Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, August 31, 2025
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6 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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So, the infamous visa “integrity” fee is on. Notice there’s a way to collect it, but not to refund it. Rule of Acquisition number 1: once you have their money you never give it back.
The piece does note a purpose of this: “For example, visits from Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, have all been up considerably this year, but I suspect these new fees may act as a deterrent.”
Next, AI gadgets keep on coming. After the failure of the R1 Rabbit and the Humane AI Pin, comes the Plaud Note.
This one may actually work. What it does is record whatever you want, and then it can, through a phone app, make transcriptions, summaries, translations, etc. I’ve found LLMs decent for summaries, less so for translations past basic stuff, and so-so for transcriptions (if Youtube’s auto-generated captions are an example).
We’ll see. But it sems we’ll be cursed with LLMs from now on.
I’ve been having fun with watercolors lately. I suck at it, but the focus it requires means I have to shut off the “worrying about everything” part of my brain. It’s relaxing when I can tamp down the perfectionist in my head who is very judgy about my efforts.
On the menu for tomorrow is this miso-grilled shrimp with corn and shishito peppers from the NYT cooking section. It’s sunny and in the 60s here (around 18C for JohnSF, if he’s about).
I own a few rental properties. Renters–two women in their early 20s–had been in this house for years just moved out. I’d been in the house more than a few times when they lived here and they were always responsible tenants, took care of the place. But seeing what they left behind, something changed in their last half year here. Yard is waist high and filled with trash. There were dozens of large holes poked into the ceiling in nearly every room. One room for some reason had lines of spray foam insulation all over the walls and carpet–that stuff doesn’t come out of carpet or off walls easily and i had to replace the drywall and the carpet. And of course a cleaning hadn’t even been attempted.
My goal is always to give back as much of the security deposit as possible, and I’m very lax on what I’ll consider “normal wear and tear” especially if you’ve been in the place multiple years. Shit gets worn down in the course of life and that’s on me, not the renter, to make better.
But if there’s “above and beyond” work to be done–say repairing and repainting hundreds of square feet of ceiling because you took up an indoor archery hobby–material costs are being deducted, and I’ll use a stop watch to give an exact accounting of my labor cost, which is $50 an hour (it’s in the lease).
After labor and material costs-and deducting from their bill the two nice kitchen shelves they added, and estimated value of the baggie of mushrooms in the bedroom closet–their bill comes to $1,747.52. Their deposit was $1,750.
Honestly I’m impressed. They used the security deposit as effectively as possible, leaving behind the exact amount of work and waste equal to their deposit and in the end not screwing me out of a single dollar. They’ll each get a dollar and change back, to get an ice cream cone or soda in celebration. Amazing.
@Neil Hudelson:
Don’t give the shrooms back.
@Neil Hudelson: Based on the descriptions of the damages I would suggest not trying the shrooms.
Random miscellany:
Rudy Giuliani was apparently injured in a car accident in NH on Saturday night. There’s a whole weird “he stopped to help a woman who was the victim of domestic violence” preamble, then he got back on the road and was rear-ended. Developing story, not much else out there yet.
Someone referred to Donald Trump as “Metamucilini” and I giggled.
Speaking of Trump, he has apparently not made any statements in five days and the press has only seen him at a distance. Weird.