He’s not the only one responsible for the mess we’re in. History never works that cleanly. But he is the face of it. The mascot. The loud, smirking permission slip for cruelty, ignorance, and the kind of shamelessness that used to at least pretend it knew better.

What he did and continues to do, what he normalized and continues to normalize, didn’t end with him. That’s the part that keeps me awake. He didn’t invent the ugliness, but he flung the doors wide open and invited it to settle in, to get comfortable, to stop whispering and start shouting. Things people once felt embarrassed to say out loud are now worn like badges. Fear became a blatant political tool. Lies became a strategy. Decency became less than optional, a disadvantage.

And the damage isn’t just policy or headlines. It seeped into families, workplaces, friendships. It taught people that empathy is weakness and that winning matters more than truth. It tells the cruel they are righteous and the ignorant they are experts. It makes exhaustion the background noise of daily life.

Long after he’s gone, long after the name fades from yard signs and news chyrons, we’ll still be dealing with the consequences. Re-teaching basic facts. Re-building trust. Reminding each other that being human requires effort, restraint, and care.

I don’t believe one man can destroy everything. But I do believe one man can accelerate the rot, can legitimize the worst impulses of millions, can make things harder for everyone who still wants to live with some measure of kindness and sanity.

That’s the inheritance we’ll be left with. Not just what he does, but what he makes acceptable. And undoing that will take longer than any term, longer than any lifetime headline.

I look forward to a day we don’t see his vulgar influence. That will be a day for celebrating. 

#doodle #apartyiscoming

Is Roanoke Police Surveillance Violating Your Privacy?

The Panopticon on Our Streets: Why Roanoke’s Surveillance Network Should Worry You

When you drive through Roanoke, you likely obey the speed limit and stop at red lights. You aren’t a criminal. Yet, to the Roanoke Police Department’s new surveillance network, you are data to be captured, cataloged, and stored.

The RPD has quietly built a dragnet of 16+ Flock Safety license plate reader (LPR) cameras. As of mid-2025, these cameras are not just looking for stolen cars; they are creating a comprehensive log of everyone’s movements.

While officials tout the benefits of the new Roanoke Operations and Crime Center (ROCC), the numbers tell a different, more alarming story about the erosion of privacy in our city.

The Dragnet: 290,000 Photos of Mostly Innocent Drivers

The most chilling aspect of this system is the sheer scale of the data collection. According to the department’s own transparency data for a single 30-day period in 2025:

• Total Vehicles Photographed: ~293,455
• Actual Investigations (Searches): ~400-600

Do the math. Over 290,000 photos were taken, but fewer than 600 searches were conducted. This means that over 99% of the data collected is of law-abiding citizens going about their daily lives: driving to work, dropping kids at school, or visiting a doctor.

This is the definition of mass surveillance: collecting data on the entire population to catch a tiny fraction of wrongdoers.

The “Pattern of Life” Problem

Proponents argue that the data is “only” kept for 21 days. But in the digital age, three weeks is an eternity.

With 21 days of data, an algorithm can easily establish your “pattern of life.” It can determine:

• Where you sleep (where the car is parked at night).
• Where you work.
• Which political protests you attend.
• Who you associate with.
• Which medical specialists you visit.

This data is collected automatically, without a warrant, and without your consent. While RPD policy currently states the system is for “criminal investigations,” civil liberties groups warn that policies can change far faster than laws.

Who Watches the Watchers?

The RPD states that searches require a “justification” and are audited. However, this is an internal check, not an external one.

• No Warrants Required: Officers do not need a judge’s permission to access this database; they only need a case number.
• The “Justification” Loophole: In many jurisdictions, vague justifications have been used to look up ex-partners, journalists, or political opponents. While RPD claims strict adherence to policy, the potential for human abuse in a system this powerful is a feature, not a bug.

A False Sense of Security

The system is powered by the Roanoke Operations and Crime Center (ROCC). While they report leading to “dozens of arrests” in a month, we must ask: At what cost?

