2026 January❮❮prev

My 13th Annual One Second Everyday,
Featuring cameos from (in order of first appearance)
Jon (Torso and Marimba), Lynette, Myles, Duke, Eslam, Maria, Kyle, Me, Don White, Jim, John, Swans, JP Honk incl Dom and Ben, a Cement Mixer, Julie, Matt, Susan's Frottoir, Porter Sq's "Gift of the Wind", Cindy Scott, BABAM incl Rayyan, School of Honk incl Josh, JP Honk incl Tim Dan Declan Lindy Steve Leigh, Yamato Taiko Drummers, Gibbs school band, First Friday incl Carrie, Wren, Chas, Aurora, a Covid test, Glenn, Rebirth Brass Band, Reena, Matthew, Kellie, Anna, JP Honk incl Tom and Duane, Not Art, First Friday incl Max and Nyle, Arun, Liz, Tesla Takedown incl Marie, Dig Dug, Scott, Geese, Krista, Lisa, School of Honk incl Timothy, Fish, my beard, Linda, Donald Duck, José Carioca, and Panchito Pistoles, Joe, BABAM incl shola, Wake Up the Earth, Karen, JP Honk incl Sam, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, ADubbs' legs, Juggler, Susan, Lena, Kelda, SoH incl Nat and Kaleb, a kitten, David, Adam, Tractors, Roxanna's memorial, Olive Garden, Mom, Cousins incl Lauren , Ken, Ron, Aunt Susan, Maurie, Terry, a bunbun, Roman, Anisha, Romane and her mom, a doggo, a cardinal, Improv Asylum, Blue Man Group, Agnes, Mia, Aaron, Portland Sea Dogs, Brent, Lucas, Lincoln, Clawdette Smm Smm, JPHonk incl Diego and Malia, Extinction Rebellion, Kyle, Tom, Dylan, Sarah, Abby, Emma, Todd, Alpacas, a squirrel, JP Honk incl Matt, Marsha, Cathleen, Karen, Jordan, Cordelia, Eva's Relish Recipe, Elio's oyster shucker, a horse, a tapdancer, Minuteman crosscountry track, Middlesex Activist Band, Arthur, Dalia, stiltwalker, tumbler, Alien Bill, Sophie/Zoot, a spooky skeleton, John Lochiatto, a Red Rebel, T-rex Skeletons, T-rex Clowns, another cardinal, Diego, a kitty, a windup insect, Car Gurus, Charles, Andrew Pinard/Jonathan Harrington, an anti-ICE Eagle, Bethlyn, Calvin, Chloe, Puck (RIP), Bard

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Don't let the powers that be bury Jack Smith's testimony about Jan 6
Ten was the number this year, shoehorn these into 4 galleries: my favorite overall, ones involving people I love, ones involving creatures, and then just generic "visuals"

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We don't have the right to force regime change in other countries, and I think Trump said he wasn't going to be this kind of interventionist.

Friends that lean left, do read Maduro's wikipedia page. There was a lot not to like about this guy. (I still trust the process of Wikipedia though the coverage almost seems slanted but maybe he was that bad.)

Folks who lean right, do think about Trump and his promises not to be this kind of screwing with other countries president. And how convenient a smokescreen this is for a guy with incredibly low popularity numbers right now. Media I consumed last year... 4 star in red, 5 star red and bolded...

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oldie but a goodie

A while back the physicist Edwin F. Taylor headed a "science and spirituality" group (one that I co-lead for a while after) at the First Church in Belmont (UU). He knew of my interest in dealing with morality and asked me for notes on his own ahead-of-time eulogy essay he was writing, If We Did Not Die

December was light in new music but pretty good... "Tambourine" is such a banger for me acoustically. And for the Tom Waits, I just love the line "Come down off the cross, we can use the wood"

4 star:
* Tambourine (Eve)
* Come On Up to the House (Tom Waits)
* Sock It to Me Santa (Bob Seger & The Last Heard)

3 star:
* Pianomaniakks (Intro) (Levi.Sct)
* To All the Girls I've Loved Before (Albert Hammond)
* 'Zat You, Santa Claus? (The Heavy Remix) (Louis Armstrong & The Commanders)
* Old Folks Boogie (Little Feat) Was thinking about this video, ninja kitty cat jumping and dodging down a hallway...

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Philosophers are generally expected to display wisdom and calm in the face of existential questions. I am just not one of those philosophers.

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Someone has forgotten that we have laws not kings.

