Weekly Update, November 9, 2020

Greetz internet friend, and welcome back to my blog. Thanks for taking the time to read this weekly update! Like last week, I’m running late and planning on keeping this update short, so let’s just dive right in.

Politics

While it is great that Joe Biden won, and I think we should celebrate, that doesn’t mean we should keep the pressure off the minute he is in office. It’s great and I am very pleased that fascism was defeated at the polls, but there were millions of American voters who looked at Donald Trump and said, “I want four more years of that!”

Honestly, I need to spend more time sitting with and trying to understand if it is just racism or something else that caused so many people to vote for him? Last weekend I finished watching Boy’s State and I thought it was very instructive. People underestimate youth at their peril! I agree with some of the students from that film, that if you want to be successful in politics it is imperative to understand conservatives and where they are coming from. Over and again this weekend I heard the same thing from the different movies I was watching – if you want to win, you have to know your enemy.

There is more I could write on this subject, but I am going to leave it there for now.

Black Lives Matter

Like most of the rest of this post, I don’t have much to say outside it being great that a woman was elected Vice President, and it is wonderful that there will be a Second Gentlemen. However, the VP-elect had many problematic policies and it will still be important to try to push her and the rest of the administration to the left. That having been written, it is also important to acknowledge the victories when they come!

I also think it is important that myself and other white radicals and progressives not get too self-righteous. When it is all said and done, it was the work of a coalition that included women and people of color that brought victory to the Democrats in this election. Too frequently their contributes are ignored, marginalized, or improperly diminished, and I want to make sure that does not happen here!

After four years of Donald Trump and his followers and their, “F your feelings” attitudes, it is pretty easy to feel very tired and bullied as a country. However, a new day is starting to dawn. While the fight is far from over, it feels like now we can at least slow down just a bit. Perhaps this is the wrong analysis, and we should be redoubling our efforts. There are two things that I know for sure – one of them is that you cannot draw from an empty glass.

The second that that I know for sure is that Black Lives Matter! I really hope that this Presidential victory will bring real change, but that will only happen if all of us can keep up the pressure on these newly-elected politicians. They work for us, and it’s important that we all keep that concept in the front of their minds. We have all seen what happens when politicians only look out for their base. Also important and very instructive is that we have all seen what Republicans do when they have power. They separate families and keep children in cages, they brutalize protesters, and they supported a racist. I will never forget these lessons, and I hope no one else forgets either!

Professional

Last week I was working on a web application penetration test and an extra project. It was a very difficult and distracting week, with the election and uncertainty surrounding it, and I wasn’t nearly as productive as I would have liked. I’m going to work harder this week to try and compensate.

Personal

In what was surely a stroke of horrible timing and will almost certainly go down as a bad decision later, I decided to start NaNoWriMo last week. If you are not familiar, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, where writers try to produce at least 50,000 words in 30 days. My goal was 60,000 because I know there are going to be edits and lots of stuff will probably be cut from the final draft. That way I can lose up to ten thousand words and still have a novel when I’m done.

Participating and finishing NaNoWriMo has been on my bucket list for a decade and even though I have too much on my plate right now, I started it on November 2nd and the only prep I did was an outline on November 1.

So far, I’ve written about 8700 words of my 60,000 word goal. I’m taking the short story I wrote a few weeks ago and my wife just finished editing last night, and using it as the basis for a novel. Speaking of that short story, I know that I’ve been saying that I am going to post it for weeks now, but I am actually going to post it this week! My editor and the love of my life finished her notes last night and I’m going to make the changes she suggested and post it. If you want to know exactly when, turn on my notifications on Twitter today and you’ll know when I post it because I’ll tweet about it.

Now, because I’m behind in NaNoWriMo, and I’m starting work an hour early because of this project I’m working on, I’m going to end this weekly update now. Thanks for taking the time to read it!

People to follow

As I do every week, here are some tech and non-tech people you might consider following on Twitter.

Martin Luther King III - The son of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Bernice King - The daughter of Dr. King

@cetolyne - great friend, awesome programmer, super helpful!

@blenster - cool maker, very positive, well worth a follow!

@GWeessies - very smart person doing interesting research!

Marley - first place champ! Marley is one of the best on Twitter!

Null Coder - another awesome person to keep an eye on!

@EvilMog - creator of the DC MUD and an interesting person to follow.

TrakoZG – an internet friend who tweets excellent things

Sofia Rune – brilliant scholar who shares things that are both insightful and valuable

Click here for the previous post, and click here for the next post. Finally, I hope you have a very nice day and a most excellent week!