Liberalism doesn’t necessarily maintain itself

At dinner last night a friend's comment about "being right and being ignored" reminded me (somehow) of this conversation between Cass Sunstein and Tyler Cowen

In particular,

COWEN: Now, your new book On Liberalism is primarily a defense of the liberal concept, but if someone asks you, what’s the most likely scenario for liberalism being self-undermining, what’s your worry?

SUNSTEIN: Low probability. The likelihood is that we’ll be undermined by anti-liberal and illiberal forces, not self-undermining. I think it’s fair to say or to worry that liberalism doesn’t create the conditions for its own self-perpetuation, so it’s not as if it’s self-undermining, but it doesn’t necessarily maintain itself [emphasis added]. The reason is that a society that is flourishing needs a lot of stuff in it, including norms of cooperation, norms of charity, norms of mutual support. Liberalism, in my view, doesn’t undermine those things, but other forces can undermine them, and it’s not clear liberalism has the resources to respond.

Given the times we are in, I do very much worry about our not having the resources to respond.

I enjoy the "Conversations with Tyler" podcast. The participants mostly assume you know what they know and, since I don't, this results in me very often pausing the audio and searching for a primer on what was just said.

Multi-Terra Helio Cell Vehicle

My children would have loved this Multi-Terra Helio Cell Vehicle 407 cockpit control. I especially like the addition of the fans!

Unsustainable advancement

Software developers have the bad habit of switching to programming languages and tools that result in applications consuming most of the resources from hardware advancements. The new 2025 laptop runs faster than the old 2015 laptop, but not nearly as fast as its components' raw improvements should provide. The switch from installed desktop applications to on-demand web applications has resource consumption that should rightly be called gluttonous. These switches have mostly burdened the user and not the developer. With the recent advent of vibe coding and agentic workflows these costs are now felt by the developer. And the costs are enormous. Collectively our datacenters consume the power output of whole electric generation facilities and the surrounding watersheds to cool them down. I don't see how this is a sustainable advancement; not for the profession and not for the planet.

My RIPTA support letter

My letter to my local state Senators and Representatives to support RIPTA.

I am hoping you can help RIPTA get the funding it needs to avoid the draconian cuts to service that are being proposed.

I am lucky in that I can work from home and only commute to my employer's Providence office a few times per month. Nevertheless, I still incur the costs of operating a car here in RI. The golocalprov.com 2022 article reports that it cost over $3000 a year to operate a car here. With average repair costs in the $150 to $250 range (which, given my recent experience, is higher now).

https://www.golocalprov.com/business/rhode-island-is-new-englands-most-expensive-state-to-drive-in-says-report

When I first started working for my current employer I took the 65x RIPTA bus each day. The ticket cost was very low, $2, and the bus was always full over the course of its route from Salt Pond to Kennedy Plaza. If I drove I would have had not only the car operating expenses, but also the $15 a day parking fee. Parking alone would be over $3000 per normal working year.

I can't image what it would feel like to face a $6,000 per year cost of living increase. An increase solely due the state of RI reneging on its commitment to fund public transport for all Rhode Islands. I hope you can help convince our legislators and governor of the importance of adequately supporting RIPTA.

Reneged is the right word because the Transit Forward RI program is less that 5 years old!

Update: RIPTA significantly cut route service freqency. It was already bad and is now aweful. Overcrowding is also causing buses to skip stops as they don't have capacity.

Railway modeling in the mid to late 1970s

The "From the Archive" section of the most recent issue of Railway Modeller magazine (July 2025) referenced a cottage thatching article by Allan Downes in the July 1975 issue. This brought on a flood of memories from that period when I was building my GWR branch line in N guage. His work was wonderfully inspiring even with only black & white photos along side his hand-drawn diagrams and plans. Fortunately, Railway Modeller has all of their back issues online and so I was able to read that article and an earlier one (February 1975) where he introduced the thatching technique.

In hindsight, what I really miss about this time and Downes's approach was the simplicity of it all. I knew no different. I built a whole railway station, goods depot, engine yard, and town using nothing but what a 14 year old could find and afford. The most expensive material I bought were the sheets of printed brick from the Totnes hobby shop!

