Powers, Morals, Great America

I have a hard time with watching the news lately. Watching breast-feeding babies separated from their mothers under the guise of the bible and put into cages. This is what America has become. This is disturbing because our nation was founded on the basis that we should be free to practice whatever religion we want. Our ancestors came here in waves, persecuted by bible wielding preachers. We have become that from which our ancestors fled.

I don't know how people can claim this is God's will. I'm waiting for my country's leadership to step up and do something. First to act like a leader wins. So far all I see is blame towards the other party.

What makes America great was an idea whose time needs to come again. In an ideal world, we would try and convict those people who take bribes and sell out their constituents of treason against the people of America. We would throw them in prison or worse, but that's not what will happen because we do not live in a just world; we live in the real world, where ideals are dreams. The American Dream is alive and well if you are rich. Otherwise, you are a beggar and scum to our government. There are people actively working to disenfranchise you. They are afraid of the kind of vindictive person who might take away what they have and distribute it.

Socialists, Communists they would call you. Maybe. Those words lost meaning decades ago. "This is all hyperbole." I hear people living under a rock cry out. "We have agents of our government to look after our poor, right?" I hear you say that we have these institutions for equality in Housing and Urban Development and equality in Education. Once upon a time we did. We knew how to stand up for what is right. Now these institutions are crumbling under an administration working actively to screw the American poor.

Why do I deserve to go to fancy restaurants and live in comfort? Because I won the birth lottery. I was born to parents who lived the American dream - starting their company and making money. Employing people, and providing value. In better words, I don't deserve my lot in life. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to give it up. My point is that we are all deserving of good food and clean water and air. We all need shelter. We all need someone to stand up to the bullies. Today the bullies are the ones with the money. The only way to prove you're standing up is to not accept campaign finance. That's not how the game is played, I'm afraid. No money means no voice. No voice means no organization. No chance. All we have are those mired in the donorship trough, voicing poll-tested lines and ducking questions, placing blame, and doing what their owners pay them to do.

Happy father's day. We are camping with our religious community this weekend, and I'm on vacation from blogging for a few weeks.

Online identity and policy; won't somebody think of the children?!?!

Every so often, you hear a politician try and come up with a solution to the duopoly that is our childlike anonymous online self. I read an article today about one such politician. The proposal is that you must provably identify yourself online so that you can be punished if you misbehave. The article suggests that billionaire tech founders have control over the vast usage of their platform and should be willing to impose draconian measures to prevent harm from befalling on their end users.

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Pardon me while I go off hunting for memes about people being mean on the internet.

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To anyone implementing these crazy notions, I warn you: watch your Daily Active Users go crashing. My children are 9 and 12 years old... They will use social networks poorly, and there are many, many millions of other pre-teenage children on the internet with brand new internet IDs. Ask them for proof, and they'll use your competitor. Facebook has 1.45B DAU (source), but website Reddit recently surpassed (source) Facebook as the number 3 website on the internet - behind Google and YouTube. As much as the UK PM is right that what is illegal offline is also illegal online, violence is something which has an offline presence. There is no easy button, and your citizens won't stand for putting microphones in their homes -- I use a Google Home, but that's only because I'm foolishly trusting in big G as a target with too much to lose if they should violate enough end user trust. As an American, I don't trust the government (of any country) to set the rules. The internet is some kind of virtual world, where not all the inhabitants are human, and not all humans are who they pretend to be, nor are they connecting from where you think they are.

So what can be done, and what is being done in this space? Well, I don't want to be a pessimist and say that nothing can be done - there is some extent to which we are talking about whac-a-mole (an arcade game which represents a futile effort at making a lasting change). There are interesting efforts - one that I've recently been made aware of is named Perspective - part of Google's Jigsaw - which attempts to discern harassment from conversations. The ultimate problem is that no one country can control its people online. Online is a big place. It is the wild west, but that's also part of the draw.

