Reading

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final (?) Sinai shabbaton

My now-former synagogue has an occasional shabbaton (Shabbat retreat), nominally once a year but sometimes the gaps are longer. They had one this past Shabbat; I've attended every one since I joined the congregation and if this isn't the last one, it will be the last one as "us" before a merger/acquisition, so I wanted to be there even though I've otherwise moved on to my new synagogue.

This one didn't have the usual longer lead time; a date became available and they jumped on it. We were missing several of the regulars and some newer minyan members weren't able to come, so it was small -- which could have made it more intimate, but it didn't have quite the right mix for that. There was a single member from the other synagogue, plus their interim rabbi, and I wonder how it felt for that congregant.

I couldn't help noticing that the average age has skewed way up (most are rather older than me), especially if you exclude the clergy (who have to be there).

Because it was Halloween, their interim rabbi led a text study on spooky stories from the talmud, which was pretty engaging. From what I've seen, text study is his strong suit, so I'm glad he did that. The senior rabbi prefers discussions to more formal study and did that. The cantor taught about a rare and distinctive trope (cantillation mark) that appears in next week's parsha, one of only four times in the torah. I hadn't previously noticed that, every time shalshelet appears, it's on the first word of the verse. His source sheet is public.

I got email on Monday asking if I would lead a text study on Shabbat afternoon. I called it "Avram before Lech L'cha" and drew a lot from Bereishit Rabbah, which I hope to write about separately. The afternoon sessions are always more lightly attended (some people take walks or nap or shmooze), but we had enough people to have good conversations and I overheard some comments that suggest I have fans. I think it went pretty well. My biggest fear in leading a study session (as opposed to giving a d'var torah) is always what to do if people don't engage. Fortunately, people did. Someday maybe I will get better at facilitating rather than wholly directing conversations like this.

Overall: I'm glad I went, but I felt less inspired and connected than in the past. Maybe that's the mix, maybe it's that our long-time now-retired rabbi set a really high bar, maybe it's the merger, maybe it's me. I don't feel the need to go to whatever follows this in future years, even if many of my friends are still going.

I came home from the shabbaton last night, and this morning went to a very nice welcome session and brunch for new members at my new synagogue. One era ends, another begins. (And Beth Shalom does a great job with welcoming newcomers!)

El Día de los Muertos

El Día de los Muertos isn’t Halloween per se.
In most locales, festivities must wait another day.
They also last at least two days, and some folks spend a week.
Despite the many signs of death, you’re not supposed to shriek.
Instead, you pay respects to friends and relatives who died
And share in reminiscences that tend t’ward joy and pride.
At altars called ofrendas, you may leave some drinks and food
The honored dead enjoyed in life, a gift of gratitude.
It isn’t always solemn; rhyming poems get absurd,
In mockery of epitaphs, describing what occurred.
Expect a lot of marigolds and skeletal motifs,
The former in connection with indigenous beliefs.
Enjoy the pan de muerto, which is soft and sweetened bread
With extra dough in bony shapes to represent the dead.
Quite recently, parades became a modern acquisition.
I like what I have learned about these Mexican traditions.

Entry tags:

food stuff

New (to me) product: New Organic's Chai Finishing Sugar!

Tuesday, my wife and I were in Las Cruces for stuff and visited Sprouts as we don't get over there very often. Cruised past a display of interesting stuff and saw this interesting product. And procured it.

it has a very interesting flavor profile, for our purposes it will probably go well in my Burmese Coconut Cake (from Milk Street) and with an icing for it. Very reminiscent of what you'd expect of a chai-blended sugar.

But the ingredients of this "chai" sugar kinda blew me away: it contains no chai!

Herein are the ingredients: organic cane sugar, organic cinnamon, organic ginger, organic cardamom, organic clove, organic black pepper, organic sunflower oil, organic allsipice.

No chai.

So it's Chai-FLAVOR Finishing Sugar!

Still, kind of a fun accessory. Too expensive as a primary cooking component, but a decent add-in.

Entry tags:

environment

The demolition of the White House East Wing? ASBESTOS!!!

Renovations in the early 1900s and 1940s probably introduced a large amount of asbestos insulation in the walls and around the plumbing in the building, which means any renovation or demolition of the building needed to have a thorough inspection and abatement plan in place before any work or demolition could be done.

