Other stuff a bit farther in the past:

Last weekend was the 2021 MIT Mystery Hunt, written by [whoosh!] ✈✈✈ Galactic Trendsetters ✈✈✈ [neowwww!], and it was incredible puzzling fun. This year's hunt took place at the MYST 2021 physics conference, having hunters explore an alternate universe and MIT's alternate-universe counterpart, the Perpendicular ( Read more... )

So Trump is out, with some last kicking at American political norms. But rather muffled kicking, by Trump standards. Trump's ban from Twitter was really quite a significant change in the political landscape, it turned out! There was the continuing stream of blatantly corrupt pardons: Bannon (for defrauding Trump supporters), Broidy, Erikson, etc., ( Read more... )

Obviously, the events of earlier this week have been sticking in my mind and in the news:

( Cut for length )

Since the idea of the current President being removed from office has come up again for some reason, and discussion of the procedure for removing a corrupt and/or criminal President is so last year, thought it might be interesting to brush up on Amendment 25 Section 4, the second way the Vice President can become Acting President. Here's the text, ( Read more... )

What a dark day in American history. To sum up the events so far:

Vice President Pence put forward a statement rejecting both the absurd legal theory that the VP can appoint the next President and Vice President unilaterally, and the absurd legal theory that Congress can't object to alleged certifications of electoral votes ever. Both straw ( Read more... )

Alphabet Workers Union launched today, so that's exciting. And yes, I'm with the union!

As for the rest of the week:

I was expecting some pretty mind-blowing stuff from the Trump lame-duck session, but I'm not sure I was expecting the latest election-theft attempt. This is the sort of criminal conduct that would have been an earth-shattering scandal ( Read more... )

Time is moving on, though the feeling lingers that the new year is not really here yet.

End of year post that's a bit less on the national news side:

Christmas celebration went well. Eris had a good time celebrating with the cousins. Cooked a porchetta from Stillman for a mid-day dinner, quite a dramatic looking roast and it made for tasty leftovers.

( Read more... )

2020 is coming to an end for real, and I'm too exhausted to really gather my thoughts.

What a hellish year, despite my relative "can't complain". I suppose there was some good stuff in those first few months, but that doesn't even seem like it was in the same era. The Trump administration is coming to an end at least, the political era which it ( Read more... )

I took some time off this week in an attempt to get my first extended break since the pandemic began, and tried to spend some of the time doing anything other than household chores and killing time. Did do a bit of reading and watching movies and playing more Hades and so on, so it didn't feel like a total waste. Took a few walks. Time flew by, ( Read more... )

Trump Campaign electoral strategies:

* Win the support of a majority of the electorate (arguably they were never here).

* Win a narrow electoral college victory with the support of just a plurality of the electorate.

* Win a narrow electoral college victory with the support of not even a plurality (2016).

* Apparently lose the election, but prove in ( Read more... )