John Scalzi’s Sage Voting Advice
Science fiction and fantasy writer John Scalzi weighed in on the 2026 midterm elections and who you should vote for in Ohio, where he resides. I think much of his advice applies to other states in 2026. Really, his final paragraph summarizes it all very well.
“And don’t vote for any Republicans. Let their manifest exile begin this year. Let it be compounded in 2028. Let them wander in the wilderness for a very long time. They deserve it.“
I urge you to read the rest of his post. It might make you smile.
AI, Trump, and Deception
On some days, it’s hard to be in the coffee shop. I was writing away when a group of five males who are about my age arrived. I’ve seen them before but don’t know them. After ordering drinks, they took the table beside me and began discussing subjects I enjoy.
For instance, they mentioned “Klara and the Sun”. Terrific book. A short summary is given. They don’t know the author’s name.
Working on my manuscript, I refrained from informing them.
“Did you lose any money yesterday?” one asked another. “There was a big crypto crime. I can’t remember the name of the company.”
I know, I know, my brain shouted, but I kept typing, venturing deeper into the novel in progress.
My coffee-shop neighbors returned to an earlier topic, AI. One said, “I think they’ll need to start labeling things made with AI.”
“Oh, yes,” another confidently replied. “That’s a given.”
I laughed to myself. I don’t think anything involving large sums of money and corporations is a given. I think that’s especially so when profits and revenues are in direct competition with public health and safety. Thinking back, I easily recall several historic incidents that repudiate that idea.
- Way back when cigarette companies paid doctors to reassure people that cigarettes weren’t dangerous.
- Remember the exploding gastanks on Ford Pintos? Ford paid a lot of money to keep that quiet, figuring that it would be cheaper to pay off the lawsuits.
- How ‘bout that time that oil and energy companies found and hid the risks and dangers of climate change?
- Purdue, the Sacklers, and the opiod epidemic early this century?
- Or what about DuPont and 3M hiding the effects of forever chemicals, Johnsons & Johnsons and the talcum powder/asbestos scandal, Volkswagen and dieselgate, or Monsanto and Roundup?
I can imagine the campaigns already, based on what I’ve seen with GMO labeling battles and Oregon Connects’ astroturf efforts here in Oregon. AI companies will run emotional ads arguing that forced labels stifle local software developers, harm tech startups, and slow down life-saving medical AI innovations.
They’ll jump on the deliberate manufacturing of ignorance and doubt, tactics corporations successfully employed before. As we’ve seen with multiple issues and challenges, the fight over AI labeling won’t be fought with facts; it will be fought by trying to convince you that facts don’t exist yet, or that a consensus about the facts doesn’t exist. It’ll be fought by convincing you that there is doubt.
Which brings us to Trump. Trump loves AI, although he wants to rename it, of course. While in office, Trump will absolutely fight to keep AI labels from being applied. Donald Trump is all for making money and dismisses values like honesty, ethics, and integrity.
So Trump will instantly denigrate any efforts to label AI content. That, I think, to Trump seems a lot like ‘woke’. And if he does, it will malign the effort for years.
I think that because of the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump claims that election was ‘stolen’ from him. No evidence of that has ever been produced. Trump often claims it’s because of voting by mail. 51% of Americans believe that election security is now a big problem in 2026. When it’s addressed by party, 83% of Republicans believe that voting by mail is now not safe.
We can argue that the polls now reflect a worry that Trump has taken steps to make voting less secure. I believe that he influences others with his lies and deceptions.
Which is the point. When someone like Donald Trump takes the stage and bellows a claim, it becomes part of our modern landscape, tainting truth, spreading doubt and confusion.
And that’s why I don’t think that we’ll ever be able to accurately label AI content.
Not till longer after Trump is gone.
Saturday’s Theme Music – Us and Them
Ashland, southern Oregon — October 31, 2026.
Another 30-degree night. White clouds overly the blue sky, creating a hazy white and blue sky. About 50 degrees high expected, I think.