And we all know that didn't happen. There's no way in hell that with the speed in which that building came down that any sort of plan or abatement could have been done. Which means all of the construction workers, White House workers, Secret Service, WH security, press, visitors, protestors, anyone walking near the area - all have been potentially exposed to asbestos.

Also, when asbestos is removed from building renovations, it has to be specially packaged for disposal, including the special handling outerwear that the workers wear. Which means the landfill that the East Wing now occupies is now a haz mat dump and probably thoroughly contaminated with free-floating asbestos. Every time more rubble gets dumped on top of the East Wing debris, the physical impact hitting the lower layers of WH debris is stirring things up and more asbestos gets pumped into the air.

https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/10/trumps-swift-demolition-of-east-wing-may-have-launched-asbestos-plumes/

Oh - and another thing? #47 also just disbanded the commission in charge of regulating and approving changes to historic buildings and monuments throughout the DC area, which would have been in charge of any renovations to the White House East Wing.

Coca-Cola loses court case to distribute Dr. Pepper

BLEH!

In case you were unaware, Dr. Pepper was not a Coke product. They were their own brand, and in the last year or two became the #2 cola, bumping Pepsi out of that slot.

Coke had a contract for their distribution, which is why you usually saw it on the menu at Coke restaurants. But now, as of Monday the 27th, many restaurants will be starting to serve Mr. Pibb, a vastly inferior product (IMO). Presumably Keurig, Dr. Pepper's owner, will have its own distribution deals in place, but it may be a bit chaotic until things settle down.

Usually I drink iced tea (unsweet) when dining out, but on rare occasion I'll get a Dr. Pepper. I don't like disruptions like this! Grrr....

I am a little perplexed and amused that it took the legal system to resolve whether or not Dr. Pepper were allowed to distribute their own product. I guess big business just can't give up that last penny of profit, even if they don't make the product that they're distributing.

https://www.silive.com/business/2025/10/coca-cola-to-pull-popular-soda-flavor-from-restaurants-and-venues.html

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The Python Software Foundation (PSF) rejects U.S. government grant to increase software security

The PSF isn't a huge organization, but they do a lot of work. They have an annual budget of about $5 million and applied, and were close to receiving, a grant for $1.5 mil from the National Science Foundation to “address structural vulnerabilities in Python and PyPI.". PyPI is a library used by TONS of Python projects and has been subject to what's known as supply-chain attacks.

So what's a supply-chain attack? In brief, you take a library that's commonly used. Let's say it let's you send output to a PDF within your Python program, a fairly common task, and something that most programmers don't want to reinvent and won't bother inspecting the library for vulnerabilities. The attack happens when a bad guy changes the code for that PDF library then uploads changes to the master, and now, in addition to generating the PDF, it sniffs around your computer and does... stuff. Infects it with malware, perhaps. Gains admin access and strolls around the network. Looks for crypto wallets and steals them. It can do all sorts of stuff. That, in very simplified form, is a supply-chain attack. And if the program you are writing is released as open source and lots of people download it, THEY all are capable of being subverted!

The PSF was going to use the money to implement some automatic code inspection systems so any changes uploaded into the PyPl library would automatically be inspected, etc., to reduce the threat of supply-chain attacks. Lots of good stuff.

But there was a problem...

The grant application was close to being approved when the board that reviews such applications noticed that the "...foundation’s mission statement includes a goal “to support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers,” which conflicted with the grant requirements."

And there was another problem. The grant application, if you agreed to accept it, you also accepted that the NSF could claw-back funds if they wanted to! Basically, you take the $1.5 mil, spend it, and a few years later they decide you're too woke and take it all back, directly out of your bank account. And if your cash flow was a little tight at that time, well, sorry! Your foundation just went negative and is no longer solvent!

The board of the FSF decided to withdraw their grant application with the NSF and pursue other avenues to complete their missions.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/python-foundation-rejects-1-5-million-grant-over-trump-admins-anti-dei-rules/

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AI datacenters creating an order backlog of JET ENGINES

*SIGH*

I'll let the Slashdot summary do the initial speaking for me:

A global shortage of jet engines is threatening the rapid expansion of AI data centers, as hyperscalers like OpenAI and Amazon scramble to secure aeroderivative turbines to power their energy-hungry AI clusters. With wait times stretching into the 2030s and emissions rising, the AI boom is literally running on jet fuel. Tom's Hardware reports: Interviews and market research indicate that manufacturers are quoting years-long lead times for turbine orders. Many of those placed today are being slotted for 2028-30, and customers are increasingly entering reservation agreements or putting down substantial deposits to hold future manufacturing capacity. "I would expect by the end of the summer, we will be largely sold out through the end of '28 with this equipment," said Scott Strazik, CEO of turbine maker GE Vernova, in an interview with Bloomberg back in March.

