No small job

Today is Thursday. I can live with that.

The political environment is now officially boring. Hopefully that means less doom scrolling.

Katie Trojano does a taxonomy of potential mayoral candidates. The list just keeps on growing. Meanwhile, Kim Janey prepares to get down to the hard work of actually being (interim) mayor. “I am confident I will be able to do what’s needed to get our residents vaccinated, safely get our children back to school, and help our businesses start to grow so we can achieve an equitable economic recovery for all of Boston.”

If you want to recruit competent coders try hiding the job announcement in the code. Pretty clever.

Inauguration fashions were on display yesterday but Bernie Sanders’ ensemble inspired the most memes. This is my favorite.

And poor Joe Exotic had high hopes for a Trump pardon. It never came. That’s pretty much the last four years in a nutshell.

Rear view mirror

Today is Wednesday. Inauguration Day.

Mina Corpuz has me thinking of pizza. But not just any kind of pizza.

Trump told his supporters to “have a good life,” before getting aboard Air Force One for a flight to Florida. The outgoing president won’t be attending Biden’s inauguration, although he did write him a note. Trump leaves a strong stock market, for what that’s worth. But he also leaves a foreign policy in disarray, surging unemployment, a massive deficit, a dysfunctional federal government, an uncontrolled pandemic, a battered and divisive civic environment and a nation teetering on the verge of civil war. Quite a record. But this country is resilient. Hopefully things will get better now.

Boston’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade is cancelled for the second year in a row.

Joe Biden has a Peloton bike and some people are worried that hackers could use it to spy on presidential workouts.

And the Zune is dead. Long live the Zune.

Any club that would have me as a member

Tuesday. It’s the 37th anniversary of the Apple Lisa.

This just in: The coronavirus is out of control.

Spencer Buell is compiling a list of people who are not running for mayor. Lydia Edwards is on the top of the list, which is a shame. She would be a great mayor.

More videos of the Capitol riots, this time courtesy of Parler’s crappy security.

Tomorrow is moving day at the White House. It’s a logistically complex undertaking that has to be accomplished in a short timeframe. There’s also the matter of transferring the Twitter accounts.

And it’s the anti-doomsday clock. Tick tick.

Friends of our enemies

Today is Monday. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Bitcoin vs. Medical School? Now you can run the numbers.

Earlier in January, Brian Krebs was investigating DDoS-Guard, a “dodgy Russian firm” that maintains the website for Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization. DDoS-Guard also hosts various phishing sites, cybercrime groups and servers for 8chan and QAnon, considered by the FBI as a domestic terror threat. Then the Capitol riots happened, organized to some extent by the QAnon crowd and also by the folks on Parler, which was hosted on Amazon. As part of the backlash, Amazon cut off hosting for Parler, leaving them with no servers. It looks now like Parler is trying to get back online by getting into bed with DDoS-Guard. Fitting, I guess.

Phil Spector has died in prison serving time for murder. He was crazy talented and crazy dangerous.

According to a previously secret settlement agreement, Fox News had a stake in Trump being elected. You wouldn’t know it from their coverage, right?

And Beth Teitell says we can’t concentrate… or something…

Take off your pins

Sunday morning. It’s a birthday for Ben Franklin, Al Capone and Muhammad Ali.

San Francisco is too crowded. Nobody goes there anymore.

This Washington Post video story on the breaching of the Capitol is gripping. The situation was worse than you thought. Other video from Luke Mogelson underscores that. Just wow. Axios has begun a series on how it all started, beginning with election night. And the Wall Street Journal looks at where it will likely end.

Remember that migrant caravan? Apparently it’s still out there, marching around, thousands of miles and two borders away from the US. And with Biden set to be inaugurated this week it’s once again big news at Fox.

Scotland is considering opening a RICO (or, as they call it, an unexplained wealth order) investigation into Trump’s Turnberry golf resort. It seems like they’re arguing about who should initiate it.

And sometimes the wisdom of crowds is pretty stupid.

Rookie mistake

It’s Saturday. Here comes the weekend.

What is the My Pillow guy up to? Nothing good, it seems.

