The Problem With Whiplash

     After my initial comments, I'd been sitting out the ongoing ABC/Jimmy Kimmel/FCC furor.  The most recent development rates a few words: Kimmel's back on.

     In what form, nobody know.  There were serious talks, we're told, but who said what and what promises may have been made remains a mystery.

     Maybe they should've talked to Target.  The retail chain had embraced Pride Month for several years, expanding their rainbow-themed offerings in a way that a few critics decried as cynical "rainbow-washing."  Then came a conservative backlash that included a boycott.  Target backed down, goodbye rainbows -- and that prompted another boycott by liberals and LGBT allies.  The result has been a steady decline in shoppers and sales: many liberals have avoided them since and a lot of the conservatives never came back.  By not picking a course and sticking to it, they lost out.

     ABC/Disney is trying to thread a similar needle.  Kimmel's return will probably get big ratings, but after that, success may take a more-nimble mind than the corporate offices of a big TV network can produce.

     The Press needs to remember they are The Press, covered under what remains one of the world's strongest guarantees of freedom in the First Amendment.  It's uncomfortable; it covers everything from Fox News to NPR, from Hustler to the Christian Science Monitor, from your four-page neighborhood weekly paper to The New York Times, from comedians to snoozingly serious commentators.  Uncle Sam is not the boss of them -- even when they say things the government doesn't like, even when they say things We The People don't like.

     The First Amendment even protects them when they don't say things that many people might like: politically conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group owns 38 ABC affiliates, and they're not going to be carrying Jimmy Kimmel Live!  If the FCC leaned on them to carry the show now that it's back, that would be just as wrong as implying ABC stations that did carry the show might find themselves in hot water.  Say what you will about Sinclair -- I certainly will -- they have picked a position and stayed with it.

     The unifying idea for newspapers, radio, TV and online news outlets has long been -- and should remain -- that they are protected from government pressure over their content.  They should raise a hue and cry when this freedom comes under threat.  They don't have to like one another; I expect them not to agree with one another on politics and culture; but even The Worker and The Wall Street Journal have a shared interest in the First Amendment.  The Press has been taking it for granted.  Recent events show that's not a good idea. "Jawboning" has been ramping up quietly for many years now, and it's past time for it for be tamped back down.

What's For Supper?

     We had home-made chili Saturday night -- lean ground beef, a fresh chorizo sausage squeezed out of its casing, diced onion, diced red, yellow orange and green bell peppers, a few fresh tomatoes from the garden plus a box of finely diced tomatoes, three small cans of mild green chilis with chili powder, bay leaves, fresh basil, smoked paprika, a little curry powder and Cajun seasoning.

     It was good, but I'd bought tomatoes put up without salt.  It took a generous shake to wake up the flavor.

     Tonight, leftovers.  Tam picked up one mild and one hot Italian sausage, and I had my secret ingredient: Italian-style Giardiniera, mixed vegetables pickled in vinegar brine. The brand I like added just enough salt, with the tiny onions, cauliflower, celery, carrot discs and strips of red peppers contributing to the flavor.  I diced them up a little more than they already were.  Is it still chili?  I don't know.  It was tasty.  I could stand up a spoon in it and it didn't need any salt.

Us, Them And The Excluded Third

     The problem with two-value logic is that it doesn't scale directly.  It's a handy way to build small widgets; relay logic, TTL and CMOS have been a backbone of my work for decades.  It's great basis for computers, but to get anything done, you have to lay in a machine language and start clocking data and instructions through the hardware; to do anything big, you need to stick a more human-parsable language on top, with an operating system to shovel in coal and an assembler to turn your code into ones and zeros.

     Likewise, out in the world of human interaction, if you want to draw one line down the presumable middle and call one side Us and the other side Them, it doesn't scale worth a damn.  Worse yet, it sticks everyone from your cousin who thinks the rate of social change is too high (and what's with all the pronouns?) to militia members bursting from the back of a rental truck to beat up Pride paraders on one side, and your Granny who wants to have Social Security and Medicare expanded (and why are rich people not taxed more?) to a mob of anarchists, Leftists and looters along for the grabbing taking over a town center on the other.  Cousin and Granny aren't into the violence, despite harsh words at the Thanksgiving table, and they don't approve of it, either.

     Even all that and everything in between manages to leave out the real problem, the real enemy of civil discourse: the muddy thinkers who believe they can assassinate their way to a better world.  Go back to the previous paragraph: even the worst of 'em, Left and Right, aren't directly out to kill.  Intimidate, silence, drive out, injure, steal?  They're often okay with that, and it's not good.  Some of 'em would like to trigger widespread conflict.  But it takes a sharply bent mind to murder like lightning from a cloudless sky.

     When a prominent public figure gets shot, or people in a supermarket or school (etc.), we want it to make sense.  We want the shooter to not be someone from "our" side.  (I sure do!)  Quite often, when the malefactor's politics are known, they're garbled, but yeah, they lean one way or the other.  (And it's a mix if you look at 'em all.)  Nevertheless, the essential difference is, that person thought they could improve their world through murder -- and nearly everyone around you, all of your fellow citizens, the religiously devout and the scoffers, the Left and the Right, the politically active and the people who ignore it, do not agree. Even most of the worst of Us -- and Them -- don't agree.

     There are arguments and frantic sweeping-under-rugs about which "side" is the most violent, including a DOJ report that got yanked from their website.  The reality is, most people are not violent; most politically-active people are not violent, and even most of the persons at the far fringes of Right and Left that do endorse violence draw the line short of assassination and mass murder.  Most people with strong feelings would rather yell at one another, vote at one another, wave signs at one another.  Some of them will throw punches and rocks, break windows, start fires.  And yet they still stop short of killing.

     Trying to pin the blame on political opponents, and then painting that entire side as supporters of it, is false logic.  It's not who they are.  It's not even who the worst of them are.  It serves to legitimize increased political violence in return; it makes all of Us -- and Them -- worse.  And the excluded third category, lone wolves divorced from normal logic, normal social strictures, normal morality and ethics, are still around, like sparks from a fire.  We can pour water on the sparks -- or gasoline.

Tired

     Four ten-hour days of installing a large transmitter -- one that still doesn't quite work as it should -- is grueling.

     The two-man installation team, subcontractors to the manufacturer, were skilled.  They didn't break for lunch.  They also didn't get quite as much detailed information as usual, thanks to this being a used transmitter a little over five years old, and so we may have missed a couple of network cables that let the various bits and pieces talk to one another.*  The techs back at the factory are pondering it.  They're also pondering our present transmitter, with a sixteen-year-old control system running a collection of high-power amplifiers that are twenty-nine years old: it was made by the same company, but not a bit of it is still supported.  And its performance, at present, is significantly better than the newer one.  Embarrassing.

     The new and old are not talking in more than one way.  There's a very basic connection between them, an interlock that shuts them down when transferring from one to the other.  It's as simple as a light switch, or it ought to be, but the connection that should tell the old transmitter "Lights out!" and then "Lights back on!" just tells it to shut down, all the time.  So we can't hook it up.

     I don't have to troubleshoot it.  I just have to keep pointing out that we paid good money for a system that, ahem, works, and that furthermore, it's not supposed to need risky jeeping to operate.  Alas, I do have to facilitate the troubleshooting; so it's going to be my headache until it gets sorted out.

     Back to that on Monday or more likely Tuesday.  For tonight, delivery food and, I hope, a decent night's sleep.
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* A modern TV transmitter functions in about the same way as an after-school chat room for Junior High girls: "I'm going to wear purple and violet tomorrow, and I want all of my friends to do the same!" vs. "I'm going to set my power level at 50% and so should all the other amplifiers."  I suspect there's even giggling; I know they all tattle on one another: "Power Amp 7 had an overcurrent!  PA 6 is overheating!" Sure, they do so over a CAN bus, RS-422 or a data network, but it's the same kind of thing.

Jawboning

     "Jawboning" is not just rustic-sounding slang for idle talk; it's a term of art.  Specifically, it's when a person in a position of government power uses that power to lean on citizens.  It's considered an abuse of office and can even be a violation of the law.

     Jawboning is what FCC Chair Brendan Carr did to ABC over (intemperate at best and possibly tasteless) comments by comedian Jimmy Kimmel.  The precise comments don't matter.  You can go look them up, and depending on your politics, they may make your blood boil or elicit a shrug.  They're not especially funny, but that's how it goes with topical satire: not every bit lands.

