(23 March, 2024)
1) I don't believe in the concept of dancing on someone's grave before they're buried, and I hope people are still taking the threat of #45's candidacy seriously. Democracy won in 2020 because people took #45 seriously. #45 won in 2016 because nobody took the threat seriously. In whatever way you can do it best, speak out against the threat to democracy that this person poses. It can be talking in the break room, it can be using community organizational skills to connect people to collaborate, it can be being a hermit who types stuff on a low-to-moderately visited blog *cough*...whatever our skill set is, use it to help preserve democracy and keep #45 out.
This election isn't about making major progress on issues. This election is very much about preserving what we have here and now.
Even if it's a hard pill to swallow, just vote for Biden.
Accept where we're at right now, and work with that. 45 has stalls on every case against him. He can probably stall this $500mill bond he owes for awhile, so he's not losing anything until the stall tactics run out. I hope comedians and opinion-based news media cut the smugness about the trials and take this more seriously. I just hope nobody is thinking he'll be broke and in jail before election time. That's definitely not happening. (Edit, 3 April: I hate to say "I told you so", especially in this case....but...well...)
I really believe that right now is a time where we need stability in leadership. The economy is still in post-COVID recovery. It needs stability. A lot of social tensions are still bubbling under the surface, and more stability is needed so we can get past the ultra-aggressive divisiveness that defined the 2016-2020 era and get to giving strong, coherent arguments (and counter-arguments) regarding issues that are at the sources of out tensions (e.g.; reproductive rights, issues related to race, LGBTQ+ rights, 2nd amendment rights, states rights and their limits, affordable housing, immigration laws).
45 offers no stability. I may be an ideological anarchist, but anarchism doesn't imply chaos. 45 offers chaos. In my opinion, that's not a good thing. But it's a very real possibility and has to be taken seriously.
2)Related to above, I was really shocked at how two high profile, high ranking attorneys could somehow not, between the two of them, have enough legal and political sense to think that maybe being in a secret relationship while working as lead prosecutor and special council on maybe one of the most high profile and important cases in maybe the whole history of this country. was a really stupid idea. I honestly can't even believe that. I'm glad they finally did the right thing, but they wasted a whole lot of people's time with the conflict of interest hearings, and they cast a whole lot of doubts (warranted or not) on the prosecution. Which feeds into conspiracy theory b.s. Absolute bone-headed, totally unforced error.
3) I've noticed prices of gas jumping up again recently, and I hope everyone remembers that there is still wars going on in the world, some of them involving major oil-producing nations (not just Middle-Eastern). I just hope everyone remembers that the U.S. President has very limited influence on gas prices, even within our own government. First and foremost, oil producing regions influence the price. The larger global economy influences the price (company stocks, distribution costs, supply and demand, technological advancements). Within our own government, there are hundreds (at minimum, I'm sure) of people who have more influence over domestic pricing of oil (and other goods), both in and out of government. I'm going to predict that leading up to the elections, we'll see some sharp rises in pricing. I think some nations will look to influence the election by influencing prices. It's going to be a pinch, for sure. But I wouldn't put much blame on Biden (or any president, really) for any price increases (or decreases) you might see between now and the election. Wallet size evokes a lot of emotion for a lot of people, and people start voting emotionally when they're in the voting booth with a thin-ass wallet. Just saying..
4) At the state level, I'm hoping the current balance in the U.S. house (4 dems, 2 repubs) remains. I think that balance is pretty fair, in terms of representation. I don't know that the currant enate representation is fair (2 dems, 0 repubs), but personally, I'm ok with that balance for now.
I haven't looked through other ballot measures or candidates for many state/local offices. But I hope voters vote with the knowledge that there's no quick fixes for what Oregon's going through. Not just Portland, but Oregon in general.
Beware of any politician or bill that claims it will solve one of the major problems; addiction and associated issues, homelessness & affordable housing, the reintroduction of classes in post-COVID education & the issues with funding & salary for educators, Eastern Oregon's clean water crisis), and some still-substantial issues revolving around inequalities faced by both minority and under-represented groups (race, gender, sexuality, religion or lack there-of, so on and so forth). All of those are big issues whose only solutions are long term, probably multi-generational efforts to adequately address (much less outright solve).
(Also: beware the super-dramatically-long run-on sentence)
5) The mass shooting that killed about 100 people (some reports saying maybe more than 100) in Moscow is sickening. Maybe we aren't great friends with Russia but we can still feel sympathy for the loss of civilian life.
