The Incredibly Monotonous Permian Basin

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

North of Alpine, Texas

Leaving the hills and canyons of the Alpine, Texas, area for a drive north, we were soon entering the Permian Basin. Maybe we were always in the basin as it stretches in all directions for a total of 86,000 square miles or 250 miles (400 km) wide and 300 miles (480 km) long. Our path is being dictated by roads not previously travelled by us that we had tried to identify by looking at a very low-res image of our Map of America shared here on the blog in 2018. After we get home from this trip, I’ll be posting an updated map of the roads we’ve driven over that includes last year’s trip up the middle of the U.S. and the roads we’ll travel today.

Buzzard seen north of Alpine, Texas

After passing by this “ornamental sculpture,” we needed to turn around to determine if we’d seen what we thought we had. Pulling up after a quick U-turn, the buzzard had pulled its wings in but once again threw them back out. Obviously, it was not a sculpture. A buzzard buddy was also perched nearby, warming his wings in the sun, but I couldn’t fit the two in a single shot, nor could I capture a more detailed image as lazily I had taken only a single lens with us on this trip. As a matter of fact, I didn’t bring my tripod either, which will hurt my ability to take pictures of the main reason we are on this trip; more about that tomorrow.

Proud of oppresion in rural Texas

Is that three bullet holes that have chipped into the historical marker that’s making me hysterical? This sign from 1936 celebrates the clearing of Indians and bandits back when the “country” was being cleared of those scourges. The land didn’t need clearing if it wasn’t for the invading hordes that wanted an abundance of free lands that those pesky Indians didn’t hold a title to. Maybe I’m just too woke, but I find it an affront and demeaning to Indigenous Americans to equate them with bandits and the suggestion that they needed to be pushed away in any case.

Highway 17 south of Pecos, Texas

The area we were out traversing from about Saragosa, Texas, to Hobbs, New Mexico, is home to the incredibly monotonous landscape that is nothing but dirt, oil and gas wells, and sellers of brine. Brine is a salt solution used by the mining industry; we had to look that up. This is pretty much what everything looks like in the Permian Basin.

La Norteña Tamales in Pecos, Texas

This was a coup that only happened due to the demands of the bladder. After stopping at a gas station here in Pecos, Texas, Caroline was admiring a sign next door and said she wanted to take a photo of it. Often, when I hear that, I’ll also move to take the same image using my DSLR, should her sense of the aesthetic have been correct, and later, I regret not having taken the same photo with a better-quality camera. Good thing I did because after taking this, I wandered to the front of the building believing that La Norteña Tamale Factory was closed due to the open sign being off in the drive-thru, but sure enough, they were open. I ordered a couple of tamales for each of us, one green chili chicken tamale and the other a spicy red beef. Back on the road heading north, we shared one of the green chili tamales and immediately turned around to return to the shop.

Caroline Wise at La Norteña Tamales in Pecos, Texas

We did not go back to register a complaint; we were not unhappy. On the contrary, we were ecstatic that a $2 tamale should be so amazingly perfect. That’s right, perfect. Our return was to collect a dozen of the green chili chicken and a dozen of the Hatch chile “Rajas” tamales, along with a packet of spicy peach ring candies by Nooshka’s Candies. Beaming with enthusiasm and exclaiming our delight, the owner came out of the kitchen to thank us and explained that the quality of everything they offer is due to the efforts of the amazing staff. Before we left, he generously gifted us with a melon/mango aqua fresca. Good thing we brought the ice chest with us on this trip.

Oilfield near Jal, New MexicoFarther along the road, the smell of gas permeated the area on occasion while we also drove through wafting invisible clouds of more fragrant petroleum. At least petroleum is somewhat interesting smelling, whereas gas is anything but. The eye sees sand, low bushes, discarded and unused equipment, and 10,000 pickup trucks interspersed between countless tankers and various other semi-vehicles, pulling and pushing every manner of equipment across the otherwise barren land.

Ruin on Highway 62 Eastern Texas

With nearly 150 miles (240km) driving north before turning east for more of the same, the majority of our day was spent in this seeming wasteland with no redeemable qualities other than being an epicenter for economic activity that contributes to an incredible resource wealth for Texas and New Mexico. Well, that stuff and the town of Pecos with those tamales.

Near Seminole, Texas

Big-time nerd action was had on the side of one of the roads we traveling when we stopped to watch a crew working on electrical towers putting up high-voltage transmission lines. We kept our distance until I noticed one of the guys starting to cut a cable, and I asked if we could see the cable up close; he said we had to keep our distance, but he then cut off a length of the aluminum and steel cable and brought it to me. Sadly, it was too long to fit in our car, and he’d already moved on, so there was no asking him for a shorter piece. No matter; we were as happy as if we’d spotted wolves in Yellowstone.

Wind Turbine South of Stanton, Texas

While much of the Permian Basin is this flat, dry environment with sporadic areas that are farmed, the area is big on energy extraction of not only oil and natural gas but of wind too. With about 2 billion barrels of oil produced worth around $150 billion annually and 10.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas extracted worth about $38 billion, the wind might be a small part of the economy, but still, they are producing about $6 billion of electricity by harnessing this resource.

