Merry Nothing-To-Do-Day

I’m estranged from my extended family because they’re mostly Trumpistas, and I have no desire to be the crazy uncle who shows up when there’s food; but I’m a fairly extreme introvert, so that’s actually OK with me.

It’s possible for me to get bored, however; so just for lulz, I decided to translate my rational number into Java.

I haven’t done any Java work since I retired, and so I don’t have javac on either the Windows or Linux partition on my home computer.  It’s probably out there somewhere on the VPS that I rent, but I haven’t found it yet.  The result is that, as I write this, the code hasn’t even been compiled, let alone tested; and we know how that can go.

If anybody out there might actually find this useful, would you care to be my tester? 😎  You’ll find the current version of the source in this ZIP archive.

Update:  2024-12-26 20:00−6:00:  OK, I found javac on my VPS and, after fixing a bunch of stupid mistakes, got a clean compile.  For the sake of my sanity, I’ve added the requirement that the one-argument Rational(double) not be passed a subnormal value; and I’ve put the new documentation and the ZIP file containing the new source at the links above.  Now for some testing…

Update:  2024-12-28 09:00−6:00:  I found some bugs just by desk checking the code some more, and I reorganized the documentation a bit.  OK, now for some testing…

Update:  2024-12-30 20:30−6:00:  OK, I think it’s done.

This Sticks Out Like a Sore Thumb

One thing that I’ve found striking is that, although there have probably been numerous deaths by gunshot in New York over the last few weeks, exactly one is all over the news.  Indeed, it was the lead story on NBC Nightly News tonight, beating out Assad’s overthrow in Syria which came in second.  And it’s not just the corporate media:  although PBS News Hour had Syria as the lead story, apprehending the likely killer got second place with about ten minutes of air time.

What’s so special about this particular murder?  The only thing that I can see is that the victim was one of the oligarchs.

LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back

Here’s a late addition to the support of Julia Serano’s post, and probably a boring one as well since others have already said it better than I, and I really have nothing to add.

But I do want to go on record as supporting LGBTQ+ rights which strikes be as just basic human decency.

(I also agree with others that we’re stuck with voting for politicians in the Democratic wing of the Oligarch party, but we should express our displeasure whenever we can at having no better choice.)

I Guess I Use Social Media After All

I just found out that I have a Substack account. 😎

A while back, I got a free subscription to some e-mails sent by Robert Reich; and after a time, I updated to a paid subscription, not because I wanted to use any new features, but because I wanted to support Reich’s work.  The credit card I used at the time needed to be replaced because of some fraud; and this morning, I got an e-mail message saying that the card had been refused and I needed to update my payment details.  OK, that makes sense.

I didn’t recall ever signing in to the account before (although I must have to do the paid upgrade); and it took me a while to remember what I had used as a user ID and password.  After finally logging in and figuring out how to navigate through all the settings, I changed the card info…I hope.  We’ll see whether I did everything correctly.

While I was in there, I added this blog’s URL as my “website”; and I think I figured out how to get a permalink to a particular one of Reich’s posts.  I’ll probably try to use that shortly.

How They Can Think That

I think flex gave a good answer to the question in my previous post.

I’m now leaning toward an idea that I’ve had for quite a while which was reinforced by a recent e-mail message I got from Robert Reich’s Substack.  Here are three of what seem to me to be the important bits:

On Tuesday, according to exit polls, Americans voted mainly on the economy — and their votes reflected their class and level of education.

…

While the economy has improved over the last two years according to standard economic measures, most Americans without college degrees — that’s the majority — have not felt it.

…

While Republicans steadily cut taxes on the wealthy, Democrats abandoned the working class.

Yeah, professional Democrats and Republicans are pretty much united in their support of large corporations and billionaires (although the Republicans crank it up to eleven and the Democrats are much better on “social issues”).  That’s why I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary when he was still a viable candidate (although I wasn’t a “Bernie bro” who stayed home out of spite).

