First Thoughts

… HCR meter pointing downwards… discussion of conservative extremism as evidenced by policies against mask and vaccine mandates… it’s really bleak and threatening… at present, the only remedy appears to be some form of federal voting rights legislation which the Senate can’t pass without making a change in the filibuster… several moderate Democrats Senators have said they will not vote to change the filibuster… what’s most depressing and frightening is that both sides view the current situation as an existential threat… this is the kind of thing that has already and will continue to lead to bloodshed…

… no alcohol last night, in at 9:30 PM, up at 4:00 AM… 6.5 hours of sleep… yup, that seems about right…

… finished The Essential Haiku yesterday, started Conscious, by Annaka Harris… i read a Brain Pickings post about it a couple of days ago and decided to buy it… i am 25 pages into it and was thinking that the development of ideas about consciousness in the book seemed a bit confused and unsound… i know that the book is heading towards presenting the concept of panpsychism, because of the Brain Pickings post and because there is a chapter labeled “Beyond Panpsychism” about 3/4 of the way through the book… an embrace of panpsychism would undercut some of the reasoning in the parts i have read so far, which flits around the trickiness of deciding when matter becomes “conscious”… the dividing lines are not clear and where we presently draw them doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny… so i am thinking the author is confused and muddled but it occurs to me that they are setting us up to introduce panpsychism as the resolution of the muddle… so i think i know why they are proceeding the way they are… at my present rate of reading, i will be done with the book in a few days…

… K comes today to continue with the weeding an mulching of the garden… i have done some work on the other side of the garden and it looks like we will be close to complete by the time H gets home…

… i am looking forward to driving down to Florida and back… the time spent there will be emotionally fraught as J will be frail and continuing on the path of heart failure, and C will be stressed out and sad, and my own emotions will be complex because of my poor relationship with J… so i focus on the three days of travel at either end… time to process… the possibilities of some minor adventures…

… i am feeling a little anxious about my skin exam next week, though i am not presently concerned about any skin anomalies… will be glad to have that past me…

… Chas to the vet yesterday… he’s gained a large amount of weight, 8 lbs according to the vet’s record… we decided to do a blood panel that included thyroid indicators… we’ve had several dogs in the pat with thyroid issues… fortunately, that is easy to treat… the visit cost nearly $470… we used to be able to get out of there for around $200… both Chas and Fiona got vaccinated for Bordetella, aka, Kennel Cough, yesterday… apparently it is going around… the vet says they have seen doggie patients at the rate of 1 per day that have it… it sounds like there is a cluster in one family in Beacon or Beacon vicinity…

First Thoughts

… dinner with D & E last night… really nice time… got to express my thoughts more than i do with H present… drank a little too much wine but it was good fun…

… HCR meter neutral to negative today… speculation that the Taliban can/will be held in check for a while through the withholding of foreign aid which the country is totally dependent on… it’s wait and see… also, incredulity that the U.S. Government had no idea that there would be such a rapid collapse of the military forces trained by the U.S.… that there had been a fundamental misunderstanding of the Afghan people…

… eye on the weather for next week… will have to shift to rebuilding the back stairs and so far, the weather is not looking cooperative… on the other hand, the weather app (Dark Sky) has seemed inaccurate lately, who knows what it will be… i’ve installed Weather Bar on my desktop… lets see if it is any more informative and accurate…

… in the meantime, finishing up the dining room panel project is my next few days… should have it all done by Friday(?)… certainly by end of the weekend… probably be able to get it painted before H returns from BI which i hope will make her smile…

… i’ve been neglecting photo processing during dining room construction… i am getting out and making the pictures, iPhone only, but no processing or sharing…

… i have booked my hotel stays for the journey down to Florida… first night, Lynchburg VA, second night, Savannah GA… now for the journey back… then figure out a few sights that don’t take long to see… starting to look forward to it even though visiting with my parents will be a bit sad and stressful…

First Thoughts

… HCR meter negative… about the lightning speed collapse of the U.S. trained Afghan army which was, apparently the result of negotiated cease fires between those armies and the Taliban… that the U.S. seemed to have no idea of what was going on seems implausible, or, if indeed the case, pretty troubling… at the end she goes on a bit of a rant against conservative politicians trying to make the Afghan situation the Biden/Harris admin’s fault… i know she tilts strongly liberal, but i wish she hadn’t done that…

