I am reasonably well informed but I’m not a political junky. My intention is to share the fruits of my own research for anyone who may find it helpful. Everything here is in the order on which it is printed on my ballot.
Neither candidate has a statement in the voter guide, which is pretty normal for “Big Ticket” elections.
I don’t swoon for Becerra. He feels like a dull establishment candidate. California’s version of Joe Biden, but way younger. Those folks tend to do a fine job and these days we have had our share of strutting peacocks. I would take Becerra over Newsom in a heartbeat. Steve Hilton promises what: cut all the taxes and all the government services and round up the immigrants who don’t have fancy accents? Hard pass.
I dream of a California Governor who finishes the bullet train. Keep dreaming, Danny!
Lieutenant Governor
Democrat Fiona Ma
Secretary of State
Shirley Weber isn’t whining about making people show IDs to vote like the Republican candidate.
Controller
Malia Cohen sounds like she has been doing a fine job.
Treasurer
I could go for “country club Republican” like Jennifer Hawks to serve as a balance on the checks written by a Democratic state. Unfortunately, I clicked on her web site and it started playing music. That makes Democrat Eleni Kounaliakis a sane choice.
Attorney General
Michael Gates is the only candidate to submit a statement to the voter information guide. Too bad he’s MAGA. No Vote.
Insurance Commissioner
Two Democrats make this a real choice. Kim wants more aggressive reform: a government-run non-profit insurance system, while Allen wants to improve the existing system. Bernie Sanders endorses Kim while Big Money opposes her. Insurance is broken and it is only going to get worse with climate change, so I’m willing to bet on Kim’s bolder strokes.
Member, State Board of Equalization District 2
Two Democrats. John Pimentel is endorsed by the Howard Jarvis people, the trolls who brought us Prop 13. That makes Sally Lieber the sane choice.
United State Representative District 17
Ro Khanna could not be bothered to submit a candidate statement. So … Ritesh Tandon is a Republican who might even be an okay choice in any year but 2026. However, the only issue at stake right now is Donald Trump and the only safe option for now is Ro Khanna.
State Senator District 10
Scott Sakakihara has the only candidate statement. Harvard Law School, Navy Veteran, and grandparents who were interned during World War II. Scott Sakakihara is the obvious choice.
Member of the State Assembly District 26
Patrick Ahrens grew up in our district and he knows what it is to struggle financially. Endorsed by YIMBY Action for supporting housing. I am glad to vote for Patrick Ahrens.
Retention Elections
These are effectively “recall elections” that are held regularly to remove judges who have lost public trust. Judges are usually retained. A “yes” vote retains the judge. It is hard to find much information here, and where there’s a lack of smoke I see no need to fire.
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court: JOSHUA GROBAN
Yes
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court: KELLI EVANS
Yes
Associate Justice, Court of Appeal, Sixth District: CHARLES WILSON II
Yes
Associate Justice, Court of Appeal, Sixth District: FREDERICK CHUNG
Yes
Associate Justice, Court of Appeal, Sixth District: CHARLES ADAMS
Yes
Associate Justice, Court of Appeal, Sixth District: ALLISON MARSTON DANNER
Yes
Associate Justice, Court of Appeal, Sixth District: DANIEL BROMBERG
Yes
Superintendent of Public Instruction
Reading the candidate guide, I liked Shaw’s focus on core academics. A little more research found that she’s been busy trying to ban transgender students from athletics. She has drawn the endorsement of the California Republican Party. When it comes to transgender athletes, I think the question of what is fair ought to be worked out by the folks who run sports programs. Politicians who want to ban transgender people from participating in public restrooms or sports are working to re-kindle and channel the fires of homophobia, which have, blessedly, been waning in past decades. Richard Barrera is the safe, sane choice.
City of Sunnyvale, District 5
My yard has one of the handful of lawn signs in town supporting Richard Mehlinger, who is running unopposed. Richard is well-spoken and he shows up at community events. He is a good guy who works hard to represent our community and it is a privilege to vote for him.
Prop 1: Bonds for Housing Affordability Programs
Yes. Bonds to help build more housing for low income, veterans, farmworkers, tribes, and students. “No argument against Prop 1 was submitted.”
Prop 2: Increase State’s Rainy Day Fund
Yes. Because of Prop 13, California’s property tax revenue is forever constrained and the state relies more on income taxes and sales taxes. These tax sources are volatile: especially when you consider the technology sector, which is boom-and-bust. Some years the state is awash in money and Democrats love to spend on new programs, then the bubble pops and all the great promises have to be cut. So, in 2014, they set up a Rainy Day Fund: in good years the state socks away some of the surplus for the years when they need to bridge a massive shortfall.
Right now, tariffs and energy prices are hurting the economy, which continues to “grow” due to the ever ballooning AI bubble. Let’s sock away more surplus while we have it because the next recession is going to suuuuuuuuuuckk!!!!
