2024 Presidential Race and Citizen Action Items

We’re betting you weren’t expecting this odd and odious outcome for U.S. president a year ago. It’s 2024 now, and boy does it feel like a snippet out of Orwell. In 2023, Trump was besieged by debts and losing court cases. Some of the malfeasance just boggles the mind: Inciting a failed coup d’etat on January 6, 2021. Campaign fraud. Sexual assault: convicted. Caught on tape bragging about his sexual conquests while married. A sophomoric attempt to subvert the election with fake electors. Emoluments. Attempting to extort Ukraine in exchange for U.S. military aid. We’re also betting you’ve forgotten about that last one. Heck, we’re betting you’ve forgotten about the last three. Can you believe that? Such behavior would’ve sunk any prior president for life.

Clearly the office of the U.S. president has changed permanently. U.S. voters were perceived as moral and judgmental. Nay to that. Instead, they’re selfish, superficial, emotional, and spectacularly inattentive. We’ve discovered that, with the proper slavish following and a lack of clear moral opposition, the voters will ignore a gargantuan slew of damning facts.

Let’s put this clearly. Trump personified the trope that there truly isn’t such a thing as bad publicity, especially in this news-lite era. Bad press beats boring press, and making a splash with regularity, no matter how inelegantly, means you dominate the conversation and suffocate the opposition.

How could Kamala have cut herself a larger slice of the newsmaking pie? For us, the answer lies not in following the Trump path of lies, fear, and hatred, but in carving a fresh trail that makes politics hilarious. The Democrats’ nicey-nicey check-our-facts tepid approach doesn’t work in the clickbait era. You have to grab the headlines by the throat and shake them until the clicks fall out in your favor. Even Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high” ethical line in the sand incorporates an inherent misunderstanding of the dynamic. It’s not good vs. bad; it’s getting heard vs. getting silenced. Nor is it necessary to fight alarmism with alarmism.

What specifically do we think the Democrats need to break the hypnotic spell? Perhaps a snarky tour of Donald Trump’s greatest failures, with Kamala interviewing former business partners, contractors, and Cabinet members? Fireside chats dissecting video of Trump’s ridiculous statements and lies? Three-minute Economics 101 Youtube videos gently explaining to Trump how tariffs work? A ten-minute weekly video bit that compares Red and Blue policies, cohosted by a late-night talk show host and a rotating cast of celebrities and broadcast both online and on TV? That would’ve all been must-see TV. “Concept of a plan” – Trump’s hilariously pathetic debate excuse for still not delivering a Trumpcare medical plan after nine years of promises to do so – should’ve been leveraged to the hilt but wasn’t. What about Kamala talking to people whose lives have been changed by Obamacare? That’s not hard.

Hatred and bile is not in the Democratic playbook, and we support that, but knowing, withering humor is never out of style. The Dems need to dominate the storylines and shame Republicans with their own tactics and ethics.

Watching U.S. politics in future may be a bracing and ugly experience. But it doesn’t all have to be bigotry and fearmongering.

Blaming Your MAGA Moron Neighbors Is Just What They Want

It’s true that we wouldn’t have this U.S. president-elect if not for the millions of witless fools who voted for him. But directing your ire at them is blaming the victims. They’re going to suffer just like the more progressive of us, if not more.

Blaming the political operatives and leaders who augmented and amplified Trump to further their own dubious careers is a start. But follow the money. We blame the corporations who funded the failed January 6 self coup d’etat and continue to throw currency at the problem.

This Presidential Race Was Not Business As Usual

To be fair, Kamala Harris was kneecapped by Biden’s horrific timing. You can’t stage an effective national election campaign and set up a platform in the span of a few months. But we don’t think Biden was the problem. The Democrats’ inability to counter Trump attacks was deeply felt. They were on the defense on a lot of legitimate major issues like immigration and the economy. They had excellent counters to these both – Trump’s record on both is terrible, and Biden guided us through the global economic chaos of the pandemic – but many voters thought they had none. Trump’s bile made headlines while Harris’ pleasantries did not. Against one of the most vulnerable candidates in history, she was additionally crippled because Dems were loath to go on the offensive and seem “too shrewish” or “too Hillary-ish,” a constraint a male presidential candidate wouldn’t have had to entertain.

