A short trip to San Antonio.

South Louisiana and New Orleans have long lived under the twin guns of flooding from the river and flooding from hurricanes.  Both are getting seriously worse.  A sobering read from Vice.

What It’s Like to Live in a City That’s Slowly Drowning

Climate change is making New Orleans wetter, hotter, and more dangerous. It’s a preview of what might happen to a state near you.

I’m not sure I watched Mr. Rogers Neighborhood as a child.  I remember cartoons and The Three Stooges.  Educational programming wasn’t a thing yet.  I have two sisters, almost a decade younger, though.  I do remember watching Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers at a time when I was probably not their targeted demographic.  Hey, all the better.   I remember enjoying and being even a bit confused by Mister Rogers.  I didnt even appreciate that he voiced all the puppet characters, something that seems obvious to me today.  And I really never followed the plot of the puppet shows.  Even today I can’t remember any of the plotlines though I remember the characters well.  Perhaps it was inscrutable, even to an older child, but it did keep my attention for years.  A good article from the Atlantic on Mr Rogers.

My Friend Mister Rogers

I first met him 21 years ago, and now our relationship is the subject of a new movie. He’s never been more revered—or more misunderstood.

As a person who was illegally “scrubbed” in a Texas national election many year ago, I have made it a point to pay attention to anti-democratic tactics in US politics.  We will see how it goes in Kentucky in 2019.  There seems to be a clear and simple path for the Republican party establishment to overturn an election that they lost.  Will they do it?  Seems like a bad idea all around to me.  Of course this is on top of decades of gerrymandering, questionable funding of elections, and other forms of disenfranchisement.  Oh, Republicans don’t hate democracy.  They like democracy when they win.  The real test is how you feel about democracy when the votes don’t go your way.  From Salon:

Republicans won’t concede: They react to sweeping losses by attacking democracy

Matt Bevin hopes the Kentucky legislature will just appoint him governor: One more sign Republicans hate democracy

Was wondering why that 30 mile wide strip of land called the Oklahoma Panhandle sits between Texas and Colorado.  Like many things in the US it has its history in slavery.  From wiki:

When Texas sought to enter the Union in 1845 as a slave state, federal law in the United States, based on the Missouri Compromise, prohibited slavery north of 36°30′ parallel north. Under the Compromise of 1850, Texas surrendered its lands north of 36°30′ latitude. The 170-mile strip of land, a “neutral strip”, was left with no state or territorial ownership from 1850 until 1890. It was officially called the “Public Land Strip” and was commonly referred to as “No Man’s Land.”

I used Grady Booch’s Ada book back when I was an undergrad.  In this IEEE article from Computing Edge he gives a short overview of the history of Software Engineering, name checking just about everyone who is anyone.  Also found the accompanying video on line.

The History of Software Engineering

Typically interest rates get cut during bad economic times, like a recession.  It is a bit of a mystery to me why interest rates are being cut during a “good” economy.  This is classically a recipe for a bubble, such as the real estate bubble that led to the crash of 2008.  So where is the bubble today? The Conversation says: corporate debt.

Why the Fed has no choice but to keep cutting interest rates – if it wants to avoid a financial crisis

I think the ultimate flaw in liberal democracy is a tolerance of intolerance.  This seems a bit slippery but it isn’t really.  Some things shouldn’t be tolerated, no matter how tolerant you want to be.  A good read that goes down this road starting with John Stuart Mill and freedom on speech and ends with today’s modern fascist strongmen around the world (for lack of a better term).  And yes, it is all about the internet and the breakdown of traditional communication channels.  I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but get ready for some rough road ahead.  And as my Mom used to say: don’t believe everything you read.  From the Boston Review:

What John Stuart Mill Got Wrong about Freedom of Speech

One problem with modern web commerce and social media is anonymity which leaves the door open for fake accounts and scammers.  Most platforms don’t seem to mind since it boosts their numbers and perhaps even revenues.  Sites like Ashley Madison took this to an extreme with something like 99% of it’s (female) users being fakes.  Twitter regularly purges millions of fake accounts.  These are mostly harmless (I have never had a use for Twitter myself) but sometimes it can lead to actual rip offs, with the platform not helping, or even abetting the scammers. A long but good one from Vox on AirBnb.

I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb

While searching for the person who grifted me in Chicago, I discovered just how easy it is for users of the short-term rental platform to get exploited.

From The Atlantic.

The U.S. Only Pretends to Have Free Markets

From plane tickets to cellphone bills, monopoly power costs American consumers billions of dollars a year.