Firstly, let’s dispel the common myth that Texas is entirely populated with gun totin’ trump votin’ rednecks. The thing is that Texas is really big and there are lots of counties that have small populations but still count towards the total vote… however the four biggest cities (Dallas, Houston, Austin, & San Antonio) all voted for Hillary in 2016 as did almost all of the southern counties in Texas. Unfortunately as I mentioned… Texas is really big, and republicans have crammed the big cities into single counties so all they have to do is make it harder to vote in just those counties and Texas swings towards gun totin’ trump votin’ rednecks. Yeehah!

So republicans have been in charge of Texas for quite some time and have consistently done things to make it harder for democrats to change that including gerrymandering. Also, you can vote with gun permit but not a student ID, there is no online voter registration, you must be deputized to register voters, voters under 65 can’t use fear of covid to vote by mail. If you don’t know why all of the above favors republicans then you have not been paying attention. (Hint, it’s about stopping young people and people of color from voting for some unknown reason).

However the most obvious and egregious one happened yesterday.

Our delightfully evil state Governor, Republican Greg Abbot, just issued a proclamation that there can be only 1 ballot collection box per county. So if you’re not a Texas local you’re probably thinking “that sounds OK” … and for all the gun totin’ trump votin’ small population counties that is fine. Many of them only have ~2000 voters so all good. However, due to aforementioned gerrymandering, Travis county contains the entirety of Austin, nearly 1.3 million people. Harris county contains Houston which is 4.7 MILLION PEOPLE FOR ONE BALLOT BOX! To put that number into perspective, 4.7 million people is more people that 25 of the other states have. It’s more people than the 5 smallest US states combined! It’s also ~1770 square miles of land to cover for that 1 ballot box, again this is because of excessive gerrymandering to make sure those blue voting big cities only have a tiny impact on Texas as a whole.

I should point out the number of ballot boxes were already embarrassingly small for those two counties to stop those nasty democrats from actually voting with Travis only having 4 and Harris having 12 but at least they were spread out so everyone could get have one nearish.

So yeah. Trump may win Texas for the same reason he won it in 2016. Cheating. Yay.

For reference, this is a link to the polling results by county in 2016. Most of the blue standalone spots are the big cities.

https://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/texas/

So my music nerds: most of you know the amazing composer John Cage. He’s the guy who has written some amazing works, but is most commonly known for his work 4’22” in which the pianist opens a piano for 4 minutes and 33 seconds then closes it. This is not about that work.

This is about one of his lesser works which has a small celebration this weekend. John Cage wrote a piece called “Organ ²/ASLAP (As Slow As Possible)”. Now the thing about this piece is it specifically did not set any specific time for “as slow as possible” in fact he encouraged flexibility. Many performances of the relatively short piece have run for 20-70 minutes… while some famous performances have stretched 6, 8, and even 12 hours. I know’ it’s weird but awesome.

However the most famous performance is in St Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany and began in 2001 and is planned to run for 639 years finishing in 2640. No it’s not a person playing it obviously but an amazing specially designed instrument.

What’s really cool (cool in the “I’m a massive nerd and I think this is cool” sense) is that this Saturday a single chord that has been playing since 2013 will change. I know, you’re all truly excited and should listen in!

This has been today’s nerd talk.

Much more details about the fascinating instrument, the schedule, other details are available at the main page if you speak German here https://www.aslsp.org/de/ or at the wiki page on when it changes here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_as_Possible

ADVANCE WARNING: This will contain boring pond maintenance stuff, a small lesson in fluid dynamics, and one small animal murder. Feel free to skip.

So both our pumps for filtering and aeration simultaneously failed yesterday which was a bummer. Now submersible pumps that run 24/7 and are magnetic impeller driven (all parts that water can damage are permanently sealed) are awesome things I in general, but in praticality they are a pain in the ass combination of fiddly bits, magnets, and weird spooky fluid dynamics. They also need to ALWAYS be attached to a filter at the intake end because weirdly solid matter like leaves and rocks behave in a way that water doesn’t (I’m so sciency)so getting solids in the water flow tends to be, well, bad.