Balances of powers, scales of justice, and cake

The 7-2 gay wedding cake supreme court decision that came out this week (full text - 59 pages) was a disappointment for many people who are anxious that we are returning toward a religious state that our founders were desperate to avoid. To me, and reading much of the 59 pages this week, it falls into one of those many situations where it's complicated, and it's also a personal matter: My grandparents started a quite famous bakery by the name of Freed's in Las Vegas in 1959. I'll refrain from regailing you with many stories of all the chores and jobs my dad and his four siblings did some 50 years ago to help their struggling parents make that coffee stand with donuts into thriving a bakery.

I don't quite understand how we live in a society where our highest court justices don't understand the difference between participating in a "gay wedding" due to "not condoning it" vs discriminating baking a cake for a celebration involving 150 guests on the basis of the buyer. In my mind, the test case isn't the central case. I wonder what happens if a gay couple wants a wedding cake, and so they go shopping with a lesbian couple... Tricking the business and buying two wedding cakes... That people would have to resort to this is wrong. Then after the ceremonies send the store pictures of the newlyweds and thanking them for their wedding cakes, what happens?

See, this to me is the contrapositive. The business would have not sold the cakes. Can they then sue the couples under this ruling? This is where government laws and mathematics diverge. In reality, I don't want this supreme court decision tested again and again. For starters, I can't find a test for this decision that doesn't start with some people being terrible to others and then bringing in lawyers. Really, though, the test would be if people refuse to sell other goods and services to Gay, Black, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, and Jewish people - that's the test. That's the slippery slope.

The bottom line is that all fundamental laws and religion and in fact the civil code of our society begins with the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Syncopated terms

I think we should do some experimenting with our system of government. I think perhaps that we should change the terms of president and vice president and how they get elected. I think we should hold presidential elections at the same time we do the mid-term elections and VP elections when we previously did. So it works something like this: 2018 - presidential election for 2021-2024 term. 2020 - VP election for 2021-2024 term. 2022 - presidential election for 2025-2028 term. 2024 - VP election for 2025-2028 term.

Why? Well, if you're running for a new term, it gives you 2 years lead time to prepare for the actual job. Our president elect normally has about a quarter year to transition to the new administration. After your 2 years of preparation, you have 2 years of administration to accomplish your goals and win the trust of the public, if you do well enough to earn the public's trust for a 2nd term, you have more time left at that point to finish your work and transition the responsibilities to the next leader. Also, I think that during those 2 years, at the president's discretion, they may chose the president elect to be acting president for relief rather than the vice president. The only way the VP succeeds the president in an untimely death is during the first two years of a term, when the successor is not yet elected.

Having the president and vice president elections separated by two years allows people who ran for one office unsuccessfully to run for the other office - it also separates the process of running and gives the public an opportunity to vote separately and evenly. You get the most qualified candidates for both offices and you get candidates from both parties knowing who they will be working with. I believe the beneficiary of this approach will be the American public. You also can have a situation where both office-holders can run for president at the same time for the next term. I like the cooperation coupled with competition. I like the notion that you have less than a full term before you have to prove yourself to the public and the more even duty cycle of preparation and growth.

I'm not a big fan of the electoral college. In a Republic like ours, I feel it is disingenuous to give some people a weighted vote for president based on the relative lack of representation in number of house members their state produces. Not only do states with lesser populations get more per-person votes, but they also get more senate representation per voter. I have lived in 6 states (only 4 of them when old enough to vote). It seems ridiculous to me that in some states my vote counted for more than when I lived in others. I'm also of the opinion that you shouldn't disenfranchise Americans who live in our unincorporated federal territories. As someone born in one of the original 13 colonies, I feel it is my duty to bring up the "no taxation without representation" slogan out of the 1700's.

We have a peculiar, perverted, partisan, gerrymandered, rigged, corrupt, and unfair election system. It's time we re-imagined how we choose the people who steer our government in a responsible and forward-looking fashion. I'm somewhat inspired by the 6 / 2 year terms for senators and house members.

