Matt @matt@istheguy.com

Ok I've mostly locked in my ballot.

I still haven't picked a circuit court judge, and I don't think I will. They both look great.

For school board, @Simon 's mom likes Angie Smith and Jeff Gaynor but hasn't decided on a third yet, so I've got those two filled in, and I guess I'll take some time to look up what I can about the remaining 7 candidates.

Ok, I get it now; proposal B (Ann Arbor 2020) has a context. Historically, the city has built new sidewalks by charging adjacent property owners.

If proposal B passes, the city will have a few years during which it can add new sidewalks with tax revenue instead, and it's part of the city's efforts to discourage driving and encourage walking.

As a citizen who walks everywhere and almost never drives, I am in favor.

Oh right I normally just don’t vote in trustee elections for schools I have no stake in, but then I realized if I wasn’t gonna vote anyway, I may as well vote green party? Let me know if you care about Wayne state trustees and you think I should not vote green party

Van den Burgh and Roumel both look like good judges. Roumel has a lot of endorsements, but they both really look great. If anything I'm inclined to vote female due to the lower odds of being a sexual predator, but I'll likely leave it blank.

When it comes to the state supreme court, my aunt who used to work on policy in the capital building says McCormack and Welch, so I've already filled in those bubbles, and no power on earth can change my vote.

@soccrchik I know you've attended classes in the past at WCC—do you have any knowledge to pass my way about trustees?

Proposal C looks like the affordable housing initiative that this town has been needing for decades. A firm and shouted yes.

Proposal B looks like a new project to build sidewalks, and all I could find about it were offhand mentions that it was to close sidewalk gaps especially near schools? Does anybody know more?

Proposal A looks like a renewal for the city's road maintenance budget. Seems fine?

The Washtenaw county proposal looks like asking for a renewal for a mill for the county to buy land for nature reserves. An easy yes.

2020-2 made me nervous at first, but it does not appear to even have opponents? It looks like it's redundant with existing laws and exists to put pressure on police to take search/seizure laws more seriously.

If 2020-2 is rejected, it will still be illegal for a cop to force you to unlock your phone at gunpoint, but they'll be able to credibly claim that the will of the public is on their side, even if the law isn't.

Took me a while to figure out how I felt about 2020-1, because it doesn't really provide a context. Proponents speak in empty sentences about how nice parks are, but opponents claim that:

1. It's a shift from buying new land to conserve to only maintaining existing parkland, and

2. It attempts to tie park maintenance budgeting to the mining of fossil fuels.

Hey local friends, how are you voting on state/country/city proposals? I’m currently leaning no on 1, yes on 2, yes on wccd, yes on A, ??? on B, and yes on C. In particular, if you understand what B is about, or if you disagree with me, I would like to hear from you!

Wait, did I buy tiktok?

Server health update: ok something is up. On the previous server, I just had it reboot nightly which... I guess it worked, but I think it rebooted mid-auto-kernel update? So I mean, I shouldn't be treating uptime as a bug. SIGH guess I have to start monitoring UGH

I added a hit counter to my website, so now you'll know how many other people have viewed my website! https://matt.istheguy.com/

@Simon When you're doing garden stuff, how often do you come across epazote?

I've never used elasticsearch; I've only had to run it, and my experience is that I hate it.

Ok the site has been up but unreliable all weekend, I think because elasticsearch kept filling up the ram. I've throttled it, so now it should merely fill up its own allocation, panic, and restart every once in a while, without affecting anything else.

Oh and for those who I haven't already told who may be wondering why istheguy email stopped working, it's a related problem, but it won't be anymore because mail is now running on its own separate server. I'm told it takes gmail 5 days to start trusting a new mailserver, so, if you use gmail, that clock is running.