The pumps usually have only one moving and replaceable part which is the impeller. This is a mini propellor sitting in a semi sealed section which is only accessible by dragging the pump from the bottom of the pond, clearing of the years of built up algae to try and actually find the working screws… opening the only panel bit up and finding out what the hell is going on. It’s messy, unpleasant, and an extraordinarily good reason never to own fishies unless your an idiot. There’s also stuff about non oil based lubricant types to avoid pond infection but it sounds too sexy so I’ll spare you that.

So pump 1 (which drives the bell fountain, the one that creates a fancy bell made of water, was a simple fix. I say simple but I mean forking annoying but let’s keep the polite fiction. Once I did get it out of the water and ungummed it from algae (technical term) there was a large clump of what can only be described as a concentrated mass of leaves, leftover fish food, and no small quantity of fish poop congealed within the pump that had somehow sneaked past the filter and formed what I can only describe as the aquatic equivalent of a fatburg. It was most pleasant but thankfully easily removed with only mild nausea and squickness.

Pump 2 however had deeper issues. I had recently had to replace the tubing betwixt the pump and the filter in a vain attempt to use the word betwixt in a sentence. Also to extend the hose so I could locate the filter in better location. I mean it’s all about the fish feng shui. Now here’s where fluid dynamics some into play. As a non marine engineer I’d not taken into account that adding roughly 4 times the length of host betwixt the filter and pump would basically cause the pump to act like it was sucking a McDonald’s thickshake up a two story long straw (both in the suction needed and the headache at the end). End result, I needed to redo all the work while the fish constantly laughed at and mocked me. Goldfish can be cruel.

So what about the murder? You’ve read this far so you deserve it. Firstly it was NOT a murder of the mocking fish though they deserved it. On finishing my riveting pond repairs it stirred up lots of water when they restarted… and I discovered the tiny lifeless corpse of one of my new mosquito fish (we have 5 in the pond). On closer inspection (I’m a specialty coroner ichthyologist now) I discovered that it had had its belly ripped out by one of the clawed or beaked happy animals living in our backyard. WE HAVE A MURDERER! I shall be investigating the footage and enhancing to see who dunnit. More CSI equipment is not available at this time though the cat is keen to help with the investigations if more corpses show up for some reason.

That’s all for today. Pond life forever!

So following up from a throwaway comment on my discussion about Sally Ride and the first Tampons in space, let’s have a chat about NASA’s “urine collection assembly” and penis size.

So astronauts often can’t remove their space suits and almost no space vehicles are equipped with bathrooms. In fact for the first US man in space, Alan Shepherd, no plans we’re made for peeing as it was to be a 15 minute flight. Unfortunately there were launch delays and eventually mission control gave him permission to relieve himself in his suit. Yes, the first American in space wet himself and went to space drenched in pee. It’s all on public record.

So they figured out something was needed, and thus the “urine collection assembly” was designed. This was a system developed by engineer Donald Rethke (who earned the nickname “Dr Flush” for his work on zero gravity waste management. No I’m not making this up) which consisted of a 1 liter bag to hold the urine, an attachment to secure it to the body, and a condom like sheath with a tube at the end to transport the urine to the bag. The sheath was initially made in 3 sizes of small medium or large.

Of course they were all men and NO ONE wanted to take anything other than a large despite the fact that all the flight doctors were well aware of their measurements and no. Consequently the first tests of the system involved much leakage because men have fragile egos.

Now here’s where the stories become a little fuzzy because everyone acknowledged that the sizes changed names unofficially to make the poor astronauts feel better about their fragile masculinity but there are multiple accounts of what it changed to. Some say “large, extra large, and humongous” and others “extra large, immense, and unbelievable” and there’s other accounts as well. Suffice to say most astronauts ended up with “small” for the much tighter fit *ahem*.

I’m going to note here for no reason that Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon but notably and according to mission logs (no pun intended) Buzz Aldrin was the first to pee there.

