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A new program in Denver that sends a paramedic and a mental health expert to 911 calls instead of police launched amid calls for alternatives to policing. So far, the van has taken more than 350 calls without once having to call in police backup.

Conspiracy vs. Democracy

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How Conspiracy Theories Are Shaping the 2020 Election

This matters not just because of what these voters believe but also because of what they don’t. The facts that should anchor a sense of shared reality are meaningless to them; the news developments that might ordinarily inform their vote fall on deaf ears. They will not be swayed by data on coronavirus deaths, they won’t be persuaded by job losses or stock market gains, and they won’t care if Trump called America’s fallen soldiers “losers” or “suckers,” as the Atlantic reported, because they won’t believe it. They are impervious to messaging, advertising or data. They aren’t just infected with conspiracy; they appear to be inoculated against reality.

Democracy relies on an informed and engaged public responding in rational ways to the real-life facts and challenges before us. But a growing number of Americans are untethered from that. “They’re not on the same epistemological grounding, they’re not living in the same worlds,” says Whitney Phillips, a professor at Syracuse who studies online disinformation. “You cannot have a functioning democracy when people are not at the very least occupying the same solar system.”

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Everything is the wrong color. Happy to not actually have fires near us, but we’re definitely getting hit by the smoke.

On This Day: Sep 12

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 26 posts previously published on September 12th

  • 2023
  • 2021
    • 📚 32/2021: Head On by John Scalzi ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
  • 2020
    • A new program in Denver that sends a paramedic and a mental health expert to 911 calls instead of police launched amid calls for alternatives to policing. So far, the van has taken more than 350 calls without once having to call in police backup. ➡
    • Conspiracy vs. Democracy How Conspiracy Theories Are Shaping the 2020 Election This matters not just because of what these voters believe but also because of what they don’t. The facts that should anchor a sense of shared reality are meaningless to them; the news developments that might ordinarily inform their vote fall on deaf ears. They will not ... Read more ➡
    • Why Goodreads is bad for books After years of complaints from users, Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end.  ➡
    • Everything is the wrong color. Happy to not actually have fires near us, but we’re definitely getting hit by the smoke. ➡
    • On This Day: Sep 12 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from September 12 ➡
  • 2018
    • Study finds no link between transgender rights law and bathroom crimes. Well, now. And in other shocking and entirely unforeseeable news, water is wet. ➡
    • Well, crud. I was worried this would happen, but hoped it wouldn’t: Apple has discontinued the iPhone SE. While it doesn’t affect me directly, it does make it probable that when it’s time to upgrade, my wife will move away from Apple in order to get a comfortably sized phone. ➡
    • In a perfect world, I’d have Apple’s iPhone X photo processing capabilities attached to a full-frame sensor in a Nikon f-mount compatible body. ➡
    • Listening to whatever’s playing on Apple’s livestream, with less than ten minutes before the event should start. Gotta see the new goodies (new iPhone X, Apple Watch) and then wait for the usual round of post-event dueling “Apple is the messiah/is clueless and doomed” roundups! ➡
  • 2016
    • Apparently, feeling tired and a bit worn out is good inspiration for moody album cover style photos. (256/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • Looking particularly scruffy this pleasant Friday evening. ➡
  • 2008
  • 2006
    • Boy Meets Dragon I love, love, _love_ this shot -- possibly my favorite from yesterday's trip to the zoo. ➡
    • Keith Olbermann to Bush While skimming over my LiveJournal Friends Page, sirriamnis led me to this 'Special Comment' by Keith Olbermann. It's one of the few things I've found worth using YouTube's embed feature for -- this is good. For the bandwidth challenged, the transcript is under the jump. ➡
  • 2005
  • 2003
    • Namedropper ;) You lucky bastard. ➡
    • Twenty Questions Why don't we have answers to these 9/11 questions? ➡
    • Persistance of Mouse Thanks to some of today's Disney animators, Destino has been completed, and will likely be shown in theaters next year before a Disney film, and eventually end up on DVD. I'm really looking forward to seeing this. ➡
    • The Man in Black Johnny Cash has left the building. ➡
  • 2002
  • 2001
    • It all keeps getting scarier Anytime a noice like a plane is heard everyone instantly starts looking up, trying to figure out where it's coming from, where it might be going, and whether it's friendly or not. The speed that something as familiar as an airplane engine can become a trigger for paranoia and fright is just staggering. ➡
    • Fascinating, frightening, and touching: eyewitness accounts Blogs from ground zero. I wouldn't have had time to search all these out, many thanks to Big Pink Cookie for originally posting most of them. ➡
    • Political cartoons There's a feature over at Slate with a lot of different political cartoons responding to yesterday's tragic attacks. Most share a few obvious common themes, but there's one theme that struck me as I kept seeing it come from the pen of so many different artists. ➡

