I suspect that my best contribution to the 2018 Midterms was the Tactical Voter’s Guide to California. In an open primary where you can end up with two Republicans on the general election ballot, it was important to identify Democrat front-runners early, so I did the homework. Many friends thanked me for making their down-ballot votes better informed. In 2020, we are facing a similar problem. For the presidential election to make any difference, Democrats must also hold the House and take back the Senate.

I was born in USSR. There were no votes in USSR. I remember Perestroika. When I was just a teen, my parents were seriously discussing going off the grid to sit out the civil war if the 1991 KGB putsch against Gorbachev succeeded. Everybody was surprised when it failed. What followed was very confusing time, people had no idea how democracy is supposed to work, including the people who somehow made it work anyway, for a few years.

Whether you’re looking for a way out of the Gulag or just a plan B for the next time you land in Facebook jail, moving from one centralized social network to another won’t do you much good. Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, MeWe—they all have the same fundamental flaw. A for-profit corporation sustained by ads will always put growth and engagement above all else, from privacy and mental health of individual users to social cohesion and political stability of entire countries.

I recently stumbled upon something I didn’t know existed: the very first novel by Robert A. Heinlein that was written in 1938 and remained unpublished until 2003, long after his death. It is clear from the very first page why he couldn’t sell it to publishers in 1938: it challenges the contemporary social taboos as mercilessly as his late work, and it took becoming the most popular sci-fi writer in the world for Heinlein to be able to get back to this kind of writing.

With the usual caveat that this is just one poll of only 1000 likely voters, the FairVote’s ranked choice Democratic primary poll is very informative.

The colonel is coming, he would smother them all, He is stomping his boots, but he slips and he falls, And we’re the ice under colonel’s boots!

If you have to guess my opinion on the latest round of the progressive circular firing squad—the DNC vote against setting up a single-issue presidential debate on climate—you haven’t been paying attention. To be honest, I know that you haven’t, and I am very distraught that none of my friends called this right away.

I have many problems with the civil war Justice Democrats are waging against the Democratic Party: results; motives; manipulative rhetorics (double standards, impossible standards and victim blaming); strategy; priorities.

Identity politics works differently in Eastern Europe than it does in United States, but it is definitely present, and is tightly woven into the political discourse. Instead of race, identity politics in Eastern Europe is centered on language and culture.

Herd immunity is how vaccines stop contagious diseases. If enough of the population is immune, typical individual infection runs its course before it had a chance to jump to another vulnerable host, and even unvaccinated individuals are protected. Without herd immunity, even vaccinated individuals are at risk. It works the same way in politics and in computer security.