Super Bowl Thoughts

08:51 Monday, 8 February 2016
Words: 367

Puppymonkeybaby must die.

That aside, I was happy with the result.

I really didn't care very much about either team, so what was interesting to me was the matchup between Peyton Manning and Cam Newton. Manning had been a thorn in the side of Jaguars fans for many years; but it's been kind of sad watching him the last couple of seasons. I like to see "old guys" keep suiting up and trying to be competitive, but there comes a point when it's just kind of foolish.

I was at the stadium to see Dan Marino play his last game. It was obvious there was nothing left in his arm, and it was painful to witness. (Watch the video. Good times.) I suspected Manning had entered the foolish phase, but the playoffs seemed to offer some room for doubt.

And Cam Newton. I don't like Cam Newton. I hesitate to say that because too many people immediately assume it's a race thing. Nothing I say here will change anyone's mind on that score, but I just don't like Cam Newton and it's for the same reason I don't like Colin Kaepernick, and why I didn't like Jim McMahon. Football is a team sport. Ego plays a role, it has to to endure the punishment the game dishes out. But you're only as good as the other ten guys around you. You can't take all the credit, and you don't get all the blame. The superhero antics are a distraction. Colin Kaepernick didn't look very heroic this year, and Cam Newton didn't look very heroic last night. Call it karma, maybe.

So I was happy with the result.

But it was a sloppy, ugly game on both sides. A bit less so on Denver's side, perhaps.

Clearly, at least to me, Peyton's career is over. He couldn't retire on a better note. The defense carried him on this one, and perhaps that's as it should be. It's a team effort.

Cam Newton is a gifted athlete, and a good quarterback, maybe a great quarterback. Only time will tell. But last night should have been an object lesson in the value of humility.

Update: Well, and then there's this.

Still Lazy After All These Years

07:10 Tuesday, 8 February 2022
Current Wx: Temp: 46.85°F Pressure: 1016hPa Humidity: 95% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 779

Since about 2017 I've been involved, at something perhaps just a little more than an insignificant level, with local politics. I sought a seat on the local Soil and Water Conservation District Board of Supervisors and won that by dint of having no opponent.

I resigned that seat in 2020 to run for state representative after being asked to do so. Wasn't much fun. Lost, but we knew that going in. Learned a lot.

And I've been involved in various committees and organizations, seeking to help promote change in the region. Most recently, I wrote a handbook for becoming a candidate and the very basics of running a campaign.

Now I think I'm done.

In many ways, it's been quite an eye-opening experience. Everything is far worse than I knew, and there's little prospect for improvement in the near term.

How it became such a revelatory experience perhaps offers some insight into why there's little hope for change, at least for the foreseeable future.

Florida, in the main, and this region of Florida in particular, has been governed exclusively by the Republican Party for more than twenty years. The net effect of that governance has been to create two Floridas. One for people like me, the privileged; and the other for what I like to call the ignored.

Life for the privileged is pretty good in Florida. We have low taxes, and the legislature is constantly seeking ways to lower them more, or place barriers on localities increasing them. The privileged can live in areas with good schools, or send their children to one of the many private schools the state supports with public money. Crime is mostly kept confined to urban areas, and policing is heavily resourced. For the privileged, with health insurance, Florida has an enormous array of healthcare providers and facilities. And although Florida's natural environment is vanishing, what remains is attractive and affords many outdoor recreational opportunities for the privileged.

So, among the privileged, Republican governance has been a good thing.

Not so much for the ignored. Florida has never expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, despite the fact that the program is a net economic win for the state. Affordable housing has always been a problem for the ignored, and it's growing worse now. The ignored are confined to schools that are severely under-resourced. Florida ranks near the bottom of all states in education spending. For decades, Florida has subsidized the tourism "industry" by refusing to raise the minimum wage, ignoring the millions of Floridians living on the ragged edge of poverty. When the minimum wage was raised by a statewide ballot initiative, the Republican legislature set about creating legal exceptions to actually paying it. And now it's working hard to close the ballot initiative window, which also brought back the right to vote for returning citizens, and which the legislature effectively gutted by means of bad-faith fuckery.

The ignored don't have a voice, and the Republican Party has seen to it that if they try to use it, they'll be locked up. That was the whole point of last legislative session's "anti-riot" law HB1.

The Democratic Party might be the voice of the ignored, but much of the Democratic Party in Florida is run, and run badly, by the privileged. Let's be clear, the privileged like their privileges. Which mostly means, their money.

The Republican Party is the party of money for that reason. But Democrats aren't broke. They just don't want to put their money where their mouths are.

There's a horrible story to be told about Republican governance in Florida, but the press isn't going to tell it. It's not news. The frog has been well and truly boiled. It's only found in statistics, and in the places where tourists never go.

Democrats could tell that story, but it would take money. And nobody wants to give any.

Ultimately, this is unsustainable. I don't know how it ends, but it doesn't end well; and there's a lot of needless suffering along the way.

I just know I have little interest in trying to recruit people to run for office, who will be under-resourced. The very first thing that gets reported about a candidate in Florida is how much money they or their committee have. If they don't have any money, they're among the ignored.

It's all very depressing, and I don't want to go to any more meetings, read any more emails about vote-by-mail, or go canvassing or any other traditional, essential and ultimately useless efforts.

In Florida, dollars count more than votes, and for whatever reason, Democrats just haven't got the money.

