Abrigo Valley Trail to Santos Trail returning on Briones Crest Trail, a pleasant three and a half mile hike in Briones Regional Park.

(Previously: Mariposa Loop)

Hike starts at: 37.927261, -122.158768. View in Google Earth.

(Related: Devils Kitchen; Hazelnut Trail; Bay View and Shoreline Trails at China Camp State Park)

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(Hike Map)

Lake Merced in San Francisco (Previously: Lake Merced).

(Related: San Francisco from Alameda; San Francisco from San Bruno Mountain; San Francisco from Mount Davidson)

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A five mile loop in Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve. Super limited parking so a good one for an early start. Descend Grabtown Gulch Trail for a little over two miles (and it doesn't really stop going down). Then after about five seconds along Purisima Creek ascend Borden Hatch Mill Trial all the way back to the top.

Hike starts at: 37.422216, -122.338163. View in Google Earth.

(Related: San Pedro Valley Park Waterfall Loop; Bull Valley Trail to Port Costa; Bay View and Shoreline Trails at China Camp State Park)

(You might also like: China Camp State Park; Recent Wildlife; Sunset #9)

(Hike Map)

2020 Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, including the Galilean moons.

(Related: Jupiter from Casini Ranch; West of West Portal; Waterloo Sunsets)

(You might also like: Summer Solstice 2020; Mangler; Was there ever any doubt that I would eventually write this post?)

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Winter starts now in the Northern Hemisphere, Summer to the south. 10:03 UTC Dec 21 2020 rendered in Catfood Earth.

(Previously: Winter Solstice 2019)

(Related: Winter Solstice 2021; Winter Solstice 2017; Winter Solstice 2015)

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Minutes spent so far this year waiting for Excel to talk to a printer: about 290.

Lifetime Excel print jobs: maybe 2?

How to fix Accessing Printer Press ESC to cancel:

1. Press Start, search for Printer and run the Printers & scanners setting item.
2. Find and click Microsoft Print to PDF and click Manage.
3. Click Set as default.

The only real disadvantage is you'll need to select a different printer when you actually need to print anything (which you probably don't).

(Related: Export Google Fit Daily Steps, Weight and Distance to a Google Sheet; Full Outlook Web Access on Chromebook; How to backup Google Photos to Google Drive automatically after July 2019 with Apps Script)

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The Saints of Salvation by Peter F. Hamilton

4/5

 

Dead Lies Dreaming (The Laundry Files, #10) by Charles Stross

4/5

 

Poseidon's Wake (Poseidon's Children) by Alastair Reynolds

3/5

 

The Sentinel (Jack Reacher, #25) by Lee Child

4/5

 

(Related: #Resist; Point Reyes - Drakes Estero; Nonfiction)

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Mariposa Loop in Briones Regional Park near Lafayette. Park near Happy Valley Elementary School and then head up Panorama Drive to the top to get the trailhead. It's just over three miles. The first mile goes up 600 feet without stopping and the views are fantastic in every direction. This is the first time we've visited Briones, will be back soon as it looks like it has a lot of decent loops.

Hike starts at: 37.905312, -122.142265. View in Google Earth.

(Related: Bumpass Hell; Golden Gate Park - Stow Lake, Strawberry Hill and Museum Concourse; Crissy Field)

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(Hike Map)

There is going to be a grown-up in charge. Maybe a little too grown up, and maybe not in charge of the legislature but what a relief.

This is a historic election for me. It's the first time the party I voted for (either in the UK or the US) has ended up in power. After a lot of shopping I rather fear I finally bought something.

It's more than a little shocking to me that more than 70 million Americans looked at this choice and voted for Trump. It's also shocking that out of a couple of hundred million possibilities that this is the choice we ended up needing to make. Biden was pretty far down my list in January but I held my nose and voted for him. I have to be charitable and assume that the same is true for many Trump voters. But still. FFS. He's literally killing you.

A decade ago I compared US politics to daisyworld and it's still true. We have guaranteed two party rule and neither party is particularly attractive. This forces people to pick a team and it's why we got the tribalistic result that we did. You're going to keep rooting for your side even if you don't particularly like the team this year. We need more like twenty parties and some genuine choice and some power sharing that results in compromise rather than deadlock.

On the subject of deadlock in practically every other democracy when the government can no longer govern then it falls. I do not understand why we go years with an imponent leader. I know that there are many people who think that this is a feature rather than a bug. That having Biden in the White House but Mitch McConnell saying no in the Senate is the kind of checks and balances that gave the hallowed Founders wet dreams. But I'm sick and tired of minority rule or near rule. Obama at least got two years to legislate, Biden might be facing zero and that's a crazy outcome for a majority of four million and counting. We need a National Popular Vote and we need to do something to fix the Senate.

$14 billion was spent on the 2020 election which is eye-watering. We're on track to spend $6.6 trillion this year though so we can afford to word on getting the money out of politics. It's crazy that Congresspeople face election every two years and are basically just fundraising the whole time. Let's have longer terms and Federally funded campaigns and term limits. Let's have independent redistricting that allows voters to choose their candidates and not candidates to choose their voters.

I'm not holding my breath.

(Related: Thinking about the UK referendum on AV; I'm with Her; Intelligence Squared Two-Party Debate)

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Looks like the Digital Services Act is going to be interesting. Vice reports:

"Furthermore, if the European Commission listens to the Parliament's recommendations, large tech companies may find it harder to actually keep users on their platforms in the first place. That’s because at least in the discussions so far, there’s been an emphasis on looking into interoperability between different platforms, meaning that users could move and communicate between them using open protocols."

I have repeatedly called for this, it's the best way to break apart Facebook and get people back to talking to friends and not being manipulated by algorithms. But also:

"They also wrote that “User-targeted amplification of content based on the views in such content is one of the most detrimental practices in the digital society, especially when such content is amplified on the basis of previous user interaction with other amplified content and with the purpose of optimising user profiles for targeted advertisements.”"

Being the EU, I worry that we still get the ads and maybe some additional cruft to dismiss or not at the bottom of the screen. Instead they'll focus on the content and there will be more banned speech, or platforms will be responsible for truth which I don't think is the way forward.

(Related: Facebook shouldn't own your social graph; More on breaking the Internet; Doing news right with Feedly and Google News)

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