It is Election Day today in New Jersey. Everyone in my family voted early, by mail (as it should be), so there’s nothing to do but wait until evening when the results start rolling in. I’m hoping that Phil Murphy wins re-election, and that we don’t have a repeat of the 2009 gubernatorial race. The year after Obama won the White House, Republican Chris Christie was voted in as our governor. His disdain of funding schools and infrastructure set our state back for his entire tenure. I’m not ready to go through that again.

Barbara Sprunt reports for NPR today:

Sen. Joe Manchin has announced he cannot yet support the $1.75 trillion framework for President Biden’s social spending package that congressional Democrats were hoping to push through this week.

“I will not support a bill that is this consequential without thoroughly understanding the impact that it will have on our national debt, our economy and, most importantly, all of our American people," the West Virginia Democrat said in a statement Monday afternoon.

I feel like she could have written this article any day this year, since Joe Biden was inaugurated. Sen. Joe Manchin is destined to be the Joe Lieberman of 2021. Like Lieberman, who killed the ACA’s “public option” to protect his insurance company donors in Connecticut, Manchin will be responsible for neutering the most impactful legislation since the ACA, all because of a price tag that is (1) going to be spread out over a decade; (2) will represent a tiny percentage of GDP over that period; and (3) has been cut in half since this spring. Point 1 is just the standard Republican talking points about any kind of spending that isn’t a tax cut.

This rigamarole has gone so long that I don’t think the Democrats can reach him with any kind of progressive legislation. It is dangerous to anger him too much over this, too, because he could flip parties, and then the Democrats would lose the Senate. Overall, he is an untrustworthy person to negotiate with. As for the similarly “centrist” Kyrsten Sinema, she is at a whole other level of incomprehensibility, and could still be a spoiler to the Democrats even if Manchin eventually agrees to some bill. Neither one of them are fighting for anything of value for their constituents. I would be surprised if they remain in office after their next elections, no matter what they do from this point forward. It’s hyperbole, of course, but I want to say: “Never has so much been lost for so little gain.”

I carved a happy jack o’lantern this Halloween.

Double chocolate cupcakes for Halloween.

🎃 Lots to do today for Halloween! We’re making cupcakes (my kids can’t eat much candy due to allergies), chili, and cornbread for a family party, and we’re trick-or-treating, too.

In America, we could all unite politically, but only if we all decided to be Republicans. That is what happened, briefly, after 9/11. It could never have gone the other way; there is no way we could all put down our differences and become Democrats for a while. That is by design. For as long as I have been alive, Republicans have defined what Democrats are. To them, Democrats are many horrible things, but they are primarily unpatriotic, ineffectual, and toxic. (To be honest, there are also racist and homophobic stereotypes thrown in, too.) Many Republicans would gladly vote for a dog over a Democrat, mainly because right-wing messaging has tarnished the party label completely and relentlessly in a large portion of the country for decades.

I have been a Democrat all my life. Even I find it incredibly hard to define what a Democrat is without relying on terms and caricatures invented my Republicans. I don’t think most people understand that they have the same blind spot. I see it all the time in news articles, opinion essays, blog posts and tweets. I see most people using the language of Republicans defining what Democrats are. I see some people who are disheartened with Republican politicians or policies refuse on principle to see Democrats as sensible alternatives. I want to say to those authors: You don’t really know what a Democrat is because it has been defined by the opposing party for its own benefit.

I think Democrats—even most Democratic politicians—believe in their own bad press, too, because it has been so pervasive over my lifetime that it is part of American culture and ideology. I want to say to these people: You are not how others perceive you; you are what you do.

A vaccination, blood test, and an MRI all in one 24-hour period was too much for me. 😮‍💨

Today I watched some videos from Great Art Explained on YouTube. The videos on Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, Hokusai’s The Great Wave, and Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights are fascinating. Watching them have me some serious flashbacks to my art history class in college.

I just got my Moderna booster shot. They are in such demand that CVS called me and asked me to come in three hours early to get it.

I have completed the New York Times crossword puzzle every day for years, but for some reason I stopped about a month ago. I have been having trouble getting back into it, too. Too many lousy puzzles turned me off.

