"Is that Kiernan done?" *
We actually had a mostly cloudy day today. No rain, but it kept things cooler all the same. Our high was 78F.
No work today, but I'm going to make up for it tomorrow. First, I'm getting together the next Sirenia Digest, and then I'm getting back to work on The Night Watchers (new and improved).
This morning I had a 9:30 a.m. doctors appointment, which ate up much of the day. At least she isn't alarmed that I seem to be one of those older people who is simply losing the need and/or ability to sleep.
Okay, so...last night, Trump and his lunatics at Madison Square Garden, the new depths to which is has openly sunk, and so on and so forth. Apocalypse and tyranny seem written in the sky. Lots of good articles on the atrocity were written and published today, so I will not attempt anything like a summation. I will point you to this piece at Salon.
"The horrors persist; the mundanity of it keeps us moving."
Indeed.
I will say, please, do not think, that should he win, that this will be anything like Trump's first presidency. It won't be. For a lot of reasons, many of which should be obvious. And in a nation so profoundly divided, and in especially toxic ways, possibly more deeply divided that it was leading up to the Civil War, well...we're all so busy tearing one another down, doing Trump and Company's work for them...you see? I did say on Facebook today:
If you care about the freedoms of PoC, LGBT+ people, women, the poor, and on and on and on and on, you cannot afford to sit this one out. The shit we're seeing, this might be the LAST one, ever, if these fascists-come-lately get their way. They are open in their desire to destroy democracy. Harris in not my ideal candidate, but I am damn well voting for her. The option is, as we saw last night, openly racist, grotesque madness, a Nurmemberg rally in 2024 America.. If you can vote, PLEASE VOTE. Please.
It feels a little naive, looking at that now. But I can hope that the fence sitters will get down off the fence and I can hope for epiphany from the people with their heads so far up their asses they can't see doom rolling their way as they whine about the inability to deny their "conscience" and only "vote for the lesser of two evils." You know the really important this about the lesser of two evils? It's not as bad as the greater of two evils.
----
Tonight we watched Francis Lawrence's Constantine (2005). The film still looks fresh, and, honestly, were it not for the baffling miscasting of Keanu Reeves I think it would be a very good horror film.
I think I'm about to take refuge in several math texts I have not read in a while or have not ever read. Science is safe, and mathematics is safer still, and in the days to come I need to buffer the coming horrors with that sort of safety. A place to catch my breath. A place to remind me their is sanity in the universe, even if it will always be out of reach of most human beings, bound as we are our baser selves. Anyway, I'm thinking about books like Petr Beckmann's A History of π, Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, John Derbyshire's Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra, William Poundstone's Prisoner's Dilemma: John von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb, and oh, another of Poundstone's, Labyrinths of Reason: Paradox, Puzzles and the Frailty of Knowledge.
Anything else?
Please visit the Dreaming Squid Sundries shop. We are still trying to find equilibrium after sending all our money to the IRS. Thank you.
* ...said the pharmacist today.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
3:14 p.m. (the best rootbeer in the world)
No work today, but I'm going to make up for it tomorrow. First, I'm getting together the next Sirenia Digest, and then I'm getting back to work on The Night Watchers (new and improved).
This morning I had a 9:30 a.m. doctors appointment, which ate up much of the day. At least she isn't alarmed that I seem to be one of those older people who is simply losing the need and/or ability to sleep.
Okay, so...last night, Trump and his lunatics at Madison Square Garden, the new depths to which is has openly sunk, and so on and so forth. Apocalypse and tyranny seem written in the sky. Lots of good articles on the atrocity were written and published today, so I will not attempt anything like a summation. I will point you to this piece at Salon.
"The horrors persist; the mundanity of it keeps us moving."
Indeed.
I will say, please, do not think, that should he win, that this will be anything like Trump's first presidency. It won't be. For a lot of reasons, many of which should be obvious. And in a nation so profoundly divided, and in especially toxic ways, possibly more deeply divided that it was leading up to the Civil War, well...we're all so busy tearing one another down, doing Trump and Company's work for them...you see? I did say on Facebook today:
If you care about the freedoms of PoC, LGBT+ people, women, the poor, and on and on and on and on, you cannot afford to sit this one out. The shit we're seeing, this might be the LAST one, ever, if these fascists-come-lately get their way. They are open in their desire to destroy democracy. Harris in not my ideal candidate, but I am damn well voting for her. The option is, as we saw last night, openly racist, grotesque madness, a Nurmemberg rally in 2024 America.. If you can vote, PLEASE VOTE. Please.
It feels a little naive, looking at that now. But I can hope that the fence sitters will get down off the fence and I can hope for epiphany from the people with their heads so far up their asses they can't see doom rolling their way as they whine about the inability to deny their "conscience" and only "vote for the lesser of two evils." You know the really important this about the lesser of two evils? It's not as bad as the greater of two evils.
----
Tonight we watched Francis Lawrence's Constantine (2005). The film still looks fresh, and, honestly, were it not for the baffling miscasting of Keanu Reeves I think it would be a very good horror film.
I think I'm about to take refuge in several math texts I have not read in a while or have not ever read. Science is safe, and mathematics is safer still, and in the days to come I need to buffer the coming horrors with that sort of safety. A place to catch my breath. A place to remind me their is sanity in the universe, even if it will always be out of reach of most human beings, bound as we are our baser selves. Anyway, I'm thinking about books like Petr Beckmann's A History of π, Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, John Derbyshire's Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra, William Poundstone's Prisoner's Dilemma: John von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb, and oh, another of Poundstone's, Labyrinths of Reason: Paradox, Puzzles and the Frailty of Knowledge.
Anything else?
Please visit the Dreaming Squid Sundries shop. We are still trying to find equilibrium after sending all our money to the IRS. Thank you.
* ...said the pharmacist today.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
3:14 p.m. (the best rootbeer in the world)