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00:27 Wednesday, 17 January 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 58.53°F Pressure: 1012hPa Humidity: 61% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 175

I've been corresponding with Jack Baty, and he was kind enough to send me the Tinderbox file that is the Jack Baty Daily. It's interesting to see how someone else with a lot more experience in these matters approaches the application.

We're also planning to have a "Blogging with Tinderbox" meetup session in February, looking like the 24th. It'll be one of the regular weekly Tinderbox meetups (alternating between Saturdays and Sundays). Jack and I, along with Mark Bernstein and anyone else who maintains a blog with Tinderbox will share our experiences using the app and why we blog with Tinderbox.

If you're running a blog using Tinderbox, you can use the little upgrade I've added to the export template to "Reply by email." We'd be happy to include you in the meetup to share your experience with other Tinderbox users who may not be writing a blog, or may not know how useful Tinderbox is in doing so.

(I'm kind of tentative about this "reply by email" thing, so we'll see how it goes.)

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This Morning's Moon 1-17-24

05:50 Friday, 17 January 2025

Current Wx: Temp: 41.94°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 63% Wind: 5.01mph
Words: 130

Watched the SpaceX Starship test yesterday. Pretty cool Super-Heavy booster landing, but wow, what happened to Starship, or "'Ship," as the cool kids call it?

Capturing that booster is just amazing. But I can't imagine anyone is going to tolerate launching those things with any kind of frequency greater than monthly, if that. Were those flocks of migratory birds I saw flying through the frame after recovery? Are they nesting there? Yeesh.

It's an astonishing technological achievement. I just don't see how it's compatible with any habitat on earth. They're sure as hell not going to be able to launch those things from KSC on the regular.

But what do I know? King Elon will issue a royal decree and it'll be game on! We're all going to Mars!

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She's Moody

05:58 Friday, 17 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 41.94°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 63% Wind: 5.01mph
Words: 75

Wish I could give you some insight into Florida's new senator. She's been AG for about six years now. Culture warrior. Carries water for Governor Dumbass. Hasn't made much of an impression apart from the usual Florida Republican lack of empathy and inclination toward cruelty and performative bullshit. Makes Marco look like a statesman and a humanitarian.

She'll probably get elected too.

Every day, there are more reasons to look forward to leaving this state.

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Gym Rat

14:00 Friday, 17 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 60.66°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 51% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 292

Just got back from a workout with our personal trainer. Stop me if you've heard this before:

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

Same thing with going to the gym. I mean, it can't work miracles. I'm still fat and flabby, but boy do I feel better!

I loved running. It was meditative in a way. It got the day off to a great start. I wish I could run again, but I've got a bout of achilles tendonitis going on in my left foot right now for God only knows why. Once I get walking, it recedes into the background; but come home and sit for five minutes and, ow! Anyway, it is what it is.

But going to the gym and lifting weights and using the machines, even using rubber bands, it keeps my heart rate up. It's as good as running, I think, at least for me in my current condition. And when I'm done, I feel spent, I feel a bit weak, but I feel alive. Woo-hoo! Not ten years younger, but maybe five?

Mitzi's going up to Winterfell in March to work on countertop, sink and cabinet installations and she's going to sign us up for a gym membership while she's there, so we can roll right into it when we get there in June. Taking a break is a risky proposition.

It really helps to have a trainer. Keeps me from finding ways to slack off, keeps the variety up and makes it interesting. Gives you feedback on your form. So we'll be looking for another one of those too up there.

Anyway, "Feeling good, Billy-Ray!" and so forth.

The beat goes on...

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Kevin Drum On the NY Times

14:16 Friday, 17 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 61.41°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 48% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 53

I stopped subscribing years ago. That decision has been affirmed again and again.

And again.

The Times may have been "the paper of record," once upon a time; but now it's just another competitor in an attention economy, and the only thing they seem to feel they have a responsibility to is themselves.

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Countless Reasons

14:28 Friday, 17 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 61.54°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 48% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 166

I gather the vast right-wing conspiracy has some plan for the Supreme Court to overturn all state gun control laws in the near future. Gosh, that sounds great.

