New comics

• Dark Side of the Horse
• Day by Dave
• Deep Dark Fears
• DeFlocked
• Don Brutus
• Doodle Town
• Eek!
• El Café de Poncho
• The Elderberries
• Endtown
• Eyebeam
• Farcus
• Fat Cats
• FoxTrot Classics
• FoxTrot en Español
• Frank and Ernest
• Fred Basset en Español
• Freshly Squeezed
• Frog Applause
• Funky Winkerbean
• FurBabies

Improved comics

“Dick Tracy” is now being pulled from GoComics in addition to Comics Kingdom, so it is now accessible in the aggregator to people without a Comics Kingdom subscription.

The “Batch Rejection” strip which I added yesterday was broken and is now fixed.

Coming from GoComics in addition to ArcaMax

These will have improved resolution when GoComics is working:

• Daddy’s Home
• Diamond Lil
• Dinette Set
• Dogs of C-Kennel
• Flo & Friends
• For Heaven’s Sake
• Free Range
• Fowl Language

A special note about “Fowl Language”: GoComics and ArcaMax publish this strip on different days, so you’re going to see duplicate strips in your feed if you subscribe to this one. Repetition is better than losing strips if GoComics freaks out again! But if it manages to stabilize for a while I may end up disabling the ArcaMax puller for this strip.

More improvements to GoComics fetching

The GoComics fetcher is now robust and should work much more reliably. We’ll see if this new implementation lasts us for a while or if they escalate the blocking and I end up having to rebuild it again.

• Calvin and Hobbes en Español
• Cathy Commiserations
• Cattitude — Doggonit
• C’est la Vie
• Chuck Draws Things
• Citizen Dog
• The City
• Cleats
• Compu-toon
• Cornered
• Cow and Boy Classics
• CowTown
• Crumb

In addition:

• Fix Rose Is Rose, which was broken some time in the past few days.
• Crabgrass is now available on Sunday as well as the rest of the week.
• When a Comics Kingdom user exceeds the view limit for a strip for a given day, display a useful error message to that effect.

This takes a lot of time. If you’re using the aggregator regularly and not supporting it on Patreon, you should feel bad.

GoComics strips have returned. I have a workaround for being blocked by the site which doesn’t allow me to load comics in real-time, but I can get the loaded eventually. I am attempting to load all comics in the background throughout the day, so hopefully by the time you go to read your comics the ones you want will be there, but if not then see below.

These new comics have been added:

• 9 to 5
• Aaggghhhh
• The Academia Waltz
• Adult Children
• Agnes
• AJ and Magnus
• Alley Oop
• Amanda the Great
• Andertoons
• Angry Little Girls
• Animal Crackers
• Annie
• Ask Shagg
• Back to B.C.
• bacon
• Baldo en Español
• Ballard Street
• Barkeater Lake
• The Barn
• Barney & Clyde
• Batch Rejection
• Ben
• Benitin y Eneas
• Big Nate
• The Big Picgture
• Bleeker: The Rechargeable Dog
• Bliss
• Bloom County
• Bob the Angry Flower
• Bob the Squirrel
• Bo Nanas
• Boomerangs
• Bottomliners
• Bozo
• Breaking Cat News
• The Buckets
• Buckles
• Buni

I will continue to work my way through GoComics and add strips to the aggregator as time permits. If there’s a specific GoComics script you’d like me to add out of order, let me know.

The comics list is now much easier to read. Comics are listed in columns which resize dynamically based on the screen width, and there are section headers so you can scroll quickly when looking for specific comics.

When a GoComics comic is not currently available but the aggregator thinks it should be, the error that is displayed now includes a link to the source page for the comic, so you can click through and read the comic on GoComics if the only reason it’s missing from the aggregator is because it’s being blocked.

For comics that are available from multiple sources, the aggregator now attempts to fetch from all possible sources in preference order by quality (i.e., resolution). This should improve comic availability and how early in the day they’re available.

The aggregator is now smarter about detecting when it is being blocked by GoComics and won’t keep trying to fetch comics, which should decrease page load times.

Availability information has been configured into the aggregator for a number of additional comics, which means both that the page will load faster on days when they’re not published if you read any of those comics, and that you won’t see errors about those comics on the days they’re not available.