I’m not going to go too deep into it today but when Sally Ride flew they had to develop the “Maximum Absorbency Garment”… which yes, was a diaper because women often lack a penis (or a fragile male ego). I’m also not going to discuss the bags taped to the ass for “solid waste removal” and I’ll instead leave it to the imagination.

That’s enough pee for one day. I want to thank the amazing author Mary Robinette Kowal for some of this info as she’s done way more research into waste in space than anyone reasonably should, and also helped me to develop a practical method for a working kitty litter in zero G for a story I’m writing. Go read her books, especially the lady astronaut series.

So let’s talk about the hatch act. This is a law in the USA that very specifically states that public funds should NEVER be used to promote a political party. So basically all public funds (your and my taxes) should be for the people of the USA and not to promote one party over another. Good stuff.

Now the president and Vice President are exempt from this basically because they may make a partisan comment at some time while in the White House (paid for by public funds) or somewhere else where it’s inappropriate. However every member of their staff, all the senior White House executives and all federal employees are covered. They have their first amendment and can say what they like, but can’t do it using public funds which includes doing it on property or using equipment that is paid for by the public. This is a BIG DEAL!

As an aside note, during Obama’s administration he once wanted to make a political call from Air Force One which is paid for by public funds. His staff said no because of the hatch act and they ended up installing at great cost to the DNC convention fund a political line on Air Force one so the hatch act wouldn’t be violated.

So yeah, this current administration has repeatedly violated this law, and that’s bad. It means taxpayer dollars have funded various officials speaking at public funded locations and events, massive political events using public funds. Trump frequently has used public funded announcement events to attack political appoints, they flew mike Pompey to Jerusalem using public funds for flights and security to speak at the RNC, and lastly last nights travesty of politicizing the White House in favor of the Republican Party and holding a massive fireworks display on public property that focused on the trump campaign (and even lit up with “trump 2020” in the fireworks.

Now yes, the president speaking is immune to the hatch act, but every single employee and every dollar spent on that event was a violation.

You may think this is petty and tiny, but right now there are terrifying hurricanes hitting coasts, there is a horrible pandemic happening across the country, we have an unemployment crisis and a financial disaster. Every dollar spent on that event was paid for by taxpayers who trusted the government to use it to help the nation not a political party, and every dollar spent means the RNC saved more money so it could do attack ads later.

So yeah. This is bad. Real bad. And honestly if I’m paying taxes I really want it to go to roads or hurricane relief rather than “trump 2020” fireworks. I don’t know how you feel?

So let’s have a chat about disability in US presidents for no particular reason. Out of the 44 people to hold that office (thanks Grover for throwing off the count) there have been 11 who have identified with some form of disability. And no, the current office holder has not identified as one of them despite rampant speculation.

What? I hear you say. Surely it was only Roosevelt who was in a wheelchair? And if that was your response then you need to re-evaluate your implicit ableism and determination of “disability” as not all are obvious and there have been 11 US presidents with recognized disabilities so far and that should be celebrated.

Let’s go back to George Washington who was known to have a learning disability. He was an awesome speaker and leader but had significant trouble with a learning disability and as such his grammar was notoriously poor. Yes, this is a disability. Ask anyone who suffers the same and see if they don’t feel it impairs them in some way. While I’m at it Thomas Jefferson also had a learning disability.

Then there’s James Madison who had epilepsy, again a disability. Obviously.

Next there’s Abraham Lincoln. What did he have apart from an awesome hat? He had major depression. Yes, that’s a disability as well. Ask anyone suffering from it and see if it doesn’t stop them from functioning occasionally. Honestly, if you don’t think it is then screw you.

Moving to the more modern ones, there’s Theodore Roosevelt who had serious visual impairments due to a detached retina from a blow to the back of his head. Woodrow Wilson who had a learning disability and dyslexia… and then had a stroke in office which caused partial paralysis.

