It was still raining a little bit on Thursday morning, but light enough for me to walk around Ginza district.
Pictures:
Used cameras in a store inside Shinjuku station (the ‘Junk’ designation simply means ‘Final Sale’ or ‘As-Is’; the item should still work fine!);
The Chuo Line at Shinjuku station (gets over to Tokyo Station quicker than the Yamanote loop line);
Then from Tokyo Station the Marounochi line with its iconic red trains go to Ginza station;
Artwork and the fancy inside of Ginza station;
The T-rex wire mobile is from an at exhibition on the top floor of Matsuya Ginza department store;
The new Nissan Leaf Electric Vehicle in a splashy turquoise color;
Ginza station on the way back.
I had the sense when I went out at 10 am this morning, that there were more people around on the stations and on the train than there normally would be. And then there were fewer as the rush hour approached at 5.30 pm (the peak is normally 6.00 pm to 7.00 pm).
All was explained when the hotel staff told me that today was a national holiday in Japan: Culture Day.
Culture Day (Bunka no Hi) is a national public holiday in Japan held annually on Nov. 3. It promotes the arts, cultural awareness, academic endeavors, and a love for peace and freedom. – from Wikipdia
It is Election Day in the United States, of course. It will already be 8 am on Wednesday morning here when the first results will start to come in.
The first polls close at 6 p.m. ET in the eastern parts of Indiana and Kentucky. Then at 7 p.m., polls close in Georgia, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia, the rest of Indiana, Kentucky and most of Florida. Then North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia follow at 7:30 p.m- as reported by CBS news.
The Shinjuku-Seibo station opened in 1952 and is the terminus on the Seibu Shinjuku Line. Its entrance is right by my hotel.This is the train station named Takadanobaba, on the green Yamanote Line operated by East Japan Railway Company (JR East).I love this graphic from a screen inside the train car that shows the estimated times to the upcoming stations. The Yamanote Line is a loop line and is one of Tokyo’s busiest and most important lines, connecting most of Tokyo’s major railway stations and commercial and urban centers. The Yamanote Line opened on 1 March 1885: 141 years ago.Mejiro station on the Yamanote Line has only this one entrance and exit.The Museum of Philately is close by Mejiro station, and there are a handful of displays and a library with stamp catalogues on the second floor. There are a few stamp dealers with shelves full of albums and stock books, and I bought several sheets of Japanese frame stamps to add to my collection. (Frame stamp sheets: special, limited-edition sheets of customizable or themed postage stamps issued by Japan Post. I will post pictures of a few examples).
For years, Dario Amodei, a founder of the start-up Anthropic, has been painted as the pre-eminent doomsayer of artificial intelligence, often making sweeping statements about how the technology could wreak havoc on the world.
On Monday, as Dr. Amodei presented his company’s paperwork for what could be the biggest ever initial public offering on Wall Street, he painted a more nuanced picture: Even with its many risks, A.I. has the potential to bring about untold benefits to humanity.
– Mike Isaac reporting for the New York Times
Anthropic has officially filed an S-1 registration statement with the SEC for an upcoming initial public offering, possibly as early as this November. The juggernaut of an IPO has estimated valuations ranging from $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion.
The way the Anthropic IPO goes will have widespread implications. ‘It makes the Claude chatbot, is a tent pole of the A.I. industry. It sits atop a pyramid of business partners and suppliers, making it a barometer of the broader economy’ writes Erin Griffith and Lauren Hirsch in another report for the NYT.
‘If Anthropic disappoints in its public debut, that could hurt investor confidence and cascade into a wider market sell-off, casting doubts on how much longer the A.I. boom can go. A successful offering could lift the market and pave the way for more A.I. companies to go public.’
Headlines and infographic from The New York Times. Check it out: ‘Sufficiently advanced AI systems could, if not developed, deployed, and operated with appropriate safeguards, oversight, and security measures, pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.’