General Electric's LM6000 and LM2500 series -- both derived from the CF6 jet engine family -- have quickly become the default choice for AI developers looking to spin up serious power in a hurry. OpenAI's infrastructure partner, Crusoe Energy, recently ordered 29 LM2500XPRESS units to supply roughly one gigawatt of temporary generation for Stargate, effectively creating a mobile jet-fueled grid inside a West Texas field. Meanwhile, ProEnergy, which retrofits used CF6-80C2 engines into trailer-mounted 48-megawatt units, confirmed that it has delivered more than 1 gigawatt of its PE6000 systems to just two data center clients. These engines, which were once strapped to Boeing 767s, now spend their lives keeping inference moving.

Siemens Energy said this year that more than 60% of its US gas turbine orders are now linked to AI data centers. In some states, like Ohio and Georgia, regulators are approving multi-gigawatt gas buildouts tied directly to hyperscale footprints. That includes full pipeline builds and multi-phase interconnects designed around private-generation campuses. But the surge in orders has collided with the cold reality of turbine manufacturing timelines. GE Vernova is currently quoting 2028 or later for new industrial units, while Mitsubishi warns new turbine blocks ordered now may not ship until the 2030s. One developer reportedly paid $25 million just to reserve a future delivery slot.

Now, in some cases the jet engine is in place as a power backup in case main grid power fails. But in many cases, such as Leon Muskbrat's xAI data centers, he's running them full-time while he's waiting for generating stations to be built! And yes, the locals are not happy because he's installing more turbines than he's permitted for. And, of course, the local town councils are doing squat to enforce permits because JOBS!

One interesting Slashdot commenter said "Yes during the dotcom bubble the company my dad worked for made HVAC and UPS equipment for data centers, and they declined the opportunity to build out bigger capacity to meet orders instead of just letting the queue grow longer because their management figured it was a bubble. So, they survived the pop because instead of having unused factories, they just had some cancelled orders. The turbine manufacturers probably feel the same or just don't feel like trying to build factories during a trade war anyhow."

The big question, of course, is how much will this cause problems with the production of jet aircraft? These jet engine generators take engines made for... wait for it... jets. The Boeing 767 is specifically mentioned, that plane is currently in production, and engines are needed for newly-made aircraft and also to service the fleet that is now flying. In the world of 'money talks, BS walks' I suspect that the vulture capitalists backing AI may be able to throw more cash towards data centers, pulling more orders for engines than the airlines can. Could this disrupt global air travel? Will the engine makers, such as GE, be stupid enough to build more capacity and when the AI bubble bursts, be on the hook for billions of dollars that suddenly is no longer needed?

Now, there's one other point that I don't get. There are thousands and thousands of jet engines on the used markets available right now. Okay, maybe they're not quite as powerful as something that's strapped onto a 767. So maybe you need two or three or four to make that much power. But they're available right now. SO WHY AREN'T YOU GOBBLING UP THE USED MARKET?

Article behind a paywall:
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/turbine-shortage-threatens-ai-datacenters-as-wait-times-stretch-into-2030

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/10/28/0151205/jet-engine-shortages-threaten-ai-data-center-expansion-as-wait-times-stretch-into-2030

Book Review: Mexican Gothic

It's been almost three years since my last Silvia Moreno-Garcia reading. The two books were published so close together that each one ends with an excerpt of the other. Of course, they're not quite the same genre. Gods of Jade and Shadow may focus on the god of death, but it's still less charnel than this.

( Cut for length )

I got the urge to pick up a less urban fantasy with fictitious maps up front. That would be The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson.

Entry tags:

recipe

J.D. Salinger's Popcorn Salt!

I was adding a recipe to my iCloud Notes, and the top recipe came up, which was this! I haven't made it yet, but I thought I'd share it. And also give you the story of how I got it!

There's a podcast that's a lot of fun called The Sporkful. It's a fun listen that features interesting guests. As their tag line goes, it's not for foodies, it's for eaters. Anyway, they had on, IIRC, a librarian/archivist who came across this recipe in the collection that he manages. And it's become his go-to popcorn salt. And here it is!

