Mitch's Blog

Publicity photos and a brief write-up on what to expect from Fallout Season 2 in December. I’m looking forward to it. www.theverge.com/games/760…

ICE Is Nothing Like the Brownshirts, Because the Brownshirts Actually Identified Themselves www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/…

A fascinating history of zippers, which were invented in 1892 and didn’t even work for almost 20 years. During all that time, zippers were a scam, a product in search of a solution. After all, buttons and snaps worked fine. articlesofinterest.substack.com/p/new-epi…

What Happens When an Entire Scientific Field Changes Its Mind www.scientificamerican.com/article/w…

I almost came home with another dog this morning, a sweet-faced chihuahua/German shepherd mix. (And isn’t that an unlikely romance?) The woman walking her said she was a foster, and available for adoption. But I resisted temptation.

The foster dog showed no interest in either me or Minnie, and the woman said the foster has a history of being hostile to men. Also, Julie definitely does not want another dog. So I see no reason why adopting that dog would have been a bad idea.

The scarcity of public toilets is a perfect example of American thinking in 2025. Americans would literally shit their pants to avoid the possibility of reducing a homeless person’s suffering.

Some days, I hate Gavin Newsom. Some days I love him.

A few months ago, I announced to a friend that if Gavin Newsom is the nominated candidate for President in 2028, I would quit the party. This was around the time that Newsom was hosting his MAGA-curious podcast and making anti-trans statements.

But other days, I have felt like if the Democrats don’t nominate Newsom, I’ll walk.

I was loving Newsom beginning August 14. That was a good day for our man Gavin.

Newsom held a firecracker of a press conference Thursday, announcing the launch of a statewide effort to fight back against Trump’s attempts to rig Texas' elections..

Trump and his cronies are nakedly and without pretense planning to gerrymander Texas, redrawing district lines to generate five additional Congressional seats for the Republican Party.

Newsom and his allies said, effectively, fine then. You gerrymander Texas, we’ll gerrymander California for the Democrats.

Perhaps equally important was the plain language Newsom used:

“California will not sit idle as Trump and his Republican lapdogs shred our country’s democracy before our very eyes," he said. “In just six months, Trump’s unchecked power has cost Americans billions and taken an ax to the greatest democracy we’ve ever known. This moment calls for urgency and action – that is what we are putting before voters this November, a chance to fight back against his anti-American ways.”

Unlike Trump’s naked power grab, the Election Rigging Response Act will be decided by California voters in November. And it will be a temporary change, through 2030, with redistricting returning to the state Citizens Redistricting Commission. And it keeps California’s current Congressional maps if Texas and other states also keep their original maps.

“The damage the Trump administration is causing to our country is clear: masked agents terrorizing communities, tax dollars wasted on military stunts, allies alienated, and loyalists hired to replace public servants,” said Senator Alex Padilla. “This administration is out of control—and the Election Rigging Response Act is how California defends our democracy and fights back.”

And there were a roster of other patriotic Democrats joining Newsom, including San Diego’s Lorena Gonzaez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO; and La Mesa’s State Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson, M.D., chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus.

Under the redistricting proposal, the 48th Congressional District, straddling Riverside and San Diego Counties and held by Rep. Darrell Issa, would move from “safe Republican” to a “lean Democratic” seat.

Newsom trolled Trump on social media:

DONALD IS FINISHED — HE IS NO LONGER “HOT.” FIRST THE HANDS (SO TINY) AND NOW ME — GAVIN C. NEWSOM — HAVE TAKEN AWAY HIS “STEP.” MANY ARE SAYING HE CAN’T EVEN DO THE “BIG STAIRS” ON AIR FORCE ONE ANYMORE — USES THE LITTLE BABY STAIRS NOW. SAD! TOMORROW HE’S GOT HIS “MEETING” WITH PUTIN IN “RUSSIA.” NOBODY CARES. ALL THE TELEVISION CAMERAS ARE ON ME, AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR. EVEN LOW-RATINGS LAURA INGRAM (EDITS THE TAPES!) CAN’T STOP TALKING ABOUT MY BEAUTIFUL MAPS. YOU’RE WELCOME FOR LIBERATION DAY, AMERICA! DONNIE J MISSED “THE DEADLINE” (WHOOPS!) AND NOW I RUN THE SHOW. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GCN

The specifics of Newsom’s proposal are important, but it’s also important what it represents: Democratic willingness to fight for America.

Newsom’s fighting spirit is a refreshing change for a party that has seemingly spent the last decade or more as the party that “would bring a pencil to the knife fight," as Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said.

During Newsom’s press conference, Trump demonstrated what’s at stake.. Trump sent more than a dozen Border Patrol agents, masked and armed, to stand outside the press venue. It was a show of force meant to intimidate California and force us to bend the knee.

The show of courage by Newsom, Democratic leaders and allies was great. It was a refreshing moment in a time when — as one person said on social media — “its just nothing but bad news these days. even the good news is just ‘federal judge temporarily pauses bad news’".

But it’s not enough. Newsom is still the man who loaned his platform to MAGA extremists and spoke out against trans people. The Democratic Party needs to decide firmly and definitively whether it represents all the American people — including trans people — or attempt to pander to Republican supporters who will never support us.