A unifying thread in this debacle is the smell of business-as-usual. Democrats ran the same tired playbook, following the lead of their experts and campaign managers. They failed to see the bigger problems: Trump was dominating the storylines, they weren’t attacking Trump’s varied and glaring weak spots, and they weren’t resoundingly countering Trump’s ill-founded attacks on key issues. In the followup, Sen. Bernie Sanders lamented, “Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing?” Indeed.

Speaking of common-man suffering: we also feel Biden failed to shame big U.S. corporations into lowering prices and stopping the profiteering. Inflation numbers showed a strong recovery, but prices remained high as companies padded their pockets. As Bernie could tell you, Biden and Harris would’ve won real bankable political loyalty if they’d been willing to step on some wingtip-shod toes, but that opportunity was missed.

We are concerned that, with all the rhetorical tools to defend democracy in their hands, the Dems let the presidency slip away at this pivotal moment. The Republicans have figured out a way to buy the rich and fearmonger the poor at the same time. Shiny Happy People and a campaign based on joy are not going to beat that. The Dems had no counter, even though the right was running one of the weakest candidates in history, a manipulatable man who’s a liar, a bigot, and a loose cannon.

We’re Betting No One Else Is Pointing This Finger

There’s a plethora of finger-pointing right now, from Biden to young males to pollsters. Fine. We think the pundits are missing the bigger picture: journalists and religious leaders.

These two professional groups, especially the churches, have been notably absent in communicating how outre and offensive a Trump presidency will be. They should’ve clearly guided the voters into seeing that this candidacy is not moral or acceptable. Because it’s not. But they were too busy chasing money and clicks to seize the moment.

Newspapers and other media outlets have been running scared in the new media economy as their industry transitions from subscriptions to earning ad money off clicks. Now popular content makes money; factual, difficult content does not. COVID stories did great before the vaccine came out; now updates are hard to find because nobody wants to read about it anymore. Heck, nobody wants to read anymore. They had a massive opportunity here to draw a line in the sand and prove their value by systematically raising the red flag and protesting vehemently against this offense against democracy.

In the old media economy, classic broadcasters like Walter Kronkite wouldn’t have simply narrated as Trump threatened and bloviated his way through the halls of Congress. This is not what you do when you see your rights and those of your friends and family being permanently harmed by a traitor who has demonstrably attacked the nation. But on election night, we watched broadcasters amiably and spinelessly commenting and narrating as they saw damage being done. Let’s put it this way: you don’t entertain at the wedding as your mother remarries the ex-husband who routinely used to beat you bloody.

We’re thinking most journalists would be happy to say to you directly that the 2024 Trump presidency is a joke and that Trump should be in jail, not in the White House. Did they shout it in their writing in a systemic way? Did they make provisions so Harris’ quieter, saner voice got equal time with Trump’s? Mostly, they didn’t. In a world where the country is split down the middle, they’d be giving up half those valuable clicks. But in a world where the country can’t be bothered to read up on their presidential candidates, we rely on journalists to tell us what’s broken.

And churches, ohhh, we reserve special loathing for many churches. We know, separation of church and state (which Republicans do not respect, and is a governmental concept, not a religious one). We know, it’s traditionally uncouth for pastors to speak on politics. What’s also traditional, however, is for churches to lead on ethics, freedom, and the moral continuity of the nation, to point out hypocrisy and untruth, even if it might cause them to lose some in the donation box. In exceptional times, we expect our religious leaders to take exceptional action. See next section.

This U.S. President Is A Joke

Make no mistake: no matter what your political loyalty, Trump is a horrible parody of a national leader. In 2017, he tried to dismantle the country from the White House, appointing saboteurs to lead crucial governmental agencies like the Department of Education, the Post Office, and the National Security Council (none of his appointees to the NSC had any NSC experience). In 2021, he clearly tried to destroy this government by force, inciting a mob to attack the Capital, which had not been attacked by any group since the British during the American Revolution. And now our mewling, cowed political leadership, in exchange for his mercurial support, have aided and abetted him into the top seat again so he can finish the devastation… and most glaringly, so he can protect his own oversized posterior from lawsuits (convicted of 34 felonies thus far, and legally unable to vote in New York state) and debtors. In our opinion, just like Trump himself, a Trump loyalty is simply traitorous and fascistic.