Then of course we had Franklin D Roosevelt who of course suffered from Polio and very successfully ran the country from a wheelchair. It should be noted how few wheelchair pictures there are of him because out of respect the press only published “flattering” photos of him while he was in office which a) imagine that, and b) wheelchairs can be freaking flattering and I would have liked some awareness back them TYVM!

Lastly theres Eisenhower who had a learning disability, Kennedy who had both a learning disability and chronic back pain, Reagan who had hearing impairments, and lastly Clinton who also had/has a hearing impairment and wore hearing aids.

So next time people talk about or insinuate that disabled people are less than, 11 of them have run the USA (I mean not all of them well, but that’s a side issue).

Ok, so I REALLY don’t want to talk about politics at the moment so I’m going to talk about a weird and wonderful obscurity that always fascinates me – Japanese teachers grading marks! Bare with me, this is fun!

Before I start, I’ve never been taught in Japan so I know none of this first hand, but it’s one of those weird rabbit holes that I’ve done a lot of research on because it amused me. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on one of these but make sure you use the correct mark. I’m also using the English words for these marks because I’m not trying to teach you Japanese.

Firstly, teachers in Japan are usually well paid & are very well respected. They’re usually referred to as Sensai which any martial artist knows as teacher but it’s a little more than that as it’s actually an honorific also given to doctors, public officials & other well respected members of society. Teaching is a very sought after profession and the exams to get in are incredibly tough and have a huge fail rate. The teachers also work an average of 11 hours per day and up until 2002 they taught classes 6 days a week (it’s 5 now but there’s more extracurricular stuff) and are heavily involved in extra curricular activities like helping with school clubs, and visiting each students home to have a “get to know you” session with the parents. They’re often also heavily involved in counseling students and administrative work far beyond western teachers.

Additionally teachers in Japan never really stop learning. They’re encouraged and often required to attend courses after hours and in summer to keep up their general knowledge, techniques and other classes. And as of 2009 they’re required to renew their teaching certificate every 10 years with an exam and 30 hours of monitored classes.

I mean I’ve had some great teachers and I have a lot of awesome teacher friends but that’s a lot! There’s way more differences from USA/UK/Australia but that’ll do for this post.

So that’s background. Now I want to talk about grading marks because they’re both weird and awesome and I love them. Anyone who has watched any anime that involves a classroom (like one of my favorites, “assassination classroom”) knows the Japanese mark papers differently but it took me ages to find out what all the marks mean.

To start with, most western countries grade with a check mark for correct and a cross for incorrect. Sometimes things get circled to point out the error. You’d think that part would be the same, yes? Well no. When an answer is correct in Japan it gets circled. For reference a circle is also often the shorthand for “yes”. A cross is still incorrect or “no” but thats rarely used in grading. I should point out for the gamers this is why PlayStation has the O for yes and the X for no. When grading papers, to mark an incorrect answer teachers will use a check mark. I know right!? There’s a lot of reasons given as to why… some say it’s to say “check this answer because it’s wrong”, some say it’s just quicker than making an X, and there’s other theories to do with the character re and other things but the only certain thing is that everyone will tell you for certain which one is true. Anyway, checkmark is bad in Japan. Next time you watch an anime or Japanese movie know that the student with lots of check marks is a bad student.

But wait there’s more and I love these!

There’s the triangle. A triangle beside an answer means “close but not quite” or “try harder”. It’s meant as an encouragement mark to let the student know they’re on the right track even if they fail. I love this one and we should adopt it. Teachers, let me know if you have something similar without writing the words.

Next there’s the double circle (literally a circle inside a circle but sometimes just a spiral). This is for very good\excellent answers that don’t just pass but pass creatively, with extra info, or even just with perfect penmanship. It’s highly sought after so things with variable answers (essays, presentations, reports, projects) often have students go above and beyond to earn one. Showing a double circle to your parents gets you great respect.

Lastly there’s my favorite because in Japan you couldn’t have at least extra special, pretty, and weird one, and thats the circle flower! The circle flower often means perfect or at least the equivalent of “wow, you really blew me away with this one”. It’s both rare and beautiful and students really strive to get these. I’m going to do a rough drawing below but it’s usually a spiral with petals… though sometimes it’s a double circle with petals.