🎵 I listened to Lana Del Ray’s new album, Blue Banisters today, plus a new single by Beach Bunny, and enjoyed them very much. Adele’s new album is coming out soon, and I am really looking forward to it, too.

One thing I certainly do not believe in is the divine right of kings. When considering why this is, I originally thought it was because I am American, and come from a country whose founders rejected the monarchy. But that can’t be it. Americans love monarchies, especially the British one. I realized that my feelings about it go deeper, and distract from my enjoyment of the fairy tale movies and stories my kids consume, which very frequently include princes and princesses whose right to wealth and power is never questioned.

People can accrue power in various ways: being strong, wise, skillful, or charismatic are just a few. However, I think that there is limit to how much power these positive traits would give a person. They could lead a clan, but not a kingdom. To exert power over a kingdom requires ruthlessness, egoism, and violence.

I believe that, at the dawn of history and before, ancient kings and pharaohs accrued their power over others through conquest. They didn’t earn their land. They took it. They didn’t earn their wealth. They stole it. They didn’t earn the subservience of their followers. They forced it.

This line of thought leads me to believe that all modern nations could trace themselves back to powerful people who stole their wealth from others. Furthermore, they used their power to invent religions and rules of thumb—such as hereditary monarchy and the divine right of kings—to justify and perpetuate their position at the top of society.

To this day, these ideas still have appeal and currency. We don’t question them, even those of us who live in democratic republics. To believe someone is a prince, you have to believe in princes.

I don’t believe in princes anymore. Nor kings, nor queens, nor princesses. These are just people who, by chance of birth, benefitted from ancient theft and conquest, and perpetuate the myth that they deserve it.

The latest controversy in my area is another type of fight between conservative parent activist groups and school boards. This time it is not about mask requirements, but about sex education. Two things specifically rile the shouting class this time: (1) Masturbation exists, and (2) so do LGBTQ+ people.

Apparently, there are enough prudes out there to give the school superintendents hell about teaching about masturbation in schools (grade 3-5 specifically, in my case). I’m not talking about teaching how to masturbate, or about teaching that masturbation is a normal, natural thing for people to do, or even teaching that mutual masturbation can be an alternative to sexual intercourse that is far less likely to lead to pregnancy. I’m talking about even saying the word masturbation or writing it down.

The elementary school superintendent emailed everybody in town to clarify that masturbation is not included in my town’s 3rd-to-5th grade sex-ed at all, and proved it by excerpting parts of the curriculum. So all the bother over it, in my town at least, was just noise created by busybodies and crackpots. It is embarrassing to me that sex-ed can’t cover the one thing that the kids, by fifth grade, are probably already doing, and at least tell them it is OK. Instead, they will learn—from each other mostly—to feel ashamed about it.

LBGTQ+ material is also not part of the curriculum, which is terrible. LGBTQ+ people exist, which is not contingent on whether certain parents or people don’t like it or approve of it. Some of the students in every school are LGBTQ+, and they deserve to learn that they are not alone, not weird, have resources available to them if they need them, and deserve to be treated with respect. There was so much homophobia when I came of age (the late 1980s) that, if I had thought I was gay, it would have been devestating to me. And, at the time, I thought of myself as very progressive about homosexuality—I figured out myself that homosexuals must be born that way. If I came of age and discovered that I was gay, bi, or whatever, I would have needed some support from grown-ups and authority figures, and probably would have had no better place to get it than from school.

I would agree that grade 3 is too early to broach these topic and that grade 4 may be too early for most kids. However, grade 5 is the latest that these topics should be introduced, because that is when most of the kids will need help understanding them. Sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity are all things that teens and adults have to deal with all the time. To sweep some of it under the rug because prudish or religious people think they are improper just underserves our kids and perpetuates the persecution of non-cis, non-straight people.

You could argue that sex education should be handled at home, by parents, and that schools should keep out of it, or only focus on its biological aspects. That may sound reasonable, but it really isn’t. While I agree that parents should educate their children about sex—like my wife and I will—to arm them with information and to help them through puberty without developing unnecessary shame or body horror. The thing is, a lot of parents don’t—and those are the ones who are most vocal right now. We should not let them dictate how much or how little will be taught to all of our kids about the facts of life.