On This Day: Sep 11

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 22 posts previously published on September 11th

  • 2023
  • 2022
  • 2020
  • 2016
    • I hope your weekend was good, and that the week ahead is pleasant for you. (255/366) ➡
  • 2015
    • Yup. Won that round. #cah #cardsagainsthumanity ➡
    • Bringing out the vintage 1960s silver shrimp cocktail serving dish that Prairie inherited. It was originally her grandmother’s, and is inscribed to her grandmother from the “Connie wives”, when Prairie’s grandfather was 2nd in command of the USS Constellation aircraft carrier. ➡
  • 2008
    • I’m a Case Study I'm a case study in a textbook -- and, contrary to what might be believed, it's _not_ a psychological textbook. Rather, it's the latest repercussion from my fifteen minutes of fame way back when. ➡
    • Links for September 10th through September 11th Sometime between September 10th and September 11th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! ➡
  • 2006
    • Me and a Cockatiel Spent a very nice day at the Woodland Park Zoo today. I've got the photos sorted out and almost ready to upload, but that'll come tomorrow. In the meantime, I've uploaded four taken today of either Prairie or me. Consider it something of a 'teaser'. ➡
  • 2005
    • In Transition Along with upgrading the backend of the site to Movable Type 3.2, which I did last week sometime, I've decided to upgrade my templates to the new MT3.2 styles. For now, though...things might be a bit odd. Bear with me, hopefully this won't last _too_ long. ➡
    • Basic HTML tag cheatsheet After a friend asked me a few questions about the basic HTML tags while trying to clear up some confusion, I went Googling for some sort of cheat sheet listing just the most basic tags. I couldn't find one -- just came up with a lot of full-blown tutorials or cheat sheets listing every tag in the book -- so I tossed this together. Hopefully it helps. ➡
  • 2003
    • Can't it wait? Why in God's name do people find it acceptable to stand at the urinal and talk on their cell phone at the same time? ➡
    • Who's on stage? Okay, this is it — the last one. Mostly because it's the last version that I know of, but hey, that's okay. This one comes from one of the best TV shows of all time, the Animaniacs. ➡
    • Hu's on first? Seeing as how something tells me this is a good day for a little levity, and I keep getting laughs out of these, I'm continuing on a theme here. Hopefully nobody minds too terribly much! I actually had this posted on another blog a while ago, but here it is again. ➡
    • Who's on first? I gave a copy of the 'Who's on first' takeoff that I posted earlier to the guys I work with, and one of them was completely confused. He's originally from Britain, and had never heard of the original Abbott and Costello routine! ➡
    • Abbott and Costello in Computerland Okay, one last thing before I head off to work. Dad sent me this today, and I damn near fell off my chair laughing at it… ➡
    • Print-friendly pages with CSS Printing often seems to be the bane of web publishing doesn't it? Thankfully, CSS allows a remarkably simple way to avoid having to deal with all these frustrations. With a little bit of coding time, you can create a special 'print stylesheet' that will determine exactly how your page looks when it's printed out. ➡
  • 2002
    • Oingo Boingo Y'know, I wish I had an excuse for not discovering Oingo Boingo years ago...but I don't. ➡
    • So it’s been a year One year ago, something huge and immensely terrifying happened. In the year since then, however, a multitude of other, smaller, less immediately noticeable things have happened (usually in the name of 'patriotism'), that added up scare me as much as (and quite possibly more than) the attacks themselves. ➡
    • Portland protest All the best things about this nation are under assault, and we have lost a great deal of ground already. We have mostly lost it through shortsightedness, internal bickering, and an annoying habit of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. We need to stop acting as though 'smash the state, stick it to the Man' is anything other than a child's point of view. ➡
  • 2001
    • Still can’t really believe it All and all, it's been an absolutely incredible and tragic day. The single biggest terrorist attack the world has ever seen, with repercussions that can only be speculated about at this early stage, and only the weeks to come will show where things go from here. ➡
    • How far is this going to go? My thoughts and prayers certainly go out today -- not just for the unfortunate victims and families of victims of the attacks this morning, but for an, if not peaceful, than at least less-than-cataclysmic resolution to this entire affair. ➡