     The FCC doesn't regulate networks.  They regulate individual TV and radio stations, most of which are owned by a handful of very large corporations -- large and hoping to get larger.  For them to grow any further, they're going to need FCC approval.  There are limits -- "ownership caps" -- on how many stations in a given market may be owned by a single company.  Nexstar, one of the largest, is in the middle of a huge merger with another big owner, and they'll need a new, higher cap.

     So when Brendan Carr went on a podcast and said, "This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead," Nexstar was listening.  They announced the ABC stations they own weren't going to carry Kimmel's late-night talk show.  Sinclair, another big group owner, followed suit.  ABC responded by dropping Kimmel.

     ABC can do that.  They're his employer; if they don't want his show, they can (within contractual limits, and we can be sure attorneys for everyone involved are very, very busy right now) pull the plug.  Likewise, network affiliates are not necessarily required to carry every show the network shoves down the pipe (though, yet again, contacts and lawyers are involved).  The entity who crossed the line was the FCC Chairman, who was essentially saying, "Nice TV stations.  Be a shame if something happened to them," to individual ABC affiliates.  FCC regulations are many and complex; dig deep, and everyone's got something that might not be quite right.  "Give me the man and I'll give you the crime," or give him the station, in this case.

     It was jawboning.  In the Bible, mighty Samson beat a thousand men to death with the jawbone of an ass; here, a single ass is jawboning the giants of broadcasting to their knees over misfiring political humor.

     Is that really a good outcome?  And how will the next FCC Chairman use that power, if it goes unchallenged?   Even Brendan Carr once thought it was a problem, before he got control.

I'm Holding Off

     I have several comments that I have not published. It's not that they're overly contentious, it's just--  Most of them are trying to map recent events into the old familiar Left/Right paradigm, Democrats vs. Republicans.  An awful lot of politicans and talking heads want to do  that, too.

     Maybe don't.  It's easy, but the essential divide is between people who are willing to treat others as impediments, as things -- and those who refuse to.  You don't kill people for espousing ideas you despise; you don't treat people like cattle.  Suspected criminals offering no imminent threat should be arrested and charged, not killed offhand. Political opponents are debated, not demonized and threatened.  You run against 'em in elections, you don't try to run them out of town.

     These things used to be axiomatic, and while as a society we sometimes fell short of them, we knew it for a failure; we tried to do better.

     When did we stop trying to do better?

Updated

     The more that comes out about the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk, the less sense it makes.  I don't trust most of what I'm seeing, so I have updated my earlier blog post to reflect the increased doubt, and I'm waiting for additional reporting from a wider variety of sources.

     What's out there at present is not internally consistent.  The majority of perpetrators of this kind of high-profile attack show a great deal of cognitive dissonance, beliefs that don't sort out as neatly as most people's -- just as this type of crime is uncommon and twisted, so, too, are the minds behind them.  Hunger for nihilistic fame remains a common factor, but if you were looking for "why" and hoping to find some handle you could turn down or even off, that's not much help. 

You Thought Your Workplace Was Messed-Up?

     A news commentator/host at a major cable news network recently remarked live on the air that homeless people who refused official help should be given, "[...I]nvoluntary lethal injections.  Just kill them."

     That's shocking stuff, and he later apologized for it, in very much a "my bosses are making me do this" manner.  Even more shocking is that when he advocated killing unhoused persons who wouldn't cooperate, neither one of of his two co-hosts objected.  One, who had already suggested such people should be locked up, replied, "Yep."  The other host did not so much as blink.

     I'm not going to name any of them, or even the network.  If you're curious, any search engine will find video and news stories with full details.  Nope, I'm here to point out that it takes a pretty askew newsroom culture for "euthanize recalcitrant homeless people" to be an acceptable casual comment, one your co-workers nod along with and don't call out.

     Don't go along with that stuff.  Killing people is not okay.  It is a crime.  The only exceptions are after due process of law and criminal conviction, and it's rare even then; in self-defense from imminent harm (and it generally gets careful legal scrutiny); and in the course of actual warfare (and even some killings in war can count as crimes).  Eschew evil; don't treat people as things, pieces to be taken off the board to suit your or society's convenience.  There are lots of terrible, awful, annoying or lousy people in this world, but very few are criminals and they have just as much right to exist as anyone.

     (I suppose some realpolitik type will comment to shake his head in condescending sadness over my naivete.  I'm not saying it doesn't happen; I'm not saying there aren't vicious folks around who might do abrupt and grievous bodily harm to strangers.  This isn't about them.  It's about you, and me, and the ethical standards any decent person ought to hold for themselves and uphold for society.)

Right-On-Right Murder?

     I can't say often enough that I do not condone political violence.  I don't have to like a person or agree with or approve of their opinions to know that they shouldn't be murdered.  And the truth is, I found most of Charlie Kirk's notions loathsome, especially his assertion that womenfolk like me should shut up, stop working for wages (and competing against, oh horrors, men for jobs) and concern ourselves with children, cooking and church.  Nevertheless, nobody should be killed for saying such specious nonsense.

     Republicans, starting with the President, were quick to condemn the political Left for the murder, even before a suspect was in custody.  Some even claimed this kind of violence was especially associated with the Left, conveniently forgetting the previous high-profile assault and murder of Minnesota state legislators -- Democrats -- for which a man long associated with conservative and anti-abortion efforts has been charged.  In reality, it appears the man who has confessed to shooting Charlie Kirk is a very-online gamer associated with the "Groyper" movement and a fan of farther-Right Nick Fuentes* -- and perhaps a bit unmoored, mentally,.  It looks very much like he acted alone, and that's typical of such attacks: not only because a solo operator with murky mental processes is harder to predict, but because conspiracies are unworkable and get stopped early: if there are three or more people involved, the odds are high that at least one of them is an informant.

     Supported in part by the obscure online-ironic nature of the messages on the bullet casings, cryptic to most normies, Republican figures are still blaming the killing on the Left, even on centrist Democrats who said mean things about Kirk (a man who never hesitated to say mean things about people and polices he disapproved of).  While the accused killer is as politically incoherent as most of his murderous ilk, it's clear he leaned far more Right than Left.

     But look here: these killers are outliers.  Most sociopolitical conflict in the U.S. plays out without this level of violence, despite acrimony.  Riots are newsworthy because they are rare.  This kind of targeted violence is even rarer, and most people, most politicians, no matter how foaming-at-the-mouth they might be, neither engage in nor promote physical violence.  (It is slightly newsworthy that South Carolina's Nancy Mace was calling for dire vengeance when early interpretations of the bullet casing scribblings suggested the shooter supported trans issues and abruptly switched to calling for prayers for him when it was revealed he was a cisgender white male.)

     Video games don't make people killers.  They get used as excuses.  Politics, likewise.  The converse is a greater risk.  When politicians and public figures start using these kinds of killings to justify wide-scale repression or worse, look out: throughout history and all around the globe, governments gone wrong are more dangerous to more people than any lone-wolf assassin ever was or could be.

     Update: the alleged killer's politics may be even more incoherent.  Gamer memes are a mirror-maze incomprehensible to outsiders and where they intersect with politics, there's even less clarity.  Various groups use -- and flip or mock -- the symbols of their opponents.  I have added a question mark to the headline, and...time will tell.  Or it won't, and perhaps this will be one more example of an attack rooted in chaotic notions that don't fit neatly into comfortable, familiar categories.
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* Later information does not bear this out.

9/11

     With the anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks falling the day after both a school shooting and the apparent assassination of a high-profile sociopolitical influencer, I was thinking about the nature of murder.

     Murder isn't scalar, not really.  Murder one person, murder a thousand: the stain of it, the sin of it, if you will, doesn't change after the first one.  And while we feel that the person who kills dozens is more heinous that the person who kills only one, realistically, they can only be executed once, only be imprisoned without parole for one lifetime.

     What scales is tragedy.  The attacks on September 11, 2001 left thousands of grieving families.  One family, we know what to do: you drop off a hot dish, sit with them, cry with them.  Over three thousand?  It's emotionally inconceivable.

     We can remember the day.  We can remember any friends lost.  It feels like so very little, but it's what we can do.

Thought For The Day

     If you are thinking you can’t say something “without coming off as a racist SOB,” that means it’s a deeply racist thing to say, and you might not want to say it; maybe you should examine your reasons for thinking it.  They're almost certainly nonsense, driven by emotion rather than fact.

Prediction

     I continue to condemn violence against people -- even ones who ideas I despise -- who are running their mouth and otherwise engaging in normal, peaceful political activity.  In a contest of ideas within a free democracy, violence has no place.