Prop 3: Fund Schools and Health Care by Extending Tax on High Incomes
Yes. If you’re above $371k filing single or $743k filing jointly, you’ll pay 1% higher taxes, and up to 3% higher taxes above $1.5 million filing jointly. If my family were to one day ascend to such income, it would be a privilege for us to chip in a little bit more for the people of California.
Prop 4: Repeal Prohibition Against Public Funding of Election Campaigns
Yes. We have a prohibition on publicly-funded campaigns? Fuck that!
Prop 5: Change Recall Process for Statewide Officers
Yes. The current process is “do you want to do a recall?” and then “if so, which of these 6,000 names do you want to have as a replacement?” Prop 5 dispenses with the second question: a Governor will be replaced with the Lieutenant Governor and anyone else will be filled by a special election or appointment or whatever is called for.
I remember when we recalled Gray Davis. He was replaced by Schwarzenegger based on name recognition. Luckily, Ah-nold wasn’t half bad but we just skated past a potential disaster there. Prop 5 is a very sober reform to the recall process.
Prop 37: Loan Program for Middle-Income Buyers of New Homes
Yes. The state doesn’t spend any money, just leverage its credit to help loan money to first-time California homebuyers, making less than half the area median income, for homes priced under $1 million to 1.5 million in the wealthier counties. “No argument against Prop 37 was submitted.”
Prop 38: Bonds for Immunology Research
No. I support bonds for housing in Prop 1 because housing affordability is our top crisis as a state. Science funding is important but I think the legislature should work out what our priorities are.
Prop 39: Prohibit Citizens from Voting
No.
Voting is an Act of Faith. I have faith that in every precinct in the United States, a person can walk into their polling place, and state their name and address to the poll worker, who will cross their name off the roll and hand them a ballot. Nowadays the ballots are mailed out and brought back in or deposited in a box, but the idea remains. You and I and every American are as good as our names.
The fetish with “showing a photo ID” is just one more attack by Power to Divide and Conquer and Undermine Trust among Americans. Fuck that. No no no no no no no hell no thank you.
Prop 40: One-Time Tax on Billionaires
YES!
There should be more billionaires like Dolly Parton, who was filthy rich but so generous with her wealth she never became a billionaire. There are a class of people who, like Dolly Parton, are good at business, but they lack the sensibility that money is a means to an end, and not the end in itself.
The hypothetical value of billionaires is that these powerful folks can serve the interests of humanity when government goes astray. This hypothesis was busted last year when billionaire after billionaire, the most powerful people we have, came crawling on their knees to lick the heel of our new Fascist Leader. A lot of them seemed to enjoy it. After all, Fascism is State Capitalism, where the government’s resources are directed to enriching businessmen.
Billionaires are not on the side of Democracy, and many will fall in line behind the next coup d’etat. Prop 40 is a local compromise between applying a one-time “haircut” to wealth instead of labor for a change, and is a far more humane approach to dealing with the obscenely wealthy than the guillotine.
Prop 41: Prohibit New State Taxes (on Billionaires)
No.
Opponents of Prop 40 claim that billionaire wealth is wrapped up in non-liquid assets which make it difficult for them to pay taxes on that wealth. And yet … the billionaires have found a lot of money to advertise against Prop 40 and to bankroll Prop 41 and 42 to function as Poison Pills to invalidate Prop 40 and screw up California’s ability to manage our budget.
Prop 42: Prohibit new Personal Property Taxes (on Billionaires) and Certain Retroactive State Taxes (on Billionaires)
No.
Opponents of Prop 40 claim that billionaire wealth is wrapped up in non-liquid assets which make it difficult for them to pay taxes on that wealth. And yet …
Prop 43: Limit Voters’ Ability to Raise Taxes
No. So, there’s a 2/3 majority required for a government to raise taxes via a ballot proposition, but a simple majority vote for a proposition brought by citizens via signature collection. What really irritates me is that, like Prop 13, a majority vote can require a supermajority vote to override a majority vote. Let’s not surrender our power as voters.
Prop 44: Require Community Health Clinics to Spend 90% of Revenue on Program Services
No. This sounds reasonable on its face, but a lot of clinics run on narrow margins and there there is uncertainty over how “program costs” would be tallied. For example: is transporting low-income patients to a rural clinic a “program cost” or is it some sort of non-program “outreach service?” TBD! This creates added anxiety for clinic managers and could well threaten patient services that aren’t designated as “program costs.”
This sounds like another area for the legislature to take responsibility for effective regulation.
Prop 45: Modify Environmental Review for Certain Projects
No.