Happy National Chess Day (here in the United States).
I asked Gemini AI to give me an overview of the history of chess machines. Supremacy for humans was already over some 30 years ago— in 1997.
That was the year in which IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue defeated reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match.
The history of chess machines spans from 18th-century mechanical hoaxes to modern supercomputers and AI.
1. Mechanical Automata & Early Inventions (Pre-Computer Era)
1770 – The Turk: Built by Wolfgang von Kempelen, this famous life-sized wooden figure dressed in Ottoman clothing appeared to play chess autonomously. In reality, it was a mechanical hoax with a skilled human chess player hidden inside the cabinet. It famously played against historical figures like Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin.
1912 – El Ajedrecista: Invented by Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo, this was the world’s first true automated chess-playing machine. Using electromechanical electromagnets, it could play an endgame (such as a king and rook against a lone king) without human intervention.
2. The Dawn of Computer Chess (1940s–1950s)
1948 – Turochamp: Alan Turing and David Champernowne designed the first theoretical chess-playing algorithm. Because early computers were not yet powerful enough, Turing calculated the moves manually by hand on paper.
1951 – Ferranti Mark 1 Program: British computer scientist Dietrich Prinz implemented a basic chess algorithm on the Ferranti Mark 1 computer, allowing it to solve “mate-in-two” chess problems.
1957 – IBM 704 Engine: Alex Bernstein created the first fully functional computer program capable of playing a complete game of chess from start to finish on an IBM 704 mainframe (taking about 8 minutes per move).
1980 – Boris Handroid: One of the earliest commercial chess computers featuring a rudimentary robotic arm to move pieces.
Early 1980s – Milton Bradley Chess Robots (Phantom, Grandmaster, Milton): Mass-market boards that used internal electromechanical systems and magnets under the board to pull and slide pieces automatically in response to human moves.
Commercial Dedicates: Standalone electronic chess computers (such as The Chessmaster series) became popular household gadgets in the 1980s.
4. Grandmaster and World Champion Defeat (1990s)
1988:Deep Thought became the first computer to defeat a chess grandmaster (Bent Larsen) in tournament play.
1997 – Deep Blue: IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue defeated reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match, marking the first time a machine beat a human world champion under standard tournament time controls.
5. Modern Neural Networks & AI (2000s–Present)
Engine Dominance: Traditional engines like Stockfish utilized deep calculation trees and advanced heuristics to surpass human capability by vast margins.
2017 – AlphaZero: Developed by DeepMind, AlphaZero used reinforcement learning and neural networks rather than human-programmed heuristics.
It taught itself chess from scratch in just a few hours and overwhelmingly defeated top engines like Stockfish.
I took this picture at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, MA, in 2024.
Endgame In 1950, Claude Shannon published the groundbreaking paper “Programming a Computer for Playing Chess.” About this time, he invented a chess machine called Endgame. The name refers to the machine’s ability to manage a maximum of six pieces, so he focused its computing power on the endgame, or the final moves of a chess game. Going through dozens of relay operations for each play, including a random element that changed its move in certain circumstances, Endgame could respond to an opponent’s move in roughly 10 seconds.
Claude Shannon Endgame base, circa 1950 Gift of Mary Elizabeth Shannon on behalf of the family of Claude E. Shannon MIT Museum Collections Endgame game board, circa 1950 Courtesy of IBM Corporate Archives
We started out in Bend, Oregon, a little after 8 am this morning.
We first stopped by the very last Blockbuster video rental store in all of the United States (and all of the world, in fact). We made another stop at the spectacular Smith Rock State Park.
After that we made our way north and west to Ellensburg, and across Snoqualmie Pass to Seattle.