     The most recent assailant, when they catch him, may claim political motivation, but he (or she, or they) will most likely turn out to be like the vast majority of these killers, a person obsessed with high-profile murderers, and their primary purpose will have been to make themselves famous.  They'll be someone who lives in the borderlands between sanity and insanity.  Such people -- and the half-baked notions they espouse -- don't deserve serious consideration as anything but criminals.

     Politicians often seek to exploit these crimes (or more accurately, the public's reaction) to further their own interests.  They will seek to boost whatever cause or program they were already favoring.  Others will express sincere sympathy, and I trust them a little more than their opportunistic peers.  Both the sincere and self-serving/cause-serving reactions can be found all across the political spectrum.

     Less universally, for every high-profile death, there are barbarians who will express glee.  It's unseemly.  Ungracious.  You can dislike or disagree with a man's ideas -- or even the man himself -- without dancing in his blood when he is killed.

     When the most recent attacker is hunted down, he (etc.) is going to be one more warped flake hyped on nihilistic fame, just like the vast majority of similar murderers. 

     Update: the killer is still not found, and my in-house subject-matter expert reminds me that the late Charlie Kirk had critics to the Right as well as to the Left, many of them extremists who decried his lack of antisemitism.  So the killer's screed -- of which there will probably be one -- is as likely to lean that way as the other; the "No enemy to the (Left or Right, depending on the speaker)," types should bear in mind that most shades of political opinion have foes who are even farther in their own direction; the only ones who don't are so far out that they're off the map.
     The other point that merits bearing in mind is that a 200-yard rifle shot is not, in fact, all that far or difficult; hunters and U. S. Marines routinely do this with stock AR-15s and hunting rifles, however James Bond it sounds to you or me.  It's a chilling reality.

Old

     Yesterday was a solid day of physical work, much of it near floor level, and I'm paying the price.  I can still work with vinyl floor tile* but even a little leaves me with a sore back and aching knees.  We've got the first major piece of the big project in place.

     It turns out the manufacturer did make one tiny little mistake when they refurbished this (slightly) used transmitter: while most of the components didn't require adjustment when moving from the previous channel to ours, one high-power radiofrequency filter is critical and difficult to adjust.  It's a factory job, set once and never touched again.  Or, at least, not touched again unless you put the transmitter on a different channel.

     So they touched it.  While most of the component parts -- about half a semi-truck load -- were dropshipped from the previous owner† to us months ago, a few that needed high-level test equipment and esoteric skills to set up went to the factory instead.  There, they were all retweaked without delay, packed up and put on the shipping dock.  The filter, in a refrigerator-sized crate, never left the dock.  Monday, checking through the big box I thought it was in and finding everything but, I asked and after about an hour, heard back from the guy who found it in a corner, "Oops."  The plan is to get it to us before the installer arrives next week.
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* Vinyl Composition Tile, that is, and not Vinyl Asbestos Tile.  The latter is generally removed by moon-suited specialists when found.  I learned to do tile work after three successive floor-tile crews left bad impressions when we rebuilt the transmitter site; the ones that did very good work were primadonnas, who begged off after having to work around electricians for three days: "We usually have the whole jobsite to ourselves.  This is too difficult!" --On a project proceeding under immense time pressure, rebuilding after a fire while the smoke-damaged equipment in the back room, patched up and mostly functioning, tottered from minor failure to minor failure.  It was difficult for everyone.  The next crew arrived high, stayed high, did adequate work for a day -- and were never seen or heard from again.  The final ones also enjoyed their glue fumes and, from circumstantial evidence, other substances, but they had the job mostly finished when the general contractor escorted them off the site, paid them off at the gate and suggested they and their contraband depart forthwith, because they were, ahem, too under the influence for safety and he would call the police if he saw them again.  Every single crew had delivered a constant stream of complaints.  At that point, I learned how to cut and lay tile: Most people use too much glue even with a serrated trowel to spread it, a hot air gun softens tile for cutting, a big rubber mallet knocks out the trapped air.  Don't get too fancy!  I don't know if I could tile a floor from scratch; it's a big job and there's some critical prep work.  Over the years, I have cut, patched and filled enough floor tile to cover the floor of a large bedroom.  I don't know if all tile crews are flaky, but if you find good ones, don't lose their number!
 
† Technically untrue, since both stations have the same corporate owner.  The transmitter is free, left over from a reshuffling of TV channels in that other city -- free aside from the cost of factory retuning and checking, and field installation with their expert.  This is "free" like the cost of my house, almost, and still cheap as such things go.

What Day Is It?

      It's Star Trek day, among other things, the day the first episode of the series aired on NBC, the first step in a long cultural arc that took science fiction from being that crazy stuff your parents razzed you for watching and your English teacher despaired of you reading* to a cherished institution featuring Star Wars day every May and Star Trek day as summer comes to an end.

     Fun stuff, but it's a reminder that every day is History Day.†  I was reminded of that more forcefully while listening to a radio news piece from Kyiv this morning, covering the Russian drone strikes in that city.  The reporter had been awakened in the night by the sound of incoming Sahed drones and recorded parts of her story with the engines of the weapons throbbing in the background.  It's an eerie sound, and reminds me of Edward R. Murrow of CBS, broadcasting live from a London rooftop during the Blitz.‡  Or, much later in that war, the guttural buzz and sudden halt of an incoming V-1.

     We're in the run-up to World War III, or at least to a wider European War.  This time, America First holds the White House and Congress; Zelenskyy is no Churchill, nor is Putin Hitler: history does not repeat.  But it does rhyme, and the present verses carry a familiar rhythm.

     I hope I'm wrong, but there's a chill in my bones that freezes optimism.
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*Not quite a decade later, my high school offered a class on "Science Fiction."  But the English department was pretty desperate, in that huge Sports, Shop and (slightly) Math-heavy high school.  My Dad, on the other hand, never stopped regarding it as silly stuff, unworthy of adult interest.  He preferred Westerns.
 
† Is there a History Day?  Well, yes and no.  It's not just one day.
 
‡ At first, BBC didn't want him up there, and refused use of the roof of their main studio location, Broadcast House, fearing Germans might use the sound to fine-tune their bombing.  Eventually, someone realized the value of broadcasting live coverage of the attacks, and British resolve in the face of them, to the then-neutral United States.

Sunday Supper

     It's nice to have at least one conventional sit-down meal a week.  Any more, I mostly have salads, sandwiches or "trash night" pizza, our time-saver on the night we empty all the trash cans, clear out the fridge and set the can out for the city to empty.

     Sunday or Saturday, I try to do more.  This was a busy weekend, as I continued straightening up the library/dining room and, on Saturday, took delivery of a large, heavy flat-pack box with a famous blue-and-yellow logo on it.

     It's a new storage cabinet for the bath.  The old one was tiny, and Roseholme Cottage lacks any semblance of a linen closet.  It's barely got closets at all.  I found a six-foot-tall cabinet online that would fit the available space, and after dishes and housecleaning, I spent Sunday emptying the old cabinet, cleaning the corner where it sat, assembling the new one, modifying it slightly to clear the baseboard, and getting it into position and anchored to the wall.

     But that left no time for the grocery, and not much for cooking.  I asked Tam to pick up a couple of cased sausages, whatever appealed to her, and some of the fresh, microwave-ready vegetables our local grocery sells, all cut up in a cooking bag, with a little seasoning.

     I was expecting the usual assortment -- onion, carrot, asparagus, pea pods, zucchini, cauliflower and/or broccoli, etc.  Brown the sausage, drain, add a small jar of good garden-type spaghetti sauce,* heat and add the nuked veggies.  The store was out of them.  They did have Parmesan zucchini, with a nice pat of butter blended with the cheese and Italian herbs.  I'd forgotten just how well the combination works, but it certainly does.  Tam picked up a chorizo sausage and a mild Italian, a nice combination.  I added a small can of tomato paste to thicken the sauce, since zucchini's got a lot of water in it.  We both went back for seconds.

     It's a low-effort meal that looks and tastes like you spent a lot of time on it.  Add some garlic bread and it's as nice as anyone could want.
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* Michael's of Brooklyn Home Style Gravy remains my go-to.  There are other good sauces, but it's tasty and consistent.

I Don't Post For Two Days And The Department Of Defense Starts Using A Nickname

     That was two days of...something.  I've been dodging politics, in part because the news is so crazy (if recent events were happening in any other country, our media would have no trouble pointing out what it is) and in part because I doubt I can do much good by commenting on it: either you just love, love, love what our Nero posing as Caesar and his clown circus is up to, or you recognize it as a very bad and outright dangerous direction for the Federal government to take, or you're an insensible lump who thinks it will never touch you and will go away if ignored.

