Peter Grose is an amazing author and he has created two awesome lists for Shepherd:

• The best books about the history of Australia
• The best books about World War 2

He wrote up a really nice blog post about Shepherd and me. It really made my day as it capture a big part of why I started the website and what I hope it can help impact. I am hopeful that I can play some small role in restoring America, as it has lost its way and no longer represents the values I was raised to believe in.

I am a very optimistic person and it takes a lot to phase me. But, I had a terrible day this month when an author was incredibly abusive. It was a very weird experience and they were obviously dealing with something that caused them to react in such a way. I ended up having to cut them off and it was a bad day. I am always grateful for people like Peter and the 99.999% of authors who are supportive, kind, and respectful.

Lindsey and I are super excited to get our first vaccine shot in early July… which should mean we are fully vaccinated by mid-August. Once Portugal announced our age group was eligible we just had to submit our health number on the website. Then we got a text to confirm our appointment. The entire process took 5 minutes :).

Health care in Portugal is FUCKING amazing. We had an appointment with a pediatric doctor for Calico yesterday and he talked to us for an hour. No rush, he wanted to know everything. And, even though the appointment was at 4 pm he was ON TIME. It just makes me despise the entire American system even more. They should just call American health care “money” as there is no health nor any care happening within it unless you just get lucky.

I had a follow-up this week after my day at the Hospital and the experience was glorious. The doctor was perfectly on time and he had actually read everything in my file BEFORE MY APPOINTMENT. Have you ever had a doctor read anything about you before they meet you? Let alone review all the data??? Then, he went through all my numbers one by one to explain what they were in detail. He was not in a rush and it was a great chat. It makes me tear up just thinking about it because I actually feel like he cares and he spent time preparing for the appointment.

Fuck American “health care”.

No country is perfect and we had a bad doctor experience prior to the good one with Calico. But, the American system is a giant steaming pile of shit. It needs to be destroyed and rebuilt using the best parts of Europe and Asia. We have utterly failed as a country in this regard.

Update – I got my first one on July 6th, 2nd on August 3rd. And, Lindsey got her first one July 21st… almost there :)

Calico asked his teachers how to spell “peak human strength” yesterday. This kid cracks me up :). Especially since his teachers are all Portuguese and it took them a second to understand…

I spent 10 am to 5 pm on Thursday at a local Portuguese Hospital. It was weirdly a good experience and further cemented my opinion of how bad the American health care system is.

I’ve been having a weird fluttering feeling a few inches below my waistband for about 5 days. It isn’t painful, more like a muscle twitch/spasm. I am pretty sure it started on Saturday with a little flutter for 5 seconds but I can’t really remember. I did a new workout on Monday and that could have pulled something, along with another new workout on Tuesday… but who knows. Anyway, it started lasting longer and I was worried it was Crohn’s disease-related. I haven’t gotten an inflammation test since I was in the USA in late 2019 (with covid I decided I should just avoid the doctor for a while).

My anxiety was so high at that point I needed to go and try to get some answers and make sure it wasn’t serious. So I went to the emergency room as the first appointment I could get with a local gastroenterologist was July 1st (beats back home where the doctor is booked for a full 6 months and I have to ask him to squeeze me in somewhere…). And, Lindsey came with me to help, her Portuguese is much better than the two words I know.

I think we waited 5 minutes to see a doctor in the emergency room, he admitted me to get some tests to see what was going on. I think we waited another 20 minutes and saw the 2nd doctor. We talked to him for a while and he ordered some tests to look at inflammation and some other metrics. It was really nice as he actually talked to me and it was the 2nd longest I’ve ever gotten to talk to a doctor (the other being in Croatia). He wasn’t in a rush to get me out like every American doctor I’ve been to. Then I waited and got two vials of blood pulled, some urine, and then I waited for test results. It took a few hours and everything looked good, but he ordered a 2nd batch of tests as he had an idea it might be a microscopic kidney stone maybe. So I then got an x-ray and ultrasound. All done very promptly and efficiently… it was kinda amazing. Then I stayed there to wait for all the results (I read some really good books which was nice). Everything looks good and they made me a follow-up appointment for mid-June.

