Bitchin Dave's Newsletter - July 29th
Over the last few weeks, we visited St Kitts & Nevis. It was interesting on so many levels - beyond just enjoying beaches in the West Indies.
First, and foremost, Nevis is where Alexander Hamilton was born. We did a brief tour, and his life there was a little complicated. His father was a wealthy plantation owner, and Alexander was born to a woman who many believe was a prostitute.
In any case, he was a bastard raised in Charlestown. He couldn't attend school because of that fact, and was tutored by a Jewish woman (and surprisingly, there was a decent sized Jewish community there!). Of course, he saw slavery first hand, and that was pointed out as an influence on his life. After his mother died at age 9, he left for NY.
It's really interesting how connected these islands are to the Americas.
Second is about this being Charlestown. As it happens, the first colonists who made it to the Americas in the 1600s landed on the island, reprovisioned their ship, and continued on their voyage, eventually settling in the Americas. But because they found the island's land was fertile, it became a stopping point for the future travellers, and at some point, they founded Charlestown. Of course the British "defended themselves" against the native population. By exterminating them.
The slave trade was big business. Nearly all of the slaves that made it to the colonies came through the West Indies. They were auctioned off in public squares, and sometimes made to work on the islands for the cash crops (sugar cane most notably) that were grown on the island.
The current inhabitants of St Kitts & Nevis (like most islands in the Caribbean) are descendants of the enslaved. They are well educated and know the history of their islands. But there's irony here! Because it was once a British colony, they are not specifically taught about slavery, and the Christopher Columbus story is prominent.
And of course, the West Indies abolished slavery by law, 30 years before the United States became disunited and engaged in the civil war.
St Kitts & Nevis rely heavily on tourism. It's the main industry today. Even though the temperature remains fairly consistent during the year, tourism is very seasonal with more people visiting during the winter months. So it's a struggle during the summer months for a lot of people, with limited income during the offseason. And, interestingly, it's taken them a lot of time to recover from COVID as well. A year of lost business meant some things that used to be available simply aren't any more.
And finally, a note about climate change. They say that "the poor" are affected first. And while these islands are not poor, per se, they don't have the same affluence as we have in the United States. And they see things first. There's a huge problem of sea level rise. There are downstream impacts from pollution. The weather is less predictable in some ways. And there are few answers.
You can learn an amazing amount by visiting a place and paying attention to the reality that's around you, rather than just ignoring it and sitting on the beach.
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TL;DR dad offers his son a chance to take on a challenge that you see on the socials. Kid succeeds. That video goes viral, and ultimately leads to the son getting a chance to go on the field with a baseball player he wanted to meet. It's worth a read, and reminds us that there is still good in the world. |
Disney is - and always has been - very territorial about their intellectual property. I mean look at Mickey Mouse, and how the Disney company sought to maintain the copyright over his likeness for as long as they did, going so far as to lobby congress so that they could maintain that copyright for longer than originally intended. And now along comes AI. Several companies are using it to generate content that (seemingly obviously) infringes on those copyrights. Only the courts have been kind of letting a lot of it slide as these new technologies are "training." But Disney is not taking that lying down and is suing to protect their IP from this type of infringement. It's worth watching to see how this plays out, and whether the other players with significant works being re-created ultimately join the effort to stop AI companies from using and monetizing on the works of Disney (and others). Here's an article from June that lays it all out. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-06-22/inside-disney-s-campaign-to-protect-darth-vader-from-ai |
Researchers have found a plant-based substance that provides a way to suck up microplastics. ... researchers found that extracts from okra and fenugreek can remove up to 90 percent of microplastics from ocean water, freshwater, and groundwater. These results were recently published in the journal ACS Omega. Its early, but the results are interesting! |
I've talked in the past about the possibilities for wireless power transmissions. DARPA has achieved this - by sending 800 watts of power over a distance of 5 miles! The pulse was transmitted with an approximate 20% efficiency, and some of the power it transmitted was used to make popcorn. The researchers have bigger ambitions for the system's use in the field, however, suggesting that it could be used to power unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Popcorn. Seems so innocent, given that this is an advanced research branch of the army. |
In 1964, NASA launched Relay 2 as an early satellite. The main objective was to determine the feasibility of launching a satellite that could remain in place and allow for data to be relayed from future manned missions (like the moon shots). Having fulfilled its purpose, the satellite was decommissioned in 1967, and just left to sit in a high orbit above the earth. And then in mid-June of this year, it suddenly came to life and emitted a strong radio pulse - well beyond anything that could be easily explained. Scientists are trying to understand what happened here, but it's a really fun mystery for now. The original article is behind a paywall: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2485157-dead-nasa-satellite-unexpectedly-emits-powerful-radio-pulse/ Another free source for a related article: https://www.sciencealert.com/mysterious-radio-signal-caught-bursting-from-long-dead-nasa-satellite |
This is an interesting long-form piece about how Harvard wanted to know about how the slave trade was handled at the university. It is worth a read... ...but for anyone who wants the cliff notes version, essentially someone was hired to do the research and what he found was that there was a lot of overlooked elements of slavery that helped build the university, and even several prominent people involved with the founding were slave owners. The researcher was asked to limit his findings because this was a source of shame. And when he didn't, he was let go, and the university turned the research over to a company doing more genealogy and less shining a light on slavery. Which is shameful in its own right. The past happened. Why can't we just own up to it and move on? |
Bonus: The whole Epstein saga feels like it's an episode of Police Squad with the orange menace in the role of Frank Drebin.
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