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| From 2025 12 31 Porto, Lamego, Castelo Rodrigo |
Beginning our cruise up Portugal's Douro River, today's photo-of-the-day is from the Carrapatelo Lock. It is one of the deepest and highest river locks in Europe, featuring a large water level change of about 35 meters (115 feet).
Source: ChatGPT, City of Richardson
Beginning September 28, 2026, Daniel Burdette will represent Richardson's Place 3 on the City Council, replacing Dan Barrios. Will that make a difference in city policy? Who's to say? As a test, I looked at votes in the 2025-2027 term (so far) to see what might have been different had Burdette been in that seat for the full term. That is, had Barrios resigned in 2025, perhaps getting replaced by Burdette as early as May 2025, what would be different in city policy today?
I looked for Council votes in which Barrios's vote was determinative: winning votes in which Barrios was one of four Ayes, or losing votes with only three Aye votes, in which Barrios voted Nay. There were five such votes.
Source: City of Richardson
On September 21, 2026, the Richardson City Council interviewed the three finalists for appointment to the vacant Place 3 position. Then, after about a half-hour in executive session, the Council returned to open session to name Daniel Burdette the lone finalist for appointment. The Council is scheduled to vote on the appointment at its September 28 meeting. The Council did not publicly provide the reasons for its choice. I asked ChatGPT to score their answers against a specific set of criteria that I defined with suggestions from ChatGPT. Based on ChatGPT's scoring, Daniel Burdette's interview received the fewest "Strong" ratings of the three. That result was consistent with my own impression of the interviews. So, I asked ChatGPT to report a textual analysis of the interview, identifying Burdette's strengths, weaknesses, and implications for appointment. I include that report verbatim here.
On September 21, 2026, the Richardson City Council interviewed the three finalists for appointment to the vacant Place 3 position. Then, after about a half hour in executive session the Council returned to open session to name Daniel Burdette the lone finalist for appointment, which will be made at the September 28 meeting. What reasons did the Council give for its choice? They didn't say in public. That leaves the citizens to guess at their reasoning. As my impression of the interviews would not have led to me choosing Burdette, I started digging to see what I might have missed. My first exercise was to examine the seven questions asked of each applicant and score their answers. I didn't consider whether I agreed with their answers (yet), only how the answers measured up to a consistent set of criteria like Knowledge, Responsiveness, Clarity, Specificity, etc. To keep my own biases to a minimum, I asked ChatGPT to do the scoring. The scoring is systematic to the extent that I strove to keep from giving ChatGPT subjective scoring instructions.
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Netflix
On August 24, 2026, the Richardson City Council interviewed eight applicants for the vacant Place 3 position on City Council. On September 14, they reduced the field to three finalists. Rather than primarily evaluate the applicants based on their answers, I'm going to focus on the questions the council members asked, in hopes of getting good questions asked September 21, when the three finalists will face the Council again for another round of questions.
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| From 2025 12 31 Porto, Lamego, Castelo Rodrigo |
Today's photo-of-the-day is from Porto, Portugal. Porto is the second largest city of Portugal, after Lisbon, with a population of its metropolitan area of 1.9 million. According to Wikipedia, "On the Douro River estuary in northern Portugal, Porto is one of the oldest European centers, and its core was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1996...Port wine, one of Portugal's most famous exports, is named after Porto, as the metropolitan area, and in particular the cellars of Vila Nova de Gaia, were responsible for the packaging, transport, and export of fortified wine."
Porto by day. Click for a photo of Porto by night.
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| From 2025 12 28 Pena, Cascais, Óbidos, Nazaré |
Today's photo-of-the-day is from Nazaré, Portugal. According to Wikipedia, "Nazaré is one of the most popular seaside resorts in the Silver Coast (Costa de Prata). It is famous for its huge waves and surfing competitions. As of 2026, the record for the tallest wave ever surfed stands at a wave measured at 26.2 m (86 ft) at Nazaré in 2020."
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Netflix
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HBO Max