I have been working all evening on my InsurTech presentation and totally blew through my self-imposed blogging deadline. No worries. My mind was engaged and my time was well spent.

I mailed in my request for a mail-in ballot for all future elections. (My state has an off-year election cycle for state-wide offices, so this is timely.) I did not do so before because I had thought it would be better to take my kids to the polls to show how voting works. I realized that I can also do that from home. Really, we should all be voting by mail. It would expand the franchise, and give us more time to consider the down-ballot candidates, like school board members, who are not covered by the media and can have a direct affect on our lives in ways that governors and presidents cannot.

My daughter’s iPad wont take system updates because over a third of its storage space is taken up by “Other”, which I cannot delete. Hooking it up to my Mac and doing the update from the Finder is working a treat. Who knew?

🎮 I have been loving the new Metroid game and it has been kicking my ass. 😂 It is the toughest and most fun game I’ve played since Hades and Hollow Knight.

I was so tired this afternoon that i couldn’t talk good (er…) and stuff at my last meeting today. Thankfully it was not a meeting with a client. 😅

💉💪 I scheduled my COVID-19 booster shot appointment. I hope to be able to vaccinate my kids soon, too.

I have thought so many Big Thoughts about the InsurTech presentation I am working on that I have come full circle. I realized today that what I have built thus far contains pretty much the same information and ideas as my prior presentations on the topic, going back four or five years.

I think my current presentations slides and speaker notes are much better, and that the talk will be have better focus and clarity, but I am surprised at how much I want to say seems to be recycled from what I already had thought about the topic.

I started off trying to say something new. I hope that saying something old, but saying it better, counts for more than I think.

I spent some time today trying to set up my new Retro handheld gaming system. I flashed ArkOS on it and copied some games over. I had to find YouTube videos to help me configure it correctly. I hope to figure it out well enough to give the cool, inexpensive handhelds to my kids someday.

This video from University of California Television hit close to home (literally) for me:

Follow a team of UCLA anthropologists as they venture into the stuffed-to-capacity homes of dual income, middle-class American families in order to truly understand the food, toys, and clutter…

Watching this video was like watching a newsmagazine segment about my own house.

My house is a mess, my kids won’t pick up their toys and have taken over the entire house, and I spend so much tome tidying the same few messes every day that I can’t seem to move forward on any projects that would actually make my home better.

It turns out that I am not alone, and that the problems I have with my living space are uniquely American and uniquely modern. My wife and I are trying to crack this problem, and talked about it at length tonight. We are going to try a couple new things to crack it, though I am not sure they will work.

Today’s new MacBook Pro models are the first in a very long time that seem too “pro” for me. Their processor specs make my M1 Mac mini—which is fantastic—seem pretty pathetic by comparison. I’m not in the market for a new machine, but I look forward to reading the reviews.

After a long time it feels great to be a Mac user again, because there are really good products up and down the line.

I was very excited early this month for the release of Metroid Dread so I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube of gamers playing through classic Metroid games. Eventually the YouTube algorithm led me to learn about retro handheld devices. These are emulators that can play games from many older systems. I quickly got obsessed with them and ordered one, an Anbernic RG351MP, despite my history of not really liking many of the classic games available on my Nintendo Switch. So, it may be a waste of money, or something I can eventually give to one of my kids, or it will be something I really love. I am looking forward to setting it up, tweaking its firmware, and playing some classic games.

I have been diligently working on my InsurTech webinar slide deck this evening. I was so locked in the zone that I forgot about everything else for the last four hours. I completed 20 slides, which is probably about half of the slides I will end up creating entirely. My presentation team partners will be creating the rest.

I don’t have enough time to make my slides look perfect, which is unfortunate. While I have one good visual that I build up throughout the section, most of the images on my slides are just floating out there next to my text, instead of being full-bleed across the slide or otherwise better integrated with my ideas. At least I am using whitespace instead of bullets.