Here is a graph showing rainfall over the last several years. Note that I go by the year that the rainy season started. So "2021" kicked off recently and will keep running through the end of spring 2022. This is still up-to-date!

Image source.

I wanted to write about student loan forgiveness since the idea has been floating around. I am not in favor of blanket forgiveness but I have another idea. We should let students work off their debts by working for charitable institutions.

Student loans really are causing big problems right now. They create a lot of stress for the people who owe money, whether they are able to pay or not. And as some critics have pointed out, myself included, much of that debt will never be paid back anyway (the trends and statistics are awful). But those who are saddled with unpayable debt are kind of locked out of many economic activities due to no access to credit. They are stifled, economically, and that is not good for them or the country.

But, with blanket forgiveness, there is the issue of moral hazard. How do you face someone who avoided debt by scrimping and sacrificing or who has been struggling for years to make minimum payments, and tell them that it was all for nothing and they should have just defaulted from day 1? What message does that send?

Also, ultimately, the US government money is OUR money. It is 1.5 trillion dollars! Do we want to forgive all that debt and not even get anything back for it? Normally in a default situation there is some type of negotiation that goes on. You may not get 100% of your money back, but you get something. At least a few pennies on the dollar. I think we can ask something of people who owe the money in exchange for debt forgiveness or cancellation.

So here is my idea. Let's allow 501(3)(c) charitable institutions to hire people who owe student debt and put them to work. Instead of paying them with real money, they send a record of hours worked to the government, and the government credits those hours (at some TBD pay rate) to the person's student loan debt. This would be voluntary for the charitable institutions and the people who owe money. Nobody has to participate. If you owe money and are making payments and have a good job, good for you! But if you owe money and don't have a job, or have a low paying job, maybe you can find a few hours a week to work for a 501(3)(c) and make your minimum payment every month that way. If your charitable organization doesn't want to deal with sending hours records to the government, no problem. Don't hire anyone on that basis.

This is just the sketch of the idea. I am not an expert on charities. Maybe it does not need to be restricted to 501(3)(c) organizations. I just picked that because it seems to be a clear cut designation. Either you are one, or you aren't one.

Image: Slightly cropped version of "Protest Sign08" by a.mina found on Flickr. Image License CC 2.0.

Here is what they should do. Fix all the Boeing 737 max aircraft out there. Software fixes, additional hardware, whatever it takes. Then, Boeing should hold an 8 hour board meeting on a 737 Max while it is in flight over the North Atlantic. No cherry-picked pilot or aircraft. The plane and the pilot must be selected at random. Once the board agrees to this, we can have some confidence that they really fixed it.

Image by SounderBruce released under Share Alike 4.0 license.

I was actually in Riverside. Taking a break from being a UC Santa Cruz student. I was living in an apartment with my then girlfriend. Since I am not a baseball fan I didn't get the news right away that an earthquake had interrupted the world series (my sister was at that game). Then I started hearing. The Bay Bridge collapsed (that is what they said). The Marina district is in flames (my brother and sister-in-law lived in the Marina). I couldn't reach anybody on the phone. Nothing but a fast busy signal. The whole trunk line going into the city was overloaded.  I got in my car and drove way over the speed limit all the way to San Francisco. I saw a bus full of Sherriff deputies from some southern county. Probably they were heading north to help with the disaster. At first I slowed down not wanting to get a ticket. Then I said fuck it. What are they going to do pull me over with a bus? I put the pedal to the metal and they disappeared behind me.

I turned on the AM radio in the car and nothing I heard calmed my nerves. The Cypress structure collapsed. I didn't even know what that was, but I knew it was serious. The bay bridge collapsed. The Marina district is in flames. Live report from a helicopter hovering over downtown Santa Cruz. The pilot couldn't find Santa Cruz at first because all the lights were out. When they did find it, and turned on their spotlight, it lit up scenes of incredible damage, which they described for my benefit. Rubble everywhere. Collapsed roofs. Manikins and goods strewn across the floor. So many of my friends were at UC Santa Cruz. Were they OK? In 1989, nobody had cell phones. I could only hope for the best.

As I got closer to the bay area, it occurred to me that there could be damaged overpasses that were not yet marked or closed. The way I remember it now, there were no cars on the road. At the speed I was traveling I wouldn't be able to stop in time if I did find a collapsed overpass. But I didn't slow down.

