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machination.org

Near miss

The Mid-Atlantic region and DC were always known for stormy summers, and even catching the tail of hurricanes now and again. But yesterday, and last night especially, was intense. The Tornado Warning alerts caught us off guard. I had to check to see if was meant for us. I found I lived inside territory covered by those red boxes and ultimately under that storm track.

A couple years ago, I’d have gone outside (and probably would’ve been fine) but this time I grabbed my kiddo out of bed and we sat in the basement for 15 minutes, waiting for the danger zone to move past us.

Postscript, 3 July — National Weather Service Confirms Two Rare Tornadoes In D.C. and Arlington.

Counting blessings, being counted

I filled out a random Census survey on behalf of my family about my child’s health over the past year. I am once again reminded as to how immensely lucky my family is, and saddened by all the challenges out there (the vast majority that I, so far, could respond “no” to). Still, certain questions made it clear that we were deeply affected this year, and maybe the kiddo’s parents are worse for wear. Burnout is on the Census Bureau’s radar, after many other more imminent challenges for so many.

More importantly: the frailty of the safety net and the widespread and deep impact of economic injustice made me feel more vulnerable than maybe I am, but I know I am vulnerable if my fellow citizens are.

Senator Mike Gravel passed away.

I had lunch with him in 2007 at McCormick & Schmick’s on K Street. I heard out his bizzaro communications strategy for his quixotic presidential run (and I was in the mix as a veteran of such a campaign), and took a pass.

I liked the guy.

The pandemic is “ending,” on a slew of bittersweet notes for me.

(And of course, it isn’t really over yet for so many around the world, including small children here.)

After a long year, I'm seeing the cracks

“I’m breaking a little," (or words very close to that) was a sentiment shared with me recently.

Me too.

…And not just us. (Not to say that this other person’s experience is about anxiety, but both what I infer or imagine about theirs and what Dan Cederholm shared resonates with me.)

Lab leak hypothesizing

I’m a college dropout. Not a scientist. Let alone a biologist or epidemiologist or whatever other ologist I would like to include in a fantasy panel to help me reconcile my interpretations of the news with what their expertise, regardless of their preferences, might inform.

I’ve been aware of the credible strains of the “Lab Leak Hypothesis” from near the beginning, which now have fairly widespread recognition. (And all the words mean something, right? Hypothesis == something to be proved or disproved.)

What I feel like is missing is a middle ground in what otherwise seems like a dichotomy. Either its from the wild or it was “created” (modified/magnified) in a lab and got out. It seems like the middle ground is, for a lab that might be collecting samples to then study (and perhaps modify, say through alleged “gain of function” explorations, etc.), that a yet to be modified strain of something collected might leak, if a leak is a possibility.

And then it would have no markers of its own that would necessarily indicate human intervention. Right?

The folks who dismissed a lab leak given their belief in the ostensibly far lower odds (but now widely recognized as yet to be actually precluded odds), always, I think, seemed to really speak to their judgement in natural origins of the SARS-CoV-2. But that wouldn’t preclude the scenario above.

I am not even sure this is an original critique. I might have picked this up somewhere and my brain is spitting it out because it hasn’t seen it incorporated clearly into the new reporting that legitimizes the broader theory as still being a possibility.

A crime against humanity

Given my apparent “sensitivity.” I am working on consuming more “positive” media (and boxing in my media consumption), but I can’t live disconnected from the world. Yesterday’s heading was “criminal negligence,” but this is a Crime Against Humanity: How Families, Separated At The Border By Trump Policies, Are Coping. Listen to it.

I don’t trust the “quote sites” to neccessarily attribute a quote well, but while I am taking care of myself, I also recognize the value of this observation, attributed to Jiddu Krishnamurti:

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
On this lunch break, I'm heading over to the kiddo's daycare to spend some time with him. He's a lucky kid and I am luckier than I feel.

Criminal negligence

I can’t filter it out, and it still cuts. Every story about the horrible things the systems we make hurt children.

Every dehumanizing experience with authority that children are directly subjected to, and every exhausted, desperate parent because they’re underpaid, dehumanized, sick, tormented… every one of those things is a crime.

Pretty much that and the climate crisis should be things we reconcile ahead of just about anything else.

I am writing again

I got some hours in front of a couple of different text editors this weekend.