On This Day: Sep 10

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 24 posts previously published on September 10th

  • 2024
  • 2023
  • 2021
    • 📚 31/2021: The Star to Every Wandering by David R. George III ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 🖖🏻 ➡
  • 2020
  • 2018
    • Summer Vacation Part One As noted before, I posted these backwards, but here are the photos from the first part of our summer vacation. We spent four nights at Seaquest State Park (and had two of our nieces and their mom join us for two of those nights), wandering the woods and driving up to visit Mount St. Helens. ➡
  • 2017
    • At the Seattle Center to see a play, and happened upon their Hawaiian festival. Now sitting by the International Fountain and watching kids play. ➡
  • 2016
    • When clearance sales mean you can get a #batman onesie for $9, you don’t pass up on the opportunity. (254/366) ➡
    • More #Lego #minifig success! Got the #penguin costume, #icequeen, #boxer, and #babysitter (#bigsister? #mom?) with the cutest lil’ baby Lego! ➡
  • 2014
    • Halfway through the week. So far, so good. ➡
    • Oh, yum. Came home to still warm fresh baked bread, with the homemade fireweed jelly we got from my friend Thumper (AnnaMaria) when we were in Anchorage. So good! ➡
    • Bird, meet window. Window, meet bird. (The bird was fine, flew right away. I just couldn’t help but be amused at the almost cartoon-like near perfection of the smudge.) ➡
  • 2009
  • 2008
    • Jazzy Genius Here's a playlist my iPod just put together (pulling only from songs that happened to be loaded at the time), seeding off of Tony Bennett's take on 'Steppin' Out With My Baby'. ➡
  • 2004
    • Bush vs. Jesus If George W. Bush were running against Jesus H. Christ... ➡
    • North to Alaska On the off chance there's anyone in Anchorage who might have nothing better to do tonight than hang out at the airport, I'll be arriving on Continental flight 1587, scheduled to show up at 11:40pm Ak time tonight. ➡
    • Ten Tech Items Inspired by Science Fiction I WAS going to ask you to research whether or not there have been any women in Sci-Fi but I have answered that myself, having found Flash Gordon's moll. However it is a Sci-Fi question. Can you list 10 real technological 'things' that have reputedly come out of Sci-Fi stuff written in the 20th Century? ➡
  • 2003
    • www.michaelhanscom.com Eclecticism is now residing at www.michaelhanscom.com! Even better, the old address of djwudi.typepad.com will still work as a backup, so any links out there pointing my way will still work, without any issues whatsoever. ➡
    • Dean 'near-perfect' in latest debate The thought of that lying, hedging, mealymouthed stumblebum of a president trying to go up against the confidence, poise, and fire that Dean so often shows (and is apparently getting much better at as things progress) is incredibly amusing. ➡
  • 2002
    • Search re-enabled I know that the majority of my posts lately have been site-oriented, and are probably insanely boring, but...well...from time to time, I fall into full-on-'geek mode'. Just bear with me. ➡
    • 9-11 tributes Several sites across the 'net are altering their front pages as a tribute to the 9-11 attacks. Some aren't bad, some seem to be pretty ridiculous (to me, at least). ➡
    • The Height of Ambition But when the band played the Mexican hat dance, the construction workers started stomping in unison, and Endler -- standing next to Jack Kyle, the Port Authority's chief engineer -- began to feel odd vibrations in the structure. The floor did not seem steady. ➡
  • 2001
    • Nano-nano! In The Diamond Age, Stephenson does for nanotechnology what he did for the internet and virtual reality in Snow Crash -- takes today's best existing ideas and theories and extrapolates them forward into the future to explore where the technologies can take us. ➡

