Events

I'm taking a day of doing nothing today lest I completely implode. After two 3-hour rehearsals this week, another three next week, and two performances next weekend, I'll need all of Thanksgiving week to catch up on The Crown and Warrior Nun. (Don't snicker at that second one; it's a great show!) Regular posting should resume soon.

First run

The Federal Trade Commission, which has become the de-facto enforcer for Silicon Valley shenanigans, has decided the smell coming from Twitter HQ can no longer be ignored after their top privacy and security people have left: It marked the second time in two days that a federal official has expressed concern about the chaotic developments at the company, coming less than 24 hours after President Biden said Musk’s relationships with other countries deserved scrutiny. The agency said that it was “tracking...

James Fallows wants to put the domestic political press in a time-out: [I]n historic terms, the midterm results under Joe Biden in 2022 are likely to be far better for the incumbent party and its president than for other modern presidents. As Biden would say, it’s a BFD. [But] what has happened appears to be entirely at odds with what the political-reporter cadre — the people whose entire job is predicting and pre-explaining political trends — had been preparing the public for. The Democrats have...

Democrats picked up a US Senate seat in Pennsylvania with Lt Governor John Fetterman defeating charlatan carpetbagger Oz Mehmet handily. And at least one far-right troll, US Rep Lauren Boebert (R-CO), may lose her seat to a challenger.  So far, though, control of the House remains unknown, even as Democrats look likely to hold the Senate. One of the night's biggest losers was the XPOTUS, whose hand-picked candidates—not one of them qualified for office—did worse than expected. Even better, states...

Even with Chicago's 1,642 judges on the ballot ("Shall NERDLY McSNOOD be retained as a circuit court judge in Cook County?"), I still got in and out of my polling place in about 15 minutes. It helped that the various bar associations only gave "not recommended" marks to two of them, which still left 1,640 little "yes" ovals to fill in. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world... Republican pollster Rick Wilson, one of the co-founders of the Lincoln Project, has a head-shaking Twitter thread warning everyone...

I'm running all 538 unit tests in my real job's application right now after updating all the NuGet packages. This is why I like automated testing: if one of the updated packages broke anything, tests will fail, and I can fix the affected code. (So far they've all passed.) This comes after a major demo this morning, and a new feature that will consume the rest of the sprint, which ends next Monday. Oh, and I have two opera rehearsals this week. Plus I have to vote tomorrow, which could take 15 minutes or...