The cost? 40 Euros… and health insurance for my entire family in Portugal is around 175 euros a month. My guess is in the United States I would be looking at a bill between $900 to $2,500 dollars to me, plus paying $1,400 a month for shitty insurance that covers nothing before a $6,000 dollar individual detectable.

Friday I had more fluttering, but after Saturday it went away. My guess is a weird muscle pull given how many lunges and side lunges I did but who knows.

Calico brought home the “preschool plague” and it has been a rough week. Luckily it was not covid. I got a nice bike ride in last week on Saturday, and then sick again on Sunday and just wiped out for the last 7 days (just a nasty head cold). Today is the first day I feel better but still low energy. I managed to work all week, and I am looking forward to getting out of this plague :).

If you think January 6th was scary just wait… the Republican party is fully swallowing the lie that the election was stolen and that there was election fraud despite every piece of evidence (aka reality – which they are not familiar with given the last twenty years of delusion). Trump is massing control of the party and forcing everyone to back this HUGE lie. Normal American Republicans believe this lie and this is not going to end well. And, Republicans are using this lie to justify laws designed to reduce voting and American’s participation in Democracy. These are the same laws they have been trying for years but amped up considerably. You have Republicans like John Kavanagh saying things like “Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes as well.” What does quality mean? It means Republican voters and winning at any cost… it makes you ask, does the Republican party want to live in a Democracy?

Best case?

It destroys the Republican party. My irrational hope is that there are enough rational people in the Republican party that they lose 3% to 4% of voters who are turned off by this insanity. I think that is pretty unlikely given the echo chamber of Fox News, the cowardice of their “leadership”, and experience. The other hope is that 5% to 10% of their voter base gives up because they think the entire thing is rigged by the communist lizard people who are stealing children. The flip side of this is it requires the Democratic party to finally recognize the Republican party is not a governing partner (and hasn’t been trying to govern in 20 years. Then they have to get rid of the filibuster and make real changes (as currently, Biden has done NOTHING except optics).

Worst case?

The Republicans win the midterm election based on restrictive voting laws upheld by the SC and their normal propaganda… and stop the government from doing anything (not much past the current situation where they refuse to govern). Then in the next presidential election, a Republican wins and moves to disband large aspects of our Democracy. And as a country we slide into a fascist dictatorship… something like McCarthyism with a constant Communist/Socialist boogyman as everything is rewritten around the insane conspiracy theories that define the Republican party.

Regardless, large swaths of Republicans have been radicalized and violence is going to follow regardless of the path…

And, if you think the Republican party believes in maintaining Democracy as a core attribute of this country you need to wake up. The number of editorials and “think” pieces from Republicans challenging the idea that Democracy is tied to freedom is increasing… you are starting to see the idea emerge that freedom isn’t tied to Democracy and that what needs to be protected are the rights of the “few” against socialism. If you think it can’t happen in the USA you were not awake during the Cold War. The Republican party is heading toward a path of trying to overthrow the United States government, January 6th was the idiot’s version of that, and now we wait to see if the Democrats will do anything about this looming threat.

Fun day, Shepherd is officially launched into public beta :)

A TON of data entry and editing over the last 4 to 5 weeks. 409 book lists, 2305 books along with all the data and cover images, and 2,452 author profiles.

Lots more to come :)

btw, a really nice writeup here by the awesome Marton who built this :)

And, a short interview with Phil about the project here. And, another one here too.

Background… Calico calls breast bobos.

At some point when he was little he got to watch some animated music video and saw this one with Dwayne Johnson in Moana (this video cracks me up). Anyway, because of this, Calico has a deep-seated belief that being able to move your bobos like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is the epitome of strength :). I work out a fair bit and he usually likes to join in, and the end of each workout is a question “can you move your bobos yet?” One day buddy… one day… :).

We got our first trip outside our city limits since mid-January (when the lockdown started). Today was our only chance before the lockdown restarts tomorrow to stop people from doing stupid stuff over Easter. April 6th is when things should start to lighten up after this…

We had a very fun day :). Although I had the worst sunburn I’ve had in 20 years… swollen face and out for four miserable days. It was a good lesson for my son and luckily it was just me and my forehead. I forgot my hat and since it was semi-cold, windy, and early in the year I didn’t think about it. I also have no tan even for me, as I’ve been inside working for the last 4 months…

Lindsey celebrated her birthday this last weekend and we had a lot of fun fun! This is her 2nd Quarantine Birthday and we hope to escape once the lockdown is relaxed after April 5th. We are in desperate need of a day at the beach.

