Mitch Wagner

“‘Never gonna crack it with a detective who wears an actual fedora unironically,’ Melissa Chen, a tech executive based in London, wrote in an X post that has been viewed more than five million times. ‘To solve it, we need an unshaven, overweight, washed-out detective who’s in the middle of divorce. A functioning alcoholic who the rest of the department hates.'”

Alisha Haridasani Gupta at The New York Times

(This article ran on Thursday. This morning, French authorities arrested
suspects charged with being the Louvre thieves, according to headlines.)

Happiness is not achieved by pursuing happiness. Happiness is a byproduct of finding life purpose and pursuing that purpose.

Dana Milbank reports at The Washington Post:: The best way to achieve happiness is focus on others and how you can contribute to them and their well-being. We need to find meaningful ways to contribute, “and often that will lead to the happiness that you’re seeking,” says psychologist Kendall Cotton Bronk of Claremont Graduate University.

Ask yourself what “the world is missing” and how you uniquely “fill that gap a little bit,” says psychology professor Todd Kashdan, who runs the Well-Being Lab at George Mason University. “The specific purpose doesn’t matter; it’s just a question of ‘what lights you up. Then commit to make a specific regular contribution – particularly time – toward that purpose.”

The contribution doesn’t need to be “a major life-changing allocation of time or energy” but rather “things we can fit into our everyday routines,” says Cornell psychologist Anthony Burrow, who runs the university’s Purpose and Identity Processes Lab.

Milbank writes:

There’s no right or wrong purpose. It could be related to family or work or anything else that gives you meaning and helps you order your goals. It’s not necessarily altruistic (evil people can have purpose) but often is. Your purpose can change over time.

Anteaters evolved independently at least 12 times in the 66 million years since nonavian dinosaurs went extinct.

Ants and termites are good eating and there are plenty of them. They outweigh all other insects, mammals, amphibians and birds combined in the rainforests of South and Central America. And globally, termites alone outweigh all wild mammals by a factor of 10.

Jake Buehler at Science

Cory Doctorow:

Remember when we were all worried that Huawei had filled our telecoms infrastructure with listening devices and killswitches? It sure would be dangerous if a corporation beholden to a brutal autocrat became structurally essential to your country’s continued operations, huh?

In other, unrelated news, earlier this month, Trump’s DoJ ordered Apple and Google to remove apps that allowed users to report ICE’s roving gangs of masked thugs, who have kidnapped thousands of our neighbors and sent them to black sites.

There’s more: Decades of protectionist tech regulation gives the Trump government control of the world’s cloud applications, networks, tractors, phones, game consoles, medical implants, ventilators and more. “It’s well past time for a post-American internet.”

David Pierce, a writer and podcaster for The Verge, talks about his work process and tools on the Cortex podcast with Myke Hurley.

Pierce is one of my favorite tech journalists and podcasters, and it’s not just because he does great work and because of his winning, upbeat personality. It’s also because his mental processes and work style are similar enough to mine that I find it useful and enjoyable when he nerds out about his tools and work style.

He talks about the style of podcast where the hosts are friends and talk about a subject they love. The Vergecast, which he co-hosts is a great example. He and Mike Hurley praise two podcasts in that style: The Rest is History and Rewatchables. Those two podcasts and The Vergecast are three of my favorite podcasts. Locally, here in San Diego, the Voice of San Diego podcast is yet another great example I love of that type of podcast.

David says the friendships the audience feels for podcast hosts are real, that we spend more time with our favorite podcast hosts than we do with nearly all of our real-life family, friends and co-workers.

I definitely feel those feelings, but I am skeptical whether those friendships are real. I sometimes refer to my favorite podcast hosts as “imaginary friends.” I don’t know whether those feelings are mentally healthy.

I do occasionally write to my favorite podcast hosts (I just sent a quick note to Pierce), and I always keep in mind when I do that these people don’t actually know me. The relationship is 99.95% in one direction.

Further complicating things: I currently have two favorite podcast hosts and writers who are also real-life friends. I have met up with them many times in person, and they have been to my house. However, I only see one of them every few years, and the other one is someone I have not seen in more than 40 years. These two people occupy very oddly-shaped emotional spaces in my head.

David and Myke also nerd out about productivity tools. They both agree that they would love to be the kinds of people who sit down and do a weekly review of their plans every Sunday, and that they never do it. Same here.

Help pass California Proposition 50, the Election Rigging Response Act (ERRA). You just need to walk around your neighborhood and talk to your neighbors. Sign up at mobilize.us

It’s easy to feel hopeless as the Trump government sends masked agents to invade our communities, uses government as a personal revenge apparatus, executes extrajudicial killings and creates economic chaos with tariffs. Even billionaires and the CEOs of the biggest companies in the world are bending the knee. It seems that surely the rest of us can’t do anything to stop the U.S.’s downward spiral.

