Oh, the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments

Oh, the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments that is taking place on the floors of software companies across Silicon Valley this morning! (Except maybe at Peter Thiel's office.)

Barrons reported that donations to Hillary from employees at so-called millennial firms (the Barrons Next 50 index) outpaced donations to The Donald from those same firms by a factor of 50-1. How can all these advanced thinkers possibly continue to live in a country that elected The Donald?!?

I work with two people, D and T, both very intelligent software engineers. T is one of those very skilled high-tech workers who have immigrated legally from China.

D says to T: "After last night's election, I think I am going to have to move to China."

I comment: "T is probably thinking: Be my guest."

T, who struggles sometimes with English, simply smiles and nods her head in agreement.

Congratulations Ro!

Congratulations to Ro Khanna on his landslide victory in the 17th Congressional District, my district. Silicon Valley is finally free of that old Democratic millstone Mike Honda!

Potential Trump cabinet appointees?

Maybe Victor Hanson for Secretary of Defense or State and Peter Thiel at Treasury?

Democratic hypocrisies coming soon to a theater near you

The Democrats will insist that elections do not necessarily have consequences. For weeks, Democrats have been insisting that The Donald should accept the will of the people as expressed through the outcome of the presidential election; now, like Peter Beinart this morning, they will insist that some things "are too precious to be put to a popular vote."

The Democrats will begin to appreciate the virtues of obstructionism. Alternatively, they will praise the virtues of bipartisanship.

After having pushed through Obamacare by a strict party line vote, the Democrats will bewail legislation passed along strict party line votes.

The Democrats will defend the use of the filibuster to block judicial nominees. For close to a year now, the Democrats have threatened to use the nuclear option to fill Antonin Scalia's seat on the SCOTUS as soon as Hillary was elected and they retook control of the Senate; now, Democrats will be outraged and cry foul when The Donald nominates a conservative and the Republicans use the nuclear option to fill Antonin Scalia's seat on the SCOTUS.

After 4 years of Obama using the phone and the pen to govern by executive order, the Democrats will bemoan presidential government by executive order.

After allowing President Obama to foist on the United States international deals on climate change and Iran's nuclear weapons without Senate ratification, the Democrats will now insist that all international deals be ratified as treaties by the Senate.

After having insisted for quite some time now that only Black Lives Matter, Democrats will suddenly realize that they need to pay attention to the plight of white, middle class voters, too (just so long as those deplorable troglodytes don't adopt extreme positions, like opposing gay marriage, or objecting to abortion on demand, or something equally benighted).

After Hillary and her PACs spent twice as much as Donald, the Democrats will insist once again that we must pass campaign finance reform.

After having been the beneficiary of nonstop, blatantly partisan, pro-Hillary media coverage during the campaign, the Democrats will once again denounce the biased political coverage of FoxNews.

After defending the rapist Bill Clinton for decades, the Democrats will find unfit for office a president who is guilty of serious sexual offenses against women.

And last, but not least: After not uttering a word of criticism during 8 years of Obama megadeficits, Paul Krugman will become a fanatical deficit hawk.

Full disclosure: I voted for neither Crooked Hillary nor for The Donald.

I can't believe how stupid Trump and Hillary are

Where was Peter Thiel when Trump needed him? SFGate has published a tweet from Edward Snowden refuting Donald Trump's desperate claim that the FBI could not have reviewed the emails on Huma's server so quickly. Every second year CS student knows that comparing hashes was the obvious way to eliminate all duplicate emails. Interestingly, SFGate seems to think Snowden's remarks are the brilliant insight of some great genius.

Of course, Trump's ignorance is matched by Hillary's, who (along with her lawyers, ferchrissakes?) thought that her server was secure because it was "on property guarded by the Secret Service."

And we are going to elect one of these two buffoons to be leader of the free world.

New pieces of shit

One day back in my hippy days, I got into a heated philosophical discussion with my parents. I told them that they were "overly materialistic." Gesticulating around the room, I shouted "Look around you at all these possessions that you have accumulated. They are just pieces of shit." Presumably, my point was that I was morally superior to them because I cared nothing for the base, physical things in life, but instead had my mind's eye firmly set on objects in the higher spiritual plane.

So, for the rest of her life, whenever I acquired any new possession -- a new car, or a new piece of furniture, or expensive new fishing gear -- my mother would say to me: "Oh, so you've acquired some new pieces of shit, huh?"

My mother has been dead for several years, rest her soul. But, this morning, as I stood in our backyard admiring the new teak patio furniture that had just been delivered to our house, she called out from the grave "Ah, I see you've acquired some new pieces of shit." Touché, Mom.

The Kleene Closure of Sexualities

Here's a wonderful quote from an article on sfgate entitled White Cal students blocked at Sather Gate in 'safe space' protest:

LGBQIA+ stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex and Asexuality. The "+" symbol encompasses all other sexualities, sexes and genders not previously mentioned.

I guess the + sign is meant as a kind of Kleene Closure of Sexualities. Except then it probably should be written as LGBQIA*.

It would save a lot of characters if they just wrote S* to stand for "whatever kind of Sexuality you can come up with, including no sexuality at all". But, then, that would be thought to include regular old vanilla heterosexuality, which would be undesirable, since the tolerance for sexual diversity exhibited by the Cal student protesters most assuredly doesn't extend to heterosexuality, just as their tolerance for racial diversity doesn't extend to whites.

And then there is this other article from sfgate Oberlin activist students want conversations instead of exams, no below-'C' grades.

Oberlin students: when even sfgate is amused, you have gone too far.