Instead of destroying boxes by flattening them for “recycling”, why not bring them to Costco for Customers to reuse?
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IDEA: Reuse versus Recycle?
Tuesday, June 16, 2026
Leave a Comment » | 
IDEA | Tagged: cardboard boxes, COSTCO | 
Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
INSPIRATIONAL: Never destroy what you can not create
Tuesday, June 16, 2026The Cold War’s Accidental Whale Observatory
- Built to track enemy submarines, the Navy’s underwater listening network inadvertently revealed that whales may be singing across entire oceans
By David Rothenberg
9:39 AM CDT on June 4, 2026
*** begin quote ***
Yet the thousand-mile song takes hold of our imagination right away: “I could show you the evidence today. I can listen in Puerto Rico to a whale way up on the Grand Banks. Can the whales do that? You might well ask, ‘What would they have to say?’ Then you’re suddenly putting on this silly human restriction. A whale might turn around and say to me, ‘What would you possibly have to say to one another sitting just two meters apart?’”
Like so many great scientists, Clark is not afraid to be a bit of a dreamer. More than once, he has sought out the advice of musicologists: “Marty Hatch, a specialist in Indonesian gamelan here at Cornell, had this to say to me, ‘You know Chris, you look at all this singing as data, but I think of it as a musical, emotional experience.’ Musicians hear song, and this is where I sometimes lean away from the scientific and tend to agree with them. Why can’t we just appreciate it as a phenomenon that is phenomenal?”
No human musician could stay in time counting as slowly as these whales do. These incredibly low thumps and moans are rhythms at such a lax pace that they are barely perceptible to human beings. Speed a blue whale song up 10 times, and 30 minutes becomes three. Move the pitch up to the realm of a cello, bowhead song, or a human moan, and exactly every three seconds comes the same soft moan. Only when we slow down time do we hear the thousand-mile song, a great sigh in the deep sound channel, echoing from one end of an ocean to another.
*** end quote ***
Hard not to be fascinated by the whale sounds story. Like birds, we know so little about their vision; so too, we seem to know so little about whales.
Maybe someday, humans may truly appreciate the beauty of the natural world around us.
It reminds me of the Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).
The crew travels back in time to 1986 San Francisco to bring back two humpback whales — George and Gracie — because an alien probe is destroying Earth waiting for a response from humpback whales, which are extinct in the 23rd century. They need the whales to “answer” the probe.
Why is that so hard to imagine?
Maybe we do need “time travel”! Can you imagine if the cure for cancer or some other terrible disease was contained in the passenger pigeon?
Remember Colossal Cave Adventure by William Crowther, expanded by Don Woods. “You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building.” When I was playing that, I had friends, who after killing the snake in an early cave, became disgusted with the game when they couldn’t get past the bird in (I think) Cave 7. Of course, I, like several others, never told them their mistake. It became a standing joke in the in the nerd circles about noobs and I D ten errors.
Laugh!
From that single lesson, I learned one should never destroy what you can not create. Seem like a good heuristic (rule of thumb) for life.
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Leave a Comment » | INSPIRATIONAL | Tagged: Center for Conservation Bioacoustics, Cornell University, David Rothenberg, Marty Hatch, nautil.us, Sound Surveillance System, Whale Observatory, Zoology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
POLITICAL: U.S. military involvement everywhere, but not in Sudan?
Monday, June 15, 2026https://tuckercarlson.com/morning-note?
Marshall Worth
June 4, 2026
*** begin quote ***
Please Drop the Act
According to the people who constantly demand U.S. military involvement in foreign nations, America must send its troops to die around the world in the name of humanitarianism. We are the international community’s good guys, Lindsey Graham and his friends say, which means we are obligated to fight the bad guys.
This argument has surfaced countless times. Whether their focus is on Iran, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Iraq, Syria, or nearly any other country that permanent Washington decides to demonize, neocons always tend to fall back on the same basic messaging: going to war is the right thing to do.
What’s interesting is that this so-called morality never seems to apply to Sudan. Corporate cable news networks rarely report on this, but the African nation is home to some of the most brutal atrocities taking place anywhere on Earth. This AP News report shines a light on the details. They are jarring.
“The United Nations calls sexual violence one of the ‘most defining features’ of Sudan’s war, now in its fourth year,” the piece reads. “Many women have been subject to sexual slavery and forced to pay ransoms for their release, sometimes up to $10,000,” it continues.