J.D. Salinger popcorn salt

Ingredients:
6 tsps sea salt
2 tsps paprika
1 tsp. dry mustard
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp celery powder
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp marjoram
1/2 tsp curry
1/2 tsp dill powder

This is definitely going to have a bit of a kick to it! For me, I'm going to leave out the dill powder: I just don't care much for the taste of dill. You might also want to process this in a spice grinder or mortar and pestle as the thyme and marjoram can be on the large/leafy side if you want things down to a more uniform consistency.

Have fun, and report back if you try it!

Igor

To those who haven’t read it, here’s a detail not well known:
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, old Victor worked alone.
He had no lab assistant till the first recorded play,
Presumption, which I doubt is still performed a lot today.
The bumbling servant there was Fritz, who later would appear
Within the film of ’31. To add to viewers’ fear,
He had advanced kyphosis like the dude at Notre Dame.
Dwight Frye, who also worked that year as Renfield (he’s the bomb),
Became a different henchman in the sequel with the bride.
The next two films, however, let Lugosi come in stride
As Ygor, whose deformity resulted when the town
Had hanged him but messed up at it (why was he still around?).
This Ygor was a blacksmith, not a toady in the least.
Indeed, he took control of the reanimated beast.
The later House of Frankenstein had Daniel take the form,
So Universal Studios made hunchbacked aides the norm.
The first assistant Igor, tho, was Warner Bros.’ doing
In House of Wax, a Frankenstein-free film for 3D viewing.
It wasn’t till Young Frankenstein that hunchback Igor came,
And he pronounced it “eye-gore,” so it wasn’t quite the same
As that which has been used in countless parodies to date.
Who knew that a composite’s role in lore could be so great?

Database maintenance

Good morning, afternoon, and evening!

We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)

I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.

Ta for now!

Entry tags:

cars,
software

Some Audi infotainment systems were bricked for MONTHS by a SiriusXM update!

The shape of things to come?

SiriusXM radio service pushed out an update that expected the infotainment system to be at version x.5. Or whatever. If it wasn't, it rolled back. And therein's the rub. Sirius was unable to revert to its former state, so it tried to download its newest image. Which wasn't compatible with the current state of the infotainment system. Reboot the infotainment system, rinse, repeat.

For some Audi owners, this went on for MONTHS.

I would be seriously pissed if this were to happen to me! Now, my Subaru is 10 years old, and I replaced the radio with a newer Kenwood to get some additional functionality out of Apple's Car Play, and I'm glad I did it. But if I had a newer car with a touchscreen, and it got borked like this? WOW. Very unhappy camper!

The problem was that there are people with car that, for whatever reason, were not running the latest version of their car's infotainment OS. Maybe they had a bad antenna, who knows. Then this APP update comes along and blows everything up. Once again, bad programming that was unable to fail safe and properly revert back to its previous state. I don't know anything about how these infotainment systems are programmed, but you'd think the first thing you'd do when pushing an update would be to read what version is out there - which you can presume is working properly - and write that version identifier off to a safe memory space that won't be overwritten. If your update fails, reload THAT saved version! Then figure out what happened.

*sigh*

https://www.thedrive.com/news/a-siriusxm-update-sent-some-audi-screens-into-a-forced-reboot-loop-for-months

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/23/003245/a-siriusxm-update-sent-some-audi-screens-into-a-forced-reboot-loop-for-months

Entry tags:

elon musk,
space

This is fun! Cards Against Humanity forced SpaceX to clean up an acre of land!

A true feel-good story.

Cards Against Humanity (CAH) is a very fun, and potentially very rude, party card game. A few years ago they decided to tweak President 45's nose and bought an acre of land in Texas in the path of a proposed wall building. And sold 1" parcels of it to fans of their game, making the acre so subdivided that any attempt to purchase it or to seize it through exercising eminent domain over it that it would be insanely complicated.

Well, the site just so happens to be near Boca Chica, the location of a certain space company's launch platform. And said space company moved in a bunch of trucks and dumped gravel, debris, and all sorts of stuff on this acre that they didn't own. CAH had posted no trespassing signs on it, which said space company's trucks ignored and drove over. CAH complained to said space company and was ignored, so they sued.

And got a settlement! Shortly before the suit would have gone to trial before a jury, the space company blinked.

Sadly the terms of the settlement are sealed and CAH can't talk about it, but the space company cleaned up the acre, remediating it back to its original state. And the owners of said acre will be receiving a CAH card pack extolling the many manifold virtues, or lack thereof, of Leon Muskbrat.