On This Day: Sep 9

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 25 posts previously published on September 9th

  • 2023
  • 2020
  • 2018
    • Aah, the 80s. When “Nazis are bad and should have their faces melted off” wasn’t a controversial statement. ➡
    • Re-watching Raiders of the Lost Ark and wondered if the “archaeological booby traps” trope had any basis in reality. Turns out, the answer is “yes”! Neat! ➡
    • 6.16 miles on the Cedsr River Trail this morning. Not a bad morning’s walk at all! ➡
    • How naked Burt Reynolds ended up in a Native art gallery in Seattle: This is wonderful. ➡
  • 2016
    • Just a nice quiet Friday evening at home. (253/366) ➡
  • 2015
    • Really, I’m not turning into some high-fallutin’ food snob. I’m just really spoiled. :) ➡
  • 2008
  • 2005
    • Why I’m not a Hollywood casting agent Seeing as how they're both horribly typecast these days and just seem to play the same characters over and over in every movie...I think Sam Jackson and Morgan Freeman should switch agents for a few years. Shake things up a little bit. ➡
    • Humor in Tragedy It's good to know that even in the midst of devastation, some people can still hold onto their sense of humor. ➡
  • 2004
    • Hurricane Ivan This looks about right to me…Hurricane Ivan gives Florida the finger. ➡
    • Bush’s military timeline Simon Woodside has created this handy-dandy timeline of President Bush's military service, using official documents released by the White House and the military. ➡
    • Mac tattoo? Rabid Mac fan I may be, but I do have to admit that I’m not quite rabid enough to get an Apple-flavored tattoo. However. If I were to get such a tattoo, I really think that the sticker design on this Powerbook would be it. That’s just a thing of beauty. (And yeah, this is ... Read more ➡
    • Incoming Florida just can't get a break, it seems. The current five-day forecast for Hurricane Ivan, courtesy of NOAA. ➡
    • The Class of 2008 For the seventh year, Beloit College has published their Mindset List, giving a short rundown of where today's college freshmen stand in relation to the world. I've caught this list for the past couple years, and it's always fun to read…if a little frightening at times (I'm only 31, and this list can make me feel old). ➡
  • 2003
    • Nice tits A selection of beautiful pictures of Tits. ➡
    • Good God, this is frightening Planning a trip anywhere next year? It might not be a bad idea to make driving plans instead of flying — since the US is planning to start flagging and detaining travellers at the airports. ➡
    • 20 Tips for new G5 owners This one's mostly just for me — originally from Ken Tidwell and posted on MacInTouch, but as their archives can be difficult to search, I wanted to keep this around. If all goes well, it might come in handy in a couple weeks. ;) ➡
    • Apples for Alaskans When school begins Sept. 15, the Denali Borough School District will become the first in Alaska to provide a laptop computer for every student in grades 9 through 12. ➡
    • Opus is back! After eight years away from newspapers, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Berkeley Breathed is creating a new comic strip called 'Opus,' starring his beloved penguin of the same name. ➡
    • How much to ship…me? Wanting to save a few bucks, he somehow puts himself in a shipping crate, manages to survive two flights in cargo planes, then pops out of the box once he arrives at his parents house — at which point the surprised delivery man calls the police, who arrest the man on an outstanding warrant. ➡
  • 2002
    • Font tweaks and hiding links And hey presto -- a hidden link that I can use to jump directly into edit mode on any post or comment in my blog! ➡
    • So long, Webloggers Well, it's official -- the Webloggers Webring is dead. Not a big surprise, really (some sort of crash had wiped out the linking system a few months ago, and it had been in limbo as to whether or not it could be recovered), but still something of a shame. ➡
    • Kung-tunes is back! I took a little time last night to get Kung-Tunes back up and running again -- as before, there's now a 'Music of the Moment' box displaying whatever .mp3 I'm listening to, updated every 30 seconds so that it's always current. ➡

On This Day: Sep 8

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 31 posts previously published on September 8th