But check out this report from a local news outlet. Take a look at that graph? I wonder what happened in 2008 that precipitated that sudden skyrocketing?

Oh, I remember... Obama, America's first Black president was going to take all our guns.

Oh, and the drop there in 2024? As the article makes clear, Floridians no longer need a concealed-carry permit.

What they should have done at Jax Today was show the crime rate in each county. Now, that's a double-edged sword, because the firearm fetishists would claim that low crime rates were because of high gun ownership rates. I would maintain that they are incredibly safe counties to begin with, and the only reason people feel the need to own guns is because they watch Fox News.

So looking forward to leaving this insanity.

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Shrinkage!

18:01 Friday, 17 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 55.2°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 71% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 118

So with the cold weather, I guess we won't have to look forward to Sean Spicer explaining the size of the Orange One's "crowd" because it was cold.

I know Spicer won't be the Press Secretary, but I can't help thinking of him as George Costanza.

"There was shrinkage!"

"Turtled on ya?"

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All Nazis All the Time

07:57 Saturday, 17 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 26.06°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 82% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 466

My books are nearly all in storage, including volumes 1 and 2 of Werner Klemperer's I Will Bear Witness. He was an intelligent man who could see what was taking place all around him, who was relatively powerless to do anything about it.

So he wrote his diaries.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to lose most of my 11 readers if I start writing about Nazis and fascists exclusively, but there's only so many places I can direct this rage and incomprehension at the absence of rage all around me.

Losers remember all the wrong lessons from history, recalling only the humiliation and grievance of defeat, and nurturing it to one day try again.

Winners forget history. "Well, that's over! Glad we got that fixed! Let's go make money!"

ICE detention centers are concentration camps people!

"They're not Nazis. You're being irrational, hysterical. They're just Americans, Americans can't be Nazis!"

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

Jesus H. Motherfucking Christ!

"America must have Greenland. Lebensraum! Er, I mean, "national security!"

I was trying to do something fun in another area, and kept encountering pushback and negativism because, well, reasons I guess. So that stopped being fun. Life's too fucking short.

I played Lode Runner on the Apple IIc Plus yesterday. Made it to level 16. Pisses me off that Total Replay doesn't seem to let you record your high scores. The app never let you save a game in progress. You could pause it, but you couldn't save it. In an emulator you can save the state of the emulator and return to it at any time, but there's no satisfactory joystick experience. Maybe I can use the keyboard? There's like over a hundred levels, I think the highest I ever got back in the day was in the twenties. All my muscle memory is on the joystick though, and that's slowly coming back.

Each level begins paused, so you can look at all the guards and chests and try and figure out an approach or strategy. I seem to recall that back in the day I was pretty confident that the only thing keeping me from finishing the game was the inability to save it in progress. That is to say, I became "good enough" to be able to identify the kinds of routes and the levels of bricks I had to destroy to get to the chests without too much difficulty. You get an additional life with each level successfully concluded, so you can afford to die a few times to figure something out. I don't think we called it "grinding" back then, but that's essentially what it is.

But there's only so much retro-gaming I can do as well.

Anyway. I guess it won't be all Nazis, but pretty damn close.

The beat goes on...

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Nazis and the Confederacy

11:13 Saturday, 17 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 29.53°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 8.9mph
Words: 153

You may be wondering if I'm suffering from NDS (Nazi Derangement Syndrome), in suggesting that there is a through-line from the Confederate States of America and Nazi Germany, i.e. "losers" never forget history.

Here is a remarkable video of a Zoom lecture, Nuremberg Laws: How The Nazis Were Influenced by U.S. Jim Crow Laws. (It starts about two minutes into the recording and the audio sucks, but it's tolerable.) This is very worth your time to see the connections between immigration, eugenics, white supremacy and Nazi Germany. Spoiler alter: The Germans sent a delegation to America to study Jim Crow and decided it was too extreme for Germany. But they loved the eugenics, immigration and anti-miscegination laws. It also talks about the role of memory.

Great video.

If you don't want to spend an hour watching a video, here's a shorter piece touching on some of the same issues.

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