(24 March, 2024)
6) Congrats to the Oregon State Women's Basketball team for getting into the Sweet 16. The dynasty continues. Call me biased towards my alma mater, but I think they win it all this year. (Update: Good luck to the Lady Beavs in their Elite 8 game on the 31st!) (2nd Update: Dang, they lost. But it was a great run, and they really held their own against an undefeated team. Getting to the Elite Eight this year after completely missing the tournament the last year is still a hell of an achievement. Good season, Lady Beavs!)
(28 March, 2024)
7) In a previous iteration of the "Rando Thoughts" series, I expressed reservations about Argentinian President Milie's tenure, and how much he'd actually adhere to his alleged libertarian philosophy. It's hard to judge another country's politician's (domestic) success as a foreigner. So I always appreciate reading/listening to the takes regarding politician's from other countries from people born and raised in those countries. So, with that in mind, I was excited to read Argentinean-born-and-raised Antonella Marty's take on Milie's tenure thus far (link). The fact that Marty is also a libertarian was a bonus. Anyway, from the article (and what news items I've read/watched on Milie), it's been kind of a disaster, and Milie is definitely a LINO. Disappointing.
(1 April, 2024)
8) The new California $20/hr minimum wage for fast food workers is ridiculous. I'm far from the only (much less the first) to point out that what's most likely going to happen is a lot of people are going to get laid off and price are going to rise. So whatever benefit there was to having a $20/hr. minimum wage was supposed to have will be negated by a rise in unemployment and higher prices. The only possible good outcome is that it may lead to people eating less fast food.
Update 6 Ap.: In another case of "I hate to say I told youIt does, in fact look like this is already a bit of a nightmare. Lots of lay-offs, closures, and price increases and "creative" pricing based on time of da and such. That's the result of only like $4/hr increase from the previous minimum wage. And for only a single element of the economy.. Image the nightmare scenarios if you turned every state with the current $7.25/hr federal minimum wage into a $15/hr minimum wage state. In every business. That's more than doubling the minimum wage in those states. The immediate shock to the system would be ruinous to a lot of businesses and to a lot of people working for those businesses. If $4/hr can screw up corporate backed fast food franchises, Imagine what an extra $7.75/hr is going to do to mom and pop shops, local mechanics, grocery stores (chains or otherwise), and probably even schools and libraries and such. I'm cool with raising the federal minimum wage to like $9/hr., because it won't shock the system. And, as someone who's worked federal minimum wage jobs, an extra $1.75/hr is a solid raise to do the same work. If individual states with higher minimum wages want to go higher, that's up to their voters. But the federal minimum wage cannot more than double at the turn of a calendar page. There would be catastrophic job loss and all the side effects that entails (increases in poverty, homelessness, addiction, crime, etc.). I just hope the "Fight for 15" crowd is paying attention, and that they scale back their goal to something reasonable.
9) It's really infuriating and disappointing that Women's History Month had to end with a rash of random attacks of women in NYC (link). Sometimes I wonder if we've just hit some sort of wall with respect to social evolution/social progress. Like all the progress we've made (and a lot of progress has been made, even if it sometimes doesn't feel like it) in thee last 129-some-odd years just caused like some sort of mass short circuit in the brains of the majority of our population.
(8 April, 2024)
10) In any other election year, I would've been glad to see the No Labels party on the ticket. But this year is about biting the bullet, voting for Biden, and keeping Trump out. I do hope that the No Labels party gets a strong base and fields a candidate in 2028, though. I think the idea of a more Centrist party is good. I like the idea of Andrew Yang's Forward party, too.
(11 April, 2024)
11) Was watching this (link), and I was a bit confuse by Trump's comment that the disgusting, outdated Arizona abortion ban was "the will of the people". It wasn't voted on by Arizonians. It was implemented by the state government and state courts. Florida, at least, is letting constituents vote on the issue. I do appreciate Arizona's AG saying she will not prosecute "violations" of this bs law. If Arizona really wants to enact the will of the people, they'd have let constituents vote on the issue instead of pushing this ban on the population without a vote from constituents.
By and large, I support states rights, but this is one of those cases where the state has over-stepped their boundaries by ignoring their population completely.
(12 April, 2024)
12) The bombing of the Iranian embassy in Syria by Israeli forces (link) has to be one of the stupidest tactical moves in recent history. The international goodwill for Israel is already paper-thin with all the human rights violations in Gaza, and now they're making moves to turn this into a regional conflict? Fucking moronic. I see absolutely no advantage for Israel to make that kind of move. It makes zero sense.
