Increased air travel for the holiday is a form of national suicide. But on CNN they give a lame version of the story. Trying to find normalcy flying to a big family dinner on Thursday is crazy. #
A friend told me the other day that outliners are not good for planning software development work because they are "linear." I have no idea what that means. For me, the function of an outliner is to let me record ideas and events to flow to different places over time. Flow is the big word. It's the fluidity of the outliner that makes the difference. I think of it as text on rails. Paper and whiteboards are not so flexible because of limited space. Outlines have unlimited space. I can always add a note and the software automatically makes room. And I can move something without erasing it (a weakness of paper). Fluidity. Are outlines linear? Not in any obvious way, to me at least. A linear tool would force everything to be on one line, at one level. The point of an outline is that you can go infinitely deep. The work has structure. A line is unstructured. #As far as I know, no columnist or editorial board has called for the House and Senate to remove Trump before he can do more damage. There is a provision for it in the Constitution. Here's the checklist.#
A big unreported problem in the political universe of the US is that our journalists are: 1. Cloistered. 2. Incurious. 3. Late.#
I'm about to give up on the holiday cards. All the sites are impossible to use. I want to put a picture on the front. A two-word message in front of the picture. Open the card, it says something like Happy Holidays, with my name, and enough room for me to write something. On the back it should not have an ad for the company. It should be just as simple as I've said here. I shouldn't have to figure anything out. Four questions, click Submit to preview. Bing.#
A vivid picture of how ideas flow in our political world: "He spent most of his career as a bit of an outsider to Washington’s social world, his face pressed against the glass. The cool kids, including President Barack Obama, occasionally mocked him behind his back for his cornball earnestness." They're talking about Joe Biden, who is about to become our president. So maybe the idea of people inside and outside isn't serving us so well. I can't believe how long it takes our stupid political system to neutralize a troll. If journalism weren't so walled-off from those of us with our faces "pressed against the glass" we might have avoided a lot of the still-unknown Very quietly Medium is no longer the online place-of-record, which is good, because as a money-losing tech startup they have no obligation to maintain a record. The bad news is that the new incumbent is yet another tech startup. If we want the net to work, we need some institutions that are not-for-profit. archive.org is a good backstop. But the web imho deserves more. #
Must-read article on the stupid coup that's happening right now in the US. The author makes a good point. There is a coup built into the Constitution in the delay between the election and inauguration. Too much time for a president who has been voted out to do damage. Previous presidents have limited the damage because they were goodfellas, and wanted to be seen by history as such. But now we have a mad king who doesn't give a shit what you think.#
Has anyone considered that the Trumps want to delay the transition because the Bidens will then find out that they’ve gutted our government. And that there’s actually no plan for distributing the vaccine. In other words it's a coverup. Hoping some catastrophe comes along that makes it unnecessary to do a transition. Think about how long Trump has stalled the release of his tax returns. #
Trump is like a programmer you're getting ready to fire, who gets wind of it, and starts destroying your servers and backups. I've seen this actually happen. Do you wait for all the I's to get dotted and T's to get crossed, or do you delete his credentials immediately?#