The article centers around interviews with three women, each of whom says they are victims of abduction and sex slavery at the hands of the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces (RSF). One of the women recalled RSF fighters ambushing her on the street as she fled her home, forcing her to strip before binding, beating, and transporting her to an abandoned desert village. Once there, she and her fellow captives, some of whom were teenagers, “lay bound in a shelter, urinating on themselves” and “were raped multiple times by different men.”
“The captors would enter [the chambers] and choose who they wanted, untie them, assault them, and bind them again,” the AP reported.
This cycle lasts until the victims die or find a way to buy their freedom. Ransoms routinely run high enough to force the women and their families to sell their cars, homes, and plunge into debt. All just for a chance of release.
Imagine if this precise thing were happening in Iran. Mark Levin and his allies would spend months lecturing the American public about how the Iranians needed freedom, and they would demand that the president drop everything to deliver it. Nothing would matter to them more than saving the women kidnapped by the evil Mullahs, even if doing so meant tanking the U.S. economy, getting our soldiers killed, gifting terrorists troves of new recruitment material, and blowing trillions of taxpayer dollars. This is bigger than politics, they would say in unison. It is about basic decency.
How come no one seems to feel that way about Sudan? The answer exposes the entire pro-war scam. Neocons have no concern for the people of Iran, Venezuela, or any of the countries they demand the United States “set free.” If they did, then they would also care about Sudan, Uyghur Muslims in China, and albinos in sub-Saharan Africa. Their true motives are entirely different; they only sing songs about “liberating the people” to brainwash well-meaning Fox News viewers into believing that globalist foreign policy is of deep moral purity.
Instead of insulting the public’s intelligence with lies about their deep worry for the well-being of Iran’s population, warhawks like Levin should drop the act and be honest about their true reason for wanting war. They pushed for Operation Epic Fury because they thought it would help Israel, not America or the Iranian people. Every honest person knows it.
*** end quote ***
AS a little L libertarian, I don’t want “foreign adventurism” and “foreign entanglements”. Hence, the USA should:
- Declare Sudanese diplomats persona non grata
- Cut off all “aid” to Sudan and anyone who supports them
- Stop all travel visas to and from Sudan
- Stop anyone from coming to the US that is from Sudan
That’s should shine a laser focus on the problem that they represent.
If that doesn’t work, then there is always Letters of Marque and Reprisal!
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Leave a Comment » | Political | Tagged: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lindsey Graham, Mark Levin, Marshall Worth, Russia, Sudanese Rapid Support Forces, SYRIA, tuckercarlson.com, Uyghur Muslims, Venezuela | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
RANT: Online appointment schedules a slot that they don’t have.
Sunday, June 14, 2026Recently scheduled an oil change for my Chevy Truck.
Had some problem with the password entry.
(No, I don’t forget them. I use a password manger and Apple Passwords also saves them!)
Password reset TWICE?
Argh!
So I’m suitable annoyed but I get it entered. (Even had to put in the VIN. I bought it there. Their system should know it. Probably Claude AI (I call it Claudia), CHATGPT, Google, every data broker , and hacker all know it. Argh!
SO it’s booked.
TWO DAYS later, I get a call from a nice lady at the dealer saying the online system schedule me for a time that they don’t have available. And we rescheduled it a week later.
So, their online system schedules an appointment slot that they don’t have.
How dumb is that! Sigh! Yeah, AI and computers will rule the world. Not as long as Murphy’s Law is operable.
So how much of my TAE (ie., time, attention, effort, and dikw), my compute, as well as the dealer’s computing, and their receptionist’t TAE did this all cost?
I guess I should have done it the old fashioned way and just called in at the beginning.
So that’s what I’ll do from know on.
So the dealer’s computer “front door” is just a waste of their resources!
So much for AI wiping out humans’ jobs!
Sigh! Argh! Laugh!
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Leave a Comment » | Ranting | Tagged: Chevy | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
INNOVATION: The $255 Beach Shade Dividing America’s Coastal Towns – WSJ
Saturday, June 13, 2026https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/shibumi-beach-sun-shade-04770fba?st=iSp81z
The $255 Beach Shade Dividing America’s Coastal Towns
- Some beachgoers love Shibumis for their simplicity and safety. Others consider them a nuisance, and some places have banned them.
