John Scalzi: Holden Caulfield in middle age. Like Scalzi, I never got the appeal of “Catcher in the Rye.” And my reasons were similar to his: I grew up reading science fiction.
If you were going to give me a teenage hero, give me Heinlein’s Starman Jones: He traveled the galaxy and memorized entire books of log tables and became Captain of a starship (for procedural reasons, granted). All Holden did was bitch, bitch, bitch.
Why is the sky dark at night?. The mystery stumped astronomers for centuries.
California’s farmers backed Trump, whose immigration policies could be dangerous to the state’s agriculture and the nation’s food supply. Half of California’s farmworkers are undocumented, and California grows half of America’s fruits and vegetables.
I stepped over one of the cats this afternoon and she panicked and bolted and I changed the direction my foot was coming down and she changed her direction and I stepped on her a little bit and nearly fell on my face and she bolted out of the room.
That was eight hours ago and we have not seen her since.
I’m sure she’s plotting to kill me.
I’ll be sleeping with one eye open.
I usually oppose Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving, but I’ll make an exception here because it’s so clever.
It’s on one side of a corner unit of a condo complex. On the other side is this toy village, which I’ve shared here before. I suspect the same creative person did both.
She died Thursday, just a week before Thanksgiving.
“You want to know if I’m moral enough join the Army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug.”
It seems from this obit that she had a well-lived life, of which being a restaurateur was only a part.
Hegseth has written multiple books describing is conspiracy theories that the US is ruled by a Communist conspiracy launched by Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and which is now embodied in the Democratic Party, writes Jonathan Chait at The Atlantic.
He believes officers who obeyed orders from Obama and Biden — in other words, officers who did their sworn duty to obey the lawful orders of their commander-in-chief — are traitors who should be dealt with accordingly.
He believes Democrats are traitors who should be overthrown by any means necessary, and he makes no exemptions for any Democrat (including me!).
Chait:
A defense secretary with a tenuous grip on reality, who can’t differentiate foreign enemies from domestic political opponents, and who seems to exist in a state of permanent hysteria is a problem that the United States has never had to survive. The main question I was looking to answer when I started reading Hegseth’s collected works was whether he would follow a Trump command to shoot peaceful protesters. After having read them, I don’t think he would even wait for the order.
YouTube is now the most popular podcast platform. I don’t get it. I listen to 1-2 hours of podcasts daily, but I would not want to sit down and watch that much talking-head video.
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez won a “long-shot Democratic campaign for Congress in a solidly Republican, heavily rural part of Washington State…. FiveThirtyEight estimated her chance of victory at a mere 2 percent. But she won, defeating a burgeoning star of the MAGA movement named Joe Kent,” writes Michelle Goldberg at the New York Times.
Gluesenkamp Perez, whose father immigrated from Mexico, ran an auto shop with her husband and lived in a house they’d built themselves. Her campaign emphasized both her blue-collar bona fides and her support for abortion rights, and she was frank in her denunciations of Donald Trump’s authoritarianism….
But if many on the left were delighted by her victory, they were disappointed by how often she broke with her party once she was in office. Gluesenkamp Perez voted to scrap Joe Biden’s plan for student debt relief. She supported a Republican bill to bar the use of public lands to house migrants and a resolution censuring her colleague Rashida Tlaib for her anti-Israel rhetoric.
…
I’ve heard you say that there’s no “one weird trick” that will end the Democratic Party’s woes. But it seems like maybe the closest thing to one weird trick would just be recruiting more working- and middle-class people to run for office.
Yes. I don’t think more lawyers running for office is the solution here.
Given that you won in a Trump district, you must have won some percentage of Trump voters. When you talk to people who voted for both you and Donald Trump, what do they tell you? Where is the center of that Venn diagram?
Probably cost of living and border security.
Was it just that they felt like you both cared about those issues? Or did they feel like you both had solutions?
It has been a priority for me. The world I’m living in, I’m going to the grocery store and seeing people take stuff out of their cart. Fentanyl is just running rampant. A lot of us felt like Joe Biden’s administration did not take it seriously, and there was a very, very late pivot on the border.
I think there are voters who see Trump and I as real people who are candid. They don’t agree with us about everything, but they have a sense that I’m telling them what I actually think and am listening to them with curiosity and honesty.
On the question of whether Trump is “marching us toward fascism.”
I think one of the dangerous things about that line of questioning is that democracy is not based on a binary vote for president. It is a muscle in normal, ordinary Americans who are showing up to volunteer at school, who are helping their neighbors out, who have a relationship with their community. It is all of these ways that we live our lives. And so when you say it’s just about one person, I think you damage the long-term muscle to resist a drift.
You’ve been forthright in support of the rights of trans people, which Joe Kent tried to use against you, especially when it came to things like trans women in sports. How did you navigate an issue that proved so difficult for Democrats nationally?
I do not think that is why Democrats lost the presidential race. He tried to come for me on it and it did not work.
Because it wasn’t a priority for your voters?
That’s right. In town halls and things like that, people are talking about, like, Spirit Lake and flooding in the Chehalis River Valley. I think views are nuanced on this, and there is some electoral liability for Democrats, but it’s not an Achilles' heel.
She favors reforms such as expanding the House and ranked-choice voting as means of bringing greater representation to the US government.
I think 90 percent of Americans really do agree about 90 percent of the issues, and instead we are allowing 10 things to push us into camps that are not going to build a coalition that could actually pass laws. So power continues to accrue to the most senior members and the least representative districts.
The framework here is that it is a bipartisan, equally divided commission that is thinking in large terms about what will deliver the most utility, not something just for a particular area. If we want more normal, working-class people here, we need electoral systems that open the door to more people participating.
I think rural America has not been well served by single-party control, and I also think our current system means that the most bipartisan members in the middle are also the ones who have to fight for their lives every election. That’s a lot of energy, right? It’s exhausting. It’s hard on your family, and it eliminates the deal makers.
You live in a community where Trump won. How many people in your district do you think voted for him because they want him to do the things he promised, like set up immigrant detention camps and use the Justice Department to take revenge on his enemies? And how many do you think voted for him because they don’t believe he’ll do those things?
When you’re fixing a car, right, I would much rather have it make the same noise predictably. Like, it always clunks when I turn left. Whatever it is, a predictable problem is much better than an unpredictable one. And so that confidence that this person is not trying to make themselves acceptable to you. They’re not putting out celebrity surrogates. They’re just showing up, and you can take it or leave it.
Natasha Dumas at McSweeney’s: Reasons That I, a Trans Woman, Have Had to Use the Bathroom at My Workplace
We cannot let this one pass. New bathroom bill would essentially make it illegal for trans people to use bathrooms in American airports. Don’t be surprised when it’s followed by national bills preventing people from being trans in public.
This is that idiot Nancy Mace’s latest brainstorm. It pertains to any federally owned bathroom: Airports, museums, office buildings, parks, etc.
AOC:
The idea that Nancy Mace wants little girls and women to drop trou… in front of who, an investigator? If a woman doesn’t look woman enough to a Republican, they want to be able to inspect your genitals to use a bathroom? It’s disgusting.
Gödel never revealed the nature of the loophole, and it’s never been discovered, though there are theories.
My guess: It’s the Presidential pardon.
I’m about to fill out my passport application form for the fifth time. I made two errors the first time, had computer problems the next two, and made another error the fourth.
The most recent error: My legal name is Mitchell. The form asks for other names used. I put down “Mitch,” which is of course the name I go by everywhere but on legal documents. Turns out other names are only supposed to be legal names.
I am about to fill out the passport renewal application form for the third time today because the process keeps glitching. I may instead climb into the wheel well of a jetliner and smuggle myself out of the country. It would be easier.
The Sol Reader is an ebook reader built into glasses frames. The epaper fits where the lenses of the glasses go. Not gonna lie — I am tempted by these silly things, but the price tag is high — $400.
I read the book when I was about 12 and thought it was amazing. It was my first exposure to the type of main character I would learn, years later, is called an “antihero.” I loved the worldbuilding, the imagined technology, and how the characters interacted with it. Some scenes were just dialogue, characters describing what machines were doing and what they were doing to try to get the machines to obey them, and I loved that.
I read it several times as a teen-ager but not since. I wonder whether I would love it today.
Good cover too. Captured the spirit of the book.
It occurs to me now that “Yesterday’s Children” echoes “The Caine Mutiny.”
It was the kind of machine you’d see behind the counter at a Starbucks or in a cafe that serves fancy coffee drinks. They had hooked up a generator and a five-gallon water tank. I asked one of the men what was happening; he said it was a joint promotion between a local running club and a British shoe brand coming to the US.
When we returned that way again about 30 minutes later, a dozen runners were standing around, and they’d set up a 7-foot high shelf unit with cubbies of running shoes for the runners to try the shoes.
You can barely see the coffee machine in the photo above, peeking out behind the cluster of men in the center.
They offered me coffee, but I declined. I do not think about drinking coffee along with strenuous exercise.
Texas education officials are expected to vote this week on a public school curriculum that focuses on Christianity.
From the curriculum:
What is the Golden Rule?
The Sermon on the Mount included many different lessons. Some of these included do not judge others; do not seek revenge, or try to get even with someone; and give to the needy. Beyond the Sermon on the Mount, there are many rules included throughout the Bible. Jesus said that the Golden Rule sums up all of the important teachings from scripture. “So in everything, do unto others as you would have done unto you."'
