Meet the new boss

Monday, right? The word of the day is mimesis.

The Boston business community, which was initially suspicious of Marty Walsh’s labor origins, now gives him high marks. The next mayor may not be so business-friendly.

Speaking of the next mayor, Willie Gross is considering throwing his hat into the ring. He’s been thinking about it for some time but with Walsh leaving he can now say it out loud. Gross would have to resign as police commissioner or take a leave of absence to run. Mickey Roache, a popular police commissioner in the nineties, did that. He came in 7th in the preliminary election.

Will we look back on the pandemic as the beginning of a revolution in medicine? Some scientists think so.

Parler is being cut out at every level. They’re crying fowl, framing it a a suppression of free speech. Its not. It’s more like survival of the fittest speech. Parler is just a poor imitation of Twitter. On top of everything else, this week hackers have scraped all of Parler’s data, including deleted posts and videos with location metadata. So their security isn’t very fit either. That data breach could be a big deal for investigators and embarrassing for some people.

And if you’re like me you have recurring subscriptions that you may have forgotten about. Here are some apps that might help get that under control.

Whataboutism

Another quiet Sunday morning. It’s a birthday for Jim Croce, Donald Fagan and Ronnie Hawkins.

2020 was the 50th anniversary of the founding of one of the newspapers on Nantucket called Yesterday’s Island. They’re collecting stories of life on the island in 1970. Here’s one that brought back some memories for me.

From the New York Times, writing about the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick at the hands of rioters incited by the president: “Mr. Trump has not reached out to Mr. Sicknick’s family, although Vice President Mike Pence called to offer condolences, an aide to Mr. Pence said.” And the flags at the White House are not at half-mast.

Checking in on Fox News this morning I heard very little about the most important events of the last few days like, you know, the deadly attack on America. But there was plenty of talk about the backlash. I heard outrage over shutting down social media accounts and the potential for impeachment. Essentially they were painting President Trump and people on the right as victims of everything that happened this week. Shameful spin.

Car makers are shutting down over a lack of semiconductors. Cars are computers. So it makes sense for Apple to get into the game.

And Brexit trade is getting off to a shaky start. Companies working across the borders are seeing some “grit in the mechanism.”

Deplatformed

Saturday. The weekend is here.

The Globe looks at who may now be coming out of the woodwork to run for mayor. And a few who have indicated they won’t.

Twitter has extended its suspension of @donaldtrump. It’s now permanent. Facebook has done the same. This follows the suspension of the social media accounts of other right wing figures. Trump is reportedly moving to Parler and Apple is considering removing that app from its store. Google already has. Reddit has closed down a number of popular Trump-related subs. His campaign email provider has also terminated his account. My first reaction to all this was ‘what took you so long?’ But I’m also worried that it might play into, and amplify, the conspiratorial paranoia floating around out there.

It appears that some of the mob who invaded the Capitol Building had plans that went beyond smearing poop and posing for Instagram. Guys with guns, Molotov cocktails and flex cuffs point to a more serious end game. That’s how a mob mentality works. One minute unwitting folks are posing in front of a statue. They get caught up in the moment as someone leads a chant of ‘America First’ and ‘hang Mike Pence.’ Then out come the flex cuffs and before you know it someone is actually getting hanged. It’s a good thing it never got to that point. Capitol police did (at the cost of at least two lives and many police injuries) manage to protect members of congress from the mob. But it seemed like that’s where things were heading.

Did Adam Christian Johnson manage to get that lectern back to his home in Florida? Checked luggage? Doesn’t matter. He’s going to jail.

And with everything else going on, it’s nice to focus on bathrobes for a change. Here are some good ones.

What’s next?

It’s Friday. I guess that’s something.

There’s that Viking dude who was seen screaming at police and who later was photographed standing on the dais of the Senate chamber. Some said he was an antifa/CIA deep-state plant. Turns out he’s just a Q-anon conspiracy nutjob in face paint and a Viking costume. Standing on the dais of the Senate chamber.

Marty Walsh is off to Washington to join Biden’s cabinet. It’s big news but not a big surprise. Bill Forry takes us back through Walsh’s political history in Boston. And Kim Janey will now be the first woman and first woman of color to run the city. She’s been a great councillor so I think she’ll do well.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board couldn’t resist taking some partisan shots from the right at their favorite partisans on the left before they got to the point of advising Trump to resign:

[T]his week has probably finished him as a serious political figure. He has cost Republicans the House, the White House, and now the Senate. Worse, he has betrayed his loyal supporters by lying to them about the election and the ability of Congress and Mr. Pence to overturn it. He has refused to accept the basic bargain of democracy, which is to accept the result, win or lose.

It is best for everyone, himself included, if he goes away quietly.

A Capitol police officer who was hit with a fire extinguisher while trying to hold back rioters has died. Someone must know these guys.

And with complete disfunction at the top of the government, yesterday saw the highest new case and Covid death numbers and the most jobs lost to date. So there’s that.

Bully’s pulpit

Today is Thursday. It’s also I’m Not Going To Take It Anymore Day.

So much for those Tweets and Facebook memes about Trump supporters not rioting when they lose an election. Good times.