Volunteerism

I'm a believer in volunteering to do things. Volunteering is one way that you learn and grow at things for which you aren't necessarily known to be competent. Volunteering is as much about self growth as it is about giving back. It's about forming a connection with other people and about doing good for the benefit of others. You can give money, or you can give of your time. Sometimes both are required. Today, I volunteered a few hours to be a judge in an 8th grade class which has designed phone apps. At my work, I "volunteer" as a technical interviewer - the process involves a significant amount of time commitment and judgement - I always try to leave a candidate with a positive experience even if my recommendation is that they are not suited for the position. Now, you might call a part of my job work, but I consider that specific part volunteering -- I'm not paid any better for that time spent, and in some sense it costs my productivity towards what I am being paid for. People skills - "soft" skills are hard for software engineers. Emotional intelligence - that intuitive nature where you can read people and ascertain their intents from body or facial language - I'm not so good at that. But I'm good at asking a technical question, working with someone to find a solution to a problem, and evaluating how well they did at the problem compared with others to whom I have given the same challenge.

So I volunteer. I interview potential colleagues at work. I interview potential students as an alumni interviewer for my university. I volunteered to be a leader of a Cub Scouts pack (for a year). I have even served on a jury. The most precious gift you can give of yourself is your time. My wife is an inspiration to me. She gives so much to her students. Today we voted, went to the gym, and then she signed up to be the VP of Events for our children's PTA next year while I drove her Prius through a Chick-fil-A drive through with the kids. That's not volunteering - parenting is my 2nd job.

Oh, and one of the things we voted on was a historic and unusual ballot measure that I was in the right place and right time to sign to put it on the ballot... I might crow about this later if the measure passes. [Edit: it passed.]

Pardon me?

Today, our president, Donald Trump, tweeted that he thought he could pardon himself. "As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong? In the meantime, the never ending Witch Hunt, led by 13 very Angry and Conflicted Democrats (& others) continues into the mid-terms!"

He thought that in the event that he were tried and convicted of a federal crime, that he could simply say, "No biggie. On behalf of the American people, I hereby pardon myself."

I can't even. That logic is unimpeachable, sir. You win. 22 weeks from now, on midterm election day, we'll see if what you win is a landslide for the opposition.

[Update: the opposition "won back" the house but not the senate.]

Inspirational video

For some reason, I stumbled upon this video, and it gave me pause, delighted me, made me cry a little, and I'm sharing it. Should I ever run into Richard Pimental, one thing I would like to say is thank you for your service and your words of wisdom.

Growing up in a digital age

One of the lessons I learned growing up is that you become your parents. They leave their mark on you from day one. Well, I haven't always been the best example to my children. My son comes home after spending the afternoon at a friend's house, and using mommy's iPad Pro to play Fortnite he communicates online, and I get to hear about it while driving home how he unlocked the chat feature and told some "friends" online about him and daddy. So we have a talk, and I am stern and tell him all about the evil people who snatch children and that he must never ever tell people enough to identify himself or his family to those potentially untrustworthy strangers online... perfectly channeling my mom. Then I feel guilty that I have gone too far, and backpedal and give him all the good examples of coming together with groups of strangers at a local safe place for a meetup for games like we used to do. There's a difference between online and reality.

Online, you use pseudonyms and protections to shelter your reality from the digital existence front that you put up. That wasn't always the case. Back in the 1980s, phones weren't mobile. You had to physically exert effort to find someone, but the information was usually published in the white pages, and so long as you had a unique enough name and were polite and friendly, it wasn't hard to get information from people. Online, people are crude replicas of ourselves. We react through limited digital interfaces - links to videos or messages walled behind some account-based ecosystem paid for by advertising. I don't think the ads have caused me to buy anything or really to be aware of anything that I wouldn't otherwise be aware of, but regardless, they keep the access free.

I grew up, hang out in nerdy social circles, and found my wife before the age of online match making and social networks. Our culture has blended what I call the digital convergence devices - telephone, audio recorder, video camera, fax machine, email, text, even video communicator - into every screen. We are never more than 2 feet from 3 of these devices. The level of tracking we can do today if you know how is scary. I have worked for multiple companies that track millions of devices with GPS and network signals and gather somewhat of a mapping from your IP address to a real-world physical coordinate. This mapping is both non-exclusive to one company, and accessible to developers like myself. I'm not coming to get your children, and I hope you're not coming to get mine. The truth is far more complicated that we're all vulnerable to smart people with knowledge and skill that can navigate the technology stack and do what we fear.

You have to trust someone.