I’d love to just quote the whole thing, but that goes way beyond “fair use”.  I guess the next job for this old fart is to figure out how to link to a particular post on somebody’s Substack.

How Can They Think That‽

I still can’t get my mind around the election results; but there’s something that’s nagging at me:  when I see shots of folks at Trump rallies, it looks to me like they believe, immediately and uncritically, everything he says.  How can they not know that he’s a liar?

flex has a comment on Mano’s blog that lists some things that one of their coworkers has said, including “Trump was never convicted of any crime.”  How can anyone not know that he was?

The only thing I can think of is that they get all their information from Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk (or worse).  Is there anything we can do to get the truth out to these people?  (I’m not doing jack shit by posting this on FtB.  I’m “preaching to the choir” as they say; but I don’t know what else to do.)

Spåromr.?

The Sweedish word, “Spåromr.” (possibly an abbreviation) came up on an e-mail list I subscribe to; and somebody asked for a translation because he couldn’t get a reasonable result from Google.  Can anybody translate?

Update:  2024-11-05 07:55−6:

Thanks to dorfl, comment 2. What prompted the question is:

car falling off platform
Photo by Gary Kazin.  Used by permission.

The wavy lines make me think of water though, not railroad tracks.

Ah, a brief respite from worrying about the election. 😎

SCOTUS’ Gang of Six Have Done It Again

From an e-mail from Robert Reich’s Substack:

… the Supreme Court decided today to allow Virginia to resume purging names from its voter registration rolls.  Virginia has purged 1,600 names in the last two months.

…

[The Justice Department argued] that Virginia’s purge violates the “quiet period” of the National Voter Registration Act, a three-decade-old federal law barring states from systematically removing voters from the rolls during the 90 days before a federal election.

Can anyone doubt that these people are totally shameless idealogues who craft opinions given partisan Republican talking points?

Mike the Mad Biologist links to a case of a Trump supporter who got purged in Texas, which gave me a good laugh, but is still something that shouldn’t have happened.

What I’ll Be Voting For

Siggy has a post about the importance of down-ballot voting, and giving examples from his ballot.  I wanted to follow his lead and give some examples of my own; but that turned out to be pretty long; so I decided to use up the space on my own blog instead.

School Boards

This is important.  We seriously need to keep the anti-fact folks off of them; so I always check out the candidates’ websites at least.  In the last school board election I had a vote in, there were five candidates for three positions.  I voted for one who had endorsements from several organizations with some version of “equity” in their names, one who had some version of “inclusive” in several of his issues, and one who likes teachers and thinks they should get a raise.  I declined to vote for a “human resources advisor” and a guy who had “parental rights” as an issue.

About a week from now:

There are 38 candidates in eleven races, U.S. President/Vice President, U.S. Senator, U.S. Representative District 2, Governor, Lt. Governor, Sec’y of State, State Treasurer, Atty. General, State Senate District 1, State Representative Distrint 92, St. Louis County Council District 6.  I see more Democratic than Republican yard signs in my neighborhood, so I might actually be voting on the winning side in the last three of those; in the others, almost certainly not.  Three of the races are, maybe, interesting.

U.S. Senator

Five candates.  In addition to the Libertarian and the Green, there’s a guy named Jared Young who’s running in something called the “Better” party.  His website is all about voting for an independent instead of a Democrat or a Republican.  Although I suppose I agree in principle, such a vote is way too dangerous this year.

The real choice is between the odious Josh Hawley and Lucas Kunce, a career Marine officer (now in the reserves), who seems to be a mostly mainstream Democrat with some progressive-leaning ideas.  He’s well-funded and has lots of TV ads that seem pretty effective to me.  Hawley is also well-funded and has lots of TV ads that, unsurprisingly, lie about Kunce.  I can only hope that Young pulls more votes from Hawley than from Kunce.  It would be cool if deep-red Missouri could flip a Senate seat. 😎  (I wouldn’t bet on it, though.)