… dust up with my sister yesterday… trying to think what sort of olive branch i can extend…

… WooHoo!… a Red Roof Inn in Savannah Georgia and it is only $56 dollars a night and highly rated by customers!… and, there is a Red Roof in Charlottesville, much more expensive… may need to locate one outside of the city… would like to keep overnight costs near $300 for entire trip… the adventure is coalescing…

… rain coming, probably tropical storm remnants, need to protect the lumber drying in the driveway, finish wee whacking in the back…

First Thoughts

… the HRC meter points downward today… Kabul Afghanistan fell to the Taliban last night… Ashraf Gahni, president of the U.S. backed Afghan government has fled to Tajikistan… apparently the military the U.S. trained was only interested in a paycheck, not defending the U.S. created government… what a waste of “treasure,” as it is often put… lives and money… then context of the world is shifting away from Europe and the U.S. to the asiatic countries… my own assessment, not HCR’s…

… meanwhile, my Dad was at the center of conversation yesterday, the family Zoom meeting, text conversations with H about how to manage in September, when i will head down to Florida for what could be an extended stay, not allowing me to get back to New York in time to travel out to BI for my niece’s wedding… it’s all up in the air…

… a bit of a frustrating day yesterday… was on track to get a number of things done, including weed whacking and cleaning up in the back yard… then i ran out of whacking cable… then i went out to get some more… then i made the decision to get it at Lowes in Newburgh… then, on the way, i saw the traffic backed up for at least three exits… then i thought i will go back via 17… then when i did, it turns out that the traffic was backed up there too… then it took way too long to get back… then i gave up on finishing the yard work… then i thought, tomorrow’s another day… here it is tomorrow, i will endeavor to finish the yard work and get back to dining room carpentry…

… it is turning out that i will have to travel to Florida over Labor Day weekend… sigh… not what i would have preferred… i will begin to finalize the planning this week…

First Thoughts

… awoke with a start this AM, realizing i had forgotten to take my BP meds yesterday… a very rare occurrence… back on track now…

… months ago, i bought a vertical mouse, partly because a very expensive track ball had failed, and partly in hopes that neck pain i was experiencing was some form of mousing injury… the pain has almost disappeared… can’t attribute it to the vertical mouse with absolute certainty, but it is an interesting coincidence… i should note also that the vertical mouse has felt very natural to use…

…the HCR meter this morning is neutral… it was all about how Social Security got enacted and the woman responsible for it, Frances Perkins, the first woman to hold a position in the U.S. Cabinet… it ends on a somewhat disquieting note, a quote from Ms. Perkins…

One thing I know: Social Security is so firmly embedded in the American Psychology today that no politician, no political party, no political group could possibly destroy this Act and still maintain our democratic system. It is safe forever, and for the everlasting benefit of the people of the United States.¹

… fast forward to today, Democracy is under attack and if the siege is successful, Social Security and other social safety net programs will be on the chopping block…

… i was reading about China yesterday… an article on their move to reign in their tech industry… they have given it unfettered existence to this point… one of the things they are doing is forcing platforms to play nice with one another, so that they can’t monopolize a space… this surfaced my enormous frustration with the distribution of films in this country… i have been wanting to watch the movies of Kelly Reichardt all together, one after the other… it’s impossible… they are available on different streaming services, or not available at all… one needs to sign up for every f’ng media service out there to do it… it shouldn’t be like that… i am all for companies making money from the content they own, but there must be a way that delivers more value to the customer… it should be available for rent on all services, even at a somewhat higher price, and can be offered as part of a subscription for free or lower cost on the streaming service with the rights to distribute… then services can compete to provide the best user experience, the best stable of content to provide free or lower cost, etc… nobody would have to sign up for half a dozen services to watch the variety of content they want to watch… the Chinese government could make this happen, that might be its advantage…

First Thoughts

… HCR meeter neutral today… about the census and the political machinations that will be attendant with redistricting… major point is that urban populations are underrepresented and rural populations are overrepresented… that rural, white minority populations will continue to press this advantage and urban majorities will increasingly not tolerate it… it sounds as thought there need to be changes in the way representation is calculated, on a per multiple thousands basis… it doesn’t sound like this requires a constitutional amendment from my read of this AM’s post… i just re-read, and yes indeed, Congress set the cap on number of representatives… the constitution is mute on the point… one wonders why there isn’t talk of changing the cap as an effective antidote to voter suppression etc…