Yesterday’s atrocious events are still sinking in. Democrats (and some republicans) are calling for the Vice President to begin proceedings under the 25th Amendment to remove Donald Trump from office. A Trump-supporting business group, the National Association of Manufacturers, has also released a statement advocating removing the president. Pretty extraordinary. Here’s an excerpt:

“This is sedition and should be treated as such. The outgoing president incited violence in an attempt to retain power, and any elected leader defending him is violating their oath to the Constitution and rejecting democracy in favor of anarchy. Anyone indulging conspiracy theories to raise campaign dollars is complicit. Vice President Pence, who was evacuated from the Capitol, should seriously consider working with the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to preserve democracy.”

Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have frozen the president’s accounts. Trump staff resignations are beginning. Capitol Police are going to have to answer some tough questions about their planning. I would imagine that all this looks pretty bad to our allies and friends overseas. Even Turkey, which knows a thing or two about coups, is concerned. Reminds me of this old Onion story.

And here are some photos from the siege on the Capitol. They speak for themselves.

Back to the clubhouse

A strange Wednesday in January. The word for today is pugilism.

Ted Gioia has posted his top 100 albums of the year, with another hundred runner-ups thrown in. Not necessarily the most popular music of the year but the releases he thinks are good. I’ll be going through these into the spring. I always discover something new and great in his lists.

There are logistics and security advance work required for a presidential visit and that’s what looked like was happening in Scotland for inauguration day. But apparently there’s no love lost between Donald Trump and Nicola Sturgeon, who’s cancelled the rumored presidential golf visit, ostensively over the coronavirus lockdown.

Brian Chen writes about the tech that will dominate in 2021. Seems mostly like an extension of the tech that flourished in 2020.

John Roderick has an apology.

And the Massachusetts Legislature has managed to make the deadline for passing all those bills. They did it by moving the deadline.

What’s the rush?

Good day. It’s Tuesday. Happy National Bird Day.

I would stay away from DC this week. Big things afoot.

The governor is getting a little impatient with the legislature over their failure to get transportation and economic development bills to him. The clock is ticking down and it’s “a really big deal,” says Baker.

The whole 5G/Coronavirus conspiracy thing always seemed pretty ridiculous to me. And now that crowd has taken the ridiculousness up a notch with theories about 5G tracking chips being mixed into the vaccines. They even have schematics of the chip, which, it turns out, is a heavy metal guitar pedal.

Last night I checked the state’s website for the covid numbers and I was surprised to see that they changed the way the site works once again. It was so different, in fact, that there was nothing to see. The new, improved interactive dashboard didn’t show any data at all. Seems to be fixed now.

And Starbucks has announced its winter menu. Pistachio Latte, Honey Almondmilk Cold Brew, Red Velvet Loaf. You can also pick up a cup of Yirgacheffe Chelelektu. Yummy.

Tough crowd

Hey, it’s Monday. Slow start today.

The knives are out in the Sheehan family. There’s a lot of money in beer distribution.

I read the now famous Twitter thread over the weekend where John Roderick, now always to be known as bean dad, described his can opener life lesson. It was funny and stupid. But the Internet seems to be un an uproar over it and he’s deleted his Twitter account. I must be missing something.

Gerry and the Pacemakers were the first real famous rock band out of Liverpool, although not the last. Gerry Marsden has died at 78. Paul McCartney weighed in on the loss.

Ashish K. Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, wonders why no one is in charge of the US vaccination effort. In Israel, by contrast, vaccinations are going fast and furious.

And, Cam Newton has crossed the bridge and the Patriots season is over.

The future is now

Today is Sunday. Apple Computer was incorporated on this date in 1977.

Indoor exercise season is here. Very boring, but I think I can manage 4 seconds a day.

In 1998 Ray Kurzweil wrote The Age of Spiritual Machines. In it he made predictions of a future in the year 2019 where technology would revolutionize the human experience. I remember it as an optimistic book. So, how did his predictions work out? The Militant Futurist blog decided to score them. In general Kurzweil did well. Many of the things he predicted did come to pass. But where we are now is not what anyone would have expected from reading that book in 1998.

Eli Dourado takes his own shot at predicting the future, focusing on the next decade. He sees breakthroughs in medicine, life extension, energy technology, transportation, space, computer science and food. But I think he also ignores those pesky political and cultural issues that will color how the science will play out, as Kurzweil did. It’s a great read nonetheless, with many interesting links to follow.

Bitcoin > $30k yesterday.

And that new mutated variant of Covid-19 is looking like it might be a big problem. Not good.

A strong foundation

Good Saturday morning. It’s Isaac Asimov‘s birthday.

Drive-through weddings are still happening in Vegas. A welcome sign of strange normality.

The Walsh team, like the Menino team before them, is pretty good at managing the city budget. Boston closed the year with a budget surplus, marking the 35th year the city has done so. Meg McIntyre reports that while many other cities are laying off workers and cutting services as a result of the pandemic, Boston has actually added jobs.

Just in time for the new year, Kafka’s The Trial has entered public domain. Here are some other works opened up this year.

Mitt Romney‘s claim to fame was rising to the logistics challenge of the 2002 Winter Olympics. (There’s also the Big Dig, but we won’t dwell too much on that.) These days he’s watching the logistic challenge of vaccine distribution play out and he has some concerns.

And this is something I hadn’t previously considered: If you’re an astronaut on the International Space Station and you turn your smartphone sideways, it won’t go into landscape mode because there’s no gravity. Also GPS and time zones would be a mess. Hey Siri, what’s the weather at my current location? …Siri?