With my band BABAM, (behind my friend Sophie), via the NY Times on Anti-ICE protests

It is clear that the ignorance of US citizens of federal laws and law enforcement duties, procedures, and limits of authority is getting to the point where it is deadly. I spent probably 3 hours watching and re-watching, and finding every single video and angle I could of the situation in Minnesota yesterday and came to one immovable conclusion based off of what I saw, and what I know from a professional standpoint. This is long, but please at least give it a read.

As a former officer, let me make something clear: ICE agents ARE NOT police officers, deputy sheriffs, or troopers. They are not local/state law enforcement. They are not federal criminal law enforcement. They have an INCREDIBLY limited scope of authority, and that scope of authority exists in detaining and arresting with probable cause and/or SIGNED WARRANTS those investigated and suspected of being in the US illegally.

This ENTIRE situation in Minnesota was outside of the scope of legal authority from the get go. None of it was done within the scope of authority of ICE. Every single behavior those agents made was procedurally incorrect, done without proper authority, and was based off of intimidation and the assumption that people do not understand the law and their rights in regards to interactions with ICE.

On no planet should an officer, agent, or any human being ever step in front of a car in drive that is actively trying to leave, and use their body as a shield to prevent a person from LEGALLY LEAVING a situation in which they are not legally being detained. It takes maybe a week into any kind of actual law enforcement training to understand that in NO CIRCUMSTANCES do you ever place yourself in front of a vehicle in drive. That agent had every single opportunity to simply take two steps to the right and not be standing directly in front of a vehicle attempting to conduct their legal right to drive away.

You can see the wheels are turned, [Renee] backed up and turned them to the right, moved forward a bit to leave, couldn't because an agent was standing in front of her, and continued to try to leave by TURNING HER WHEELS TO THE RIGHT and moving forward. He continually chose to stand there and not allow her to legally leave as she had every single right to do.

The officer pulling on her door and banging on her window and swearing at her had ZERO authority to order her out of her vehicle or attempt to make entry into her vehicle. None. A single day of actual training and regard to legal scope of authority and the LAW would've prevented that from happening.

You now have a frightened citizen being blockaded by immigration agents, with another person in her vehicle, who had zero obligation to follow legally invalid orders from that agent, being blocked in and having a fully grown, masked man attempting to make entry into her car. If this were reversed, every single person would immediately feel she had every reasonable expectation to fear for her safety. It doesn't matter if she knew it was ICE because the agents weren't even acting in their scope of authority anyway.

Whether or not she made the right decision by very CLEARLY, based off of how hard her wheels were turned and how low and to the driver corner windshield that shot was fired, trying to drive to the left of that agent, is IRRELEVANT in the picture as a whole.

None of this would have happened if those agents had done even one single thing correctly. Not just correctly, but within their legal scope of authority. Every single moment of that interaction was escalated by untrained, unprofessional, procedurally inept "agents" who not only had zero control of themselves but everything around them. And not because they are helpless, but because their actions that did not fall under their scope of power CAUSED this. Their tempers, lack of training, and knowledge that they can get away with violating their own scope of authority caused this.

I will always be the first to defend law enforcement when lethal force very clearly is required. But this was not even remotely the case, and as an actual TRAINED professional in that field with experience and understanding of both the law and procedures, there is no justification for this- and it would benefit EVERYONE to actually read up on the laws, scope of authority, and use a single shred of common sense to see that this situation was started, escalated, and caused these events to transpire by the ICE agents involved. I have zero respect for those in power who are ignorant to their authority and abuse it at the cost of lives around them.

RIP Scott Adams, his cancellation not withstanding. Or his advocacy for when "only persuasion matters, not truth" and other pro-Trump idiocy.
I will always appreciate his comic on how consciousness is partially just a post-decision rationalization -
Also his line about Sisyphus, which I badly paraphrase as "Sisyphus has a sense of playfulness [...] you have to look at it from the rock's point of view." I do like a good collection of tumblr posts

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I admit this made me laugh.

20 'Star Wars' Characters Ranked by How Bad Their Breath Probably Is from Scott Mitchem on FB: AHAHAHAHAHAHJAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA*SOB*

what a g'damn infant we have running this country,

Machado 'presented' her Nobel Peace Prize medal to Trump, both leaders confirm
or how excited he is by a car with his face on the side... (which is just a dab of quid pro quo, there... Or stuff like how FIFA's head piled him with a golden trophy Or you know, a new 747. Jeez. My 11 year old nephew independently discovered a kind of fun art technique I made up for myself a decade ago - using layers to draw over a photo, and then using the eyedropper tool to grab a flat color and then apply it to a larger region, resulting in a nice illustrated/cel shaded look.

