Ian Welsh

Trump has shown himself to be a partner who can’t be trusted — he’s unreliable and routinely goes back on his word. But Western nations hate China enough that Trump might pull this off, Welsh says.

If so, we’ll be the weaker side, as the USSR/Warsaw Pact was last time and we will lose the new Cold war, falling further and further behind technologically and watching as the Chinese enjoy goods we can barely even dream of, just as was true of the late Soviet Union.

Everything, and I mean everything, will be sacrificed to keep the oligarchs in power, keep making them richer and keep the flow of unearned cash pouring into every rich person’s orifices.

On the other hand, the EU and China are in talks to end EU tariffs on electric vehicles. “That sound you hear is Elon Musk puckering up to kiss his ass goodbye.”

My latest on Fierce Network

I found this to be a fascinating story: “Digital humans” — realistic, AI-powered avatars — are poised to revolutionize human-computer interactions in the telecom sector. These avatars provide higher customer satisfaction and increased likelihood of purchases compared with traditional interfaces, according to research. Companies such as AT&T, Amdocs and ServiceNow are leveraging AI to automate network operations and enhance customer service.

Trip Gabriel / The New York Times

I did not read Keen‘s book. I had not even heard of it or him until I read this obituary. I did, however, read “Iron John,” by Robert Bly, which was published about the same time and was another touchstone of the men’s movement of the 90s.

I think there are many, many ways of being a man and I am not the type of man that the men’s movement of the 90s spoke to. And if the “manosphere” of the 2020s is anything like how I’ve seen it described, I certainly don’t want to be involved in that.

Xochitl Gonzalez at The Atlantic:

… these were students in America doing what students in America should do: questioning authority (in this case, me) and using their rights to free speech and free assembly to engage with issues they are passionate about.

Also, Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University grad student, was surrounded by “hooded and masked plainclothes [ICE] officers” near her Somerville, Mass., home. She was “seized in the street, handcuffed like a criminal, and put inside the back of an unmarked car in what looked, to passersby, like “a kidnapping.”

She is a Turkish citizen legally in the U.S. who did nothing other than write a civil editorial urging her university to “take more seriously a vote from the student senate calling on the university to divest from Israel.” She broke no law.

Marco Rubio’s interpretation of law to justify Öztürk’s arrest is “just one more example of the Trump administration’s attempts to change America from a nation of rights to a nation of privileges that can at any moment be revoked.”

It’s scary to be an American right now as Donald Trump and Elon Musk run amok in Washington. But we here in San Diego can be a little less scared than our friends and family elsewhere in the country because we live in a Blue county in a powerful Blue state.

But San Diego could become scarier if the Republican candidate wins the April special election to fill a vacant seat on the San Diego Board of Supervisors. If the Republican candidate wins that seat, the Republican Party will control the county board of supervisors, bringing a MAGA regime to San Diego. To prevent this, we must do two things: 1) Turn out the Democratic vote, and 2) vote only for Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre, the endorsed candidate of the San Diego Democratic Party, despite more than one Democrat being running in the election. Otherwise, we split our vote and risk a Republican taking the seat in the Primary. If that happens, we will have a MAGA County Board of Supervisors.

If you live in District 1, please vote for Aguirre. And if you don’t live in District 1, please talk to friends and family there and encourage them to vote for Aguirre.

Act fast — the election ends Tuesday, April 8, in five days!

The county board of supervisors has a broad scope of authority: It manages a significant budget for services and programs, disperses federal funds, manages social welfare programs such as CalFresh, Medi-Cal and the foster care system, and it oversees local government and law enforcement for unincorporated areas of the county.

Aguirre will make a great supervisor. As mayor of Imperial Beach, she has an impressive array of accomplishments. She has been a champion in the fight to clean up the South County sewage crisis, securing $600 million in federal funding. She has helped make life more affordable by lowering utility rates and adding moderately priced homes. She achieved gains in public safety and disaster response, fighting homelessness, and overall quality of life for all San Diegans — not just the rich. And, of course, she has worked to protect our values — Aguirre is pro-choice; she favors keeping local law enforcement focused on fighting crime, not doing the federal government’s job on immigration enforcement; and she opposes federal cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, elder care and Social Security.

There are other excellent Democrats in this race. But Aguirre is the San Diego Democratic Party’s endorsed candidate, and we all must get behind one candidate to help her achieve more than 50% of the votes in this special election.

If the Republicans win the board, we can expect to see cuts to social services, including homeless aid and mental health benefits. Republicans will enact economic policies that help the rich and hurt the middle class and poor.

We’re already seeing Republicans doing damage in San Diego. As County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer points out in a recent newsletter, extreme federal service reductions aren’t a distant Washington fight; they will directly impact all of us in San Diego, cutting healthcare, housing, and homelessness benefits and increasing the cost of living.

“Slashes to healthcare?” Lawson Remer writes. “It means bigger crowds and longer waits the next time you’re in the emergency room.”

She adds, “Elimination of federally funded housing vouchers? It means local homelessness will increase as more of our neighbors won’t be able to make rent in high-cost San Diego.

“Cuts to Medicaid? It means fewer beds in the County for unhoused people having a mental health or substance abuse crisis on the streets.

“Reductions in the national food assistance program known as SNAP? It means kids in our community who we see every day — children of our friends, neighbors and coworkers — will have less to eat.”

50,000 people could lose access to job training and financial assistance, 400,000 San Diegans may no longer receive food assistance, and nearly 900,000 residents could lose Medi-Cal healthcare coverage, Lawson-Remer writes.

A Republican majority on the San Diego Board of Supervisors would make the damage we’re seeing from Republican policies much worse.

In contrast, Aguirre will help make the county better for everyone, not just the rich. It’s that simple. We need to restore the Democratic majority to the board. If you live in District 1, please get out and vote for Paloma Aguirre. And if you live outside the district, get your friends and family in District 1 to vote for the endorsed Democratic candidate, Paloma Aguirre.

The district includes Chula Vista, Imperial Beach, National City, and some communities in the City of San Diego, including Barrio Logan, East Village and Golden Hill. It also includes the unincorporated areas of Bonita, East Otay Mesa, Lincoln Acres, Sunnyside and La Presa.

Eligible District 1 voters have already received ballots in the mail; they must be returned no later than Tuesday, April 8. You can mail the ballot in through April 8, drop the ballot in one of 29 official ballot boxes throughout the district, or vote in person starting Saturday, March 29. Find locations of drop-off boxes, in-person voting locations, and more information on SanDiego.gov and more background on the election on the KPBS Voter Hub.

A version of this article appeared in the April edition of the Progressive Voice, the newsletter for the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club. I’m a board member at large for the club.

The new version adds integration for generative AI, improved text editors, and more.

I’ve been using DT 4 in beta for a couple of months and found it to be stable and excellent.

The GenAI integration will no doubt get all the attention, but honestly, my favorite new features are the improvements to the Markdown editor, including customizable margin widths, typewriter scrolling and WYSIWIG editing.

Many people use DevonThink in conjunction with something else for note-taking and writing, such as Obsidian or Ulysses. I use DevonThink for all three — document management, note-taking and writing — though I also other apps for specific jobs, such as Apple Notes for notes and documents I need fast access to on mobile (such as travel itineraries) and Drafts as a scratchpad for jotting down quick thoughts.