We are trading the anonymity of the open road for a system where every movement is a potential data point in a police file. We are moving toward a society where you are tracked by default, and privacy is the exception.

Sources and References

• Transparency Portal: Roanoke VA PD Transparency Portal – Flock Safety
• News and Context: Roanoke Police Unveil New Real-Time Crime Center (WSLS)
• Civil Liberties Context: ACLU on Automatic License Plate Readers
• Legal Precedent: Fairfax Judge Rules Against Mass Surveillance (ACLU VA)

I love the snow. I always have. The way it hushes the world, the way it makes even familiar streets feel briefly mythic. I am not anti winter, In fact, it just barely loses to Autumn as my favorite season. I am just realistic about what winter does to a body that has been around the block a few times.

Cool weather suits me fine. Sixties are great. Forties are lovely. That is jacket weather, walk a little farther weather, breathe deep and feel awake weather. My joints agree with that version of the season. We are all on the same page.

But once the thermometer slides down into the twenties and the teens, my back and joints stage a quiet rebellion. Nothing dramatic. Just a firm and persistent no. The kind that does not respond to optimism or extra layers or bravado.

So I admire the snow from inside once it crosses that line. I watch it fall, appreciate its discipline and its beauty, and let it exist without demanding my participation. There is no betrayal in that. Loving something does not mean enduring all of it.

And this is where chili enters the picture. Chili and corn chips are a wonderful thing in cold weather. They make the cold feel like a suggestion rather than a threat. A bowl of chili warms you from the inside out, steady and honest, with corn chips doing their essential work of crunch and salt and comfort.

Staying in becomes a form of respect. Respect for the weather as it is, respect for the limits of a body that has earned the right to be listened to, and respect for the simple truth that some winter days are sometimes best enjoyed with a spoon in hand and the snow safely on the other side of the glass.

Front walkway has a drift of about 30in/76cm , so it gets to act as an extra drink cooler, more chilly than our garage.

Front walkway has a drift of about 30in/76cm , so it gets to act as an extra drink cooler, more chilly than our garage.

https://meshview.rvame.sh/map

Monitoring Our Local Mesh Network in Virginia

There is something quietly beautiful happening across Virginia, and most people never see it unless they know where to look.

Right now, our local mesh network covers roughly two thirds of the state using nothing but radio. No cell towers. No carriers. No contracts. Just small devices talking to one another across distance, hills, and neighborhoods. If you layer the internet on top of it, the reach becomes as wide as anyone who still has a connection. But the real magic is that it does not need the internet at all.

Radio only needs two things. Power to the devices, and enough range between them to pass a signal along.

That is it.

The red dots on the map are live nodes. Each one is a person or a place. Each one is actively communicating as simple text messages with the others. No central infrastructure. No single point of failure. Messages hop from node to node like neighbors passing notes down a long porch.

If you have internet, you can relay traffic out to the wider world. If you do not, the network still breathes and moves on its own.

What flows across it is even better.

There are independent channels that cannot be blocked. They are encrypted by default. They are used to report ICE activity in real time, to ask for help, to offer help, to check on someone when the weather turns ugly. One day it is a heads up about enforcement moving through a county. The next day it is someone asking if anyone has a shovel to clear a driveway for an older neighbor. Sometimes it is just people staying in touch, making sure they are not alone if phones go dark.

This is what resilience looks like when it is built by regular people.

No corporation decides who gets to speak. No platform decides what is acceptable. There is no algorithm boosting outrage or burying kindness. It is just text moving through the air, carried by trust and proximity.

In an age where so much communication depends on fragile systems and distant companies, radio feels almost radical. Old technology doing a new job. Quietly. Reliably. Human scale.

As long as there is power, and as long as there are neighbors willing to keep a node alive, the network stays up.

That is worth monitoring. That is worth protecting. And honestly, that is worth being proud of.

Random trip made good, had a little outing to Small Batch Liquidations @smallbatchvirginia  ,  which already sounds like a place that should involve forklifts, shelves of loot, and a bell you ring when something unexpected comes in. That is not far off. The inventory shifts constantly, like a tide made of pallets and hope, and the folks working there know what is on the floor right now without having to disappear into the back and guess.

We were on a post-holiday cleanup mission. The season has ended, the glitter has migrated into corners, and I suppose it is time to put things away in a way that suggests we might be functional people. Storage bins. Wreath containers. The unglamorous architecture of keeping a house from slowly collapsing into eternal seasonal chaos. Everything we grabbed was in brand new condition, and the price was right.

There was also a fun detour item. A TI-84 CE Plus Python calculator. Rechargeable. Modern in that specific calculator way where it still feels like serious equipment even if you mostly want to poke at it and see what it can do. Something to tinker with, graph nonsense on, maybe write a tiny program or three someday when the mood hits. (You can also tweak it to play retro video games.)

The people there were friendly and genuinely helpful, not hovering, not rushed, clearly used to the fact that what is available today might be gone tomorrow. They were well aware of their own moving inventory, which feels increasingly rare in stores these days. The prices were excellent in that way that makes you briefly wonder if you misunderstood something, then realize no, this is just how they operate.

You leave with what you came for, a little extra curiosity in the cart, and the sense that you just participated in a small, functional local loop. Things move through. People get what they need. The house gets put back together after the holidays.

A solid stop on an ordinary day that ended up being better than it needed to be.

#roanoakeva #shopping #cleanup #smallbatchliquidations

https://education.ti.com/en/products/computer-software/ti-connect-ce-sw

TI connect CE

https://yvantt.github.io/arTIfiCE/

arTIfiCE jailbreak

https://www.cemetech.net/downloads/browse/84pce

Sweet calc download cemetech site

https://www.cemetech.net/downloads/files/1372/x3232

This program is a slim shell and launcher program that has support for running programs regardless of archive status, along with an organized and colorful GUI. Hide programs, lock BASIC programs from editing, rename files and more with Cesium.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-84_Plus_CE_series#:~:text=The%20TI%2D84%20Plus%20CE%20can%20run%20a%20wide%20variety,operating%20through%20the%20link%20port).

Leave it charging for a few hours. If it still boot loops then press and hold 2nd and del (they’re the top full sized buttons on the keypad) then press the reset button on the back of the calculator with a pencil for at least two seconds. You should see a message that says “send OS now”. Do not press clear.

Leave it charging on this screen for another few hours. Afterwards, press and hold the reset button on the back of the calculator for at least two seconds again (but don’t hold 2nd and del this time). This might cause the calculator to boot normally.

If you get the same “send OS now” screen then press the clear button (rightmost column on the keypad) and proceed with an OS reinstall: TI-84 Plus CE Recovery Techniques.

If it still boot loops then you likely got a defective unit. I’d return it for a new one.

If returning isn’t an option, you can try buying a new battery and replace it. Texas Instruments TI-84 Plus CE Battery Replacement

The Case Against Carilion Clinic’s Embrace of AI

Or: Why “Cautious Governance” Isn’t Enough

Carilion Clinic frames its use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as innovative and carefully regulated. But beneath the polished language and promising pilot projects lies a host of unresolved risks – risks that extend beyond slick marketing into real harms for patients, clinicians, and communities.

Administrative Burden vs. Structural Problems

Carilion promotes tools like AI scribes to reduce clinician documentation time. Yes, clinicians spend significant hours on notes instead of patients – but AI scribes aren’t a panacea.

Research shows that while ambient AI documentation tools can potentially ease workload, they also come with limitations such as hallucinations, inaccuracies, and variable quality that require sustained human oversight. This means the burden is transformed, not eliminated.

Source: Journal of Medical Systems – Limitations of Ambient Clinical Documentation

More importantly, the root causes of burnout – understaffing, productivity quotas, and billing-driven documentation – cannot be solved through software alone.

Predictive Analytics and Algorithmic Bias

Carilion cites predictive analytics tools designed to identify patient deterioration earlier. But real-world evidence shows that hospitals often do not adequately validate these models using their own patient populations.

Less than half of hospitals rigorously test AI tools for bias, raising serious concerns about reliability and equity.

Source: Health Affairs / Healthcare Dive – Hospitals Rarely Test AI for Bias

When models are trained on biased or incomplete data, they do not eliminate disparities – they scale them.

Source: arXiv – Algorithmic Bias in Healthcare AI

Operational Efficiency at the Expense of Humanity

AI-driven command centers promise smoother patient flow and optimized bed usage. But efficiency is not the same as quality care.

When algorithms influence transfer decisions, bed assignments, and discharge timing, patients risk becoming logistics problems rather than people. These systems optimize throughput – not dignity, continuity, or trust.

Imaging, Research, and the Consent Problem

AI-assisted imaging and clinical research tools rely on massive amounts of patient data. Yet patients rarely have meaningful control over how their data is reused, repurposed, or commercialized.

Ethical analyses warn that existing consent models are inadequate for AI-driven secondary data use.

Source: BMC Medical Ethics – AI, Data Use, and Informed Consent

Privacy and Re-identification Risks Are Real

Carilion emphasizes strict governance and data safeguards. However, research shows that advanced AI systems can sometimes re-identify individuals from supposedly anonymized datasets.

Source: Journal of Medical Internet Research – Re-identification Risks in Health AI

Public trust is fragile, and once patient data is compromised, it cannot be reclaimed.

The “Black Box” Problem

Many healthcare AI tools operate as opaque systems, offering little explanation for how they reach conclusions. This lack of transparency undermines clinician trust and complicates accountability.

Source: JMIR Formative Research – Explainability Challenges in Clinical AI

Deskilling and Erosion of Clinical Judgment

Researchers have raised concerns that reliance on AI tools – particularly large language models – could lead to deskilling, where clinicians increasingly defer to machine output rather than exercising independent judgment.

Source: arXiv – Deskilling Risks from Generative AI

Regulation Still Lags Behind Reality

The federal regulatory framework for healthcare AI remains incomplete. Hospitals are largely left to self-govern, creating uneven standards and weak accountability.

Source: Reuters – Calls for Equity-First AI Regulation in Medicine

AI Solves the Wrong Problems

Healthcare in Southwest Virginia does not suffer from a lack of algorithms. It suffers from staffing shortages, rural access barriers, poverty-driven health disparities, and burnout.

AI does not fix these problems. It distracts from them.

Conclusion

Carilion’s cautious rhetoric is better than blind adoption, but it still places patients and clinicians inside a live experiment.

Skepticism is not anti-technology. It is pro-patient, pro-clinician, and pro-trust.

Medicine should move at the speed of trust, not the speed of software.

Possible career paths in 2026:

Missing hiker

Vanished at sea

Weird thing in the woods

Forest goblin

Subject of local folklore

Libby’s AI feature, called “Inspire Me,” is a generative AI-driven, opt-in discovery tool designed to help users find books and audiobooks from their local library. It uses user-selected prompts (e.g., “fast-paced mystery”) or existing tags to suggest five titles, focusing on items that are available to borrow immediately.

Key features of the “Inspire Me” AI tool:
Contextual Recommendations: The AI analyzes your library’s digital collection to provide personalized suggestions, explaining why each title fits your chosen “inspiration”.

Instant Availability: The tool prioritizes titles that are ready to check out, helping users avoid long waitlists.

Privacy-Focused: The AI does not receive personal details, user data, or full tag descriptions; it only uses the titles within your tags to generate recommendations.

Optional Usage: The feature is optional, allowing users to choose whether to engage with the AI to find new reads.
This tool was introduced in late 2025 as a way to enhance discovery, aimed at supplementing, not replacing, the curated, human-selected collections of local libraries.

Tuesday morning. Car inspection. The sacred Virginia ritual where you hand over keys and wait to be judged by a man with a flashlight.

The waiting room is the usual. Burnt coffee. A rack of ancient magazines. Fox News murmuring from a TV mounted too high, like it isn’ttrying hard to be heard.