These are the same types of people who claim, perhaps even sincerely, that Christmas isn’t a Christian holiday because so much of the celebration is secular.
“Do not judge others; do not seek revenge, or try to get even with someone; and give to the needy” – the very words that Donald Trump himself lives by.
Inside ISIS’s Graphic Design Team — Ruthless terrorists, yes, but they have standards when it comes to graphic design.
Julie and I have not done a family Thanksgiving for years but from what I gather from the news and social media, the event has evolved into a joyless occasion where people yell at each other about politics for several hours.
Also, I am a Boomer and an uncle so apparently, I am supposed to play an integral role in this — I’m supposed to be the guy who ruins everything. I am shirking this responsibility.
My coffee is chewy this morning. The grounds broke containment in the coffeemaker.
TV shows we are currently watching: NCIS Origins, High Potential, Matlock, The Lincoln Lawyer, The Diplomat, Evil and Yellowstone. Except for Yellowstone, all of these shows are procedurals. Even Evil is an ecclesiastical procedural. And even Yellowstone has a procedural-driven storyline.
Brendan Carr will be the next FCC chief. What network operators need to know. By my colleague Masha Abarinova on Fierce Network.
Contact your Congressional reps and ask them to oppose HR9495. “If this bill passes, the Secretary of the Treasury would have the power to strip _any _non-profit group of it’s tax-exempt status with no due process."
America now has an unelected defense contractor sitting in the White House doing ketamine and twiddling the algorithmic knobs of an influential right-wing echo chamber while fulminating against traditional standards-based journalism, threatening to revoke network broadcast licenses, and suing advertisers who don’t want to spend their money on his dwindling user base. What could go wrong?
On top of that, Trump’s most likely FCC Chairman is Brendan Carr, who was tasked in the first Trump government to crack down on platform moderation by taking control of Section 230, literally wrote the Project 2025 chapter laying out a plan to do so, and is now begging to punish NBC for having Kamala Harris on “SNL.”
To be as clear as I can be, the second Trump administration with Elon Musk embedded within it represents the most direct and sustained threat to the First Amendment and the freedom of the press any of us will ever experience. If you’re a media executive or editorial leader and you haven’t met with your legal team to understand the current landscape of First Amendment threats, let alone the ones to come, you’re already behind. Get on it.
Regarding Big Tech leaders congratulating Trump on his victory:
All of these men are now hopelessly trapped in a problem their own platforms and algorithms created: they have to manipulate Trump’s narcissism to secure tariff exceptions and regulatory largesse, while knowing that the vast majority of their employees and half of their customers will see any engagement as moral bankruptcy.
Trump names Brendan Carr as his FCC leader. Carr has threatened to use the FCC to regulate speech that conservatives disagree with.
Some things I saw while walking with the dog.
Like other methods of measurement created by tech companies, “views,” “impressions,” and other metrics are arbitrary, and as any influencer knows, they can change at the drop of a hat — platforms update and encourage users to prioritize different metrics based on what’s good for the business. And right now, Meta just wants you to keep scrolling.
Stephen King quit Twitter and joined Threads. His last tweet: “I’m leaving Twitter. Tried to stay, but the atmosphere has just become too toxic. Follow me on Threads, if you like.” Here he is on Threads.
Here’s something I saw while walking with the dog this morning: This spectacular rainbow.
What’s the Deal With Pete Hegseth’s Crusader Tattoos? His body is covered in symbols celebrating violent Christian nationalism.
I have been distinctly uncomfortable with the whole “we must find ourselves a Joe Rogan” [—] a guy’s guy who can talk to the men who we desperately need to appease in order to win elections. [Certainly, liberals and progressives do] need to adapt themselves to a new media landscape and claim some of that territory for ourselves. This is a new world and the old so-called liberal media is dysfunctional. But the canonization of the dumbshit bro talk as the the only way to do it strikes me as wishful thinking on the part of a whole lot of lefties (you know who you are) who really relate to that stuff and think the whole “girlification” of the Democrats is a drag.
These liberals think it’s a liability that “the majority of Democrats are women… Good to know.”
There needs to be some creativity here, people. Running with stupid (or pretending to) isn’t going to get it done. Looking down on the Democratic party for not being the kind of people you want to have a beer with is well… stupid. This isn’t about your social life.
And Digby quotes Josh Marshall: “Voters often want new leaders. But things are always a bit out of joint when it’s leaders who want new voters.”
Related: On Threads yesterday, journalist Taylor Lorenz asked male podcast listeners to recommend favorite podcasts that aren’t as big as Joe Rogan yet.