     It cannot safely be ignored.  One of the biggest weaknesses of the United States Congress is also its greatest strength: the House and Senate are a contentious, bickering mass of people; the two bodies disagree internally and dispute with one another.  For anything to get done, over half of each body's got to agree it ought to happen, and then hammer out and whittle down a mutually-agreeable version.  It's clumsy.  It's slow.  It a deliberative process.

     Replacing or supplanting that process by the whims of one man and a small circle of his hand-picked advisors allows the preferences and prejudices of a few people, only one of whom was elected, to replace the aggregate likes, dislikes, wisdom and damfoolishness of 535 pontificating blowhards chosen by the voters, by state and district.  They're less likely to leap first and look afterward.  They may still make the wrong choices, but they will have talked over the options, largely in public; they will have received feedback from voters and lobbyists (and maybe even subject-matter experts).  If their choice doesn't work out, it's easier for them to change direction while blaming their peers for the misstep.

     You can vote your way into autocracy, nice as a slice of hot pie.  History's lacking examples of a country voting their way out of it.  It's usually a messy process.

     We ain't there yet -- but you can see it if you stand on a chair.  Maybe it's worth checking for yourself.

     It's the Department of Defense.  It's the Gulf of Mexico.  Green is not orange; up is not down.

New Refrigerator Arrived

     It's here.  I paid extra to have the installers take the old one and all the packing away.  And it appears to be working okay.

     This one is reminding me why I dislike top-freezer refrigerators.  It manages to make matters worse by being about seven inches shorter than the old one.  I can fix that part; I've already got a riser with a storage drawer sketched out.  But it's still kind of a sit-down fridge, if you're looking for something that's not frozen.  Pull up a chair and browse!  The appliance outfits just don't seem to be making the arrangement I prefer in anything shorter than six feet tall.  (Powell Crosley, Jr. seems to have started the big top freezer trend.)

     An old-time single-door fully-enclosed refrigerator and most of the "Monitor Top" models that preceded them had good internal sightlines: the small freezer compartment didn't obscure the view of items in the refrigerator proper.  But a two-door model with the freezer on top has a huge barrier for anyone whose eyes are higher than the top of the main compartment, and the deeper the unit, the worse it is.  With older technology, you wanted the freezer up high; the coils around the outside of it made the small freezer freeze, and cooled the much larger compartment.  Monitor tops picked up a little more efficiency by mounting the condensing coil and compressor on top.  But modern insulating materials are much better, and compressors are more efficient, too.  There's no reason other than tradition to stick the freezer up top.

     I'm stuck with it for a while now.  Awkward though it it, it seems to be a nice little machine, with lots of space inside.  And it fits the available spot in the kitchen.

     A huge plus is that I have made a good start on straightening up the dining room/library.  It really got out of hand during the pandemic and it was badly cluttered before.

About Mass Murderers

     Every time it happens, the same general coverage plays out: normal shock and horror at the horrific crime, and once the initial outrage begins to fade, everybody but everybody, from NPR to your uncle who shares loud opinions at every family gathering, from Fox News to gun-control organizations, starts trying to suss out the mind of the killer, often with an eye towards catching the next one before they go off the rails and usually grinding their own axes in the process.

     And they keep on saying the name of the killer, over and over.  Making them famous.

     You want to know the prime motivation of all of these murderers?  They want to be famous.  Many of them treat the stats on similar criminals as some kind of twisted leaderboard.  Sure, the nominally-religious ones say it's for their faith, the racist ones give racist justifications, the political ones claim its for some greater good or to silence their enemies, the seething nutjobs talk about striking back at whatever institution, authority or peer group they think wronged them, yadda-yadda yackety-yak, but it's blather.  They're looking to write their names across history like misbehaving boys peeing their names into fresh snow in their neighbor's front yard.

     Every single person doing a deep dive into the supposed mind of these criminals, "Whatever made Firstname Lastname commit their horrific crime?  We talk to the former yoga instructor of their neighbor across the alley and analyze their MySpace page from twenty years ago," is just feeding the next would-be mass killer: Look how much attention Firstname Lastname got!  Look at how many views their manifesto got!  Look how angry they made people!  They want to be just like Firstname Lastname, only more so -- and they don't mean the killer's religion, politics, or particular flavor of non-murderous nuttiness.  Nope.  It's the killing -- and the fame.  It's the attention.

     We have to stop stoking the flames of criminal celebrity.

     These crimes, striking though they are, are rare.  Over a hundred people die in traffic accidents in the U. S. every day and we scarcely blink.  One person kills two and injures nearly ten times as many, and it makes headlines and gets live special reports.  The overwhelming majority of people in this country didn't kill anyone; Sunday School teachers and the worst racists you can think of, hardcore Antifa people and the nice little old Republican ladies who work as pollwatchers every election didn't kill anyone or even plan to; nearly every Muslim, Evangelical Christian, agnostic and Sikh (etc.), along with just about all Republicans, Democrats, Greens and Whigs (etc.) didn't commit mass murder.  Even most insane people are, in fact, not murderers.  How lovely if we could point at some demographic group and say, "Yes, these people are the ones who commit mass murder," and stop them.  But that's not how it works.

     The most recent mass killer as I write this was apparently a member of a stigmatized group (and also a rabid fan of other mass murderers, from the available evidence).  That is being leveraged in ways that are, in fact, lies; lies that contribute nothing to finding and stopping mass killers and instead deflect attention elsewhere.

     The specific bent that these mass killers share is an intense desire for posthumous fame earned through terrible crimes.  That's as deep as it goes; politically, religiously, socially, they're all over the map, and while most are white males, there have been female, nonbinary and non-white mass shooters -- and all of them wanted to be known for their crimes.

     Deny them that attention.

Labor Day

      Here's to everyone doing physical work for a living, which includes me at least half the time.  I have done it all day, every day, not digging ditches but up and down ladders, in and out of trenches, stringing coaxial cable and smiling at the customers no matter what, and that kind of work is almost always underpaid.  But it's got to be done.

     I worked for myself, last night and today.  The fan bearing in the fridge got worse last night and the hot side was very hot indeed.  Rather than hope all the protective measures held while the fan screamed out its last and I tried to sleep, I pitched everything that was sensitive -- a couple of bouts of food poisoning have made me timid about food safety -- and put the fridge in icebox mode.  It held up okay overnight with the cold packs I had stockpiled in the freezer (keep your freezer full, with paths for airflow; it's more efficient and the gelpacks come in handy) and I added ice today.  More ice tomorrow, and that should get it to delivery of the new one, with cold soft drinks for Tam and cold UHT milk and Reese's Cups for me along the way.

     A fair part of the day, I spent clearing away books in the library/dining room so there will be a wide path from the front door to the kitchen.  It was overdue work, and there's still more to do.

N. B.

     Looks like it's time to explain again:

     I don't care if you're the raddest, reddest pro-Trump Republican in the country or a mealy-mouthed, lukewarm, "He's not my guy, but..." anti-anti-Trumper: if you're not against Mr. Trump* and his regime, you're helping enable fascism in the United States of America, and you should stop that.  It's unAmerican.  I am not going to be nice to you, I'm not going to consider your tender, wounded feelings and you will not get the benefit of the doubt.

     There's an administration in Washington, DC right now that is using normalcy bias, entrenched respect for institutions and a tradition of civility as weapons to destroy our freedoms, to trash the separation of powers, to exploit the law for their own benefit and to ride roughshod over the civil rights of all Americans.  I refuse to play along.

     You shouldn't play along either.  Some of you, lifelong conservatives, are going to have to vote for better GOP primary candidates, and when they lose, if you want to keep on having elections you're going to have to bite your tongue and vote for Democrats in the general election, saving arguments about social and monetary policy for later.  Yes, it sucks to be you, oh the pain of having to vote for a woman of color who won't sit down and shut up, but your party leaders and politicians had the chance to stop Donald Trump and they chose to fail, thinking they could ride his coattails to glory.  That's not the direction he's headed and it'll be a damned close thing if he doesn't drag the country down to ruin with him. 

     No commenter gets to lecture me on how to behave.  In her old age, my maternal grandmother became very outspoken.  This was in the 1960s; elderly women were supposed to be demure if not downright invisible.  She was neither.  Her five daughters were horrified, but she told them, "If I cannot speak my mind now, when will I be be able to do so?"  I'm old; I'm past my planned retirement age and the way things are going, I'm not going to be able to retire until I'm too worn out to work.  If I can't speak my mind now, just when the hell will I?

