Really enjoyed this article, You Don’t Have To Swallow Frogs, and particularly this advice:
You just have to think for yourself. Know what tradition you’re aligned with, whether it’s a philosophical one, a religious one, or one that rises out of a particular past oppression—or all of the above. There might even be a group or a school of thought you’re reacting against. If you haven’t thought about these things before, read less daily news and try to find an approach that reflects what matters to you.
Read Ilya Soman’s article on the Perils of Unitary Executive Theory and the phrase “two wrongs don’t make a right” comes to mind. I think the better question now is, who benefits from the President of the United States given ultimate power with no oversight from Congress and immunity from the courts? And what of the purpose of the Constitution to restrain power and preserve rights? What of the ninth amendment?
The Cubs got shutout yesterday in the second Wild Card game, so today there is an elimination game with San Diego. Got to score runs to win a baseball game. Because the Dodgers won their series, which was the only sweep, the Cubs/Padres game starts at 5 PM today while the Tigers/Guardians game starts at 3 PM.
Wild Card Game 1
The Cubs won the first wild card game today against the San Diego Padres. I do believe it might be their first ever wild card game win. The 3-1 win was due to the pitching staff, in fact as I watch the other games played today, the old adage of good pitching beating good hitting seems to hold. The sharpest example was in Cleveland where the hottest team in baseball the Cleveland Guardians was beat by the coldest Detroit Tigers thanks to the game’s best pitcher, the Tiger’s Tarik Skull.
I see the Cub’s have announced they are starting tomorrow’s game with an opener as recent closer Andrew Kittredge will start the game. My guess is that Shota Imanga will follow Kittredge but I wouldn’t be surprised if Shota only pitches one time through the Padres line up. Counsell can’t blow out pitching because there might be a game three if they don’t win, but the Cub’s want to win this next one while they have the advantage of elimination game pressure on their opponent.
The Chicago Cubs play their first Wild Card game for the 2025 MLB playoffs this afternoon, which is their first playoff game in many years. Looking forward to seeing how the team performs. I am not expecting much success in the playoffs this year, and I am mostly happy for the young players to gain experience with playoff pressure. Winning championships is part experience, part talent, and part luck, you need them all to win a World Series.
Foldable Phone Or Tablet
Two years ago the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft dropped off the samples it collected of the asteroid Bennu. I’ve been fascinated by our ability to fly a spacecraft to an asteroid, which is also rapidly hurling through space, do a “touch and go” to collected samples, then fly back to earth, drop the samples off and continue on to another asteroid. Today I did a quick search to see what has been learned about Bennu. Recent reports state that Bennu is “a mixture of dust that formed in our solar system, organic matter from interstellar space, and pre-solar system stardust. Its unique and varied contents were dramatically transformed over time by interactions with water and exposure to the harsh space environment.” [Source] and “In addition to the five nitrogenous bases – adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine and uracil – required for building DNA and RNA, the researchers also found xanthine, hypoxanthine, and nicotinic acid (vitamin B3).” [Source]. OSIRIS-Rex has been renamed OSIRIS-APEX and is currently flying toward another asteroid, Apophis, which it is scheduled to meet up with in 2029.
Finished reading: The Tears of Things by Richard Rohr 📚 Because civilization seems stuck in an infinite loop, the Hebrew prophets are as relevant today as in their day.
The U.S. Supreme Court seems firmly entrenched on institutionalizing the unitary executive theory. In light of this, if SCOTUS serves more than President Trump it seems they need to clarify the power of Congress over the Executive, for it seems to me that the Constitution invests Congress the power to write and pass laws, including the power to overturn a President’s veto, and that the Congress says the Executive must execute the laws of Congress. It does not seem to me that the Constitution gives the Executive power to interpret a clear law, even if that constrains the executive. In other words, dear SCOTUS, please explain to me how checks and balances of the Constitution exists in the world of the U.S. Presidential monarchy that you are creating.