“Who are some of the up and coming men in the male podcast space that bros are listening to?” she asked.
I recommended Ezra Klein, Dan Savage, Everett Rummage (Age of Napoleon), John Green, Dan Carlin (Hardcore History), Tyler Cowen, Nilay Patel and David Pierce (Vergecast), Gilbert Gottfried, Casey Newton and Kevin Roose (Hard Fork), Jonathan Goldstein (Heavyweight), PJ Vogt, Ryan Broderick, Dominick Sandbrook and Tom Holland (The Rest is History), John Gruber and Ira Glass.
I was kinda trolling Lorenz a bit — because I am not a bro. I am a fucking grown-ass man. And none of those podcasters are bros. Bros are children with car keys and liquor; I want nothing to do with them.
The latest Jesus movie mixes Christianity with MMA fighting. The Forward, a Jewish publication, criticizes a movie about Jesus as a mixed martial artist for being unrealistic and historically inaccurate.
I’m Jewish myself, and I read the Forward regularly. I’m baffled why they chose to run this review of this movie. I read it, and I’m now sharing it, so maybe that’s my answer.
Tulsi Gabbard’s Nomination Is a National-Security Risk. She has vehemently and often spoken in support of Syria and Russia against the United States.
“Dogma” is one of Smith’s best movies. It’s surprisingly thoughtful as well as crudely funny.
Smith is Catholic, or at least was raised in the religion. He clearly respects Catholicism and is wrestling with it.
Kevin E. G. Perry at The Independent:
"It’s a funny, funny flick, and it makes you think," said Smith. “You walk out of the movie and maybe you think about your own faith or your own spirituality, or maybe not, [but] at least you’ve been entertained.”
Also: “I always felt that – with her infinite patience – God had to be both a woman and Canadian.”
Good news for fans: Smith says there are plans to re-release the film in 2025. “Dogma” has been unavailable on streaming, and the last physical release was a Blu-Ray in 2008, because the rights are owned by Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob.
Tyler Cowen interviews Neal Stephenson on history, spycraft, parallels between the 20th Century US and Soviet Union and more. Stephenson’s new book is Polostan, a historical novel set in the 1930s; it’s the beginning of a new series.
Anna Kodé at the New York Times:
Ms. Schiffman pointed to a photo of a white sink — surrounded by towels, dishes and a mirror — as revealing of the quotidian scenes she is hoping to document. It’s the only sink in that tenant’s apartment, said Ms. Schiffman, who also has just a single sink in her home. “You have to do everything in that sink — when we have to go to a wedding or a thing, there’s a schedule.”
Schiffman moved into her husband’s railroad-style apartment in 1997, and they’ve lived there since.
Because the apartments are rent-stabilized, landlords don’t renovate them, so the photos cross time. Many of the subjects have lived in their homes for decades. “One tenant said to the photographer, ‘I know that these are the same floorboards walked on from the time this building was built in 1898.’”
But the neighborhoods change.
One tenant who had been living in her apartment since the 1990s said to Ms. Schiffman, “At least a crack addict would say good morning to you. Now I say good morning to these young tenants and they look at me like, ‘Why are you talking to me?’”
In the modern world there are three main ideological groupings. Broadly the right, the left, and liberals/neoliberals. These don’t appear on a line, they’re a triangle and each has something in common with the others. The left, generally speaking, is anti-war, for example, and so are parts of the right, especially paleocons. Liberals are very identity politics focused and the left has sympathy for that, but isn’t as dedicated to it. The left’s primary focus is on economic issues and relationships and the relationship to IP is more of “of course everyone should be treated equally.”
By Welsh’s definition, I’m on the left. I’m not identity-politics focused but I do strongly believe that everyone should be treated equally.
Also:
Left wingers are the opposition to capitalism. The most extreme versions want an end to it entirely, the moderate versions want it under firm control, made to contribute to mass prosperity, not turned to produce billionaires.
I’m most definitely moderate-left on capitalism. Markets are excellent servants but cruel, wicked masters. Also, capitalism is often in opposition to free markets.
The Onion’s bid was backed by the families of eight victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and one first responder. It also will have an exclusive advertising deal with the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety….
The purchase acquires the company’s intellectual property, including its website, customer lists and inventory and certain social media accounts, as well as the production equipment used to put Jones on the air. The amount of the bid was not announced.
“The Onion is proud to acquire Infowars, and we look forward to continuing its storied tradition of scaring the site’s users with lies until they fork over their cold, hard cash,” said The Onion CEO Ben Collins. “Or Bitcoin. We will also accept Bitcoin.”
In order to make the bid work, the families “agreed to forgo a portion of their recovery to increase the overall value of The Onion’s bid, enabling its success,” the families said in a statement.