… a less fraught day yesterday… i spoke with Mom, things seemed a little less dire when i talked with her about Dad’s condition though i learned that she has one way of thinking about my Dad sleeping in a chair, and my sister another… the former tries to get him not to do it and is frustrated at not being able to, the later believes he does it because it is more comfortable, which tracks with his condition… i think mom is in a little bit of denial… not that she doesn’t know where this is heading, but she would like it to slow down… Rick arrived last night… there have been no reports from him yet…

… the heat broke a little, but not completely… going to continue to be hot, though not as hot…

First Thoughts

… a friend once said that his day got off to a good or bad start depending on what Heather Cox Richardson had to say… it is similar for me, and today it’s a bad start… she calls a spade a spade… radical conservatives are working hard to move the country in an Authoritarian direction, praising Victor Orban, president of Hungary, whipping up anti-immigrant frenzy, telling their constituents that immigrants are to blame for the current Delta variant crises and blaming it on lax immigration policies of the Biden/Harris administration… it isn’t true… all to preserve the white male patriarchy hold on power… i saw this coming years ago… it is reaching the decisive point… the next three and a third years will be the pivot point or not…

… critical to stopping the authoritarian move is to enact federal voting rights legislation of some kind…

… i am feeling anxious about the coming day… anxious that there are too many things i should do and not enough time to do them… i will have to triage…

… K comes to weed the garden today… it will be a novel concept to have a well weeded garden…

… J and i talked a bit after the family call yesterday… we agreed that with current trends, we don’t expect J to last beyond October… my mood about that is somber… we are going where we are going… the goal is to get there with as little suffering as possible… certainly for J, but also for all of us around J… of course, accepting the inevitability of J’s death is accepting the inevitability of our own deaths… this makes it hard to face…

… time to be a bit more optimistic about the day!… i will get what needs to be done, done…

First Thoughts

… Heather Cox Richardson made a post today… she usually takes Saturday night off… however, Rod Rosen testimony has begun… there has been news reporting that 45 directly pressured the Justice Department to overturn the election… it was barely resisted… but, it was resisted and now it will be testified about… will be interesting to hear what the reporting is in the coming weeks… is the noose tightening around 45?… will there be justice served?… or will our system allow him the weasel away?… HCR is hopeful… stay tuned…

… E and B had a movie night last night… wasn’t totally in the mood, but went anyway… it was fun… it was outdoors… most surprising was that i wasn’t bitten by mosquitoes… fans seemed to do the trick of keeping them away…

… had to change track on construction projects… did some research on PT lumber and the consensus seems to be that it is good to let the lumber do some drying before installing it… so i set it up with air circulation and we will wait and see… in the meantime, i plan to move on to the dining room trim… i have some boards and should be able to get it started…

… i am glad to have no commitments today, other than family zoom…

… i purchased a subscription to SetApp… i think it will be less expensive in the long run, once i switch Ulysses over to being managed through it… i also really like the NotePlan app for tracking what you plan to do, what you do… there is an Instagram uploader that may be moderately helpful in posting my images…

… yesterday i didn’t turn the TV on at all… if i had been home last night, i would have watched a movies, but that is my plan, little TV for the time that H is on BI…

… also, i continue to spend very little time on FB or Instagram… not missing it that much… feeling more at peace… it helps to not engage in the desire disappointment cycle of being liked or not…

First Thoughts

… a long post from Heather Cox Richardson, the history of voting rights, the prospects for new legislation to protect rights… some hope that legislation will be formulated and passed, some hope that the Democrats will meet the dire situation… if they fail to pass legislation, the country is heading down the road of authoritarianism…

… curious movie last night… Test Pattern… about sexual assault, a young woman with a boyfriend goes out with a friend, gets drugged and raped… the drugs made her appear to be willing… though she was not… the bulk of the movie centers on her boyfriends insistence that she go to a hospital and have a rape kit administered, and where it gets interesting, the boyfriend is borderline controlling and possessive… it’s more important to him that she do it than to her… that she is black and he white adds further complexities to the situation… the movie is inconclusive about her and her relationship at the end… it’s interesting, critics seem to have loved the movie, audiences not so much, and i get that… intellectually i appreciate the movie, emotionally, i didn’t really connect…

