Daily Log

Woke up around 9, but tried to go back to sleep. Read some. Came down. Didn't get around to opening this journal until 1, by which time I had largely rewritten the Music Week introduction, and had breakfast. We also finished the jigsaw. Hot again today. It's over 100F now, forecast for 107F. We've been over 100 for most of the week. I should get Music Week up shortly. After that, I have no idea what I'm going to work on. Probably Loose Tabs, as that is the least demanding thing I can think of.

Wednesday, August 12, 2026

Daily Log

Woke up today around 10:30. Finished the section on Venezuela's wars of independence: the failures in 1810 and 1814, then Bolivar's final triumph after returning from exile in Haiti and Jamaica, swearing to end slavery, raising British support, and recruiting crucial allies from the plains. Next section covers the decline from 2004-2019. That is no doubt the point of the book, but the history matters, and I now have much more detail than I had from Grandin. Came down around 11:30. I went to Eddy's Toyota yesterday. They decided that there was nothing wrong with the car computer display system. The missing maps were part of the Toyota Connect app. And they couldn't troubleshoot the app, but they gave me a support phone number. I haven't followed up, nor have I looked at the reply to my complaint. Although the service is free (covered in the purchase price for two years), they wanted $65 to change the dirty cabin air filter. I've replaced them several times in the 2006. Those things cost about $10, and take about 5 minutes to change. Or 10 seconds, if you don't count the work it takes to visually inspect the old filter. (They're behind the glove compartment, so you have to pop it out, then put it back.) While I was waiting, I overheard another customer being told she should have her tires rebalanced ($90), and a front-end alignment ($150). I'm not sure I'm up for a "Toyota Really Sucks" post, but I'm collecting data.

I wasn't looking forward to facing email today, but when I sat down at the computer, I found 124 unread messages in my Thunderbird inbox. Got a flash pop-up of 1 more while writing this. Most I've seen from recent days, but 25-30 are from today. No Consumer Guide yet. I'll go through them later, and make notes below:

• Toyota Brand Engagement Center responded by my complaint. Well, sort of: they said they're sorry, but stuff it: Drive Connect is over, use your phone maps, go to the dealer to see if anything is wrong with the panel. They gave me a link for info on resetting the app PIN. I looked at it, but haven't tried it. Looks to me like you have to login before you can update the PIN, but right now I'm not able to login at all. Some more research suggests that the app is near-useless, with or without a Toyota Connect subscription. I found a discussion of subscription issues here. There is a lot of learning curve with this crap (and evidently most of what you learn is that it's all crap).

Music Week

Expanded blog post, August archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 26 albums, 5 A-list

Music: Current count 46411 [46385] rated (+26), 25 [18] unrated +7).

Advance Music Week appeared August 12 on Substack. It is also archived here. My cutoff was done before the Substack post, but the introduction is revised/rewritten.

New records reviewed this week:

• Michael Blake: Piccolos Before Rifles (2025 [2026], Baby Tank): [sp]: B+(**)
• Billy Childs: Triumvirate (2026, Mack Avenue): [sp]: B+(*)
• Isaiah Collier: Joy (2026, Brownswood, EP): [sp]: B−
• DOMi & JD Beck: Who Asked? (2026, Apeshit/Blue Note): [sp]: B−
• Ferg's Imaginary Big Band: The New Atomic (2024 [2026], Trash City): [sp]: B+(*)
• Satoko Fujii Orchestra Kobe: After the Storm (2026, Libra): [cd]: A−
• Iceage: For Love of Grace & the Hereafter (2026, Mexican Summer): [sp]: B+(**)
• Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds: Mutiny After Midnight (2026, High Top Mountain/Atlantic): [sp]: B+(**)
• Leven Kali: LK99 (2026, Def Jam): [sp]: B+(*)
• Kiss Facility: Khazna (2026, Ambient Tweets): [sp]: B+(**)
• Caroline Kraabel/Pat Thomas/John Edwards/Steve Noble: Transgressive Coastlines (2024 [2026], Shrike): [bc]: B+(**)
• Ravyn Lenae: Blue Island (2026, Atlantic): [sp]: B+(***)
• Madonna: Confessions II (2026, Warner): [sp]: A−
• Oliver-Smith Incomparables: Stomp Your Stuff (2025 [2026], Turtle Bay): [cd]: A−
• Arlo Parks: Ambiguous Desire (2026, Transgressive): [sp]: B+(**)
• Pussy Riot: Cyka (2026, Stem): [sp]: A−
• The Rolling Stones: Foreign Tongues (2026, Rolling Stones/Polydor): [sp]: A−
• The Strokes: Reality Awaits (2026, RCA/Cult): [sp]: B+(**)
• AJ Suede: Atomic Justice (2026, Knowhatimean, EP): [sp]: B+(*)
• Skúli Sverrisson/Bill Frisell: For All Your Flowers (2026, Newvelle): [sp]: B+(*)
• Syd: Beard (2026, Free Lunch/Warner): [sp]: B+(**)
• Juanma Trujillo/Kenneth Jiménez/Vasco Trilla: Nada Es Nada (2026, Ramble): [bc]: B+(**)
• WDR Big Band: Jagged Edges & Elegant Lines: The Music of Ayn Inserto (Summit) [08-07]
• Wiki: Ancient History (2026, Wikset): [sp]: B+(***)
• Yard Act: You're Gonna Need a Little Music (2026, Universal Island): [sp]: B+(**)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

