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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • The federal government is the largest employer in the United States and the hardcore R base isn’t big enough for them to get away with pissing off people on the margins. Sure, the true believers will blame democrats. But if a relatively small percentage of Republican voters get pissed and don’t bother voting, they’re not only not going to win the White House, they could easily lose the house and their shot at controlling the senate. And what pisses people off more than not getting paid?


  • The hop part is a bit more interesting. The strong beers of the time weren’t enough to keep the beer from getting infected. However, hops are a natural preservative. The oils have antibiotic properties. They were initially used as a preservative for weak British ales and the taste was a side effect but not necessarily the desired effect. When they had trouble shipping their beers across the world, they would pack the beer full of hops so it would make the trip. Eventually, Brits in India developed a taste for the bitter beer that was shipped to them and a beer style was born.









  • We had considered moving from our high cost of living area to a cheaper state but ultimately didn’t because of our young kids. We’re squeezed pretty hard here and we could all live very comfortably on my salary in another state. But I couldn’t find a place with remotely acceptable schools. And who would our kids friends be? Very worried about the influence of their peers, raised by racist homophonic garbage.

    And beyond maternal care, healthcare in most “affordable” states is just bad. We have the best healthcare system in the country where we’re at. What if we move to a state in the bottom third of the country and one of us got sick? The healthcare stories from rural America are very chilling.

    And then once the kids grow up, what do they do then? No jobs, no decent higher education, lots of heroin, etc. Their options will likely be leave or fail unless something dramatically changes in the next decade. This might not really apply to Texas or the southwest but I’m on the east coast.


  • They don’t. Libre Office is maintained by a non-profit called The Document Foundation. They’re funded entirely by donations. I think they make enough to have some full time employees.

    A lot of open source software is created by individuals or non-profits. The Mozilla foundation makes Firefox, for instance. They make money through donations and also Google pays them a ton of money to be the default search engine.

    There are for profit companies that make or contribute to open source software. Such as Red Hat. They tend to make money by selling support for the software.