Routine Revelations

If we had a truly functioning democracy, the primary view on elections would be to provide all means possible to enable everyone the ability to vote rather than seeking ways to rig the system to secure a victory. Election day would be a national holiday or be on a weekend and even occur over several days. We don’t have to know on election night who won, there are plenty of days between the popular election, actual election, and inauguration, by design!

If you start with the premise that there is a relationship between privacy and liberty, then you might find it ironic that Europe has overcome the United States as the world advocate for liberty. The United States has been in the process of becoming a police state since the early 1970s, when the Federal government started viewing some U.S. citizens as enemy combatants under slogans like “War On Drugs” and “War On Crime.” And despite thoughts to the contrary, Trump is all in on the evolving police state just like former U.S. Presidents or representatives.

Currently reading: The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction by Peter Rollins 📚

Reading this one as part of my church book discussion group.

Today is the 51st Anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch. Or the beginning of a great conspiracy theory.

It got hot outside again. Chased back in to the air conditioning.

I see a video snippet of Mike Pence saying “We don’t want CDC guidance to be a reason for not opening schools.” First reaction is WTF not?

The second reaction is that there are two big issues at play here. One is “anti-elitism,” which is a point of view of which there are no experts to trust, everyone should just “go with their gut” or “use common sense.” In most Republican circles “elites” are Democrats or liberals to be ignored out right.

The second issue is relationship between federal and local governments. It’s clear that the Republicans in charge right now think there is no legitimate role for the federal government beyond defense. In their eyes the federal government has no responsibility for solving “big problems” of the nation. In some ways their view of government is more Articles of Confederation than U.S. Constitution. (I find it ironic that a Conservative group calls themselves The Federalist Society but acts more anti-federalist.)

Stated differently, current Republicans take Reagan’s phrase “The Federal government is not the solution, the federal government is the problem” very literally, and apparently lost on them is the irony that the words were spoken by a man seeking the position of being the top person of that federal government.

Hard to believe that a factor of comparison between the Trump and Biden campaigns are their smartphone apps. The contrast is striking.

Recent feature updates to my blog are the Search and Now options at the top of the page. Click Now to learn more about me and what currently has my attention. It has a easy to remember URL: http://frankm.info.

I think micro.blog needs a new Discover category for plugins, to make it easier to know when plugins have been updated and to find new plugins.

Ice cream outside on a summer day

What one must do to protect their coffee on a windy day when sitting near a shedding cedar tree.

This is much better, temps in the 70s with a breeze, although the humidity is still north of 50%.

I’ve recently purchased a Lenovo Duet, which is a Chrome OS 2-in-1. I am a long time Chromebook user and own a Pixelbook, but the Duet is the first Chrome OS tablet I’ve used and the first time that I’ve installing other Android browsers like Brave. Chrome OS really doesn’t like that there is more than one browser on the Duet because every time I click a hyperlink I get a prompt asking me which browser I want to open it in. There should be a way to override this so I can tell Chrome OS only open hyperlinks in Chrome and don’t bother asking me, but I haven’t found one it exists.

I’ve added a Search option to my blog to enable readers to find topics that I’ve written about. The option is a work in progress, right now after to click through to read an entry in the search result, clicking Back does not return you to the search results, instead you have to re-initiate the search. The option is available to me as a micro.blog plugin.

Dave says Puerto Rico was the canary in the coal mine of how Trump would, and has, handled COVID-19. Why that was not seen that way is that most Americans do not view Puerto RIco as one of us. I don’t just mean those who support Trump, I mean all of us.

Hello world. Typing this at you via the Gluon app running on my Lenovo Duet. Gluon is a microblogging app for Android and iOS and while I use it on my phone, I realize that I can also use this on the Duet. Hope to be able to edit posts in the not to distant future.