One of the things ChatGPT is good at is serving as my ever-available debating partner. It can come up with a good list of pros and cons for/against any proposition, and it can brainstorm reasons for why something is or isn't the way I'd like it to be ( Read more... )

NOT commuting today, I think I'm commuting Wednesday and maybe Friday. As usual I'll need to have the trash/recycling to the curb by 7am, and the house ready for Maids by 8am. But I also want to run 3 miles before 9am. I don't usually run on a Maids morning because I usually commute, or I feel awkward about returning from a run while the Maids ( Read more... )

I didn't sleep well, but seem to have slept enough. I ate a pre-run breakfast and will do a 3-mile run before telework.

I did need to keep working after dinner last night.

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I haven't had time to write about the International Criminal Court and the prosecutor who wants to arrest the leaders of BOTH Hamas and Israel for war crimes, but this ( Read more... )

Looking at some recent polling crosstabs, I'm most curious about which issues are important to different demographic groups. For people 55+ the most important issue is immigration and border security. For people under 55 the most important issue is inflation. But for some reason when the typical person hits my age, they are more worried about ( Read more... )

I fell asleep fine, after having two satisfying slices of pizza for dinner; T had the same amount, but he'd ordered two large pizzas so we have a lot of leftover pizza.

But then I dreamt I ate an entire large pizza, and started working on the second. I woke feeling indigestion, as though I had consumed an entire large pizza. But it wasn't real. ( Read more... )

After watching the Green Party fall off the ballot here in Maryland, I did some quick legal research on the Constitutionality of ballot access requirements in the US, and learned that the Supreme Court has been quite friendly toward states that want to limit ballot access.

Political parties do not have a Constitutional right to ballot access, ( Read more... )

I was talking with T last night during and after dinner about a variety of topics. I spoke with him about how my first political value is supporting universal civic democracy (UCD), because without UCD we cannot solve any of our other problems. Without UCD, the people who do achieve power will simply do whatever keeps them in power, and to hell ( Read more... )

Yeah, I'm a lawyer, but it's not that difficult to look this up ( Read more... )

Once when I had extra time on my hands, I created a spreadsheet containing the popular vote totals for Republicans and Democrats in every Presidential race since 1876, which is when the two-party system -- Democrats v. Republicans -- settled into place in the US, a place from which it has not budged since.  From 1876 onward, the top two vote ( Read more... )

In seeking to prevent environmental breakdown, what counts above all is not the new things we do, but the old things we stop doing. Renewable power, for instance, is useful in preventing climate chaos only to the extent that it displaces fossil fuels. Unfortunately, new technologies do not always lead automatically to the destruction of old ones.-- ( Read more... )