Update (14 April): Cool (link). Before I say more, I want to emphasize that when I say "Israel", I mean the government/military leadership, not the average citizen. With that disclaimer....
I just don't understand the endgame for Israel here, aside from trying to ignite this into a full-blown global conflict. Iran and Russia are allies, for what it's worth. If the U.S. gets involved in Israel's conflict, it might be a justification for Russia to get involved (I personally believe that the ongoing war in Ukraine is just as much about Russia "annexation" of Ukraine as it is about goading NATO into conflict). I'm sure Israel's allies are thinking the same thing (or something similar). I just don't get what the point of the attack on the Iranian embassy in Syria. Israel may have a strong military/defense, but if none of their allies want to risk WWIII they'll be fighting against multiple countries who have some pretty strong military/defense capabilities themselves.
(13 April, 2024)
13) For what it's worth, I keep a play list of news items (and math talks and health/exercise videos and other stuff) that I find interesting on YouTube. It can be found here: (link). I obviously watch a lot of news. And videos in general, I suppose. Occasionally I'll even comment on videos. In general, it's just quicker to do that then copy & paste the link and sign into the blog and write a blurb and all that. It's also hard to comment on all the things I want to comment on...just time-wise. I tend to comment more on local/state news items for Oregon. I don;t think I mentioned this on my blog yet, but I did appreciate KGW's series for Black History Month consisting of profiles of prominent Blackmen and Blackwomen throughout the state's history. The profiles weren't documentary-length or anything, but I appreciated the month-long series.
As an aside, Youtube kind of kills my hope for humanity. On one hand, it is kind of handy as an aggregator for your interests. It's easy to find things that interest you. I subscribe to some mathematics channels (e.g.; IHES, IAS, Stony Brook's video page) and watch talks. I can find good courses up to grad-level (e.g.; the two courses I linked on the "links" page of this site), I can find all the Caribbean music my heart desires and discover new artistes, I can find news articles that interest me, I can find some neat outdoors/hiking/camping tips, and I can find exercise tips. It's super convenient.
It's also a cesspool of just...I don't even know how to describe it in any succinct way. I guess the best way I could describe it is that it's like all the worst traits of social media and the internet all smashed into one place. Sometimes I'm honestly absolutely relieved when a video has the comments turned off (even on videos I'd want to comment on, if only to say "Nice job!". And sometimes I just stare at what gets views and what doesn't. Like, real news pieces might get 20k views, while Jon Stewart does joke-news on a same subject and gets 3mill views. It's also weird to go through all the thumbnails and realize stuff like "over-exaggerated facial expressions in the thumbnails get more clicks" and "90% of Americans evidently live in vans and do nothing but travel the country and record themselves".
I dunno...I think it's similar to the way I feel about the internet in general; it's an amazing tool that people don't take real advantage of.
(15 April, 2024)
14) I support the Oregon School Choice Account Amendment, which may appear on the ballot pending the attainment of the requisite number of signatures (full text of proposal). My thought on it are as follows:
Given the "culture wars" going on regarding what should or should not be allowed in schools (Critical Race Theory, LGBTQ+ history/rights, Feminism and body autonomy, etc) and given my view that public schools should be entirely secular, I'd rather people have the choice as to which school they send their children to. Instead of wasting peoples time and money by suing schools over books where two girl bunnies kiss or making parents sign waivers to let their kids listen to the factual history of slavery in America (and so on & so forth), just let parents who are (IMO) bigoted send their kids to closed minded schools. Their kids can go to "MAGA K-12" or whatever. They'll have nothing to complain about, and they can leave secular, public schools alone.
I also think that this opens the door to allowing children to find education suitable to their interests, education that caters to disabilities, and other more specialized forms of education.
Education isn't "one-size-fits-all". Not all kids learn the same, for whatever reason I don't thnk it's a form of discrimination to say that (for instance) children on the Autism spectrum should be able to go to a school that specializes in educating children on the spectrum. Trying to shoehorn them into a "normal" class and forcing a teacher with no experience with, or understanding of, the needs of children on the spectrum is a recipe for disaster.
I'm slightly hesitant about the wording of the Amendment, as it does feel kind of like it might be easy to take advantage of, and it might leave less fortunate students behind. But I do believe that we have to find a new way to educate students, and we need to find a way to keep schools and the educational system in general from becoming overly-politicized and breeding grounds for discontent.