It’s also tacky. Have we ever seen a president so eager to hawk merchandise? He’s pitched Bibles, watches, his own failed university, beans, and a mind-blowing set of crypto EFTs featuring him as a superhero, cowboy, and God knows what else. We’re still trying to gauge how much he owes to Putin, financially and otherwise.

We also think it’s important to emphasize how much contempt Trump has shown for the bedrock of democracy, free and fair elections. Never in American history has anyone done so much documented damage to elections, culminating in a laughable attempt to send in fake electors to erase the 2020 election results. Will every future losing Republican candidate run a post-election “stop the steal” effort? Will every election simply be preamble to months of legal battles and a Supreme Court ruling? Is our electoral college now composed exclusively of nine senior citizens with possibly compromised loyalty to the republic? We dread to find out.

Lastly, it’s only two days after the election, and already we’re getting clear signs that the extremist Project 2025 document, aimed at gutting the existing government staff that is hired, not appointed, and contains the bulk of the government’s institutional knowledge, is fully in play. Gird up, folks. It’s going to be a long four years.

In short, everyone’s for sale, journalists, pastors, newspapers, even the SCOTUS and clearly the POTUS. So who’s minding the story, funny man?

What Are We Betting On Next?

In the deafening vacuum created by the silence of journalists and church leaders, we’ve found some surprising patriots, whom we think all good citizens should take concrete steps to help and support.

Those surprising patriots are at the vanguard of both old and new media. We must celebrate and amplify people like Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Jon Stewart, and John Oliver, who as humble entertainers have been leading the fight when our guardians have failed. And we must do the same for podcasts like This American Life and On the Media. Why? Not because we get a cut (we don’t). Because if you like something and you don’t support it, it dies. Even if it’s free. Especially if it’s free. That’s the way the world works.

Here’s a simple painless cost-free citizen suggestion: go to YouTube right now and subscribe to the LastWeekTonight, Late Night with Stephen Colbert, Daily Show, and Jimmy Kimmel Live channels. Like a few videos. They’re funny and they might soothe your soul a little. These talented folks do an amazing job of making often tedious topics hilarious and crystal-clear.

Side note: it’s ironic that these comedians from late night are entertainers just as much as Fox News is staffed by entertainers and driven by viewership. More and more, as the gatekeepers have fallen and the hoi polloi choose their information, opt-in entertainment is driving our news. The key difference, of course, is that we’re getting sold what we want and not what we need to know. And we think one of the key distinctions between news and entertainment is that we rely on our providers to tell us what we need to know. The other, less serious observation here is that, while conservatives are opting to consume content infused with fear and hatred, liberals choose facts steeped in ironic laughter. We find that refreshing and a stark contrast. We also think these comedians are showing the Democrats how they need to update their stale methods.

And of course, we celebrate and support the principled journalists and religious leaders who’ve raised their voices against American fascism. Patronize them, donate to them, encourage them.

We also would like to point out that Trump and his fellow fascists will be targeting a wide swath of vital non-profits, trying to gut them and put them out of operation. Support the ones you value, because they’re going to need your help to survive in the next four years.

Do you think trolling bad corporations on LinkedIn might make you feel better about this cursed election? You might enjoy the Facebook group Defending Democracy on LinkedIn, which has some hilarious examples and a guide on how to do it yourself.

In short, the Republicans have evolved to appeal to the working class by leveraging racism, fear, and hate. Democrats are not getting the job done with the same old platitudes and fence-sitting. We think snarky humor and facts will never go out of style, but we also think the Democrats need to learn from The Daily Show and others how to make headlines without hatred.

So the next time you’re thinking of buying a good read, watch, or wear, consider instead subscribing to or buying something from one of these new guardians of your personal and political freedoms or some journalist, writer, or pastor who’s proven their worth. We’re betting you’re not subscribing to a newspaper anymore, so you’ve got the spare change. Why not?

Square login public service announcement: it’s broken

Do you login to Square (squareup.com) regularly to do business? Maybe sell items or swipe a credit card using your phone?

Well, their login has been broken for awhile and here’s how.

