As I mentioned in an earlier post, I signed up for a one year subscription to be able to get access to NYT Cooking. Here are some recent recipes I have made (all were excellent! (gift links below)):
Also, here are some recent collections I am looking through:
Wired: Election Deniers Aren’t Contesting Their Massive Losses
Overall, the Democratic Party had overwhelming success across the nation, taking control of the House and Senate in Congress. In addition, the federal government did not interfere in Election Day activities. Election Law Blog has several posts on this topic, suggesting that the preparation of state and local election leaders helped create an environment that supported voter access and stood ready to fight interference.
In my home state (Oregon), results generally favored Democrats. Democrat Tina Kotek had a 100,000 vote lead over the Republican Christine Drazen on Election Day with mail-in ballots still coming in through next week. With mail-in ballot volume since Election Day, it is very unlikely that Drazen can overtake Kotek, yet Drazen has refused to concede the race. As of November 6, Kotek’s lead has increased to 130,000 votes.
Two other races I was interested in were the US Senate race and the US House District 6 race. For US Senate, Democrat Jeff Merkley was running for reelection against Oregon House rep David Brock Smith. In past US Senate elections in Oregon, the Democratic incumbents Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley have spent little effort to campaign in Oregon (advertising, candidate debates, other engagement). This happened again in 2026, but Merkley was able to easily beat Brock Smith (57% for Merkley, 39% for Brock Smith).
For the House District 6 race (a new district created in 2022), Andrea Salinas was running for reelection against former Dundee mayor David Russ. In her first two elections, Salinas faced businessman Mike Erickson. Both candidates spent quite a lot on negative ads. Andrea Salinas managed to win both times by 2-3% margins. In this year’s contest, David Russ raised about $15,000 versus $600,000 for Salinas. In this year’s race, Salinas had no advertising or engagement, yet she continued to send out almost daily fundraising texts – ugh! Even with Russ’ low financial support, he still managed to get 42% (with Salinas getting 57%). To me, this shows that there is a significant amount of Republican voters within the district, and that Salinas could face headwinds if a credible challenger could be found.
Possibly the earliest possible results from Maine:
The Emacs text editor is now 50 years old! See coverage in MIT Technology Review and The Register (via Emacs News).
It’s interesting that the Atlantis version of Dave Winer’s Frontier application is available in a repo called helloFrontier – and that he does not link to the repo…
I recently recorded a podcast with my friend John Philpin, where we talked about our projects on the IndieWeb and the current state of AI – give it a listen!
modeorg.org: a human guide to Org mode (via Emacs News) – a 30 day guide to learning the Org Mode feature within Emacs – I will give this a try to see how it compares to my site Org Mode for Beginners.
There are a number of important elections happening around the world. In Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated Flávio Bolsonaro in their presidential election this past weekend. This past Tuesday, Israel held national parliamentary elections, which will determine if Benjamin Netanyahu will continue as prime minister. In the United States, early voting and mail voting is underway for local, state, and federal elections, culminating on November 3rd (Election Day in the US).
The most important step that voters can take is to vote early if possible, and be prepared to vote in person on Election Day if that is the voter’s choice (i.e., show up early with identification). What is at stake? The issue being covered in the mainstream media is control of the US Congress (currently the House and Senate have Republican majorities). Election polls are indicating that the Democrats could take control of at least the House, and perhaps the Senate as well.
The other issue that is getting a lot of attention is the possibility that Republicans could block Democrats from taking control of the House or Senate when the new Congress meets on January 3, 2027. Again, mainstream media are publishing a lot of negative “what-if” scenarios on how this could occur. I recommend following the Election Law Blog headed by Rick Hasen at UCLA Law School. This is an excellent resource on following any election-related litigation. In addition, there have been multiple posts evaluating these “what-if” scenarios at Election Law Blog and other sites on how the likelihood of success is low to none:
I have been retired now for several months, and thought it was a good time to reflect on how things have changed for me.
When I started my retirement, I would start each day with a written list of to-dos on my computer, and work to complete all the things on the list. After about two months, I decided that I did not need to have a list. Now, I have a hand-written list to collect things/tasks as they come to mind, and I just keep adding items, not starting a new list until the page is full.
I had some planned projects for when I retired (mostly website maintenance/migration, start looking at using AI for software development). I was able to finish the migration work in a few months, and did some experiments with AI after that. Over the past few months, I have had difficulty thinking of a project where I want to invest my time. For example, I see articles/posts about apps that people have developed using AI, and I have no interest in those things. If anyone has any ideas for a good project, send them my way!
In general, I have become more relaxed in my day-to-day activities. If I don’t get a task done, there is always tomorrow to get it done, or the day after that….and I have also taken a lot of naps!