However, there are a number of “intermittent” comics which publish on inconsistent days so I can’t configure availability information for them. These will continue to show up with errors on the page if you read them, on days when they aren’t published. Currently these are:

• AJ and Magnus
• bacon
• The Big Picture
• Bleeker: The Rechargeable Dog

These comics that are no longer being published have been removed:

• Brenda Starr
• Ink Pen
• Noodle Scratchers

Additional miscellaneous notes about specific comics:

• “1 and Done” is back to being fetched from GoComics instead of ArcaMax. For some reason the ArcaMax version is only published three days per week whereas the GoComics version is five days per week, and the strips are different on the days they overlap (!!) so one can’t really serve as a backup of the other.
• There were briefly two redundant “Broom-Hilda” comics listed, one without the hyphen. This is fixed.
• The recently added ArcaMax “Humor Me” comic was added broken and has now been fixed.

GoComics has tightened its anti-scraping protections, presumably to defend against AI slop factories. As a result I am currently unable to retrieve comics reliably from GoComics. I may be able to figure out how to circumvent the new protections and/or find other sources for some of these comics, but in the meantime, they are either working intermittently or not at all:

• Adam@Home
• Arlo and Janis
• Betty
• Baldo
• Banana Triangle
• Big Top
• Birdbrains
• The Born Loser
• Bound and Gagged
• Brevity
• Brewster Rockit
• Broom Hilda
• Calvin and Hobbes
• Close to Home
• Drabble
• The Duplex
• Edge City
• F Minus
• Family Tree
• The Flying McCoys
• FoxTrot
• Frazz
• Fred Basset
• The Fusco Brothers
• Heart of the City
• Ink Pen
• Jump Start
• The Knight Life
• Lio
• Lucky Cow
• Marmaduke
• Monty
• Nancy
• Off the Mark
• Overboard
• Phoebe and Her Unicorn
• Pluggers
• Prickly City
• Sherman’s Lagoon
• Stone Soup
• Sylvia
• Tank McNamara

In addition, the new comic “1 and Done” has been added to GoComics, but as noted above it may work intermittently or not at all.

The following comics which were previously being fetched from GoComics are now being fetched from ArcaMax. They should be more reliable than GoComics but slightly lower resolution:

• The Argyle Sweater
• B.C.
• Baby Blues
• The Boondocks
• Cathy
• Crankshaft
• Dog Eat Doug
• Doonesbury
• For Better or For Worse
• Garfield
• Get Fuzzy
• The Lockhorns
• Luann
• Mike du Jour
• Mother Goose & Grimm
• 9 Chickweed Lane
• Non Sequitur
• One Big Happy
• The Other Coast
• Peanuts
• Pickles
• Rose is Rose
• Rubes
• Scary Gary
• Speed Bump
• Wizard of Id

The following comics have been moved from Comics Kingdom to ArcaMax. As above, they will be lower resolution, but they’re now available to everyone who uses the aggregator, not just to people who set up a Comics Kingdom subscription. Furthermore, the “1-day delay” version of these comics is no longer available, since it’s not needed for ArcaMax:

• Arctic Circle
• Barney Google and Snuffy Smith
• Beetle Bailey
• Between Friends
• Bizarro
• Blondie
• Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee
• Family Circus
• Carpe Diem
• Curtis
• Daddy Daze
• Dennis the Menace
• Dustin
• Hägar the Horrible
• Hi and Lois
• Macanudo
• Marvin
• Mutts
• Pajama Diaries
• Pardon My Planet
• Popeye
• Rhymes with Orange
• Shoe
• Six Chix
• Take It From The Tinkersons
• Zits

The following new comics from ArcaMax have been added:

• Agnes
• Andy Capp
• Archie
• Aunty Acid
• The Barn
• Barney & Clyde
• Breaking Cat News
• Caption It
• Crabgrass
• Cul de Sac
• Daddy’s Home
• Diamond Lil
• Dinette Set
• Dogs of C-Kennel
• Flo & Friends
• For Heaven’s Sake
• The Fortune Teller
• Fowl Language
• Free Range
• Ginger Meggs
• Heathcliff
• Herb and Jamaal
• Humor Me (Leave Caption In Comments)
• Jerry King Cartoons
• Loose Parts
• Master Strokes: Golf Tips
• Meaning of Lila
• Momma
• Poorly Drawn Lines
• Red and Rover
• Reply All
• Rugrats
• Sarah’s Scribbles
• Shrimp And Grits
• Spectickles
• Strange Brew
• Wallace The Brave
• Wee Pals
• Working it Out
• Wumo
• Zack Hill

Before I tell the whole story I first want to share the most important thing I learned. The official website for Quad Lock is https://quadlockcase.com/. There’s another website, quadlockcases . com (note “cases” instead of “case”), which is fake and you should not use it. It looks like somebody in China is using that website to sell knock-off versions of Quad Lock products.