So why do I love these so much? Partially because their weird and amusing, partially because I would have loved to get a “nearly there” every now and then instead of just the pass fail you often get, and an excellent would have been really something to strive for. It’s that extra but of effort that many (and I’m being really clear here… many, not all) teachers in the west don’t bother with, especially since the profession is often disrespected, underpaid, and thought of as a last resort job (if you can’t do, teach) which is terrible and demoralizing so I don’t blame the teachers.

Homework – try and find an excuse to use a circle flower on paperwork in the future. It’ll make me and the world a happier place. 🙂

Today’s history lesson : Being that it’s 100 years old today, let’s talk about the 19th amendment of the US constitution. It was officially ratified by the 34 states it needed to be adopted to law on the 18th of August 1920. This is the amendment that gave to right of some women to vote (more on that later).

Firstly, I’m not going to go into it but actually getting this amendment even written is a long and fascinating story including lots of peaceful and not so peaceful protests, massive and hugely misogynistic smear campaigns against it, prisons, beatings, hunger strikes, forced feeding,… and incredible heroism and persistence by the women’s suffrage movement in general and specifically people like Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Even after it passed in the house and senate It still needed to get ratified by 34 states which is another crazy story involving intrigue and bribery. It’s all fun. Seriously go read a book on it or listen to an excellent podcast. There’s plenty.

Now the text of the 19th is this “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” Which all seems pretty good in general. Women all over the US can vote! Rejoice! However there’s a catch. This only says you can’t be denied based on sex, nothing to do with race, financial situation, or anything else messy like that.

Now you’d think at least white women could vote then, but many were encouraged not to for many years by abusive husbands, threat to jobs, etc… but that didn’t last long. White women still had to fight for several years to be allowed on juries so if they were taken to court it would actually be by a jury of their peers.

And of course minorities were out of luck from the get go. Native Americans weren’t even given citizenship till 1924 and many states still blocked them from voting till 1957. Hispanic voters were mostly blocked in many states through intimidation and poll taxes. National immigration laws prevented Asians from gaining citizenship until 1952.

And of course black American women had the worst of it. They were legally allowed to vote and some could from 1920, but below the Mason-Dixon line most were blocked by intimidation, active blocking by election officials, and often beatings… and of course Poll Taxes actively designed to make voting harder for the poor. It wasn’t until the 24th amendment in 1962 and the voting rights amendment act in 1965 that most women were actually allowed to vote. Of course subsequent massive closures of polling stations in predominantly minority areas by republicans, and the recent attacks on vote by mail and the post office have made some backward progress there.

So everyone can vote now? Nope. There’s the obvious age restrictions, and I can’t vote as a non-citizen… and there’s also the massive breakdown of the voting rights act that allows politicians to close certain voting stations making it impossible for some people to vote. Also voting happens on a workday and there’s often lines so many poorer residents can afford to vote. Also convicted felons even after release can’t vote in many many states. Also and presidential elections are limited to only states, not territories so Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the rest are all out of luck there (they often still do but they’re not counted officially in the totals). Oh, and anyone in Washington DC can’t vote in the house, senate, or for presidential elections so are basically screwed.

So yay for the 19th! It did a few good things at the start, lots more eventually, but there’s still people who miss out on the benefits.

(Note: this is horribly truncated but a quick summary. Go read history, it’s fun!)

So let’s have a quick talk about the awesome US postal service (USPS). Back in 1775 it sort of started (long story go look at history) with Benjamin Franklin as the first postmaster General. It transitioned a little but basically ran smoothly for ages. It’s also one of the few government organizations specifically authorized by the US constitution. They are also the only delivery service to guarantee “last mile delivery” to ALL US addresses no matter how remote, including US territories and overseas military bases (FedEx and UPS use them for this bit sometimes as it’s too expensive for them)… and stamp costs for letters is identical to all those addresses (and can only be raised by congress). Lastly up until 2006 (this will be in a note at the end) it was one of the few government services to actually make money most years, or at least hold even. It’s pretty awesome actually.

