Voting musings
I appreciate living in a universal vote-by-mail state (Oregon) except for one little problem: the “by mail” part. While I am strongly supportive of the efforts the state makes to get a ballot into the hands of every single voter, the fact that this depends on the US Postal Service increasingly feels like a dangerous dependency in this age of barely-restrained power grabs by the current federal administration. This is especially true given that they’ve already tried to ram through (unconstitutional) federal control of election by USPS rule-making (currently blocked by the courts for the 2026 elections).
We’ve already got a decent network of ballot dropboxes and county clerks’ offices for getting marked ballots back. The real problem is getting blank ballots to the electorate. I don’t know what the answer is here, but I hope the Oregon Secretary of State’s staff is making plans for some alternative way to distribute ballots before the 2028 Presidential elections, which I firmly expect the Republicans to try to steal by any means available.
“Morning Fog”
Tiny webs and fog droplets on some wild grass.
#dailyphoto #oregon #eugeneoregon
TLDR: Countries that should be allies of the USA are getting increasingly fed up with the Trump administration’s bullshit (in this case, over sanctioning the ICC). Good for them.
The Deleted Tweets of the New White House Press Secretary
The new Press Secretary is a blonde woman (central casting, anyone?) with a history of tweeting absurd conspiracy theories, fascist drivel, and right-wing talking points. I’m sure you’re surprised.
Anthropic’s Claude AI submits a false tip on a Philadelphia unsolved homicide case
Once again, because journalists are apparently having a hard time grasping this: Claude AI did no such thing. The human programmers at Anthropic, incentivized by greedy people with shady morals, built a flawed tool with predictable bad results. The most charitable interpretation is that it was a buggy tool. The more sensible interpretation is that this is criminal hacking on a massive scale that should be prosecuted accordingly.
US sanctions global court as judge awarded Nobel Peace Prize
I guess we’re lucky that we didn’t decide to bomb Oslo.