My motorcycle has a Quad Lock mount, vibration dampener, USB-powered wireless charging head, and waterproof 12V to USB smart adaptor. Yesterday the wireless charger started malfunctioning: when I mounted my phone, it started switching itself off repeatedly, while the LED on the charger cycled through solid dark blue (ready to charge), green (charging), flashing light blue (“overheating”, according to the documentation), dark (resetting).

I went online to try to find documentation about why this was happening. Somehow I initially ended up on the fake website mentioned above, but I eventually ended up on the correct site, I believe by doing a web search for keywords related to one of the products I have which is only available for sale on the real site. This is where I learned that the flashing light blue LED supposedly meant “overheating”.

At this point I needed to ask for support, because “overheating” didn’t make any sense: it was dark outside and not hot.

I opened a live chat, which connected me to a chatbot (sigh). The chatbot was actually pretty effective. It asked me clarifying questions, to do some additional tests to narrow down the problem, and for some additional info, and then told me that it had created a support ticket for me and a real person from Quad Lock would be reaching out to me about it soon.

The most important test the chatbot asked me to do was to unmount the charging head from my bike, take it in the house, and see if it worked properly when plugged into a wall charger instead of the 12V adaptor; it indeed worked perfectly in this context, implying that the problem was probably with the 12V adaptor, not with the charging head.

After the chatbot gave me the ticket ID, I asked it to send me a transcript of the chat. It said it couldn’t do that but if I wanted it could add a note to the ticket asking a person at Quad Lock to send me a transcript. I said, “Frankly, the reason I’m asking is because I’ve heard horror stories of chatbot claiming they opened tickets that they didn’t really open. If that’s what happened here then adding a fake note to the fake ticket isn’t really going to help.”

The chatbot conceded that was a fair point and transferred me to a person. The person confirmed that a real ticket had been opened by the chatbot and that the chatbot had put all the information I provided into the ticket. They also asked me to in the morning send a better video of what I was seeing (since the first video was taken in the dark) and proof of purchase for the Quad Lock stuff, which I had to call the dealer to get since I couldn’t find it.

This morning I went outside to do the new video and instructed and discovered that things had gotten worse: now the charger LED was completely dark and charging wasn’t working at all. At this point I performed some additional tests to confirm that the problem was definitely the 12V adaptor:

• Disconnect USB cable from charging head and plug it into my phone. Result: phone does not charge.
• Disconnect other end of that cable from 12V adaptor, plug in different USB cable, and plug other end into my phone. Result: phone does not charge.
• Disconnect other end of adaptor from battery SAE connector and plug in battery tender instead. Result: tender has solid connectivity to battery.
• Remove and put back fuse between SAE connector and battery. Result: tender loses connectivity to battery as soon as fuse is removed, gets it back as soon as fuse is returned.

At this point I replied to the support email I was sent last night about my ticket, explained what I was now seeing and the tests I’d performed to isolate the problem to the 12V adaptor, and attached a photo of the adaptor on my bike and the invoice PDF that the dealer had sent me earlier that day after I called them and asked for it.

Within a few seconds I received a response asking me to send proof of purchase, even though I’d already done that.

I replied and said I’d already done that.

Within a few seconds I received the exact same response asking me to send proof of purchase.

I replied again and said I’d already done that, and attached the invoice PDF a second time to that reply.

Within a few seconds I received the exact same response a third time.

At this point I went back to the website live chat, told the chatbot that I needed to chat with a real person, and then, once I was connected to a real person, told them what was going on and asked them to get me out of this “dumb loop” so that my ticket could move forward.

The person reviewed my ticket, thanked me for the additional information I’d provided, and offered to arrange for a warranty replacement of the 12V adaptor. I thanked them and gave them my address and phone number, and a couple minutes later I received email confirming that the replacement had been ordered.