     If you don't like it, don't read my blog.  I'm not going to miss you.  I do this for me, not you.
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* On my blog, I do not use cute or disparaging names for politicians.  They get full names and/or titles and salutations, just the same as if they were decent folks.  A few of them -- notably, the odiously racist Woodrow Wilson -- have left such a stink that I will add that description when they are mentioned, but Mr. Nixon isn't "Tricky" here nor is Mr. Clinton "Slick."  Presidents and Congressthings are Just Some Guy, exactly the same before the law and their fellow citizens as the dude down the block, and I don't call him asinine nicknames, either. 

Appliances At The Edge

     The refrigerator started screaming Friday.  Oh, it'd made noise before, an occasional annoyed yowl like an unhappy orc, but this was unceasing.

     There are only a few possibilities.  Compressors in a modern fridge tend to hum and chuckle, and die without a sound.  But there are fans flowing air over the coils that cool the freezer and refrigerated compartment, and often another one moving air over the hot-side coils as well.

     The inside of the main compartment and freezer weren't especially noisier than outside.  The sound was coming out the back.  I ignored it Saturday; there were other things to do and the icebox was plenty chilly, with good airflow out the cold-air vents into the compartments.

     This morning, it wasn't very cold.  I'd put a couple of bags of leftover roast pork with vegetables in the freezer and they were squishy-cold but not frozen.  The meat drawer of the fridge read 47°F -- too warm.  (And there goes a pound of applewood-smoked bacon, two weeks supply.  And most of a five-buck carton of eggs, and probably three tubs of Irish butter, dammit.) (Update: with a longer time in the fridge, my thermometer reports 37°F.  Better news for the perishables, though not great, and the freezer still doesn't freeze.  A replacement is on the way, though it would seem they're making many of them a little taller now -- and the ones I like best are a couple of inches too tall for the space.  So, freezer on top, like some kind of savage.)

     At the very bottom of my little fridge (narrow, cabinet-depth, bottom freezer, a perfect fit for my galley-style kitchen), the lowest drawer of the freezer is only half the depth of the other two, leaving an open space at the back of the device.  The compressor and hot coil live down there and I have never taken a look, other than to vacuum the vent slots at too-infrequent intervals.  Time to change that.

     With the cover off, a fat little compressor lurks at the left, dollhouse-scale tubing connecting to a ridiculously-tiny serpentine coil at the right, and at far right, a shaded-pole motor with oversized bearing spins a little nylon fan.  If not for the big bearings, it would look just like an old phonograph motor.  It comes on whenever the compressor runs, which means the compressor's running all the time.  There was surprisingly little cat hair, and vacuuming it out and cleaning the fan blades didn't help.  A sharp tap will quiet the fan motor briefly, but the Oilite-style bearings quickly return to their noisy grooves.

     My fridge, an LG LRBP 1031, is over eighteen years old and no longer made.  The fan motor, along with nearly other part, is obsolete and unavailable.  So it looks like I'm in the refrigerator-shopping business.  In the U.S., there aren't a lot of options for these British-scale* fridges, midway between a tiny dorm refrigerator adequate for a six-pack of beer and a couple of frozen dinners, and a giant deluxe French-door marvel that seats six and holds enough to feed a family of ten for a month.

     Today's brunch is canned sausage hash with some added seasoning over toasted rye breadcrumbs: always have a Plan B!

     In the meanwhile, the fridge is in the kitchen, screaming.  Sooner or later, I'm going to have to put it out of its misery.  Other than Tam's soda pop, three chocolate bars, a bag of Reese's Cups and a half-jar of peanut butter (sensing a theme...), there's nothing left in it fit to consume.  Oh, wait, I'm keeping UHT milk singles in there, too: it's shelf-stable, but it's better cold.
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* That's where I first saw them, anyway, in home-improvement shows and dramas produced in the UK.  When I moved to Roseholme Cottage, there was a huge refrigerator looming in the kitchen, making a narrow spot and blocking the entire width of the long, skinny room when the door was open.  I spent about a week thinking I'd seen something that would work better, and finally just plugged the requirements into a search engine.  Back then, there were three choices in the right size, and I had to have it drop-shipped from the East Coast.  But if I had to buy a new refrigerator, I wasn't going to settle for anything other than an exact match; I'd been coping with big, awkward fridges all my life.  About the only one I'd really liked was a round-top Philco-Ford made in the late 1940s or early '50s, in place at the transmitter site since before they went on the air, almost the same size as the flat-top LG that's hollering right now.

About Our Lack Of A National Religion

     Some awful things have happened over the past week, and I'll get into them, but first --

     A commenter took offense at my pointing out, despite the strange and unfounded claims of Indiana Lieutenant Micah Beckwith,* the United States of America is a secular democracy that, by Constitution and law, does not promote or privilege any particular religion but protects the free exercise of all religions. 

     I grew up taking that for granted; it was a bland axiom, as uncontroversial as the sun rising in the east.  "Was" is apparently the operational word there, so let's review, starting with the relevant parts of First Amendment:
     "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof [...]."
     Seems simple enough.  The first part says the Federal government can't make any religion special and the second part says the Feds don't get to stop 'em, either.  Congress has a website with a lot of explanation of the history, intent and application of those few words, with extensive reference footnotes, but there isn't any secret hidden codicil or exemption for some sort or generic Christianity or the slightly wider handwaving of Judeo-Christian belief.†  "No law respecting...or prohibiting" is sweeping.

     With that as background, you've got to wonder what the first generation of Feds thought about it.  After all, they'd lived through it, and could be expected to have a firm grasp of where the Bill of Rights left the relationship between religion and the Federal government.  Oh, if only they'd left us some official word, and not just letters to Danbury Baptists...!

     Thing is, they did.  But first, a digression to Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, which says:
     "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the Contrary notwithstanding."
     Got that?  Treaties have the force of Federal law.  Presidents and Senators may safely be assumed to know this.

     In 1796, President John Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli, after the U.S. Senate had approved a resolution of ratification.‡  Adams had been Vice-President when the Bill of Rights was passed and the proposed Amendments were sent to the states; he had taken the VP's job of presiding over the Senate very seriously.  We can expect him to have followed the debate.  Not a few of the original group of U.S. Senators were still on the job, too.

     Article 11 of the version of the Treaty of Tripoli that the Senate approved and President Adams signed begins, "As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; [....]" and goes on to assure the Pasha that the Feds hold no religious enmity towards him or his country.

     Our President and Senators knew what it said, and they were okay with it; they knew that treaties, once ratified, become part of the "supreme Law of the Land" in the U.S. and they were clearly okay with that.

     The Federal government of the United States of America is a secular government, under which all residents are free to follow their own religious faith, and (if they wish) to look to it for guidance.  Individual members of the three branches of government, elected and appointed, may of course do so -- but the Constitution is the foundation of our law, not religion.

     So when I get comments like this, I know it's nonsensical blather:

     "Wrong. No Established Church does not mean an anti religion nation. That is the alternative. Another  'church' takes it place. Marxism, climate change, LBGTQ+ET.EL. You are anti Christianity and that is a loser in America."

     I invite readers to scrutinize the blog post to which that comment was directed, "Ipse Dixie," for any evidence that I am "anti Christianity" or that I think our country -- in which the Feds are barred from prohibiting the free exercise of religion -- is or ought to be "anti religion."

     As for the commenter's proposed alternatives to Christianity, the only one of them that has claimed to be§ would be Marxism, and you can find folks with conventionally religious -- even Christian -- versions of it.  As an economic and political theory, no version of it has worked out, but people do keep on trying, often with guns.  You can find lots and lots of sincerely churchgoing LGBTQ+ people, climate activists and climate scientists, and -- this being the United States of America, with our Bill of Rights still, so far, intact -- you are welcome to form your own opinions about them, but those other things do not constitute or replace religions. 
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* Recent reporting has revealed his utterly brazen use of State funds and facilities to promote a partisan political agenda.
 
† This is essentially the polite way to say, "Monotheism, but only the right kinds of monotheism," leaving Sikhs and Muslims and several others out in the cold.  Of course, once you've thrown all but two faiths under the bus, there's always the guy who argues that adding just one more won't hardly matter....
 
‡ The Senate doesn't actually ratify a treaty; that happens after all parties have signed it.  What the Senate does (or does not), by a two-thirds majority, is agree that the President ought to sign it.
 
§ Well, kind of.  Classical Marxism calls religion "the opiate of the people," claims it is used as a means of control and aims to suppress it.  Countering this, multiple examples of religiously-based opposition to exploitive or oppressive governments, as well as examples from thousands of years of history, across multiple faiths, demonstrating that telling someone their religion is a lie doesn't stop them from continuing to follow it, often even under threat of force.