Halloween has arrived in the US. At last. Decorations have been up for a while, and a casual topic of conversation, a filler. “So, do you have any fun plans for Halloween?” “Do you get many tricker or treaters?”
We have no fun Halloween plans. Going to a Day of the Dead party, but that’s on Monday. No, we don’t get any trick or treaters, and we’ve ceased buying treats because we ended up eating them all or freezing them forever.
I chuckled as a I dressed today. I’m wearing a sweater with a black tee shirt under it. I bought the sweater before moving from California to Oregon, so that’s over 21 years ago. But I recognized the tee shirt as one of the black cotton tee shirts with a chest pocket that I wore with my battle dress uniform in the Air Force over thirty years ago. I was in special ops for a while, and they required black tees. I still have three of them. Amazing how well they held up.
Trump says we’re getting richer. Economists say, um, no.
Gosh, if we’re getting richer, as Trump claims, I wonder what’s causing the soaring personal bankruptcies this year if we’re all ‘getting richer’? And if the US as a nation, why is our national debt so high and climbing, or that the budget deficit is getting worse?
I also wonder why so many people are complaining about the high costs of food, healthcare, and just about everything else. Besides increasing personal bankruptcies, personal savings are cratering in the US, and credit card debt keeps going up. Even farmers and ranchers, beneficiaries of Trump’s attempts to buy them off, are starting to say that Trump is a disaster.
Well, the truth to Donald Trump’s assertion is in his words. When Trump says “we’re getting richer”, he doesn’t mean We the People. Trump means Donald Trump and his family and peers like the wealthiest five percent of the nation are getting richer.
For Trump, it’s always about us and them. Trump managed to con a large portion of the population into thinking he included them when he said ‘us’, but they’re starting to understand that Donald Trump is a greedy, lying narcissist who is using his position to enrich himself.
‘Starting to’ is key to that. Many Trump supporters ‘sort of kind of maybe realize’ it but support Trump despite what it does to the nation because they like his brand of greed, hate, division, faux religion, and chaos. They approve of his ‘small government model’ because it means less regulation for business and more money and opportunity for them to get wealthier! “Everyone for themselves!” is their model, echoing the Founders’ intentions.
As everyone knows, it’s all part of the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all white men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Christian God with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Getting Richer, Screwing Everyone Else, and Doing Everything to Hold onto Power.”
Every school child is taught that early in American schools, especially private, white Christian schools paid for by vouchers made possible by poor taxpayers.
For as the old maxim goes, “We are only as strong as our weakest link, so we need to break those links and replace them with links like us. For in conformity is strength.”
Today’s theme music is by Pink Floyd. “Us and Them” was part of the album, “Dark Side of the Moon”, which was released in 1973. The lyrics are perfect for the Trump era, as he’s constantly dividing the nation, world, and even his own party under terms which call out us and them.
Sample Lyrics
“Forward”, he cried from the rear
And the front rank died
The general sat and the lines on the map
Moved from side to side
Black and blue
And who knows which is which
And who is who
Up and down
And in the end
It’s only round and round, and round
“Haven’t you heard it’s a battle of words?”
The poster bearer cried
“Listen, son”, said the man with the gun
“There’s room for you inside”
They’re not gonna kill ya
So like, if you give ’em a quick short, sharp, shock, they won’t do it again
Dig it? I mean he got off lightly ’cause I would’ve given him a thrashing
I only hit him once
It was only a difference of right and wrong, innit?
But really, I mean good manners don’t cost nothing, do they, eh?
Down and out
It can’t be helped
But there’s a lot of it about
With, without
And who’ll deny
It’s what the fighting’s all about
I hope you and me, and all our friends and relatives, have very good days and comfortable nights.
Cheers
Trump World Truths
I Found a new time suck.
Yes, that’s what my life was missing because I have all the time in the world and absolutely nothing to do.
This particular suck is all about the elections. The UF Election Lab maintained by Dr. MacDonald, offers interesting data on the 2026 midterm election cycles. Like any good time suck, it offers the kind of information that always has me questing across the net, looking for validation. Trust but verify.