(19 April, 2024)
15) It's funny how people will go berserk over someone having some inflated net-worth and how they should be taxed even more for their sort-of-real money....but nobody bats an eye when some moron(s) make and install a 65-foot fucking hot dog sculpture in the middle of Times Square (link). I can't find how much it cost to make, how much the space it's installed in costs, if it's publicly or privately funded...whatever.. I can promise the cost of that monstrosity is well over a million dollars, though. What boggles my mind is how the artists probably don't even know their bullshit critique on capitalism and consumerism is basically the end result of capitalism and consumerism. There's absolutely nothing utilitarian about a 65 fucking foot long hot dog. It doesn't help society in any way. It's a garish, disposable photo-op in the middle of a garish, disposable photo-op of a Manhattan neighbourhood. Bob, Sue, and the kids aren't going to take a photo of the hot dog and then go home and start holding meetings in coffee shops to set the groundwork for the revolution. They're going to go home, post the photo to social media, forget about it when it's far enough down their time-line, and then microwave some actual (likely over-priced) hot dogs and watch Netflix on like 7 different devices (at the same time!).
If the artists really wanted to make a statement, they could've used the money spent on a 65-fucking-foot-long hot dog and spent it on some affordable housing. There's parts of the country with very high poverty where $1mill+ can buy a house or two that're already split into apartments. They could buy those, and charge the bare minimum rent to cover property taxes, utilities, and the necessities. A true non-profit venture. But their first instinct was to spend all that money on a giant fucking hot dog sculpture for an empty gesture of a political statement. Beware morons in socialist clothing.
Update (later): I should say that I do think most billionaires are under taxed, even if most of their wealth is tied up in stocks, property, and such things. Do I think any living person needs a yacht the size of the combined square footage of every single house/apartment I've lived in (which is a lot of houses & apartments, ps)? No.. Do I believe in trickle-down economics? Again, no (at least, not completely).. I also don't think taxing the living hell out of "the 1%" would have the effect that the AOC's and the The Bern's of the world think it would have. You cut a business like Amazon some tax breaks because they do employ tons of people, and you want them to keep employing people to keep unemployment down. You tax them more, the have less incentive to keep employees. At the risk of a bad pun, it's the cost of doing business.
(21 April, 2024)
16) Regarding Puff DiddyDaddyBrotherLoveWhateverNameHeUsesNow..... and saying this as a life-long hip hop fan...I personally don't give a flying eff if he's gay or bisexual or pansexual or asexual or heterosexual or whatever. As long as everything is consensual, do what you do and do whatever makes you the best version of yourself. Same goes for literally anyone. If the sex trafficking accusations are true, though...he's gotta go. And by "go", I mean "go to jail".
17) While I understand the frustrations with homeless camps in cities/towns around America, I do hope that the SCOTUS doesn't criminalize homelessness in their upcoming hearing/decision on the Grants Pass V. Johnson case. The homelessness crisis in Oregon is....intense (to put it mildly). It's intense everywhere, I'm sure. But I live in Oregon, and I see our problem here first-hand. While Portland definitely gets the most attention for their homelessness issues, it's a statewide issue. A lot of people are in desperate situations, state-wide. Making desperate people even more desperate is a recipe for disaster. Criminalizing homelessness would make this problem 1000X worse.
(23 April, 2024)
18) I think it's odd that the media are referring to the protests on college campuses (and elsewhere) as "Pro-Palestine" and/or "Anti-Israel". . I think the more accurate description is "Anti-Human Rights Violations". I'm not seeing a lot of people with "Justice for Hamas!" signs or anything. I think most people are just disgusted by the fact that civilians aren't getting the very basics (food, water, medical care, etc) because some dipshits in government offices want to play with humans' lives. Of course, "most" doesn't mean "all", and I'm positive that there are a few people who are pro-Hamas, or who are anti-Semitic. But I think the vast, vast majority of protestors just want to see civilians in Gaza be treated humanely.
(1 May, 2024)
19) I'm not the biggest fan of Chris Hayes (which I've said before...he's just too opinion/feelings-based and not facts-based enough for me), I largely agree with his take here (link) regarding college campus protests. I agree that the media should be focusing less on some kids in tents with rhyming chants and focusing more on, you know, innocents (especially children) being killed.
While I do think that protestors should be cited and fined for smashing windows and defacing property and violence, I don't think the act of protest itself is worthy of mass arrests and such. You don't need an army of cops or the National Guard to deal with this kind of thing.
20) Was glad to see that Arizona over-turned that insane Civil War-era anti-abortion law. It's always good to see the right thing happen.