I don't know if said card packs will be available to buyers outside of those acre property owners, but I'd love to have one. Had I known about this land purchase, I would have liked to have been a part of it.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/cards-against-humanity-gets-settlement-from-spacex-plans-pack-of-elon-musk-cards/

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Amazon Web Services had a major problem, and it seriously effected Smart Beds(?!)

Now, I have to admit that I didn't know there was such a thing as smart beds. I'm not in the least bit surprised, but I didn't know it.

First, the problem. Amazon Web Services, AWS, had a DNS problem that clobbered a whole bunch of systems around the world that relied on processes running within their cloud services. We had problems at work in the library Monday and Tuesday, though those seem to be clearing up. The data center that had the problem is one of Amazon's oldest, and it's had serious problems before in 2020 and 2021.

(In short, DNS translates domain names, such as Amazon.com, into internet server addresses, such as 192.68.25.1, and sends data requests to the correct server. If it gets borked and you're a data packet, it becomes a lot more difficult to get where you need to go.)

This is why I'm an advocate of not having your IT system relying on cloud systems! But management likes to think they're saving money by putting stuff "in the cloud" where people have little direct control over things and security risks multiple. But whatever, as long as management is happy.

So, these "smart beds". They're made by a company called Eight Sleep. Not only do the beds cost $5,000, you pay $200-$500 annually for this bed to be connected to the internet so it can adjust its position, temperature, "provide soundscapes and vibrational alarms", etc.

GAH!

Whatever. I guess if you have the cash to throw $5K at a bed, go have fun. I'm not going to do it.

ANYWAY, when the DNS problem happened, and the bed could no longer talk to the ~~spy~~mothership, the beds freaked out (probably along with their owners), including some folding themselves double. Apparently Eight Sleep's programmers never considered a scenario where the beds lost connectivity and didn't design a fail safe mode for the bed to, you know, just be a bed. The CEO of the ~~idiotic~~smart bed company said "...engineers were racing to build an outage-proof mode in the event of a future outage." Livestock, meet barn with open doors.

"Sorry, boss. I was late today because someone unplugged my bed."

I am going to laugh my butt off if this company goes bankrupt and all of those beds freak out or die when the servers get unplugged.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/cloud-computing/smart-beds-flipped-out-during-the-aws-outage-and-so-did-their-sleepy-owners/ar-AA1OYol8

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/22/1347211/smart-beds-malfunctioned-during-aws-outage

Entry tags:

donald trump

Trump finally wins a Peace Prize! NOT an Onion headline.

Hint: it's not the Nobel.

He was awarded the Richard Nixon Foundation's Architects of Peace Award.

Yeah. Tricky Dick is back in the news!

Previous recipients: Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney. I'm sure he'll be proclaiming that it's a much better award than the Nobel.

Good company there, Li'l Donny! Irony doth know no bounds.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-wins-peace-prize_n_68f88ee0e4b0dbac459201ca

Entry tags:

ebooks,
storybundle

29 sci fi/fantasy trilogy books for $33!

Storybundle is at it again. This series includes: The Monarchies of God 1-5 by Paul Kearney, The Gales 1-3 by Tanya Huff, Shadowkings 1-3 by Michael Cobley, Dark Delicacies 1-3 by Del Howison and Jeff Gelb, Queens of Fate 1-3 by Natania Barron, Triggernometry 1-3 by Stark Holborn, Yolen's Short Fiction 1-3 (The Emerald Circus series) by Jane Yolen, Assassin's Code 1-3, and The Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire 1-3 by Rod Duncan.

PHEW!

I can't imagine what the page count of all that is for $33! For me, the Triggernometry, the Tanya Huff, and the Jane Yolen series are the ones that I'm most interested in. Here's the description of Triggernometry: "Stark Holborn's Triggernometry series mixes the grit of the Western with a cast of mathematicians from across history to create a unique and explosive adventure." Wild/Weird West and dueling mathemeticians? Okay.... Just weird enough to really interest me!

You control the split between the authors and Storybundle, and can designate 10% of the proceeds to the Locus charity.

Like most of the Humble Bundles, these are DRM-free. You can get three books for $5, but you have to pay a minimum of $33 to get them all.

The deal is available for another 15 days and 22 hours as of my posting this.

https://storybundle.com/trilogies

AWS outage

DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.