Category: Uncategorized

I feel like I’m going to sleep with a sword of Damocles hanging above my head.

I was in the cafeteria getting a plate. There’s a glass wall between me and the food, and the cook has to serve everything. I point at some yellow stuff and ask for squash.

The cook looks at me oddly and says that’s collared greens.

I ask, “The yellow stuff?” It’s obviously squash.

The guy winced. A moment later he said, “Yes, that’s squash. Sorry. I thought you were pointing at something else.” He looked very embarassed.

I felt sorry for the guy because I’ve done that a million times. It’s probably the cook-version of saying ‘you too’ after someone tells you to enjoy your meal. It’s a little weird to think about the other perspective.

The squash was good.

There’s this thing caled ‘regulatory risk.’ Ant Financial just found it.

I’m very curious how deeply exposed some American financial institutions were to Ant. WSJ mentioned Blackrock and Fidelity, but were they dropping 0.1% on a flyer or 10% on a core position?

I kinda want some meatballs.

Go vote.

The walking paths around the grounds at DU aren’t straight. They don’t follow the shortest path. They’re all artsy. If you want to get somewhere, often you have to go around weird little curves.

It’s kinda annoying but kinda cool because it’s weird, artsy, and useless. They make me think of Amber.

I am so ready for this year to be over.

A few days ago, Shelby Super Cars (No relation to the famous Ford tuner/racer/car builder, but also a Ford tuner/builder) claimed they set the land speed record with the Tuatara in Nevada.

They had some problems with their record.

Apparently the video they released didn’t support the record, and later Jerod Shelby admitted the video wasn’t either record setting run. The GPS company distanced themselves from the GPS records. The driver said he didn’t know what was going on.

Shelby says they’re going to rerun the route with all their ducks in a row: GPS will be certified, better video recordings will be released, etc.

I’ve got a few takes on this.

1) Anything is hard when a bajillion people are picking it apart, so I’m sympathetic toward the Shelby case. They do have to get this right, but it is a lot harder than one might expect.

2) I like fast cars, they made a fast car, I like that.

3) They do seem to be trying to fix things, and at least they’re saying the right stuff.

If they fix everything for the record, if another run is attempted, if a new record is made, I’ll be even more impressed. Overcoming their own problems is in a way more laudable than accomplishing something on the first try.

If not, they’re just another not-good-enough, and the supercar world is littered with such people.

Now I’m waiting for the new run and new video. But emotionally, good luck SSC.

-broke the Snowden papers. He’s been reporting on corruption in Brazil. His resume is a mile long.

Let me be clear: I don’t agree with him on much. But he does have a certain bloody-mindedness on certain topics that reminds me of Mattis.

He just quit The Intercept citing editorial censorship. The Intercept’s editors replied. He responded.

Basically, Greenwald wanted to report critically on Biden, and The Intercept wouldn’t let him. That reminds me a lot of Mattis too.

Mattis leaving the White House was a pretty serious indictment of the Trump administration. Greenwald doing the same to The Intercept is a similar indictment of them. One of the reasons I connect these two individuals, ones who would probably not enjoy the comparison nor appreciate it, is that I don’t agree much with either of them. And I think the institutions they departed from are more similar than those institutions would appreciate either.

If you go through the emails posted in that third link, these, Greenwald goes off. He is primed and ready to start swinging. There’s a bit of justification within The Intercept as Greenwald comes across as a prickly and self-absorbed individual, one consumed with his own virtue. Fanatics display such attributes. But between Maas’s initial letter and Reed’s clarification, it is quite clear that he was censored, and that Reed was trying to stop publication of the article elsewhere. I haven’t seen Greenwald’s contract, so his accusations of contract violation are unknown. The Intercept’s editorial policies are here.

The New York Times had a similar experience in July, and it has had many more. These incidents happen often at the Trump White House.

There isn’t a thesis or punchline to this story. It’s just what I think about.

The prototype looks great. If the big complaint is that the grill is too square, things are going well.

I still think the R35 looks amazing. It is a brick. It is a fast brick, but it is a brick.

With all the furor over Supreme Court partisanship, something I think is much more talked about than real, it’s easy to miss the consistency with which the court has ruled on voting regulations.

They are the state’s affairs.

Even Pennsylvania, which seemed to violate the plain meaning of federal law, was left to the state’s own rules. Other cases like California and North Carolina have been left to the states as well, with little regard to Democratic or Republican facitonalism. It’s not absolute, but it’s the clear trend.