First off, Square lets you choose to login either with your email or your phone number. WARNING: Your password’s simply not going to work if you try to login with your phone number. I’ve tried it, today in fact. This function is apparently 100% dysfunctional.

Don’t try it because it’ll just tell you you got your password wrong even if you nailed it using a password tool, like I did.

Square’s login email authorization’s broken too

What do you try next? You click that “Forgot password” link and start waiting for that reset email with the annoyingly short lifespan. Guess what? I’m still waiting for mine. I think Square’s login verification mail server is broken or hammered or misconfigured.

It’s just a sign of the times that a major e-commerce component like Squareup.com has such bad UX and security testing. If you use Square, be warned.

Avatar 2’s plot is perhaps the least remarkable of this remarkable award-winning movie’s marvels. What happened in the movie? Here’s a complete refresher. And what made the Avatar 2 plot so porous, from a professional game writer’s point of view?

The Avatar 2 Plot in bullet points:

• Jake Sully, the human-turned-Na’vi-avatar from the first movie, is now raising his four kids (!) with his wife Neytiri in the beautiful wilds of the rich planet Pandora. One of them is Kiri, an adopted daughter somehow birthed from Grace Augustine’s (Sigourney Weaver’s scientist character) comatose avatar (!). They are visited frequently by a orphan human kid named Spider (!) who lives with the human scientists who stayed on the planet after the violent colonizer corporation RDA was defeated by Sully and the natives.
• The above paragraph is just ridiculous, now that I see it written out. They chewed off a lot for a movie franchise that hasn’t been in theatres for 13 years. Sorry, back to the topic.
• Sidenote: Sully, previously wheelchair-bound, is now fully avatar, because the Na’vi used their magic Spirit Tree to move his consciousness permanently into the avatar body, which looks very much like a native Na’vi except for its five-fingered hands. The Na’vi then roasted his human body and turned it into delightfully spicy kabobs. (Just kidding on that last part. Sully’s body did not meet Pandoran FDA standards.)
• The RDA return, seeking to harvest the golden brain juice of the giant intelligent Pandora whales called Tulkun, which grants eternal life to humans (!). With them is the reincarnated human psycho Quaritch (visualize the NRA in human form, complete with buzzcut), who died in the first movie, but has been uploaded into a new Na’vi avatar body. Of course, he’s champing at the bit to kill Sully.
• Quaritch captures Sully’s kids; Sully and Neytiri manage to free them but Quaritch captures Spider, whom he realizes is the human son he sired (!) with some undetermined human victim from the RDA before he died in Avatar 1.
• Knowing Quaritch will keep attacking, the Sully family flees their native jungles and relocates as refugees, joining the reluctant Metkayina clan, a related Na’vi group that lives by the sea and is better adapted for such a life. Sully’s kids clash with the kids of Tonowari, the Metkayina chief, which leads one boy Lo’ak into danger, but he’s saved by Payakan, an outcast Tulkun.
• Quaritch tracks Sully to the Metkayni and starts attacking random villages and Tulkuns to draw Sully out. He captures two Sully kids and Tonowari’s daughter. In a standoff, Sully surrenders to Quaritch to save the kids, but Payakan smashes the RDA warship, unleashing a free-for-all. Sully’s oldest son Neteyam frees the captured kids but is killed by the humans. Spider disables the RDA ship. Lots of fighting; the good guys escape the sinking ship. Spider saves Quaritch from death but rejoins the Sully group.
• There’s an emotional (?) funeral for Neteyam and Team Sully resolves to defeat the RDA.

Wow, there are some whoppers in that Avatar 2 plot. It astonishes me that they were so aggressive after a 13-year hiatus, pushing Sully and Neytiri not just into parenthood but linking them to a brood of five that are very difficult for the writing team to characterize… and for audiences to distinguish, given the inhuman sameness of the Na’vi renderings.

Sully and Neytiri don’t just have one borderline child; they have two. Kiri and Spider are both odd orphans. Kiri is the child of Augustine’s avatar — itself a strange stillborn adult embryo. As you may remember from Avatar 1, Augustine was wounded by Quaritch, and Sully and Neytiri tried to transfer her into her avatar, but instead she died. Somehow in the intervening years that inactive avatar gave birth. Who was her father, and how did this happen?