Ipse Dixie

     Indiana's daft Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith is at it again, this time proclaiming on "X" that the First Amendment doesn't say what it clearly says:

     Separation of Church and State is and always has been a lie—a dangerous falsehood weaponized to dismantle our Republic. From its very inception, this phrase was twisted to marginalize Christian values and strip away the moral foundation that has held America together. They want you to believe that faith and patriotism are separate—that you must choose between God and country. That is unacceptable. Don’t fall for it.
     We are a Judeo-Christian nation. Our Founders did not intend to erect a secular barrier between God and government—they understood that faith and freedom are inseparable. We must reclaim that truth and not let secular agendas undermine what it means to be American.

     He's lying.  And he's lying in a particularly bad-faith manner: there has never been a need to choose between one's deity and one's country, not in the United States -- and the secular barrier between religion and government exists precisely so that none of us ever has to.

     The Founders represented a very wide cross-section of religious beliefs and attitudes, from Ethan Allen's aggressive Deism and Thomas Paine's agnosticism, to devout Congregationalist Samuel Adams (who broke with cousin John Adams, at least for a time, over the latter's conversion to Unitarianism).  All of them had some experience with a state church, and they didn't want it.  Their consensus appears to have been that religious belief and practice was a deeply personal matter, which should not be compelled -- or restricted! -- by government.  They had no problem with individuals looking to their faith for moral guidance, but they wanted government kept firmly out of it.  And as early as 1765, James Madison expressed the thought that a state-established religion was detrimental not only to freedom of religion but also encouraged excessive deference to any authority that might be asserted by an established church.  Thomas Jefferson, in the 1779 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom wrote: 

[N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

     Your religion is your religion, which you share with the fellow members of that faith; our government is our government, a secular matter.  If your faith guides your political choices, that's fine; if your faith compels the political choices of others, or restricts the free expression of their faith, that's wrong.  The United States of America is not a "Judeo-Christian nation," it's a nation with strong protection of religious freedom -- and a government open to men and women of all beliefs.

     Indiana's Lieutenant governor is peddling disingenuous, deceptive crap.  He's shoving men like Paine and Jefferson out of history in favor of nonsensical fairytales about the Founders, in a transparent attempt to justify theocracy.

And You Still Think He's Great?

     After the disturbing spectacle of a Cabinet meeting -- a Cabinet meeting! -- that was mostly an over-the top buttering up the boss session, I would like to think few people still entertain the notion that Mr. Trump is benign or especially competent.  I'd like to, but people keep surprising me.

     I'm no fan of overblown rhetoric on the part of or directed toward Presidents of any party or personal inclination.  The President of the United States is Just Some Guy, named George or Bill, Barack or Joe, Don or Dick.  They're not magic -- and  they don't deserve fulsome praise for getting out of bed in the morning, stuffing themselves into a suit and tie, and shuffling downstairs to the office and claiming to have ended wars.

     Presidents are not kings.  Their Cabinet members ought not suck up to them in public, especially not in a fawning, obsequious manner, and if they are obliged to do so, it's a sure sign something is wrong.

     Judging from that Cabinet meeting, our country is in the middle of a six-alarm helmet fire.

An Interesting Article

     Former Reason editor and Cato Institute analyst Radley Balko has posted an interesting article about these unprecedented times.

The Ancient Art Of Bear-Poking

     The thing about pushing limits is that it provokes reactions -- especially if the limit is a historic norm that is poorly-defined in law or courts don't protect: expectations are askew from the legal reality.

     Push too hard, expect people to push back.  I think the Trump administration is hoping for it, hoping sending Federalized National Guard troops into big cities will create an incident leading to riots that will justify even harsher measures.  And yes, big cities are crime-ridden; they always have been -- but the rate has been falling dramatically over the last decade in every one of the cities the President has sent or is talking about sending troops into: a lot of people in close proximity is always going to be a hunting ground for the criminally inclined and as a society, the U.S. has been doing an amazing job of getting it under control, using everything from community policing to outreach programs, mandatory sentencing laws and getting the lead out of gasoline.

     This reality, which you can go look up for yourself, doesn't serve an agenda based on urbaphobia and anecdote; it doesn't serve the desire to test limits -- and cause reaction.  Remember the chaos of the first Trump administration?  He loved it, or at least the opportunities it provided, and he's going to get himself more of it, one way or another.  Count on it.

     Chicago, Illinois seems to be his next target.  That city and state has a pretty good chance of litigating the effort to a standstill, but it won't stop there.

---

     Press coverage of the redistricting conflict, with Texas and California at the fore, keeps turning up an interesting tidbit:  Blue states are having a much harder time gerrymandering, because a lot more of them have nonpartisan boards or commissions to draw U.S. House districts, or rules that serve similar ends.  Red states have made no bones about drawing lines to reach partisan goals, even when the result is wildly skewed from voting patterns, pointing out that it's allowed.  This disparity should tell us something, that the Dems are, at least, concerned about the appearance of fairness, while the GOP can't be arsed.  The latter is not a good look; it's not the way our system of government is supposed to work, at least not based on what I was taught about the root causes of the American Revolution.  The English Crown got a reaction there, too.

Chuck Roast

     The grocery had a decent price on chuck roast, so....

     I put it on a rack in a covered pan on the grill, salt, pepper, a little Worcestershire sauce and topped with orange slices (no, really).  I let it cook over a slow fire for a half hour before adding potato chunks (with some paprika and pepper) and turnip chunks (with curry powder).  After a half-hour, I added beef stock just below the level of the rack.  Bay leaves, carrots and wedges of red onion followed, then red bell pepper and oyster mushrooms, plus fresh basil leaves from the garden.

     It took three hours for a three-pound chuck roast.  Tam and I liked it, and there are leftovers (defatted and grease separated from the broth) for at least two more meals.  I might just simmer one batch down with diced tomato and some seasoning.

Off On A Sidelobe

     It took professional help.  I was trying to realign a satellite dish -- a big one, 6.1 meters in diameter -- on a satellite it should have still been pointing at.  The signal was there, but it wouldn't quite lock.

     These days, there's an outfit we hire when this kind of thing gets weird.  The best gadgets for the job have gotten smaller -- but way more expensive.  When we used uplinks all the time, and had guys on the staff who ran 'em often, it made sense to keep the latest, best stuff.  Now we might need that gear once every year or two.

     So I called in the experts, and they showed up, got it a little better and got stuck until another team member showed up to help.  The receiver kept trying to lock on the signal, but it wouldn't stay

     A really big satellite dish has "sidelobes," kind of extra focus points, where the signal strength peaks -- but not by much.  And it's small compared to the main lobe.  But with a good receiver on a big dish?  It'll work, or almost.  We were on a nice fat sidelobe, diagonally off, and it was tricky fumbling back to the main lobe.  But we -- which is to say the guys who do that kind of thing all day every day -- got it.

     The receiver still wouldn't lock.

     This dish is a legacy.  It shows up on the software that runs all of my employer's dishes, but nobody's supposed to use it.  Someone, probably quite some time back, had been looking to aim one of the general-purpose dishes at the main campus, got on this one by mistake, realized it too late and tried to set it back.  It almost got pointed in the right place, so that's one thing.

     But it appears the receiver got a command, too (oops!), and ended up with a very wrong configuration.  Untangling that had us deep in menus I'd never seen before, but a mere fifteen minutes later, it locked -- and held.

     I kinda somehow left power to the dish motors turned off.  It's supposed to be left looking at one specific satellite.  Maybe this time it will stay.

Whew!

     The writer of The Lazarus Project managed to wrap it up in a satisfying way despite multiple time loops -- and still left a cliffhanger ending!  No spoilers, but I'll recommend the series.  There's handwavium and a few moments where you just have to let young Jim Hawkins pilot a pirate ship without questioning how he has that skill, but it's worth the effort.

Current Events

     I have not commented on immediately current events; two in particular have been all over the news, international talks with an eye to ending the war Russia initiated against Ukraine and President Trump's push to have Republican states redraw U. S. House districts ahead of the midterms.

