Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Italy Travelog #22
Chia, Sardinia - Thursday, 29 May 2025, 5pm

Early today I wrote about how we decided to take it easy at the resort today. We hung out by the pool from the morning through lunchtime. But there's more. More pools. More taking-it-easy. More. MOAR!

After Hawk was done with her massage in the spa I joined her up there for our "Spa Wellness Visit". It's an membership benefit I get as a Hilton Diamond elite. (The front desk agent at check-in told me there are no elite benefits, zero, at this property. She was so adamant there was nothing for us she refused even to enter my Hilton number in the computer. Another agent later, when we went to book the massage, inquired if I had elite status, took my number, and told us about this. 🙄)



The Spa Wellness Visit includes using the spa's hot tubs, sauna, steam rooms, and "emotional showers". I was amused by the term emotional showers. Like, what, the water drips out of the shower head accompanied by sounds of sobbing? 🤣 Alas, no, it's not quite that emo. It's just colored lights flashing and aroma-infused water.

Well, we weren't interested in the sauna or the steam rooms, and the emo-showers just looked silly. Oh, and the aromas were all mint, which Hawk is allergic to. We've already had enough allergy problems this trip. 😒 So we tried the hot tob, which is the main thing we wanted anyway.



We pressed the too-difficult-to-find button to start the jets and quickly found... the pool is running backwards. Or rather, the pump is installed backwards. The jets on the sides don't work. Instead, water comes jetting up from the middle of the floor of the pool, from what are supposed to be the return vents. 🤪

We gave up on the buttoh (hint: it's backwards) after a minute or two as a pool that just boils and bubbles like a cauldron of trouble is not very enjoyable.



Upon hearing that there are 3 pools to the resort's "Roman baths" I hoped for the classic trio of caldarium, tepidarium, and frigidarium. Hot, warm (tepid), and cool. The people at the spa were mystified when I used those three Latin words. I mean, this is part of Italy, and there are Roman ruins around. You'd think someone would be aware of what their ancestors figured out 2,200+ years ago. Nope. These are the clowns who put the Jacuzzi together backwards. Buttoh!

So it turns out all three of these pools are tepidaria. None of them are quite hot tubs. Though at the same time no two of them are the same temperature. So they're like plus quam tepidarium, tepidarium, and prope tepidarium. 😂

While the three of these pools were pointlessly different in temperature they were purposefully different in how their jets were positioned. One has lounge seats built in with jets in the seats; another has traditional hot tub benches with jets; and the third has a sequence of paired jets at different depths in the water. We used the latter to massage our ankles, calves, thighs, hips, and back and we waded around to different locations. After both amusing ourselves and massaging ourselves for a while we sat out on shaded lounge chairs to enjoy the afternoon warmth.

Better Call Saul episode 4.10, the season 4 finale, is where Jimmy McGill finally completes his transformation in Saul Goodman. ...Well, almost. He announces that he's going to file a DBA to start practicing under the name Saul Goodman.

For Saul Goodman to be "born", of course, Jimmy has to "die". Jimmy gives his own eulogy, in a fashion, in an impromptu bit of unsolicited advice— that's partly a rant— to an aspiring college student, Kristy Esposito.

Jimmy's Advice/Rant/Soliloquy

Kristy applied for a scholarship under a grant created in Charles McGill's name. Jimmy is on the board of the scholarship committee that's chaired by Howard Hamlin and filled with a bunch of HHM people. There are 3 scholarships available, and maybe 10 students have made it to this final round, where they answer questions in a group interview with the committee members. The winners are chosen but not informed yet.

Jimmy catches Kristy outside the law offices. "You didn't get it," he tells her. "You were never gonna get it." He explains that it's because the people in circles of power make decisions very quickly about whether a person will ever be allowed into their circle. Kristy has a minor crime on her record, a small shoplifting offense from a few years ago, and the people with power will only ever see her as a person with a criminal record, he says. It doesn't matter what the circumstances of that one bad act were, nor does it matter what good she does after that; most people will not look past it. Thus he encourages her not to play by the rules, to "cut corners", and to "do what they won't do" in order to get ahead.

Jimmy's really explaining himself here. It's like Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy scene. Kristy is Ophelia, who hears what Hamlet is saying even though really he's talking to himself as he rationalizes the choices he's making. Jimmy's trying to convince himself that all the corners he cut were actually a noble thing and that becoming a person who, as a rule, doesn't play by the rules is the path to success.

Then Jimmy's car dies.

No, seriously. He goes to the garage, gets in his car, and the car won't start. Jimmy starts crying.