This one is interesting. The Yes side is mainly big businesses and “greedy developers” out to make money by building stuff. The No side is environmentalists and labor unions. The labor unions are interesting: wouldn’t you want more construction jobs? But I recall when I served on the Planning Commission that brothers and sisters in the trade unions would oppose local projects that hadn’t agreed to union labor by claiming that construction involves formaldehyde; CEQA action can be used to coerce developers to meet union demands.
I want to support Prop 45 to streamline housing, green energy, and transit projects. YIMBY and transit advocates don’t endorse Prop 45 because while they support cutting red tape, there is concern that Prop 45 would promote sprawl. Sprawl has obvious negative environmental impacts that Prop 45 would facilitate.
I think there is virtue in streamlining CEQA, but Prop 45 is not the right solution.
Regional Ballot Measure RTM
Yes.
I hate regressive sales taxes. Even more, I hate car dependency and sitting in traffic.
The Pandemic shook things up for our regional transit agencies. Emergency funding allowed improved service at the same time that agencies lost a lot of commuters to Work-From-Home. The end result was better service for the community at all hours. Caltrain especially, since the long-awaited electrification project, is posting record numbers outside of commute hours, even if the commute trains aren’t as full (of revenue) as they once were. I think we need to push this transition further along by keeping the transit agencies funded to serve the needs of the public.
Paring back services now would deny opportunities for folks who rely on public transportation, and it would force expense and lost time on those who can transition to driving. We need a better mechanism for funding public transportation, but we need to fund public transportation.
City of Sunnyvale Measure G
Yes.
Measure G allows Sunnyvale to use alternative processes to commission public works, which could streamline certain projects. Rather than having separate bid phases for design and construction, the city could solicit “design and build” bids — the design and construction are bundled. The concern is that while joining phases may streamline the bidding process and make it more efficient, going from “lowest cost” to more subjective criteria allows more room for corrupt sweetheart deals. I would rather our government have the flexibility to operate more efficiently for the price of public diligence.
City of Sunnyvale Measure H
Yes.
Straightforward: the City Manager has authority to settle legal claims up to a limit specified in the city charter in 1989. This limit doesn’t account for inflation. Measure H amends the city charter to let the City Council set the limit. In computer programming terms: we replace a constant with a variable.
City of Sunnyvale Measure I
Yes.
The terminology around Measure I gets confusing but my gist is that right now, a City Council vacancy requires an election to be held at the next (March) election and then the regular election for the council seat gets held again in November, so you get a candidate having to run in two elections eight months apart. Measure I says that if the six remaining council members can agree on an appointment to fill the vacancy, the appointee can serve until the next general election.
I can see both sides to this: my concern is that the March election is low turnout, and I would just as soon have the appointee focus on serving the city rather than standing in two elections in the same year.
El Camino Healthcare District Measure S
Yes.
We would move from no term limits for the El Camino Medical Board of Directors to four four-year term limits. Enough time for Directors to gain plenty of experience in the position.
Wally Lamb tells a short and rambling tale of a fifth grader coming-of-age in a Catholic school set in the 1960s. A vivid picture of a young guy raised by Italian parents who run a diner down at the bus station. Colorful characters, young and old. I recalled my own time in middle school. Class performances were more of a thing even in the 1980s than they seem to be now. “Lift every voice and sing” needs to be a cultural habit.
“Lady Bird”
I was surprised how much I enjoyed this movie. After streaming it, I borrowed the Blu-Ray from the library for a second viewing. More coming-of-age in a Catholic school in 2002 Sacramento, California. Every character is going through their own struggle. The father losing his tech job in 2002 hit close to home.
“Sacramento is the midwest of California!”
“Of course you love me, but do you like me?”
“Aren’t Love and Attention the same thing?”
“Like ‘Napoleon Dynamite’” is fair: awkward high school students. I thought of “The Big Lebowski” what with a Californian of their Own Name stumbling through life on the eve of (another) war in Iraq. There’s an overall theme of longing for more while realizing that you love what you have.
Where are you from?
Sacramento.
Where?
… San Francisco.
Oh yeah, nice town!
The Pushcart War
Back to the middle school again for me, and back to the 60s in setting, except the 2012 printing of Jean Merrill’s classic sets the tale 14 years in the future of 2026, which is pointlessly jarring, because the novel is clearly set in a New York City with wooden pushcarts and telephone books and taxis. A New York City that has never heard of Internets or Smart Phones or Ubers or e-bikes. A timeless tale of The Little People standing up to The Man. Old timey and sentimental and absurd with a straight face like I was reading a Wes Anderson movie.
I get that the novel was set in the future when it was first published, but by the time I got to read it in the 1980s, I read the book a few times as hopeful historical fiction. So, after I got past the ridiculous date given in the introduction, I dialed the book back to when it really lives and had a great time again. This being the 60s there’s a pleasant “crackpot” florist in jail for terrorism, and a big peace march near the end. True to 2026, the rich and powerful are monsters pushing their master plan to own it all. Until the people at last determine otherwise.
