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Our FIOS went out at 4 in the afternoon presumably due to some accident nearby. Still not fixed! The estimated time to restore is tomorrow mid day. This is the longest outage I have ever seen FIOS have. Even in the worst weather FIOS is dependable but today is something else. Something must have seriously gone wrong.

FIOS is out which means we have no TV tonight. We actually have to talk to each other. The horror 😱😱😱

Not clicking or reading any more stories about Israel’s continued genocide in Palestine. From my point of view, post Nov 5 the blood is on Arab Americans hands and the people who wanted to send Biden and democrats a message. My conscience is clear so best of luck to all those who sent a message. The blood of all those innocent people is now on your hands.

Over the last week I have done the following: 1/Logged out and deleted my twitter account. I had a shadow account that I had been using to track local police/school/weather accounts but fell into the dark hole a month before election by using it nonstop tracking the election. Now that it’s over, time to logout and keep it away. It has actually worked wonders just by doing this for my mental health. 2/ I am actively not taking any interest in “Trump appointed X to run X” articles. They are all over my news app but I am just not following it anymore; I sometimes click to read the opening paragraph and then just ignore the rest. It’s immaterial now. 3/ I had advised my wife and kid to do the same and avoid all news altogether. I told my kid focus back on Taylor Swift and not elections (which she was heavily invested in!). 4/ Start focussing on the things that I can indeed control in the short term, most important being my health and planned vacations. There’s a lot going on there that deserve more attention. 5/ Be more outgoing and invite more of our extended friends to spend time with us. While I love the small circle of friends we have, we just don’t do enough meeting up with so many others that we really should; over next few months just having more people around and meeting them will be a good change. They ain’t going nowhere yet, so we might as well enjoy! In short, fuck the news and focus inward.

Can we like stop with this whole nonsense of Biden stepping aside now so Kamala can be the first woman president, or Biden nominating her to SCOTUS. Like he *DID* step aside. She did her best. The American public has spoken. What Biden must focus on is to biggest bang for the buck that gives democrats a fighting chance in future than to indulge in symbolic performative nonsense like this.

The dreaded end of year reviews means no matter how good or bad someone is I need to make a sucky choice of rating someone below the line and potentially creating an exit scenario for that person. This is the one aspect of management job I am sure everyone hates but as my current manager told me, *If you dont nominate someone, I will nominate you to be that person* – simple, but quite effective forcing function. I dont like this one bit, but I gotta do what I have to do I suppose. I know the criteria by which (rather simple) I am going to do it though.

It’s insane how I am seeing Kamala all over my Instagram suddenly. Like every post even going back to few weeks ago suddenly popping up in timelines. Don’t let anyone fool you that only Musk was the only one here with X – Mark was equally in cahoots suppressing all dem information and pushing conservative posts.

Is it just me or the bakers on this season of great British bake off are insanely good! So far Dylan is my favorite and honestly the fact that he is Indian-Japanese is even more cooler coz that’s a combination I would have never imagined. Also, he seems like a fantastic baker!

A nice sleepy Sunday. Ifs actually going to run after 4 weeks today and kid is out with her friends at a mall. For a change I am looking forward to the rain 😆

I am more emboldened to post this post last night than now haha – Random musings on how democrats can actually start winning in future elections:

(*Disclaimer: I am not an election expert nor a political strategist. This is just how I think things may pan out. It’s important to win to govern. I could be wrong about every single thing on this list!*)

1. Give up on illegal immigrants. Its clear that most latin people dont care for their own people trying to make a better life so you want me to care about them now? Nope. The party needs to move very right on this because the normal populace does not want it.

2. Give up on birthright citizenship: Its not a winning message. It says nothing. A good majority of the world doesnt even allow you to become a citizen or have birthright citizenship so you might as well give it up. Blame it on staying with the times.

3. Crime and homelessness in cities: Nobody, not even democrats support housing homelessness in their cities. Stop with this posturing and do something about it. Every time I visit Seattle I find that place getting worse and worse and democrats want me to believe somehow thats ok.

4. Be honest about economy: One of the worst economic messages of this election cycle was the stock market. Empathize with regular people. Even as a top earners in country, we felt the pinch of inflation. Empathize that economy has not worked for people and listen.

5. Give up on NATO in short-term: Of all the things that I might have ever agreed with Trump on, this was the one. I don’t fucking want my country handling your issue. Europe issues are Europe issues, let them deal with it – even at the expense of China having undue influence.

6. Fuck the Middle East. Nobody cares. They dont even care for each other you want me to care for them? Nah.

7. For heaven’s sake, nominate a straight white man with a few white kids for president. Those days of colored folks or women winning are over in short term.

If this sounds dangerously America First, it probably is. In case of a wildfire I am not helping my neighbor escape until I make sure my own family escapes my burning house. Once I secure them maybe then I will think about my neighbor. Thats all.