None.

Old music:

None.

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Dr. Gianni Bianchini: A Study in Songbook (Gianni Bianchini Entertainment) [08-01]
• Geof Bradfield/Myra Melford/Ben Goldberg/Dana Hall: Open or Close (Calligram) [09-04]
• Greg Chako: Hard Bop for the Record (Mint400) [09-04]
• Christian Finger: Zeit Zirkel (Finger Music) [10-01]
• Satoko Fujii Orchestra Berlin: Second Attempt (Libra) [09-04]
• Gwen Hughes: The First Noel: Jazz Hymns for Christmas (Fairfield) [10-15]
• Jason Kao Hwang/Human Rites Trio: Second Life (Flying Panda Music) [10-01]
• Judi Silvano's Garden Winds: First Flight (JSL) [10-01]
• Technocrats: Passionata: The Music of Gregg Hill (Cold Plunge) [08-28]
• Chris Whiteman/John Toomey Quartet: Live at Révéler (self-released) [10-02]

Daily Log

Woke up around 9. Read some. Went back to bed, and slept to 11:30. Came down by noon. Have to take the car in for "service" at 2 today. So nothing much to do until then. I posted my complaint about Yahoo last night. Laura commented on the length (wc says 2120 words). I didn't get through yesterday's email. Quite a bit has piled up this morning. I'm not looking forward to spending most of the day getting through it. I did make a bit of progress on the jazz poll website index page. Formatting isn't great, but better. Progress will be slow, but should be steady from this point.

Email (inbox: 215):

• Substack: Music Week (8:1): +1 like; Jordan Peterson: daily stats: 5 likes, 1 comment, 1 restack, 0 subs, 127 email views, 22 other views; Yahoo Mail Really Sucks; shareable assets; 3 likes. Comment from Gary Finney: "You know, Tom, for many years now, I have viewed customer service to be an oxymoron on the same level as military intelligence." (Yahoo buried this comment in a thread.)
• Ack from Toyota Brand Engagement Center.
• Yahoo says: Daily Streak Completed; Track Your Progress.
• OR Books: Julie Tilsen: Personal Responsibility, Inc.: How Psychotherapy Turns Society's Problems Into Yours.
• Amazon: book and mouse delivered. Three emails threaded.
• Tom Engelhardt: Aging in the Wrong World

Daily Log

Got up around 11. Had to come down directly. Laura was already up. This is going to be a weird day. Yesterday was spent writing up the "Jordan Peterson" post. Not sure what I need to do today. One thing is to write to Toyota about their crummy expired app. I take the car into the dealer for "free service" tomorrow, so I need to get my complaints lined up. Second thing I need to do is to figure out the CSS problem with my update to the jazz poll website. Adding the album cover to the third column broke the formatting of the first column. Go figure. Of course, I still have the email problems, and the car audio problem.

I ordered a new mouse from Amazon. To get tomorrow delivery, I had to add to bring the order up to $25, so I followed their recommendations, and wound up picking a Yakov Rabkin book.

Started another Substack piece: Yahoo Mail Really Sucks.

Email (who knows?):

• Substack: Jordan Peterson: +3 likes (+2 yesterday), 1 comment.
• Note from Arlette Hovinga on jazz poll. I responded, but through Yahoo app, so I don't have a record in my mailer.
• Tom Carson: Drunk History in the Making: No, Trump isn't an alcoholic. He just might as well be, and that goes double for the Trumpified GOP.
• M7.4 earthquake in Colombia.
• TomDispatch: William D Hartung: The Pentagon's Obsession With China Puts Hawai'i at Risk
• Amazon: I was going to order a replacement mouse. To get overnight shipping, I added a Yakov Rabkin book

I wrote a comment to Toyota on their lapsed trial subscription:

You sent me email, "Do You Miss Remote and Drive Connect?" When I bought a new 2025 Toyota Corolla Hybrid, I seem to have been given a trial subscription that has expired on July 31. I thought this was related to your Phone App, which had some features of your Remote Connect. I never found those features useful, and in any case the app stopped working about a month after we got the car. It still gives me a "security alert" requiring a PIN that I don't have, offering no way to get one. So I didn't think anything of the expiration, until the maps stopped working, and the screen told me I had to sign up for your "service." As I recall, the salesman told me the maps came from my phone, and the app itself would cost half of what you are charging. I've had many other glitches with the panel, plus I still hate that I can't play CDs, as I could on my previous Toyota. I am very unhappy with the car, the dealer (Eddy's Toyota, in Wichita), and now with the company, which I once regarded as the best in the industry. Now, like many companies, you are making it extremely difficult to get any sort of customer service. I feel like screaming, but that would just chew up precious characters in a message that's mostly likely only going to be read by a machine anyway.

I seem to have been able to submit this message. I had to fill out a long form of contact information. I also had the option of having the email forwarded to the dealer, so I checked that. I have a service appointment with the dealer tomorrow, so it will be interesting to see if they know anything about this.

Daily Log

Slept until after 10. Came down before 11. I started working on a piece for Substack, based on a Jordan Peterson title. Should be pretty straightforward, so that will be main job today. Still have to deal with email. I may start collecting Loose Tabs, but I have some time for that. More urgent would be extending the jazz poll website facelift. I'm stuck there with a CSS problem (getting the rows to align vertically). I also should add the CGs to the Christgau website, and update it. Then there's the matter of setting up a Francis Davis website. First step there will be to register a domain name.

Email (171 in inbox, who knows how many read/unread?; I've read all the email, with 162 left in inbox; still cannot delete the zombie emails I moved from spam to inbox before clearing spam):

• Project Syndicate: The Canary in the AI Coal Mine (Kenneth Rogoff); Zombie Monetarism (James K Galbraith)
• Cadence: Irene Schweizer interview
• Michael Steinman: Dizzy Gillespie clip (started playing).
• Substack: Jordan Peterson: shareable assets, +2 likes, +1 subscriber (Troy Dostert).
• Sam's Club offer for $25 for one year (50% off regular).

I published the Substack piece. I updated my website. Firefox is running extremely slow these days. I probably need to shut everything down.

Rebooted. Thunderbird came up and gave me the same "RETR command did not succeed. Error retrieving a message. Mail server responded: Server error - Please try again later."

Daily Log

Slept until 11:30. Started reading a book about Venezuela, which with its history of the early colony is a refreshing change from the AI books. I didn't get Music Week out last night. Will try again today. I'm using the Yahoo! Mail webmail tool, with no ability that I'm aware of to download messages. I hate it, but I don't know what else I can do at this point. Customer service at Yahoo seems to be hermetically sealed. I don't see any good options. Meanwhile, my computer is slowing down alarmingly. I've never move into the newer computer, but something is wrong with it too. I don't know what to do here.

Email (who the fuck knows? but it's likely that I still haven't looked at old mail; latest email in Thunderbird is April 4: Tom Engelhardt: A Fly on the Wall):

• Xgau Sez Questions: every time I click on one, I get a message "We couldn't load this message." It then offers "Retry," but reverts to the index. When I try deleting those emails, they reappear in the index. At least one older one is visible. I should file a TR, but there's no fucking way to do that.
• Tom Carson: A Tale of Two Kentuckians: Andy Veshear vs. Thomas Massie in 2028? What the heck, we've seen it before.
• Substack stuff: Loose Tabs (8): +1 like; +1 comment (chpowell: "Great! We're in heated agreement."); Music Week (8:1): +3 likes; +2 subscribers; daily stats: 4 likes, 2 restacks, 1 sub, 111 email views, 55 other views. The other views were higher than usual. Also note that Twitter still outperforms Bluesky 13-8.
• Normal G Finkelstein new book: Gaza's Gravediggers: An Inquiry Into Corruption in High Places.
• TomDispatch: When a President Promises a Massacre
• Jim Eigo: downloads for digital only releases, the sort of thing I would normally squirrel away in my Downloads folder.
• Toyota again: Do You Miss Remote and Drive Connect? I don't think so, but I do miss having a car that played CDs, and where the instruments worked reliably without dropping connections.
• Important Records: big, quite lovely email that's practically a catalogue of their products.
• 4DaRecord: I downloaded T(h)ree.

