In 2018 I began keeping a log of fucked up news stories in an effort to avoid becoming accustomed to how fucked up everything is. This is the log for March.

You may also be interested in the log for February or the log for April.

March 1

• Trump announces plans for massive tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum. Stocks plummet on the news, trade allies threaten retaliatory measures, and U.S. manufacturers warn that tariffs could hurt sales and lead to layoffs.
• The Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, led by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), leaked private text messages between Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) and a lawyer with connections to Christopher Steele to Fox News. …

In 2018 I began keeping a log of fucked up news stories in an effort to avoid becoming accustomed to how fucked up everything is. This is the log for February.

You may also be interested in the log for January or the log for March.

February 1

• The Trump administration wants to cut funding for clean energy research by 72% in order to focus on exploiting fossil fuel resources.
• Two students are shot and three are injured at Salvador Castro Middle School in Los Angeles.
• The Trump administration strips the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s enforcement powers and drops lawsuits against predatory payday lenders. …

In 2018 I began keeping a log of fucked up news stories in an effort to avoid becoming accustomed to how fucked up everything is. This is the log for January.

You may also be interested in the log for February.

January 2

• Trump taunts Kim Jong-un on Twitter, bragging that “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his”.
• Trump takes credit for the fact that 2017 was the safest year on record for the aviation industry.

January 4

• The Trump administration announces plans to allow offshore oil and gas drilling in nearly all US coastal waters, despite strong opposition from state governors. …

Cloudflare sees itself as a critical component of the Internet’s infrastructure. They handle “around 10% of all Internet requests” — a number they cite to demonstrate that they have what they feel is a grave responsibility to protect free speech online.

“The size and scale of the attacks that can now easily be launched online,” writes Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, “make it such that if you don’t have a network like Cloudflare in front of your content, and you upset anyone, you will be knocked offline.”

Prince believes that Cloudflare has an even more important responsibility to uphold the principle of due process, and that this means they shouldn’t make arbitrary decisions about what content they should serve from their edge servers. “At its most basic,” he writes, “Due Process means that you should be able to know the rules a system will follow if you participate in that system.” …

People who don’t have a particular skill tend to think of those who do have that skill as “knowing how” to do that thing.

To a non-programmer, a programmer is a person who “knows how” to write software. A doctor is a person who “knows how” to diagnose and treat health problems. A carpenter is a person who “knows how” to make things out of wood.

But it’s never that simple.

As a programmer, I can tell you that knowing a programming language doesn’t make you capable of writing good software any more than knowing English makes you capable of writing the Great American Novel. …

Good news! The Republican healthcare plan will reduce the federal deficit by $337 billion over ten years.

Bad news: 24 million people will lose their health insurance.

Is it worth it? To help you decide, here are a few other ways to look at those numbers:

• Every time Trump spends a weekend at Mar-a-Lago, it costs 237 people.
• Providing security for Trump Tower costs 36 people per day.
• Eric Trump’s trip to Uruguay in January on behalf of the Trump Organization cost 7 people.
• The wall Trump wants to build on the Mexican border will cost 1.5 million people.
• Trump’s proposed increase in defense spending would cost 3.8 million people.

In September of 2015, Felicity and I flew to Iceland, met up with my brother Rusty and sister-in-law Laila, and spent two weeks circumnavigating the country in an RV on the famous Ring Road. It was an experience I’ll never forget.

Each day we made our way gradually counterclockwise around the 828 miles of the Ring Road, stopping frequently to revel in the most amazing natural beauty any of us had ever seen. Each night we found a local campsite and encamped in the RV.

It was as challenging as it was enjoyable. Driving that large manual RV on Iceland’s narrow, winding, and often unpaved roads was an anxiety-inducing experience to say the least. Living in it was not exactly pleasant. Ironically, given the otherworldly beauty of our surroundings, we spent much of our time preoccupied with the mundanities of navigating, camping, decamping, preparing meals, washing clothes, showering, and pooping. …

Here are some things Trump supporters have said to me about Donald Trump in recent weeks:

“I’ve never liked him, and voted against him. He isn’t a conservative, and is one of the worst choices the Republican party could have made.”

“I don’t know much about Trump, and what I do know about him I don’t respect.”

“…I abhor much of what Trump has stood for…”

“I did not vote for him, and I’m extremely disappointed that he is the party’s nominee…”

“There is nothing I can say to justify my choice other than this is what I hear God saying.” …