Mitch's Blog

Cisco reports a rebound in service provider spending driven by network refreshes and growing demand for AI and data center connectivity. My latest on Fierce Network.

The Trump administration is replacing American democracy with a kleptocracy, a system of corruption in which a network of ruling elites use the institutions of government to steal public assets for their own private gain….

It is the system Russia’s president Vladimir Putin exploits in Russia, and President Donald J. Trump is working to establish it in the United States of America.

“The Trumps’ most natural allies,” [writes Tom Burgis of The Guardian], “first in business, now also in politics—have long been the rulers of the Gulf’s petro-monarchies, who see no distinction between their states’ interests and their families.'”

— Heather Cox Richardson:

Current examples of Trump kleptocracy: Trump’s plan to ally with Russia and force Ukraine to surrender, funneling billions of dollars of Russian natural resources and sweetheart deals to favored Russian and U.S. businessmen; White House advisor David Sacks negotiating sweetheart deals for Silicon Valley companies; U.S. policies promoting Trump family business; the sale of public office to Trump donors.

Also, Trump commuted the sentence of David Gentile, convicted of defrauding 10,000 investors out of $1.6 billion. “According to Kenneth P. Vogel of the New York Times, prosecutors said the victims were small business owners, teachers, nurses, farmers, and veterans: ‘hardworking, everyday people.’ ‘I lost my whole life savings,” one victim wrote about his losses. “I am living from check to check.'”

There’s a new name for the new oligarchs: The Epstein Class. Trump used to call those people “the swamp” and now he is their champion.

I changed the domain for this blog. The old domain redirects to the new domain so if you’re following this blog you don’t have to make any changes to your bookmarks, RSS feeds or email.

I started this blog using the domain mitchw.blog in late 2022, when I switched from Wordpress to Micro.blog. I didn’t want to use my full name on social media because at that time I was working for a company that was sensitive about being associated with potentially offensive speech. “Mitch” and “Wagner” were already taken on .com and .net and all other reasonable top-level domains, and I couldn’t think of anything cute that I liked, so I went with MitchW. I used the .blog top-level-domain because I was swept up in the fervor for the revival of good old-fashioned blogging.

I quickly got tired of that domain, but couldn’t be bothered to change it. I couldn’t think of anything I liked better. And I couldn’t even figure out why I didn’t like the domain mitchw.blog.

I had an insight recently, from a throwaway comment John Gruber made on his podcast The Talk Show (I think it was this episode with Stephen Robles): He said he doesn’t like the word “blog.” And I realized I don’t like the word either. I love blogging, but I don’t like the word “blog.”

Also, I don’t ever think of myself as “MitchW.” I think of myself as Mitch, Mitch Wagner and could even go with a Wagner domain name if it was available (which is was not).

I already owned mitchwagner.com, so I changed the blog domain to that. I followed these instructions. In my case, I already had a website hosted at that domain at Micro.blog, and so I didn’t have to mess with DNS settings; I just had to follow the instructions at the preceding link to point the domain to my blog instead of to my other website.

The whole thing took just a few minutes and was no trouble at all.

In addition to the blog, I had used mitchw.blog as my handle on Bluesky. I changed that to mitchwagner as well. This broke all the links to my previous Bluesky posts, but I don’t care about that.

Then I changed my ActivityPub username to @mitch@mitchwagner.com. Now, I can better take advantage of a feature of Micro.blog where I can read and reply to Mastodon and Bluesky responses from the Micro.blog timeline; people on both those services will see responses as coming from names extremely similar to the ones I use on those respective services (though not identical, they’re close enough).

And speaking of domain names: Twenty-some years ago, I saw a woman named Micki Krimmel used the blog domain mickipedia.com. As soon as I saw, I thought, “That’s brilliant!” And “Damnit! I wish I’d thought of that!” I didn’t follow her lead and use the name Mitchipedia because it would seem like stealing. Finally, two years ago, I thought, “Why don’t I just ask her if she has a problem with it?” And she was gracious about the whole thing and I changed my tumblr handle to mitchipedia but stopped short of using it as my primary blog domain because it seemed like too much of a commitment, like getting a tattoo (something else I once decided to do but then decided against it at the last minute and still have not followed through on). Also, the .com and .net domains were already taken and I grabbed .org but I feel like I’m not a .org. Yes, I overthink this kind of thing.

After comparison shopping, I now know that the best place to buy ice in the neighborhood is the liquor store a quarter mile from the house. Hopefully, our refrigerator will be repaired or replaced before I get a chance to form a relationship with the people who work there.

We are watching Pluribus. The premise is that everyone on earth has undergone a rapid, miraculous change in consciousness, and the show focuses on a single unpleasant, bitter alcoholic who was left behind. We are not exactly enjoying the show and yet we feel compelled to continue watching.

