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We had drama. Julie commented at bedtime that she hadn’t seen Vivvie, our slate-gray cat, for about 24 hours. So we spent some time looking around the house for her. I went down in the courtyard, though Vivvie never, ever shows any interest in leaving the house. She’s a timid cat and runs away at any sign of busyness. No sign of Vivvie. I kept my eyes peeled around the yard when I was putting Minnie to bed. No sign of Vivvie. I looked in the spare room and closets. Nothing.

Vivvie did not come to bed with Julie during the night either.

This morning, we looked around some more. Still no sign of Vivvie. Julie was distraught. I was concerned and also puzzled. Sammy is an escape cat. If Sammy was missing that amount of time I’d be sure she’d gotten out. But Vivvie stays put.

Then Julie had an idea: My recliner in the living room. I’d been sitting in it yesterday. What if Vivvie climbed up in there when it was open, then couldn’t get out when I shut it and got up?

And we went to the living room and opened it up and Vivvie SHOT OUT AT TOP SPEED.

We are often in the living room with the dog and Vivvie is wary about the dog so when she got stuck in there she didn’t complain the whole time we were in the room. Or I don’t know maybe she liked it. Cats are weird. 📓

What AOC Gets that Bernie Didn’t - Michael Grunwald at Politico

Progressive pot-stirrer Sean McElwee has some thoughts about what went wrong for Sanders supporters, and how they can get what they want (eventually).

McElwee defies conventional wisdom for progressives by saying progressives need to embrace conventional wisdom — polling, focus groups, and changing the message to suit the district.

He popularized the slogan “Abolish ICE” — even had it as part of his twitter handle — but advises Democratic candidates to be extremely cautious using it themselves, because it’s just not a slogan that will win many elections.

Talking about which policies could work politically in Trump districts is not a fun conversation to have, but we need to have those conversations.

This article comes at a good time for me; I’ve been disgusted by national Democratic Party politics, discouraged and pessimistic about the future of the US. But now I’m reminded politics is incremental. Getting Trump out of office and keeping Congress would be a big win and it seems very achievable. Winning the Senate and a few state houses would be even better. That would only be the beginning — if Democrats fail to deliver real improvements in people’s lives, they’d be out of power by 2024. But victory in 2020 would be a great start.

Why Aren’t We All on the Same Time Zone? - Patrick J Kiger on How Stuff Works

Time zones are confusing to people who routinely communicate or travel across them, and some people are proposing to put the whole world on one time zone - UTC, which is five hours ahead of Eastern time in the US.

This does not mean that New York businesses would open five hours earlier. A business that opens at 9 am today would open at the same time under the new system, it’s just that the clock would say 2 pm. Everybody would get used to it quickly, say proponents of the change.

I think this is a bad idea, simply because I don’t think there are enough people doing business across time zones to make it worthwhile to change the system for everybody.

However, I have thought for years, that there should be a custom of using universal time for those of us who DO have business crossing time zones. I’ve been routinely doing business across time zones for many years, and even now I still occasionally miscalculate, or propose a meeting time to someone without specifying which time zone I mean.

One of my favorite features of the iPhone is the ability to get notifications for replies to individual email messages and threads.