… i decided yesterday to lay out a plan of what i thought i wanted to accomplish for the day, and then write down what i actually did… it was a mixed bag… things got done, things i had been intending to do, or needed to do, but not everything i planned…

First Thoughts

… H safely delivered to M… trip home quick, easy… dogs happy to be released, Fiona refusing her food… i will make dog food today…

… Heather Cox Richardson wrote about the Civil War today, the moment when the tide of it changed… the brutality of the war… the hatred that must have existed… we are not there yet in the present day… i hope we never get there…

… robotics on my mind… evolution on my mind… we will advance our ability to make machines regardless… i have long speculated that intelligence was moving forward through the machines we make… the problem with machines is the people who make them… they can do tremendous good, or tremendous harm… at present, it all depends on the people who commission and deploy them… i wrote a micro poem about this…

The world of robotics,

is the world of robotics—

and yet…

… in the format of the famous Issa haiku, The world of dew…

… the dogs don’t seem concerned about the absence of H…

… i wonder how the chocolates we brought to M and R were?… they certainly had interesting flavors and were beautiful enough…

First Thoughts

… a text from J, during the night, they spoke to C who says J is slowing down considerably, not able to make and eat breakfast… they say they are glad that R and i will visit soon…

… exploring SetApp… i try to take a look at one new app a day, i have found two that seem worth my while, NotePlan in particular seems to be the task and planning app i’ve been waiting for all my life… combining note taking, task setting and calendar all together… it, combined with Ulysses should be enough to justify its cost… if i find one or two more that are useful, icing on the cake…

… today i take H over to M and R’s house, from there, they will spring M from rehab and take them back to Block Island… H will stay with M on the island for as long as it takes to be sure they are able to function, with or without help… or the end of the month, when they will have to be back to care for the dogs while i drive to Florida and back…

… Heather Cox Richardson’s post was about how the conservative stance on COVID19 (reinforcing vaccine disinformation, banning mask wearing and downplaying the virus altogether) is boomeranging on them as the Delta variant burns through the unvaccinated who are overwhelmingly the ones catching it, being hospitalized with it and dying from it… with any luck, conservative disenchantment with their leaders and happiness with the economic help the Biden/Harris administration has organized will lead to control of House and Senate remaining in the hands of Democrats… it would likely mean the end of the threat to democracy for the time being…

First Thoughts

… last night, just before going to bed, i let the dogs out… big commotion, one dog comes when called, the other doesn’t… go to investigate, the other dog is rubbing his face in the dirt, the air smells of skunk… sigh… second dog had to be bathed before going to bed… dog children… love them most of the time, damn annoying on occasion…

… we visited D and J yesterday, friends of H’s from the PBGV world… they wanted to meet Fiona and see what it might be like to have a GBGV… D has prostate cancer and the sense i got was that it wasn’t going well… D seemed depressed… it made me thoughtful…

… news broke about the release of the AG’s report investigating charges of sexual harassment by Andrew Cuomo… calls for his resignation or, if he refuses to, impeachment, began immediately… it has never occurred to me to harass any woman… i don’t understand men who do…

… Heather Cox Richardson talked about the Biden/Harris administration’s efforts to help impoverished people… at the beginning of the administration i thought that they needed to do enough that positively affected ordinary people’s lives that those people could be peeled away from 45… HCR thinks that is part of the plan too…

… i have been thinking that one of my shortcomings in life has been an inability to decide on big and deep efforts, then plan and execute them… i am going to change that… part of my problem is that i get lost in the weeds of the planning, and then fail to execute…

… tomorrow i take H to her brother’s house in CT and then come back without her… she and M will pick up M from rehab and take her out to Block Island… H will stay with her to make sure she is able to care for herself or has the help she needs… we don’t know how long that will take… while she is gone, i plan to get things done… i will rebuild the rear steps, paint the bay window, progress with the installation of trim in the dining room… i will tend the garden, work on my photography, and enjoy being on my own for a bit…