Being a life long doodler myself, I bought him an iPad and an Apple Pencil last year to encourage this kind of play, but was curious that he ignores the Pencil in favor of the fingers nature gave him. This sort of surprised me; when I doodle on my own iPad I NEED the precision of a good stylus... with a fat opaque fingertip it's too hard to make lines meetup. And his lines were fine!

But I put on my UX researcher hat and observed - and in a minute the answer was clear - he pinches and zooms in ALL the time as needed to where the imprecision of a finger doesn't matter. And not just zoom, but rotate to get a more convenient angle for the coloring motion of his fingertips.

Stodgy old me, growing up with pen-on-paper, this wasn't an option. And I never was comfortable with how some iPad art programs made it "too easy" to rotate. (Heck, my current favorite doodle pad Apple Notes doesn't even have zoom in!)

But this next generation - they're touchscreen native in a way I will never be... The kids are alright.

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America has blown 80 years of accumulated goodwill and trust among its allies, our American moderator was told. A rock-steady assumption of allied defence and security planning for literally generations has been that America would act in its own interests, sure, but that those interests would be rational, and would still generally value the institutions that America itself worked so hard to build after the Second World War. America's recent actions have destroyed the ability of any ally to continue to have faith in America to act even within its own strategic self-interest, let alone that of any ally.

The officer then said that even a swift return of America to its former role won't matter.

Because "we will never fucking trust you again."

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Was pondering the difference between my buddy Scott's love of AI summaries of articles and books - a powerful tool in a text flooded world, but I worry about glossing over nuance - and my historic love of pithy quotes.

Superficially they're similar modes- a lot of information presented in a compact way. But I was pleased when I thought of this framing:

A good summary captures the essence even at the cost of some detail, but a thought provoking quote is able to invoke MORE detail, provoking the thoughtful reader's imagination. It can evocative and invite unpacking, while a summary is bit more drably utilitarian.

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This Greenland thing is fricking INSANE.

What right do we think we have to Greenland?

Destroying NATO... what a dream for Putin!

(As my FB friend Mike points out Not to mention for China and Xi Jinping - between justification for whatever they want to do in Taiwan (and the USA less likely to say boo about it) they get to the be the beacon of stabilty and predictability, a reasonable partner when we've become a America First/America Alone/We Don't Care loose cannon.)

Nothing is more beautiful than shadows.

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about right. I'm sure folks on the right will do their stupid "haha" faces, and the smarter ones could even quibble on a few of the particulars, but the broads strokes are correct

This is some 25th Amendment level frolics. "Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace." is some mad villain sounding shiznit.



I was curious about his "I've stopped 8 wars claim", like if he actually did a lot thats been ignored. Looking at Snopes/ back when the claim was 6 wars in 6 months , Armenia and Azerbaijan is probably the one significant claim.

And uh, doesn't justify wrecking NATO over Greenland. This guy is some kind tool for Putin.

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The post also had PDFs of the 2024 vaccine schedules which shouldn't be too hard to find.

Amazing to think we're a society voluntarily making ourselves worse at preventing illness, including some deadly ones I've seen people die from.

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the 2024 vaccine schedules: via

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Orwell gets mentioned a lot but a leader starting World War III because they didn't win a peace prize is the most Kurt Vonnegut ending to humanity I can possibly imagine.

"Greenland is SO BIG it covers up 99% of the Epstein files."

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like my one buddy Sean says
"Gonna be hilarious when europe dumping their US bonds causes a financial crisis that makes everyone wake up and realize that AI is a bullshit shell game and we trigger a greater depression." I'm most of the way through the book "Tiny Habits" by BJ Fogg. One of its "life hacks" is to unabashedly have a microcelebration - a fist pump, victory song, happy dance, whatever - when you accomplish a little something. (And another life hack the book is based on is to start with bite size, trivially-doable versions of more daunting tasks.)

It's meant as a form of self-programming; an example Fogg gives is, think of a baby's first steps. The parent's delight and happy feedback is such a strong and fundamental message for the baby to keep going, this is good. (The baby's certainly no track star yet!) And the same principle sticks with us as we age.

But it's easy to be skeptical, right? We're not babies! What if it's just a TINY accomplishment? Won't we just be goofuses, happy morons cheering ourselves on?

Like....OH NO! You mean we might seem happy and energized for No Good Reason? GASP! What an awful life THAT would be.

(I mean, if we can be feel blocked and procrastinatory for insufficient cause, and we have the ability, why NOT lean into the opposite for equally insufficient cause?)

I think the other fear, that easy celebration somehow demeans or diminishes our ability to rejoice when we tackle larger scale tasks, is a canard as well. Another part of us will still be able to discern when larger scale accomplishment has been made.

2026 January❮❮prev