“After surviving unimaginable loss with courage and integrity, they rejected Jones’ hollow offers for allegedly more money if they would only let him stay on the air because doing so would have put other families in harm’s way,” said Chris Mattei, attorney for the families and partner at Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder.
Jones condemned the deal and said it’s unconstitutional because in MAGAworld, the Constitution means whatever they want it to mean.
Tom Homan, the man president-elect Donald Trump has selected to serve as “border czar,” defended his family separation policy at an extremist festival last month surrounded by QAnon promoters, election conspiracists, and church leaders wearing crowns of bullets.
“Trump comes back, I come back, And I will run the biggest deportation operation this country has ever seen,” Homan told a cheering crowd at the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival, a three-day celebration in Greeley, Pennsylvania, organized by the Rod of Iron Ministries, a far-right gun sect that worships AR-15s.
Homan, who was officially appointed as “border czar” by Trump this week, was one of the main architects of the “zero tolerance” policy during Trump’s first term, forcibly separating more than 5,000 children from their parents between 2017 and 2018.
…
Homan was introduced on stage by Justin Moon, a firearms manufacturer and the son of Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Church, a global religious cult whose adoring followers were known as Moonies. Homan shared the stage with far-right figures that included Pizzagate promoter Jack Posobiec and Ivan Raiklin, the self-styled “secretary of retribution” who created a “deep state target list” of Trump’s enemies who he wants rounded up and arrested. Also speaking at the event were prominent QAnon promoter Mel K, disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and Craig Sawyer, a former Navy Seal who has promoted various conspiracy theories including human trafficking and pedophilia rings.
At the festival, Homan also pushed the baseless claim that the immigrants were being allowed into the country to help Vice President Kamala Harris win the election. This was a conspiracy theory that was promoted heavily by pro-Trump election denial groups in the months leading up to the election.
All the best people.
At Mar-a-Lago, ‘Uncle’ Elon Musk Puts His Imprint on the Trump Transition. “He’s on the patio. He’s on the golf course. Everywhere Donald Trump looks, there is the world’s richest man.”
Bluesky added 1M users since the election. “Blue” is right there in the name.
Cory Doctorow: Xi’s 2012-2015 anti-corruption campaign routed out real and serious corruption — but only when done by Xi’s opponents. Xi’s allies were allowed to continue grifting. Look for Trump to follow that lead in prosecuting corrupt businesses, including antitrust. He’ll find real abuse but turn a blind eye to his allies' crimes.
This will create a trap for people who hate Trump but don’t pay close attention to anticorruption cases. It’s a trap that Trump sprung successfully in his first term, when he lashed out at the “intelligence community” – the brutal, corrupt, vicious, lawless American spy agencies that are the sworn enemies of working people and the struggle for justice at home and abroad – and American liberals decided that the enemy of their enemy was their friend, and energetically sold one another Robert Mueller votive candles:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/
Over the next four years, Trump will use antitrust and other corruption-taming regulations to selective punish crooked companies. He won’t target them because they’re crooked: he’ll target them because they aren’t sufficiently loyal to him.
If you let your hatred of Trump blind you to the crookedness of these companies, you lose and Trump wins. The reason Trump will find it easy to punish these companies is that they are all guilty. If you let yourself forget that, if you treat your enemy’s enemy as your friend, then Trump will point at his political rivals and call them apologists for corruption and sleaze – and he’ll be right.
It is possible for Trump to fight corruption corruptly. That’s exactly what he’ll do.
GPS spoofing threatens global aviation. Attackers can potentially cause a GPS blackout or guide a plane into dangerous skies. By my colleague Dan Jones at Fierce Network.
The worst part of the week after the presidential election has been the bombardment of “What the Democrats Must Do Now” messages from people who certainly do not know the answer to that question. “Regular Folks, my Students at Yale Tell Me, Are Tired of the Elites,” by David Brooks. “Some Friendly and Helpful Suggestions to My Friends on the Left,” by Bret Stephens. “Guhhh… Woke! Buhhh” by Pamela Paul. … The zombie opinion-creation industry does not even require a reflection period to trot out an entire set of prescriptions. They just changed the date on the label on the old prescriptions.
You can divide the post-election reactions of people in power into two groups: Genuine Attempts to Grapple With Reality, and then the larger group of Soothing Rationalizations of What Just Happened Which Will Allow People in Power to Continue on in Their Nice Lives. The danger is that the first group gets seduced by the second group and as a result we get the next four years of the same people doing the same things to the same effect. (You may notice that straightforward ideas like “fire everyone in Democratic Party leadership positions automatically after a national election loss” do not appear to be on the table.) This sort of conversation, in which many participants are concerned with covering their own asses, and all theses are unverifiable, is always in peril of puttering out into a grand conclusion of “Change nothing,” despite that being the one plan that has already been proven to be bad.