Anyone who has driven around in an unmarked car with lights and siren knows how tempting it is to turn them on when someone cuts you off, just to scare them a little and make a point. But it’s usually a bad idea and most LEOs quickly learn not to do it. This case illustrates why. Rollins showed an amazing lack of judgement in the initial alleged encounter, then on social media and then again later with the TV crew.

We complain about our legislators in Massachusetts but at least we don’t live in Missouri where they’ve taken stupid to a whole new level.

Wikipedia is 20 years old. (There’s a page on Wikipedia on Wikipedia.) Heather Kelly looks at how they’ve managed to make the whole collaborative encyclopedia thing work and Alex Pasternack reconstructs how they covered the assault on the Capitol in real time.

And ice cream for dogs (or actually frozen lard) has been available for a while now. It is not for people. The taste is horrible (I’ve heard). Now Ben and Jerry’s is getting into the game with their own brand of canine ice cream that humans will also find “delicious” as a late night snack. Sorry Fido.

Doomed to repeat

Happy Friday. It’s Martin Luther King Jr.‘s birthday.

Lily Hay Newman provides a very good primer on iPhone security.

To better understand what’s going on today, Danny McDonald takes us back to the 1993 mayoral race. Boston is a much different and, I would say, better place now, but history does tend to repeat itself.

The Axios Bill of Rights. I like it.

It’s an interesting legal question: Who would preside over an impeachment trial in the Senate for an ex-president? Constitutional wording is unclear but I think the ‘relates back’ theory makes the most sense for allowing the Chief Justice to preside. After all, the things Trump will being tried for are things he did while president.

And an electric Mustang? I’m definitely interested. Except it’s not really a Mustang. It’s an electric SUV called a Mustang. Now that’s unfortunate.

Promises made

Thursday morning. I already know what I’m having for lunch.

Secretary of State Bill Galvin wants to use polling places as vaccination centers. Of course someone would have to go on TV to publicize the program.

Looking back on the last four years, the one thing that stands out from all the political noise is the national debt. Trump came into office with a promise to eliminate it within two terms. Instead he increased it by $7.8 trillion. That’s $23,500 of new debt for every American. Sure, the pandemic contributed to the spending but the debt was already out of control even before the first positive test.

In related news, we’re not going to the moon and there’s only been 40 miles of new wall built. Also, Obamacare. Very few politicians accomplish everything they promised on the campaign trail but Trump has made so many outlandish and undelivered promises that it merits note.

Guess a forgotten password and unlock $220 million dollars worth of bitcoin. Guess wrong and it all goes up in smoke. Talk about stress.

And a recent scientific study reveals that marijuana use correlates with junk food consumption. Eureka! Now pass the XXTRA Flamin’ Hot Cheetos®.

Parler games

Wednesday, Jan 13th. It’s the anniversary of the Hawaii Emergency Alert scare.

That Trump tax cut that some workers received before the election was actually a deferral of taxes until after the election. Now it’s time to pay up.

Hacking Parler was not difficult because the site was not very secure. Amateurishly insecure, actually. “This is like a Computer Science 101 bad homework assignment, the kind of stuff that you would do when you’re first learning how web servers work. I wouldn’t even call it a rookie mistake because, as a professional, you would never write something like this,” Kenneth White told Wired. The exfiltrated data is already being used to identify Parler users inside the Capitol during the uprising.

The new Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station came in under budget and ahead of schedule. The reviews are glowing. It looks beautiful in photos. And, it has become a catalyst for other improvements in the area. Nice work!

Business Insider: “The US military will have a larger footprint in the nation’s capital by this weekend than the total number of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.”

And if you ever get a chance to go to Tunis, you should. The food is amazing, even the runny eggs. In the meantime there’s this.

All things to all people

Tuesday. Who could hang a name on you.

Good for Bill Belichick.

Michael Jonas explores the pros and (mostly) cons of a Willie Gross run for mayor. But I wouldn’t underestimate his advantages. A sometimes conservative police chief with high name recognition and deep roots in the Black community, Gross could be in a unique position to pick off voters from across the spectrum.

The Consumer Electronics Show is virtual this year, as expected. Here’s coverage by Cnet, The Verge and the WaPo.

Texas and Louisiana are blanketed in snow. Madrid is digging out from almost two feet. And in Boston? Bare ground and no snow in sight. This is my kind of winter.

And don’t forget to buy those lottery tickets this week. Big money!