Per their mail, the Toyota app Remote and Drive Connect allowed me to do the following things (from my phone app) that I can no longer do:

• Start your vehicle
• Check status of doors/windows
• Check fuel level
• Lock/unlock your vehicle

I don't know why I would want to be able to do any of those things from my phone. Actually, I haven't been able to get into the Toyota app for many months now, due to some security thing that I've never understood. The bigger problem is that when the trial ended, I lost my GPS maps. Except that I still do have my maps from Android Auto, so maybe I'm using some kind of "expert" interface to them? As we've only been driving in town, I've only used the maps to set an route once in the last year. Seems like I could do that with the phone as well. They also have a "Music Lovers" option, but it only allows you to stream from Apple or Amazon, and only if you pay them separately for an account, so what is the value added here?

I posted this on X (remembering that once I had a problem with Cox customer service running me around, but Cox monitored mentions of them on Twitter, and sent me a helpful message after I complained there):

I've been a Cox customer for 25+ years. They sold my email account to Yahoo, and now I can't POP my mail. AFAICT, they have no customer service. I've spent 8 hrs with their chatbot, to no avail (including: no one available). Is this the future? Or is Yahoo just extra shitty?

Music Week

Expanded blog post, August archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 19 albums, 2 A-list

Music: Current count 46385 [46366] rated (+19), 18 [11] unrated +7).

New records reviewed this week:

• Badger Hunt: Full Moon in My Pocket (2026, self-released): [bc]: B+(**)
• Concrete Rock: New York DIY (2026, Desert Island): [bc]: B+(*)
• Graham Coxon: Castle Rock (2026, Transgressive): [sp]: B
• CS Cleaners: What's This? (2026, Wharf Cat): [sp]: B+(***)
• Doseone & Height Keech: Wood Teeth II (2026, Hands Made, EP): [sp]: B+(**)
• Kelela: New Avatar (2026, Warp): [sp]: B+(**)
• Mark Lomax, II & the Urban Art Ensemble: Black Odes: A Reclamation Suite (2026, CFG Multimedia): [os]: B+(***)
• Mon Rovîa: Bloodline (2026, Nettwerk): [sp]: B+(*)
• Navy Blue: Sir Render (2026, Freedom Sounds): [sp]: B+(***)
• Odd Okoddo & Ogoya Nengo: Palagoma (2026, From Cool Waters): [bc]: B+(***)
• Henrik Olsson: Antumbra Ensemble (2025 [2026], Cuneiform): [dl]: B
• Lido Pimienta: Caribenya (2026, Anti-): [sp]: B+(*)
• Speaker Music: Synoptic Audio (2026, Planet Mu): [sp]: B+(**)
• Vince Staples: Cry Baby (2026, Loma Vista): [sp]: A-
• Frank Trompeter/Richard Gilman-Opalsky: Antifascist Freedom Music (2026, Mahakala Music): [bc]: B+(**)
• Twisted Teens: Florida Water Blues (2026, Going Underground): [sp]: B+(***)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Lekan Animashaun: Low Profile (1977-86 [2026], Strut): [bc]: B+(***)
• Los Orientales De Paramonga: 1972-1976 (1972-76 [2026], Analog Africa): [sp]: A-
• Gary Stewart: One Track Mind (1970-73 [2026], Delmore Recording Society): [sp]: B+(**)
• Gary Stewart: King of the Honky Tonks Live (1981, Gary Stewart): [sp]: B+(**)

Old music:

• Twisted Teens: Twisted Teens (2024 [2025], Chain Smoking): [sp]: B+(***)

Grade (or other) changes:

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• The Joshua Breakstone Quartet: Wonderful! (1983, Capri) [08-21]
• Rob Dixon: Naptown Soul (Strikezone) [08-21]
• John Hollenbeck & Hot Club Jazz Orchestra: Peace & Justice (Flexatonic) [08-14]
• Justin Pierce: Sway (Justin Pierce Music) [08-14]
• Alex Roitman Tango Ensemble: La Cocina De Tango (ARTE-FL) [08-25]
• Henry Threadgill Zooid: Cut You Where You Was (Pi) [08-28]
• Gaia Wilmer Large Ensemble Featuring Mônica Salmaso: Parabólico: Reflections on Gilberto Gil Volume I (Sunnyside) [08-14]

Daily Log

Published Music Week (8:1) yesterday (archived here. Didn't get to writing the introduction to Music Week proper, so that is today's project. The Substack version talked about my email ordeal, and also the car "platform" issues. I spent several more hours looking into email. At this point, I don't have any good ideas. And it's pretty clear that Yahoo is not going to provide any help. I'll get back to that later today, but in the meantime I probably need to work off the webmail interface, at least to delete the 90% crap I receive.

Slept until after 10. Into the appendix to The God Test, so I'll be done with it today. Basically, what he's saying is:

1. AI is awesome, or at least it will be (any day now, but soon).
2. This can be good or bad, depending on how it is used.
3. He offers some suggestions for making good more likely than bad, such as world government and/or fundamental changes in our psyches and culture (like promoting cognitive empathy).
4. He concludes with some bullshit about God (or gods), which he (as he's always done) grounds in natural selection.