     As for the peace effort, good luck to honest principals -- Ukraine, Europe, the UK and yes, even our President, who wants a Nobel Prize so badly that he may even be standing up to his good friend Mr. Putin to try for it.  The problem is, Russia -- and Vladimir Putin in particular -- started the war with the express purpose of absorbing Ukraine.  He went so far as to write (possibly with help) and publish a paper arguing at some length that Ukraine has no independent historical existence and is wholly a modern creation; actual historians do not agree.  His position does not augur well for even a "freeze the battle lines and draw the new border there" outcome (unacceptable to Ukraine and international law): Mr. Putin's Russia wants to take all of Ukraine and Ukrainians want to keep it.  So I'm not hopeful -- but I'm happily willing to be surprised.

     On mid-decade House redistricting to grab more seats for one party or another, it's cheating.  It's not the done thing; states redraw those districts every ten years, with the new census results in hand.  States have considerable latitude in where the lines are drawn and there's no black-letter law that says they can't do so in a partisan manner, though by long custom, the end result is not supposed to be too lopsided when compared to the state's proportion of votes for the main parties.  (And there's a whole Voting Rights Act thing in which districts should be arranged in such a way that racial minorities have a shot at proportional representation, but let's leave that for later: it's in the courts again, last I heard.)

     The Constitution puts it this way: 

     Clause 1, Composition:
     The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.
     [...]
     Clause 3, Seats:
     Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.

     Yeah, the Framers didn't leave us a paint-by-numbers.  They left the details for Congress, and Congress has tended to let the courts work it out (and the courts, in turn, have demurred on some of it).  Clause 1 comes in for some serious work.  Clause 3 does, too -- but the notion of only changing district maps in response to new decennial census data has been taken as axiomatic since the first time it was done.  In that light, it may be of some interest to note that the Supreme Court, when ruling that asking demographic questions above and beyond a simple count was a permissible action, said, "...that our interpretation of the Constitution is guided by a Government practice that 'has been open, widespread, and unchallenged since the early days of the Republic.'"  Thus, too, the time and timing of redistricting.  So if it feels kinda cheat-y, that would be because it is; it's not the way it's been done in the past, nor the way most people expected it to continue to be done.

     Nevertheless, Texas seems to be bound and determined to do it; my home state of Indiana is considering doing the same, to yank the rug out from under our two blue House districts (in Indianapolis and Chicagoland, about as blue as Indiana ever gets).  And the Trump administration is asking other red states to do so, too.

     Elsewhere, the latest Pew poll shows the President is underwater on approval ratings and especially on tariffs, the economy, peace talks and his administration's handling of the Epstein files.  Results run near 60% disapprove/40% approve on most items.  Being underwater by 20% is not the kind of thing that makes a party's ticket appeal to voters.  Why, it might almost tempt a political party to try giving the old pinball machine a good slam.

The Lazarus Project

     Tam and I have been watching a British science-fiction series, The Lazarus Project.  It arrived in the U.S. already canceled, and I think that's a pity: it may be the best treatment of time travel in science fiction film and television.

     The story is heavily character-driven, echoing some of the themes and concepts in Fritz Lieber's "Change Wars" stories and even Johanna Russ's "Trans-Temporal Authority" that figures in several of her stories and novels.*  (Poul Anderson and John Varley wrote stories in this vein as well.)  The series doesn't bother to explain much, which is for the best: the "science" hardware in SF time travel is inherently handwavium that can't stand close examination.  Instead, the episodes and overall arc are as tightly plotted as a murder mystery.  There is no shortage of car chases and gunfights -- but they're in service of a convoluted story with plenty of "ah-ha!" moments.

     It may have been a little too hip for the room, too good as SF to hold a mass audience.  You have to be ready to buy in to the central conceit, that (to a greater or lesser extent) past events can be undone and redone.  But it got two seasons, and even if the series doesn't stick the landing (I don't know yet), it's a heck of a ride, at times as shades-of-gray as the best film noir. 
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* There might even be touches of Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps" and the film Looper.  Another Heinlein story, "--All You Zombies--" was filmed as Predestination, which is probably the second-best time live-action time-travel story.

Filtering History

     It's best to let historians do their own fighting; they'll do so at the drop of a hat, and discuss the hat's provenance, origins and cultural connections on the way down.  We're best off when we have a lot of them and they're all under some sort of "publish or perish" pressure: they'll fight their way to accuracy, by the jealous pointing of the mistakes of their predecessors and peers if nothing else.

     You know what's not a good idea?  Rewriting history to suit an agenda.  From the Soviets airbrushing purged Party members out of photographs and twisting history books around to suit their own ends to Parson Weems' well-intentioned fable about a young George Washington ruining a cherry tree (but not his untrammeled honesty) or the White House and the Press concealing President Roosevelt's inability to walk unaided, distorting history is harmful.  If you don't have a clear idea where you've been, you're not going to understand where you're going.  Meddling with the presentation of history is literally Orwellian: it's Winston Smith's job in 1984.

     So when the President of the United States tells the Smithsonian Institution -- he is not their boss, by the way -- they're to start combing through their museums and culling any commentary and exhibits that don't jibe with his notion of a positive portrayal of American history, historians are right to object.  The venerable Organization of American Historians is looking out for the rest of us.

Apparently, They Don't Know Beans

     Stopping by the other foodie-mart on my commute yesterday, I bought a "southwest hash" mix that looked interesting -- diced russet potatoes, sweet potatoes, red and green peppers...and black beans.  This morning, I squeezed a chorizo sausage out of its casing, browned it, set it to one side and cooked the southwest hash in the grease with a dash of chili powder and some dried onion flakes.  When it was done, I stirred the sausage in, pushed it to the sides of the pan and scrambled three medium eggs in the center.

     I mixed it all together, added some cilantro and parsley, and served it for breakfast.  Tam was dubious and only had a little -- those beans, you know.  I feel much the same way about sweet potatoes, but I gave it a try.

     It's pretty good, with one exception: about half of the beans are still middlin' hard.  Maybe I didn't give it long enough under the lid.  The directions call for "8 to 12 minutes," and I went for ten, plus the uncovered cooking time for the eggs.  Maybe the beans didn't get soaked long enough before packing.*  It was a change from the usual stuff, and if there's a next time, I'll know what to try. 
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* There are lots of reasons why most of the canned and frozen legumes you buy are rehydrated dried beans.  Ease of storage and transport is the main one.

And Now, Threats

     It's hilarious.  The barbarians, having breached the gates (and claiming to be "defenders of culture," which is apparently how they spell racism) are now making threats.  I have, apparently, hurted their dearly tender feelings through the use of facts, history and logic, and they are a-comin' to get me.  Or maybe it's just karma.  Most of them are not exactly clear.

     I've seen 'em at the range.  They're not exactly credible there, either. 

     Update: Another nitwit has chimed in to tell me that the problem is I'm too mean to Trumpist Republicans and their fellow-travelers.  OMG!  How could I not have known?  Oh, that's right, I did.  I meant to be rude to them.  I've already said so.  But I am not threatening them; I am not promising retribution or gloating that I believe it is coming for them.  Honestly, I don't know.  The American Experiment may be doomed, and if it is, I expect to be harmed by what comes after.  But until it falls, I intend to keep pushing back, because the real ideals of this country are worth fighting for: that all people are created equal, that we've got a right to be represented in the government, that what we say and write and read should not be censored, that no religion should have the power to dictate our beliefs nor be suppressed by the government, that everyone here is entitled to due process of law and so on as spelled out in our Constitution as amended.

     That blood-and-soil bullshit isn't Americanism.  This country is a set of ideas, and if you're opposed to them, you're opposed to this nation.

     When I get threats, I will mention it on this blog.  I won't publish them.  If anything happens to me -- and that's unlikely, most of these people are cowards, who impotently wish I would stop reminding them of how far short they have fallen -- then there are people who can get at the unpublished comments and will know where to start looking.

Night Shift Spider

      There was no sign of a spiderweb when I got home from work yesterday but -- Thursday being trash night -- I went outside with a bag of office trash well after sunset and she had a full web up, this time all under the eaves, the usual plane of the web carefully bent into a kind of saddle shape to fit neatly around the corner, well out of human reach.

     The spider scuttled smartly into hiding behind the downspout as I approached.  She's not taking any chances!  The web showed signs of a few big catches, holes in the mesh where something big had been trapped and secured (and consumed) or cut loose.  In deference to Tamara's concerns, I moved the big trash can out from the wall so it wouldn't be under the web.  (Tam used to live in a house with big, hairy wolf spiders haunting the entryway.  They had either poor timing or lousy eyesight, since they tended to rappel down on her to the mutual discomfort of both parties, and she's been suspicious of all spiders ever since.)

     The web near our back door is a good spot for a spider; there's a farmyard-type light high on the kitchen extension that lights the back yard and around the corner from it, a small sconce illuminates the back door.  The web is right between them, with a good influx of flying insects.

