…the least we can do is take their money and run. Or something. Today was the first day in a while without structured plans and without starting out with a steaming hot morning en route to a 90F high, only to feel even hotter. So my son and I got on the bike and went to our town’s free museums… yes, the Smithsonian Institution. We’re lucky to have this and I try to remember that and make use of them, for my own benefit, but especially for my toddler’s.
Daniel Ellsberg. ¡Presente! It is a story I’ve alluded to too many times in too many places, a boring one at that (I had no role except to be there) but I had lunch with him in early March 2003. He was discussing with my then-boss his premeditated protest outside the White House of the imminently expected invasion of Iraq.
Will it be possible to buy a dumb electric car? No Internet Protocol dependence and certainly no fucking ChatGPT? I don’t mind contemporary local computer-driven safety features—not talking Model T dumb. I like the idea of bringing extra brains and network connectivity to the vehicle with me (e.g. via smartphone) but entirely optionally. I’d still like to go for a drive without anyone but… the CCTV and imagery satellites and drones knowing where I am.
Developer Betas have crept onto all of the devices. 🤷🏻♂️
For the second day in a row, I am explaining to my 3-year-old why we’re not going to the playground. Hauling out the weather app, showing him the AQI map, and saying “Do you remember when you said the air was smoky? You were right - the air is bad right now.” He and his peers are not the first toddlers to have air pollution explained to them (or just have had to deal with it), in fact we have more than enough code orange days around here that systematically impact others more than us, but the intensity, range, and reason is still a shame.
It’s a trope, but only because it is an essential act of life.
Listening to behind-the-scenes tales of the incoming demise of the debt ceiling negotiations. Democrats playing to lose, as always. Doesn’t matter how bad it gets.
(Edited for clarity: what was intended was the demise of things in the course of debt ceiling negotiations. All lose, no win on the part of the Dems. The negotiations themselves continued and its participants wouldn’t recognize a demise.)
“Propellers are louder over ground.” This study seems to state the obvious, but I am sure I didn’t read the article closely enough to understand what was novel. That said, it also seems to be speaking to its relevance in a near future urban environment with more VTOL air taxis and ubiquitous drones. But I am going to imagine it bears directly on present-day Washington, D.C. which seems to be increasingly (over the past twenty years of living here in three of the four quadrants) plagued by helicopters, seemingly flying lower too. So much so that our non-voting Congresswoman has made repeat protest actions that in yet another way, mark the failure of the Congress to be a steward of the city. (There’s no change that bill will be acted on.)
Mike Gravel would’ve been 93 today. Before the ‘08 election he took me to lunch on the recommendation from Ralph Nader’s camp, hoping I’d join his campaign. I was flattered but passed. I don’t regret it, but even with how I saw things go, I think it was a bigger opportunity than I understood.