After this was done, I asked the person I was chatting with two additional questions:

Q: I leave my bike plugged into a battery tender all the time when I’m not riding. Could that be bad for the 12V adaptor if I leave the adaptor in “Auto” move so it’s on all the time when the battery tender is plugged in?

A: The first answer I was given made it clear that the person misunderstood my question. I clarified the question, and they answered that no, they didn’t think it was bad for the adaptor. Personally, I think she’s probably wrong and I’m going to try to make a habit of putting the adaptor into the “Off” position when the bike is plugged in at home.

Q: Why are there two different websites, “quadlockcase.com” and “quadlockcases.com”?

A: The second website appears to be fake and you shouldn’t use it. Thanks for letting us know about this.

That’s the end of the story so far. I hope in a week or so I’ll receive a replacement 12V adaptor which I can install. That’s going to be a bit of a pain since the wiring for the existing adaptor runs underneath my gas tank and I’m going to have to unbolt the gas tank and remove and replace several cable ties to install the replacement. But that’s obviously better than needing to pay $40 for a replacement adaptor.

All of the problems I had getting support from Quad Lock for this problem were technological, because tech is shit nowadays. Both of the real people I dealt with were courteous and helpful, and the company ultimately did the right thing.

However, by May 2020 that was years in the past, and we were not going to be buying anything else from KiwiCo, so I unsubscribed from their marketing emails.

A month later, I got another one. I unsubscribed again.

Then the emails stopped, for more than six years, until KiwiCo spammed me again earlier this month.

Now, when a company that makes its money from sending people marketing emails stops emailing a former customer for more than six years, and then all of the sudden starts again, that means the customer’s unsubscribe request worked, and then stopped working.

For that, there are only four possible explanations:

1. something went wrong that caused people to receive emails who had previously told the company they didn’t want them;
2. a person at the company caused it by accident;
3. a person at the company caused it on purpose without the knowledge of company management; or
4. a person at the company caused it on purpose with the knowledge and consent of company management.

If a customer contacts the company and complains about this, and it was caused by one of the first three explanations, then the logical, ethical, business-savvy thing to do is to acknowledge that something bad happened, apologize, express regret, and confirm that steps have been taken to address the situation and ensure that neither that customer nor others will receive more emails they’d unsubscribed from.

If, however, it’s because the company has decided to spam people who unsubscribed, then the business-savvy thing to do is to obfuscate, refuse to explain or admit what happened, and just unsubscribe (again) customers who complain even though that doesn’t address the root cause or solve the problem for other customers.

By now you’ve probably figured out that I complained to KiwiCo about the spam, and they responded by obfuscating and refusing to explain or admit what happened.

They also repeatedly told me they’d “solved the problem” by unsubscribing me, even after I explained repeatedly that what I was asking for was an explanation for why they started spamming me again after more than six years of honoring my unsubscribe request, and an assurance that they had also unsubscribed others who were incorrectly resubscribed. These, of course, they refused to give.

If KiwiCo were a huge corporation then I might believe that my complaint never actually reached anyone with the authority to give me a straight answer. But they’re only ~100 employees, small enough for everybody to know everybody else. They saw my complaint, and they chose to respond with obfuscatory bullshit.

So, KiwiCo is willing to resubscribe people who have previously unsubscribed from their spam, which is slimy, and they’re willing to lie when called out on it, which is even more slimy. Therefore, if you don’t want to do business with a slimy company, you should avoid them.

TLDR

I recommend you vote:

• YES on Question 1
• YES on Question 2
• NO on Question 3
• YES on Question 4
• NO on Question 5 (strong recommendation)
• NO on Question 6
• YES on Question 7
• NO on Question 8
• YES on Question 9

Question 1: Expanding the Public Records Law

I recommend a YES vote on Question 1.

Question 1 would amend Massachusetts’s public records law to cover the legislature. Currently the legislature has exempted itself from our public records law.

In the majority of U.S. states, the legislature is subject to the public records laws that apply to other public entities. It is a stain on Massachusetts democracy that our legislature has exempted itself from our public records law. It is also consistent with our legislature’s long-time pattern of claiming to be transparent without actually being transparent.

Opponents of this question make three arguments:

1. The proposed wording does not adequately protect the privacy of correspondence between constituents and legislators.

2. The proposed wording only protects deliberative records about legislation during the legislation process; once a bill is no longer under consideration these records would become subject to the law. This will create a “chilling effect” and prevent legislatures from speaking frankly while crafting legislation.

