Diary

I've sort of been waiting for the Trump administration to implode, but, although it does seem to be occurring, it's still a slow process. Obviously, the Republicans are already panicking about losing the House in the midterm elections next year, and in true Republican form they are launching a massive gerrymandering campaign. Since they have specifically tied their destiny to Donald Trump, I don't think that they are going to get the results that they wanted. One thing that has caught my eye is that Trump is currently losing the support of male voters. I think that, from this position, the only way that he can increase his popularity is by reviving the economy and reducing inflation. However, economic growth has been jostled about by his tariff "plan," which is still in an unstable state, and, even if it is finalized soon, the economy may take several years to stabilize. If there were a resurgence in manufacturing jobs, which I think is unlikely, it would probably be after 2028. And, since the initial effect of tariffs is usually higher inflation, there may be higher inflation for some time. Because Trump is an idiot, he seems to think that if the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates, he will get both an economic surge and lower inflation. In fact, there may not be an economic surge, and this might lock in higher inflation. As I said earlier, inflation is usually reduced by raising interest rates, not by lowering them. 

On a broader scale, I have been thinking about recent American political developments in terms of "liberal" and "conservative," and how this relates to my readings on evolution, particularly the evolution of cooperative behavior in humans. In many respects, the MAGA movement is a continuation of the Tea Party movement, in which selfish behavior overshadows selfless behavior in politics. The rough pattern of this change is that conservatives gradually decided that it wasn't worth it to them to help minorities, immigrants or women, and that liberals dug further into the idea of social equality as a democratic principle. From an evolutionary standpoint, either view might be correct. While cooperation is probably the main reason why we exist today as a species, as I've said, that was primarily an evolutionary fluke, and all of the other primate species are less cooperative than we are: if they could vote, they would probably be Republicans. This may be why progressive politicians currently seem to be fumbling around to come up with an effective message. My overview of this situation is still that the human population is too high, we have seriously damaged the environment, and that we should cooperate at least in addressing these two issues and reducing warfare. As I have also noted, H. sapiens is not an intrinsically rational animal, and I would welcome some help from AGI.

My personal life is currently a lot less dramatic. My tomatoes are doing even better this year than last year, and this is the first time since I moved to Vermont that I've had large, ripe tomatoes in the first week of August. I'm hoping that, since this is a longer ripening season, I may be able to eat all of them this year and not have to give any away. As far as my investments go, I haven't held any stocks since July 22. So far, this has had little effect on the value of my holdings, and I would rather be safe than sorry, with huge market drops possible in the next few weeks. My new telescope mount finally seems to be working properly. At times I was getting fed up with it but was unenthusiastic about repacking it into four boxes and returning all 116 pounds to California. The main problem turned out to be that, in the course of making screen and software modifications, they never changed their setup instructions, so that the instructions didn't match the equipment. I eventually figured this out on my own and experimented a little to figure out what the correct steps were for star alignment. Losmandy is a little different from most astronomy equipment-making companies, which tend to be engineering-oriented. I don't think that Scott Losmandy went to college, and he attended Hollywood High School. He started the company because he was a machinist and stargazing hobbyist. The company is located in the same town from which The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was broadcast. Johnny also became interested in astronomy and used to have the astronomer, Carl Sagan, as a guest. Even so, although there was this glitch, the people at Losmandy were friendly, and I sort of enjoyed seeing how they operate. They make more videos and podcasts than other suppliers, probably because of their Hollywood orientation. I usually appreciate quirky companies like this that don't follow standard corporate models.