I really want to see what kind of world the transformed human race creates but instead we’re locked in on watching someone get drunk and binge-watch “Golden Girls.” That is literally what happens in the third episode. 🍿

Hamilton Nolan: Third parties on the U.S. national level are disastrous: “On the national level, and in particular concerning presidential elections, forming a third party tends to be counterproductive, because it has the effect of pulling votes away from the party closest to your beliefs and thereby helping the party most opposed to your own beliefs.” But a Labor Party can strike a crippling blow against Republicans in Red States that hate Democrats. How to Win Red States With a Labor Party

Michelin Honored the Cheesesteak. Not All Philadelphians Cheered. “In a Venn diagram of people deeply concerned about Michelin ratings and people deeply concerned about cheesesteaks, the overlap is not large.”

Why sex workers, kids and terrorists are the first to adopt new tech. “… these groups aren’t more (or less) temperamentally inclined to throw themselves into mastering new technologies. Rather, they have more reason to do so.” — Normie diffusion and technophilia, Cory Doctorow, @pluralistic@mamot.fr

Heather Cox Richardson: The Trump government surrenders to the Russians, betrays our European allies, commits war crimes and Trump posts messages of hate and terror for Thanksgiving.

As Trump’s popularity continues to drop, the MAGA coalition shows signs of cracking, and Trump’s mental acuity slips, there is a frantic feel to the administration, as if Trump’s people are trying to grab all they can, while they can.

Joel Stein defends the em-dash in the face of attacks by AI-haters. “It’s the breath marks of Emily Dickinson, the stream of consciousness of Virginia Woolf, the head-clogging maximalism of David Foster Wallace, the self-aggrandizing asides of Joel Stein.”

We Can’t Diet and Exercise Our Way Out of the Next Pandemic. ““In the event of a sudden pandemic, what should we do? This month, Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, offered a remarkably blunt answer: nothing.” By David Wallace-Wells.

Our refrigerator is currently not keeping things cold. We have the refrigerator repair guy coming Monday, but there is the possibility it’s not just pining for the fjords and we now have an ex-refrigerator. If we need to replace the fridge, do you have a recommendation?

I’d like to see a good miniseries based on Roger Zelazny’s “Damnation Alley,” but I fear that the biker aesthetic might be seen as out-of-date. BIkers don’t have the same pop culture romance as they did in the 50s-80s. And people would think the show was a ripoff of “Escape From New York,” so the publicists would have to explain that the Zelazny came first.

There was a movie made of the story in the late 1970s, but it got terrible reviews and I have never seen it. The armored car in the movie lived on for years in a series of 1980s Amoco commercials.

I’d also like to see a miniseries based on Zelazny’s “Doorways in the Sand,” and of course a full-blown big-budget many-season series based on the “Chronicles of Amber.”

I’ve seen reports that George R.R. Martin is producing a series based on Zelazny’s “Roadmarks.” I’d love to see that, but I haven’t seen anything about it recently and I suspect it’s in limbo.

kthxbai

I thought this was a pretty cool show. I liked the idea of a sentient chimp as crew member, and I had a mad crush on the girl.

A look back at “Mallrats” on its 30th anniversary, including a big interview with Kevin Smith. By Katie Baker at The Ringer

“Mallrats” was Smith’s second movie, coming off “Clerks,” a low-budget indy which saw him hailed as a cinematic genius. “Mallrats” was a spectacular flop, and critics were now saying Smith was an idiot.

But “Mallrats” has lived on as a cult classic and fan favorite, and making the movie shaped both Smith’s career and his life. He met his wife, Jennifer Schwalbach-Smith, through a circuitous route as a result of making “Mallrats,” so (as he points out) their daughter owes her life to “Mallrats.”

Smith tells a story about how he had to flee his house during the recent Los Angeles wildfires:

Smith considers himself “a pack rat and a fuckin’ hoarder,” but on that day, he was holding only two things when he left the house with his wife and their dogs. The first was a small urn containing a portion of his father’s ashes.

“The other,” Smith says, “was my Silent Bob costume. Because I was like, Well, if everything burns down, I’m gonna have to work and shit.”

I wouldn’t say “Mallrats” is one of my favorite movies, but I have seen it two or three times and enjoyed it and — you know what? There aren’t many movies I’ve seen more than once so yeah I guess “Mallrats” is one of my favorite movies. I know the movie is loved by middle-schoolers, but if you’re reading this you’ve seen my posts and you know that a big piece of my sense of humor is stuck at age 13.

China has brought millions out of poverty. The US has not – by choice

Jamelle Bouie: The White House Gold Rush Is On. “If Trump’s first term was marked by a level of graft and self-dealing that would have embarrassed a Tammany stalwart, then his second term seems to be an explicit effort to outpace his previous record and set a new high-water mark for political corruption in the United States…. By any and every measure, in other words, Trump is the most corrupt person to ever sit in the Oval Office.”