wife, "I want to tell you, even though I have no heart, I still love you."

The artificial heart never became a replacement for a real heart. Didn't you think it would, if you were around, reading the news 43 years ago? Artificial hearts are only used as to keep people alive while they wait for a heart from a human donor.

Jarvik, the "handsome, tousle-haired man," also posed in Hathaway shirt ads — like this one, complete with the company's trademark eyepatch. He also posed in a Lipitor ad that got criticized as misleading because Jarvik was "not a cardiologist" and — though the ad depicted him rowing — "apparently, not a rower."

Jarvik was married to Marilyn vos Savant, the woman who's been famous for decades for supposedly having the highest IQ. (She scored 228 on the Stanford-Binet test when she was 10.)

"This is the first video edited with the Neurolink.... This is my old voice, narrating this video, cloned by A.I. from recordings before I lost my voice...."

I am the 3rd person in the world to receive the @Neuralink brain implant.

1st with ALS. 1st Nonverbal.

I am typing this with my brain. It is my primary communication.

Ask me anything! I will answer at least all verified users!

Thank you @elonmusk! pic.twitter.com/bxYO3SBfA2

— Bradford G Smith (Brad) (@ALScyborg) April 27, 2025

You can wear a device that records everything you say and, through A.I., advises you, on a daily basis, about how you can improve your communication skills.

I'm reading "This disc records everything you say — to make you a better person/Limitless hopes its AI wearable device will be used as a life coach and productivity tool by millions" (London Times).

“Practise more active listening and patience when interacting with your kids, especially when they’re seeking your attention,” one notification read that popped up on his smartphone. “Sometimes you get caught up in your own tasks or thoughts and may not fully engage the moment with your children.”

The advice was followed by a transcript, recorded at 9.09am the previous day, when Siroker, a start-up founder, was clearly distracted while his six-year-old clamoured for attention. “It’s hard to hear this, because I didn’t realise …. I’m a good dad,” Siroker trailed off. “But now I can go back to that time, and say, ‘Hey, what was I doing at 9.09 that was so damn important?’”

Presumably, the child is also recorded. Does the A.I. critique the child too?  

The microphone is always on! You end up with searchable document of everything it records. And by "you," I mean anyone who uses one of these things. I hope whoever they are, they use it only for its intended purpose: To improve communication. The privacy problems are obvious, but it's only a matter of time. These things — like the cameras everywhere — are inevitable. 

"Tesla is the only company with all the ingredients for making intelligent humanoid robots at scale."

"My prediction is that Optimus will be the biggest product of all time by far. It will be 10 times bigger than the next biggest product ever made."

ELON MUSK: "Tesla is the only company with all the ingredients for making intelligent humanoid robots at scale.

My prediction is that Optimus will be the biggest product of all time by far. It will be 10 times bigger than the next biggest product ever made." pic.twitter.com/Aqa6SsnsQW

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) April 2, 2025

Musk moves quickly into successes and failures. Yes, we could pause to cry a tear over Brad Schimel — upon whom once rested "the entire destiny of humanity" — but look here: Musk has got the biggest product ever made.

And:

pic.twitter.com/ZoideOC1RU

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 2, 2025

All right now. Who would mope about Wisconsin?!

There’s no success like failure....

AND: Embracing the notion that there's no success like failure, Musk now tweets: "I expected to lose, but there is value to losing a piece for a positional gain."

"We got stuff coming that’s going to frost some people’s cookies."

Says Chad Kassem, referring to upcoming record reissues, quoted in "The Wizard of Vinyl Is in Kansas/Chad Kassem is on a mission — saving listeners 'from bad sound' — at the rural factory where he pores over LPs from some of music’s most important artists" (NYT)(free-access link, because this is a great article (by Ben Sisario)).

Kassem, we hear, considers "the post-World War II years the apex of sonic fidelity. To illustrate his point, Kassem played an Analogue Productions version of a 1950 recording by Duke Ellington. Although it had been recorded in mono, the sound emanating from Kassem’s speakers was powerfully real, down to the woody texture of the saxophone reeds on 'Mood Indigo.' Kassem, practically shouting over the music, leaned down inches from my face. 'You play me a record from the last 20 years,' he exhorted, with some expletives, 'that sounds this good.''

I don't know if I'd order new old records. Many people do, but I'm averse to acquiring new possessions. But I'm motivated to play the LPs I already own, many of which were my father's and from the 1950s. 

"In technofeudalism, you’re just a digital serf. Your value as a human being, as someone built and made in the image and likeness of God..."

"... and endowed with the life spirit of the Holy Spirit — they don’t consider that. Everything is digital to them. They are, at the end of the day, transhumanist. And what is transhumanist? Transhumanist is somebody who sees Homo sapien here and Homo sapien plus on the other side of what they call the singularity. And that’s why they’re all rushing — whether it’s artificial intelligence, regenerative robotics, quantum computing, advanced chip design, CRISPR, biotech, all of it — to come to this point of which the oligarchs are going to lead that revolution. And why are they going to do it? No. 1, when you get to know them and see where they’re spending the money, it’s because they want eternal life. You know why? Because they’re complete atheistic 11-year-old boys that are kind of science fiction 'Dungeons & Dragons' guys, and we’ve turned the nation over to that. And yes, I’m going to fight it every fucking step of the way. This is taking us back a millennium to feudalism.... They’re all superprogressive liberals, they’re all technofeudalists, they don’t give a flying fuck about the human being.... And they have to be stopped. If we don’t stop it, and we don’t stop it now, it’s going to destroy not just this country, it’s going to destroy the world...."

Said Steve Bannon, in "Steve Bannon on ‘Broligarchs’ vs. Populism/The fight for Donald Trump’s ear" (NYT)(listen and read the transcript without a pay wall here, at Podscribe).