I have a few, blurry photos of my layout. Saddly, I had to leave it all behind when my family immigrated to the US.

Board game UX

I don't know if the game Star Wars: Outer Rim is enjoyable, but the game's physical design is amazing. Which reminds me I have What the Tech World Can Learn from Video Game UX lined up to watch.

Update: The video was about using gamification to enhance learning to use a handheld ultrasound scanner. Nothing new.

South Kingstown & Narragansett restaurants

If you are looking for good restaurants in South Kingstown or Narragansett try:

• Purslane
• Duck Press
• Tsunama
• Trattoria Romana Wakefield
• Pasquale's Pizzeria Napoletana
• Agave Social Cocina Mexicana (quality dropped, pice increased)

RI DOT

A long time ago I organized a study group to read the whole RI state budget. We were lucky to get Tom Sgouros to guide us through this massive document. At the time there was no online version so we got printed copies. I remember struggling to carry the weight of multiple copies of its multiple volumes as I walked to my car. One of the things we learned was that DOT has almost no debt service. How can a $981M department that is responsible for roads, bridges, etc with lots of bond money projects have only $330K of debt service? It achieves this by hiding it within the Department of Administration. Most of the DOA's $211M debt service is actually DOT's. DOT costs Rhode Islander's well over a billion dollars a year. I honestly don't know if this cost is outrageous, or if it is money well spent. But it is useful to know the scale of the effort to build and maintain the road infrastructure.

FY 2025 Budget

Sensitive side of pure evil

I am reading Lord of the Rings for the first time. Yes, reading LotR is a right of passage for geeks, but I'm really only a geek by circumstances rather than by anything deeper. (I have watched Peter Jackson's movies several times, if that helps.) I am enjoying the books, having starting with the Hobbit. But several times I have wondered how a young reader today, one not raised in bucolic Devon, responds to Tolkien's beautifully rendered landscapes? Those landscapes are integral to the book and, for me, a sustaining attraction.

I did try watching the first season of the Rings of Power, but quickly gave up. Others have well explained its many, many failures. It is now in its second season and, apparently, has very strange things to say about the sensitive side of pure evil.

Rings of Power’s orc baby: Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequel doesn’t get it right. | Vox

Ad hoc systems for managing work

I love seeing people's systems for managing their work. Even those of fictional people. This short from The Bear on managing the restaurant's guests and their orders is great. 

To Do as a game

This might actually work!

Red Indian Pipes

On a walk this weekend I saw a red Indian Peace Pipe. Neither I or my wife had ever seen one before. Apparently, they are not common, but also not rare.

MSCHF's “Not Wheels” and Osprey's Gaslands

I recently saw MSCHF's “Not Wheels” and it reminded me of Osprey Publishing's Gaslands, a tabletop post-apocalypse vehicle combat game. Even if you don't play the game, getting some matchbox cars, salvaging greeblies from the inside of defunct printers, superglue, and some paint is a lot of fun for the whole family (well, some members of the family).

Examples of hardiness

I walked at Tippacansett this past weekend and I was drawn to these examples of hardiness. Perhaps I was thinking, consciously or not, about still being an individual-contributor software developer at 60.

The Paris Olympics' pictograms

I have to say that this Paris Olympics pictogram for the Giant Mollusks Eating Women in Swimsuits event is very well done... Joking aside, the design of the pictograms broke with tradition and the result is objectively useless. The illegibility of the pictograms on the printed material is a spectacular design fail. Linus Boman's critique at Paris 2024 Olympic pictograms - what happened? is great.

Inspiration and ingenuity

Sometimes all you need is inspiration and ingenuity for your tabletop space wargames.

So very disappointed with yesterday's eclipse here in Rhode Island. I should have paid attention to the data about the eclipse's path and not succumbed to the hype. Had I done that I could have driven to Vermont to see something quite spectacular

Photo by Tim Barmann, a colleague at MojoTech

Natural RGB

I really enjoy the Tippecansett trail in the Arcadia management area. It is strenuous and beautiful. Some of yesterday's colors, a natural RGB,

Too pretty to burn

The garden knows

For this gardener any success comes from decades of mulch and regular weeding, but mostly from letting the garden itself tell me what it will keep.