I bought the book for my older son for his birthday, but the books of my youth do not easily appeal to the tastes of today. More prose for Dad. I hope it finds a reader through the Little Free Library. If I get my hands on an older printing I may stash that on my bookshelf.
James
Another middle-school flashback, ostensibly. Headed down the river with Huckleberry Finn, but with the adventure told from Jim’s point of view. The story and the back story reveal themselves in layers, and grow increasingly implausible and entertaining. Huck is a nice kid but here it is Jim coming of age, a grown man, who has emancipated himself, out of necessity, and now he has to figure out who he really is and how far he’s willing to go to get what he wants. The last part of the book reads like a movie and I am pleased to hear that is in the works.
I picked the book up on a Saturday and was finished the next day. I’m not a fast reader but James was engagingly urgent and I had to keep going. I’ve got it next to the bed, and I may re-read it before deciding where it should go next.
We have broken the climate. The world is on fire. Rivers dry up. Glaciers collapse and destroy towns. I fear for the topsoil. I fear for the famines. I fear for the people. And every new day will bring its Grace and I can enjoy the world for what it is.
They say “infrastructure is code” – the DevOps Mantra. I say it myself.
I don’t call myself DevOps. (My employer does and I don’t argue with a paycheck.)
I write code to manage infrastructure. I am a DevOps Practitioner.
But …
I am large.
I contain multitudes.
I call myself a Systems Administrator.
Because, really:
Infrastructure is computers
Computers are largely code
Computers are more than code
There are cables and latches and screwdrivers involved
Infrastructure is also power, network, site planning, service agreements, security standards and processes and audits, recruiting, staff training, on-call schedules and standards, vacations, physical and mental health, procurement, shipping, payments, budgets. Infrastructure is so much more than code.
(On my current team we also advertise: Engineering Support services, Information Technology services, Audio-Visual services, Bicycle Maintenance, and Wildlife Removal. Multitudes!)
Infrastructure is not code; Code is infrastructure
And yeah you need to manage infrastructure resources effectively. Managing the code infrastructure means source control, automated tests, validation, pull requests, managing build/deployment infrastructure, &c.
There are cloud-only DevOps who wash their hands completely of the physical realm. All hardware is just an API. Good for them. They seem to spend a lot of time in meetings.
This is what you might see one day if you are a server who has been having an especially rough time.
For me … I’m a “full stack” engineer. Maybe I’m a full rack engineer. I have, in my career, managed most of the infrastructure components listed above. I’m grateful to work on a growing team that allows me to focus somewhat.
I keep a broad lens.
I enjoy managing infrastructure with code.
That frees up time and attention for the rest of the adventure.
I schlepped the family out to Sunol to ride the Niles Canyon’sM200 railcar. A railcar is a bus on rails instead of asphalt. The M200 was built in 1926, and was one of the early “skunk trains” named for the aromatic fuel it burned in its original gasoline engine, ferrying lumberjacks to their work sites from up in Willits. Later on it served as a school bus. When the Niles Canyon folks got ahold of it, they swapped in a diesel engine. I got to ride up front, next to the box that houses the diesel engine, taking in the heady aroma. I smiled to see that the rear view was a modern aftermarket backup camera system, and the speedometer looked like an old smart phone showing a GPS-derived speed estimate.
A happy coincidence: I wore my Wente t-shirt on the day we rode the M200. Wente Scout Reservation shares the skunk branding with the nearby railroad.
We rode East from Sunol along the original Transcontinental line from Sacramento to San Francisco, which used to run across the Dunbarton Bridge to connect with the now-Caltrain line up to San Francisco. The tracks had been pulled up long ago, but the volunteers have been laying “new” tracks East toward Pleasanton, which is as far as they own the Right-of-Way. The “new” tracks are old tracks that Caltrain replaced as part of the electrification upgrades. They may not be suitable for California’s future bullet train system but they’re plenty handy for a heritage railway running a motorcar at a top speed of 10 mph. The original line went up to 40 mph, explained our host.
Barry Lyndon
Of even more obscure appeal than a hundred year old railcar is a fifty year old Kubrick film. In July I took the Caltrain up to San Francisco and a Muni bus over to The Roxie. I left the family behind because I’m not a sadist. I had a burrito for dinner at Pacho Villa’s and because I’m an old-fashioned cheapskate who eschews online convenience fees, I had to wait in the standby line because it was a “full show.” After the train ride and the burrito, the standby line just added to the sense of adventure: maybe I wouldn’t get in!? The standby line self-selected down to four folks and we all made it in just fine. I sat mid-way near the aisle, behind a large afro that enforced good posture on my part and next to an autistic fellow who managed to unobtrusively stim during the more emotional scenes. I drank two cans of beer from the concession stand.