We took U.S. Route 97 (US 97) from Bend all the way to the Washington-Oregon state line (the Columbia River), and from there to Toppenish in Washington. From Toppenish we took Interstate 82 to Ellensburg, and then Interstate 90 that runs across Snoqualmie Pass to Seattle.This is the the very last Blockbuster video rental store in the whole world (in Bend, Oregon). It was a Pacific Video store before converting to a Blockbuster franchise in June 2000. It became the last Blockbuster store in the U.S. in 2018 and the last Blockbuster store in the world in March 2019.Smith Rock State Park is a state park located in central Oregon’s High Desert near the communities of Redmond and Terrebonne. The day-use area of the park is open daily from dawn to dusk.The sheer cliffs are the result of a major volcanic eruption in the area millions of years ago. The stone material is called Smith Rock tuff.This charging stop is in Madras, Oregon.Here is Oregon’s Mount Hood, seen from U.S. Route 97. Mt Hood is an active stratovolcano and the highest mountain in Oregon, standing at 11,249 feet (3,429 meters). It is located about 50 miles east of Portland.Still in Oregon here, but now approaching the Columbia River Gorge and the Washington-Oregon state line.Hello Washington State. We had just crossed the Columbia River. This is still U.S. Route 97.Here is the Columbia River Gorge and the mighty Columbia River— the Washington-Oregon state line.Look for the Stonehenge Memorial (round brown structure, middle of the picture) perched on a bluff overlooking the Columbia River Gorge. It was built as a World War I memorial dedicated to soldiers from Klickitat County, Washington, who died in the war.Wind turbines dotting the hills, very similar to the ones we had seen in California.This Stars and Stripes flag on a tall pole is in Toppenish.Here is the Yakima River, a stone’s throw from our charging station in Yakima.Our last charging stop for the day was in Yakima.On the way to Ellensburg. Light from the setting sun behind us is refracted on the car’s display screen.Late afternoon in Snoqualmie Pass over the Cascade Mountain Range, on Interstate 90.Crossing Lake Washington for the last few miles to Seattle. The light rail train on the left is still a new sight, in operation since late March 2026.The end of our day’s journey on U.S. Route 97, Interstate 82 and Interstate 90 is coming up with the Rainier Avenue exit. The lettering in the cement at the tunnel entrance says ‘Seattle — Portal to the Pacific’.
Here is our drive for today: about 475 mi and just under 8 hours.
We took Interstate 5 through Sacramento and Redding, and then at the little town of Weed, went on to U.S. Route 97 to cross into Oregon, and go through Klamath Falls to Bend. Morning rush hour near Sacramento. It helped a lot to have an HOV lane that we could use.Our first charging stop for the day at Anderson, CA, was the same one we had used on the way down to Palm Springs. Check out the olive green Cybertruck.Interstate 5 winding through the mountains near Redding.One of the arms of the sprawling Shasta Lake north of Redding.The souvenir store in Weed, CA, does not actually sell weed (cannabis) products. It does have t-shirts, sweatshirts, key chains, shot glasses and all kinds of other souvenirs.Weed is also where we made our second charging stop.Beautiful Mt Shasta, with very little snow this time of year. Mt Shasta peaks out at only 200 ft lower than Washington State’s Mt Rainier. Mount Shasta is easier and simpler to climb than Mount Rainier, serving as a non-technical steep snow-mountaineering peak, whereas Mount Rainier is a massive, heavily glaciated objective requiring rope-team and crevasse-rescue skills. [Source: Global Summit Guide]Paraglider near Mt Shasta.Trees in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.Now approaching the California-Oregon border, and this is the little town of Dorris on U.S. Route 97.A vista of the tranquil waters of Upper Klamath Lake, as seen from U.S. Route 97 that runs alongside it.Trees at a last rest stop in southern Oregon, at about 4 pm.We have arrived in Bend, OR. Giving the car one more charge before we head to the hotel.
We left Palm Springs shortly after 8 am this morning.
We made two charging stops, a lunch stop in Bakersfield, and two additional stops, and arrived at Lodi, California, shortly after 6 pm.
