Trump has hit the basement of his support now — and he's never going to lose these supporters
For the people who still support Trump today, no revelation or action will cause them to give up on him.
Based on what we know so far, it seems likely that Trump engaged in vile, depraved sexual practices. His business was a massive money-laundering operation. He openly and nakedly accepts bribes in staggering volumes. He falls asleep in meetings and demonstrates mental incompetence.
And yet Trump’s approval rating stands at 40%. Two fifths of America voters look at Trump and think that he’s their boy!
If the Republicans are soundly defeated this year — and pray that happens! — the people who support Trump today will continue supporting him for decades and believe that he was betrayed.
The game now is to activate the apathetic voters, the people who believe that Democrats are no better than Trump, and that there’s nothing we can do to make things better. That’s the Democrats' job, and the Democrats have been shit at it so far (which a few exceptions — hi, Zohran Mamdani!).
An important update on my earlier “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” take: I am informed by car-guy friends that Citroëns were sold in the United States until 1975, so it is perfectly plausible that Giles would have been driving a decrepit Citroën 25 years later.
Experimental replication shows knives manufactured from frozen human feces do not work. In case you wondered about that.
We did not watch the new Star Trek last night, because we watched The Pitt instead. I plan to watch the new Trek tonight. I’m not the only one making that decision, but I expect Julie will agree.
I hated the previews of the new Trek and planned to stay clear, but the consensus online seems to be that, yeah, the previews are dreadful but the show is good-to-great.
As for The Pitt — I’m still having feelings about that.
Do you know the secrets hidden inside your AI models? Enterprises and telcos face security risks from AI models and cloud infrastructure controlled by rival geopolitical powers, says F5 executive Chuck Herrin. My latest on Fierce Network.
Julie and I were mega “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” fans. We tried a rewatch recently and one thing that jumped out at me was that the show is set in SoCal and Giles wears tweed and sweaters ALL THE TIME, which is ridiculous. Maybe 20% of the days in the year here are cool enough for tweed.
Also, Giles initially drives a decrepit 1963 Citroën, to comedically illustrate his nature as an impoverished eccentric English academic. But how did he get a Citroën on the U.S.? Did he have it shipped from England? Where does a high school librarian get that kind of money?
I know a surprising amount about men’s style for someone who goes around wearing cargo pants and food-stained T-shirts 97% of the time.
I’m looking for recommendations for a good spam-blocker for text messages that works across the iPhone, iPad and Mac. In addition to general spam-blocking, I want to block all messages containing a specific string of text — I get a lot of spam messages from Democrats seeking political donations, and virtually all of them have links to actblue.
When Julie is out of town and I’m at home, I rewatch the tv show MASH. It holds up pretty well, although I wish there was some way to watch on streaming without a laugh track. You can find MASH without the laugh track on DVDs, but I don’t want to go to the hassle and expense.
I am amazed that for much of my life we watched comedies with a laugh track. I have lost the skill to tune the laugh track out.
I started traveling for business 37 years ago and during that time electronics has of course gotten exponentially lighter and more powerful. So why has my day bag gotten heavier? Am I carrying anvils around?
The refrigerator repair guys have come and gone and it turns out they did not have all the parts needed to repair the refrigerator after all! They replaced the compressor and motherboard, plugged it in and sparks flew, which is (they explained to Julie, who explained it to me) bad.
Recapping: This morning our main refrigerator was not working. Now it’s not working and there’s solder powder all over the kitchen, which Julie, bless her, is cleaning up.
Boston startup IO River seeks CDN shakeup. The Beantown business provides a vendor-neutral platform that orchestrates multiple edge networks to eliminate vendor lock-in and boost reliability. My latest on Fierce Network.
I'm reading a paper book for the first time in 16 years
I switched to ebooks-only in 2010, when the Kindle app for iPad came out.
However, yesterday I decided I wanted to reread “Funny Papers,” by Tom De Haven (I discussed that here yesterday) and I could not find an ebook version of the novel. I do have a paperback copy at home so now I’m rereading that.
I like it. I can’t say I have any interesting new insights about ebooks vs. paper, but maybe I will after I’ve read more of the book.
Last night, when I was reading in bed, Julie said, “Oh, wow, the sound of a turning page. We haven’t heard that in a while.” Julie reads ebooks too, when she reads books — lately she’s been doing crossword puzzles.
Since I made the switch to ebooks, society’s views toward digital vs. analog has changed, and we’re rediscovering the benefits of analog technology. But I like ebooks. I like my Kobo.
One of my main reasons for switching to ebooks is that paper books take up so. much. space. That hasn’t changed.
Exciting refrigerator news
We are scheduled to get our fourth visit from a refrigerator repair guy this morning, and this time they plan to actually bring the part they need to repair the fridge. The fridge broke down Nov. 30 — we bought a smaller fridge after about 10 days when we could see this was going to go on for a while and I was feeling like I was getting too close of a personal relationship with the guys at the liquor store where I was buying ice. I am grateful to the missus for many things but particularly for working with the buffoons at the refrigerator repair company on this, and also for shopping for and buying the Emergency Auxiliary Backup Refrigerator.