Atrophy

Monday, October 2, 2023

The democratic body is in severe condition, in both flesh and mind. After more than a decade of disciplined training in the 1930s and 40s, we were a toned and capable athlete. While not yet at our apex, we could still strike fear in the eyes of most of the competition. But complacency, changes to the rulebook, and (most importantly) distraction, veered us away from a hall-of-fame career. There was no freak accident, it didn’t happen overnight.…more

What Is to Be Done vs How to Do It

Friday, September 22, 2023

We’ve forgotten how to build membership organizations. Yet the success of democratic society will depend on them. A membership organization is built by: Determining the constituency/class it will represent Finding (and convincing) influential people in the constituency to recruit members Asking new members to sacrifice time, talent, and money towards the organization I have seen a few attempts at organizing in Boise and they generally failed these steps. The main exceptions are the Leninists and Reclaim Idaho (I’ll discuss them more below).…more

Big Trouble

Monday, September 4, 2023

I have a reading problem. My enthusiasm for a new book usually only lasts for about 200 pages; by then, whatever eagerness I had to learn about some Very Important subject wears off and the real drudgery of reading sets in. So I set it aside, hoping the future would bring renewed vigor. It should come as no surprise then that the starting date on the front of my copy of J.…more

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Thursday, August 17, 2023

Can you perform romantic poetry using flag semaphore? Possibly. Can an electric guitar tell a science fiction tale? Despite Rush’s best efforts, not very well. Can a television convey political philosophy? “With great inconvenience” says Neil Postman. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, he makes his case against the TV. The Age of Exposition A society’s primary form of communication shapes our conception of truth. It prioritizes certain types of truth-telling over others.…more

Value Per Acre in Ada County

Friday, November 12, 2021

Inspired by Strong Towns, I wanted to do a value-per-acre in Ada County. I started off just picking assorted parcel’s from the Ada County Assessor interactive map: Boise: Location Value/Acre Winco (Downtown) $1.306 million/acre Trader Joe’s $4.941 million/acre Whiskey Bar $5.6 million/acre Costco (Cole) $797k/acre These three from the “blighted”-looking parcels near Boise Ave. and Broadway Location Value/Acre Coble Company $2.557 million/acre Thompsons INC $3.304 million/acre Kiddo Holdings LLC $2.671 million/acre All better than downtown Winco and Costco!…more

Notes: Can't Get You Out of My Head

Thursday, March 11, 2021

Part 1 — Bloodshed on Wolf Mountain Old Power As the British Empire declined, people were unsure how to move forward. Stories of violence and abuse confused and terrified those at home. Afraid of those they colonized, the British middle class revealed their racism as many began moving to the island. One of these, Michael de Freitas, was surprised at how it differed from his imagination. As a subject of the Empire, he was always told England was his homeland, but he found himself an outsider.…more

The Republic for Which it Stands

Saturday, January 30, 2021

Richard White’s The Republic for Which it Stands is an intimidatingly large history. It which takes us from Andrew Johnson, who argued to Frederick Douglass’ face that poor whites were the real victims of slavery, through the parade of bearded Presidents, and all the way to William McKinley. This was an America unable to decide what it stood for. The republican dream of independent producers was constantly threatened, but no alternative could take hold.…more

Random Dev Notes (Room ~@Relation~ Dao Error)

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Apparently with Room on Android, you can’t use @Insert Dao methods with a POJO. It throws an unhelpful error that took two entire days to figure out. I’m writing this so I never forget and to maybe help someone out who googles it next. Say you have a model and POJO like: @Entity(...) data class User( val id: String, val name: String ) @Entity(...) data class Pet( val id: String, val type: String, val name: String, val userId: String ) data class UserWithPets( val id: String, val name: String, @Relation( parentColumn = "id", entityColumn = "userId" ) val pets: List<Pet> ) If you write a Dao method like:…more

City of Quartz

Saturday, May 23, 2020

Table of Contents Introduction/Motivation Week 1 (<2020-06-02 Tue>) Notes Discussion agenda Weekly Questions Preface Questions Summary Prologue Questions Summary Week 2 <2020-06-09 Tue> Sunshine or Noir? Strong Towns: The More We Grow, the Poorer we Become An Insolvency Crisis A Lack of Wealth Simple Math Strong Towns Approach Supplemental Books Movies Misc quotes Links (Articles, videos, etc.) Introduction/Motivation The Left is impotent in the Treasure Valley. Sure, our politics are becoming dominated by the Democratic party, but outside of sporatic semi-successful social justice campaigns and rallies, power is still wielded by the economic elite.…more

Prisoners of the American Dream: Foreward

Friday, April 24, 2020

Why this book? Why now? I’ve been itching to dive into Mike Davis’ work for a while. Late Victorian Holocosts has sat dormant on my shelf and could never get around to it. His work spans nearly everything I’m interested in: ecology, land use, Southern California, Marxism, economic imperialism, and organized labor. What’s not to like? His books were recently on sale and a ordered a few more. I’m going to start with Prisoners of the American Dream (PotAD).…more