No, he's not crying about the car. I mean, literally he is, but the car not starting is the straw that breaks the camel's back. Jimmy is releasing his emotions about his brother, Chuck, who died a year ago now, and releasing his misgivings about whether he should even try to play by the rules as a lawyer.

Jimmy Comes Back from Suspension— As Saul

In the last part of the episode Jimmy goes back before the board of the State Bar to petition for his license back. He's already been denied once; this is an appeal.

In the denial at Jimmy's first hearing, the committee chair explained to him that he wasn't "sincere" enough. Jimmy was actually very sincere and gave a fantastic answer when they asked, "What does the law mean to you?" But it wasn't what they wanted to hear. They wanted to hear about Chuck. It was well known that  Jimmy's suspension was because he committed a wrong against Chuck. As Jimmy explained in his soliloquy, that's all they saw in him. Chuck, Chuck, Chuck. Thus for him to do anything other than gush with praise and remorse about Chuck was "insincere". Because, again, to them, he's nothing except what he did to Chuck.

So Jimmy comes back to the appeal hearing and talks about Chuck, Chuck, Chuck. At least one of the committee members is moved to tears. Kim, who's in the audience, is moved as well. She's also beaming with pride, as she counseled Jimmy heavily on his presentation for this appeal.

Out in the hallway while the committee is deliberating, Jimmy and Kim are jubilant. They're sure he's won. But Jimmy starts laughing. Did you see those suckers? he sneers. That one asshole was crying, he had actual tears! Jimmy reveals that nothing about this new, more "sincere" presentation was actually sincere. It was just the right amount of tug-the-heartstrings emotional claptrap to fool a bunch of arrogant people who expect to hear a particular story and nothing else.

Let me come back to that point in a moment.

Minutes later Jimmy gets word from the committee that they're reinstating him. As he goes to sign the papers he asks the secretary for a DBA document— because he'll be practicing law from now on as Saul Goodman.

RIP, Jimmy who sometimes cuts corners McGill. Long live Saul sneering disdain Goodman.

Why Jimmy's Speech Resonates with Me— In a Bad Way

Jimmy's speech to the committee resonates with me— in a bad way. I feel like there have been a lot in my professional life where I've been denied something I wanted. There was 1 of it to go around, and it went to someone else. I came in 2nd or 3rd place. Or 4th. Whatever; the ranking didn't matter. I didn't get it. But what rankled was that the person who won didn't do as well as I did, objectively. They didn't have as much content. They didn't have as many numbers. They didn't have as many facts. What they did have was some emotional appeal, some bullshit that wasn't even relevant to the matter at hand. Like, we're selling software, and they told some probably made-up story about an 8 year old girl with cancer. And the people above me, the people who maintain that they're better than me because they're there and I'm not, chose the bullshit.

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #22
Jonas Ridge, NC - Thu, 5 Sep 2024. 4:30pm

Upper Creek Falls turned out to be more than we expected— both in terms of the size of the main falls and the length/strenuousness of the trail. At the bottom of the big falls we weren't thinking about the latter, though. Yet.



Yes, this is the same falls I finished with in part 1 of this hike. Here I'm photographing it with my ultra-wide zoom lens. This is at 10mm with my camera's APS-C sized imager; it's a 15mm equivalent on a traditional 35mm camera. I slowed the shutter speed down to 1/5 second with a neutral density lens. And, yes, the camera is hand-held because I didn't lug a tripod down here and didn't even have my hiking pole monopod to use.

As you can see in this photo versus those in my previous blog entry the sun was in and out of clouds, but mostly behind the clouds, this afternoon. Changing light makes photography challenging... but also more fun, as it exposes different views of the same scene.



Soon enough it was time to head further downstream. There are more falls down there and a pretty clear path, marked with reflector blazes on trees, to get there.

On the way to these falls (photo above) we saw the couple who were previously enjoying the big falls 50' away from us coming back up the trail. Why come back up the same way? The trail loops around back to the parking lot. We said as much in chatting with them, wondering if maybe the creek crossing was too dangerous to ford.

"Oh, the trail crosses the creek?" they responded. "We didn't even think of that!"

"Yeah, it shows it right here on my GPS-enabled trails app," I said, pointing to AllTrails running on my iPhone.

"Oh, I'm using AT, too," one of the hikers said, showing me his phone with the same app open.

How can you use the same app and not see the trail marked in bright green?! I wondered to myself. This dude is literally holding the map in his hand and can't figure it out. Sheesh, it's like holding in your hand a device with access to the sum total of human knowledge does not make everyone smarter, it just makes the average person more confident of their dumb ideas.

