Early Version

we are even further north in North Dakota. for a short week.

i flew back in on Friday, and leave again on Thursday. 🔥 boy are my arms tired! 💡 that feels like almost a normal week? but it will seem short.

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for the week:

• process the ~20 links from last week, currently in browser tabs on the phone
• do some tests of Claude 3.7 . the first test is can it implement a lexer/parser based on a BNF representation.
• in part 2, determine additional programming/education tasks for the week
• some "gardening prep" work. 💡 I don't want to do indoor starters until I return from the next trip. but, the weather tomorrow should be good for some raking/digging outside

https://thehill.com/policy/international/5170029-conservative-commentator-questions-zelensky-over-attire-why-dont-you-wear-a-suit/

The important note is that suit (business attire) in English is костюм (Kostyum) in Ukrainian.

🔥 also that, somehow, the press corps included Marjorie Taylor-Greene's boyfriend (the aforementioned Mr. Glenn), from one of the third-wave conservative-media blogs.

an article title: An Obituary for the FBI / America's dream of a politically independent bureau is officially dead

🔥 no additional information about the article is necessary.

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the concept of a "politically independent bureau" is, largely, a polite fiction.

💡 in two ways. first, "everything is political, eventually". but, second, "independent from the president". the second one is at least theoretically remediable.

it has survived for a while, but Trump is committed to ignoring that fiction. as it is a fiction, he will largely succeed at this.

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this is not entirely a good thing.

but: if you want a separate category of "independent agencies", maybe it should be in the constitution somewhere?

With vacation starting tonight, we will keep glendive going.

I will have notes on Fountas and Pinnell reading system (and the concept of Whole language education) at some point. 🔥 it stinks! 💡 there is a certain sense that, for reading 汉语 ⚙️ or, to a lesser extent, עברית, a "whole language" model is necessary.

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Well, there will be two sets of notes.

One on "this doesn't work" / "does this work"?

And a second set, on "how did we end up here" / "Is this a failure of liberalism"?

Some languages are very phonetic; the same small number of rules will let you sound out every word.

English is far less phonetic; there are many words that are pronounced oddly ⚙️ the tough ploughman let out a sigh

Fortunately, we can calculate how "phonetic" a word is. Bat and hat will be very phonetic, colonel and knight and yacht will not be.

💡 this is useful for scoring texts for grade-level.

it has been a quiet week.

this was no great surprise, and is no great disappointment.

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i have written enough about project ideas related to Education 💡 regarding each of: pedagogy, skills assessment, and aptitude assessment and Language, or the use of LLMs for either task.

i have written nothing about Rust in the Linux kernel, but I have little to say at this time. ⚙️ https://www.heise.de/en/news/The-Rust-DMA-dispute-in-the-Linux-kernel-An-attempt-at-analysis-10291239.html?seite=all is a sufficient explanation.

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other areas of my expertise:

• Wikipedia continues to have too many people doing stupid things whom I am unable to call out.
• American Politics continues to be a field best left unplowed.
• Atacama continues to morph into a project that I only work on when something about the site annoys me.

An initial reply from Claude:

When I ask it to be harsh, it points out some minor details that don't matter:

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It uses the phrase function words for what I describe as grammatical words. And suggests some that aren't in the top 2000 words:

• whereas
• besides
• hereby
• whichever
• whenever
• whoever
• nonetheless
• furthermore
• whereupon
• henceforth
• wherein
• therein
• whereof
• herein

the basis for a word bank is a dozen novels from Project Gutenberg.

there are a few things to adjust for 💡 the boilerplate text, page numbers, chapter titles, tables of contents but nothing too difficult.

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as far as "names" are concerned - the capitalization (and the spikes in frequency 🔥 "Harry" is far more common a word in Harry Potter than in Gulliver's Travels ) should distinguish them.

💡 names are often polysemous. Autumn fell in the woods. - is it a person or a season? Georgia was beautiful - is it a person, a state, or a country? this ... is fine.

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we then have a few hundred "grammatical" words. what does the word for mean? or with? how can you explain that without circular definitions? you probably can't.

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by word frequency 250, we get words like open, together, seem, next. Still polysemous, still sometimes used in a grammatical way. But, generally, words with a definition that can be done in simpler words.

by word frequency 500, we get words like hot, bed, and thousand. words that can be defined, but might use less-common words. 💡 I don't have a perfect list yet. But bed may-or-may-not be more common than sleep.

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past that point, it is a flood of nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

at word frequency 1000, we get improve, sign, magazine. words that are polysemous, but easier to define.

at word frequency 4000, we are at coordinate, canvas, and combat. a purely-linear ranking may no longer be meaningful. the type of corpus will matter too much for there to be a fully well-ordered list.

i don't have a good enough list for word frequency 10000 to say anything definitive. perhaps moss, alloy, and paintball will show up here.

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we also have to deal with conjugation somewhere around here. are democracy and democratic one word 💡 the term lemma is used sometimes, but I don't like it or two?

also, are terms like bow (of a ship) and bow (gesture of respect) and bow (for string instruments) separate words?

seen on Reddit: https://www.themainewire.com/2025/02/maine-may-soon-join-calls-for-an-article-v-convention-to-amend-the-u-s-constitution/

💡 "Campaign Finance" has too many issues to discuss here.

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Term limits are the wrong solution to the wrong problem.

Well, two different solutions, to two different problems. Term limits for SCOTUS are different than term limits for elected officials ⚔️ re-elected officials, and that is at least the right problem.

For the Supreme Court: the romantic idea is an 18-year term limit for SCOTUS, with a new member appointed every 2 years. And, some unspecified method to ensure that a judge's unfortunate early demise does not disrupt "partisan balance".

Unfortunately, said method might not exist.

Fortunately, there is no real need for a Constitutional Amendment here. Just, some amount of comity between parties, to implement it legislatively.

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Term limits for Congress are the wrong solution to the wrong problem.

The claimed problems are:

• geriatrics who sleep-walk to re-election
• incumbents are re-elected too often
• members spend too much time campaigning (and fund-raising)

Term Limits ... solve some of that. But create their own problems:

• the "revolving door" - members spend too much time auditioning for their next job
• political parties still have safe seats
• harsh limits on "institutional knowledge"

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There are other solutions, each of which have their own drawbacks. But, in some combinations, fewer drawbacks.

• US House members cannot run for consecutive terms
• Age limits for members
• "Competence" tests 💡 which, unfortunately, might be impossible to distinguish from ideological tests
• Multi-member districts ⚙️ the problem is that State boundaries mean it is difficult to ensure each district has the same number of members; for partisan issues the differences between 3-member and 4-member districts are substantial
• a larger chamber ⚙️ the US House has had 435 members since 1913

🔥 Fun Fact: none of the Founding Fathers of the United States ever owned an automobile.

A case finds that using an iPhone to aid in viewing through tinted windows of an automobile is not a "search". ⚙️ US v. Poller, Second Circuit, 2024 term

This ... is a sensible and correct definition.

But, the fact that the Constitution does not consider the existence of "personal vehicles" is something of an anachronism.

Should it say anything? Is the status quo (that vehicles are, per the 10th amendment, regulated by the states) correct?