The movie was magnificent on the big screen. Worth the trek. A prideful young Irishman finds himself living an adventurous life in the 18th century. He learns to be wiley and shrewd and ultimately marries into Class, where that self-centered wily shrewdness renders him an insufferable Jerk. Rise and Fall. A good story with duels. If you like the musical “Hamilton” you might also enjoy the story of Barry Lyndon.
I had some errands to run so I ran them on my bicycle.
The ride up to OfficeMax was uneventful for the most part. In Mountain View, El Camino has a mostly very nice protected lane. At one point where the protected lane becomes a dashed green mixing zone, a Tesla tried to merge into me so that they could make a right turn. It was slow enough that I just yelled and yelled and yelled until they stopped. Something like “HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY!!!!!” I saw everything happening and didn’t feel endangered. When you’re riding on the street, you ride with hyper awareness.
Along the way, I also managed to share a thumbs down with a Nazi-era Tesla, and even flip off the cyber cab. You know: a great ride.
An intense ride to fulfill a dull mission.
I found the pens I wanted to buy. My current favorite is a Tul fine point gel. Specifically, the fine point gel pen they sell near the register for $1.70 versus the fine point gel they sell from the pen section at 4/$10. What’s the difference? No idea! But the one in my pocket looks like the cheap ones so I stick with a winner.
Next stop was Best Buy, just where the protected bike lane ends at the Sunnyvale border. I returned a hard drive the younger son had wanted, but which proved incompatible with their frankensteined donated Linux gaming rig.
I decided to take El Camino Real just in case I saw something tasty for lunch. Normally I would not ride my bicycle on El Camino Real in Sunnyvale, because there’s no bicycle infrastructure. It is a grim place to ride. But I felt it was my right.
I took the right lane, as one should. This ensures that I am highly visible, and my behavior is consistent versus riding along in the gutter and weaving into traffic whenever there’s a parked car or other road hazard. Right away, I heard honking in the distance. It was a blue Tesla purchased since Elon did his Hitler salute. The driver for which I have the least empathy. He got closer and honked some more. So I stopped. In front of him.
“Go around!” I gestured.
He put his hands up in frustration. What is going on here? This bicyclist is telling me to use one of the other three lanes of traffic!?
“Go around!”
“Go.”
“Around.”
“Fricking Nazi,” I mumbled as he merged into the next lane and I resumed pedaling. He turned right two blocks down, heading for an apartment building. For the next few lights I noticed the same gold-colored car following me. I was glad because it meant that in traffic, and with a shot of adrenaline, I am just as fast as any other car in the right lane. I sped right past The Greek Spot which I had had in mind. I was too full of speed to make room for gyros.
A Cadillac SUV honked its horn as it passed me in the next lane over.
“Fricking Slowpoke” I yelled as I rode past their open window, turning left at the next red light.
I cruised up to a four-way stop, and someone in a minivan who had the right of way tried to wave me through but within half a second realized that they would pointlessly hold up waiting traffic. I was proud of them for their awareness. They went on their way, and I resumed pedaling.
At Evelyn, near Murphy, as is often the case, some poor rideshare driver was waiting to do a pickup in the bike lane. As I do so often, I rode up to their open window, and at the volume of a bicyclist accustomed to conversing with automobiles on busy roads, explained to them that this was a dangerous situation, and that there were several parking lots and loading zones adjacent to where they were sitting. They politely agreed as I yelled “thank you for your cooperation” pedaling away towards home.
I arrived home wearing a sheen of well deserved sweat. A great ride! Time to settle in to a quiet Sunday afternoon.
Tonight is the last night for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. I’ll watch it tomorrow on Paramount+. I canceled my annual subscription, which would have renewed in early June.
I never used to be a late night TV watcher. It is a nice format, though. Especially when the news has become such a grind. A friendly face samples the day’s crimes, chews a few bites into a bolus of rage, breaded in wry humor with a tangy glaze of hopeful frustration, and pops it down my exhausted, slack-jawed maw. Between All the Star Treks and Stephen Colbert, the Paramount+ subscription made sense for me. But I have watched All the Star Treks and tomorrow I will have watched All the Colberts.
Thank you for the past decades of entertainment, Stephen Colbert! I am going to miss you!
Here’s my gripe with how the show has been distributed. I’m not staying up late to watch. I’m not sure I can even get CBS on my antenna. I know we do get NBC because I “stay up late” to watch Saturday Night Live during the national broadcast at 8:30 pm Pacific. If late shows did that … I mean it is pre-recorded anyway … maybe just post the episode to the paid streaming service at air time?
… I wait until the next day. But why, as a paying customer of Paramount+, can I watch clips of the show on YouTube for free tens of hours before I can watch the show on Paramount+? Why the delay? Why? And what I would really really have enjoyed, since the show on Paramount+ has no commercials, why not let me hear the band play through the breaks? I assume that was a hassle with potential royalties if they played covers. “Move On Up” …
On Monday, they did at last let the band play on, by posting a full, un-cut episode, which you can watch for free … on YouTube. The band improvised and jammed and it was wonderful:
Away from the noise of social media, the Internet is still brimming with great stuff to read. The old way of finding a feed reader, subscribing to some sites, and coming back on occasion to be wowed still works great. Kagi has pitched in with their “Small Web” site to help folks find new voices. It takes a little more effort to get this going than it does to visit the increasingly barren FaceBookMegaMart or injecting TikTok into your retinas, but damn it is so much more gratifying.
Unlinked quotes here are most likely taken from The Sun Magazine, which has great writing in the even older and more convenient format of the printed magazine.
But, quickly, the feeling to be without a smartphone changed from anxiety to liberating. I felt really happy not to have a phone on me while outside. I was rediscovering my old way of getting lost in my thought, of sometimes talking to myself to clarify an idea. Which is less weird these days because everybody assumes you have an ear bud and are on the phone with someone else. In fact, when walking alone, I’m often on a call with myself.
“When you bury a parent, you bury the beginning of your life.” –Bob Hikok
No one who isn’t us is going to destroy the Earth, and no one who isn’t us is going to save it. The most hopeless conditions can inspire the most hopeful actions. We have found ways to restore life on Earth in the event of a total collapse because we have found ways to cause a total collapse of life on Earth. We are the flood, and we are the ark.
–Jonathan Safron Foer
“Grief doesn’t make an appointment. It just shows up while you’re doing the dishes.” –Lalaie Ameeriar
To argue that the current extinction event could be averted if people just cared more and were willing to make more sacrifices is not wrong, exactly; still, it misses the point. It doesn’t much matter whether people care or don’t care. What matters is that people change the world.
Doomscrolling is a protection racket. Every horrifying headline you consume without acting on is a toll you pay to the algorithm in exchange for the feeling of engagement without the inconvenience of actually engaging. Power loves this arrangement. Power has always loved a population too exhausted and too demoralized to walk out the front door. The algorithm is doing work for authoritarianism that authoritarianism used to have to do itself. It’s very efficient. You should be furious about it. Preferably while moving.
Oxide.computer will sell you an on-premise cloud. Type some commands into a great big computer and it will build you a network of smaller computers inside the big computer. That is an exciting idea for an old Systems Administrator like me.
Oxide recently shared their internal guidelines on using AI. Good stuff here. The LLM Anti-Patterns are especially decent: don’t mandate that anyone use LLMs, don’t shame folks who do use LLMs, and, this shouldn’t need to be said: don’t date your LLM!
What Oxide advocates is responsibility. An AI is a tool to build things. What you build represents you. LLMs can generate code very effectively, but that needs to be code you understand and vouch for. Because, at the end of the day, it is your code and you are responsible.
It is all too easy to ask AI to take away your responsibility. When the cartoon or the video clip or the email was obviously penned by an AI, we can tell you aren’t representing yourself. Is your audience not worth your time? Worse: do you feel unworthy of being yourself? We can’t see you through the slop!
At the other end are the “never AI” folks. On Mastodon I see posts float by from people who grouse every time an Open Source project reveals that it will leverage AI to expedite the unrelenting work of building, reviewing, debugging, shipping, and supporting free code. Surely, some projects will incautiously ingest “vibecoded” AI Slop, but in general, Open Source maintainers are passionate and responsible volunteers conscientiously leveraging new tools to deliver a better service to their community. We owe these folks respect and good faith.
Use the tools. Or don’t. Both choices are correct. The wrong choice is to be the tool, by letting the tool be you. Having a “relationship” with your AI is a sad move, and expecting other people to have a relationship with your AI’s slop is disappointing and creepy. Step away from the keyboard and spend some time with a kindred spirit. Head outdoors to feel the sun and the cool breeze tango with each other across your skin. You are too beautiful and too precious to be outsourced to a GPU farm.
NOTE: in the spirit of exploration, I sought feedback from an LLM, “Kimi K2.5 (reasoning)” on how to make this post more readable and engaging. It suggested some early revisions to this post, but every word remains my own.
Easy: right-click on “Ask Gemini” and select “Unpin”
Right-click “Ask Gemini” and select “Unpin” …
… and the “Ask Gemini” button is gone! Poof!!
Yet another dull anecdote about Google sucking at UI:
I tried to ask Gemini by clicking the “Ask Gemini” button but it asked me for permission to spy on my stuff and I said no and so it wouldn’t let me ask anything of them.
Thank you, @14mission for testing the attribution feature for me!
This is a very humane feature, I think. If someone shares your content then Mastodon helps you to connect with their social media profile.
Then I got to thinking about how there are accounts on Mastodon that basically mirror Bluesky. But I never check or post to Bluesky. I could mirror my Mastodon to Bluesky? Yes! Skymoth was super easy to set up. Nice!
I was chatting on Discord and a friend said he wanted to see Mastodon without re-toots. Bluesky has a nice OnlyPosts feature but then I spotted the applicable feature in the Mastodon UI.
Squeeze the “two carats” element to get a submenu.
That left me with one last grouse I have had about Mastodon: the one thing I can not easily block is re-toots of screenshots of X. Or can I? Well, I think I effectively can. The secret is that stuff is mostly re-toots of George Takei, so blockingmutingGeorge Takei ought to do the trick.
George Takei is great but his social media is too much.
Now, I love George Takei as much as anyone. Unfortunately, his social media is a barrage of stuff I don’t want to see that is frequently re-posted. This technique is probably applicable for other popular folks as well.
“Our destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.” –Henry Miller
Hotel in Waikiki: from the balcony on the fifteenth floor I can see other high-rise hotels, but on our block are a pair of two-story apartment buildings. At the one apartment building, every patio is filled with stuff, and on the next building over, the patios are all completely empty. Between our high-rise and the apartment buildings is an empty lot with a fence around it, just across from our building. Between the street and the fence is a homeless man, who has occupied that same spot all week. He caught my eye on the first day, as he was visited by many birds, with whom he was sharing a Domino’s pizza. The next day I saw that there’s a Domino’s around the block. While most folks come and go through the day and night, he is always in his spot, like a video game NPC. I assume he doesn’t want to leave his stuff unattended for long. Aside from the difficulty of living outdoors, being tied to a spot to guard your possessions feels like an even worse burden. Humans need to stretch their legs, not be pinned down to a spot outdoors. “Lock down” without a roof or walls.
I am old enough to remember when The Internet wasn’t just screenshots of quotes from other websites.
What strikes me most is the difference between people who’ve learned to construct what I call ‘containers for attention’ – bounded spaces and practices where different modes of engagement become possible – and those who haven’t. The distinction isn’t about intelligence or discipline. It’s about environmental architecture. Some people have learned to watch documentaries with a notebook, listen to podcasts during walks when their minds can wander productively, read physical books in deliberately quiet spaces with phones left behind. They’re not rejecting technology. They’re choreographing it.
Others are drowning, attempting sustained thought in environments engineered to prevent it. They sit with laptops open, seven tabs competing for attention, notifications sliding in from three different apps, phones vibrating every few minutes. They’re trying to read serious material while fighting a losing battle against behavioural psychology weaponised at scale. They believe their inability to focus is a personal failure rather than a design problem. They don’t realise they’re trying to think in a space optimised to prevent thinking.
All the hype around AI this early may slow long-term adoption, as more people are drawn in to be underwhelmed and put off adoption longer than if they were lured in by a more mature product. That may slow the rate of job loss that we might anticipate due to the new technology. Also, perhaps, the AI bubble will have turned out to be a stimulus for deploying renewable energy generation faster than we might have otherwise, which will hopefully be put towards de-carbonization of the grid as the bubble pops.
“Our job is to keep up a police action against the possibility of a police state.” –Orson Wells
I do not mourn the Ayatollah. I think the Trump Doctrine may come to be defined as “Change the Regime and You Change the Nation” and I think it will turn out to be hollow. So far, Venezuela is as it was, and while Iran’s leaders have many challenges, there’s no reason to believe they can’t replace Khameni and continue more or less as they have for the past decades. Even in America, we elected a Great Leader who emits a great sound and fury and is doing real damage, but the People aren’t with him. Obama didn’t end Racism, and Trump can’t make us goose step. When you strike at the heart of a nation, you tend to make the State stronger. In America, after 9/11, we rallied behind a mediocre president, erected a new Police State, and looked the other way as our government tortured people. There is a reason that other presidents have been shy about following up on talk of “Regime Change” and that is because it can’t be achieved from the air. Change doesn’t come from the Top, it comes from the heart of the People. It is the hearts of Iranians that offer the greatest potential to change Iran. The same is true for Venezuelans and Americans. We The People are the change that we wish for.
I have no idea if people are reading what I write, and it really doesn’t matter. It gets the ideas out of the whirlwind in my head so I can make space for new things. —Michael Pusateri
There is a cloud of dread I can sense in the Bay Area. A shadow ahead of the Super Bowl, which will be hosted this Sunday a few miles from my house. Today it was the “nuke sniffing helicopter” zig zagging around a colleague’s house. Another friend reported that their car was searched by dogs on the way to the UPS store, as they live near the stadium. There’s a general dread of ICE and a surge of Federal Law Enforcement conducting raids while they are in town for game security. Now there are reports of pro-ICE billboards having gone up in San Francisco.
