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43% of Voters Dissatisfied With Both Parties – The New York Times

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Times/Siena Poll: 43% of Voters Dissatisfied With Both Parties – The New York Times

Alienation is felt most intensely among younger voters; nearly two-thirds of respondents under the age of 30 expressed dissatisfaction with both parties. Young voters are increasingly likely to identify as politically independent — a recent report from Gallup had the number of independents at a three-decade high — and, so far, they are more likely to remain that way as they age than they were in previous generations.

“Both parties are the same,” said Max Cook, 24, a college student in San Diego. “They both have the same level of corruption. They both take lobbying money. It’s different lobbying, but the same corruption.”

Mr. Cook said he did not vote in 2024 because he did not care for either major party candidate. He added he leaned toward Republicans as the “lesser of two evils” but worried that neither party was putting America first.
Map: Floodwood Pond Loop

Truth is I just need the weekend to survive 🥱

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That and rainy days, though there won’t be any this weekend, but at least I can pretend to sleep in this weekend, but it’s early summer so it’s go-go-go. Last night was great but it was after 9 PM when I got home on my mountain bike from Black Creek WMA, had some dinner, scrolled through that awful social media site, it was after 10 PM by the time I was asleep. And up at like quarter after five, as the sun was shinning and I needed to pee.

I was listening to a podcast 🎧 last night about air pollution, and it was full of advertisements about chron’s disease. 💩 Yuck, though I do admit sometimes, well most of the time, I eat an actually healthy amount of fiber with me mostly veggies lunch and carrot pancakes, 🥬 so it keeps me pooping. That book I read about composting toilets got me thinking a lot about the challenges of humanure – besides the ick factor – there are a lot of complicated issues in composting poop. Hook worm 🪱 and all kinds of other diseases are possible with composting poop, though I’m not convinced landfilling is the option. But what they don’t tell you about most composting and outhouse systems, is your just landfilling the poop on-site. Some of it’s volume breaks down, but it’s hard to recapture the nutrients. On site landfilling of the poop (burying it) does mean it continues to breakdown and is pretty harmless in a few years, but it also doesn’t seem like a much of a solution. But the same is true with on-farm trash dumps, if the waste is burned and free of organic matter to cause soil shifting, buried deep in an area not like , and not nuclear waste or drums of dripping chemicals, it’s pretty harmless. 🤷‍♂️ People though act like everything is toxic waste. 💀 But what do I know, I spend a lot of my summer pooping in a bucket 🪣 and burning the plastic wrappers. 🔥 That is once my camper shell arrives.

It was remarkably nice last night. 🌆 I started out to Five Rivers but I ended up deciding against it as I’ve gone there a lot this spring and thought it would be nice to instead spend the evening reading 📚 and studying the wild flowers 🌼 at Bender Mellon. Seems like there is fewer daisies around this year, but maybe I’ve not be heading out to the places where they are most common. I guess it’s still pretty early, only late May. Still it feels like summer is rapidly racing through as I wait for my truck cap to arrive. ⌛ Summer is always like that, you wait for the bugs to clear out of the woods and to get hot, and before you know it, it’s September. 🍂 Cue the Brian Hyland’s Sealed with a Kiss, that intro melody always struck me as a good introduction to six o’clock Action News, but what do I know? Bender Mellon was good, and then after a little bit of reading and looking at the wildflowers, I rode out to Black Creek Marsh, checked out the observation tower 🗼 they are building, climbed up it because there was no signs prohibiting such a thing, and then walked down to the creek to swat bugs and watch the sun set. 🐸 🦆 Then I rode home, listening to a podcast discussing the Syracuse Viaduct to street-level conversion project. Downtown Syracuse will likely be gentrifying soon, but that’s good, as nobody wants to listen to and smell diesel trucks all day. I remember going to one of those drunk 🍹 fests, work dinners, and having to walk under the Viaduct back to the hotel. That wasn’t much fun. And the Syracuse Viaduct is so narrow, with tricky merges, so I’m kind of glad I’m gone but also glad I don’t live there while construction is underway. I’m sure if it was like when I was working in North Syracuse, I’d be driving down a lot ot Tully to hike and spend times in woods around Labrador Pond.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do for breakfast, 🥞 ended up being more apple pancakes as I like breakfasts sweet and with lots of fiber from the carrots, 🥕 which another five ponund bag is almost ready to carry my lunches before getting added to bag to turn into carbon dioxide, the plant food fire and my big SuperDuty truck produces and cities produce way too much of. But I ride my bike to work and I compost, 🔥 so I’m almost a greenie. 💚 And eventually I’ll have hogs, 🐷 if not this year. I’m just waiting to get back to wilderness, and few more years hopefully of traveling the back roads and smoking dope. Made some coffee ☕ up but that didn’t last for long, and now I’m sipping some apple cider vinegar with my water. People say, oh you must have awesome blood sugar 🧁 and be so healthy with ACV. I am like, no but I’m probably trashing my teeth with all that diluted acid, and I just like the tangy taste. It’s just so much better then that overly sugary and sloppy with fat crap that the commercial institutions are ramming down our throats. Speaking of which, I need to poop, 💩 shower, and hop on my mountain bike and head to the office 🏢 and get more tax data and ioi_codes loaded into the system.

Map: Oakley Corners State Forest
Map: Cat Hollow Lean-to and Campbell Mountain

Dow Futures Tick Up

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Stock Market Today: Dow Futures Tick Up

Oil is extending its decline after the latest reports of a possible peace deal with Iran.

The most actively traded Brent crude futures were recently down 2% around $91 a barrel. Brent is headed for its biggest monthly drop since May 2020 after falling nearly 18% through Thursday. U.S. stock futures are ticking up a little and Treasury yields are largely unchanged.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said yesterday that Washington and Tehran are within reach of an agreement to wind down the war, though President Trump hasn’t signed off yet. The White House wants commitments from Iran to dispose of its highly enriched uranium and never to seek a nuclear weapon, as well as a full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

Sleep deprived 😴

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There was a time not all that long ago when I worked crazy long nights in the office at the end of session. Nowadays I don’t do that but I still end up staying up too late with the late summer sunsets and early sunrises. I’m rarely home until after nine or so, preferring to enjoy the nice summer evenings in parks and preserves. But then it’s light out around five o’clock, you get up, run to the bathroom and start the coffee and before you know you’re living on six or seven hours of sleep without an alarm clock or schedule. I kind of treasure the rainy days when I get home early and go to bed early to catch up on much needed rest.