Our route took us to Yucca Valley, and through the Mojave Desert to Barstow and then to Bakersfield. From Bakersfield we followed California State Route 99 (SR 99) to Stockton and then drove a few miles on Interstate 5 to get us to Lodi for our overnight stay.An array of solar panels and a Joshua tree on the right.Wind turbines on the way to Barstow.A closer look at the solar panels.
A glimpse of the Mojave Air and Space Port (MHV). This 3,300-acre site houses over 100 commercial and experimental aircraft. Planes are stored here for temporary holding, part-stripping, or scrapping.Evidence of wildfires that scarred the hills.It was 1.02 pm and 102°F (39°C) when we rolled into Bakersfield.Our first charging stop was in Bakersfield at the Double Tree Hotel there.Evidence of the construction of the California High-Speed Rail infrastructure. Construction of a 171-mile segment between Merced and Bakersfield, with revenue service projected between 2031 and 2033 is underway, but to date the project has seen massive funding shortfalls, complex land acquisition, and severe political and legal delays.Our second charging stop at Madera.California produces about 80% to 82% of the world’s almonds.
I embarked on a roadtrip to Palm Springs, California, this morning, with my two amigos in their Tesla Model Y.
We left Seattle at 10 am and made our first charging stop in Ridgefield, WA, after 152 miles. Washington State’s only In-and-Out Burger restaurant is right there and we stopped in for lunch.
The second charging stop was just under two hours later off Interstate 5 near Halsey and Brownsville in Oregon.
Our overnight stop is Grant’s Pass in the south of Oregon. The Best Western hotel here has a free EV charger-enabled parking space, which a nice bonus.
I remember reading in Alvin Toffler’s 1970 book called ‘Future Shock’ (reading it just a few years after 1970) about an automated, computerized home of the future. While the owner is away, the house monitors its own structural integrity and cross-references local data. Recognizing a structural vulnerability in the roof and receiving a weather alert that a severe storm is approaching, the house takes the initiative. Rather than waiting for the owner to return home to a leak, the house places a call to the owner’s mobile or office phone. It informs the owner of the impending storm, explains that the roof needs immediate attention, and asks for verbal or electronic permission to contact a technician to fix the issue before the rain starts.
It took 56 years, but it certainly looks like that future is here.
Here is what Eli Tan reports to the New York Times from San Francisco:
Last week, I answered a call from an unknown number. “I reached Anthem Dental and am about to connect you,” a voice piped up.
The call was from an artificial intelligence “agent” created by Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. Ten minutes earlier, the A.I. agent had called my dental insurer, given it my member ID, answered a security question and waited on hold before transferring me to the representative — just as I had asked it to.
I was surprised by how much easier the agent had made it to deal with insurance. It was one of many tasks that I accomplished with Muse, the A.I. agent app that Meta unveiled this month.
Muse is the first consumer A.I. agent from a major tech company that has become publicly available. The tech industry sees agents as the next frontier, far more capable than chatbots. Agents can roam the internet, sign in to websites, fill out spreadsheets and make phone calls on behalf of people — and that’s just the start.
Tan goes on to describe some of the dozens of day-to-day tasks that he had Muse perform. He had to trust Muse with his most personal data, which included connecting it to his bank accounts and email.
He gave acces to his credit card accounts to Muse and asked it to track his spending in Google sheets. Muse flagged two duplicate subscriptions and cancelled them. Muse used his email account to request a refund for a free newspaper trial that had expired, saving him $44.99.
Headlines and photo from the article in the New York Times. (First, may I observe that the writer could also let Muse shop for a new screen protector for his phone? 😉) The bird at the top of the screen is Wren, the Muse assistant’s name. Wren can make phone calls using different personalities, with a male voice named Brett and a female voice named Hailey. (For now, only a limited number of users will be given access to the voice call feature). Wren also negotiated the purchase of items on Facebook’s marketplace, starting with a lowball offer and then picking up from the response if the seller is willing to negotiate or not. The writer ends his report by noting that one of these purchases involved ‘a refreshing, in-person human conversation with the seller Ashley, something neither Wren nor any A.I. could ever provide’. He suspected ‘this might be another reason Muse might not immediately catch on — sometimes people just don’t want to have their personal lives automated, even if the technology is good enough’.
