307 is one short of a party

Today is pardon day. It's the day where most outgoing presidents reveal a little bit of their dirt, in a very obvious way.

So far, O44 pardoned and gave clemency to a lot more people than T45. He launched a whole program to give clemency to thousands of non-violent drug offenders.

T45's pardons so-far have been noteworthy because, like a lot of his presidential moves, they are very obviously self-serving. Flackies, aides, old buddies, people who broke the law for him.

C42 became famous for the kinda questionable pardons he did on the last day, at least one of whom later turned up to have financial connections to his extended family.

Today? Sky's the limit! Last day to play omnipotent leader! We'll see. But if I was one of those people who stormed the capitol, I wouldn't be holding my breath.

This reminds me of a poem I am wrote a while back...

And that leads to this one, from about four years ago...

The other day, our guests ran into traffic on the Bay Bridge on their way home.

This was due to a collision death, of a motorcyclist. This was due to a rather large rally of motocross bikes and ATVs.

This kind of wheelie-ride, called "bike life," has been a bit of an urban trend for a number of years, but I think the timing of this ride was deliberate. 

The day before MLK day, and a couple days before the inauguration. This is, in my mind, an "anti-trump train." This is a statement about yahoos in trucks.

And the statement is, watch the fuck out motherfuckers. We're fast, we're nimble, you can't keep up with us, and there are a lot of us.

File under: follow the money

It wasn't my coup, I swear.

Not me!

Nope, we had nothing to do with it!

Absolutely not!

Watched recaps of the America's Cup warm-up races, the Prada Cup.

The American team isn't totally out of it, they were actually doing pretty well against Italy, until they crashed.

The big surprise is the British team, who have basically padded out the roster of the last few cups, but won 4 out of 4 in this series.

File under: I am not an expert

So, we lock up kids for a year, because we don't want them to spread the virus. By and large, the virus isn't hurting them too badly. Their immune systems are developing, and the way they do that is get exposed to new viruses, and get over them. But this virus, society decided, was too dangerous for that. So we slow the spread, even among kids. Especially among kids.

Then the virus mutates into a strain that's a little easier to catch, and makes kids a little sicker.

Whoops. Like I said, I'm not an expert, but that seems like a classic unintended effect of central planning.

Finally, a couple pieces of art practice.

This one, from life. Not nuts about the foreground, but there is something working in the luminosity of the sky.

And since we're on the subject of #autodesksketchbook, hey, if any of you Autodesk developers are listening, why does the UI act like there's a big spill of white surrounding the canvas? Anytime you try to blend at the edge, and go over, your brush comes back acting like you dipped it in white. (Or whatever the background color is, I'm not sure.) This is not how painting works! In painting, when you get to the edge, there's either nothing, or some surface that will soak up your paint, not load it with some color that's not even on the layer you're working on. 

So far, that's my biggest beef with the program. You can work around it, but it really seems kinda obviously dumb.

This second was from a photo. An experiment. I'm interested in simplifying things. But this wasn't it, and I had to save it with some cartoon-ish inking.

Be safe, everyone. Keep the rubber side down.