He doesn't provide much convincing evidence for (1). On (2), he doesn't explain why AI could be put to bad purposes. It's not that he offers nothing, but it's not enough to get to (3), which is largely just a reiteration of his Nonzero games hypothesis. (4) is also long on reiteration. He has a background in theology, which he (following Pierre Teilhard de Chardin) has expanded into philosophy, psychology, evolutionary theory, and game theory. On a practical level, I agree with most of his critiques and proposals, but I see little value in his teleology. As an atheist-mathematician once said, "I have no need of that hypothesis."

Not sure what to read next. Latest purchase is another Israel book, but I still have a lot on the table I haven't gotten to.

Email (several days worth, working from web; 345 in inbox, but that includes older email I have seen):

• Substack Music Week (8:1): shareable assets; 4 likes; 2 new subscribers (Sidney Carpenter-Wilson, Ovidiu Pop).
• Rodrigo Amado on his records, with note that he's going to be shipping some copies to US soon.
• The Intercept: Tell the Senate to block Trump's USPS takeover
• Chuck Eddy: complaining about only having 600 subscribers (or 753 "followers", with 1.1K on Bluesky), panning for $50 subscriptions to read all the stuff he outlines for free.
• Cadence: several posts, including "Looking back to 2012," with some critics' EOY lists.
• Project Syndicate: Why Wealth Taxes Always Fail (Cristina Enache, really?); Zombie Monetarism (James K Galbraith); The AI Boom and the Future of Finance); Explaining China's Industrial Competitiveness (Miao Yanliang); Global Tax Reform Is the Key to a Fair AI Economy (Zorka Milin); Global governance is not fit for purpose (which also points to "Global Governance Remade," which supposedly is).
• Michael Steinman: Yahoo thinks this is spam, and flags it as such, but allowed it to appear in inbox; I clicked on "It's safe" (had to click on that two times); Yahoo is stupid.
• Tom Engelhardt: Donald Trump Gives Decline New Meaning. One note here is that Russia has lost 450,000 troops in the Ukraine War. That struck me as way too high, but that seems to be the estimate of "Western intelligence agencies"; Ukraine argues for a higher figure; BBC News says it has verified "identities of over 223,000 individual Russian soldiers killed in action." Ukraine says it has lost 50,000 soldiers; the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has verified 16,126 Ukrainian civilian deaths, but actual totals are "likely much higher." BBC has an estimate of Ukrainian deaths at 200,000. UALosses project puts Ukrainian deaths at 96,821.

Daily Log

Woke up around 8, but wasn't really asleep. I took an hour nap last night, 11-12, partly because I was tired, but mostly because I was upset at computer, and didn't know what else to do. I'm about 30 pages from the end of The God Test, and not enjoying the wrap up at all. I came down. Laura was watching a show called Lucky, some kind of heist thriller with Annette Benning and Timothy Olyphant. I often hate these bad-hings-happen-when-bad-people-steal-from-other-bad-people stories, so showed no enthusiasm for watching this one. When I came down, Laura switched to Beyond Paradise. We watched an episode, then Laura went to bed, and I cleaned up. I went up about 2:30, read some, woke up several times. Roofers started work on house next door south around 7, and it got very noisy. I kept trying to go back to sleep. CPAP gave me aggravation. Finally figured I might as well stay up.

Dinner yesterday was pretty great — only caveats were that the meat was still tough, and the potatoes were cooked but could have browned a bit more. Former was probably because I made the casserole earlier, instead of putting it into the oven when it was still hot. More time might have helped in both cases. But I felt depressed afterwards, for many reasons (beyond exhaustion). Rhonda and Jim left before dark. Brenda left later. She wanted to see Richard to go over auction stuff. I invited her to come back tonight before returning to Arkansas. Will depend on how auction goes. At any rate, I have no obligations today. I do have two big problems:

1. I'm not receiving email on my computer. Nothing there since Aug. 4 (only 2 messages still in inbox, but much more in trash). I can see mail in the Yahoo! website, and I'm seeing it on my phone. I'm a bit suspicious of the latter, given that I never use it for email. (Only for sending myself pictures.)
2. I'm still aggravated by the car. The Toyota Connect "free trial" expired on July 31. I had been having problems with audio cutting out, or sometimes just turning off. I finally figured out how to enable Android Auto, and I was able to play music through it, but when I was driving to the casino on Tuesday, it disconnected, and all I could get was an advertisement for Toyota Connect. It also displayed their GPS maps, but the icon that accessed the maps does nothing now. I was told that the car was using my phone for maps, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I may not even have Google Maps on my phone. While I despise such business tactics in any case, that it broke in mid-trip, on a high-speed highway, was extra annoying.