Welp.
It tuned out to be really bad timing to have picked today for the rollout of the AI-supported system called SMART (Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories) that aims to help manage air traffic and reduce flight delays.
An antiquated equipment failure— compounded by the accidental cutting of a fiber-optic cable that took 8 hours to repair— caused chaos at all the large East Coast airports today.
Open AI announced today that their AI technology had solved one of the seven Millennium Problems in mathematics: the Navier-Stokes problem.
(The work of the AI bots leaned heavily on breakthroughs highly related to the Navier-Stokes problem, done by New York University mathematician Tristan Buckmaster and Anthropic mathematician Levent Alpöge. So it did not start with a clean slate.)
Google AI Mode explains in broad terms how it was done:
The computational proof demonstrating a finite-time breakdown in fluid motion was achieved through the coordination of 10,000 autonomous AI agents operating continuously for 88 hours. This swarm engineeredan inward-spiraling vortex where competing physical forces precisely neutralized each other, resulting in a self-driven singularity whose logical steps were formally verified using the Lean programming language.
Below is the answer to my request to Google AI state to state the Navier Stokes millennium problem in simple terms.
The Star Trek franchise is 60 years old this month.
I found this infographic in the South African newspaper ‘Die Burger’ and enlisted the help of AI chatbot Claude from Anthropic to translate the Afrikaans bits into English.
(For the record: I can read and translate the Afrikaans in the picture as well— but not in 11 seconds flat).
Star Trek movies and television episodes frequently feature robots, androids, and advanced artificial intelligence. Lieutenant Commander Data is a fictional, self-aware android in the Star Trek franchise, best known as the chief operations officer and second officer on the USS Enterprise-D in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
I opted for the Seattle Public Library (instead of the bookstore) for my book fix today.
Notes for the pictures: Black Tesla Model Y photobombs my picture of the William Kenzo Nakamura United States Courthouse on 6th Avenue.
The Courthouse is a federal courthouse and primarily used by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. It was completed in 1940.
I am not sure why the 13-star flag (for the original 13 colonies, used 1777-1795) is on the courthouse— possibly to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. (Any past official national flag can be legally flown or exhibited for historical and patriotic displays.) Flags are flying at half-staff to honor the life and memory of country music legend and philanthropist Dolly Parton, who passed away Tuesday at the age of 80.
The yellow Lamborghini is a Lamborghini HuracánSpyder (the convertible Huracán, which is Spanish for hurricane).
Near the Hotel Sorrento off Madison Street is where I caught the G-line bus on the way back. The Hotel Sorrento was completed in 1909 and is Seattle’s longest-operating boutique hotel. Gas prices are still high. The war with Iran is now 6 months old. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed, despite the insistence of the White House that it is ‘open’.
The Blue Angels did fly today, to close out the Seafair Festival weekend.
I had my big digital camera at the ready to take a few pictures from the bedroom upstairs.
The last picture shows all six aircraft in the squad, with the numbers on their tail fins.
The U.S. Navy Blue Angels roared overhead today as they rehearsed their maneuvers for the annual Seafair Weekend Festival. (The aircraft are F/A-18E Super Hornets.)
I ran outside, or to the window, a few times when I heard them, and took these pictures.
I walked down to the Capitol Hill branch of the Seattle Public Library today to take back my two books that were badly overdue. I walked by the little car with the AFK BYE* plates again, and it made me smile.
*Away From Keyboard, Bye. AFK originated in 1990s chatrooms and gaming communities, and is now commonly used in mobile messaging to let someone know you will be temporarily unavailable to respond.