The “veneer of ‘nonpartisanship’ in mainstream media … causes them to focus on horse race analytics rather than on interrogating the morality of policy questions has seeped into the mind of the general public and now causes a great deal of election analysis to be amateur message analysis rather than substantive discussions of what humans need from politicians. If you find yourself thinking, “How should we change our messaging to win the next campaign?” I suggest you hit yourself hard on the head with a hammer a few times.
…
(Not to grind old axes, but this is the “Defund the Police” problem: a good policy addressing a substantive issue that the public found themselves completely unable to discuss substantively because all anyone would talk about was the slogan itself…. )
…
What the Democrats should do substantively going forward is: Fix people’s problems. Attack the crisis of economic inequality. Tax the rich and send the money to the poor and working class and create universal public health care and child care and free education and strengthen the labor movement and restrict the power of capital and watch the nation’s deepest problems shrink, because the nation’s deepest problems stem from the fact that America allows capitalism to arrange everything for the benefit of capital, which results in an array of awful consequences for humanity.
Addressing economic unfairness will be hard because it requires Democrats to go against the interests of their wealthy donors. Much easier to hope to win over Trump voters by being more racist and “tough on the border” and join in the persecution of trans people, Nolan says. Instead, Democrats must do it all: Fight persecution of all types.
Coal miners who fought in the Battle of Blair Mountain–members of the white working class circa 1921– resisted racism and focused on going to war with evil rich people. I believe we can too.
The Americans prepping for a second Civil War, by Charles Bethea at the New Yorker. They’re joining survivalist communities, canning food and buying guns.
Debra Whitman at the Wall Street Journal: Stress about growing older becomes self-fulfilling. The stress itself causes physiological health problems.
Also:
… our expectations about growing older become self-fulfilling because they affect how we behave. For example, while a positive attitude about aging doesn’t take the place of exercise and eating well, a belief that we can live long and healthy lives often encourages people to invest in their future selves by taking more walks and eating more greens.
On the flip side, when we view health problems as inevitable, we’re more likely to see healthy behaviors as futile. [And:] When older people believe that unhappiness comes with age, they are less likely to seek treatment for depression.
Ian Welsh asks: “What is woke?" I’ve wondered that myself. I think it’s just a random word that MAGA throws around to indicate anything Donald Trump doesn’t like. Same with “socialism” when used by MAGA.
That’s not how it started. It started with a specific meaning decades ago, but that meaning has been lost.
Bret Stephens cites Amsterdam pogroms and hate crimes in Chicago, Brooklyn, Paris and inside Israel and says:
Notice what these attackers aren’t saying. They aren’t expressing themselves in the faddish language of anti-Zionism. They aren’t denouncing Israeli policy or speaking up for Palestinian rights. They aren’t trying to make careful distinctions between Jews and Israelis. They are, like generations of pogromists before them, simply out to get the Jews — a reminder, if one was needed, of the truth often attributed to Maya Angelou: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Bluesky is probably the new Twitter, says Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day. Threads is lame, he says.
He barely mentions Mastodon. Good. Let’s keep quiet about Mastodon so the clout-chasers don’t notice it.
Also: What if Trump’s Twitter ban helped him win the election? AI is continuing to eat Google and everything else. And: “Weird crypto guys want to buy Greenland and ‘terraform’ it.”
I have cottage cheese for lunch nearly every day. Minnie enjoys it too.
Matt Gaetz: Not just a pedo. Also an anti-Semite.
I’ve been thinking about this quote a lot since election results were declared. Carlin got REALLY cynical shortly before he died. He was sure the world was burning and enjoyed watching it burn.
Some of the reports out of Trumpworld yesterday, in particular, had me alternating between laughing out loud and afraid. And I’ve barely checked the news today.
The undead workforce: AI avatars could keep you on the job after you’re gone. Get ready for your employers to demand the right to create your AI avatar, putting you to work after you’ve quit, retired, been fired or died. My latest on Fierce Network.
I hope Trump supporters get everything they voted for.
Trump is a scab, the Dems need unions, and the Dems are not faithful friends to unions. Harris campaign advisor – her brother-in-law Tony West – is Uber’s chief legal officer and the architect of Prop 22, California’s scab law that formalized “gig work” labor violations. The fact that when the eminently guillotineable union-buster Howard Schultz tries to win a presidential nomination he does so in the Democratic party speaks volumes. If your political party has room for Michael Bloomberg, it doesn’t have room for workers. Seriously, fuck that guy.
Something I saw while walking the dog: This artful cluster of birdhouses
A friend is lining up all his vaccinations for the next four years to prepare for anti-vaxxers taking charge of the US healthcare system.
Another friend is stocking up on electronics purchases now, anticipating price increases because of tariffs.
Another friend is diversifying his investment portfolio and moving investments overseas.
And, of course, some people are stocking up on survival gear or leaving the US.
How about you?
We’re not doing anything different, at least not now. If the US is going fascist, I can think of nowhere I’d rather be than California. Certainly not outside the US — no place in the world will be free of US foreign policy.
A family built a 50,000-pound full-size replica Stargate in their Ohio backyard. The ring has become a social media sensation — but tourists are not welcome.
How It Went. John Gruber shares a moving story about his mother’s death, father’s wedding ring and the election.
How Trump 2.0 could transform American cloud, AI, broadband and more. President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House and his “America First” policies will reshape the American and international tech landscapes. My latest on Fierce Network.
I started using a standing desk in late November 2010 and quickly found it more comfortable and stayed with it. I walk or stand for 12-13 hours or more on most days.
Here’s something I saw while walking the dog.
The Washington Post ordered its employees to return to the office five days a week. Huh?
Good journalists don’t work in the office. They go out in the community and find and report on news.
“News isn’t happening at your desk,” according to a great journalist (ChatGPT says it was Christopher Hitchens but I’m skeptical).
What a Trump win means for the FCC and telecom policy.Look for a Repubilcan-led FCC, eliminating Section 230 protections, potential revisions to the Universal Service Fund, good news for Elon Musk’s Starlink, and more.
This is an amazing, fast, in-depth analysis by my colleagues Diana Goovaerts and Masha Abarinova on Fierce Network
After using it once, I switched off Live Activity election results on my iPhone. Too much agita.
Apple users can use Live Activity to track election results from their home screens. I switched this on but will switch it off if it generates too much agita.
Britain’s remaining hereditary members of the House of Lords are fighting against a movement to abolish their seats. They say that eliminating the hereditary seats would be undemocratic — and their argument sort of makes sense.
Researchers from Kyoto University launched a satellite with wood paneling into space. This is not an exercise in 70s-inspired retro-futurism — they’re testing whether wood is a reasonable space construction medium.
How has the Electoral College survived, despite being perennially unpopular? A brief history of a disliked institution.
I’m sure it is great for my mental health and productivity to spend a lot of time on news and social media today. I see nothing wrong with this plan.
jk this actually seems like a good time to do minimal amounts of both news and social media.
I’ve gone door-to-door several years. Every year, I get awful stagefright — I dread it for months. Which is odd, because I do not get stagefright in real life. I love public speaking.
Once I get out there going door-to-door it’s fine. The unpleasant interactions are not particularly unpleasant and are rare. Far more interactions are pleasant. One or two are great. I need to remember that the next time I’m called.
This is a numbers game. Cover ground. You’ll get no response at 90% of the doors you knock on. They’re either not home or not answering the door.
Last week, a woman in the neighborhood caught me when I was out walking the dog and said she was afraid she’d missed her chance to send in a mail-in or drop-off ballot. I reassured her that she had until Election Day. She recognized me from my going door-to-door. That helps me feel good about the process.
There is a complicated script that we’re suppposed to follow but I believe it may have been written by people who have never gone door-to-door, and certainly not in their own neighborhoods. It makes you sound like a broken robot. I have been advised by a veteran at this sort of thing to wing it. Remember to state my name, state that I’m a neighbor and volunteer for the local Democrats. We have door-hangers — offer one of those. Other than that: Improvise. Get in an actual conversation like a normal person. We only go to houses with Democrats in them, so most of the people are glad to see us.
My own rule: Resist the urge to be persistent. Do not knock on doors with “no soliciting” signs. If someone seems to be rushed, just thank them, offer a door hanger, and be on my way in less than a minute.
Also, one house in my neighborhoood, which I have passed hundreds of times, has a wall around the front yard. When I went through the gate, the house had kind of a Texas Chainsaw Masssacre vibe. I left a hanger and skedaddled.
I think I’m done with the election. I may do some more dialing for Kamala today or tomorrow, but probably not. It’s in the hands of the American people now (God help us).
On Reddit: Why do so many people think drinking milk is weird?
Adults Who Still Drink Milk: Are You Okay? — “I’m not saying that everyone who drinks milk is a murderous psychopath – but it is unhinged behaviour.”
Something I saw while walking the dog this morning: This tiny sticker on a street sign post.
