![\"Image\"](\"https://www.atoms.net/uploads/maga.png\")
I just sent a version of this email to the two people running for the Democrat nomination for the Illinois General Assembly 1st District. My district, the 1st includes a stretch of Archer Avenue in Chicago under state jurisidiction which has proven so far very difficult to improve for bicycle and pedestrian safety.
\nGreetings,
\nI am a voter in the 1st District and am trying to decide how to vote in the upcoming primary. After reviewing your web site, I still have a few questions about transportation and street safety, and I’d be grateful for your responses:
\nWhat is your position on protected bike lanes and other street safety projects in the 1st District, especially when there is neighborhood controversy about parking or traffic?
\nHow would you balance the needs of drivers, pedestrians, transit riders, and people who bike when the city proposes street redesigns in our area?
\nDo you support expanding low‑stress options for people to walk and bike on the Southwest Side and, if so, what role do you think the state should play?
\nThank you for your time and for your service to our community.
\nSincerely,
\nACTUAL NAME HERE
\n","date_published":"Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT"},{"id":"https://www.atoms.net/blog/robot1/","url":"https://www.atoms.net/blog/robot1/","title":"Robot Minimum Wage","content_html":"and the robots have to give all their wages, initially to the unemployed and underemployed and then eventually, when all the non-automated jobs are gone, to everyone.
\nPut another way: robots are paid a wage somewhat comparable to the wage that would have been paid to a human worker. Those wages are taxed at 100%. That tax income is then used to fund unemployment payments, and over time, gradually shifted over to pay for a universal basic income.
\n","date_published":"Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT"},{"id":"https://www.atoms.net/blog/loggy/","url":"https://www.atoms.net/blog/loggy/","title":"Added some Logging","content_html":"I just added a tiny, privacy‑friendly “pageview counter” to this blog that runs for free, doesn’t use Google Analytics, and avoids collecting personal data.\n
\nMost analytics tools track a lot more than many small sites need: they set cookies, profile visitors, and phone home to big platforms just to answer basic questions like “Which pages are people reading?” and “Is anyone visiting this thing?” The goal here was different: count visits and see which pages get attention, without building dossiers on readers or depending on gross ad‑tech companies.\n
\nA tiny web service (hosted on Deno Deploy) that receives a simple “someone/something viewed this page” message whenever a page on the site loads.\n
\nThe service is a very small snippet of JavaScript added to the blog’s template that sends just three pieces of information:
\nWhich page was viewed (the URL path)
\nThe page title
\nWhere the visitor came from on the site (the referrer)
\nThe service does not store IP addresses, cookies, or unique identifiers—only high‑level information that’s useful for understanding traffic, not tracking people.\n
\nWhen someone opens a page on the site, their browser quietly makes a background request to the analytics service saying “Page /blog/archive/ was viewed.” The service checks that the request comes from a web page, updates an in‑memory counter for that page, and writes a brief log line (timestamp, path, title, referrer, and browser type).\n
\nNo cookies and no fingerprinting. The system doesn’t try to recognize or follow a person across visits; it only counts pageviews.\n
\nIt records just enough to answer “what is being read?” rather than “who is reading it?”.\n
\nFor a small site or personal blog with no commericial interests whatsoever, the interesting questions are about content, not people: which posts resonate, which pages nobody sees, and whether the site is still alive in the eyes of readers. This setup answers those questions with a tiny, understandable, and host‑agnostic piece of plumbing - no dashboards, no trackers, and no dependence on ad‑network analytics.\n
\n","date_published":"Sun, 18 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT"},{"id":"https://www.atoms.net/blog/sente/","url":"https://www.atoms.net/blog/sente/","title":"Counter-Protest is Gote (後手)","content_html":"The Japanese term, sente (先手) means "prior hand" or "first move". In the game of Go, sente translates roughly into the english term "initiative".
\nI've been spending a couple/few hours on most recent Monday evenings counter-protesting at our Alderwoman's office on Archer Avenue in Chicago. A very small, but obnoxiously loud group of people have been stiring up opposition to a traffic safety project on Archer which was approved after years of public meetings at which there was approximately zero opposition. The scheduling just happens to co-incide with "Ward Night" - the time when the ward staff and the alderwoman makes themselves available for walk-in visits from constituents (actually one can visit any time they are open). The loudest of the dozen or so regular protesters are afflilated with conservative groups opposed to our progressive alder. Their motives are suspect to say the least.
\nFor reasons unrelated to the Archer Avenue astroturfing, I'm exhausted with participating in public protests, so I'm not objective. But I'd really rather spend my winter Monday evenings doing almost anything other than standing around in the cold showing support for the safety project by holding signs and quite possibly being mistaken for a protester, rather than a counter-protester by a subset(?) of the passing drivers who can be bothered to pay any attention at all to the situation.