  • 2024
  • 2023
  • 2021
    • Breakthrough infection odds: 1 in 5,000 or better. In Seattle on an average recent day, about one out of every one million vaccinated residents have been admitted to a hospital with Covid symptoms. That risk is so close to zero that the human mind can’t easily process it. ➡
  • 2020
  • 2019
    • It: Chapter Two: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Not bad, but not nearly as strong as the first. Good character building and creepy scares became too much CGI and too many jump scares. In the end, the creepyness of part one becomes just another collection of loud noises and CG monsters in part two. ➡
    • Book forty-nine of 2019: Star Trek: The Official Guide to the Animated Series, by Aaron Harvey and Rich Schepis. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ TAS finally gets its behind-the-scenes episode-by-episode review. Artwork, trivia, and memories from those involved make this a must for TAS fans. 🖖 ➡
  • 2018
    • Getting set up for the first @norwescon #NWC42 meeting of the year! ➡
  • 2016
    • Really, no other choice for the evening. #startrek #startrek50 #llap #llap50 #themantrap 🖖 ➡
    • Happy birthday #StarTrek! Today’s the #StarTrek50 anniversary — 50 years since The Man Trap, the first broadcasted episode hit the air — and while I wasn’t around for that, Star Trek has been part of my life for longer than I can remember. And that’s quite literally true; there are family stories of me at ... Read more ➡
  • 2015
    • I’m going to be a little sad when Prairie’s vacation is done. I could get used to coming home to cocktails on the patio! ➡
  • 2014
    • Yum! Sausages, ginger carrots, garlic Parmesan mashed potatoes, fresh corn, and homemade rosemary bread. I am so spoiled when Prairie’s on vacation and decides to spend a day cooking! (And the rest of the time too, really.) ➡
    • Definitely think I’ve hit maximum beard for me; thanks to my curls, the right side of my face is distinctly fluffier than the left. Time to trim! ➡
  • 2010
  • 2009
    • Thoughts on the Fall 2009 TV Lineup I just peeked at TV Guide's Fall 2009 TV lineup to see what Prairie and I might be interested in using to rot our brains with in the evenings. Most of the week looks doable, with only a few potential conflicts. ➡
  • 2008
  • 2005
    • More Katrina Incompetence On August 27th, President Bush declared a State of Emergency in Louisiana due to the then-incoming Hurricane Katrina. Sounds like a good thing, and possibly one of the few things done right in this whole mess, right? Well...not quite. ➡
  • 2004
    • New toys to play with Y'know, it's really hard to get anything useful done when I run across all these nifty new toys to play with. ➡
    • Flickr This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing. ➡
    • Oh, this was just icky Last night, as part of my preparations for going on vacation for a week, I worked on straightening up the apartment a bit, primarily by utilizing the time-honored method of picking up stacks of old mail and papers, dumping them in garbage bags, and taking them out to the dumpster. This morning, while in the shower, I suddenly realized that I hadn't set my AdSense profit check from Google aside into a separate pile when I got it. ➡
    • So are all photographers terrorists now? Yet another 'photography is terrorism' incident. ➡
    • Votergasm! Finally, a campaign I can get behind. Um…so to speak. ➡
  • 2003
    • Fred Phelps needs help Somehow until now Fred Phelps had managed to slip completely under my radar, but from what I've seen this evening, this man needs some serious help. ➡
    • Updated iPods and iMacs Oh, and just in case you've been considering upgrading or switching, Apple announced bigger iPods and faster iMacs this morning. ➡
    • The Doctor is in! Real life imitates art. ➡
    • Working out the bugs Anyway, I'm quite gratified that the design seems to be fairly well received, and that any bugs that have been mentioned so far are actually fairly minor. It's about time I started exploring different ideas, and you all are helping me iron things out a lot. I'll buy you a drink next time you're in town. :) ➡
    • Two girls in my bed! You will notice, however, that I am not in my bed. ;) ➡
    • New Patriotism Newsweek asks this week if it may be time for a New Patriotism. I'd say yes. ➡
    • Feedster IM Searching Feedster is currently my favorite search engine for finding topical, up-to-the-minute information, and they just released a really nifty new feature today — the Feedbot. ➡
    • Fifteen In 15 minutes, he attempted to make up for 15 months of misleading the American people and 15 weeks of mismanaging the reconstruction. ➡