3. There are constitutional issues with the secretary of state, an official of the executive branch, enforcing the public records law on the legislative branch.

My response to all of these is the same: the sky has not fallen in the states where the legislatures are subject to public records laws. The risks enumerated above have not materialized. Therefore, clearly it is possible to write the law in such a way that it avoids them. The Massachusetts legislature should have done that of its own volition rather than forcing the people to attempt to get it passed via initiative petition. If the initiative petition is flawed, then they will just have to amend the law to address those flaws after the petition passes.

Question 2: Collective Bargaining for CPCS Employees

I recommend a YES vote on Question 2.

Question 2 would permit the employees of the Committee for Public Counsel Services to form a labor union. If they subsequently choose to do so, then the CPSC would be legally required to recognize and engage in collective bargaining with the union.

The reasons given by opponents for why CPSC employees should not be allowed to unionize are nothing more than typical anti-union bullshit. I’m not going to lend them legitimacy by saying anything more than that about them.

Simply put, everyone who works for a living should be allowed to unionize, and tar and feathers is too good for anyone who says otherwise.

Question 3: State Primary Elections

I recommend a NO vote on Question 3.

Question 3 would replace the Massachusetts party primary system with an all-party primary. If passed, then rather than having separate ballots for each party’s primary, all candidates from all parties would appear on the same ballot, and the first- and second-place candidates in the primary, regardless of party, would advance to the general election.

Simply put, this is a back-door attempt to get more Republicans into state office in districts where the majority of voters would not want to elect a Republican. Given that the Republican party has gone wholly fascist and is literally doing everything within its power to destroy U.S. democracy, we cannot afford any changes to state elections which would increase the likelihood of Republicans being elected.

Here’s how that would work… Many similar Democratic candidates run in the primary for a particular office. The GOP, on the other hand, only runs two candidates. The many Democratic candidates split the Democratic votes into many more slices than the two GOP candidates split the Republican vote. As a result, the Republican candidates get more votes despite there being fewer Republicans voting overall. Two things make this scenario possible:

1. It is common for many Democratic candidates to run in a primary for an open seat.
2. The Massachusetts Democratic party has shitty party discipline, whereas the GOP has excellent party discipline.

We can reconsider this proposal when the people who support democracy have retaken control in Washington, fixed the damage to our democracy done by Trump and the GOP, and enacted strong guardrails to prevent them from doing it again. Until then, you should recognize this as a backdoor effort to subvert Massachusetts democracy, and you should vote against it.

A better solution to most of the problems this ballot question purports to be trying to solve is ranked choice voting.

Question 4: Election Day Registration

I recommend a YES vote on Question 4.

Question 4 would allow voters to register to vote or change their registration on election day.

The Republican party opposes this ballot question. That should be all you need to know.

Some members of the legislature claim that the proposed law as written has problems. My answer to that for this ballot question is the same as my answer to the same objection to Question 1: if there are problems with the law, then the legislature can, and should, fix them after it’s passed.

You may have noticed a pattern here: the legislature claiming they can’t support a particular initiative petition because there are structural problems with the proposed law as written and the legislature can’t amend it. This is always a bullshit, chickenshit excuse, because the legislature can always amend such laws after they are passed to fix any actual problems with them.

Twenty-four states and Washington, D.C. have same-day registration. This is not rocket science. This is not an unsolved problem. It’s just as embarrassing that Massachusetts doesn’t have it as it is that our legislature is exempt from our public records law. We should fix that.

Question 5: State Revenue Limit & Rebate

I strongly recommend a NO vote on Question 5.

Question 5 is a steep tax cut for rich people masking as a fiscal responsibility measure. It’s a bullshit backdoor attempt to repeal the millionaire tax which we recently passed.

If the people of Massachusetts are dumb enough to pass this ballot measure than services provided by state and local governments will dramatically suffer as a result.

Please vote against this.

Question 6: Natural Resource Conservation Fund

I recommend a NO vote on Question 6.

Question 6 would establish a new natural resource conservation fund, funded by diverting existing sales tax revenue currently being spent on other things.

As much as I respect the work of Mass Audubon, the sponsor of this ballot question, and as important as I think it is to conserve natural resources in Massachusetts, this would be a bad law, and Mass Audubon is being dishonest about it.