But wait, there’s more!
The next site is called MAGA Report Cards. And holy cow, it’s a magnificent time suck for a good cause. It’s such a great collection of information about GOP candidates. What’s best about it, though, is how it connects the dots between who they were before and who they claim to be now.
For instance, on here, you can look up Republican’s positions on Medicaid cuts. You know that Republicans claim they’re against Medicare cuts, right? Or so they claim.
MAGA Report Cards responds with the receipts:
Republicans Cut Medicaid by Nearly $1 Trillion. They Scheduled the Pain for After You Vote.
This isn’t news for most of us who have been paying attention. But it’s helpful as a refresher, especially if you need to repudiate some MAGA fact denier.
MAGA fact deniers are amazing, terrifying critters. My wife was listening to a video of one yesterday. A reporter was asking a MAGAt woman what she thought of the Ukraine War and Trump’s failure to end it as he promised he would. This woman responded, well, that’s fake news.
There is no Ukraine war.
Like, whhhhaaaatttt?
No, according to this MAGAt, all that you see on the news about the Ukraine War is made up. Fake.
And that’s where technology fails us. At a time like this, I had a desperate urge to go through the computer screen and ask this woman, “If the Ukraine War is fake news, why is Donald Trump talking about it? Why did he make that promise in the first place, you fucking moron?”
Alas, technology hasn’t advanced that far yet.
Your Trump Quote of the Day, for the record:
I came across the MAGA Report Card when I looked up Christine Drazan’s record. Christine Drazan is a *cough* Republican running to be Oregon’s governor. Oregon is where I now reside and vote.
Voting by mail has been Oregon’s standard since 1998. Works great from my POV. I moved here in 2005 and have always voted by mail as an Oregon resident. I liked it because as a military member for twenty years, stationed around the world, voting by mail was often the only way to go.
Christine Drazen claimed that she fully supports voting by mail and blah blah blah.
That’s not what I remember of Christine Drazen’s previous position. She’s been in the Oregon legislature for a while. A search for her position on voting by mail took to MAGA Report Card.
MAGA Report Card handed me the receipts.
Christine Drazan Wrote the Bill to End Oregon’s Vote-by-Mail. She Describes It Very Differently.
Sites like MAGA Report Cards are so important in this digital age. The party of Trump follows their leader’s course. Donald Trump charts paths of lying, cheating, denying, and pretending.
MAGA Report Cards helps us stayed moored in facts, truth, and history.
Change is needed.
Vote blue in 2026.
Monday’s Wandering Thought
It wasn’t a simple hookup.
Despite the lidocaine injected up my urethra, the Foley catheter’s progress up into my bladder felt torturous. Didn’t help that the little exam room felt very, very…chilly, or that I was naked from the waist down, covered by a paper ‘blanket’.
Yes, this was my fourth BCG wash. Just two more to go. Fortunately, Nurse C, who does the instillation for me, is almost my age and shares an appreciation for a lot of the same rock music.
We compare who we’ve seen and what albums and songs we particularly enjoy. Nurse C has one concert over me that has me really envious: her first concert was Carlos Santana.
I’ve never seen Santana in concert.
Laughing, she told me, “It was 1975. I was a teenager and big into disco. So, I worked all summer to pick strawberries, saving my money to buy a ticket to see KC and the Sunshine Band. Dad drove me and my girlfriend to the concert and then waited at a nearby coffee shop.
“KC and the Sunshine Band finished. We got up and headed for the exit. Then the next guy came on. I said, ‘Who is that,’ and turned to pay attention. It was Carlos Santana. I’d never heard him before. That changed everything for me.”
My bladder was about finished voiding the urine through the Foley by then. Glancing at the beaker collecting it, Nurse C said, “You have some good-looking urine, though. That looks great.”
I shook my head. “Man, that’s the worst pick up line I’ve ever heard.”
We laughed as she loaded up the TB solution and began feeding into my bladder.
Music. It can really help you get through life.