Two pages about what were maybe the local epicenters of trauma shared between my parents and I. It is not what I expected to come out, but it did. I rushed off the first draft of these spare pages to a good friend. Tears came out too. A couple of guttural cries even.

Yesterday I banged out some useless Swift code to solve notional tutorial problems. But hey, my brain was working on its own and the code compiled as I dusted off some programming fundamentals.

If only I could sink into my weeks building on these things at my own direction.

Anytime there’s news of a child dying, and most especially by the hands of their own parent or caregiver, my heart breaks for days.

While I haven’t used it much, no regrets to my micro.blog renewing. Happy to see Ulysses will let me post directly from the app to here, and wondering if WWDC is going to inspire me and my cough copious cough amounts of spare time.

And then Apple Music suggests “Stay Positive,” from the Hold Steady.

Let me whine for a second

It might be looking up by now, more vaccine available. Biden has moved the needles in certan specific ways.

And christ, every day I am saddened by the news of so many who have had it more worse than we have. But it’s been a fucking year. We can all say that. In my case:

  • Just trying to be a first-time parent of an ~18mo
  • Child care not stable (and no real rebound, backup)
  • At least one close relative vax-hesitant
  • Not getting to see family (or get their help) to the degree we would have with the kid if it weren’t a pandemic
  • Being buzzed by Hueys on top of normal stupid helo traffic in this town
  • Fences and razor wire cutting off main thoroughfares to rest of the city
  • Most close friends have moved away
  • Spouse doing double-time at her job, dictated by current events (and overwhelmed with the failure of policy to support a certain vulnerable population before COVID even became a thing)
  • No time between anything, not if I’m going to keep (or set) pace at work and with the toddler.
  • Sick of everything on a screen

I don’t need to go more than a block from my house to be reminded I’ve got it good.

Now, 17 blocks from my house or so… I’m reminded how good others have it to be able to control government from doing anything meaningful and honest for my needier neighbors, let alone the rest of us.

32-ish blocks, the great Not-Trump is still Ok doing illegal bombings with war powers he doesn’t have, never mind he shouldn’t have the ones he does have.

Optimism, vigilance and action over relief and amnesia

If there is a Biden win, how will you demonstrate against his platitudes and short-sells with regards to our future?

How will you celebrate his inauguration by attending and not letting him off the hook? How will you insist that he face our existential challenges with the broadest inclusion and the maximum effort possible?

One of the opportunities for Trump, besides giving space to the racists and mysgonists, and magnifying the likewise tendencies of those harboring fear, was the reality that so many folks were effectively written off cynically or by mealy-mouthed compromise-on-compromise by Democrats. The party became untrustworthy in their eyes. I dare say rightly so.

We desperately need something better than less worse, we need something better than “moving in the right direction.” We can’t afford to be placated.

How do we seize the opportunity so many argue is necessary to create by voting for Biden?

We need optimism, vigilance and action. Not mere relief and amenesia, I hope.

Far milder corporate shills may be preferable.

I’m not sure why the existential threats actually bearing down on us aren’t somehow apart of a every day proactive effort. Instead, in my country, we are preoccupied still with the horce race of how fascists are getting away with things and how other far milder corporate shills, who speak more compassionately to peoples fears but won’t actually do anything about them, may be preferable.

We get out and I am grateful that it isn’t as hard for us as it is for many.

But I could really use getting out.

Need a night or two on the AT by myself or something.

For too long this week I underestimated the power of a shower and some stretches. And breathing.

Side hustle

I would like standard keyboard shortcut conventions on macOS for showing sidebars and side panels and whatever.

I’ve got to remember one for BBEdit (cmd-0), another set for different Ulysses modes (cmd-1,2,3,4), no option for Notes (yes, I write stuff in all of these apps, maybe that’s part of the problem), something else for Things (cmd-/). I understand the “side bar" experience is slightly more complicated in a couple of these cases, but I feel like there could be a default behavior apps could add subtlety on top of.

I really like cmd-/.

I don’t appreciate notifications from apps that I actually want to use (for how long though, given this?) that are essentially coupons and marketing and not critical transactional updates, with no settings to “unsubscribe” from a type of notification. You know who…

Tooling around Heritage and Kingman Islands in DC today and trying to maintain distance … from other people and my house.