\nAt last night's counter-protest I was reminded of Go's concept of sente. It is a bit of an exaggeration, but I've heard it said that to lose sente - to lose intitiative - is to lose the game. After one has lost initiative, one's move is reactive and worse, there may only be one weak, defensive move to make and if that isn't bad enough, that move is dictated by one's opponent. The pain! To counter-protest is to react - in Go terms, this state of reacting to an opponent who has seized the initiative is called gote (後手) - literally, "after hand". There is a way out of the situation in Go called tenuki (手抜き) in which a player who has lost the initiative intentionally ignores the threat and instead of defending, makes a move elsewhere. I wonder if it may be time for tenuki on Archer?
\n","date_published":"Tue, 13 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT"},{"id":"https://www.atoms.net/blog/public-sans/","url":"https://www.atoms.net/blog/public-sans/","title":"Public Sans","content_html":"Our tax dollars are making this awesome new typeface, Public Sans available for free. Please, no one tell Secretary of State Marco Rubio about this!
\nFor more background on the absurd Rubio tantrum see: this NYT article
\n","date_published":"Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT"},{"id":"https://www.atoms.net/blog/northwestern/","url":"https://www.atoms.net/blog/northwestern/","title":"Caving By Any Other Name","content_html":"Early on, when the trump adminstration was coercing colleges into toeing the MAGA line, it looked like universities might resist. I could not be more disappointed to see that Northwestern caved into trump's demands AND had the temerity to claim that it was preserving its independence while doing so.
\nNorthwestern's $14.3 billion endowment could have been prudently used to cover some or all of the federal funding the government threatened to withhold.
\nIn this excellent post on Why Forgiving (Not Forgetting) Marjorie Taylor Greene May Make Sense for America (and Me)\nMarie Newman reiterates the concept that Forgiveness is for you, it is not for the offending party. Newman did not originate the concept, but somehow I hadn't heard it before (or forgot if I did) so she gets the credit. There are of course, differing schools of thought about this view of forgiveness, but it makes sense to me, at least in context of MTG or, Northwestern University for cravenly capitulating to the trump adminstrations demands to give up its independence and pay a huge fine in order to preserve some federal funding.
\nSome more thoughts, in no particular order added Dec 30, 2025
\nNorthwestern could look at this example of how to stand up to a bully who is threatening to stop federal funding:\nNPR's CEO Katherine_Maher's wikipedia entry
\nNorthwestern can draw from its own history of breaking agreements if it believes it's too late to assert independence.
\nIf it can dissolve the Deering Meadow Agreement, it can also back out of its capitulation to trump. Then again, it might have to acknowledge the existence of the Deering Meadow Agreement in order to reinstate it.
\nFor now, I'm not yet burning my Northwestern Wildcats hoodie, but I'm also no longer wearing it in public.
\nAlso see:\nPritzker professors question legality of Northwestern funding deal
\n","date_published":"Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT"},{"id":"https://www.atoms.net/blog/makearchergreatagain/","url":"https://www.atoms.net/blog/makearchergreatagain/","title":"Can We Have Nice Things?","content_html":"
Good questions!
\n\nLike everyone, I have some things to say. Unlike everyone, I'm mostly refusing to use social media, and since I'm not hugely into speaking with actual people in the so called real world, this seems like a viable option. (In other words this is a slightly less and slightly more crazy person technique for expressing the inner dialog.) ALSO there will be some pretty tedious notes to myself of a more practical nature - like WHEN did I last acquire our last ever non-stick pan? (this time I mean it!)
\nTip
\nI'm using some features of the theme and blogging software here, like this tip, which isn't really a tip at all, mostly so I remember that they exist and have an example of how to use them laying around.
\nThe blog software Lume runs in\nDeno, using the pretty awesome Xeo theme
\nNote
\nLike the tip that isn't a tip, this note is well, I guess it actually is a note. So never mind.
\nSome obsessions may be revealed, such as my obsession with Frog Respiration. Other obsessions, such as riding the Peloton "bike" will be lurking under the surface, almost in secret, until I run out of other things to prattle on about.\nSpiritus Ranae, is sort-of Latin, or perhaps actual Latin for "Breath of the Frog". For about four years, my Peloton user-name was "Frog Breath". There was some non-happiness about it from people I love and/or respect, so I eventually changed it to "Spiritus Ranae" about which I have as yet heard no compliants. (Then again, an eye roll is silent!)
\nA few broad topics and particular ideas I might eventually get around to yammering about:
\nI had this idea - entirely driven by magical thinking - that one could write a letter to our depraved president which could turn him around, make him see how cruel and counterproductive his whole schtick is and even get him to unbreak our hearts by fixing the enormous mess he's created.
\nCould this actually work? Probably not. But should that keep us from writing such a letter?
\n$75M but no admission of wrongdoing... so wrong!
\nThere will be song titles for songs that may or may not ever get written.
\nlove that section of the We Will Craft values page.
\nasdf
\na white? really?
\nDevice That Made Me: Curren$y on Sega Genesis
\nYes it is a blog!
\n","date_published":"Wed, 03 Dec 2025 16:00:00 GMT"}]}