Blackcap Blog

Published at 18:02 on 31 July 2024

What Is an Anticipator?

The first time I took apart a thermostat, as a teen, I noticed this mysterious “anticipator” adjustment inside the thing. It was calibrated in these weird decimal fractions from roughly
0.15 to 1.2.

How could an inanimate object anticipate the future? It seemed like magic! Moreover, when I tinkered with the control, the heater’s cycles got longer and shorter. It was almost as if the thermostat did really know what was going to happen as it turned the heat on! And just what was the significance of those strange numbers, anyhow?

It took embarrassingly long (years!) for me to figure it out. See illustration below:

That’s right, the “anticipator” is nothing more than a tiny electric heater in series with the switch contacts on the thermostat.

How Does the Anticipator Work?

When the switch closes, the tiny heater is placed in series with the current flowing through the main heater’s relay coil. This causes current to flow through the tiny heater, and it heats up. This helps counter the thermal mass of the thermostat itself by heating it up, too, hopefully approximately in tandem with the air inside the building. The thermostat therefore reacts faster to what the heater is doing, as if it is anticipating future heating.

What Are the Strange Numbers on an Anticipator Scale?

They mark the recommended starting set point for a given current draw for a standard 24-volt system, as measured across the thermostat when it is open (i.e. not calling for heat).

Because anticipators must run on a traditional two-wire thermostat circuit, they must be placed in series with the thermostat switch point and the load the thermostat switches. Because this is a series circuit, more anticipator resistance means more total series resistance. This means that the overall circuit uses less power, and that the thermostat’s anticipator consumes a greater fraction of that power.

Somewhere between the minimum and maximum settings, anticipator heating is maximized, and somewhere between no anticipation and maximum anticipation is the proper value for a given situation. There are so many site-specific particulars that it is not possible with certainty to say in advance what the optimum setting is; all one can do is arrive at a good first guess. Sometimes that guess will be correct, sometimes it will take further refinements to arrive at the correct value.

For a high current system, only a small amount of resistance suffices. At 1.2 amps, even a small amount of resistance heating is excessive. In fact, there will probably be enough heating from the switch points’ resistance to act as a sufficient anticipator. So the 1.2 setting is for no (extra) anticipation, i.e. no extra series resistance. The anticipator is bypassed at this setting.

For a millivolt system, there is both limited power and limited voltage available. Voltage drop already can be a problem with millivolt systems, even without an anticipator. So dedicated millivolt thermostats do not have an anticipator, and millivolt-capable thermostats have instructions saying to use a setting of 1.2 on a millivolt system.

For a low current system, significant resistance is needed to extract enough power to get significant heating in the anticipator. So the lowest numbers select the maximum extra resistance.

What about the instructions that say to set the anticipator to 0.3 for electric, 0.4 for gas or oil heat, and so on?

Those are the recommended starting set points if you don’t have an ammeter reading or an existing thermostat setting to use.

What is the meaning of “longer?”

It denotes an arrow pointing to the direction to move the setting to make heating cycles longer. Note that the word “longer” is, perversely, often at the end of the scale that offers the shortest cycles (i.e. the most anticipation). It is the arrow pointing to the direction with which to move the setting to get longer cycles that counts.

Which setting is correct?

Whichever one works best! Start with one of the set points recommended by the thermostat manufacturer, but remember that they are only recommended ones. What is best depends on the particulars of your system (different ones draw different currents), your thermostat, your house, and where in your house the thermostat is mounted. There are so many particulars that it is impossible to say in general.

If you have an existing thermostat with an anticipator, copy its setting. If you have an ammeter, use that to determine a setting. If you have neither, use the instructions that came with your thermostat and set it according to your heat type. Failing all that, use whatever the thermostat happens to be set at as you got it.

What happens? Is temperature regulated properly? Congratulations, you’re at the correct setting! Don’t touch that anticipator adjustment! Does the heat run too long and cause temperature overshoot? Move it to a lower number. On a cold day or morning, does the heat tend to turn off too soon, forcing you to turn the thermostat above a set point in order to reach it? Move it to a higher number.