Lindsey found someone to put pedals on Calico’s balance bike and he is riding like a champ. Here is a video from day 2 of him riding our nearby park.

It is terrifying… he goes so fast. I know that is how he will learn but that knowledge doesn’t help me when my heart jumps out of my chest because he shoots between a tree and concrete pillar… or turns so sharply. It is so scary to let them go and watch them start navigating the world.

I always thought the hardest part of raising kids is from age 3 onward. Everything is easy before that as it is just about love and attention. But after age 3 you have to increasingly watch quietly as they run into concrete walls so they can learn. Sure you get to put a helmet and pads on them… and if you are lucky they might hear you say something useful. But, at the end of the day, if you don’t give them the gift of independence and resilience now, they are stuck on an increasingly large crutch for the rest of their lives. No pressure…

This week was also the first week where Calico didn’t want to hold my hand most of the time. It was the first time that happened to me. Ouch, my baby is growing up :).

What a very cool day, I got to interview the man, the myth, the legend, Tommy Chong.

We got to talk for an hour and what a super cool human being. I love talking to people who have really lived their lives, through everything, mistakes, success, insanity, fun, grief, love, etc. Tommy is truly someone who made me think of the famous Hunter S. Thompson’s quote:

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”

I got to talk with him for an hour (as he agreed to do a book recommendation for Shepherd). I got so many great stories about the authors/books that really connected with him along with his life through now. The focus was on his spiritual side of things and a really powerful conversation. I made him laugh really hard which is always fun (let me have my moment). Cool day and going to pick up a book he recommended shortly.

I have been really busy! Shepherd is going really well and the response I’ve gotten from authors has been amazing. It has been nice to be so busy, especially while Portugal is in extreme lockdown.

I am up to 150 authors who have published a page in anticipation of our April Launch. I’ve got 131 more in the queue for working on one. And, that is growing fast :). I am working to stay on top of everything and build the systems so we can go faster as we get ready to launch and then ship some key features before June.

Fun times :). And, here are a few screenshots from staging as the frontend for the site is up and running!

AEI did a big survey (full breakdown with graphs in the link) and found the following:

• 66% of Republicans say that Biden’s election win was not legitimate. Among Republicans without a college education that is 75%.
• 29% of Republicans say that it is completely or mostly true that Donald Trump is fighting a global child sex trafficking ring (QAnon idiocy).
• 55% of Republicans “support the use of force as a way to arrest the decline of the traditional American way of life“.
• 39% of Republicans “support Americans taking violent actions if elected leaders fail to act“. 13% of Republicans completely agree in the necessity of taking violent actions if political leaders fail.

Not a good sign… this is the war over America’s direction coming to a head IMO. As well as the 30-year shift of the Republican party to extremism and fear-mongering.

Do Republicans support Democracy? What if the majority of people in that Democratic system want something different than them? How will they react? Hint… they are showing us, violence.

Do they believe in the rule of law and our justice system? If our criminal system investigates something and finds no evidence will they believe it if it contradicts their fake reality? If our justice system does not rule in their favor will they recognize it as a valid ruling? Hint… they have shown us, they will not.

Interesting times. It is going to be a fun 10 to 20 years.

Is the end of a failed experiment? Or, 1923 before 1933? Weeee…. “interesting” times.

I am very fucking happy to see Trump out of the White House. He is the worst President in history and an absolute failure by every measure. Just an absolute scum bag with racist unamerican values. I feel calmer now that he is off Twitter and not spreading extremism and racism in our country.

I am disheartened by the total lack of action by Republicans, but not surprised. They have utterly failed to respond to an armed coup trying to subvert democracy and they continue to spread absolute lies that are encouraging right-wing terrorism. The Republican party has become the party of treason, racism, right-wing extremist, and power at all costs.

Imagine if Bin Laden and his supporters stormed our capital, broke through doors and windows, planted two bombs, killed 2 cops, injured loads of cops, tried to kill/take our vice president and other members of government, and pooped all over the building among other damage. What does the Republican party say? I am looking forward to seeing all these traitors go to jail.