Not much as I try to get into the con swing. Conventions for me are either big hits where I get energized and psyched up, or they suck the life out of me and make me wonder just WTF I'm doing (although I've wondered if it's because being at a Con I get out of my routine and sometimes forget to take all my pills, I haven't wanted to test that theory, though). Confusion has done both for me, although it is 80% the first one. I'm not sure how I'm feeling about this one yet. But being at the con, I don't have much time to read the news and write. So expect mostly a quiet time until Monday (now watch the world blow up during Friday's news cycle and/or me posting like crazy).
John Bogle, and so it goes. "When Mr. Bogle, the Vanguard founder who popularized the low-cost index mutual fund and helped put billions more dollars in the pockets of millions of people, died on Wednesday at the age of 89, he inspired an outpouring of memories." Bogle is why when asked (I am not a financial analyst or a finance adviser, please consult one of them for your investment options) about 401(k) (or it's siblings) investments I will reply that you should pick the broadest index fund with the lowest fees in the group of funds you have available (and if they ever make a Dow Jones Industrials Index fund, I'll put my money there too). In the long run few funds do better than the market, and if you pay high fees (more than 1%) you're spending a hellalotta money to someone who isn't taking the same risks. Actually, those fees add up quickly and subtract a lot from your compound interest earnings. Unfortunately for my one job I don't have access to funds with lower than 1%, but the funds I am in are the broadest index fund and it has the lowest fee rate of them all (1.2% IIRC). At the night job it's a Vanguard fund with a 0.03% fee.
Mary Robinette Kowal is running to be president of SFWA. When I started writing seriously, joining SFWA was one of those goals that I looked forward to. Then there were a few years that saw that star dim a little and I wasn't so sure that SFWA was relevant and that membership would be nice, but wasn't really a goal. I am writing a little these days, not nearly as often or as much as I would like to (probably more about that later in the year), and while SFWA is no longer that milestone in my head, the organization has enjoyed such good leadership the past 8 years that joining would again be a matter of pride. And I think Mary would make the organization even better. (Grokked from John Scalzi)
Why are there "sanctuary cities"? Because ICE is often wrong. "But instead of releasing him, the Kent County jail turned him over to the custody of ICE. The county did that based on a request from ICE, which claimed Ramos-Gomez was in the country illegally." Time to end ICE.
"The report is the first official U.S. government acknowledgment that the Trump administration was using family separation as a measure to deter illegal immigration nearly a year before it became official DHS policy. NPR and other media were reporting the increase of family separations at the border in early 2018." And how did that "deterrent" work out for us? Not so well it appears.
"'Go back to Puerto Rico!' the Missouri congressman shouted, punctuating a stream of Republican whooping and hollering at the Democratic majority for initially rejecting their request to redo a vote on a continuing resolution to reopen shuttered agencies through Feb. 28." But it totally wasn't racist. (Grokked from Joshua Parker)
"Donald Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to U.S. Congress about their plan to develop a Trump Tower Moscow, Buzzfeed News reports tonight citing two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter." Rhut rho. As my old pinned tweet used to say, "How many coincidences and unforced errors lead to a constitutional crisis. Asking for a worried country." (Grokked from Xeni Jardin)
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