First Thoughts

… Heather Cox Richardson is about Tucker Carlson, Hungary, Victor Orban, Christian authoritarianism, and how the United States is being pushed in the same direction… it saddens me that at present it is hard to perceive that this push will not succeed… i have no desire to live under Christian authoritarianism, or any other kind of authoritarianism… Democrats have been unwilling to do what is needed to reverse course… or at least a handful of Democrats…

… i once told someone that i have no interest in power, at least the kind of power that is power over… i loath people who have power and use it to shape the world to their personal vision of how things should be… i loath minorities that try to do the same… one size fits all is rarely a good solution… one size does not fit all… multicultural adjustability fits all…

… i started looking into Non-Fungible Token art yesterday… i find myself getting excited about making art in a way i haven’t been for a while… there is a way of making and distributing things i have been making but didn’t know what to do with… the flattened cans project, the video stills project… there are also the image poems, a short sequence of images played in video fashion… it seems to be opening up possibilities for exhibiting and selling… it seems to offer a chance to bypass the gate keepers… of course, there is no reason there will be any more interest in my work than there is now, just because the venue for sharing changes… there are issues with NFTs, especially environmental ones… they require a great deal of computing resources as individual object certificates (and the objects?) get distributed across many servers around the world… the redundancy is what protects the system from fraud…

First Thoughts

… i rescued a centipede from the kitchen sink this morning… i rescued one yesterday too… i wonder if it is the same one?… stainless steel kitchen sinks make good centipede traps…

… i also did not drink alcohol last night… two nights running… kitchen all cleaned up when i came down… coffee ready to go, my body happier… mind, take note…

… Heather Cox Richardson is a mixed bag this morning… she talks about the extremism of the Republican Party, about its continued enthrallment with 45, about voter suppression… but also how there appear to be fishers… apparently 45 backed a candidate in a recent election in Texas and lost… the justice department has declined to defend a member of congress from a lawsuit by Eric Swalwell nor will it assert an executive privilege defense for any member of congress against congressional subpoenas… they will have to spend their own money on defense which may help speed up the January 6th inquiry… unless, of course, private donors step in…

… i have stopped watching much news… even Nicole Wallace, one of my favorites… i don’t think the daily news adds much to my understanding of what is going on and it does much to disturb my peace of mind… H has been kindly keeping the volume down most of the time…

… H will be heading out to Block Island with her mother at the end of next week… it is unclear how long she will be there… hoping it is long enough that i can get a couple of house projects done…

First Thougths

… a good day yesterday…

… some research and thinking about web presence, nothing conclusive… assemblage of some ideas… the main decision being whether to have a news letter only, or a second blog site where more carefully composed writing happens…

… a good walk, photographs made and edited, there were some good ones…

… a nice dinner

• mothership tomato salad
  • we will be making this salad numerous times in the coming weeks as the summer tomatoes are ripe in our garden and at the farmer’s market
• lacinato kale and ricotta salata salad
  • this is a longtime favorite that features raw kale
• pan fried crispy skin salmon
  • first time i have ever managed to crisp the skin and have it not stick to the cast iron skillet…
    • salmon in the pan before heating up
    • lots of canola oil
    • medium heat
    • finish in oven under the broiler…

… it was a perfect summer dinner that met my dietary goals, low animal fat, low carb…

… the news from Heather Cox Richardson is of the more distressing kind this morning… 45 is consolidating power, continuing to divide the nation, trying to undermine the bi-partisan infrastructure bill… HCR wrote:

One of the hallmarks of a personality like that of former president Donald Trump is that he cannot stop escalating. It’s not that he won’t stop; it’s that he can’t stop. And he will escalate until someone finally draws a line and holds it.

… 45 needs to be god… he won’t stop trying to be god until someone draws that line and there are consequences for stepping over it… this is what bothers me so much… the inability of our governing system to hold him accountable… we have completely failed on that score and with every passing day that we continue our failure, the closer we come to a dictatorship… this is what keeps me awake at night…

First Thoughts

… in bed at 9 PM, awake at 3 AM, is six hours all i need?…

… Heather Cox Richardson is all about the arrest of Billionaire Thomas Barrack for obstruction of justice and lobbying for a foreign government without disclosure… as i am reading about the connections between rich and powerful people i have the thought, what does an ordinary life, my ordinary life, amount to?…

