Out and About

In a corner of the Expo hall at PAX West, sandwiched between a local vendor that sells video games and anime merchandise and another vendor selling customizable lightsabers, the Washington Secretary of State's office set up a booth.

Secretary Hobbs himself as there yesterday. There's also a cardboard cutout of him, that, to be honest, shows him appearing somewhat stiff and uncomfortable, with a Captain America shield and Thor's hammer.

Curious, I asked the employees staffing the booth what had prompted them to put in an appearance at a video gaming convention. "This is where the people are," was the answer. It also seems that Secretary Hobbs is something of a geek himself. He certainly seemed to be in his element when I saw him.

The booth had a prize wheel that people could spin to win one of several small prizes that were on the table, like a candy bar, or a cloisonné pin of the department's mascot, Mark the Ballot. (Not the worst pun I've ever heard, but it's in contention...) When I swung by today, I asked if the booth was managing good engagement, and they said that they were. Which is good. While I understand that politicians aren't the most popular people on the face of the Earth, I do appreciate it, and applaud them, for getting out and being seen. I couldn't have told you who the current Secretary of State was, before this weekend. So I'm glad that I came across him.

And if it gets more young people out to vote, they should chalk up a win for that, too.
 

Newsbait

Out of six headlines, four are clearly clickbait, and one is a press release. No wonder the media isn't doing well. News, information about the world, is a poor fit for the attention rat race. And with all of the competition out there from social media sites and other internet-based sources of information, the investments needed to do the job well have poor returns. Subscription models are fine, but that raises the question of returns for the subscribers, especially in situations where one is simply paying for temporary access to the information.

My personal theory is that much of the news is entertaining, rather than informative. Sure, one can learn something from it, but the jury deliberations in the Lindsay Clancy case aren't big news because people can use that information to better their material circumstances. The story has a soap-opera quality about it that can make it an entertaining diversion from other things going on in the world. But so do a lot of other stories. And if they don't, creative, catchy headlines can make them seem as though they do.

And when the main vehicle that pays for news coverage is the advertising that plays alongside, around and sometimes over it, creative and catchy headlines for otherwise banal stories become a matter of survival. And so that's what tends to proliferate.

One More Time?

Posts here on Blogger can have Labels, and I give at least one Label to every post I publish. Some of those Labels I don't use very often, like "Stories" or "Identity." Others are pretty much obsolete; I don't plan to go back to "The Origin of Species" or "The Republic" anytime soon, if ever.

One Label, "Rampant Idiocy," has been retired. I decided that it was more uncharitable than I really wanted to be... calling people out as stupid is demeaning to people I didn't know, and insulting to people who honestly have better things to care about than what some random blogger thinks of them. So, on balance, I'm glad I stopped using it.

But that doesn't mean that there aren't occasions that I want to bring it back...

The House is set to vote as soon as Tuesday on a four-page resolution that "condemns and denounces socialism in all its forms, including the Democratic Socialists of America and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States."

House Democrats fume about GOP's anti-socialism bill

Really? This is what Republicans in Congress think is important? Big picture, I get it. Donald Trump, with no end of assistance from the Republicans in Congress and other offices across the country, has done a bang-up job of tarnishing the Republican brand in the eyes of the public (most importantly, the low-propensity and only marginally partisan voters that Republicans will need to turn out for them) and are hoping that Red-baiting (I note the irony of this) will help rescue their chances of retaining control of the House of Representatives.

Now, had they happened to consult with me at the beginning of the 119th Congress, back at the start of 2025, and asked how to put a stop to the spread of "socialism" in the United States, I would have suggested something simpler: Make Capitalism work for more people.

Maybe it's just me, but if Socialism is honestly gaining ground in the United States of 2026, it's because people are neither convinced nor hopeful that the current "free market" is working for them. And they want to try something different. It's no different than how the nation ended up with Donald Trump being President for a second term, the Biden-Harris administration did so little that people who weren't ardent Democrats could point to that the electorate decided that giving someone who had already shown he didn't give a lick about actually governing another shot was their best option.

And now Republicans in the House of Representatives want a pointless vote simply so they can try to hang it around Democrats' necks come this November. Because this is the best they can do, given their unwillingness to stand up to the President, and their inability to keep their voters in their corner. Making America Great Again, at its very best.