The microphone on my Apple Watch stopped working weeks or months ago. I know the common wisdom is that Siri is useless, but I use it frequently to set timers and alarms on the Apple Watch and I missed being able to do that. Today I once again tried following the care instructions on apple.com and wiping the microphone with a clean lint-free cloth and then trying to scrub it with a toothbrush and tap water. I have tried that before and neither technique worked. Feeling reckless, I decided to poke at the microphone with the end of a dental proxabrush — and by gosh it worked! The proxabrush pulled out a small waxy, white plug, which I think was dried soap. And now the microphone picks up audio, nice and clear.
This has been a vexation to me for weeks or months and I’m happy to have it resolved.
I did another hour of get-out-the-vote calling for Harris-Walz. This time I called Arizona. One of the men I called signed off, “Live long and prosper.” I blanked on the proper response (it’s “peace and long life.")
Bluesky and enshittification: No one is the enshittifier of their own story
Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr:
I will never again devote my energies to building up an audience on a platform whose management can sever my relationship to that audience at will.
…
Bluesky lacks the one federated feature that is absolutely necessary for me to trust it: the ability to leave Bluesky and go to another host and continue to talk to the people I’ve entered into community with there.
I got started much later than I intended, and the website directed me to a zoom meeting in conjunction with the dialing. After 10 minutes they ended and wanted to have a debrief. I did not want to go to a zoom meeting or debrief. I am varsity level at this stuff – just give me a list with phone numbers and names and a script and I’ll jump in and do it.
Today’s calls went to Nevada. Nobody picked up; nearly all went to voicemail. Yesterday’s calls were to Georgia and I got no voicemails. Why is voicemail popular in Nevada but unknown in Georgia?
I just made a final round of donations to the Harris campaign, Swingleft.org and the San Diego Democratic Party.
Swingleft is an organization that supports Democrats in competitive races nationwide.
I don’t know how many Ms there are in “hummus.” Definitely more than zero and fewer than three.
I did it from my house, from my home office, the same place I work all day. I did it after work.
My work involved making cold calls many years ago, so I have no phobias about doing that. When I was in the cold-calling business, I used to dial each number manually, like a caveman; the Harris campaign has an autodialer, so you just call up the website in your web browser and click to dial. The campaign provides a script with contingencies on what to say if the person says they’re not sure who they will vote for, if they’re undecided on whether to vote, if they’ve already voted, etc.
The auto-dialer assigned me to make calls in Georgia. There was (cough) a bit of a language barrier on many of the calls. In theory, Californians and Georgians both speak English, but in reality the dialects are drifting. I predict in a hundred years the languages will be separate.
All the calls went to Democrats. That’s the purpose of making the calls — to get out the Democratic votes.
90+ percent of the calls didn’t pick up. Many of the others hung up on me as soon as I identified myself.
I had a lovely conversation with a 91-year-old woman who said she is not planning to vote this year. I gather from the conversation that she’s not well enough to do so.
Three people I talked to said they want to vote but don’t know where and how. The auto-dialing software has a contingency for that — I arranged to text them information on where and how to vote.
Those three people are why I volunteered.
I only had one outright hostile caller. He answered the phone, “Who the fuck is this?” and I literally laughed out loud at that. I ended the call soon after that. I clicked the button on the website to let the campaign know that I had encountered a hostile caller.
While waiting for the callers to pick up, the software displayed a series of Halloween-themed Dad jokes. It seems possible, though not likely, that Tim Walz picked the jokes himself.
I will try to do this phoning every day between now and Election Day, both to help put Kamala in the White House and for more Dad jokes.
Anyone call do this. Here’s where to sign up. go.kamalaharris.com/calls/ There’s a five-minute video orientation, which is rather confusing; I suggest watching the video and don’t worry about being confused; just push through. You’ll figure it out as you go, and if you make mistakes, it’s not a big deal.
Japan’s mundane Halloween costumes include “Person listening to the song they’re about to sing next at karaoke,” “Cast member at some kind of theme park,” “parents when they were young,” and “That person who brings you weird gummies as souvenir from their vacation.” More. Via
I took an actual taxi, rather than an Uber, on a business trip last week. I paid with a plastic credit card and received a paper receipt.
Now I know what Civil War reenactors feel like.
This year, for Halloween, I’m wearing normal clothes. Somebody asked me, “What are you supposed to be?” I said, “I’m a former gifted child. I was supposed to be a lot of things.”
I don’t like Halloween.
To me, the Halloween season is like a joke that goes on far too long. It’s like a three-hour movie that should have been 90 minutes, but it lasts four to six weeks.
Also, death and decay are awful and not to be celebrated.
On the other hand, I love Thanksgiving and (even though I’m Jewish) Christmas.
The best of Japan’s mundane Halloween costumes for 2024. Includes “Man who keeps getting mistaken for a store employee” and “Students who went to the cafe to study but ended up spending the whole time reading manga and looking at their phones."