… yesterday Jeff Bezos flew into space on rocketry and capsule he paid for… he and the crew returned to earth safely… the beginning of space travel?… space tourism?… i still am of the opinion that it is a waste of time to put people in space… it’s really the machines we need to send there…

… no alcohol last night… did i sleep better?… i’m not sure, certainly didn’t sleep longer…

… no appointments, no encumbrances, a longer walk is called for… maybe up the mountain today… haven’t done that in a while and it’s a good workout…

… i am back to processing most of my pictures to black and white… the exception is the occasional image for which color is the primary point of the image… i very much like the aesthetic of black and white and often struggle to get color photographs to be natural…

… i have been processing the thought that religious ignorance is an attempt to achieve immortality… the first and most fundamental thing we try to be ignorant about is our own death… we struggle to face it… religion aids us in being ignorant… this isn’t formulated quite right… maybe it is more that we give ourselves over to religious superstition so that we can believe in immortality… not all religions… but most of them… most of them offer the balm that life of some sort continues after death… so this is a kind of willful ignorance to give ourselves the perception that life does not end, it just transforms…

First Thoughts

… a better night for sleep…

… a new electric shaver arriving today, why am i excited?…

… it strikes me that what i wrote about the shaver could become a micro poem…

… the birds are singing… do i hear a cardinal?…

… last night, Heather Cox Richardson wrote about John Lewis and the voting rights act of 1965 and the wholesale attack by Republicans on voting rights, passing restrictive laws which disproportionately affect minorities negatively… it’s an old story, dating back well before the 1965 voting rights act to the Jim Crow south… some, too many, white people want power over everybody and everything else… democracy is not a tool they can successfully use to maintain that power, so they narrow the path to voting which they know will peel away more minority voters than white voters…

… ahh… the cardinal is singing outside my window…

… i have been working on de-googling my self… i have switched to duckduckgo as a search engine… i am working on leaving gmail having set up a new ProtonMail account… i have switched to a new feed reader, Reeder, can i import my feeds from Feedly?… only by installing them as a service… well, at least i am holding google at arm’s length?…

… H up early…

… we finally had some thunder storms yesterday which broke the heat a little bit… maybe some work can be done in the garden today…

01 First Thoughts:

… feeling so much better this morning… no sleep interruption from the dogs, little alcohol last night…

… Heather Cox Richardson mentioned Tucker Carlson… the hairs stand up on the back of my neck… a despicable person… i keep thinking there has to be a way to regulate misinformation, that if we don’t find a way, we are doomed…

… i am increasingly thinking i will remove myself from the services of the big tech companies, google, twitter, Facebook, instagram, etc… yesterday i created a ProtonMail account… i will withdraw from conducting personal business on gmail…

… a micro.blog member posted a quote by Carl Sagan, written in 1996, that is so prescient…

_ “I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…_

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”¹

… what is the antidote?… it begins with killing the filibuster and passage of voting rights legislation… it then moves on to legislation to curb the spreading of disinformation, such as a modern day Fairness Doctrine… there are freedom of speech issues with it for sure, but propaganda masquerading as opinion is presently extremely unhealthy to society… one has to be held accountable for spreading demonstrably false information when it is done willfully, maliciously and/or for selfish and political reasons… there should be certain speech, sharing and topics of conversation that are banned altogether, as in Germany and some other European countries, where the ideology and symbology of White Supremacy and Nazism are banned…

… i don’t believe a society can function well with absolute freedom of the individual, there need to be boundaries… a certain amount of individual freedom must be given up for a greater good… the balance of individual freedom vs. greater good should be managed by substantive debate in the public and a continuous review and revision of the curbs, but the curbs need to be there…

01 First Thoughts

… no middle of the night waking by either dog, but Chas is ready promptly at 4 AM… it’s ok, no alcohol last night and in bed more or less on time…

… the heat should break today… there isn’t anything abnormal about a few days of this kind of heat at this time of year… not like the Pacific Northwest where temperatures are breaking records, and in the case of British Columbia, setting an all time record… 116 degrees!…

… this morning’s Heather Cox Richardson is all about how the oil and gas industry are lobbying states for legislation that favors the fossil fuel industry and makes it harder to pursue green energy strategies… the problem with capitalism… money equals power and big oil and gas have lots of money… interests are entrenched… numerous states depend substantially on the oil and gas industry for jobs and revenue… we should be better at adjusting but the market capitalist system often makes it difficult to do what is beneficial in the long run…