And Spider, of course, is Quaritch’s human son. Who was his mother? And who’s in charge of the maternity ward on Pandora? Because we have questions! I mean, there wasn’t a single birth in Avatar 1, and we come back and suddenly the cast has doubled in size.

Avatar 2 plot whoppers and whinges:

• Pacing/tonal inconsistencies. Where is Spider during the extended segment when Team Sully goes seaward? Does the movie want to be a National Geographic aquatic spectacular or a Michael Bay blow-em-up? Is there any rhyme or reason to when Sully’s voiceover narration is shoehorned into the narrative?
• Pretty disappointed by the mouse-pulls-thorn-from-lion’s-paw cliche in Lo’ak’s meeting with Payakan.
• The Sully kids drop so many “cuz” and “bro” interjections that I felt nausea.
• I’m a little nostalgic for good ol’ Earth-based cultural appropriation here. If the Na’vi were an Earth culture, at least they’d have to standardize on accents and build on a culture that isn’t so idealized and flagrantly infected with the “noble savage” cliche. Are they supposed to be Hawaiian, Native American, or other? The only thing we’re missing is a discussion of yoga poses, tribal tattoos, and superfoods.
• The filmmakers missed a major opportunity to introduce wonder when we discover that the Tulkun can speak cogently with the Na’vi. This should’ve been a spectacular, magical movie moment. I acknowledge that, due to the timeline, Sully’s probably already had such an experience, but what if Quaritch or one of the other avatars got to bring it to us fresh? Instead it’s just a so-what moment that’s lost in the childish drama. What a sad loss.
• What’s with the kidnap-the-kids plot loop? Quaritch is a terrible kidnapper and incompetent. He should’ve killed the Sully kids twice over.
• Spider is an oddity as well. Not only is he retconned from the comics (!!!) and not present in the first movie, but he’s kind of a comical Na’vi wannabe, made doubly risible by his terrible white-boy dreadlocks (aka wonderbreadlocks). He could’ve been a compelling, conflicted antihero with his connection to both Sully and Quaritch, but instead his choices are merely glossed over.

After three hours in the uncanny valley, I have to say I wish the director James Cameron had applied some of his tech magic to giving us aliens with more distinctive and emotive features. Facial mocap has advanced, sure. The filmmakers are proud to brag about resolution and tracking points in the extra features. But as you can see in the images below, the amount of human emotion lost between the real-life performances and the final product can’t be quantified in pixels. It’s just a tragedy to see how plastic the Na’vi are onscreen.

Don’t let me overlook the spectacular craft and creature design in Avatar 2, though. There are indeed soaring spectacles and inspiring moments here, motivated by heartfelt desires to tell a moving, family-positive, eco-positive message.

However, at the end of the day, Avatar 2’s plot flaws and execution errors deliver a movie that’s more Saturday morning cartoon than cinematic tentpole, despite whatever the box office draw says. Cameron said that he was much more focused on the actors while making this movie, but he’s failed to communicate that emotion on screen. And when up against better competition at the Oscars, Avatar 2 lost in every category except technical execution. Sadly, despite all the excellence on display, that is simply justice served.

Oh wait… don’t forget SNL’s Papyrus sketch if you need a grin.

Quick note: I’m nominating Disco Elysium as the pinnacle of game writing (TM).

If you haven’t played this tremendously heartfelt and involving game, get on it immediately. This game looks superficially like one of those classic “hunt-and-click” adventure games from Lucasarts, but plays like its own tormented, hilarious, luminous revolutionary. And I mean that in all senses of the words.

I dug Planescape, but I’d say 60% of those deep backstories were just window-dressing that didn’t deepen the experience for me. They were nice but totally unnecessary… and never funny.

Elysium is a completely new level of depth. Almost every single character has something interesting to add or connect, or is just flat-out hilarious. When the lady you harass outside the bookstore ends up being connected to the guy from the boardwalk… you know the one… wow. That hit on all kinds of levels. Nothing in Planescape hit me like that.

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Is there no Drafts folder in your Gmail app on Android?

Yeah… me neither.