I wrote this for the newsletter of the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club, where I am a board member at large.

I dislike it so much that I’ve decided to stop participating in all Discord forums.

Reddit and webforums (particularly those based on Discourse software) are great. Even mailing lists can be pretty good.

But Discord is a mess. Too many channels. Every time I visit one, it’s like I’m walking in on the middle of a conversation and have no idea what people are talking about.

Discord is meant for people who live on Discord and pop in a couple of times an hour to catch up. That’s not me.

I’m feeling a little the same way about timelines — Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads and Facebook and of course X. In the case of timelines, it all seems to be people talking past each other. Tumblr is better, but mostly I’m on Tumblr for the memes and vintage illustrations and photos.

Venice floats on millions of tree trunks that workers pounded vertically into the mud over a thousand years to erect vast stone buildings on top of floating foundations. This is wild, and I had no idea. www.bbc.com/future/ar…

“We need shittable cities (actively maintained public restrooms).… A city without well-maintained restrooms is a city where many of the chronically ill cannot leave their homes, and where the homeless are criminalized for bodily functions.” www.tumblr.com/vautour-c…

President Trump’s War on “Woke AI” Is a Civil Liberties Nightmare www.eff.org/deeplinks…

I bought a new coffee on Sunday and did not care for it, but I’ve been continuing to drink it because my parents grew up in the Great Depression, and they would rise from their graves and admonish me if I threw out perfectly usable food.

But it occurred to me yesterday that if I put the coffee in the chest freezer, that would not be throwing it out. And that’s what I did, and I bought a couple of bags of our usual Sumatra, which we like.

And now the bad coffee will live in the freezer forever, slowly working its way to the bottom, like deep-sea creatures sinking to the ocean depths, where the coffee will spend eternity with other foods we have no use for but can’t bear to throw out, such as the bread pudding I bought a few years ago, not realizing I was buying a whole loaf of bread pudding, and foolishly put in the freezer before I had cut the loaf into individual portions. (What the hell am I going to do with a massive loaf of frozen-solid bread pudding? It wasn’t even good bread pudding.)

One day, hopefully in the distant future, Julie and I will both be dead, and the Questionable Coffee will be our heirs' problem.

Things that don’t bother me that seem to bother other people:

• Apologizing when I’m wrong. Just do it and get it over with. It’s a lot more trouble to twist yourself up in knots justifying bad behavior. Everybody fucks up now and then. Apologize and move on.
• Going bald. When I was young, I had long, thick hair. If there were an inexpensive, low-hassle way to get that hair back, I’d do it, but no such treatment exists, so that’s that. When I had a full head of hair, it was wild, and I had to beat it into submission every day. This way is more convenient, and I look ok as I am.
• Picking up dog poop.

Today I’ve been messaging folks I haven’t communicated with in years, and it’s been interesting to see what the last messages we sent each other were, three years ago or whatever.

Maga’s boss class think they are immune to American carnage: They’re in for a surprise. pluralistic.net/2025/08/1…

Cory Doctorow:

… The Maga base wants a bunch of stuff that the Maga elites would never tolerate, but that’s OK, because the Maga elites are pretty sure they will never have to suffer under the laws they pass for others. Peter Theil is happy to support a political movement whose dominant factions would like to put him – and every other gay man – in a concentration camp, because he’s pretty sure that only applies to the poor gays, not the billionaire gays.

Financiers who back Trump know that they can afford to transport their daughters, wives, mistresses and the housekeepers, babysitters and teenagers they impregnate across state lines (or national borders) to get an abortion should the need arise. Their participation in Maga was a bet that after victory was attained, the base could be made to settle for performative cruelty against people other than them.

MAGA’s boss class are counting on so-called moderate Democrats to bail them out when the bubble pops, as happened in 2008, Cory says.

Or they will count on that bailout. For now, I don’t think they’re thinking that far ahead. They’re thinking the hell-bound train will never arrive at its destination.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That…

Here’s something that I’m thinking about: The subprime mortgage bubble in 2008 looted the financial sector. That was catastrophic, but the feds dipped into the rest of the economy to bail out the financial sector.

Today’s looters, led by Trump, are pillaging the entire economy. When they’re done, will there be anything left to bail them out with?

Civilizations fall. It could well be our turn. And that turn may come within a few years, or even months.

No, these thoughts don’t keep me up at night. They’re too big to contemplate. I just go along living my day-to-day life, not too different from how I lived it in the 2010s.

Sorry, the optional AI is mandatory. www.jwz.org/blog/2025…

Scams And Bribery Are Becoming the Foundation of Our Economy. “The United States government taking steps to deliberately introduce cryptocurrency into the heart of our nation’s economy is kind of like a healthy person deciding to pick up a syringe and inject an unknown, harmful virus into themselves. Stick it right in the heart there!” www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/scams-a…

Cybersecurity “red teams” tell the UK government that AI is rubbish, and they don’t think much of quantum computing or blockchain either. pivot-to-ai.com/2025/08/1…

Events that mark the passing of the year: New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, my birthday, buying another year’s supply of dog poop bags, Labor Day, Julie’s birthday, etc.

“One way to think about AI’s unwelcome intrusion into our lives can be summed up with Goodhart’s Law: ‘When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.'” — Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr pluralistic.net/2025/08/1…