Anyway, back to the falls. 🤣



At the crossing there were more falls both above and below. I explored down the creek a bit further, but not too far as I was starting to get a sense of how much climbing out there'd be. And, more importantly, Hawk was already aching pretty badly from a long-term issue flaring up. I wasn't going to leave her in the middle of the wilderness to go hiking on my own.



We enjoyed the falls at the crossing a bit more before beginning the arduous climb up out of the canyon. And yes, it was arduous. It was 8-10 long switchbacks up the canyon's sloping side.

Back at the car, now, we're discussing what's next. Earlier in the day we were thinking to do a bit more driving to another remote falls but at this point, with the clouds overhead, it looks like it might get dark too early to want to do a lot of driving before a hike. There's just enough signal here at the trailhead to search for other trails on AllTrails, so I'm checking out Linville Gorge and Linville Falls. That's a big falls, and it's really not that far from here; maybe just 15 minutes of driving.

Stay tuned; the adventure continues!

I clicked on a BuzzFeed listicle today with a click-bait headline, You're Officially A Boomer If You've Done Half Of These 40 Things (4 Apr 2024). It was pretty amusing... but not in the way I expect the authors thought. It was amusing because of how stupid it was. Most of the things on their list have been done by typical Gen Xers, and quite a few are not so old that even Millennials wouldn't have done them. I'd rewrite the headline as It's Official, Gen Z Thinks Anyone Over 40 Is A Boomer. 😂

For reference, Boomers are commonly defined as those born between 1946 and 1964. The youngest Boomers turn 60 this year. Thus when articles like this say "Doing A, B, or C means you're a Boomer," they're arguing that A, B, C really haven't been popular since the 1960s, maybe the early 70s— or are only done anymore by people age 60+. But oh, how wrong these clueless (and likely young) writers are. Here are just the first 3 items from their list, with my notes about how much more recently than the 1960s they've been commonplace:

1. Drinking Coke out of a glass bottle.
Sure, depictions of glass soda bottles conjure images of the "good old days" of the 1950s and 60s. But depending on where you lived, regional bottlers were distributing Coke (and Pepsi) in glass well beyond then. I routinely bought Coke in glass bottles in 1992-1993 when I lived in New York. It's what one of the local grocery stories carried. And anyone who prefers Mexican Coke today— the stuff still made with cane sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup— still buys Coke in glass bottles today.

2. Singing the "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke" jingle.
Okay, I can get how a person whose idea of ``research``is scanning the first page of Google search results would think this is a Boomer thing. The classic Coca-Cola commercial was produced in 1971. The top several search results all say that. But I can tell you that I was born after that commercial being released, and I remember people singing it at least into my 20s. Indeed, do a little more ``research`` than just skimming the first page of Google hits, like just read the damn Wikipedia article on the song, and you'll see that the remakes were done up through the 2010s. Frankly you'd practically have to be a child today never to have sung this song— or at least heard others singing it.

3. Seeing colored toilet paper in the bathroom.
Yes, toilet paper used to be available in colors other than white. In commercial use? No. But in homes, definitely. I remember up through the early 1980s it being common for people to color-coordinate their bathrooms with paper in pastel hues of pink and blue. And if your grandma was like either of mine, you saw it in their houses well in to the 1990s.

These are just the first 3 items from the listicle. What else is on their list of supposed 1960s relics? Would you believe:

• Using a phone book
• Sending a fax
• Using a photocopier

FWIW that last time I did each of those, or had someone do it on my behalf, was after 2000. And it wasn't because I'm an old fogey, it's because the world didn't suddenly become all digital in 1970... or even in 1999.

North Cascades Travelog #3
Washtucna, WA - Sat, 2 Sep 2023, 1pm.

We got off to a somewhat lazy start this morning from our hotel room at the Spokane airport. We weren't rolling until almost 10, which meant we didn't get to our first real stop of the trip, Palouse Falls, until nearly noon.



Palouse Falls, named Washington's official state waterfall after a letter-writing campaign by local grade schoolers, is a plunge about 200' high. The official designation is a bit weird considering the falls is in... the middle of freakin' nowhere. I've marked the dateline this blog entry as "Washtucna, WA". If you've never heard of Washtucna, don't feel bad. It's a village of about 200. Our drive from Spokane airport was 103 miles.