By Fred A. Bernstein
Updated May 25, 2026 5:36 pm ET
*** begin quote ***
Invented by a trio of recent UNC-Chapel Hill graduates, Shibumis are practically an obsession in the Carolinas. Owners say they are easy to carry and set up and are safer than umbrellas, which can cause injuries or death when the wind uproots them. The company says it has sold about 500,000 Shibumis, many of them in the Carolinas.
*** end quote ***
Ahhh, American inventiveness and stogy Gooferment bureaucrats can’t deal with it.
I wonder how the family of that lady who was killed by flying umbrella feels.
I guess no one has thought about the wheel chair accessible ramp at Island Beach State Park in Pepuls Republik of Nu Jerzee that provide an easy to walk “avenue” down to the water.
Would seem possible to create a “checkerboard” of “Avenues” and “Cross Streets” with what3words “addresses” that would begin order out of haphazard deployment.
Life Guards could align their “lanes” for speedy rescues without being delayed by random squatters.
In a truly little L libertarian world, an entrepreneur would own a beach and “rent” out spots. And competition would ensure that all options were available.
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Leave a Comment » | INNOVATION | Tagged: Carolina, Island Beach State Park, Lifestyle, Shibumi, WSJ | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
AI: A conversation with CLAUDE IA that I call CLAUDIA
Friday, June 12, 2026My input:
How can I “write” a note on the back of a digital JPEG photo like I sometimes did on a real photo print?
CLAUDIA:
CONVERSATION TRANSCRIPT
Generated: 2026-06-12
================================================================================USER: new topic
CLAUDE: Ready when you are — what’s on your mind?
——————————————————————————–
USER: How can I “write” a note on the back of a digital JPEG photo like I sometimes did on a real photo print?
CLAUDE: Options discussed:
1. EXIF/Metadata “Description” field — invisible metadata baked into the file. Windows: right-click > Properties > Details > Comments. Mac: Preview > Tools > Show Inspector > Exif tab.
2. Add text directly onto the image — permanently burns note into the visible photo (Paint, Preview, Snapseed). Not reversible.
3. Rename the file — short notes like dates or names in the filename.
4. Sidecar file — plain .txt file with the same name alongside the photo.
5. Google Photos / Apple Photos “description” — caption lives in the app, not the file.
Best match for “writing on the back”: EXIF Description/Comment field.——————————————————————————–
USER: yes [build a drag-and-drop EXIF note tool]
CLAUDE: Built an interactive browser-based widget allowing drag-and-drop of a JPEG, entry of Note/Description, Author/Photographer, Date taken, and Copyright fields, then download of the photo with metadata embedded.
——————————————————————————–
USER: Error writing metadata: ‘pack’ error. Got invalid type argument
CLAUDE: Fixed the error — XPTitle and XPComment fields require UTF-16 byte arrays, not plain strings. Dropped XPTitle, rewrote XPComment encoding. ImageDescription and Artist fields carry the note reliably.
——————————————————————————–
USER: How do i see it on mac osx
CLAUDE: On Mac:
– Quickest: Right-click photo > Get Info (Cmd+I) > More Info section
– Photos app: Import photo, press Cmd+I for info panel
– Preview app (best): Open in Preview > Tools > Show Inspector (Cmd+I) > Exif tab — shows ImageDescription and Artist fields exactly as written
– Finder: Can show Comments column but that is Spotlight comment, not EXIF data——————————————————————————–
USER: jpeg
CLAUDE: The widget runs in the browser — Claude cannot rename the download directly. User can rename the downloaded file in Finder: select file, press Return, type new name. Offered to update the widget to produce a filename with !!! baked in.
——————————————————————————–
USER: download that edited picture with a filename “xyz.jpeg”
CLAUDE: The widget only runs in the browser — Claude cannot access or download files from it. Instructions to rename on Mac: find file in Downloads, click once to select, press Return to edit name, type xyz.jpeg and press Return.
——————————————————————————–
USER: capture the conversation in a text file
CLAUDE: Created this transcript file: conversation_transcript.txt
================================================================================
END OF TRANSCRIPT
# – # – # – # – #
Bottom line: It didn’t work. I’m now very confused.
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Leave a Comment » | AI | Tagged: CLAUDE, EXIF, Metadata "Description" | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
INSPIRATIONAL: Stunning demo of a dog’s memory!
