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endorsements

Somerville city council election endorsements (better late than never)

Preliminary elections today in Somerville.

The PDS do a questionnaire every year but are bad about linking to it from the front page of their web site. This year is no exception and the info I used for research is here. I also looked at some other surveys and candidate web sites.

City council is 12 candidates running for 8 slots on the final ballot. Voters pick four.

Three candidates are assured of advancing: incumbents Kristen Strezo and Will Mbah; and Justin Klekota who is the strongest non-incumbent candidate. I like all three of these but will be leaving Strezo and Mbah off my ballot for the preliminary because they will advance without my vote this time.

Three others are running strong campaigns and will likely advance: Christopher Spicer, Marianne Walles, and Ben Wheeler. Of these I endorse Spicer and Wheeler, and will not be voting for Walles. The main impact of these two votes, and the one for Klekota, is so that we collectively can gauge support when voting tactically in November. That's worth doing even though it's unlikely to actually change anything on the preliminary.

Three are running middling campaigns but have a reasonable shot at advancing anyway because there are eight slots: Ari Iaccarino, Jon Link, Jack Perenick. I am not particularly impressed with any of these candidates.

Three are, in my mind, running behind, and I don't think any of them have done a good job making an impression with Somerville voters: Scott Istvan, Holly Simione, and Tuesday Thomas. I rather like Scott Istvan, who appears to be able to listen and to pick his battles. He's well informed, has thoughtful and actionable positions, and has experience getting involved in the kinds of issues that the council will face. I don't think he has a chance in November, and I'm not even sure I'll give him my vote then, but I'll be voting for him this time because I'd rather see him on the November ballot than any of the folks he has any chance of finishing ahead of.

It's rare that I endorse an all-male slate and I would not do so if I thought Strezo had even the tiniest chance of missing the cut. But she does not, and will most likely be getting my vote in the general.

Entry tags:

bolt ev,
car

(no subject)

I got my car back! (Yay!)

I think there might be over-spray on the windshield. (Boo!) More because it points to sloppiness, not that it's a unsolvable problem. I hope to fix it myself tomorrow. Until they it's a little unsafe to drive at night.

EDIT: they took it back apologetically and agreed with me it was over-spray.

EDIT2: they seem to have gotten most of it, but not all of it, especially on the plastics. I have the right stuff for that and me doing that small amount myself is not worth the spoons it would take the press the issue further. I still haven't had a chance to drive it on the highway to find out if the blind spot was fixed.

Entry tags:

update

And it's not even over yet

This week has been very busy.

Saturday my TKD demo team performed and did well enough. I was happy for them.

Monday I got my second shingles vaccine shot and it hit me hard. Learned the hard way don't eat a full meal before it takes effect. The symptoms passed in about 36 hours.

Our kitchen sink backed up. We tried to snake it ourselves, but it didn't work. We paid someone to come in and snake it. He seemed nice and seemed to be happy to explain how to make sure we don't need his services again.

The car guy didn't answer my email, so I had to phone him. He says he's waiting on a cosmetic piece, so if we need the car we can have it back without the piece until it comes in. we just need it before next Thursday.

My foot has started to feel a little better but I'm trying really hard not to aggravate it. I matched my bench press PR, and hung from the bar for a workout, but kip swings were bugging my shoulder a little bit, but it's almost better too.

My mom was stressed about getting her driver's license renewed because paperwork often goes poorly for her, but the appointment went well.

Kaylee's been peeing a lot more, so we might have to get her blood work again and see if the vet wants to adjust her subcu water.

The wasps are still coming in, but have slowed down a lot. I still have no clue where they are coming in.

The van threw some error about coolant and stopped the engine and required me to put it in park, turn it off and back on again. It was fine after that. I hope this is a fluke and it doesn't happen again.

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At Least One Underlying Condition [Covid, US, Patreon]

Canonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1882720.html

0.

Hey, Americans! Look sharp, the Trump Administration is trying to play a head game on you about Covid vaccines, and it's apparently working, because I see nobody talking about this in the news or on social media.

There's a lot of complexity and chaos right now about what is available to whom and how to get it. Things are changing fast, especially on the state level. I hope to discuss it in another post, but there's one thing in particular I want to clarify for you.

As you've probably heard, week and a half ago, the FDA changed the authorization for the Covid vaccines, in a way which curtails access. The thing that people are hearing is that for people under 65 years old the Covid vaccines are not authorized with some exceptions.

That's technically correct, but badly misleading. A lot of people hear "not authorized" and stop really listening to the rest of the sentence. They hear "with some exceptions" and assume they're not likely to be one such, and won't qualify to get it, and tune right out.

To be cynical for a moment, you're meant to assume that.

But it turns out you're one of the exceptions. Probably. How can I know that?

The actual language from the FDA authorization just issued ( Read more [2,750 words] )

This post brought to you by the 218 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!

Entry tags:

pols,
tech

Interesting app for Android [tech]

I don't know who needs to know about this, but:

I just discovered the Android app "Periodically". It's described as an "event logger". It's for keeping track of when a recurring thing has happened, and figuring out what the average time is between occurrences. You just keep it updated each time the event happens, and it will do the math for you to figure out the frequency, and even give you a notification when it predicts the event is likely to happen again. If you're tracking more than one thing, it will try to suss out correlations for you.

I mention because twenty five years ago or so, I needed exactly this functionality and could not find any application that would do what I needed, so I wrote a thing for myself, and since then a lot of people I've mentioned it to have wondered where they can get one like it. Mine was Mac/Palm Pilot, so not of much use to most people, especially these days.
Lo, somebody seems to have realized the need for this functionality, and brought it to the market. So I thought I'd mention.

Now, in this day and age, a lot of people, especially in the US, are concerned with security. Especially if they're tracking something to do with their health. This app is not specific to health, so nothing about it immediately reveals that it is storing health information on casual inspection; you could use some sort of other term for whatever health condition it is you are actually tracking. So, for instance, If you were tracking how often your migraines happened, you could call that "new box of cereal".

This app defaults to local-only data storage on your Android device, and the developer claims that it only collects "app activity" for analytics, and shares nothing with third parties. It outputs CSV and has an option to back up to Google Drive.

I haven't tried it myself, but it has a rating of 4.6 stars out of five on the Play Store.

Reviewers on the Play Store note that tracker apps that are specific to the kind of event – such as health- specific loggers – often have needless complexity, and often some weird ideas about graphic design. They praise this app for its clean, elegant look and simple, effective functionality.

In addition to its obvious applicability to episodic health conditions, it strikes me as potentially extremely useful in one of the trickier parts of prepping: figuring out one's burn rate of resources. I think I might trial it to help me figure out how often I should expect to have to buy a fresh bale of toilet paper and how long the big bottle of ibuprofen will last me.