… a sweet story about Gertrude Tate and Alice Austin love affair in Brain Pickings… Alice Austin was a pioneering photographer… Maria Popova describes her work as brilliant, i am not as clear that it was, but she was both pursuing photography and loving a woman when both were difficult to do… i think her genius was in just getting out and doing it, recording people, in dignified portraits… here is an example…

Street-cleaner at 34th Street, New York City, part of Alice Austen’s 1896 series Street Types of New York. (Alice Austen House archive.)

… trying out Craft after a high recommendation from a Micro.blog community member… trying to see where it might fit into my workflow…

… the internet is so freaking slow this AM… that is what i hoped i was leaving behind when i came home… what gives?…

02 Heather Cox Richardson

… HCR’s post this morning is mostly about voting rights and the strident efforts of conservatives to restrict them across the country at the state level…

… this week the Senate will vote on the For The People Act which enforces from the federal level increased access to voting and ends partisan gerrymandering…

… Democratic Senator Joe Manchin has propose compromises, republicans are trying to hold the line… if they do, back over to Manchin and the filibuster question…

… a significant week for the course of democracy in this country…

03 For The People

… this morning’s Heather Cox Richardson post suggests there is movement on the voting rights front… Senator Joe Manchin has made some proposals on voting rights, which were backed by Stacey Abrams… he has also indicated a willingness to modify the rules of the filibuster, only 55 senators would be needed to pass legislation and 60 senators would be required to keep a filibuster going… meanwhile, a Republican running for office in Florida appears to have threatened to hire a Russian hit squad to eliminate his opponent in the primary… hmmm…

_ The G7 leaders offered a visible show of solidarity, with leaders talking and laughing together. Its statement repeated U.S. President Joe Biden’s slogan that we will “build back better,” and it painted a world that addresses climate change, prevents the exploitation of labor, demands gender equality, and protects human rights._¹

… a world (in which humans) address climate change, prevent human exploitation, demand gender equality and protect human rights… these are good things, things every human should want, but power dynamics being what they are, autocracies are still a viable alternative… one could argue, an emerging dominant alternative… it is hard to imaging these things prevailing under autocratic leadership…

… her daily brief is depressing… one can decide whether to have a good or bad day based on reading her brief for the day… today, it is mostly about Republican refusal to compromise on anything, or, conduct an adequate investigation of the January 6 insurrection…

… ordered C a book and gift card for their birthday, happy birthday C!…

… we leave for Block Island today… i am looking forward to R&R… a glance at the weather indicates it will be much cooler when we get there… one would think that being semi-retired the R&R is redundant, but changing environment and having a different attitude about what needs doing during the day is significant…

… trying to make inroads into community on micro.blog, slow going, but signs i might be gaining traction… replies to posts would be the true sign, haven’t had any of those yet…

… Heather Cox Richardson trying to hold on to hope that Senator Joe Manchin will agree to something that moves voting rights legislation forward, even if a less ambitious reform… he apparently believes that the For The People Act is too partisan… the obvious elephant in the room is the Republican elephant which is busy enacting partisan voting rights legislation across the country… i am beginning to wonder if we are in that pivotal moment when democracy gets lost and it is authoritarian oligarchs from here on out… at present, the only firewall will be the determination of voters to overcome the barriers… while things feel so much better under the Biden/Harris administration, there is plenty of reason to be alarmed and concerned… hopefully, HCR is right about Manchin…

… Letters from an American, May 24.2021

… we learn about Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, and the shocking abduction of Roman Protasevich and Sofia Sapega (his girlfriend) by forcing the commercial airliner they were on down when it crossed Belarus airspace… Europe and the US are protesting in strong terms, but the question is whether anything meaningful can be done… can the journalist and his girlfriend be saved?…

Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic, an authoritative scholar of authoritarianism, notes that autocrats are watching to see how the West reacts, since they, too, would like to be able to control their dissident communities in exile, showing them: “You are not safe. You are never safe. Not even if you live in a democracy; not even if you have political asylum; not even if you are sitting on a commercial plane, thousands of feet above the ground.”¹