Stiles Courthouse in Big Lake, Texas

On the side of State Highway 137 near Big Lake, Texas, stands the old Stiles Courthouse which is looking like it won’t be of this world much longer. If this was part of a larger town at some point in the past, evidence of that is hard to see out here. The building was still in use in 1966 by the highway department before being abandoned. In 1999, an arsonist burned it after two previous failed attempts.

Ozona, Texas

Twenty-four years ago, while returning from our first cross-country road trip, we passed through Ozona, Texas, and took a photo of this sign; you can see it by visiting this ancient page from that trip. Tonight, we are staying here in Ozona. By the way, our original attraction was due to the sound of the name of the town, which reminds us of our home state, Arizona.

Desert to Desert

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Dimitri at Simpson Hotel in Duncan, Arizona

Good morning, Dimitri! Nice to see you here on your perch, and thanks for guarding the parlor of the Simpson Hotel from intruders overnight. When we got in last night, the table I sat at for writing on my previous visits was set for dinner as we were joining Deborah, Clayton, Gavin, and Richard for dinner to celebrate Richard’s birthday. While Dimitri wasn’t uninvited, he was nowhere to be seen, which was just as well, as there wouldn’t have been enough cake to go around.

Stuffed owl at Simpson Hotel in Duncan, Arizona

This is not a writing trip but a respite from the task, which meant that we slept in, as much as remaining in bed until 6:00 a.m. can be considered sleeping in. By the time we emerged from our ablutions, Furry the Owl, a friend of Little Burrowing Owl who lives in a hole in a field on the outside of town next to their friends, the ground squirrels who live in a nearby mound, was surprised we hadn’t shown up earlier. We informed Furry that we’d been distracted by dreams that saw us looking to the clouds for the red-tailed hawk so we could warn everyone of its presence with chirping sounds. Or was all of that part of a dream? The more likely truth is that Clayton was the one surprised that he was downstairs in the kitchen well before my arrival in the parlor and then shared the song Little Burrowing Owl, from Mr. Elephant with us, which influenced this narrative and subsequently lodged itself in our ears like a worm for the duration of our adventure to stand under the shadow of the moon that promised to blot out the sun in two days.

South of Deming, New Mexico

A surprise road we’d not traveled previously became the route we’d journey on today as we were informed about a major freeway construction project on the west of El Paso, Texas, that we could bypass if we took this southerly trail. Prior to reaching this dusty stretch of highway, Caroline and I had traveled out of Duncan over to Silver City, New Mexico, to visit with old friends Tom and Sandy. The time spent out their way was brief, but we had to consider the two hours we’d lose today going east. This photo was taken about halfway between Deming and Columbus, New Mexico, on Highway 11, and as you might be able to guess from all the dust in the air, it was seriously windy out here in southern New Mexico.

Columbus, New Mexico

This is the oldest building in Columbus, New Mexico, dating from 1902. Operating as a train depot until 1960, when the line was closed with the track and ties sold off, it is now the local museum next to Highway 9, which used to be the route of the train.

Mexican border wall in southern New Mexico

That’s the infamous fence protecting us Americans from the invaders from Mexico who arrive to steal our jobs. While I’m mostly in agreement that people should take the proper steps to emigrate to the U.S., there are pathways for that to happen for those who are well-qualified and educated to bring skills to our country, but we have millions of dirty jobs that average American’s do not want, and this is where those less-fortunate souls to our south come in to take “all of our jobs.”

Art Car in southern New Mexico

We passed this art car at 80mph and whipped a quick U-turn to catch the guy before he pulled away. Weapons, ammunition, odds and ends, a couple of images of Greta Thunberg, mannequin parts, antlers, and assorted car parts made up this oddly balanced vehicle out here next to the Mexican border.

Prada Store in Marfa, Texas

It turns out that it’s been 22 years since Caroline and I last passed through this corner of Texas on a trip that took us through Valentine, Marfa, and Terlingua down to Big Bend National Park. This famous Prada Store art installation outside of Marfa didn’t show up until 2005, a few years after our visit.

The Holland Hotel in Alpine, Texas

The historic Holland Hotel here in Alpine, Texas, was built back in 1928 and was where we were checking in to spend the night. Of peculiar coincidence, Deborah and Clayton of the Simpson Hotel are also staying here this evening before continuing eastward to San Antonio, Texas, in the morning. They were a few hours behind us, which had us staying up writing and knitting before they arrived around midnight, as we didn’t want to lose the opportunity for this chance encounter with the proprietors of the Simpson so far away from home.