Thinking about writing a Substack post on "The Enshittification of Toyota" today. Don't know whether I will.

Email (none, broken):

Yahoo chat assistant:

Thunderbird and other third-party email apps may stop receiving Yahoo Mail if the app is using outdated security protocols or incorrect settings. Yahoo Mail now requires secure sign-in methods, and using POP with plain passwords is no longer supported. To restore access in Thunderbird, please ensure you are using the correct POP settings and an app password.

Here are the updated POP settings for Yahoo Mail:

• Incoming Mail (POP) Server: pop.mail.yahoo.com
• Port: 995
• Requires SSL: Yes
• Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server: smtp.mail.yahoo.com
• Port: 465 or 587
• Requires SSL: Yes
• Requires authentication: Yes
• Email address: Your full Yahoo email address
• Password: You must use a generated app password, not your regular Yahoo password

You can generate an app password by signing in to your Yahoo Account Security page and following the steps to create one for Thunderbird.

Since Yahoo has discontinued support for basic authorization, could you confirm if you are currently using an app password in Thunderbird? If not, would you like step-by-step guidance on how to generate and use an app password for your email client?

In Thunderbird, security settings are:

• Connection security: SSL/TLS; test successful
• Authentication method: Normal password (other options: Encrypted password, Kerberos/GSSAPI, NTLM, OAuth2

After much haggling, I've thus far determined (with varying degrees of certainty):

• Yahoo does not provide any support (other than AI chat) unless I pay extra for some kind of premium account.
• While the POP message states that the problem is a server error (possibly temporary), they provide no way of reporting that problem, and keep looping back to the suggestion that I should change my configuration.
• In theory, I can add a new server configuration to Thunderbird, which will create a new set of Inbox, etc., directories. I can get a new app-generated password from their "security center."
• They suggest backing up Thunderbird before fiddling with it.

Somewhere along the way, I wound up writing this into a form soliciting ideas:

Make it humanly possible to contact someone about server failure

Sorry for the misleading category, but I figured this is the one you'd be most likely to read. I've spent 4+ hours with your chatbot today, to no avail. I had a Cox email account, which was part of our internet connection deal, until they pawned their mail support off you Yahoo. This was in 2024. I've been able to access my email using Thunderbird and POP3 since then, until 2 days ago, when I started getting hangs, followed by an "internal server error" message. I've very carefully documented that my server configuration is correct, and that the problem occurs on your server end. The chatbot offered to connect me to a human three times, and each time failed, because evidently you have perfect technology that no longer needs humans to function properly. You don't. I could write much more about this, but until I can speak with an actual tech support person, it's unlikely to help.

I'll note here that one promising idea was that I should generate a new app password (supposedly, Yahoo arbitrarily breaks passwords without telling anyone). I did that, and it didn't work. After that, I enabled Thunderbird's error console, and was able to track the entire exchange between Thunderbird and Yahoo's POP server. There is a connection, the password is accepted, and the server returns the digest. But the RETR command blows up.

Daily Log

Woke up at 9. Read some. Came down by 10. Lots of cooking to do today. I drove down to the Mulvane casino yesterday, meeting up with the Pyeatt sisters, and two significant others. We had dinner in one of the casino grills. I had an event with the car that has left me furious. I've been having problems with the screen thing dropping the phone connection, so I couldn't play Spotify. I finally got Android Auto working a couple days ago, and that seemed to fix it. But on the highway south, I got a message saying that the phone connection dropped. It then put up an advertisement for their Toyota Connect service, which evidently I've had a trial subscription for, that expired July 31. After that, the Android Auto icon disappeared, and the icon that put up the GPS maps failed to work. I was able to set audio resources to my phone, and I was able to play Spotify the rest of the night. At one point, I also had it switch to Apple Music, which complained that I didn't have a subscription. It's hard to tell how much of this is glitchy software and how much is sheer evil. I'm totally disgusted, but will have to postpone doing anything about it for a few days. I'm cooking today. Lots of work to do on that.

Email: I'm not receiving email on my regular computer. I sent myself a test message, and I didn't get it. Send was ok. Just tried restarting, which didn't help. Message:

The RETR command did not succeed. Error retrieving a message. Mail server pop.mail.yahoo.com responded: [SYS/TEMP] Server error - Please try again later.

Daily Log

Woke up after 10. Came down before 11. Did my dinner shopping last night. Didn't find any clams, but did get 4 lobster tails, 2 snow crab clusters, a pound of red Argentinian shrimp, and some other things I may or may not use. Beyond the menu, I got an eggplant and three sweet potatoes. Spent some time last night trying to figure out what to do with the sweet potatoes. I didn't come to any decision. I looked at Rhonda's cookbook, and found two recipes there I had planned: the onion-olive-orange salad, and the spice cake.

The Pyeatts will be at Max's 3-5 PM. I may go out there to rendez-vous, or meet them somewhere for dinner. Waiting to hear their plans.

Email (27 messages):

• Tom Engelhardt: A Fly on the Wall: If only we could fly away from Donald Trump
• I wrote replies to Substack comments by cpowell and Dr Ummm.

Voted today: No on amendment, Davis for Senate, Tyndell for House, Holscher for Governor, Day for Secretary of State, Doug and Maggie Ballard for Precinct Chairs. Moderate line, so pretty good turnout.

Daily Log

Came down at 10:45. Dog fed. I was uncertain of the day yesterday, but today is Monday. I need to wrap up and post my Loose Tabs piece to Substack. Figure out the Wednesday menu, and go shopping for it. Ok, here's the menu:

• Fried round steak with mushroom gravy: chicken-fried, then baked in the gravy, basically Campbell's soup mix
• Spanish roasted potatoes: just sliced thin and roasted, with olive oil and garlic
• Maque choux: creamed corn with some onion and bell pepper
• Fried cabbage with bacon
• Mariscada in almond sauce (green sauce minus parsley): shrimp, scallops, clams, lobster tails (maybe crawfish?)
• Peach and burrata salad: with prosciutto
• Olive, onion, and orange salad
• Spice cake: with ice cream
• Chocolate pecan pie (optional)

Brenda's request was for "good old Southern food." Brenda likes seafood. Rhonda doesn't, and doesn't like to eat anything green. The steak is a Mom dish, so I think that counts. I couldn't find a seafood dish that really worked. Most, like etouffee, go with rice. Blackened fish was a possibility (redfish is classic; I've done snapper, and found a salmon recipe). Gumbo gets into soup, as does European alternatives like cioppino or bouillabaisse, which could be single-dish meals (perhaps with paella, but we'd be moving far from the Southern theme). The Spanish dish is an open-ended collection of shellfish (my recipe is just for clams, as a tapas), with a thick sauce, which goes well with the Spanish potatoes. I had wanted potatoes with the meat, so my first idea was dauphinois. The cream works well with the meat, but not so well with the seafood. The Spanish recipe should work with both, and is easier.

I made the steak, dauphinois, corn, and green beans for Steve, and that turned out very well. But the beans are, well, green, so I thought the cabbage might work just as well. Both, after all, are vehicles for bacon. I'm thinking of adding some sausage as well. In the meal for Steve, I also made horiatiki salad and baked beans. Both seem unnecessary here. I have a new Southern cookbook, and the peaches-burrata salad came from there. Seems more Italian to me, but I can point to the book. I think I can cut a corner using canned peaches (and I'm likely to prefer them). Google tells me that burrata is available at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. I have a Spanish recipe for the olive-onion-orange salad, but I prefer a Turkish one, with dry-cured black olives (so no green). Two fruit salads is an unusual move for me, but these should taste distinctly, from each other and everything else.

Sticking with the spice cake for dessert. But if I have time Tuesday evening, I may throw in a pie. (Key lime also occurs to me, but that's getting excessive. I did strawberry shortcake for Steve, which is a favorite. Bread pudding with whiskey sauce is another idea. I also thought about doing a peach cobbler. And/or the oatmeal stout cake.) Also thinking about cornbread, including a recipe that calls for some sweet potato.

I'll go shopping late afternoon or early evening. I think I will hit the Central/Rock Dillons first, then Whole Foods, then Trader Joe's (if needed). Meanwhile, it's 1:18 and I haven't gotten back to the Substack piece.

Email (19 messages):

• Cuneiform: newsletter. I can't keep up with their releases.
• Substack: July 2026 stats: 142 subscribers (+24), 831 post reads (+202).
• Letter from Mike Hull, regarding my suggestion that he think about writing a biography of Liz Fink.
• My Substack: Loose Tabs (8); shareable assets; 3 likes, 2 comments (Dr Umm, cpowell); I replied, and cpowell rejoined. Daily stats: 3 likes, 5 comments, 0 subs; 119 email views, 16 other views (top 4 sources); I clicked on "View Site," but I'm not sure why I got what I got: just a bunch of Notes; click on "Home" and got the same thing; note that Charles S. Maier has a Substack called "Rearview Mirror" (one of my old column titles); I'm tempted to subscribe to Rick Perlstein, but hate to add anything to the current email mess; I don't seem to be able to get to my own articles.
• Shock Hosting customer invoice.
• Toyota: Your Corolla Hybrid Connection doesn't have to end. Evidently it expired on 7/31/2026. They want $15/month for "Go Anywhere" ("cloud-based navigation, live-agent navigation assistance and the seamless virtual Intelligent Assistant of Drive Connect"), $15/month for "Music Lover" (which only works with "your existing Apple Music and Amazon Music accounts integrated withyour vehicle"), or $25/month for Premium (i.e., both).

