I was in a very bad mood for much of yesterday. I knew I had not slept well, but I think I underestimated how much that poor night's sleep had impacted my day yesterday. After a good night's sleep I woke up feeling refreshed and in a far better mood.
Usually, I aim for 6ish hours of sleep. And I know my body struggles if it has less than 5 hours, of which yesterday was a day, but most of the struggling yesterday was mental where as most other days it is more physical tiredness. I can only attribute this difference to the inevitable march of time.
| Share to:February 6th, 2025
Automated Archives for February, 6th 2025
This post was automatically generated.
Articles To Read
The following are articles that I saved today. Substance and quality will vary drastically.
Chess For the Day
Record: 2-0-1
Net Elo Change: +6
Games Played
Blog Posts On This Day
- February 6, 2024 (1 post)
- February 6, 2023 (9 posts)
The Big Dark in Seattle ends today (for this year)
| Share to:Though we are still in the midst of winter meteorologically (hope everyone enjoyed the snow this morning!), in terms of daylight hours, today arguably marks the end to Big Dark for the season.
Today, February 6th, is:
- The longest day since before Daylight Savings Time ended on November 3rd.
- Today is the first day in which we gain 3+ minutes of daylight each day (a streak that will last until May 2nd).
- The first day with a sunset more than an hour later than our earliest of the year (5:19PM today; earliest of the year is 4:17PM).
Some additional context:
- We're only one month (31 days) from having sunsets after 7PM! (March 9th)
- We've now gained 1h25min of daylight compared to the Winter Solstice on December 21st (~9h50min, vs ~8h25min).
- By the end of February, we will gain an additional 1h12min (and 2 full hours by March 14th!).
- Our current day length (~9h50min) is on par with Winter Solstice in parts of Southern California & the Deep South states.
- In less than 2 weeks (Feb 19th), our day length will be on par with Winter Solstice in Miami.
February 5th, 2025
"I Photographed January 6. Trump’s Pardons Can’t Erase What I Saw."
| Share to:This is why I document: America loves to rebrand its sins as myth. In four years, MAGA loyalists have rewritten January 6 from every angle. Rioters have been framed as leftists in disguise, police as “crisis actors,” the attack an FBI setup—or, more outrageously, citizens on a “normal tourist visit.” By 2025, revisionism is big business. Conservative media churns out books, podcasts, and stump speeches recasting insurrection as resurrection. But my images tell another story: they depict a nation in fracture, where well-meaning neighbors and dutiful relatives cling to their “Big Lie” with an unwavering sincerity that doesn’t just reject facts—it inoculates against them, leaving everyone vulnerable to propaganda and less capable of critical thought.
Glowbug Tag Archives
Last night I began the work of adding tag based archives to the blog. For example, my "social post" tag is meant for me to use whenever I write a quick post here which is also sent out to my Bluesky and Mastodon accounts. For that tag specifically the idea is you could have this page bookmarked and basically get a (somewhat) complete feed of my social posts.
The functionality also lays the groundwork for an eventual "photolog" view, where you'd just see a page which are photo posts I made where the photo is the focus.
The functionality has a lot of benefits, and it's been on the backlog for years. I've never gotten around to it. And, the reality is. It isn't complex to add, there isn't a lot of new logic needed. The work breaks down to:
- Create the template file
- Add a section to the publish code which does the actual publishing and making of files
- Add tag archive links to the archive page
- Add administration tools for selecting which tags get their own archives
There's obviously more to each step, but that is generally the process.
So, step one. The template is very similar to what I use for the date archives. I just made a few small tweaks and introduced a new template tag for placing the tag name on the page. So the top can say "Posts tagged: [Insert tag]".
Check. Easy.
Step two, adding the section to publishing. This should also be fairly easy, it's basically the same code as I use for date archives. Except... something isn't right. I copied the Dates archive section and went through to modify it. And then when I began testing it wasn't working. I tried to bugfix it for about an hour and couldn't find where my error was. I rolled it back and stopped there for the night.
So, we're on the cusp of adding that functionality to the blog. I'll get back to it tonight, likely. But, not there yet.
| Share to:February 4th, 2025
Excerpt from "They Thought They Were Free"
Book blurb:
First published in 1955, They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Mayer’s book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town which he disguised with the name “Kronenberg.” “These ten men were not men of distinction,” Mayer noted, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis.
An excerpt:
| Share to:But Then It Was Too Late
"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn't make people close to their government to be told that this is a people's government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.
"You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was 'expected to' participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one's energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."
"Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. 'One had no time to think. There was so much going on.'"
"Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your 'little men,' your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?
"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures' that no 'patriotic German' could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.
"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—'Resist the beginnings' and 'Consider the end.' But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.
"Your 'little men,' your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something—but then it was too late."
"Yes," I said.
"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone; you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, 'everyone' is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, 'It's not so bad' or 'You're seeing things' or 'You're an alarmist.'
"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come immediately after the 'German Firm' stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jewish swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.
"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.
"What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or 'adjust' your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know."
I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say.
