Sorry to link to the New York Post, but I thought this was funny.
A certain prideful, self-satisfied narcissist (who shall remain shameless) wants to put his name on another building. Why am I not surprised?
The was a message today in a C++-related e-mail list saying that the October meeting of the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) will consider getting rid of leap seconds and adding a leap hour every few thousand years.
At present, because of the Earth’s variable rotation around its axis, atomic clocks (which UTC is based on) are getting ahead of astronomical observations. To keep the two more or less in sync, one second is added to or subtracted from UTC every so often. In principle, this can happen to the last minute of June or December in any given year; but in practice, it happens much less often. Twenty-eight leap seconds have been added since December of 1971; but there hasn’t been one since December of 2016; and so far, there has never been a negative leap second.
Unfortunately, there’s lots of software out there that pays no attention to this; and leap seconds (23:59:60 should be considered a valid time) have caused outages even though it’s been happening for over fifty years; and it looks like we might have a negative leap second before long (23:59:58 should jump directly to 00:00:00 on some date known in advance) which could cause even more craziness.
We’ll see what CGPM decide to do …
The Missouri primaries are coming up two weeks from Tuesday*, and there will be a couple of state constitutional amendments on the ballot.
Amendment 4 changes what it takes for future citizen-initiated amendments to pass. At present, if there are enough signatures to get the issue on the ballot at all, passing the amendment takes only a simple majority state-wide. Amendment 4 would require separate majorities in each of the U.S. congressional districts. This would make it virtually impossible for citizen-initiated amendments to ever pass again. (Republicans are still upset about an amendment passed in 2024 that protected the right to reproductive freedom.) Of course, there are no changes in the requirements for amendments initiated by the Republican-controlled state House and Senate.
Amendment 5 phases out the state income and property taxes and replaces them with sales taxes. The goal is to have a tax cut for rich people and a tax hike for poor people.
If you haven’t guessed, I’m against both of them.
We have open primaries in Missouri: when you get to the polling place, you tell the official whether you want a Democratic or a Republican ballot—it’s that simple; and there’s a cogent argument that, in a heavily gerrymandered district, the only election that actually matters is the favored party’s primary.
I’ll probably get a sample ballot in the mail in a week or so, at which time I’ll know who all the candidates are. I doubt that I’ll have a good reason to vote in the Republican primary because I live in Missouri’s Second Congressional District which is gerrymandered safe-Republican, and I can’t imagine that my U.S. Rep., Ann Wagner, will have any serious competition. I’ll probably vote in the Democratic primary for the most progressive candidates in the hope of sending a signal, in my small way, to professional Democrats.
*Two days after my 80th birthday. I’m looking forward to the election, but not to being an old fart (although that ship has already sailed).
I’ve been a civil time geek for a while, and I follow an e-mail list relating to IANA’s tz database. It looks like the tz-art.html file in the next release will contain a link to Wednesday’s xkcd. 😎
There’s been a lot of discussion on the list about the proposed “permanent daylight saving time” law that just passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. It sounds simple: the proposed law doesn’t change the time zone names; it just changes the offsets from UTC and makes them permanent. For example, “eastern standard time” would become UTC−4:00 year-round. But states would be allowed to opt out, so for example, Hawaii could keep its UTC−10:00.
So what if Arizona decides to keep its UTC−7:00 year-round but doesn’t call it Pacific standard time? Mountain standard time would mean different things in tz’s time zones, America/Phoenix (Arizona except Navajo Nation) and America/Denver (generic mountain time).
Furthermore, it turns out that there’s lots of legacy code out there that hard-codes offsets to abbreviations like “MST”. All that code happens to work at present; but it’s been wrong for decades and so will likely stay wrong.
I’ll bring the popcorn. 😎
I’ve passed the two-year mark with no evidence of cancer. The half-hour immunotherapy drips will now come just every four weeks; CT scans of the torso will happen every four months; and MRIs of the brain will be six months apart. Both of my oncologists (the chemo guy and the radiation guy) are pleased, so I am too.
So far, I’d say that I’ve been tremendously fortunate. (I’m not sure that I deserve it, but I’ll take it. 😎 )
I just joined the Democratic Socialists of America because I’m curious.
I charged the “introductory” fee of $10/month to my credit card. We’ll see whether they send me a bill each month or automatically charge the card. Even if it’s the latter, I’ll probably be willing to support them for that small amount, or maybe even more.
So far, I’ve gotten one automated e-mail message welcoming me. It turns out that there’ll be a new member orientation Zoom call on the 26th of next month. I’ll let y’all know how it goes. In the mean time, I’ll check out my local St. Louis chapter’s website to see what’ll be happening between now and the midterms.