We are in our fifth week of living under the stay-at-home order issued in the Bay Area on March 16. Here are some observations about these strange times. Kensington is a Pretty Place to be Trapped Suzie in our Backyard For being stuck in one place, our new house isn’t bad. The neighborhood has lots of places to walk the dog, on quiet tree-lined streets through nice residential neighborhoods. There […]
[tl;dr – I created a new faster website for the SSS Blog more-or-less on my own. This post talks about why and how. Those not interested in a 10,000-foot overview of the web development world should skip this and wait for the next post.] Welcome to the new svelte SSS Blog. Why a new blog, when the existing one works fine? For the past six or seven years, I’ve been […]
In the end, I just could’t vote for Bloomberg Super Tuesday’s here. Suzie and I are going to vote this morning at the Kensington Community Center. After the (somewhat embarrassing I’ll admit) post yesterday, watching and reading news coverage and posts from people I respect, an email from Pete, and a good night’s sleep, I realized I just can’t vote for Bloomberg. He’d make a perfectly adequate President, but I […]
With my preferred candidate making a pragmatic, mature, take-one-for-the party decision to drop out of the race, Suzie and I have less than two days to decide who we’ll vote for in the California primary. It’s a tough nut to crack; we need a flow chart to follow all the possible permutations. I’m a moderate, pragmatic, center-left guy. I think Trump and his ilk are reprehensible and dangerous. Four more […]
I am a techno-person. I love computers. I code as a hobby. I’m a far cry from being a Luddite. But there are many ways that digital technology is making us less than we used to be. Many have been widely discussed. But not this one. Search is making us narrower, less well-rounded, and less wise. “Search” encompasses lots of things, and some aspects of it are unobjectionable. The ability […]
A late-model SUV was parked this afternoon in the driveway of our neighbor two houses up the hill. On its rear end was a bumper sticker that said: Bernie Sanders 2020Because F**k this S**t And there you have it, a truth accidentally revealed. Supporting Sanders not because of any expectation that his campaign promises will come to pass if he’s elected (there being a near-zero chance they’d ever get through […]
If Bernie Sanders (or my preferred candidate, Pete Buttigieg) doesn’t win more than 50% of the Democratic Party’s delegates, it opens the door to an open convention, where delegates would be free to select a candidate other than the one to whom they were committed before. I read an opinion piece this morning claiming that an “open” convention would as a practical matter have to nominate one of the candidates […]
In response to my first quick reaction to the Nevada caucus results, this post was to be a screed about how, if the Democratic Party were the Titanic, its response to seeing an imminent iceberg would be to head straight for it with increasing speed. Maybe that will be the case eventually. But for now, despite the media’s always-present tendency to oversimplify (New York Times: “Sanders Takes Control” “Bernie Sanders […]
When we used to visit Berkeley in the late winter, I used to be amazed by what Suzie called “Tulip Trees,” which bloom very early in the season with gorgeous large white and pink flowers. Much to my surprise and delight, it turns out that the tree right in front of our new house in Kensington is one of those trees — and right now it is blooming crazily. A […]
I’ve promised myself that 2020 will be the year I force myself to sit down at the keyboard every day and write. Many people I respect have told me I should, and from time to time I have tried, only to find myself fiddling around with the theme or fonts on the blog site, or drafting something and then deleting it. I’ve written all my life as part of my […]