"I can tell you," my colleague went on, "of a man in Leipzig, a judge. He was not a Nazi, except nominally, but he certainly wasn't an anti-Nazi. He was just—a judge. In '42 or '43, early '43, I think it was, a Jew was tried before him in a case involving, but only incidentally, relations with an 'Aryan' woman. This was 'race injury,' something the Party was especially anxious to punish. In the case at bar, however, the judge had the power to convict the man of a 'nonracial' offense and send him to an ordinary prison for a very long term, thus saving him from Party 'processing' which would have meant concentration camp or, more probably, deportation and death. But the man was innocent of the 'nonracial' charge, in the judge's opinion, and so, as an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party seized the Jew as soon as he left the courtroom."
"And the judge?"
"Yes, the judge. He could not get the case off his conscience—a case, mind you, in which he had acquitted an innocent man. He thought that he should have convicted him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have convicted an innocent man? The thing preyed on him more and more, and he had to talk about it, first to his family, then to his friends, and then to acquaintances. (That's how I heard about it.) After the '44 Putsch they arrested him. After that, I don't know."
I said nothing.
"Once the war began," my colleague continued, "resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was 'defeatism.' You assumed that there were lists of those who would be 'dealt with' later, after the victory. Goebbels was very clever here, too. He continually promised a 'victory orgy' to 'take care of' those who thought that their 'treasonable attitude' had escaped notice. And he meant it; that was not just propaganda. And that was enough to put an end to all uncertainty.
"Once the war began, the government could do anything 'necessary' to win it; so it was with the 'final solution of the Jewish problem,' which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its 'necessities' gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong. And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on Germany's losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it."
Ezee Fiber coming to Washington
I did not have getting fiber in my area on my 2025 bingo card. Hopeful that this happens quick and we can get on it and away from Xfinity.
| Share to:Duke & Ozzie in the Office
The dogs are not normally super eager to come into my office while I'm working. I've had the bed in there but they haven't made use of it regularly. So, yesterday, I resorted to bribery. Working on training Duke, the big dane, to lay down on the bed and get a treat. With him in here, Ozzie also came and made himself comfortable.
| Share to:"40 questions to ask yourself every year"
The questions seen fun and worth doing. I'm going to do this as a retrospective on 2024, and make it something I do as part of the end of each year.
- What did you do this year that you'd never done before?
- Did you keep your new year's resolutions?
- Did anyone close to you give birth?
- Did anyone close to you die?
- What cities/states/countries did you visit?
- What would you like to have next year that you lacked this year?
- What date(s) from this year will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
- What was your biggest achievement of the year?
- What was your biggest failure?
- What other hardships did you face?
- Did you suffer illness or injury?
- What was the best thing you bought?
- Whose behavior merited celebration?
- Whose behavior made you appalled?
- Where did most of your money go?
- What did you get really, really, really excited about?
- What song will always remind you of this year?
- Compared to this time last year, are you: happier or sadder? Thinner or fatter? Richer or poorer?
- What do you wish you'd done more of?
- What do you wish you'd done less of?
- How are you spending the holidays?
- Did you fall in love this year?
- Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
- What was your favorite show?
- What was the best book you read?
- What was your greatest musical discovery of the year?
- What was your favorite film?
- What was your favorite meal?
- What did you want and get?
- What did you want and not get?
- What did you do on your birthday?
- What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
- How would you describe your personal fashion this year?
- What kept you sane?
- Which celebrity/public figure did you admire the most?
- What political issue stirred you the most?
- Who did you miss?
- Who was the best new person you met?
- What valuable life lesson did you learn this year?
- What is a quote that sums up your year?
February 3rd, 2025
"February 2, 2025"
Her historian nature makes this writing entirely too dispassionate and emotionless.
| Share to:Billionaire Elon Musk’s team yesterday took control of the Treasury’s payment system, thus essentially gaining access to the checkbook with which the United States handles about $6 trillion annually and to all the financial information of Americans and American businesses with it. Apparently, it did not stop there.
Augustus Jackson (1808-1852)
Courtesy of my friend Lucas, who in turn got it from a coworker who sends out interesting profiles as part of Black History Month.
| Share to:Ice cream innovator Augustus Jackson was born on April 16, 1808, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He began working at the White House in Washington D.C. when he was just nine years old and worked as a chef there for twenty years, from 1817 until 1837. Jackson cooked for Presidents James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson. His presidential food preparation extended from cooking comfort food for the presidents’ families to preparing formal meals at state dinners for visiting dignitaries.
In 1837, Augustus Jackson left Washington D.C. and returned to his hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he opened his own catering and confectioner business. A savvy businessman, over time Jackson became one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Philadelphia, acquiring his fortune making ice cream. Although ice cream has been around since the 4th century B.C.E. originating from Persia (Iran), Jackson is known for his ice cream making technique and his inventive ice cream recipes.
That innovative ice cream manufacturing technique led to his unprecedented success. Most early ice cream recipes used eggs, but Jackson devised an eggless recipe. He also added salt to the ice, mixing it with his new flavors and cream. The salt made his delicious flavors taste better and lowered the temperature of the ice cream allowing it to be kept colder for a longer time. This helped with packaging and shipping. Jackson’s technique is still used today.
Last night I had a dream that was partial anxiety dream. I was at some sort of event and I needed three types of papers to get through. I feel like they were medical, like my doctor needed to write a note, and then two other things. I had them and then of course as I get to the front of the line I suddenly didn't have them.
It was a weird dream because I wasn't stressed. I was annoyed. I knew, for a fact, that I could just print off my papers again. It just would mean going through the queue line again.
Weird.
| Share to: