“We are living in a post-Constitutional time,” Vought wrote in a seminal 2022 essay, which argued that the left has corrupted the nation’s laws and institutions. Last week, after a jury convicted Trump of falsifying business records, Vought tweeted: “Do not tell me that we are living under the Constitution.”
Vought aims to harness what he calls the “woke and weaponized” bureaucracy that stymied the former president by stocking federal agencies with hardcore disciples who would wage culture wars on abortion and immigration. The proposals championed by Vought and other Trump allies to fundamentally reset the balance of power would represent a historic shift — one they see as a needed corrective.”
Don’t get me wrong — this is bad. Trump and his handlers like Vought are a true threat to our country. But even if Trump loses, the danger they represent remains, lurking in the background and waiting for the next opportunity to seize power. The Christofascist threat is real and they will not stop until all of us are subservient to their ideology of hate.
Just added a new section to this site, the Notes page. This is just a feed of my Mastodon posts, excluding replies. Sometimes I have something I want to write about here, but it doesn’t really deserve a full post, just a quick shitpost like I used to fire off on Twitter.
I just finished watching both seasons of The Bear (one of the best things I have watched this year; I will have more to write about it later.) Given the restaurant premise of the show, a lot of different dishes are prepared on screen, and most of them look incredibly delicious.
One of the dishes that caught my eye was the relatively simple French omelette prepared by Sydney in a later episode. The entire scene is beautifully shot and cathartic to watch (in a show that is anything but chill.) I tried my hand at her technique and recipe this morning:
A little overdone on this first try, but it was still easily the best omelette I have ever made. Possibly the best I have ever eaten. Wow.
Yes, it has crushed sour cream and onion chips sprinkled on top. Yes, those are absolutely vital to the yumminess of this dish. Incredible!
With the feds rendered useless on consumer protection and monopoly busting, telecom lobbyists have increasingly taken aim at the last vestiges of state and local government power.
Last Wednesday Jobs himself received a more thunderous thumbs-up at the announcement of Apple Computer’s successor to its own hall-of-fame classic, the original Macintosh: a machine designed for consumers dubbed the iMac (only Apple would dare to lowercase the “I” in Internet).
Do you remember the original iMac? I do. I never owned one personally, but it was an important computer for those of us of a certain age. Yesterday was the 25-year anniversary of its availability.
I grew up as an Apple fanboy. Unashamedly bleeding in six colors. Leading up to 1996, the Apple I loved was dying — quickly. But after a reverse acquisition, co-founder Steve Jobs was back at the helm of Apple and all seemed right with the world. Indeed, today Apple is the most valuable company in the world and unlikely to disappear any time soon, all of it rooted in that 1996 deal. Digression: it’s absolutely bonkers to think about it, but every Apple product today (2023) runs software that can trace its roots back to NeXT. Who in 1985 could have imagined a future where their code was at the heart of computers, cell phones, TVs, speakers, and watches 30 years in the future?
None of that future would come to pass though if Apple couldn’t get their shit together and make some money. The first step in that journey to profitability was the iMac. This was Steve Jobs at his best. The iMac project was a Hail Mary; milk the existing platform for as much short-term profit as possible while we try to figure out the next thing. It was basically existing hardware, boiled down to a cheaper and more forward-looking version (no legacy ports, no floppy drive), and existing software. Easy to build, highly profitable, the iMac was a lifeline for a company that desperately needed one.
The iMac had just become available when I entered college in the fall of 1998, and by October they were everywhere on campus. An immediate hit. Today, Apple is the most valuable company in the world (and a company that I still adore) and it all started with that little Bondi Blue plastic shell.
Fred Rogers was a Presbyterian minister whose life’s work was, I believe, built almost entirely (if not entirely) around Leviticus 19:18: “Love your neighbor as yourself: I am God.” Hence… the neighborhood. In practice it that looked like this (all of these are his words): “To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way [they are], right here and now.” and “Everyone longs to be loved. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.”
“Love thy neighbor” is definitely no longer en vogue with modern Christianity in the United States. We need more Fred Rogers in the world.
