What database would you use to implement a social graph?#

Alt-right is a bullshit name. They wear Trump shirts and hats. These are Republicans. Don't like it? Take your party back.#

"Hold the line until our country gets back to respecting each other."#

So, Arizona is becoming a battleground in the newly rebooted American civil war. Phoenix New Times has a chance to increase its profile. But the site is unusable without an ad blocker. Please clean it up, take the lead. #

Trump has zeroed in on Arizona. Look where he held his first post-Charlottesville rally. He's resurrecting Joe Arpeio. McCain killed the repeal of ObamaCare. Jeff Flake wrote a book condemning Trump. Arizona is going to be a different kind of battleground. The election there is many months away. In the meantime, watch out. He's investing in the alt-Republicans. #

Two fascinating stories this morning, one about how Charlottesville looks from Berlin and how it looks from Israel. Israel sees Trump as a gift, and they want to hold on to him, even if he is a Nazi. Germans are determined to never forget the Holocaust. Israel looks the other way.#

A couple of days ago I tried using Paypal to send money to a friend via her email account. She never got the notification, however I did get a confirmation via email. According to their website, the money has been paid. To who? I tried to use their system to ask what happened to my money. But they keep rejecting the message without explanation. I checked my bank account, and the money has been withdrawn. I tried posting a query to Twitter, it was responded to by @AskPayPal, a verified account. They asked me to send a DM. I did. I have heard nothing back from them. This is unacceptable. Paypal depends on users trusting them. I used their service to send money, it appears to have never gotten there and they won't respond to a query. I could write it off, I could -- but then I also could never use their service again. #

A general note about transmitting money via the net. None of the services I've tried give you any idea up front how the process will work. How will the person be notified? What are the requirements on their end? In one case the person had to have an account at the same bank I was using. That was not said before I sent the money. I once tried sending money via Facebook, figuring they would have worked to get the glitches out. Nope. It took days for the money to clear at the other end, which wasn't overseas, it was California for crying out loud. Sending a gift certificate through Amazon to a relative in the UK was also a bad experience. She had to spend the money at Amazon in the US, which meant shipping costs to the UK would have been huge. They didn't say this up front, or I would have used Amazon UK to give the gift. We've been using the web for commerce for 20 years. These glitches should have been worked out long ago.#

My father wrote a book, his father wrote a manifesto. My maternal grandfather created a company. My uncle designed a new kind of windmill. My great uncle was a novelist, his stories are still read, mostly in German. A cousin on the other side was a great inventor, her legacy died but was resurrected and she's now a hero, famous for her technical creativity. Of course I try to do the same thing, and I'm realizing more and more that it's futile and mostly unnecessary. This is a difference between boys and men. We hope to achieve some kind of immortality through our work. The reality is that after we're done creating, it's all largely useless. The legacy we try to create is never what we actually create. Our ambition is much greater than the accomplishment.#