Scorched my knuckle something fierce tonight.

Mom drove up, and we all walked up to the local ballot drop box and deposited our ballots.

Today’s kitchen victory: successfully made three bâtard loaves. Gave one to Mom.

Ballots arrived today.

Turned the furnace on for the first time this season.

The dude and a friend have been teaching themselves how to write mods for Stellaris. I’m eavesdropping on his side of their conversation as they open an account on GitHub.

If Republicans ram a conservative Supreme Court justice through the Senate, Democrats (both with a lowercase “d” and an uppercase “D”) must pack the courts when they retake the Senate in January.

Last night’s mini-wikidive (from “Sing, Sing, Sing”) led to Gene Krupa (from whom I got a strong Animal vibe), so that was good.

The smoke is gone, I “mopped” the floors, and all windows are open. Feeling agitated by the fallout of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death yesterday, and by the upcoming two-plus months of political shitshow, but not quite so helpless/hopeless.

Just noting the smoke for the record. Woke up to a yellow-beige light this morning.

Tonight’s picnic victory: bratwursts in sauerkraut on the grill; baked beans; nectarine/raspberry cobbler with ginger biscuits; peach sorbet with the bambina; coffee ice cream with the dude. Mom and Greg and Jocelyn and the kids came over to help us eat it all.

The dude convinced the bambina to listen to “The Internationale”. She seemed into it, though maybe not as much as he is.

Downloaded 1700-some photos from my Flickr account. Boy is that some nostalgia.

Got sucked into Ancillary Justice, and then reread Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy in short order. A couple thoughts:

• Of course the books are a criticism of imperialism and oppression, and a subversion of gender normativity. But Leckie also writes what strike me as neuro-atypical characters as well (Breq here, but possibly also one of the main characters in The Raven Tower).
• By the end of the series, I had grown tired of Breq’s near-omnicompetence.

Anyway, I finally got back to The End of Policing last night.

Talkin’ cosmology with the dude.