Palouse Falls and Palouse Creek cut a steep canyon through basalt cliffs. One interesting thing here, geologically, is that this canyon is fairly young. During the last ice age, this part of Washington was tableland covered by glaciers. When the glaciers started to melt their water flowed along a different course down to the Snake River, which feeds into the Columbia. But the volume of water from the melt was so enormous that it pushed through a different route, finding a fissure in the volcanic rock, and quickly widened out that fissure into the enormous canyon we see today. So this entire canyon might only be 12,000 years old.

Thwarted Twice

Our return visit to Palouse Falls today was a revenge trip. We visited these falls 2 years ago, at a time when the air was thick with smoke from wildfires. The weather that day wasn't great, either. It was extremely hot (100+) and sprinkled rain. Because of all that we limited our hiking to walking around the top of the cliffs and skipped taking the more adventurous scramble down into the canyon. We'd come back another time and do the canyon descent, we agreed. Except now it's closed.

The state has closed off the trails down into the canyon, and stationed rangers in the park to monitor them, because apparently a few dumbasses got too close to the edge of the cliffs and fell to their deaths. Look, I agree that places that are truly dangerous should be made off limits, but nature is inherently dangerous. In mountainous parks there are any number of places where if a person takes one wrong step too far over an edge, it's a deadly plunge. I hate that the rest of us are confined to bunny trails just because of a few stupid people. This is why we can't have nice things. 😡

There's an old joke that people make. "I don't drink 2% milk," they say, trying to make themselves sound smart, "Because what's the other 98%?"

Yeah, that's amusing if you're a stand-up comic and your audience hasn't heard it before, let alone dozens of times before. But what if it's a real question? Well, as a real question it has a real answer... and that answer isn't even hard to find. A few seconds on Google turns up numerous resources, including this Wikipedia article, Fat Content of Milk.

"Whole milk" in the US and a few other countries has 3.25% butterfat by weight. So 2% milk still has 61.5% the fat of whole milk. And it's not "98% what" because it isn't adulterated by adding some mystery ingredient. The milk is spun in a centrifuge to remove some of the fat content, leaving simply... less fatty milk.

Merely Asking Questions is not Intelligence

Some people proclaim themselves smart because they ask questions. I see that a lot in politics. Merely asking questions, though, does not denote intelligence. The mark of intelligence is a person who goes through a 4 step process: (1) Recognizing there is something one doesn't know. (2) Asking a question. (3) Seeking an answer from reputable sources. (4) Incorporating the new knowledge into one's understanding of things, including revising or even discarding previous beliefs where the new information contradicts them.

Some people do none of these yet consider themselves intelligent. Many do 1-2 and stop there. Few do all 4. It takes all 4 to be intelligent.

Several days ago I wrote about the intellectual bankruptcy of conservatives blaming the failure of banks like SVB on them being too "woke". So what is "woke"? you might ask. The term has actually been bandied about quite a bit on the political right. The recent failure of a few banks was hardly the first time conservative political leaders and pundits have used it. They've actually been railing against "woke" this and "woke" that steadily for two years. It's pretty clear it's something conservative leaders want their followers to hate, but what is it?

Briahna Joy Gray, a streaming interviewer with news outlet The Hill, popped that question to conservative author Bethany Mandel on her streaming show. In a moment that went viral Mandel stumbled over the definition. Watch the first 1:45 of this video retrospective by Gray, or watch the whole thing for greater context:



Ironically Mandel herself says, "This is going to be one of those moments that goes viral," as she gets stumped trying to define the term.

Note, this was not "gotcha" journalism. This was not a journalist ambushing a minor politician with a question about, say, issues causing political unrest in a tiny nation 10,000 miles away. Mandel co-authored the 2023 book, "Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation". It's all about the alleged sinister perils of woke-ism. In that book Mandel wrote an entire chapter defining what "woke" is. She is clearly an expert on the topic. Yet when asked to give a concise definition she stumbles and says it's not possible.

BTW, after Mandel's inability to define "woke", a term she co-wrote an entire book about and speaks about frequently in interviews with sycophantic media, went viral she posted multiple times rejecting the question as completely unreasonable and basically had a meltdown about The Left was "attacking" her.

So, what is "woke"? I'll act like I am getting interviewed and offer an extemporaneous answer— not researched, not checked against a dictionary, not even wordsmithed. This is basically off the top of my head:


See? That wasn't so hard.

Again, I wrote this in one pass, no editing, no research, not even consulting a dictionary. How did I do? Followup coming soon; share your thoughts now in the comments.

I was an attendee on a webinar today when someone, one of the moderators I believe, used the toilet with an open mic.