If you find it necessary to experiment with settings, take notes. It often takes several days of experimenting to arrive at the optimal setting.

Published at 09:48 on 29 July 2024

There is much celebration within the Democratic Party as Kamala Harris is proving herself to be a decidedly more viable candidate than Joe Biden was. Because of course she is.

Don’t celebrate prematurely. We’re barely a week into her campaign, in a year where the news cycle has at times moved very quickly. Remember the assassination attempt on Trump? Seems like really old news, yet in fact it was a little over a fortnight ago.

Celebrating now is the equivalent of celebrating a touchdown that ties the score at the beginning of the final quarter. That score is irrelevant. The only score that matters is the score at the moment the final whistle blows.

There will be dirt that comes to light about Harris. Because of course there will be. All candidates are flawed. The real test is how effectively her campaign responds to that dirt.

Just because the Trumpers haven’t announced any really good dirt yet doesn’t mean that they don’t already know of some, yet are keeping a lid on it …for now… because they want to do damage later on when it will be more strategically harmful. (No, Trump himself couldn’t stop blabbing about it. But at least some of his strategists have the sort of self-control that Trump lacks.) And then there’s the currently hidden dirt that the Trump campaign has yet to unearth, but is sure to find later.

Do not assume that current absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

And that’s just the dirt we are talking about. Then there’s Harris herself. She really blew it in the 2020 primary. Hopefully she learned her lesson and will listen to her handlers this time. (She also has more and better handlers. Last time, she was one of many primary candidates in a large field, and thus competing for a limited supply of campaign advisors. Now, she has basically unrestricted access to the Democratic Party’s top advisors.) If she fails to exercise sufficient self-discipline, however, these advantages could be for naught.

The time to celebrate will be when the polls close and the election is called for Harris. We’re not there yet. Not by a long shot.

Published at 21:44 on 26 July 2024

Simply put, they don’t realize how extreme they are.

Some time ago, I wrote that the big problem with the American Left is that it is an inward-looking subculture and not an outward-looking movement. Its rhetoric is geared more to individuals competing for in-group status than competing for the hearts and minds of the general public (and unless the latter is achieved, the wished-for revolution will never materialize).

Well, now, so is the American Right. Its rhetoric and its issues are geared more to pursuit of in-group status than anything.

All the bleating about Harris being the “DEI candidate” is a case in point. Yes, she was selected in part because she is female and Black. And so what? Running mates are commonly selected for reasons other than their intrinsic ability. Obama, a liberal junior Senator, chose Biden, a centrist senior one, not because of Biden’s ability (he is a gaffe-prone stutterer, and thus awful at public speaking), but because Biden helped round out his ticket. He needed a senior White centrist, and in Biden, he got one.

All sitting presidents have been male, and with one exception, all have been White as well. You can’t convince me that this is simply because all the most talented candidates have almost always been White and male. Surely over the course of US history, there have to be a few more nonwhites and at least a few females who happened to be the most qualified individuals of the day.

Trump had exactly zero political experience when he first ran. (Even Ronald Reagan, the previous actor to run for the presidency, had past political experience as Governor of California.) Yet somehow Trump is not a “DEI candidate.” Only the Black woman is. But of course.

If you look at the background of past vice presidents, Senator is by far the most common one. In the last 50 years alone, all but 3 vice presidents were previously Senators (two of the exceptions were state governors, and one was CIA director). And that was Harris’ background. Bog-standard.

And, having served as vice-president, she now wishes to run for president. Again, bog-standard. In the last 50 years, four vice presidents have gone on to serve as president.

Yet Republicans can’t stop talking about how Harris is neither white nor male and implying that means she therefore is not qualified to serve. This, despite their running an orange felon who is clearly the least fit for office of just about any major party candidate ever.

And here’s the rub: they can’t even perceive the disconnect here. I know, I’ve interacted with a number of Trumpers online. They just can’t process these facts. Those facts lie too far out of the realm of what their subculture believes. She is not a white male, she is the other, therefore she is a “DEI candidate” who has no business being in high government office. This is what the Trump base believes, and the Trump base does not care what anyone else believes. And they are in a media bubble (talk radio, Fox News, social media algorithmic timelines) that insulates them from the larger world and prevents them from accurately perceiving how divergent their beliefs have become.