But you can make a difference if you stop obsessing about national decline and turn your attention to local change. Join a community association, become active in your church, synagogue or mosque, and reach out to your neighbors. Change doesn’t just come from the top down; it also spreads from the bottom up. Down here at the bottom is where regular people like you and me can help bring about positive change, or at least slow the decay.

One such opportunity for positive change is available now: You can help pass California Proposition 50, which redraws state Congressional maps to create five additional Democratic Party-leaning seats in Congress. Prop 50 is a reaction to a naked power grab by Republicans in Texas who gerrymandered five Democratic-leaning districts to Republican.

What the Republicans did in Texas is corrupt and against the principles that our Founders held dear. To be clear, Prop. 50 is also gerrymandering. But it’s necessary to counter Republican cheating. The California measure will help Democrats retain a voice in national decision-making. As California State Assembly Member Chris Ward explains, Democrats need a five-point majority in the popular vote to gain majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives, because of decades of prior Republican gerrymandering. Texas’s gerrymandering will make that situation worse.

Terrible, but necessary

In Texas, the legislature decided the measure, after Republicans threatened to arrest Democrats, required Democratic representatives to submit to state police escorts and confined one representative to the state capitol overnight. But California’s Prop 50 won’t be decided by the governor or the legislature; it will be decided by the people, in a special election Nov. 4. Moreover, the California redistricting is temporary; California will revert to the independent redistricting commission, of which we are justifiably proud, after 2030.

Republicans are using their control of Congress and the White House to cheat California, threatening to withhold funding to fight wildfires, opening floodgates in the California Central Valley to waste water, driving ICE into our communities with no accountability, and threatening to withhold housing, education and healthcare funding, Ward notes.

Proposition 50 is a terrible measure — but it’s necessary. Republicans have stopped playing by the rules. Democrats need to stop bringing pencils to the knife fight.

You can help pass Proposition 50. You don’t need to donate money. You just need to canvass — walk around your neighborhood and talk to your neighbors. To sign up, go to San Diego Mobilize and look for the Prop 50 activities. Or sign up for any of the other great causes at San Diego Mobilize. If you can’t walk, you can make phone calls or text.

Even today, in the era of TikTok and AI, door-to-door canvassing is a highly effective means of getting out the vote. That’s been true for more than a century, and it’s still true.

Getting ahead

I’ve been active in the local Democratic Party and walking door-to-door to get out the vote since 2017. At first, I hated the idea — it seemed like an unnatural act. I hate being on the receiving end of door-to-door solicitation, and I did not relish the idea of doing that to my neighbors.

But I soon learned canvassing is different. We’re not asking for money or trying to get you to change your religion. We just want you to vote and suggest which candidates and issues to vote for.

Every time I canvass, I’m pleasantly surprised by how friendly and grateful people are to hear from me. Sometimes I get into lovely conversations. Though, to be honest, any kind of interaction is rare — mostly, when we ring a doorbell, nobody’s home, and we leave a door-hanger and move on. Still, it’s nice to get out and walk — and to feel like we’re doing something. Because we are.

After you’ve canvassed a few times in your neighborhood, people know who you are. One time, a neighbor chased me down — I wasn’t canvassing that day, I was just walking the dog — because she knew I canvassed, and she was upset because she thought she missed the deadline to vote in a previous special election. I reassured her that no, she had not; the ballot just needed to be postmarked by Election Day. I got out my phone and showed her where she could drop the ballot off in a dropbox if she didn’t want to mail it in. Another time, while canvassing, I rang the doorbell of a woman in her 90s who lived alone, and her caregiver let me in. The woman was unable to walk more than a couple of steps and breathed with an oxygen tank, but we sat a while and had a lovely conversation. She had been an activist herself when she was younger and more mobile.

A few weeks ago, a neighbor in his 80s greeted me with a big grin — and a fake severed head. He had been decorating for Halloween and thought that answering the door with a fake severed head was a splendid idea. He was 100% right about that, and we had an excellent conversation.

Two separate goats

That’s another great thing about canvassing: You’re a volunteer. You’re not on a clock. If you want to stop and have a nice conversation with someone, do it. That’s what we’re out there for.

Negative interactions are extremely rare; I’ve knocked on hundreds of doors and can only think of two or three times when people were rude. And sometimes even the negative interactions can be entertaining; goats chased State Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson. Twice. In one day. Two separate goats, at two separate houses.

Local action is your best bet for breaking the MAGA wave sweeping the country. Canvassing to support Prop 50 is a great way to make a difference; sign up at mobilize.us, or sign up for any of the other great causes there. Or just get active in your community — your church, synagogue, mosque, school or any other club or activity. If you choose to canvass, you’ll almost certainly find it a rewarding experience, and you’re highly unlikely to be chased by goats.

Mitch Wagner is a board member at large for the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club, serving La Mesa and surrounding communities — but all are welcome. We meet the first Wednesday of the month at 6:30 pm for a social half-hour, with programming starting 7 pm, at the La Mesa Community Center, 4975 Community Drive, La Mesa.