The Democratic platform http://scripting.com/2018/08/29/132634.html

Simple and correct. Let’s not mess it up.

After upgrading to 18.04LTS, I’m finding that the Wayland screen compositor is faster and shows much less screen tearing than the new XOrg default. Canonical says XOrg is more stable and feature-rich; maybe true, but it’s visibly worse on my laptop (Lenovo X1 Carbon)

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/the-polarization-contagion/567422/

If this is right, we are screwed. The third branch of the government gets eaten by the same factional disease as the other two have been.

In combination with reading Dan Rather’s post on the wars against the fourth estate, it’s hard to see how we get out from under.

https://www.seattlepi.com/local/politics/article/Beat-the-Seattle-heat-by-going-to-Whidbey-13110958.php

“Savvy staff” at Moonraker Books …

https://memetician.livejournal.com/201202.html

Brilliant. Calculate Arch loads from an inverted model with string and weights.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/scott-lloyd-refugee-resettlement_us_5b58cd0fe4b0fd5c73cb3c1a

Wow. One low level bureaucrat imposing his personal morality on hundreds of innocent kids. Shine the light on the guy.

i just figured out why voting systems tend to devolve into two parties or blocks.  It’s because of simple majority wins: if a group has to have more than fifty percent of the vote to win, it has to be big enough to limit the other guys to less than fifty percent.  If all parties concerned think like that, they’re going to have to coalesce into one of at most two groups.

math.

George Soros Bet Big on Liberal Democracy. Now He Fears He Is Losing. https://nyti.ms/2LpmDKL

I found the last paragraph really moving, where Mr Soros admits to being distressed at how many enemies he seems to have made, and how he wished he had more friends.

I, for one, think he’s a hero. I think Western governments let him down in the 90s, just when their support would have made the difference in Eastern Europe, and he ended up going it alone. I’d be honored to have him as a friend.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/05/a-man-raped-me-another-tried-to-they-were-not-animals-they-were-men

https://westcoastfog.podomatic.com

Full of people I used to know.