But it is part of the conversation.

What surprises me is not that Fox is on. It is that every Bubba in the shop is watching it. And not nodding. Not cheering. Not repeating the talking points like call and response at a tent revival.

They are talking about Greenland.

Greenland.

One guy says it is beyond stupid. Not “politically unwise” or “bad optics.” Just stupid. Another says Greenland is NATO. Says they helped us fight Nazis back in WWII by letting us put a base there. Says you do not threaten people who literally let you park planes on their island while the world was on fire.

Someone else laughs and says at least 47 could make up a drug excuse to go after Venezuela, but everyone knows that would be about oil anyway. They are not buying the right wing media story of righteous deposits and noble intentions. Not even a little.

One of them says this will not go unnoticed by China and Russia. Says it like he is talking about a cracked engine block that is about to grenade on the highway. Then another voice, from behind a rack of tires, says what the hell does that old idiot think he is doing?

A different guy, not quiet and not subtle, says he got caught diddling kids and now he is trying to get people talking about anything else. Anything else at all.

Nobody challenges him. Nobody cheers either. It just lands in the room like a dropped wrench.

These are white guys. Blue collar. Mechanics. Between 35 and 65. The kind of guys the news always talks about like they are a single organism. I have no idea who they voted for. I am not going to ask. That would be weird. Also rude.

But I do know this. They do not sound like men waiting for marching orders. They do not sound like people eager to vote for anyone carrying his endorsement next time around. They sound tired. Practical. Annoyed. Like people who can spot a bad idea because they fix the consequences of bad ideas for a living.

Fox keeps talking. The inspection continues. Somewhere, a printer spits out paperwork.

And in this little waiting room in Virginia, the narrative cracks just enough to let in some air.

Seed 561118013545

I heard that ICE was kicked out of Macado’s last night. If true, good on Macado’s!

Remember, Businesses generally have the right to refuse service to anyone to protect staff and patrons, such as for disruptive behavior or safety concerns.

I cannot think of a bigger disruption or safety concern right now than these thugs in our towns.

Please, refuse them any service. They do not deserve our food, drink, climate controlled rooms,  bathrooms or any hospitality. Let them sit in the cold, outside, off of *any* private property.

#abolishice #iceout

Applies to everyone selling a service! No haircuts, no beer, no groceries, no time at the gun range.

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Excavations in the Saltville Valley of southwestern Virginia have revealed rare, significant Late Pleistocene fossils of the giant short-faced bear (Arctodus simus), dating to approximately \(14,500\)–\(14,800\) years ago.

As the first carnivoran recorded there, these remains, including teeth and bones, demonstrate that this massive, top-tier predator scavenged on mammoths in the region, offering crucial evidence for the area’s paleoecology. 

Key Discovery: Researchers, including those from East Tennessee State University (ETSU), identified Arctodus simus remains in the Saltville Valley, a site known for its abundant Ice Age megafauna.

Evidence of Scavenging: The fossils, specifically dental and skeletal material, show that the short-faced bear fed on mammoth carcasses in the area. The find includes a mammoth heel bone, or calcaneus, with clear bite marks.

Significance: The Saltville Arctodus find is notable as one of the most eastern records for the species and provides a specific, direct radiocarbon date (approx. \(14,853\) BP) for their presence in the Appalachian Highlands.

The Predator: The giant short-faced bear was one of the largest terrestrial mammalian carnivores in North America, with a very powerful bite designed for bone-crushing and, likely, stealing carcasses from smaller predators.

Ongoing Research: The Saltville Valley continues to be a rich site for paleontological research, with the bear fossils contributing to a deeper understanding of the interactions between extinct species at the end of the Pleistocene epoch. 

The giant short-faced bear (Arctodus simus) went extinct around 11,000-12,500 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, likely due to a combination of factors including climate change, the disappearance of large prey animals like mammoths, increased competition with other bears (like brown bears), and potentially pressure from early humans, leading to an ecological collapse that their massive bodies couldn’t adapt to.