chhotii

Vic and I haven't sent in mail to the Town Clerk requesting mail-in ballots. My reason for this is that-- although I am fervently in favor of people having the option to do mail-in voting-- I would rather vote in-person. There's less that could go wrong?

But now I'm planning to do the Election Protection thing on voting day.

Thinking ahead (being obsessed with vote, damnit, these days), I've looked up early voting in my town. I am not clear on why-- if the primary election is Tuesday, September 1-- voting on the previous weekend, August 29 to 30, is not an option. There is only one weekend available for early voting, August 22 to 23. Hmm, that's not the greatest.

Suggestion: Plan early and often how you're going to manage to vote!

The only way for things to recover (either in the short term or the long term, not sure which) is to have pro-democracy people focusing eyes and phone cameras at the places where democracy happens, the polling places.

You know that the only way forward for Trump and his goons is to have shenanigans at the polls. Not sure what form this will take: ICE intimidating voters? Paramilitary bands of thugs (like the January 6th rioters) scaring away voters? Forcing polling places to close? Somehow the R's have to keep the people from expressing their Official Opinion of, oh, the debacle in Iran, for example.

If there aren't election monitors, the election can be a total farce, and numbers will come out making it look like this is what we want: the government that shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the government that imprisons 5 year olds in blue bunny hats, the government that takes non-violent non-offenders into custody using electric shock gloves and imprisons them in warehouses and feeds them wormy food, the government that fired so many clueful public servants that they no longer know how to keep from bombing schools or keep a monument's reflecting pond from turning green. Surely this is not what we want. The American people are usually dubious about having the same party controlling Congress as has been in the White House for the previous 2 years. Is a massive display of incompetence and veniality going to make the people want a continuation of this all the more?

I'm just sputtering here.

Anyway, election monitoring: There's an organization devoted to monitoring for shenanigans at the polls: Election Protection. I have signed up for training on August 20th to be a poll monitor. Apparently, here in Massachusetts, we get a trial run of trying to protect the voting from federal shenanigans, on the date of the primaries (September 1st). This seems odd, because as far as I have heard, the primaries have been going on without shenanigans in other states. But, anyway, some activist organization said in their newsletter that there was some news of plans of the feds doing-- something-- in Massachusetts on the date of our primary.

Thus, I have informed work that I'm taking the day off on September 1st, and I'm planning to get training ASAP and then sign up for a shift. Hopefully I can get some experience with the election observation thing before shit completely and totally hits the fan.

Needless to say-- I encourage anyone who is pro-democracy to look into this: Election Protection

Open to other suggestions for what we should be doing as well.

Work has been keeping me busy and preoccupied all the time. I'm having to learn my way around this very peculiar codebase, and more about IT/cloud deployments/networking than I ever thought I would need to know, and how to work with other developers. The speed at which one can write Java and SQL is no longer an issue; the AI will churn out code while you're getting tea; the question of exactly what code to write takes me a long time to figure out, and that cannot be delegate to the AI. So, busy busy busy all the time trying to get my tickets done.

I will say this about this job, the culture does respect days off. And we had Juneteenth off. So far this weekend there has been kayaking (yay!), dental work (boo!), and Beginning of Summer party (yay!).

The plan for today was to take a look at the camping gear because Baitcon is next weekend. But we are driving to Concord for a brunch soon. So I'm just staying out of the kitchen while others frantically cook. (Thus: hi, DreamWidth!) David may have to inspect the tent on his own and in the worse case scenario (gear-wise) there's an REI in Framingham, roughly on our way when we head west on Friday.

Saturday: As previously mentioned, went to the Ed Markey/Ayanna Pressley signature drive in the morning. It occurred to me that I know a lot of people who would be happy to sign Markey's and/or Pressley's nomination papers. So, at the end of the official event, I traded my clipboard for a fresh one, and went to Coolidge Corner. I bummed around trying to get signatures from strangers; then the Invidisible-ish regular protest started, and I got a bunch of signatures from the protesters, having great conversations with a bunch of them along the way and holding up their protest signs while they signed. There was a Markey campaign staffer posted to Coolidge Corner, also looking for signatures, and we carved up the territory; I hit up the protesters for signatures, because I'm a familiar face to them, and he hit up the random pedestrians passing through.

Sunday: Went to Somerville to get signatures from people who are Markey and Pressley constituents. Visited with Anne and Charles, and Anne, Charles, and Benjamin were happy to sign; visited with JB, who was happy to sign, and Kimberly happened to be there too! Visited with Mieke, and then Beth K. when she got out of the festival meeting, and Mieke filled me in on all the recent Firefly shenanigans. Really fun to visit with folks! And didn't just get signatures from friends. I bummed around T stops and the bike path and Davis Square asking strangers (much more bravery required). After filling up a sheet for Somerville for each of Markey and Pressley, I went to the Porter Square shopping center to find a campaign staffer to exchange for fresh papers. It was the same staffer that I had run into in Coolidge Corner the day before! He must think I'm everywhere.

Monday: The local old lady activists invited representatives of College Democrats from a couple of local universities to the church for the evening, and we had a great meeting talking strategy across the generational divide.

Tuesday: After work drove to the southern edge of town to participate in a Signs of Fascism protest. Felt very energized after doing political activism 4 days in a row!

Wednesday: In the evening, attended... one of those webinars. Won't name the organization; I don't think any less of them. One of those big activist organizations and big meetings. They showed a slide deck about No Kings, etc., talked about the mythic 3.5%, etc. These things wind up being very formulaic and one-way; for fear of zoom-bombing, they don't allow input from the participants other than in chat. Understandable, but, like, if I'm a passive spectator, there's better entertainment, and denser sources of knowledge about what to do about it all.

...would be to sign a nomination paper to get Ed Markey on the ballot for re-election to the Senate. Markey is passionately pro-democracy (gave a great speech at No Kings 3) and a visionary on many other issues. He holds the record for the most anti-Trump-appointee votes in the Senate. Signing the paper is just to get him on the ballot; one can sign this and still ponder until May 5th about whether you want to vote for him or the opportunist who's primarying (sp.?) him.

If you live in or near Somerville, I plan to be in your neck of the woods, looking for your signature tomorrow. You're eligible to sign if you're registered to vote and not as a Republican.

Oh, and Ayanna Pressley too! I also have nomination papers to sign for Ayanna, that force of nature in the House.

Scary AI prediction of 2025: We fail to solve the alignment problem.

Scary AI prediction of 2026: Alignment problem is solved: AI is aligned with Sam Altman's interests.

Recommended reading: https://medium.com/@profgalloway/the-resistance-comes-for-openai-5150e0a8223d

Here's the cutie:

It appears to me that the IRMC process is not working out well as a way to memoize staffing decisions.

Recent article in the WaPo sums up worst-case scenario fears regarding Trump. Everyone who said "oh, he won't be that bad" or "we will get through this" or "this will blow over" or "whew, he lost, crisis over" or, the worst, "so what, all politicians suck, don't they? (ugh, Biden)", I would like to bite. Hard. And not in an affectionate way.