     Early this morning, most of the web had been taken down; the spider was motionless on the few remaining strands, legs pulled in, apparently asleep.  An hour later, she'd removed the last of the web and (presumably) hidden for the day.

     We've got a night shift spider, at least for a few days.

Exceptionally Self-Deluded

     The United States of America is in the midst of a Viktor Orbán-style takeover of the institutions of our republic -- including many that have long existed outside of the government, either by independent formation (like universities) or via structures intended to distance them from direct government control, like the United States Institute for Peace or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

     In particular, the Executive Branch is arrogating to itself powers that had either not previously been deemed to exist or are Constitutionally granted to the Legislative Branch -- and a supinely complicit Congress along with a compliant Supreme Court are letting it happen, in some cases even empowering it.  It out-Jacksons Andrew Jackson, and puts forward a Wilsonian "Unitary Executive" without the odious Woodrow Wilson's academic rigor and commitment to an international deliberative body.  What it does share with both Presidencies is an overt dedication to furthering so-called "white supremacy," with the added frill of pushing women back to the powerlessness they suffered under Jackson and Wilson.  It's broadly authoritarian; I'm not going to get into any nitwitted discussion of how it couldn't possibly be fascism because they don't have spiffy uniforms or the underlying ideas don't come from the fascistae region of Italy.  The incumbent Administration means to rule, and they are completely comfortable laying a heavy thumb on any measure that will further that end, like partisan mid-decade Congressional redistricting.

     There's still a lot of talk of "overreaction," as though the sweeping changes were inconsequential follies, to be washed away or changed after the next election.  Oh, some of them may be, depending on how that election goes, and barring yet another Trumped-up "emergency" getting in the way of voting.  Others will not; many parts of the Federal edifice, like USAID, have been broken beyond recovery.  There might some day be another "soft power" effort along the same lines, but the institution, with all of its values and specialized knowledge, is gone.  And the accretion of power to the Executive may be as irreversible as the accretion of power to the Imperial throne of Rome.  Maybe not; the men who wrote the Constitution knew Classical history and tried to build a stronger bulwark against despotic power than the Roman Senate proved to be.  But so far, our Congress is failing the same test.

     So don't try to jolly me along, and understand that my rudeness to Trumpist Republicans is deliberate; unlike the conservative Republicans who preceded them, they have nothing of value to contribute to our society or system of government, only destruction and barbarism.  When they speak, hear the shouts of the mob and the howling of wolves in the background.  They seek only power and personal wealth; they smash institutions and sow only ruin.  What comes after them, unless we are very lucky in rolling it back, is darkness.

     American exceptionalism long held that our country was immune from the kinds of chaos that swept through the governments of other nations, leaving death and despotism in its wake.  Turns out that's not the case.

A Philosophical Approach

     "Aim high; adapt to difficulties; do your work; clean up after yourself."

     Last night, an ambitious spider the size of a fat cicada -- or an average thumb -- built a web outside the back door of my house, where the back part of the kitchen extends about six feet and overhanging eaves offer a little shelter.  The center was nine feet above the ground.

     The spider's shape resembled the Spiny Micrathena that visited a few years ago, but much larger and no spines.  She had gold bands on her legs, and was most probably an orb-weaver, a very large family of spiders.  Her web had four main anchor points: one up under the eaves, one on the crook of a downspout, one out of sight from the door, probably the sill of the west kitchen window -- and the last one ran all the way to a small pile of sticks on my patio!  Or so I inferred.  By the time I noticed her, it was too dark to see any of the web unless the sunset sky was behind it.  The spider would swoop down like a trapeze artist, apparently floating, tie a new strand to the anchor and head back up towards the center of the web.

     It was fascinating.  The spider's concentration was total, spinning and weaving.  I checked in several times though the evening and by the time I went to bed, she had completed the radials and was running a spiral of cross-strands.  I was considering the best path around the web to the garage for the next morning, since I would much rather have one spider than a surplus of flies and mosquitos.

     I woke in the night and it was raining.  A quick look out the back door found the grumpy-looking spider rerigging her web; the long ground-level anchor line had given way, and the web was flapping gently in the breeze.  While I watched, she got it well-secured at three points and went to work on repairs.  I went back to bed, thinking the problem of how to get by the spider without disturbing the web had been solved, leaving the problem of Tam's aversion to spiders overhead (and plotting, she says, to drop down on her) for later.

     This morning, the spider had solved it for me: there's not a trace of the web to be found!  The Spiny Micrathena had similar habits; she would make a new web every day, having taken the old one down at the end of her work.  Maybe this spider's on second shift.

     That's a pretty good tenant to have, one who works diligently and doesn't leave a mess.  My shy little indoor ghost spiders, who leave gossamer, dust-collecting traces in the ceiling corners week after week, would do well to follow her example.

Behold, the spider. Also, a cloud formation that looks like an enormous eye, watching the spider and me.

The Mutally-Invisible Debating Society

     There's a pretty lively discussion in my comments section, kind of.  None of you are getting published.  As of this posting, I'm not even publishing comments I think are wonderful on those posts.

     Anecdotes are not data.

     Speculation is not fact.  (And buddy, your speculation about what Uncle Sam is up to is wildly off the mark, and insanely optimistic.)

     We're wired up to extrapolate from what we personally see, hear and feel.  We're wired up to trust members of our in-group and we're remarkably flexible creatures when it comes to forming families, trust circles and tribes.  Those are great attributes for a clever, tool-using hunter-gatherer that tends to function in small groups.

     It sucks out loud when we try to apply that set of inclinations to understanding the wider world, to deeper understanding.  It misleads when we mistake second-hand information for direct experience or infer too much from our immediate surroundings.  We can go wildly wrong; we can be right and not know it.  We have devised a great many structures and hacks and clever approaches to get around these limitations, and a lot of them work pretty well, but damn-all of them suffice if we start with an internet connection and an opinion we want to keep.

     I have a lot of opinions and I am not shy about sharing them here.  You have probably got opinions of your own, and I invite you to share them on your own blog.

     And I invite you to share links to solid statistical data and actual expert analysis, if you want to address things of greater scope than your own work, your own family, your own curtilage.  I spent the entire pandemic looking for the most impartial sources of data, looking for places that had large sample sizes or worked from mass collections.  There were lots of heart-rending stories, especially early on, but that's just a general alarm bell; the big numbers pointed to where things were worse or better and suggested trends.  The year-to-year "excess deaths" data showed how things were going compared to previous years, with a large pool of non-pandemic years as the standard of comparison.  Those large pools of data showed the vaccines working.  Regionalized graphs of vaccination rates and infection rates showed the vaccines working.  And they showed vaccine safety, too, especially as the death rates returned to within pre-pandemic levels.

     Nothing is a hundred percent.  Not a hundred percent effective, not a hundred percent safe.  But it was hugely safer to get vaccinated than to contract the illness, and you were better off even if you did have the misfortune to catch it after being vaccinated, far less likely to have a bad outcome.  These things are facts.

     You don't have to like facts.  You can have opinions about facts.  You may even disagree with facts.  But by and large, you'll be wanting your own blog for that purpose.

How Safe Is Safe Enough?

     An unpublished commenter, while noting that pulling the plug on research stymies getting answers, said he wasn't convinced of the long-term effectiveness and safety of the MRNA vaccines that got the COVID pandemic under control.

     What's it going to take?  It's been over four years, and people are not dying of being vaccinated.  They're not suffering harm.  Not even the worst medical grifters (cough, RF, Jr. and most of his appointees at the forefront, cough) have been able to point to any widespread ill effects.  To date, it's one of the safest vaccines ever deployed.  It's still fertile ground for the peddlers of misinformation and woo, but they'll sell you flying saucers and chemtrails, too, and surely you're not falling for that?

     Everything you do can kill you.  Traveling on the roads is remarkably dangerous, one of the worst risks most people will face.  And every hot dog you eat, I'm told, robs the average person of 37 minutes of life.  (Might as well go for the chopped onion and fancy mustard, then.)

     In 2021, I wrote, 
      "You see, the U. S. is at something around two-thirds vaccinated by now.  If the vaccines were doing horrible, horrible things to people, or if they do so in the future, that's over two hundred million Americans and the number is steadily increasing.  Two hundred million pissed-off people is plenty more than you'd need to find enough ready to string up drug company executives and researchers along the side of the road, one per lamp post."

     Ain't happened yet.  Ain't gonna happen, either -- oh, it's not a hundred percent certain; nothing is.  But it's one of the most solid bets you could make.