Personal Computing Using Tablets
Enjoying a nice nearly fall morning. Could be the last of warm weather.
Do you recognize this?
Engineers and Lawyers
I am reading this interview of Dan Wang by Russ Douthat of the New York Times and find it fascinating how Wang describes the difference between China in terms of engineers and lawyers. Wang says the current China is founded by engineers, who in my experience put great value on efficiency. I think Elon Musk’s DODGE was/is very much a rise of engineers in the United States who believe they know better about running a country than lawyers. Whenever you have a group of people who are dominated by ego to think they alone are the smart people and therefore know all the answers to all the problems, you have a high potential for tyranny. Democracy and liberty is not about efficiency, it’s about peaceful co-existence. If one insists upon efficiency you end up being like the other countries, such as the old USSR and China, who likewise make efficiency a prime directive.
Here is the money quote of Dan Wang in the article:
The game goes to he who outlasts the adversary. But what the Chinese want to do is to just keep things really, really stable and just wait for the Western countries to collapse.
China plays the long game while the U.S. plays the short game.
Remember the trope, you can’t shout fire in a crowded movie theatre? The trope is intended to convey the limits of free speech, but it also conveys the extent of free speech. Perhaps one of the reasons why I remember this trope is because of it’s roots in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, my home land.
If you believe that capitalism depends upon a free market that depends upon democracy to exist, then it seems to me that the U.S. Executive successfully threatening a U.S. corporation that results in that corporation meeting the Executive’s demands is clear evidence the U.S. is now an illiberal democracy. Corporations are the prime entities of capitalism that has wealth as it’s prime directive, not liberty, so they are not going to stand up to the Executive. And here is the kicker… given that most American’s retirement savings is tied to capitalism via corporate stock, it can be argued their actions are in the best interests of the citizens. The affect is trading liberty for wealth and security.
Yesterday I reached the half way point of my virtual walk of the 2,650 mile Pacific Crest Trail that I started on December 18, 2024. I am using the Walk The Distance app.
The Chicago Cubs have clinched a Wild Card spot in the playoffs, what remains is to determine whether they have home field for the three game Wild Card series that will be in October. My buddy who is a fellow Cubs fan doubts the Cubs will have success in the playoffs. I see no reason why they can’t win a three game series at Wrigley, however I think what is most important is that the young Cubs players gain playoff experience. How well the Cubs will do depends on how well they play during the next two weeks. In recent years the best MLB teams haven’t won the World Series, it’s been the hottest teams.
Democracy is thought of as a weakness when the prime directive changes from liberty to power. If the goal is to power over others, which by the way has been a key means to the American way of life since World War II, the most efficient means to that goal is dictatorship.
Will WordLand Be A Posting Switchboard?
I listened to Dave’s podcast in which he starts to describe what he is doing with WordLand and FeedLand, and that sounds a lot like what I said that I want in practically my first post on micro.blog. Right now I am writing this using Drummer and it will be published to my Daynotes blog. If I want to also publish this on my micro.blog I need to copy and paste it in to another outline from which posts to micro.blog are published.
Copy and paste is a lot of work, what if for every post I could specify which publishing destination that post goes to simply by selecting the destination locations via a checkbox? What if I could later add a destination by simply going back to that post and checking another box, or clear a checkbox and it is removed. When I edit the item the changes are automatically re-published. BTW, the last item probably won’t work to social network destinations because they generally don’t allow editing.
The key is the per item control over the publishing destination and continual ability to edit the item. For now micro.blog’s ability to cross post items I publish to it to Mastodon and Bluesky come closest to my vision, but that is not on a per post basis, it’s all items published to my micro.blog that are published to those other destinations.
Two windows on the iPad Mini running iPad OS 26. I’ve been using the Microsoft Duo to monitor my two fantasy football teams on game days because I can see the two apps side by side. This arrangement on the iPad Mini might be as useful.
