Jeffrey’s Jammin Birthday Bash

Join me to find out how I like my new job, the exciting plans I have for the upcoming year, and so I can give a personal thanks for your personal friendship!

Please note, the official start time is 20:00 because I want to make sure not to start it before I finish my first full day of work at the new job. If I finish sooner, I will open the room earlier. This is, after all, an exciting time for me. My first new job in 18 years, and the first of four steps on the route to make me a better man, and much, much happier!

This event is opened to everyone who claims to know me! All of my software colleagues, all of my fellow authors, fellow science readers, fellow Doctor Who fans, fellow cosplayers, fellow Electric Car drivers and enthusiasts, all of my Equal Rights Amendment sisters and brothers in arms, all of my National Popular Vote Interstate Compact supporters, all of my avid gaming friends, all of my friends abroad except those in Europe—have your kip, mates—all of my fellow Toastmasters, all of my fellow aviators, all of my fellow musicians, tous mes amis qui parle français oder Deutsch или по-русский o italiano, my acting friends and my friends who eschew meat!

The only thing I ask is you be respectful, kind, and know that I hope you all consider any friend of mine a potential friend of yours!

There is a password to this event. It’s not hard to guess if you know me but if you want to know, and you are reading this on from Twitter, message me, on Tumblr, message me, on LinkedIn, again, message me, or join me via the Facebook event. Or, just comment on this blog, with your email address, and I will mail it to you.

See you all next Wednesday!

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Tesla OS 2020.16.2.1

Finally!

TeslaFi had been spamming me with news about TeslaOS 2020.16 for a while and I’ve been itching to see what, after giving us the amazing stop at a stop sign in the last minor update.

Turns out, not much. I am mostly unimpressed by Tesla with this update, though nonetheless very appreciative. Autoformatting a DashCam drive—I wonder if it supports 2TB yet—and a better layout for Easter Eggs are, after all, improvements, even if the Easter Eggs aren’t really hidden gems anymore.

The coolest new feature, though, is the new SuperCharger filter, allowing the driver to only see Version 3 stations and filter out all the slower ones. I love the fact that I have free, lifetime SuperCharging, and one of these days, I’m gonna cross the continents with that perk.

Overall, I’m not disappointed despite being underwhelmed. And one rumor is that this, or a soon to be released version will add V2G to the Tesla. I can’t wait until that rolls out as the Tesla Battery Pack may make for a new, mobile Powerwall. Mind you, even if #CO2Fre could do V2G, my house isn’t equipped for it anyway. So, even if it doesn’t have V2G, it’s still a cool update!

Tesla OS 2020.16.2.1
Tesla OS 2020.16.2.1 adds a new toy box interface, a SuperCharger filter, and auto-formatting of DashCam media. © 2020, Jeffrey C. Jacobs

Gentle reader, if you have been keeping up with me since 11 February of this year, you know that I have been posting once a day since then. As such, today marks a hundred days of a hundred daily posting. Through that, I’ve shared with you exciting electric car news, updated to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, my struggles to get the Equal Rights Amendment to be our Twenty-Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, written about my many works of fiction, and the many books of nonfiction I voraciously read to be a better scientist. I’ve shared with you my cosplay adventures, and my love of Doctor Who, my love of games, and a bit of my speaking in tongues as well as delivering speeches and singing to my heart’s content. I’ve talked about international travel and how I love to fly there in my own plane, discussed my acting and my dietary needs. And most of all I’ve told you I’m an excellent coder who is always keen for new work. Thanks for riding with me as we cruise upon the cloud to another one hundred posts!

Covid-19: Remember the Women

One thing that has been sincerely bothering me about this whole Covid scare that I mentioned a couple days ago—as if it wasn’t all over the media already—is how it will most adversely affect women who can least afford it.

The thing is, women aren’t just paid less for equal work in most professions and by many companies, but women also often have to make ends meet in the lowest paying jobs, taking the double hit of low-wage work and lower pay than their male counterparts.