Google continues to “do no harm” by slopping shovelware out there for us goofs to consume. The latest mind-numbing basic feature that is confounding me is this ridiculous situation with drafts.

If you’re on Android (obscure OS) on a mobile phone (obscure device) using Gmail (obscure mail platform from inept service), and you happen to create a draft of an email (obscure action), good luck finding that draft ever again on mobile, or on PC for that matter.

There’s little coverage and no answers in top search results. Google itself likes to point you to related answers, like how to find your drafts folder on a tablet and how to create a draft email in Outlook.

Your drafts folder is NOT the same on your PC, as well.

IMHO this is a symptom of a tech misery that’s approaching us fast. There’s a dearth of talented coders and tech wizards who can maintain and assess complex, interlinked systems. We see the result in a myriad of ways: links that don’t work, apps that cough and spit out blank screens, crashes, bluescreens. I foresee a near future when AI agents with different agendas are roaming the environment, causing even more chaos and intractible problems. Once we have active dynamic elements on the scene like multiple AI — many of which will be created anonymously or artifacts of programmers and corporations long gone — solving mysterious problems will be a thousand times more difficult than before. I also expect there to be AI agents for good that will patrol environments, fixing bottlenecks and snafus, but I don’t think they’ll outnumber the chaotic, misbehaving ones, nor will they have the access to interlinked systems to fix problems.

Moink whattt? Moink meat is a new delivery service (Moink box) that ships you ethically-sourced beef, pork, salmon, lamb, and chicken. Moink – a farmer-run venture that supports small, family farms – is part of a growing groundswell of consumers who are aware of the grievous, heart-rending ethical failings of the American agribusinesses and is trying to ensure we get food that isn’t sourced in misery.

Meat is big business and the largest sector in American agriculture… and it’s also horrific. Pretty much all of the meat brands you know are drenched in that misery: Smithfield, Tyson, Hormel, Sanderson Farms, Koch. Offenses include inhumane working conditions, crowding animals into hellish warehouses in hellish temperatures, killing them in vicious ways, using dangerous hormones, neglecting animals in diseased conditions, and salting animals with unnecessary antibiotics. Aka undiluted evil that isn’t just soul-crushing but also bad for your health and the planet.

Moink and other services aim to redirect consumers to more ethical sources of these table staples. And for you Texas readers, I’ve found a new source of ethical meat at our favorite supermarket, HEB.

For months, I’ve been buying Applegate Naturals lunchmeat, which are clearly marked as “humanely raised” and antibiotics-free… but also not economical. Their sliced ham, turkey breast, and chicken breast run about $1.21 to $.96 per ounce.

Recently, in the meat section, I discovered an alternative! Frick’s meat products are much cheaper and come in a variety of formats; I like the smoked sliced ham, biscuit ham slices, turkey breast, and braunschweiger sausage, at $.52 to $.23 per ounce. Looking at the Frick’s website, the emphasis is on artisan quality, not on ethical sourcing. In my opinion, they’re burying the lede. If you dig into the FAQ page, though, it clearly says, “Annual Humane Handling Audits are required of our suppliers and reviewed by our Sr. Management. Our suppliers follow the American Meat Institute Guidelines – A Systematic Approach to Animal Welfare, developed by renowned humane handling expert Temple Grandin.”

So there you have it. If you need ethical cruelty-free meat in Texas, look for Frick’s. And if you need to supply a family with ethical meats, check out Moink.

Wanna know how to use Vimeo’s slideshow maker? Interested in a review of this new free feature?

Surprise! You won’t find it here. Well, only a truncated one. Why? Because we don’t recommend it. We tried to use it for a project recently and invested a fair amount of effort, only to discover that it wants you to buy into the pro version if you want to make anything longer than three minutes.

We’re pretty disappointed in Vimeo for making this limitation invisible on their webpage. The page is frothy and very light on details, and there’s very little info on how to use the slideshow maker in a practical way.

They do set you up with a few sample slideshows, though, and it looks pretty nice. Some decent license-free music selections for your soundtrack. Video assets are fine. Fun titling and fonts. Transitions are mysterious, though, and it wants you to set up every new image as a “scene” even though there appears to be the ability to chroma-key out backgrounds and composite multiple images together.

In sum: avoid.