Daily Log

Posted Loose Tabs yesterday. Plan is to write a Substack post based on it today. Woke up from a dream around 7. Went back to bed, got up after 10, came down at 11. Talked to Brenda last night. She has other arrangements for Monday, but will come here Tuesday after their tour of Max's farm. I'll cook dinner on Wednesday. Brenda asked for "good old Southern cooking," so that I can do. Brenda likes seafood, but Rhonda doesn't. I think I'll do the steak with mushroom gravy, and the dauphinois, for the meat & potatoes side. Not sure what I'll do on the seafood side, but I should be able to find something. I'm thinking spice cake for dessert. I've been wanting to do that, and it's super easy. Not sure what the Tuesday schedule will be, so I'll keep that open. Probably shop on Monday.

Email (12 messages):

• Ken Brown tells me that his wife's sister, Carolyn, died on Friday, so he'll be going to funeral on Thursday, making it impossible to come visit.
• Semipop Life
• Letter from Kissa Kissa ("the jazz listening bar my wife and I run in Brooklyn"), asking permission to use my grades and reviews for a reference website on jazz lps. Of course, I'll say yes.
• Michael Steinman: Armchair critics, angry purists, and other garden pests, with music from 1958. Music in question is Chuck Berry playing "Sweet Little Sixteen" at Newport Jazz Festival, where Jo Jones is the drummer, and looks like Rudy Rutherford is the clarinetist (not a name I was familiar with, but he played with Basie and Jacquet in the 1950s, mostly on baritone sax).
• Substack: Music Week (7:5): +1 like; also +1 like for Famous Death Dwarves.
• Cadence is pushing a quarterly subscription. Sounds like the weekly newsletter discontinues for non-subscribers.

Started working on a new Substack post, based on yesterday's Loose Tabs.

Daily Log

I can't believe it's August already. I guess my calculation that the mid-year jazz critics poll would kill off the first half of the summer was an underestimate, now that we're two-thirds done. Grass is starting to turn yellow. I'm writing this before going to bed, as I updated software and rebooted. Now I have to reorganize my windows, get Firefox restarted, etc. All in all, a fairly productive day yesterday, posting Music Week both on Substack and on my blog.

Got up after 10, and came down before 11. Reached page 150 in The God Test. Next chapter is "AI Heaven and AI Hell." Main insight I've had from the last few pages is that the tendency of humans to anthropomorphize AI is strong. That's probably because they've never encountered such things except in human form. Wright talks about humans creating AI gods in their own image. Isn't that aspiration to become godlike itself a problem? Second point is that I've long thought that everyone needs their own social worker. The world is complicated, and navigating it is difficult. One needs help. AI could be that help. I doubt it's possible to eliminate the need for human backstop, much as I doubt it's possible for AI to automate all work away. I doubt that's even desirable. But perhaps it could eliminate the imagined need to keep a servent class to cater to the aristocracy.

Email (12 messages, some left over):

• Vox closed my support ticket. No additional 40% discount, but try again next year.
• Christian Iszchak: An Acute Case: 01 August 2026
• Substack daily stats: Music Week (7:5): 7 likes, 2 free subs, 109 email views, 36 other views. Since then: +2 subscribers.

Preliminary thinking on Wednesday menu. I'm basically looking at a "surf and turf" combination. For the turf side, I'm thinking (similar to a Nov. 2024 meal I fixed for Steve):

• Fried steak with mushroom gravy
• Potatoes dauphinois
• Maque choux (cajun creamed corn)
• Fried cabbage with bacon

The Steve meal also had baked beans, green beans, and horiatiki, but not the cabbage. Rhonda has a thing about green food.

Surf side is harder to figure. I have scallops in freezer, as well as a fair amount of fish. Shrimp is easy to pick up. I've mostly been looking at things like etouffee or scampi, or maybe gumbo, but it occurs to me that I could to a mariscada in almond sauce (possibly omitting the parsley that turns it into a green sauce). While the recipe calls for clams, I could include both shrimp and scallops, and lobster if I can find it (it's usually possible to find tails). That makes me wonder if I shouldn't switch the potatoes over to the Spanish slice/roast recipe, which would go well with both main dishes. I need to let this simmer in my brain a bit more.

Dessert is still likely to be spice cake.

Loose Tabs

Pick up text here.

Jul 2026