(Just make sure the other person knows what AFK stands for, or they might think you cussed at them and no longer want to respond! 😆)
These Black-eyed Susans (genus Rudbeckia) seem to seek out the sun. (Careful, or you will get scorched.) Today’s high here in the city was 80°F (27°C), so not bad at all. Elsewhere on the North American continent here, it is much, much warmer. The planet’s strongest heat dome will soon tower over the Rockies and Plains, reports the Washington Post, pushing temperatures into record levels in 32 states. Yikes.
Liam Bowman, Maia Nehme, Dana Hedgpeth and Joe Heim reports in the Washington Post: For a while, it was uncertain whether the record-breaking fireworks show President Donald Trump had promised would even happen. The nation’s 250th birthday celebration in Washington was beset by record heat, lightning strikes, an evacuation order and widespread confusion on the National Mall about whether the event would go forward. It had been a long, often stressful day. But the fireworks display that began a stroke before midnight and lasted 40 minutes was a reward for those who stayed and may have provided a temporary respite for a capital and country riven by political anger, distrust and contempt.
[Headline and reporting from the Washington Post] Just to add to the Washington Post’s reporting: Washington, D.C.’s 4th of July celebration utilized roughly 850,000 individual fireworks, with an estimated total weight of over 85 tons of pyrotechnics. And not to be a party pooper BUT: Fireworks produce brilliant displays using heavy metals and toxic chemicals. When exploded, these compounds release toxic smoke, ash, and residue that degrade air quality, pollute nearby waterways, and harm human health. The massive smoke clouds are loaded with microscopic dust and soot. Breathing this in triggers asthma attacks, irritates lungs, and worsens cardiovascular diseases. [Source: Google AI Overview]
Before tonight’s Egypt-Iran match at Lumen Field, the stadium held a moment of silence for the victims of the recent devastating earthquakes in Venezuela.
Later tonight, I headed down to Seattle Center for the post-game drone show. It only featured a few hundred drones and lasted just 12 minutes, but it was still great to watch.
This Mustique Blue Rolls-Royce Spectre was parked across from Bar Cantinetta restaurant here on Capitol Hill tonight.
It is fully electric and styled with an illuminated-style, upright Rolls-Royce grille, a very long hood and fastback two-door coupe profile, slim split headlights with vertical daytime running lights and aerodynamic, partially covered wheels.
[Information from Chat GPT]
They start at a base MSRP of $397,750, but since Rolls-Royces are heavily commissioned and usually feature bespoke colors, veneers, and interior upgrades, you could easily end up paying between $450,000 and $550,000.
The Rolls-Royce Spectre is manufactured at the brand’s global headquarters and manufacturing facility in Goodwood, West Sussex, England.
Happy Friday.
The coverage of SpaceX’s gigantic IPO (initial public offering) on CNBC this morning was wall-to-wall, with hyperbole reaching the moon.
Could orbital data centers running on solar power one day beam information back to Earth using lasers?
Time will tell.
Here is Ron Lieber, writing for the New York Times about missing out on SpaceX’s IPO:
Elon Musk may be about to become a trillionaire. Many of the people who work for him at SpaceX are about to hit seven-figure jackpots — or more — via the company’s initial public offering. And individual investors are lining up for a chance to buy shares for the $135 opening price. There are so many of them that some brokerage firms are, in effect, running a lottery for $135 tickets. Do you have fear of missing out? That’s natural, maybe inevitable. But this is a fine time to remind yourself that you can in fact win if you don’t play this week. JOMO, the joy of missing out, is a reasonable alternative to FOMO.
Lieber goes on to suggest that we revisit our medium- and long-term goals.
You might be surprised to find how many of them you have reached.
He mentions members of his immediate family that had survived cancer, that investing his savings in index funds over many years have paid off, that he has never bought shares in an IPO, and that he still works without boredom or fear of termination.
Illustration for Ron Lieber’s ‘Your Money’ column in the New York Times.