The Trump campaign is now running mostly on the basis of what that hardcore MAGA base wants to hear, and that is not what they need to do to get enough votes from low-information fence-straddlers to win.

And the vice president’s ethnicity is hardly the only example. Pick an extreme part of Trump’s plank (abortion, the Federal civil service, immigration, etc.), and the Trumpers are doubling down on it.

This is an extreme vulnerability for Trump, because unless his campaign corrects it (which, given how inward-looking their political culture is, would not be easy), the natural course of events is for them to expose by their own chosen words just what a bunch of extremists and racists and misogynists they are. And that will in turn likely alienate the middle and cause them to lose.

Published at 09:45 on 22 July 2024

Because, basically, it had to be. The logic saying so is strong enough that even the party elite can see it. They might not like it, but they also are being adults and realizing that sometimes events happen in ways not to one’s liking, and compromises must be made. For that we can be thankful.

Harris got where she now is because Biden, a centrist, needed a liberal running mate. Likewise, Harris needs a centrist running mate in order to maximize her appeal. So, expect one to be chosen. If one is not chosen, it will be a first-class act of political incompetence.

And can we please can the stupid conspiracy theories that the Democrats planned it all to be this way from Day One? Get real. The Democrats are probably the most incompetent major political party in the industrialized world. To claim they are masters at 4 dimensional political chess is beyond ridiculous. They can barely play political checkers.

Published at 12:50 on 21 July 2024

So much for my claim that assassination attempt had changed the news cycle. The cycle reverted, and now he’s out.

He is merely resigning from being a candidate. He is not resigning the presidency. He plans to serve until Inauguration Day, 2025.

That, plus his resignation letter not containing an explicit endorsement of Harris as a replacement candidate, let me to read between the lines and conclude he was not endorsing Harris. But I was wrong there, too.

Published at 13:00 on 16 July 2024

If Thomas Crooks had a political motive, it would have to come with strong beliefs. Beliefs strong enough to literally inspire him to kill. It would have been easy to find multiple examples of friends, neighbours, and/or relatives who could all testify to how big a righty or lefty he was. Instead, nothing. Just a quiet, somewhat mysterious guy without a lot of friends and no strong evident beliefs.

As such, it is pretty clear that the motive was almost certainly not political.

Most plausible working theory I have come across is the guy knew he was a loser and a nobody, and wanted to ensure he got his name into the history books. (Mission accomplished.)

Published at 07:50 on 15 July 2024

Biden won’t step aside. The assassination attempt has shifted the news cycle and distracted people from Biden’s disastrous and revealing debate performance.

Which, of course, means a sure Trump win. This would be the case even without the sympathy factor now acting in his favour due to the botched assassination attempt. Now that there is such a factor, it is not even remotely a close call.

Published at 09:27 on 14 July 2024

You’re already starting to hear it: The assassination attempt just must be more than it seems on the surface, because no way could a random nobody do this to one of the most powerful and well-protected men on the planet.

There is exactly zero hard evidence behind this theory at the moment, yet many people are already buying into it, on no more “logic” than that presented above.

One of the key attributes of any hierarchical class society is that the lives of those higher up on the social pyramid are considered to be intrinsically more valuable than the lives of those lower down. Any time a higher-up harms a lower-down, the typical reaction ranges somewhere between rationalization (“well, what did you think would happen”) and outright celebration (“justice is served, he got what he deserved”). Any time a lower-down harms a higher-up, the typical reaction is shock, revulsion, and disbelief.

This despite the clearly evident fact that the individuals involved in all circumstances are mere humans, with the same general physiological characteristics. Trump is every bit as vulnerable to the effects of bullets as was his would-be assassin.

Likewise, the Secret Service is not run by supermen. It is run by fallible human beings, capable of making mistakes. Like most organizations with important missions, it has numerous procedures designed to minimize the chance of oversights being made in its work, but that’s all they can do: minimize the chance. They can’t eliminate it. It doesn’t matter how many contingencies their strategists think up, sometimes sh*t happens and a chance sequence of events occurs that causes unrectified errors to be made.