And so I find myself plunked down in front of my keyboard, when I really should be in bed, doing my level best to contain the impulse to dust off "Rampant Idiocy" and allow the part of me that revels in being snarky and snide to run free.

Calling people out as stupid, however, won't solve anything. Speaker Johnson isn't going to read whatever takedown I could come up with, and then pledge to do better by the citizens of this country. He'd simply write me off as a partisan hack, and go back to whatever it is he does on a day-to-day basis. And the people in Louisiana who voted for him would likely think him correct in doing so. Because they don't think the problem is a failure of governance; they, like Republican voters around the nation, are much more likely to think the problem is a bunch of immoral and/or irrational people whose dire economic straits are solely their own doing.

So here we are, with Congress looking to gin up another Red Scare. Because virtue signalling is a less expensive way of getting votes than actually working to solve problems. 

The Less Things Change

When I was growing up, I lived in a distant suburb of Chicago. One of the most distant, actually; out past the city limits and one was considered to have exited Chicagland entirely. It was about 90% White when I lived there, and as a result, I tend to talk like, and have the same interests as, a White guy from the suburbs. This caused something of a problem when I went away to college at a Historically Black College/University (HBCU). For many of my classmates, my accent and hobbies weren't simply artifacts of a life spent out in the boondocks, they were a deliberate repudiation of both them, and being Black.

And this was my introduction to the idea that many people in the United States are quite sensitive to actions, attitudes or lifestyles that can be construed as a rejection of themselves. As time went on, I came to understand that this could be a very sore point for people, even rising to the level of a perceived attack on them; something to be retaliated against. Which brings me to this:

Many locals interviewed by the USA TODAY Network declined to speak publicly, citing concerns about potential political retribution if they were quoted picking one name over the other.
The Gulf of What? Has Trump's name change caught on?

With Freedom Fries 3.0 being the newest thing to hit the new cycle, I decided to check if 2.0 was still in effect. And, as far as Google Search is concerned, it is. And so I came across the USA Today article that I quoted above. While I'm sure that some of the fears of retribution are overblown, that leaves others as perfectly reasonable. Not that seeking to punish someone for going along with President Trump's pretty executive orders comes across as remotely reasonable to me.

But then again, I see the President's executive orders, and people's willingness to take sides on them, as being less important than whether it might rain again tomorrow, or whether traffic will be bad. I certainly don't see it as either a rejection or, or an attack on, myself. Sure, the President has a greater inclination for performative childishness than I might prefer, but he's hardly the only person for whom that is true. And so this can be nothing other than a pointless sideshow, rather than a rationale for sharpening the knives.

While I think I would have been surprised by this turn of events back when I was in college, part of that is due to the fact that I was a young person in college, and just learning about how the broader adult world worked. Now, having been a resident of said world for the past few decades, it's more evident to me that there's nothing new to see here.

And None For All

Much of the public outcry over data-center construction has centered on electricity costs, water consumption and noise. [...] Unions and construction trade groups are now entering the fray from the other side, warning that such actions endanger thousands of building-related jobs.
Blue-Collar Jobs Are the New Flashpoint in Data-Center Fight

People who understand that they will benefit from building datacenters are unhappy with people who understand that they will incur costs from living near datacenters. I think that about sums it up.

And it's a microcosm of the bigger debate over datacenters: Who will benefit, and who will pay the costs? It's a given that it's more profitable to do something when the costs of doing it are shared, but benefits are concentrated. And, as Dario Amodei has pointed out, businesses generally have a poor track record of living up to: "It'll be great! You'll see!"

Construction unions versus communities is a bit different, as it comes across more as a zero-sum game; for one side to get what it wants, the other has to lose out. But it's still the sort of contest of competing interests that boils down to a fundamental disconnect between who benefits from a given set of developments, and who bears the costs for them, with both sides feeling that they're being called upon to subsidize gains for someone else.

And this is a bigger societal problem that's going to have to be addressed: when people feel that they're left holding the bag for benefits that accrue to someone else, they stop supporting initiatives where they're unable to see any tangible, direct, benefits to themselves, even when that creates hardships for others.