Mitch's Blog

Every so often I think it is a good idea to roll my linkposts into a single daily digest and give it a clever name like “Mitchipedia.”

MORGAN FREEMAN VOICE: It is not a good idea.

When I was a kid, I loved the Stainless Steel Rat series by Harry Harrison.

The main character of the series is James Bolivar “Slippery Jim” di Griz, a master thief turned elite police agent in an interstellar civilization in the distant future.

The first several books of the series were among my favorites. I reread them recently and found them enjoyable. Much of the appeal for me is, and was, the author’s voice. The books are narrated in the first person and Slippery Jim is a wisecracking insouciant anti-hero.

James Nicoll reviews the first book in the series, “The Stainless Steel Rat.” He doesn’t care for it. He compares it to another series of books that I love, Donald E. Westlake’s Dortmunder series.

“Dortmunder’s adventures are just as implausible as Jim’s, but they work for me,” Nicoll says. “I think it comes down to how Jim and Dortmunder’s plots fail, when they do fail: Jim seems confident that he really only ever needs one plan, whereas Dortmunder is gloomily aware he needs at least one more plan than he has, even when he takes into account needing at least one more plan than he has.”

The books do PhilipKDickian things with reality. In the first novel, Slippery Jim takes a cocktail of mind-altering drugs to turn himself into a psychopath so he can catch a psychopath, then tricks his psychopathic self into reverting back.

The galactic culture of the Harrison books is a benevolent technocracy. Government has absolute authority to brainwash people or do anything else it wants and it all works out because it’s scientific and only for the good.

Harrison did another series of novels I loved, Deathworld, about a professional gambler who visits a planet where everything is out to kill you all the time. Children are trained in kindergarten to carry guns and use them instantly and lethally.

SDN pioneers return with $15M GPU networking bet. A16z leads a $15M Series A to upstart Netris, funding a platform automating GPU networking and multi-tenancy for AI cloud operators. By me on Fierce Network.

A homeowners association in San Marcos, a suburb of San Diego, is threatening to fine one of its residents for flying an American flag.

The HOA is (and should be) in violation of specific laws, according to attorneys quoted in the article.

The HOA says it isn’t singling out Old Glory — the policy started when a resident started flying a San Diego Padres flag. The HOA said if they allowed Padres flags or American flags then there would be flags proliferating all over the community, which would be bad …. how, exactly?

The HOA’s decisions here are so wrong that they’re not even offensive. They’re just dumb.

Cory Doctorow: “The ‘Third Way’ in liberal politics involves saying things that working people love, but doing things that sociopathic plutocrats love. It works …right up until voters notice that you’re not doing the things. That realization breeds cynicism and fury and paves the way for fascist strongmen. It’s really ugly, and no one does it uglier than Canada’s Liberal Party.”

As an American, I am insulted by Cory’s giving number one status to the Canadian Liberal Party. The Democrats here in the U.S. excel at giving lip service to working people while serving plutocrats.

I had forgotten that the theme for “Hogan’s Heroes” goes hard. youtu.be/onZm-1GjY…

Arielle Duhaime-Ross: “My fitness tracker is a secret weapon against my chronic illness." Disabled folks are successfully using their devices to manage long Covid, POTS, and more. Extremely interesting and encouraging!

I feel like this question is in the wrong subreddit.

Minnie is on medication now and I’m getting good at giving it to her without it being too stressful.

Not stressful for me. It was never stressful for her. She finds receiving the liquid annoying but she likes the tasty pill pocket and doesn’t notice its cargo.

JOB INTERVIEWER: “Where do you see yourself in five years?”
ME: “Living in an Airstream in a meadow and reading mystery novels to my sheep.”

This morning I mistakenly ate my oatmeal with the dog-food-spoon, which the dog had thoroughly licked. How is your weekend going?

Establishment Democrats are promising “war” on incoming progressives and Democratic socialists.

When they said “vote blue no matter who,” they were lying. So-called centrist Democrats are more loyal to the establishment than they are to their constituents.

These establishment sellouts are willing to work with the Grandpa Puddingbrains and his fascist supporters to protect their oligarch masters.

If there’s an afterlife, FDR is appalled.