Today I headed home from the office not long after lunch, as I had some tasks to complete at the datacenter. I returned to the office for a spell because Caltrain was effectively shut down. I recognized a familiar pattern: delay due to police activity and single-tracking at the two stations in Palo Alto. I dreaded what that meant: another young person had succumbed to the worst decision they could make. The dread was later confirmed via Reddit.
Keep your eyes open for your neighbors. Ask for help when you need it. Be kind.
“The land, still cold and wintery, was alive with creatures that trusted in the coming of spring.” –William Least Heat-Moon
A blog is the cultural equivalent of a yard sale.
Elon Musk turned a lot of people off by giving Nazi salutes, but the media never mentions this when reporting Tesla’s falling sales. “Elon Musk spent several chaotic months crudely slashing government programs,” reports The New Yorker.
During our Happy Birthday Phone Call, my Uncle mentioned that I was a Bicentennial Baby. “Yeah, I’m sorry our 250th is under such Circumstances.” “That’s okay, just stick around for 300.” “Uh … yeah, I’ll take some vitamins.”
“You never feel better than when you start feeling good after you’ve been feeling bad.” –William Least Heat-Moon
“I don’t trust pride, but when you realize that we are all one, you can be proud of being part of that gigantic entity that we all are.” –Bob Weir
I had a dream that my bicycle got stolen and I was annoyed about having to replace it because can you even buy an affordable awesome new bike with a front fork suspension and rim brakes anymore?
My wife is going for an evening walk.
She asked if I would like to join her.
The cat sitting on my lap looked up at her and meowed “no.”
The older son is going in my stead.
“A city of men is also a city of horses–balding horses, horses beautiful as Brooke Shields. Cars kill more people, but relieve us of the sight of beings whipped on our streets.” –Sparrow
I heard that with the Super Bowl coming to Santa Clara, we could expect a rush of federal Law Enforcement, so I signed up for Santa Clara County Rapid Response Training. That was my Saturday morning. A room full of volunteers and a word at the start that an observer had been murdered in Minnesota the same morning. We learned a bit about how ICE has been functioning locally, and how Rapid Response works. We signed up.
Back to the house and switch to the minivan to schlep the Pinewood Derby track over to the Pinewood Derby. “Have you seen the video?” “No, and that’s just as well.” I helped set up the track, then excused myself. “I am crashing. I need to eat.”
I ate and then climbed into bed. I rested but couldn’t nap. I missed most of the Pinewood Derby. I had just run out of energy. Not a physical thing so much as a state change. National despair. I can’t explain it but there’s a good chance you understand.
I caught the tail end of the Pinewood Derby, helped pack up the track. I stopped at Trader Joe’s for some non-alcohol Hazy IPA. The Family had eaten at The Derby. I dined on candy and fake IPAs for dinner. I don’t recommend that. But that’s a Sometimes Saturday Night. We watched Saturday Night Live. No mention of Minnesota and I understand why.
Come morning I couldn’t sleep. I really like to sleep in when I can. That’s what Sunday is for, right? I got up and went to the computer. The letter E in 700 point font. Two of them. And N, D, I, and C. I taped up the old sign: END ICE. I dressed warm and headed out.
Around the corner a guy walking his dog encouraged me to be a dumbass and go get shot by federal agents. He seemed good natured about it. I walked down to the crossroads where other protests have been held. A few cars tapped horns quietly in the residential neighborhoods but as I got to crossing the streets of the main intersection over and over, many enthusiastic honks. Kind words out of windows. Hand gestures of solidarity. A ride share driver pulled over and handed me a can of Red Bull. Another man, who looked a little like a priest, beckoned me over. He had an orange juice, a Kind Bar, “a chocolate milk, for later” and a $10 gift card for the coffee shop. He thanked me for what I was doing. As a son of immigrants. Rene nearly brought the tears to my eyes.
I did my thing for about two and a half hours. My first solo protest. I think organization is generally a better thing, but when people start coming out spontaneously, the mood has shifted. I didn’t mind being alone. I wasn’t. Most folks saw past me but plenty knew that I was there for them. We don’t want to live in a country that is ruled by Fear. I don’t want that for my boys. I really want my country to be that special place where people come to escape Fear, and for opportunity. Death in the streets is nothing new, but blessing Federal Police with power to murder people at their own discretion? I can not live with that.
Walked downtown for brunch. On the way home a lady asked if there was a protest. “It was one guy,” I said. She pointed me out to the kid as an example of a good person. What made me good, in my book, was heading home to plan out and run a Den Meeting for the Cub Scouts. We talked about pets, but mainly we enjoyed being kids together.