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Hadestown

06:45 Thursday, 8 February 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 50.68°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 84% Wind: 14.97mph
Words: 214

Mitzi is a huge fan of musicals. Theater in general, but musicals in particular. She keeps her subscription to Sirius in the RAV4 specifically for the Broadway channel, as I am reminded each time I drive the car.

Me, not so much. She has a friend, my oldest daughter's mother-in-law, who likes to go as well, and they usually go together. They're going to go see Tina! later this year.

But I like to be supportive in the sense that we "do things together." So when she asked me last November, around Cyber Monday, if I'd go to Hadestown with her, I initially hesitated, inclined to go with my default, "No." But I relented and said, "Sure." Tickets for Wednesday's performance were half-off on Cyber Monday. I had no idea what Hadestown was about, but it's a few hours one night, how bad could it be?

It was amazing.

It's a very contemporary re-telling of a very old story, a Greek tragedy.

As with most musicals, I could only make out about half the words, but I got it. (I kept looking down for the subtitles.) I ordered the CD of the Broadway cast recording and hopefully that comes with a set of lyrics.

It's a story for our time.

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Dawn 8 Feb 24

07:38 Thursday, 8 February 2024

Current Wx: Temp: 50.85°F Pressure: 1021hPa Humidity: 86% Wind: 11.5mph
Words: 23

Mitzi spotted the sky while I was in the office. Grabbed the drone and went aloft. This is about 3 min before sunrise.

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Well, That Worked

05:49 Saturday, 8 February 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 56.95°F Pressure: 1021hPa Humidity: 95% Wind: 0mph
Words: 20

Captain's Log performed as intended last night. Always rewarding when something goes right. Feels like a rare event these days.

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Overhead 2-7-25

06:23 Saturday, 8 February 2025

Current Wx: Temp: 56.62°F Pressure: 1021hPa Humidity: 95% Wind: 0mph
Words: 91

I took the 8mm fisheye to Winterfell, so I used the 9-18mm zoom on the OM-1 for this shot. I'm surprised at the lack of aircraft overhead. Normally, this place is right under a comm air corridor.

Largely unremarkable, except it's interesting (or troubling) that the trails at the far right corner seem to have a reverse curvature. The 9-18mm is rectilinear, and lens corrections are performed in camera. I have two versions of this lens, I may have to try this again sometime with the other one.

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Eye Spy

17:28 Saturday, 8 February 2025

Current Wx: Temp: 73.44°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 72% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 71

Went out to get the mail and spotted this guy on my way back in. Grabbed the E-P7, which had the 75mm/1.8 mounted on it and figured I'd give it a shot. Minimum focusing distance is .84m, so I wasn't going to get too close to him, but at 150mm effective focal length and as a very sharp optic, I figured I might not be unhappy.

I wasn't disappointed.

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Scott Galloway on Resist and Unsubscribe

07:46 Sunday, 8 February 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 0.01°F Pressure: 1029hPa Humidity: 77% Wind: 11.34mph
Words: 46

Galloway posted a video answering questions from Reddit mostly, I think. It's short, only a few questions, but I think it's worthwhile.

Here's the web site again, Resist and Unsubscribe.

And don't forget to delete the apps from your devices. You can always use the browser.

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Pot Pouri for $50, Alex

08:07 Sunday, 8 February 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 0.01°F Pressure: 1030hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 11.34mph
Words: 336

Didn't snow as much as forecast, though the wind has piled it up over the side porch which is the main entrance, so I'll get to shoveling it again shortly.

I lurk in some of the retro-computing forums and noticed that Christopher Drum took a look at Hypercard back in December. He blogs about using old software today, and what the experience feels like. That had the inevitable effect of making me want to play with Hypercard. Earlier in the day, I searched Goodwill for "vintage Apple computers" and an iMac G5 came up. I never owned one of those.

So now I'm wondering what an iMac G5 runs on eBay. Turns out, you can get one for less than an Apple II. And if I was going get a PowerPC iMac G5 to run Hypercard, then I could also run Total Annihilation!

And then I recognized what was going on. I do this all the time. I buy all this old crap to do stuff I think I want to do, and then it gets here and sits around taking up space. Sigh.

Besides, Apple made a version of Hypercard for the IIgs that's sitting in my closet, and it's a near-peer, if not 100% compatible with the Mac version.

I still think it would be cool to have an iMac G5 to use all the old MacOS 8 and 9 software I used back in the day. But life is short. Make better choices.

I've been watching some of the skiing events at the Olympics on YouTube. I have to say that I find the whine of the drones intolerable. And I can't even see where they're airing any footage from the drones? If they are, it isn't especially noticeable, like "Wow!" or anything.

Anyway, a couple of mentions of the mundane. "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."

Before dictatorship, blog about bullshit. After dictatorship, blog about bullshit.

Same-same.

Enjoy your liberties while they last.

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American Gulag

15:06 Sunday, 8 February 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 7.74°F Pressure: 1030hPa Humidity: 60% Wind: 13.02mph
Words: 132

In her most recent post in Letters From an American, Heather Cox Richardson discusses the detention system being constructed by ICE.

This policy has dramatically increased detention of immigrants. Before it, the U.S. held about 40,000 people on any given day. Now, according to Laura Strickler and Julia Ainsley of NBC News, the United States is currently holding more than 70,000 immigrants in 224 facilities across the nation, 104 more facilities than it had before Trump took office. Those detainees include children.

104 more facilities, and growing. They're building the infrastructure and processes to "disappear" people.

Laugh if you want. If you wanted to build a massive system to round up and imprison political enemies, how could you get away with it in the United States of America?

This is how.

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