Now along comes Trump. On taking office he immediately had several issues with the post office:-

1. He thinks they should be privatized for some unknown reason, which also means that last mile delivery and fixed stamp cost would immediately go away as it’s not efficient or profitable.

2. He thinks they don’t make enough money completely misunderstanding the “service” part of their name, and ignoring the history that they did till they were screwed over by congress (see 2006 “Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act” yes, this is in the note at the end)

3. He thinks Amazon don’t pay enough for their services (which is wrong) because the Washington Post writes mean things about him and his tiny ego is hurt, Jeff Bezos owns Washington Post & Amazon, ergo Amazon is cheating somehow

4. He wants an excuse to stop postal voting because many Democratic states (like California) do it really effectively and he thinks killing the post office will do that.

5. I’m going to put this here despite being false but he also claims that mail in voting is fraudulent despite citing no evidence, the fact that it’s been done successfully since the civil war and all armed forces do it, and Trump and his top admins do it… so this is just a flat out lie.

After whining about it for ages as he does, Trump finally installed his political donor croney, DeJoy, as postmaster general to deal with it. Now DeJoy is not only following Trumps orders, he also has a massive vested interest in the USPS failing. He holds $30 million in stock in XPO which is a postal service contractor that is poised to take over more of the USPS work if it begins to or does fail. He also sold off massive amounts of stock in Amazon as he took office as their stock will suffer from Mail slowdowns.

DeJoy has so far taken the following actions

⁃ fired 3 senior managers immediately in the USPS and has since fired a whole slew more.

⁃ put an immediate stop to all overtime making the mail begin to pile up in sorting rooms and deliveries getting backed up, while simultaneously making Sunday working mandatory in many places.

⁃ He’s required all managers to issue warnings for petty offenses like being 15 seconds late from a lunch break or not wearing USPS approved socks, which are meaningless as nothing is done about them but they slow down the process further.

⁃ He has shut down and in some cases removed sorting machines from 7 major mail sorting centers, many of which handle ballots

⁃ He is systematically removing post boxes from the streets of mostly democratic tickets

⁃ He has instructed workers to sort ballots as a low priority over all other mail

⁃ He has instructed all states that they will no longer get the discounted 20c cost for mailing ballots to people and will instead be required to pay the full 55c

Effectively Trump and DeJoy are very rapidly destroying and dismantling the USPS in the middle of a pandemic when it’s relied upon by millions for paychecks, medicine, and business deliveries all for political gain and financial benefit. I’m sort of pissed off about this and so should you be.

While there’s specific action that could happen, mostly it’s down to removing Trump as him and his republican croneys are blocking any assistance and will likely block any accountability. Go vote to save the post office.

…

So note at the end as promised: Just to clarify on the whole congress screwed them comment… Now for quite some number of years there’s been a mostly Republican “big government is bad!” Movement to privatize the USPS and take it from the government. The first major step on this was in 2006 when the horribly misnamed Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act was passed, which effectively made it so they were required to have retirement money ready to go for ALL employees well before their retirement date, something no company in the US is required to do. They had 10 years to have this roughly 6billion dollars ready and defaulted a few times on it because it’s a stupid amount of money. To be very clear here, the USPS had never failed to pay a retirement package before… the issue was having it all ready to go long before the retirement was due. The post office was doing just fine as a service and better than most then congress screwed them.

So, here’s the thing. I’ve been blogging, posting, mailing, and generally ranting for over 30 years. I’m trying to collect it all in one place rather than random services or privately owned blog services. I’m planning to try and collect everything I’ve written into this one spot, consequently this may be a mess for a while.

I’ve had half hearted blogs before but I’ve never really cared about them. I want to care about this one. this will be the place I write stuff and can be ignored globally. I’m good with that.

If you want to read awesome! If you don’t that’s awesome too. This is stuff I need to get out of me and if zero people read it that’s fine by me.