Good morning. Hello. How are you? #834

Slow descent into normie news round-up where I even link to an op-ed, god help me.

Good morning! Hello, how’s it going, how’s tricks? Happy March. What’s new? Que pasa? Lotta Spanish being learned in this house. ¿Abrazo por favor? We had a little Spanish school for the stuffed animals last night. Witch Hello Kitty is picking it up quickly. Daddy Jane Dance Party (Fiesta de Baille de Daddy y Jane) was pretty short because Grammy’s new car arrived and everyone was very excited by it. Jane promptly climbed in and left footprints on the brand new vegan leather before Grammy even got to sit in it. It is black, it’s electric, it’s Ford and it matches my truck and it is so awesome and we are all very jealous.

Also note the smudge on the door that Jane also did before anyone could even sit in it. We had to teach her about how people are very particular about their new cars.

Now we just need to get a black E-Transit so we can collect the whole set.

Speaking of electric cars Elon Musk is in trouble with the Chinese because as part of his normal, run-of-the-mill poopy posting on Twitter, he decided to comment on the DoE’s shifting beliefs about the lab leak theory, and the Chinese didn’t like that one bit and told him that maybe he should be Careful and not bite the hand that feeds. Apparently they are not Nine Inch Nails fans. Anyway I only bring this up because back when the Twitter deal was first contemplated I predicted exactly this scenario: that that guy would keep saying stupid shit on Twitter and eventually he’d piss off the Chinese. I’m surprised it took this long to see overt signs of it but I have zero doubt this will not be the end of it.

There was a big report out yesterday about the artificial sweetener erythritol and how it is basically toxic. This is a very, very clear study with large statistical significance, not the usual “artificial sweeteners might be bad” sort of middling, muddled sort of thing. Lotta people sent me this study yesterday because of my love of Stevia extract, a non-artificial sweetener derived from a plant. Erythritol is not stevia, but people seem to keep lumping stevia in with artificial sweetners, because it’s not sugar. This is mostly, I think, because a lot of products have both. Most granulated sugar-replacement, Stevia-based artificial sweeteners — like the ones you might put in your coffee — use erythritol as the granulation material, since Stevia extract is a liquid. But you can all rest easy, the only stevia I consume is in my beloved Zevia, which does not have erythritol or any of the “–itols” in it. My mints don’t have erythritol in them, but they do have sorbitol and maltitol and ace-k in them so, you know, not great. But we live to fight another day.

This is a pretty great Twitter thread about a national reporter, who just worked on that Times article about migrant child labor in the US. But this is about another article he just published here in Chatham County with our small local paper the Chatham News & Record, to which we subscribe. He uncovered a prosecution that was happening of ten or so people including the Chatham County affordable housing commissioner and how they were all grifting construction contracts. And she is being prosecuted. But she’s still in her job! That is pretty loony. The prosecution was happening already but literally no one knew about it because there had been zero reporting about it. I’ve been pretty fascinated with Chatham’s affordable housing policies, which are actually pretty solid and I dream of one day making large, comfortable affordable housing developments in this county so, you know, this is of some interest to me.

Speaking of local news, the NC Senate voted last night to legalize medical marijuana in the state. Still has to pass the house, I think, and get signed by our governor, but it’s not an impossibility. That and passing medicare expansion are two issues that have significant bipartian support here in NC and both didn’t quite make the cut last session so there is a lot of anticipation that they might happen this session, even as the Republicans work to roll back abortion rights and, you know, solidify their illegal gerrymander. But I guess we can’t say bipartisanship is completely dead, lol, in NC if one of these two bills get passed. Not holding my breath. And, of course, there are a few Republican holdouts that are just so worried that legalizing it medically is a slippery slope to full legalization and we just can’t have that here in the heart of tobacco country.

Also the NC Senate must be total stoners, dude, because they passed the bill at, I kid you not, 4:20 PM.

I guess we’re just one of those normie news roundup issues today because here is an op-ed, I am linking to a freaking op-ed, what has my life become. Slow descend into normie, as Kevin Slavin says. My life is a slow descent into Normie. '

Anyway, the op-ed is aout how we made a fateful error back in the beginning of this century when we passed the 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act and fixed the number of members of the house. Each house member now represents over 760,000 voters, with the number projected to increase to a million by mid-century. We need a bigger house of representatives. Five hundred, six hundred. I am so into it. Just replace the left side of the capital with a bigger one. Actually, here, let me just photoshop it for you:

I don’t know if I did that on the right side or not. Is the left the house or the senate? No idea. And of course, I assume inside there it would look something like this:

I always thought the galactic senate was kind of ridiculous because they had one of those floating pods for each constituency, and it was sort of implied that each constituency, like, got along with each other. As if a planet (or Trade federation) all agreed and was going to send a bunch of people to the senate that all agreed. Anyway this would definitely not work in our 700-person house of representatives because they’d all kill each other in their little pods.

I do think it’s a decent idea, though. The author of the op-ed (god, I’m sorry) goes on to talk about his experience on, like, non-profit committees as evidence the whole thing would work well. It is a very weird, too-personal argument. I don’t buy his line of thinking, but I do think it would be far less possible to keep your party at heel and keep members from voting across party lines. Maybe. And I definitely buy that members are becoming detached from their districts and constituent services are degrading as a result. Be all end all solution? No. But I hadn’t thought about it.

I’m sorry that photo is so blurry I usually take two and the one time I take only one it is blurry.

There’s this new form of Spam I’m getting, in Google docs. They tag you in some document about crypto and you get a Google docs notification about it. It is stunning to me that Google hasn’t done anything about this. It must be happening to tons of people. And they haven’t! Like anyone can tag you in any Google doc and it will notify you. You can block that person, you can turn off tags in that document, but of course they’re just making new Google accounts and new Google docs and the spamming continues. Enshittification continues. These companies have no interest in this stuff. Why would Google assign an engineer to, you know, fighting spam?

Wrote my monthly letter to Jane the other day. I love that project. It’s funny, though, I start every entry with some variation of “happy birthday Jane you are now X years and Y months old” and I picture 20+ year-old Jane finally reading these and she’s like, “geez can’t you start these any other way?” Time compression. I really need to stop. Or edit them out. But I do not anticipate this book getting much of an edit in 13 years or so when I’m done with it.

A few weeks ago I explained the cradle of humanity in Africa and I used the globe to explain to her that humans — all of us — walked out of Africa and slowly populated the continent. She sort of gets it, and is immensely fascinated by it, but has a lot of trouble with the concept of such large time frames. She thinks of it as more of an endurance race sort of thing. Everyone ran out of Africa at once and got to grab some section of the planet and make up a language. Seems like a fun board game.

Maybe I should help her Kickstarter that. She does love making games.

Moody and quiet mix for you today. Mostly new except I have been exploring the late-career work of the Alabama-born sister duo The Pierces, best known for their song “The Secret” that has appeared an a bajillion teen dramas including Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars. It’s interesting it was far and away their biggest hit but after that album they felt no need to try and replicate it and went back to their more straight-ahead music. I like it though. Apparently each sister has a solo album. That is on today’s agenda. Also I don’t know anything about this Complete Mountain Almanac but it looks amazing gotte investigate today.

All right well time to go do some other morning chores I hope you have a lovely day and we will reconvene tomorrow, same time same place. Until then.