Friday, June 12, 2026https://www.facebook.com/reel/1308273337503082
This dog spooked Neil deGrasse Tyson with her impressive memory:
# – # – # – # – #
How little we understand and if a dog can do this, why can’t I?
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Leave a Comment » | INSPIRATIONAL | Tagged: Neil deGrasse Tyson | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
SURVIVAL: Use what3words to pinpoint your location and get help
Thursday, June 11, 2026Lost hikers rescued in Hudson Highlands State Park
May 11, 2026 6:13 am
Mid-Hudson News Staff
*** begin quote ***
COLD SPRING – With the use of an Apple satellite emergency signal, four lost hikers along Breakneck Ridge in the Hudson Highlands State Park, one of whom was injured, were able to contact the Putnam 911 Dispatch Center in Carmel resulting in a massive rescue response by fire and EMS personnel.
*** end quote ***
*** begin quote ***
Adventure with confidence this summer ☀️⛰️
With summer adventures in full swing, emergency teams are highlighting how a simple app can change an outcome. After the Cold Spring Fire Department used what3words to pinpoint and rescue four lost hikers in New York within the hour, the City of Lenexa shared a similar reminder: whether you’re lost on a trail or just finding friends in a packed park, having your 3-word address ready ensures you’re always findable. Explore with peace of mind this season!
*** end quote ***
Seems like a good “tip” for adventurers of all skill levels. That, if lost, put that in your phone’s “missed your call message”. Imagine hearing a loved one. Or anyone saying: “Help I’m lost and my location is nuptials baroness hazelnut. Call 911 for me!”.
I can even see if you’ve fallen at home and phone battery dying.
Seems simple to me, but then I’m just fat old white guy retired injineer who’s a poor old senior citizen on a fixed income with an active imagination.
YMMV
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Leave a Comment » | SURVIVAL | Tagged: Hudson Highlands State Park, Mid-Hudson News Staff | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
GOVEROTRAGEOUS: The Gooferment its sure to collect “their” money but enforcing a court order is not their problem?
Wednesday, June 10, 2026https://www.boredpanda.com/wedding-ruined-coordinator-ashley-lopez/
BRIDE SUES HER WEDDING PLANNER AFTER SHE TURNED THE SPECIAL MOMENT INTO A “DAY FROM HELL”
@boredpanda.com
Ridhima Shukla, Mantas Kačerauskas, Jonas Žvilius
Published May 30, 2026
*** begin quote ***
Frustrated by a legal system that left her with a victory on paper but an empty pocket in reality, Lopez realized that the courtroom wasn’t giving her the accountability she needed. That is when she decided to take matters into her own hands and approach the media.
*** end quote ***
The only time I see plaintiffs assure they get their money in on Judge Judy.
I take notice that in small claims and child support, collecting is your problem. That court order is SO WORTHLESS. When the Gooferment doesn’t get “their” pound of flesh, they move heaven and earth to get it. Take everything you have. There maybe no more debtors prisons, but there might as well be if you cross the IRS. Only the DMV is worse.
I blogged about “child support” and how hard it was to collect from some deadbeats (male and female). I’d like to see the Gooferment give the indigent judgement holder their award and then go after the deadbeat with their customary ferocity.
Ditto for smal claims.
Argh!
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Leave a Comment » | GOVEROTRAGEOUS | Tagged: boredpanda.com, Jonas Žvilius, Mantas Kačerauskas, Ridhima Shukla | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
HEALTH: So “cleaner is always healthier” maybe wrong?
Tuesday, June 9, 2026*** begin quote ***
STORY #3 – A remarkable experiment in Finland is challenging one of modern parenting’s biggest assumptions: that cleaner is always healthier.
Researchers transformed sterile daycare yards into miniature forests filled with soil, moss, plants, and natural ground cover. Within weeks, children’s immune systems were already showing measurable improvements.
A year later, they had healthier skin and gut microbiomes, fewer potentially harmful bacteria, and stronger immune defenses than children playing on asphalt, gravel, and rubber surfaces.
The lesson is surprisingly simple: the microbes children encounter in nature may be helping protect their health, not threatening it.
Turns out, our ancestors were right all along.
Watch Maria’s report and see why this simple experiment is making people rethink what a healthy childhood should look like.
*** end quote ***
Yup, I used play in the park that had like a forest attached. Not sure if helped, but I can’t imagine it my allergies were worse.
— 30 —
Leave a Comment » | HEALTH | Tagged: Finland, vigilantfox.com | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
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