Add to that self-quarantining that South Korea, Italy, and now the United States are doing, at least in a patchwork of states. Many white-collar jobs offering benefits like telework and paid sick leave. But on the lower end of the economic scale, you have women working jobs in the service industry, such as in restaurants or retail. Although some retailers are also offering paid sick leave, it looks like Congress will not require it and so workers are at the whim of their employers when it comes to containing the virus.

Consider, therefore, for a moment, what a single mother who is working in a restaurant. She is paid below minimum wage, a practice under the dangerous assumption that she can make it up in tips. Add to this she has her children home from school so even if she’s healthy she may still need the time off. If she gets the time off, even paid time off, though, she’s still deprived of her tips.

Interestingly, under Virginia law, a server can be paid as little as $2.13 per hour, under the assumption she will be making at least $5.12 per hour in tips. As long as the net is $7.25 per hour, the Virginia state minimum, the Restaurant doesn’t need to pay her the full state minimum wage. Of course, when she takes off, assuming she’s paid, she’ll be paid the minimum wage of $7.25, but now the at best understaffed, and at worst closed restaurant has to pay her $5.12 more per hour to cover the lack of tips.

Keep in mind most restaurants fail. Thus, a two week slowdown or closure could leave a struggling establishment to deeply in the red to recover and if the restaurant fails, that single mother is out of work.

I’ll admit, this isn’t something I’d expect to be a rampant problem in the specific context I’ve just laid out, but consider it one of the many knock-on effects of a fortnight of closures could have on the U.S. Economy. After 9/11, all U.S. commercial air travel was ceased for the rest of the week, only recommencing on Friday, 14 September. Likewise, the New York Stock Exchange remained closed until 10:00, Monday, 20 September. The effects of just those closures on our economy were noticeable though nothing to cause an economic crash, though it did cause as much as $31.6 billion in losses to the insurance industry.

It’s hard to say exactly what the consequences of a fortnight of bringing the U.S. Economy to a grinding standstill, but there will be consequences. And consequences in a quadrennial election year. No-one knows for sure. But one thing we can almost certainly be sure of: it will hurt women the most.

18 Miles: The Epic Drama of Our Atmosphere and Its Weather

This book was a joy to read. Christopher Dewdney whips up an exciting tale filled with allegory and literary references to ground the reader in the mysteries of our atmosphere. Whether it’s the numerous names for clouds, or the way storms change the course of history, Dewdney spins a wonderful narrative interwoven with science.

One thing I always appreciate is the geologic history of things, and Dewdney doesn’t disappoint with the origin of the atmosphere and its layers, and what happens when neutron lasagna (Kurzgesagt) falls to the center of the earth (assuming it doesn’t instantly expend to enormous size one freed from the gravitational pull of a neutron star). And speaking of stars, the tantalizing layers of the atmosphere inspire this failed pilot, as well as a fascinating theory on contrails.

For excitement there are stories of the storm, hurricane, typhoons, and the thunderous squall. From a gentle rain to the most deadly twister, it’s all there. How the Atmosphere is split into 3 northern layers and 3 southern layers is also explained, giving us our Jet Streams. I loved reading about the north and south, Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Gyres which drive the oceans and the effects of El Niño and La Niña on those currents. The names of the winds and the 6 seasons also fascinated me. I like the idea of 6 even though they don’t seems equal in length from the reading.

Finally, no book about weather would be complete without mentioning global climate disruption. Though not much time is spent on this important issue, it is covered in one chapter and pushed further with the Gaia hypothesis in the final chapter.

If I was to ding this book in any way, I would only have to comment that Îsl Réunion is in the middle of the Indian ocean, not the Pacific. Indeed, there’s no way it could have affected the movement of India across the Tethys Sea if it was all the way over in the Panthalassic Ocean, which became the Pacific.

18 Miles: The Epic Drama of Our Atmosphere and Its Weather
18 Miles: The Epic Drama of Our Atmosphere and Its Weather

Other than that, though, great book! Now, on to The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities.

See you later, my friendly fellow sapiosexuals!