Our side of School Street is Community Center, Library, Village Cemetery, Credit Union, Town Office, and that has me cutting across the small cemetery coming back to the library from the ATM at the Credit Union. The cemetery is full of Hunts, but this is my favorite, born in 1756, was a private in the Massachusetts regiment (Maine wasn't a state yet) in the Revolutionary War, died in 1822. He lived to see the country and this town (1804) begin. We should write a play to be performed here; we could call it Sandy Stream Anthology. Children could stand up from behind a stone and tell the person's story.

Some quotes from this excellent book about the AI bubble.

• -- Margaret Thatcher’s “There is no alternative” has a fine rejoinder in the science fiction writer William Gibson’s famous maxim, “The street finds its own use for things.”
• -- There’s never just one ant.
• -- The most important thing about the gadget isn’t what it does, it’s who it does it for and who it does it to.
• -- Practically everyone who falls for the AI hype is dreaming of getting a human need fulfilled without having to extend moral consideration.
• -- Never forget that you aren’t the target for AI hype—investors are.
• -- AI bros are waging war against creative labor in order to create outrage, because the louder we all shout about how AI can replace workers, the more money they can raise from the capital markets and the more credulous, worker-hating bosses they can peddle defective AI products to.
• -- the output of an AI cannot be copyrighted. The prompt that a human feeds to the AI is a creative work, and it is protected for life and seventy (or a flat ninety years if the human is making a work-for-hire for a corporation). But the output of that prompt is born in the public domain.
• -- Remember: the reason the AI bubble exists is that companies want to prove that they have growth potential, in order to secure high profit-to-earnings ratios, which will let them buy businesses and hire key employees with stock, rather than cash.
• -- it is so common for “AI” to turn out to be low-paid call-center workers in India, Indian technologists joke that “AI” stands for “Absent Indians.”

It's different when it happens near to you, in a town that's only had 3 homicides in the last 10 years, when it's a young father with his wife and 3 year old daughter. It means instead of sleeping I plan scenarios. My rules do not allow killing or hurting people, but it does allow ridicule and humiliation. My scenarios usually involve animal tranquilizers, sometimes delivered by old ladies with dart guns built into their walkers, more often delivered by drones, always drones. Once tranquilized, they can be stripped of their guns and all that ridiculous army gear; their truck keys can be tossed into bushes or a gutter, maybe some sugar applied to gas tanks, maybe a couple of flat tires. They can be tied to each other with their own zip ties and their cell phones can be used to post their photos online. Then the anti-Ice team disappears into the neighborhood, and the intersection blockers let the real police through. Other scenarios involve glitter, glue, whistles, eggs, and dead skunks.

Maybe all elections should have to happen in a 3 week period. By the time the counties had elected their delegates it was clear that Troy Jackson was the winner and the other candidates dropped out and pledged him their support. So the convention on Saturday will probably nominate on the first ballot. The Platner people became the Jackson people and made sure their delegates got in. Jackson is good at winning in red districts and I think he will beat Collins in November.

Things have moved fast since Platner dropped out of the senate race; next weekend the counties meet to select delegates to a convention scheduled for July 25. I applied to be a delegate, an obligation that would last less than a month. I would vote for Troy Jackson whose platform is pretty much identical to Platner's. He has a long legislative history and can win the north. I'm glad Platner dropped out, but he is still a hero to me; he created an energetic progressive movement that will not be silenced. Waldo County will get only 15 of the 600 delegates to the convention. Here are the rules:

The nomination itself will be decided through elimination rounds rather than a single vote or a ranked-choice voting system. At the convention, every certified candidate appears on the first ballot. Each one gets a brief, formal moment before the balloting begins: a two-minute nominating speech from a supporter, followed by five minutes of remarks from the candidate. Then, the five candidates with the most votes advance to a second round. After that, each round eliminates only the last-place finisher, continuing until one candidate wins a majority. Vote totals are public, but it’s a secret ballot.

Here's a good shady spot for a phone call. The Zone. We maintain our lake buffer as sort of organic chaos, hosta mixed in with wild plants, and a winding path to the dock. Eden in the midst of a crazy world. In the summer, the weekends are over scheduled as people pack events in. Next Sunday I will go to the caucus, but I'll miss the float-in concert where the lake association (for the first time ever) will put a blues duo on the big island, and I'll miss the end of the film festival.