"My kids don't want to go to the movies. They think the screen's too big. It freaks them out."

"The biggest screen that they want watch is the screen that we have at home or their phone. I took them to see a movie. They were like freaked out. It's too big, the screen."

"As the wearer walks, the shorts analyze the user’s movement pattern and take some of the load from their hips, adapting to their pace and kicking in just as the hip joint swings."

"The garment helps the wearer with hip flexion, an activity that researchers say demands 'considerable power,' especially on uneven terrain or stairs. The effects are comparable to removing up to 22 pounds from a wearer’s weight, the researchers write."

From "Robotic shorts could help people walk farther. Yes, robotic shorts. The shorts were designed to be worn over everyday clothes" (WaPo).

From the comments over there: "Suppose I don't want to take a walk but my shorts do?"

And someone recommends "The Wrong Trousers."

"Much like the 'videotape format wars' Betamax and VHS fought in the 1970s and '80s, in the new millennium..."

"... automakers have vied for dominance over ways to charge EVs. Tesla created a proprietary, compact plug design; most other automakers used a shared design for a larger plug.... Tesla won. Within the last 18 months, every other EV maker in the U.S. has agreed to switch to Tesla's technology...."

From "Tesla won the plug war. Enter the age of the EV charging adapter" (NPR).

BUT: It seems to me that Tesla's technology was in the Betamax position — limited to one brand. Betamax was Sony. So looking at that analogy, the companies other than Tesla might well have thought their technology would win, even if it wasn't as good. That's what happened with VHS. 

"'[Musk] believes that if Trump wins Pennsylvania, he wins the election. He’s told us that repeatedly. He’s treating this almost like it’s a business deal'..."

"... said one Trump adviser. 'He knows if he loses this election, he’s screwed. The regulations, the attitude of a new Democratic administration, the animosity they’ll have for all the money he’s spent to help Trump — it’s a big business bet for him.' Musk has argued that a victory by Harris 'would destroy the Mars program and doom humanity.' Trump, in turn, has publicly endorsed Musk’s goal of accelerating a human mission to Mars.... 'Get ready, Elon, get ready,' Trump said at an Oct. 19 campaign rally. 'We gotta land it. We gotta do it quickly.' But Musk also casts his new involvement in politics as a moral crusade — to fight back against liberal social policies, protect the U.S. Constitution and oppose the 'big government machine.' 'If the Kamala machine wins, then we’ll see, I think, severe censorship,' he said at one recent rally. 'That’s why I think this is the last election.'"

From "Elon Musk is the October surprise of the 2024 election/The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO, and owner of X, has interjected himself into a presidential race like no other titan before him" (WaPo)(free-access link, my last of the month, so use it well).

I wouldn't just follow Elon Musk, but Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, and RFK Jr. are all on the same side. They are such different individuals, and they are all strongly for Trump. 

"Maybe Musk’s time would be better spent doing concentrating on SpaceX and his other corporate interests instead of engaging in fascist politics and peddling trash through his social media platform at X!"

That's the top-rated comment at "SpaceX successfully catches returning Starship rocket/The uncrewed mission on Sunday was the company’s first successful attempt to 'catch' its Starship rocket as it lowered itself down to the launch pad" (WaPo)('A SpaceX Starship rocket successfully landed upright alongside a massive metal landing tower on Sunday as it was caught by two converging 'chopstick' arms — marking another historic engineering breakthrough for the company’s largest rocket").

Meanwhile, "peddling trash through his social media platform at X," Musks posts this:

Starship rocket booster caught by tower pic.twitter.com/aOQmSkt6YE

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 13, 2024

And this:

Starlink in Asheville.

Asheville is relying on @elonmusk for communication. Thank God for Starlink or we may have no information from the storm affected area at all. https://t.co/E13IcJwgKW

— Emily Zanotti 🦝 (@emzanotti) September 29, 2024

"We know there are people who are going to take things that they see out of context to bolster or inform their own narrative..."

"... and that is part of the tension with being super transparent: It potentially leaves you vulnerable for misunderstanding in a moment when we know that absolutely any function in election administration can be weaponized."

Said Tammy Patrick, the chief executive officer for programs at the National Association of Election Officials, quoted in "Latest strategy in fighting election skepticism: Radical transparency" (WaPo)(free-access link).

"Powered by just a few ounces of an explosive compound concealed within the devices, the blasts sent grown men flying off motorcycles and slamming into walls..."

"... according to witnesses and video footage. People out shopping fell to the ground, writhing in agony, smoke snaking from their pockets. Mohammed Awada, 52, and his son were driving by one man whose pager exploded, he said. 'My son went crazy and started to scream when he saw the man’s hand flying away from him,' he said."

From "How Israel Built a Modern-Day Trojan Horse: Exploding Pagers/The Israeli government did not tamper with the Hezbollah devices that exploded, defense and intelligence officials say. It manufactured them as part of an elaborate ruse" (NYT).

"Hundreds of pagers blew up at the same time across Lebanon on Tuesday in an apparently coordinated attack that killed eight people and injured more than 2,700..."

"... health officials said on Tuesday.... Hezbollah said that pagers belonging to its members had exploded and accused Israel of being behind the attack. The Israeli military declined to comment. The wave of explosions left many people in Beirut in a state of confusion and shock. Witnesses reported seeing smoke coming from people’s pockets, followed by small blasts that sounded like fireworks or gunshots.... Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said... many of the victims had injuries to their faces, particularly the eyes, as well as to their hands and stomachs.... Three officials briefed on the attack said that it had targeted hundreds of pagers belonging to Hezbollah operatives who have used such devices for years to make it harder for their messages to be intercepted. The devices were programmed to beep for several seconds before exploding, according to the officials...."

The NYT reports.