Notices by Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social), page 8

Parallels with 1968 are obvious: the incumbent president bows out, ahead of a party convention in Chicago. But the way the party has quickly lined up behind Harris suggests the DNC is avoiding the chaos that characterized that year.

Captured with a Sinar P camera. a 240mm/5.6 APO Symmar lens, and a BetterLight scanning digital back.

This is a minimalist studio still life, so it's all about lighting and geometry.

Illuminated by a single hard light placed at the left of the frame, yielding well defined shadows. The background was a white sweep table, creating the illusion of an infinite background. The fruit looks evenly spaced, but actually the rear one had to be much farther back than the center one to create that effect.

Three Persimmons, 2008.

Very ripe pixels at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/2207576183

#photography

Politicics aside, I hope Biden is OK, and that he lives long to see himself celebrated for setting aside his personal ambitions for a greater good. It must have been very difficult for him.

Biden withdrew after lunch today and by the time I finished dinner the party was already lining up behind a viable successor on the ticket.

Are we sure this is the Democrats we're talking about?

Politically, Biden's dropping out creates all sorts of uncertainty.

Procedurally, however, what happens how is extremely clear: The DNC will use its convention to officially designate its nominees for president and vice president, and those people will appear on the ballot in all 50 states, DC, and territories.

An authoritative summary of state ballot access laws can be found at https://www.nass.org/sites/default/files/reports/summary-ballot-access-laws-president-june-2024.pdf

It would have been much more complicated if this had occurred after the convention.

Theodore Roosevelt, seeking to return to the White House in 1912, was shot in the chest by a would-be assassin during a campaign speech. He indicated that he was fine, insisted that the shooter not be harmed, and then, with blood running down his shirt, continued his speech for almost an hour before finally seeking medical attention, where X-rays found a bullet lodged in his chest.

Despite this rather badass performance, he was nonetheless defeated in the election.

Today's stressful thing I can do nothing about was a welcome break from the rest of the week's stressful thing I can do nothing about.

Today has to be an absolutely MISERABLE day for anyone working in customer service at a company affected by the Crowdstrike debacle. Remember to be kind.

I was recently at an interdisciplinary meeting (heavily skewed toward, but not exclusively, social science academics) in which easily 85% of the people there said they were working on AI or something related.

The current AI/LLM/AGI/whatever mania seems to have metastasized even more broadly than blockchain did. There are interesting and important problems there, but it seems to have become an intellectual black hole across the academy.

What I find particularly interesting/disturbing is that he percentage of people working on/near AI seems to be higher among people OUTSIDE CS than in it.

My own experience: When I've worked in groups charged with deliberately considering diversity as part of some some decision-making process (or in forming the group in the first place), I've always felt the result has been more thoughtful, of higher quality, and led to more confidence in the outcome than it otherwise would have. Every single time.

Diversity has value. Racists want you to apologize for it or back down from it, but they're not just being hateful, they're weakening institutions.

It's incredibly telling that that the right gets away with instantaneously, reflexively - and utterly baselessly - blaming just about every bad thing that happens in the US on "DEI". They did it with the Baltimore bridge collapse. They did it with Boeing airplanes. Now they're doing it with a mass shooting (where it was literally a white guy who pulled the trigger).

They've elevated racism to a ritualistic article of faith.

You could replace "DEI" with "space aliens" and it would make just as much sense. Yet it just gets shrugged off.

Probably the most naked example of the way "DEI" has become an all-purpose racist slur is in referring to Harris as the "DEI Vice President". VP is an *elected office*. She was voted in on the ticket, by, you know, the voters. She wasn't snuck into the job. She was elected to it.

When they say "DEI", they don't mean affirmative action. They mean anyone other than white guys having any kind of power or responsibility, no matter how competent and deserving.

I feel strongly that Donald Trump should neither be elected president nor shot.

Someone in AT&T public relations is breathing a giant sigh of relief right now.

@vgarzareyna Some bad news about AT&T broke yesterday, but was just overshadowed by a larger unrelated news story

Breaking: Secret Service logs show seven visits to White House by an arborist in the last six months. Our expert analyst concludes this means Biden likely has Dutch Elm Disease.

A reminder in this weather: A nice thing to do for delivery drivers (in addition to a tip, where appropriate) is to give or leave them a bottle or two of cold water. They often don't have time to pick up supplies or make personal stops.

My UPS guy was so appreciative (and surprised) that I swear he'd take a bullet for me now.