At first it sounded like someone was running water, kind of like filling a coffee maker, in the background. It wasn't either of the active speakers because they were on camera. Though it could have been someone next to them, off camera. I posted a comment in the chat, "Mmm, I can smell the coffee! Or are you pouring water?"

The water-pouring sound continued, followed by what was evidently a toilet flush. "Sounds like someone took a mic in the toilet," I commented. There were LOLs.

Then came a loud fart. O-M-G. "Is this seriously your first videoconference ever?!" I wrote.

There were more LOLs. And at least one other person was thinking what I was thinking— that a movie warned us about this problem 35 years ago!


Link: The Sound of Relief, The Naked Gun (1988)

There were a few other jokes about the open mic in the bathroom, and which movie it was in decades ago. I went to screen-shot them to include in this blog, but minutes later the host had deleted most of the comments about what happened.

BTW, I noted above that this was a webinar. It was configured so that only the host and the two invited speakers could share audio. This wasn't one of those, "Oh, crazy stuff happens when there's 200 people on a Zoom" situations. It was a professionally staged presentation with a (supposedly) experienced host moderator and two speakers representing their companies— one of which is a household name in the US.

Oops.

Representative-elect Kevin McCarthy has been trying to get elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. He's now pushed through 11 rounds of voting... and lost all of them. There were three rounds on Tuesday, three more on Wednesday, and a whopping five on Thursday. I posted on Wednesday afternoon after round 5 when I thought they'd take a break for the day. Nope, they went for round 6. And earlier today I posted after round 9, figuring they were keeping a pace of only 3 failed attempts per day.... Nope! They went for round 10... then round 11!

BTW, this is part of why I rarely blog about political current events on this platform. Politics today moves at the speed of Twitter. Sadly it also moves at the depth of Twitter. Do something to go viral, and for fucks' sake fit it in 280 characters or nobody'll pay attention.

Among the core of McCarthy's opposition are several Twitter-optimized Congresspeople. They've structured their whole political personas around generating maximum headlines. Matt Gaetz, for example, is said to have made more appearances as a TV guest on Fox than in committee hearings last season. The few bits of legislation he's bothered with in the past few years have been headline-grabbing stunts. Then there's gun-toting Lauren Boebert. She uses her office mostly for trolling.

This really makes me wonder why McCarthy and other leaders are engaging in a standoff with these opponents. They've put McCarthy forward 11 times now (and counting!) expecting the other side to blink first. Who's supposed to blink first? The people who blink first would be those who care most about finishing the selection of Speaker so the whole Congress can get to its main job, legislating. (Congress literally can't do anything else until its Speaker is selected. Those are the rules.) But the lunatic fringe extremists opposing McCarthy don't care about legislating; they never have! McCarthy and his supporters have badly misread their fellow party members. ...Which is doubly pathetic because those nuts haven't been secretive about it; they've been doing what they've been doing very loudly & out in the open.

Billionaire Elon Musk, the world's richest man, completed his purchase of Twitter this week for $44 billion. It's widely believed that he paid way too much. Even Musk believed that his offer was too high— as he tried for months to get out of it after making a formal offer. He only went through with the purchase when Delaware Chancery Court turned aside his requests to halt a lawsuit filed by Twitter for non-performance of contract. Obviously he thought he would lose... worse than lose, actually. He would have been forced to purchase the company for $44 billion and been embarrassed by public release of various documents about his behavior. So he paid his $44 billion to stay in control of the narrative.

As "Chief Twit" one of his first narrative choices was announcing that Twitter verified accounts, those marked by the blue check mark, would cost $20/month to keep.



Musk was stung by criticism that he was out of touch. Memes flew, including variations on this classic quip from character Lucille Bluth in the TV series Arrested Development, poster woman for unempathetic rich people.

Musk lowered the proposal to $8 and fired back with a meme of his own, as seen in this tweet:



In case you can't see the picture, Musk compared people whining about $8/month for Twitter Verified to those thinking $8/cup for a Starbucks coffee product is a bargain.

Aside from whatever sneering disdain one may have for $8 Starbucks drinks and/or people who spend $8/drink at Starbucks, there's a fundamental mismatch in this comparison. When you spend $8 at Starbucks, or even $1.95 at Dunkin' Donuts, you're the customer and you're buying a product. That's it.

With Twitter, everyone who tweets is giving Twitter the product, i.e., their content, for free. Twitter then uses that free content to attract audiences that it sells to advertisers. Verified users with those blue check marks are generally those most frequent contributors vendors giving Twitter stuff for free. Now Musk wants to charge these vendors without whose unpaid work the company literally would be nothing.