U.S. Representative

The odius Ann Wagner is opposed by Ray Hartmann, the publisher of a left-leaning weekly newspaper, The Riverfront Times, and a minor local TV personality on our PBS affiliate.  He seems to have very little money; and his one TV ad strikes me as angry and inneffective.  I was hoping that this would be more fun than it turned out to be.

As a result of the last gerrymandering, Missouri’s Second Congressional District changed from leans Republican to safe Republican; and so the chance of flipping a House seat are slim to none.

Governor

The Democrat, Crystal Quade, grew up poor in Missouri’s bible belt, worked several waitress jobs to work her way through college, and eventually became the minority leader in the state House.  She seems to be very well-funded.  Let’s hope.

Six state constitutional amendments or propositions

Amendment 2 legalizes sports gambling, and amendment 5 sets up a new gambling district along the Osage River.  I’m ambivalent about gambling:  I’d like to keep sleazy people out of the state; but it’s probably too late for that; and legalizing it will probably mean more tax revenue.  (The TV ads for it are all about more money for schools, which is a lie.  There’s no requirement that additional revenue must go to schools.)  I’ll probably vote for both of them.

Amendment 3 overturns Missouri’s abortion ban.  I’m for that.

Amendment 6 funds various law enforcement jobs from higher court costs.  I’m against that.

Amendment 7 makes ranked-choice voting illegal.  Definitely gets my “no” vote.

Proposition A raises the minimum wage to $13.75/hour for 2025, and $15.00/hour for 2026.  Yea.

Other questions

There are three St. Louis County propositions.  I couldn’t find anything about them on the Internet beyond the text of the propositions themselves, so I still have no idea what all the legalese means.  I intend to abstain on these.

There are also 24 questions of the form, “Shall judge [name] of [court] be retained in office?”  I have no clue and will abstain on all of them.

OK, the Debate Happened

I watched a live stream on YouTube with some additional commentary by Robert Reich and Michael Lahanas-Calderón.  I described my plan in a comment on Mano’s blog and won’t repeat that here.

Walz is not a skilled debater.  Although I thought he came prepared, he did stumble in small ways a couple of times; and it came out that, some years ago, he had claimed to be in China during the Tiananmen Square uprising when he hadn’t actually arrived until months later.

Vance did much better than I expected.  He actually spoke in complete sentences and paragraphs and didn’t display any of the incoherence, cognitive decline, or terrible-twos lashing out that we expect from Trump.  He’s clearly smarter and more competent than Trump; and I fear that that makes him more dangerous.  Indeed, if Trump wins the election, he might not last the whole four years; so there’s a real possibility that Vance could actually be President.1

Vance repeated all the lies about things being better under Trump than under Biden, even claiming that Trump saved the Affordable Care Act when he actually tried to get rid of it.  (It was McCain’s thumbs-down during the Senate vote that saved Obamacare.)

One thing that jumped out at me and that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else is that Vance would try to tear into Harris on immigration, the economy, or pretty much any subject, by asking, “She’s been in office for over three years now.  Why hasn’t she done anything yet?”  Uh … because she’s the Vice President, not the President, and so not the one in charge?2

The moderators, CBS’ Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan, were mostly even-handed, although I noticed one asymmetry:  O’Donnell did fact-check Vance on one of his many lies about the economy during the Trump years; but Brennan pressed Walz rather pointedly on his misstatement about being in China during Tiananmen Square.  I fear that Walz’ misstatement will be all over TV news while all the lies about things being better under Trump will remain old news that nobody cares about.

1This is a reason to vote for Harris next month.  Don’t abstain, don’t vote for a third-party candidate.  Harris and Trump are the only possibilities, and we really don’t want another four years of Trump (and maybe Vance as president for part of it).

2It occurs to me that it might be fun to start talking about the Vance campaign and possible Vance presidency suggesting that Vance is the one in charge.  That might send Trump over the edge even more rapidly.