I don't remember what time it was when I finally got to my mom's house in the City. Maybe 1 in the morning. My brother, his wife, and my sister were already there. There were aftershocks, but I was glad to be with them. Not knowing was the worst thing. My brother's apartment in the Marina was yellow tagged. Later, they were able to go back in and get belongings, but the building was unfit for habitation.

I found out later that UCSC was mostly OK. Classes were cancelled, and students on campus slept outside in fields to be safe. But in downtown Santa Cruz several people were killed in a collapsing masonry building. Nobody I knew personally. The entire downtown Santa Cruz was damaged and many, many businesses had to relocate to tents which were miraculously put up within a day or two. Bookshop Santa Cruz had new bags made up that had "shop" crossed out and "tent" written in. There was a foodcourt tent. But the old downtown was gone forever. The downtown you see there now is the new downtown.

The epicenter was inside the Forest of Nisene Marks, a California State park. My current home in the Santa Cruz mountains is only 2.5 miles from the epicenter.

Attached photo is in the public domain. I found it at this URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/LomaPrietaMallRescueMeyer1989.jpg

If you have ever got in over your head good judgement long gone, but found it was too late to turn back, and there was no choice but to just lock the differential, keep the throttle steady, and pray that luck would carry you through where common sense had failed, well, then this song is for you.

By the way, it is in English. But the singer is from Ireland. So it may be difficult to understand.

Huge protest in Hong Kong. Maybe a million people protesting a proposed new law which would obligate Hong Kong to comply with extradition requests from mainland China. It is widely expected that the law will go through. But Hong Kongers want to send a very clear message that the law does not reflect their will. Image from this article (where you can read more).

We are up to 44.1" inches of rain for the 2018 rainy season. We have thoroughly surpassed 2014 and 2017, which were drought years, and we are tracking close to but slightly above 2015, which was a "normal" rain year. The year-end total for 2015 was 44.7". The season is coming to an end there will likely be a bit more rainfall before we close the books.

We got about 5 more inches (125mm) of rain over the last several days, bringing us up over 26" (660mm) since the season began. Comparing to recent years, it looks like this year is pretty similar to 2015, which was a good year. You may be able to get a better view if you click on the image below.

Google has found yet another incredibly creepy way to insinuate itself into the everyday lives of its customers and clients. It lists fake phone numbers online (Google-controlled numbers) for businesses. Then when people call, Google patches them through to the REAL phone number, but records both sides of the conversation. In cryptography, this would be called a "Man-in-the-middle" attack. It is also similar to DNS poisoning. But for Google, it is just business as usual. Just a reminder that there is nothing inevitable about all this. Google is doing this as a choice. It doesn't HAVE to do it.

To read the article: <CLICK HERE>

Image was downloaded from pxhere. It is a CC-licensed image. See here: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/466535

Wow! You should definitely take a look at this interview with the author of new book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The interview is so full of zingers that I don't even know which one is best. Author Shoshana Zuboff just lays it all out.

It is no longer enough to automate information flows about us; the goal  now is to automate us. These processes are meticulously designed to  produce ignorance by circumventing individual awareness and thus  eliminate any possibility of self-determination. As one data scientist  explained to me, “We can engineer the context around a particular  behaviour and force change that way… We are learning how to write the  music, and then we let the music make them dance.”

The interview in The Guardian can be found here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-google-facebook

So far this year we have about 20 inches of rain (51 cm). To put this in perspective, I made a graph showing rainfall vs time for the last few years since I started keeping track. Around here, the rainy season begins in fall and runs through late spring or early summer. So I keep track starting in the FALL. That means the 2018 season is not over yet. That is why it says "ongoing."

According to the LA Times, SpaceX has internally announced plans to lay off 10% of its workforce to become a "leaner company."

Read the Whole Story.

Image Source

what does a fish think
when it jumps from the ocean
and sees all the stars

Image Source

Happy New Year. As promised I have launched this blog. I put all my haikus (previously posted on facebook) into the blog so there will at least be something for you to look at. I was hoping to get a good comment system working on the blog, but I haven't got that working yet. Apologies. That can be one of my goals for 2019. This blog is powered by Ghost software. I can create an account for you so you can post stuff if you like. You don't have to use your real name. If that interests you let me know via email or facebook (I am not deleting my facebook account just yet). I am self-hosting the blog with digital ocean, so I can do whatever I want.