Mass Audubon says, “Question 6 doesn’t raise taxes or create a new tax.” While this is strictly true, the proposed law would redirect tens of millions of dollars of existing annual tax revenue to a new purpose. That revenue is currently being used for othe purposes. Therefore, either (a) the other things that revenue is being used for will need to stop or (b) the legislature will need to find a way to replace that revenue to continue providing those other services.

Furthermore, in Massachusetts ballot questions aren’t actually allowed to control appropriations, so even if this law is passed, it will still be entirely up to the legislature whether to fund the problem proposed by the ballot question.

Question 7: Single Family Homes

I recommend a YES vote on Question 7.

Question 7 would require Massachusetts cities and towns to allow single-family homes to be built on lot sizes as small as 5,000 square feet. Currently many communities require much larger lots for single-family homes.

The moneyed backers of this question are real estate developers, real estate agents, and banks, all of whom stands to make more money if there are more houses being sold. So there is definitely financial interest in this question backing, which we should examine seriously.

Having said that, just because a ballot question is going to make people money doesn’t automatically make it illegitimate, an I think in this particular case the interests of the people who want to make more money and the interest of people who want more affordable housing in Massachusetts are actually aligned.

I am apparently not alone in that; this ballot question has a lot of supporters, including many progressive organizations and many politicians.

Ultimately, for me this comes down to two things:

1. Many cities and towns in Massachusetts have exhorbitantly high lot size requirements for new homes (e.g., in Lincoln, a notoriously expensive place to live, the minimum lot size is two acres). These are often in place as a strategy for keeping out low- and middle-income families, which is abhorrent.
2. We’re in a housing crisis. I’m probably going to support just about anything which helps more housing get built.

Question 8: Prohibit Retail Sale of Adult Recreational Use Marijuana

I recommend a NO vote on Question 8.

Question 8 would repeal the legalization of recreational marijuana sales in Massachusetts.

The proponents for this ballot question are lying with statistics. Since they can’t make their case by telling the truth, their argument for changing the status quo fails on the merits and should be rejected by voters.

The text in favor of this question submitted to the secretary state says, among other things, “Since commercial legislation, marijuana is now the most common drug found in fatal car accidents in Massachusetts.” I checked their web site and found nothing there to support this assertion.

What I found instead is that the very first claim given on the website is, “42% of drivers in fatal crashes tested positive for THC from marijuana.”

However, if you click through to the article they link below that claim, you learn two things:

1. That study was in a single Ohio county, which is obviously not in any way representative of anything happening in Massachusetts.
2. The study concluded, “The high rate of THC positivity remained consistent over six years and was unaffected by the state’s legalization of recreational cannabis during the study period,” i.e., the study the proponents of this ballot question cite to support their argument actually undermines it.

This is some serious bullshit right here. Please do not reward it with a YES vote.

Question 9: Firearms Regulation

I recommend a YES vote on Question 9.

Question 9 is gun nuts trying to repeal a good gun safety law passed in 2024.

Voting YES preserves the law; voting NO would repeal it.

Massachusetts has the second-lowest per capita rate of gun fatalities in the country. We’re doing the right thing, and we should keep doing the right thing. Tell the gun nuts to pound sand; vote YES to preserve gun safety legislation in Massachusetts.

I declined the call, which sent it to voicemail. The caller left this message:

Four notes:

1. Area code 351 is not used in Cambridge.
2. My name isn’t “Timothy”.
3. I’ve never been a customer of Cambridge Honda.
4. “Roger” is an AI.

Roger also sent a text message:

Just for kicks I called the number and had a conversation with “Roger”. Summarizing (the responses from the AI were significantly longer than how I’ve written them below):

Me: Are you a person or an AI?

AI: I’m an AI.

Me: 351 isn’t a Cambridge area code, and the number you’re calling from came up as Ms. Leila’s NeighborSchool. Why is that?

AI: I’m on a separate number from the dealership. I can’t tell you why the caller ID came up the way it did. If you want to confirm I’m legitimate you can call the dealership at their listed number.

Me: Where did Cambridge Honda get info about the cars I own? I’m not a Cambridge Honda customer.

AI: I can’t tell you where Cambridge Honda got your info. If you’re concerned about your privacy you can decline to share any further information with me.

Me: Please tell Cambridge Honda that I will never do business with any company that uses AI to cold-call me. <click>

I’d put the odds at approximately zero that the AI will pass on my message to Cambridge Honda, because it obviously would not benefit the people who sold this AI cold-calling system to Cambridge Honda to pass on such messages.