Authoritarians don’t like the fact that their authority relies mostly on organized brute force. It pisses the hell out of them when we anarchists say so. They want people to believe that their authority is natural and rightfully earned, not arbitrary and propped up by force. So they establish taboos against questioning their authority, and use their force-backed power to indoctrinate people into following those taboos, and to marginalize (at best) or harm (or even kill, at worst) those who refuse to adhere to the taboos.

Assuming that it simply “couldn’t” have happened the way currently it appears, that the Secret Service “couldn’t” neglect to properly secure a rooftop, and some random loser “couldn’t” almost prematurely end an ex-president’s life as a result, is assuming into existence, due to indoctrination into authoritarian values, attributes which humans do not in fact possess. It is the authoritarian mindset at work.

Note here that I am not saying that there definitively was not a deeper conspiracy, only that there is currently zero hard evidence of one, and that in the absence of such evidence, Occam’s razor applies. The simplest working theory, that a conspiracy for which there is zero evidence does not exist and that a random loser lucked out due to oversights by the Secret Service, should apply until and unless hard evidence to the contrary emerges.

Published at 22:41 on 13 July 2024

Assassinations (or attempted assassinations) seldom work out the way the assassin (or would-be assassin) thinks they will.

First, assassination attempts, like this one, might fail. They typically fail, in fact. The biggest targets (and ex-presidents are certainly a big target) all have professional security teams. And the Secret Service is one of the best. Failure is by far the most likely option.

In fact, such attempts happen all the time, and fail, due to law enforcement (primarily the Secret Service) foiling them. We don’t hear about them because:

1. The Secret Service lives up to its name.
2. In the name of not inspiring copycat attacks, the media cooperate by refusing to cover foiled attacks, unless (like this one) they get way too close to being successful and as a result become basically impossible to suppress coverage of.

It failed, so the logical result is to benefit the would be target via the sympathy effect.

But it’s worse than that. This particular would-be target has a fantasy about seeking revenge on his political enemies. He now has ammunition in pursuing this fantasy: those enemies are violent and tried to kill him.

The Nazis used assassinations and attempted assassinations to rationalize their own political violence. Kristallnacht happened in response to an assassination.

That’s right, even when they “succeed,” many assassinations, in the final analysis, fail.

There’s already some conspiracy theories emerging that Trump and his security team deliberately allowed the assassination attempt to happen. I would not be surprised to soon hear claims that it was all an inside job.

So far, there is no evidence of this, other than poorly-argued circumstantial evidence (“how could he circumvent Secret Service measures?”).

The Secret Service is indeed very good at what it does (to reiterate, assassination attempts are foiled all the time), but it is not perfect. Mistakes happen. We will probably hear how they slipped up and failed to secure the roof that served as the sniper’s nest in this one.

Time will tell, and maybe good evidence that it was, in some sense, an inside job will emerge. But so far, it has not. It is entirely possible that this thing was all sheer luck. In fact, that is currently the most plausible explanation.

Published at 20:44 on 10 July 2024

In other words, will Biden step aside or not?

Biden is clearly being a stubborn old man and refusing to see the obvious, but the voices clamouring for him to step down are pretty loud.

It’s been interesting to watch. One thing is clear: the leadership clique of which I wrote recently has not been uniting around Biden despite it all. His debate performance was so bad that it got even their attention.

Rather, it seems to be Biden’s inner circle (and a few allies of that inner circle) versus just about everyone else. And those allies of Biden are not just his fellow centrists.

What’s distressing to me is how Trumpy the president and his allies are getting. Biden is clinging tightly to his selfish goal of being a two-term president, and engaging in all sorts of rationalizations that fly in the face of self-evident facts to do so. And suddenly, questions about the basic fitness to serve are being swept aside by Biden’s allies, much like Trump’s allies have long swept aside such concerns. It doesn’t seem to matter so much as long as they can use Biden for their ideological purposes.

It’s all making it increasingly likely I cast a protest vote for Vermin Supreme this November. At least he knows he’s a clown.