Looking for Star Light

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Mt Graham in the distance on the way to Duncan, Arizona

We are traveling in the general direction of where millions of others are going: to the eclipse. Months ago, when we snagged a motel room outside of the eclipse totality. We knew we’d be positioning ourselves a couple of hours north of where we wanted to be with the hope that the drive to our destination wouldn’t be a road of mayhem. The booking in Ozona, Texas, was hundreds of dollars cheaper than in the path of the totality, where we were seeing places that would have normally cost about $100 a night going for close to $1,000 for the evening of April 7th, 2024. Flights into the areas of the totality were also too pricey, so we are driving, which is what we were doing when I snapped this image of the setting sun. Once again, we are staying out at the Simpson Hotel in Duncan, Arizona, right near the New Mexico state line.

Algorithmic Taylorism

JWise Thoughts

Firefly Image

There you are one day, sitting in front of a screen reading the latest on 1-bit LLMs, specifically Microsoft’s implementation of BitNet b1.58 for the creation of Local LLMs, and wouldn’t you know it: the proverbial one thing leading to another, an article about the processing speeds required by Microsoft to run a lower power LLM on a mobile device, shows up. While it was Intel in the story identifying the software giant’s requirements of 40 TOPS (Trillions of Operations Per Second) of calculation ability to run on the next-gen of NPUs (Neural Processing Units), it appears that Qualcomm and their X Elite chips with 45 TOPS of performance will be first to market this year, not Intel.

While I’m enjoying the luxuries of search using Claude Opus/Sonnet, Mistral’s Le Chat, CoPilot, occasionally ChatGPT, and very rarely Google’s Gemini, I’d like to think that having AI running locally on my smartphone might have some kind of advantage. I can’t help but wonder about the rise of 1-bit weighted models that utilize 1-bit strings of observational analysis of the user in a file smaller than the average cookie. What would appear to us as random 1s and 0s are data points that possibly allow companies to build a better psychological profile of a user without violating data privacy.

With AI-assisted voice, email, search, and the myriad of other transactions that could be filtered through such tools, a much more specific and accurate profile could be structured from the data.

Taylorism was first created in the late 19th century as a scientific management solution for measuring the effectiveness and productivity of people involved in physical labor. By the 2010s, Digital Taylorism was moving into the vernacular as software performance monitoring tools were spreading. Here we are today in the mid 2020s, and it would appear that we are on the cusp of witnessing the advent of Algorithmic Taylorism. This development would no longer be an outside observer or installed piece of software designed for a specific industry; it will be the operating system, the machine, able to monitor any individual for better management and observation by the algocratic state.

Image created with Adobe Firefly

Ozempic

JWise Life

Ozempic Pen

A week ago today, I started a regime of weekly injections of Ozempic. That first shot was super stressful. I really should have watched a video from someone who was already using it, but in that tense moment I did not have the presence of mind to think clearly about anything aside from following the printed instructions to the letter. After injecting the first 0.25mg dose, I was uncertain I had done it right, but within a couple of days, it became obvious it was performing as advertised as I simply stopped caring about eating.

I lost a few pounds the first week, but more importantly, my blood glucose levels started dropping, and I haven’t had any side effects. While I can’t be sure, I believe the impact on my diabetes is caused in at least some part by the radically different portion sizes I’m eating. Experiencing such dramatic effects so quickly, my first inclination was that every obese person, such as myself, should be on the drug, but just as quickly, I changed my mind. Sadly, I think there are others thinking the same thing because the conversation began this week that the makers of Ozempic could be producing it for under $5 a dose. Sounds great, but…

For the previous eight years, I have managed my diabetes with diet, exercise, and Metformin, but no insulin. Portion control and the remaining 30 pounds I’d like to lose have been problematic. In the first couple of years after my diagnosis, I lost 40 pounds and have been able to keep that weight off until today, but can’t get below my current weight. We do not eat processed foods and only rarely opt for the convenience of eating at restaurants. We’ve never used Uber Eats or Grub Hub. We do make a serious effort to eat healthy which is made easier with only one of us working, that being Caroline. In addition to eating right, we walk five miles every day.

If the federal government were to get the idea that Ozempic is a magic cure-all, I think that without free time and extra income for the obese and diabetic to address their poor diet and sedentary lifestyles, the efficacy of the drug would be foiled. But we are in America. We do not invest in health; we’d rather pay big for disease. Me? I’d rather have the best, vibrant, and adventurous life I can drag into my aging existence.

Chamula in the Desert

JWise Photo of the Day

Caroline Wise wearing wool pullover from Chamula, Mexico in Phoenix, Arizona

For the astute reader, looking closely at the photos I’ve posted so far this year, you might have noticed the poor quality of many of them; my apologies. Sometimes, I must take photos with my phone, and no, it is not a 2006 Potato Model. For the sake of preserving memories that remind us of our lives outside of routines, something must be posted on the blog. In my mind, it’s better than nothing, even if it does look like a potato capture.

By the way, the model in this shot is none other than Caroline Wise. She’s sporting a Balenciaga hand-embroidered faux-bear vest from the Chamula Collection. Perfect for winter wear on those sub-zero days in the desert. For the sake of transparency, the model wanted me to point out that she did not pay retail, which would have been the handsome price of $6400 in NYC, but instead snagged it at the Beverly Hills Goodwill on Rodeo Drive for the eye-meltingly low price of only $80.