Cold calls inviting people to sell their cars isn’t a new tactic for car dealerships. But before, it was a static recording, not an AI. The AI method is even less human work for the dealership, because the AI handles the initial interaction with the customer, collects needed information, and passes it on to a human to close the deal.

These calls are fraud. The AI would not have identified itself as an AI if I hadn’t asked. That means Cambridge Honda is deceiving the people they call to obtain financial benefit, which is the legal definition of fraud.

These calls are also totally illegal under the TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act)! And there’s a private right of action, i.e., I can sue Cambridge Honda in small claims court for $500. And since my phone number is on the national do-not-call register, that makes it a willful violation, which means I can sue them for triple damages, $1,500. So I could file a small-claims suit today and make $1,500 in a few months.

But even better, this is such a clear-cut case that first I’m going to reach out to a few class-action lawyers and see if any of them are interested in pursuing this as a class action instead of an individual small-claims suit. I intend to make Cambridge Honda feel as much pain as I can for breaking the law.

If you received this call too, let me know. The more plaintiffs we can round up for a class action, the better!

On Thursday, the Boston Election Department held a poll-worker briefing on Zoom. I think it was designated as an optional briefing rather than training so they wouldn’t have to pay us for attending.

I think this briefing happened for two reasons:

1. Poll-workers are worried about Feds showing up on Election Day and have been expressing that to the Election Department.
2. What the Election Department wants poll-workers to do if Feds show up has changed slightly since we did our training.

My interpretation of the briefing is that we were essentially told two new things:

1. We should treat Federal agents as observers and expect them to follow all the observer rules.
2. The Boston Police Department is instructing officers doing poll duty that they are authorized by existing law to remove, at the request of the warden, any observer who refuses to follow the rules.

What’s an observer?

State and Federal law allow only these people to be present inside a polling location while the polls are open on election day:

1. voters in the process of casting their votes
2. people accompanying voters to assist them
3. children of voters accompanying their parents (yes, this is explicitly mentioned in state law)
4. election workers
5. translators managed by the Election Department
6. police offers doing poll duty
7. observers

Anyone who isn’t in the first six categories is classified as an observer. Anyone (including a Federal agent!) is allowed to observe in a polling location as long as they follow the rules.

According to the Massachusetts Secretary of State, observers have the right to:

• Watch the voting or counting process from outside the voting area
• Use electronics silently
• Mark their own voting lists to track those who have voted or which ballots have been counted
• Stand close enough to the check-in table to hear names and addresses
• Challenge a voter’s ballot for legal cause
• Take photos of the room or activities
• Take silent video of the location and voting process
• Request the count on the ballot box at reasonable intervals
• Speak to the Warden if any issues arise

Observers may not:

• Speak to any voters inside the voting location
• Communicate with voters in writing, through signage or other means
• Address questions or concerns to anyone except the Warden or local election official
• Wear or display anything intended to aid or defeat a candidate or question on the ballot
• Speak on the phone inside the voting location
• Record audio within the polling place
• Challenge ballots with intent to intimidate or determine for whom someone is voting
• Carry a firearm, unless actively on duty as a law enforcement officer
• Use electronics that are not silenced
• Use public power sources in the polling location for charging devices

What’s this about “watching the voting or counting process”?

Regarding “Watch the voting or counting process from outside the voting area,” every polling place is supposed to have a specific area designated for this purpose. Our polling place, a school cafetorium, has never had an observer show up in the five years I’ve been a poll-worker, and I also don’t recall there being an observer in any the ~25 prior years I voted there, so I’m not actually sure where our observer area is, but the only space I think is practical to use for it is the stage behind the check-in tables. If I’m right then it’s going to be interesting to see how things shake out if observers show up and need to be put somewhere, because the curtain is usually closed on election day and there’s usually a lot of junk piled all over on the stage. I suppose we’ll just have to open the curtain and the observers will have to do the best they can to find a place on the stage. We are not, as far as I know, required to provide them with chairs.

My biggest concern is actually something that was not addressed by the briefing: what happens if armed Federal agents station themselves outside a polling place to intimidate “the wrong kind of people” from voting? Although there is a law about not campaigning within 150 feet of a polling place entrance, that law doesn’t apply to people just hanging around and not saying anything for or against a particular candidat or issue, so I don’t think we would legally do anything about ICE goons making a show of force outside the doors, unless they positions themselves in such a way that they are physically preventing people from entering.

