Phillip Winn @pwinn@qoto.org

One of my kids claimed last night to not know that there have been two Roosevelts as presidents of the USA, not know why people don't like Nixon, and when pushed, not know what the US Senate was. Actually, they asked, "Who is the senate? He sounds important."

🤦‍♂️

This child tried to blame their school, so they quizzed their younger sibling, who knew the answers to all of the above and claimed to have learned it while attending the same school. So then this child, in desperation, quizzed their other sibling, who knew some answers, but less than they should.

So... last night I explained to my kids how the government works, and what I think actually matters about politics and why (the Judiciary, if you're asking).

Fortunately, my kids did vote! The understood that *this* time was important, but last night I hoped I helped them understand that *every* time is important.

It is worth noting that everyone in that room who was married is in a marriage that is only legal due to a decision by the judiciary, not by law. The US Senate voted last night to change that, so perhaps all of those marriages will be protected by court-proof law soon.

#blog #politics

#blog I don't intend to do this more than once, but here are a few daily word games people might enjoy, along with an example of what is shared when you "Share Results" for each.

The one everybody knows, of course, is Wordle, found at https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle

Wordle 513 4/6

⬛🟩⬛⬛🟩
⬛🟩🟨⬛🟩
⬛🟩⬛🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Another polished game with a bit more complexity is Waffle, found at http://wafflegame.net

#waffle297 4/5

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩⭐🟩⭐🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩⭐🟩⭐🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

🔥 streak: 24
🏆 #waffleelite
wafflegame.net

That game also offers a weekly "Deluxe" version:

#deluxewaffle25 2/5

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩⭐🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩⭐🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

wafflegame.net

It is occurring to me as I write this that I should have picked a day and week in which my results for #waffle were slightly better.

My most recent discovery, thanks to @Spinybadger, is Thirdle. While that game offers a text-only share like the above, and an image+link share, for the sake of mastodon I'm going to post an image.

#thirdle http://thirdle.org

Since I'm feeling bloggy tonight, and nobody asked, here are some email lists I'm on and enjoy receiving.

1. [Artisanal Sudoku](https://artisanalsudoku.substack.com) - James Sinclair creates really, really good variant sudoku puzzles, and you get three every Monday for free, or five plus access to a growing archive for $5/month. Well worth the price, in my opinion.
2. [Sudoku Clover](https://www.patreon.com/sudokuclover/about) - Clover publishes monthly, and is also worth $5/month in my opinion. Plus, I've enjoyed her puzzles for so long on Discord for free.
3. [Letters from an American](https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com) - Everyone's favorite historian-turned-substack-queen, Heather Cox Richardson. Her daily emails teach me things.
4. [BIG by Matt Stoller](https://mattstoller.substack.com) - You should read the book Goliath by Matt Stoller, and then *also* subscribe to his weekly newsletter with a hyper-focus on anti-monopoly issues.
5. [Slow Boring](https://www.slowboring.com) - Matt Yglesias can be polarizing at times, but I find his newsletter thoughtful even when I disagree with his conclusions, as does one of my brothers who is theoretically on the other side of every issue from me politically. That seems to say something. MattY hyper-focuses on everything eventually.
6. [Garbage Day](https://www.garbageday.email) - Ryan Brodericks writes three times a week (or four, for $5/month) to remind us all that the internet is fun, actually. Brilliant observer of the online scene.
7. [Today in Tabs](https://www.todayintabs.com) - The internet in super-compressed form, Rusty Foster packs many, many links into his newsletter four days a week.

I subscribe to many more than this, but this seems like enough, and provides more than one #newsletter in each of three categories: #sudoku, #politics, and the #internet.

#blog

I created my first web page in 1994, four years after Tim Berners-Lee kicked the whole thing off. I started my first weblog in 1995, almost three years before the word was coined. Before that I was active on BBSes, so I've had somewhere to ruminate semi-publicly for quite some time.

Yet for the last few years, I've shut down existing outlets and mostly shared my thoughts with a very limited list of friends and family in iMessage or Signal. Maybe a bit of Slack and Discord. I've watched people come up and hit the big time, and other people bigger than I ever was walk away much like I did.

At some point blogging stopped being something fun to do, and started being a chore. Instead of posting my thoughts and finding clarity, I'd see thread after thread of comments on site after site devolve into the most graceless possible interpretations of whatever was written, and it became tiresome. Tiresome to write, knowing people would see whatever they wanted to see rather than what I was saying. Tiresome to read, as the same thing happened to others. Even being an active observer was exhausting, as the culture of the entire internet seemed to focus on a never-ending cycle of outrage.

It doesn't help that during the same period of time, I became more aware of just how deeply the country I live in is built on the bodies of people it chewed up and spit out and continues to disrespect to this day. That shouldn't even be a political issue, in my view, but *everything* became political, and people picked teams.

I changed mine, but couldn't work up the energy to blog about it. I knew I'd face pushback. I knew I wouldn't convince anyone of anything. My close friends and family came along for the ride, or at least observed it, but nobody else needed to know anything.

And that's really the thing. I don't need the whole world to see everything I write. Obscurity can be a boon.

Technically anything I write here is just as available to the world as anything I would have written on a blog, but it *feels* different. It feels less like I should expect to be shamed or harassed here. I also have the ability to block people and servers easily, so I'm starting to relax.

It could be that I have nothing significant to say about anything after all. Several times my friends have suggested that a rant in Signal or iMessage should have been posted somewhere, and I've never been sure whether they meant "so more people can see it" or "so I don't have to read it here." Either way, it seems like they'll soon get their wish.

#blog