https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17043541

Oy vey. Both the GitHub repo AND the HN conversation.

Stupid headline, but good article.

Source: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/05/10/can-the-democrats-win-the-2018-senate-midterms-218330

«It’s hard to overstate the degree of difficulty in flipping the Senate this year. As Nate Silver has noted, it’s possible that Democrats are confronting the worst Senate map ever—as in, since direct Senate elections began in 1914.

Roughly one-third of the Senate is up for election every two years, but this time the Democrats are defending almost three times as many seats as the Republicans are: 26 to 9. While Democrats simply need to net a measly two seats to win back the majority, they must do it by running a gantlet through Appalachia and some of the whitest, most rural, least Democratic and pro-gun terrain in the nation.»

I have my own wild theory about this, which I hope to get around to writing up soon-ish.

«Many of the country’s top law firms have resisted the prospect of their lawyers representing the president. As Mr. Trump tried to rebuild his legal team this spring, firms told their top lawyers that if they wanted to represent the president they would have to resign.

The firms were concerned about Mr. Trump’s longstanding history of ignoring his lawyers’ advice and apparent failure to pay his bills, and backlash from employees who did not want to work for a firm that was representing Mr. Trump.»

 

Hello, World.

Source: http://www.emojitracker.com/

Yes, that Billings.

Welp…

«The Mormon Church has been the largest sponsor of the Boy Scouts in the United States, making up nearly 20 percent of all of the Boy Scouts’ 2.3 million youth members.»

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/05/09/mormon-church-breaks-all-ties-with-boy-scouts-ending-100-year-relationship/

Source: http://www.thecrosstab.com/2018/05/08/may-8-recap/

Huh. NC-09 got a bit more interesting last night. A Baptist minister who pushed NC’s Amendment 1 banning gay marriage primaried the current Republican incumbent, turning the election into an open seat. His Democratic opponent is a Marine vet and former Republican.

District looks pretty gerrymandered, of course, diluting Charlotte with a bunch of rural counties. It also includes a piece of Fayetteville, home of Ft. Bragg:

(By 1: GIS shapefile data created by the United States Department of the Interior and the USGS., and published for public use by the US. Census Bureau. Retrieved from: https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/cbf/cbf_cds.html Data was rendered using ArcGIS® software by Esri. 3: File developed for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere by 7partparadigm. – https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/cbf/cbf_cds.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58986277 — Holy cow, that’s a lengthy attribution.)

Ouch.

https://twitter.com/iAmTheWarax/status/993917952612282368

I really need to do this.

https://twitter.com/SkinnerPm/status/992849468889419776?s=20

«We can still do amazing inspiring FORWARD-THINKING things. We just need to elect better representatives…unless we really think DC represents us. Which means we’re ugly.
Then work every day locally.
I mean locally.
The house to your left; the house to your right.
Then repeat»