Voter intimidation is against state law, and obviously everyone knows the only purpose of heavily armed law enforcement officers hanging around outside polling places is intimidation, but “everyone knows” is not the same as “it’s spelled out in black and white in state law,” so I honestly don’t know what we’re supposed to do if this happens, other than calling the Election Department poll-worker hotline and asking for their guidance.

What about challenge abuse?

My second biggest concern is that observers will show up and start challenging the ballots of anyone who isn’t white or doesn’t speak English with an American accent. The legitimate reasons for challenging a ballot in Massachusetts are:

1. The voter is inactive (has not voted or responded to the town census in several years) and cannot present ID or paperwork verifying they still live at their registered voting address.
2. The voter is not who they claim to be.
3. The voter does not live where they claim to live.
4. The voter is not a U.S. citizen.
5. The voter is under 18.
6. The voter has already voted in this election.

The first reason listed here can only be used by poll-workers, but anyone can challenge a ballot for any of the other reasons listed above, and they are not legally required to show any proof to justify their challenge, and the poll-workers are not allowed to adjudicate the validity of the challenge.

Challenged ballots do get counted, but they get additional information written on the back of them, including the name and address of the voter, which means a challenged ballot loses its secrecy, which is why challenging ballots is a voter intimidation strategy.

Furthermore, every challenged ballot requires paperwork to be filled out by the voter, warden, and clerk, and depending on how capable the voter is, it can easily take ten minutes or more to handle one challenged ballot. This is why another strategy that people who want to disrupt elections sometimes use is to challenge every ballot. That has happened in the past in Massachusetts.

We’ve been told that if we observe challenge abuse we are required to handle the challenges properly and also call the poll-worker hotline and tell them what’s going on, and they will advise us on how to proceed. I hope they have plans for how to deal with this, but I don’t know what they are.

One thing that’s unclear to me is whether a having a ton of challenged ballots will delay election results. It’s possible that the Election Department is allowed to treat challenged ballots like write-in ballots, i.e., they’re not actually required to do anything about them unless there are enough challenged ballots that rejecting some of them could possibly change the outcome of the election.

But it’s also possible that the Election Department may be required to research and make determinations about all the challenged ballots, and remove the votes of rejected ballots from the results, before they can certify the results.

The former would obviously be better than the latter, but even if that’s the case, organized challenge abuse spread across the entire city could result in enough challenged ballots to cause a significant delay in announcing the results. And, of course, if that happens then Trump will claim that something nefarious is going on and use it to call into question the results of the election.

Lowell Holly abuts Wakeby Pond and Mashpee Pond. There are beaches on both ponds along the trails that you can take advantage of, weather-permitting. Also, the ponds are apparently good for fishing.

The connected trails provided by the Trustees are a bit over 3 miles of walking. It’s worth doing all of them, especially the trail to Conaumet Point, which sticks far out into Wakeby Pond, giving you a 300° view of the pond when you’re standing all the way out on the point.

One thing the woodlands on this property, or more specifically the numerous downed trees within them, make clear is that Cape Cod gets harsher weather than the rest of Massachusetts. And it’s not just because of sandy soil; several of the downed trees I observed were dramatically snapped mid-trunk.

There seem to be a large variety of mosses growing in these woodlands. I snapped photos of a few that I found interesting. I won’t claim to be able to name these since I’m not a moss enthusiast.

There’s also a lot of flora to enjoy…

Here’s a minute of Wakeby Pond. Enjoy the many bird sounds, gentle ripples in the clear water, crowds of large water bugs gliding over the water, and fish literally jumping out of the water to catch the bugs.

Here’s another view of Wakeby Pond.

I enjoyed the look of this section of the trail.

Here’s a taste of what the view is like if you take the time to hike all the way to Conaumet point.

I encountered this mysterious sigil on a tree while hiking back from the point. Your guess is as good as mine.

If you ignore the motorboat sound in the distance, this video of the waves on Mashpee Pond is tranquil. Ironically, of course, the tranquil waves are produced by the aforementioned motorboats.

Finally, I can’t end this thread without sharing this groundbreaking photo I captured of a wild beach-ball in its native habitat.