August 2017

The current goal is a Spring 2018 release of Evergreen 1.0. Which is rather ambitious, I know, and I wouldn’t be shocked if it was Spring 2019. But that’s the goal.

The build is currently broken, has been broken for months, and will continue as broken for at least another few weeks.

Here’s the scoop: I decided to do syncing in 1.0. It will probably be just one system at first (most likely FeedBin, since that’s what I use) — but this meant looking at the data and database level and figuring out what’s needed to make it usable when syncing. I’m in the middle of making the needed changes.

(Originally each syncing system was going to have its own database code, but I realized that that would be foolish.)

And, because I’m such a weird database-code-loving freak, I’m not using Core Data. (Total dummy, me. Don’t tell me.) An example is DatabaseLookupTable.swift, which manages relationships.

* * *

Progress is slow, since I don’t get to work on it every day, and even when I do it’s often just for half an hour. There are occasional days where I get a few hours. But, except when I’m on vacation, progress is steady — and that’s how you get things done. (It helps to be obsessed.)

(Frontier, meanwhile, is on the back burner — I picked Evergreen to ship first just because it was further along. I’ll get back to it.)

From Nixon’s law-and-order and “silent majority” and southern strategy; to Reagan’s campaign kickoff in Philadelphia, Missouri, his “welfare queens,” his war on drugs; to the Willie Horton ad, the culture war, Rush Limbaugh, gerrymandering, voter suppression, birtherism, and “calves the size of cantaloupes” — Republicans have, for my whole life, very deliberately and consciously cultivated white grievance and racism.

I was born in 1968. This has been going on the entire time.

I always figured Republicans were playing with these ugly matches because it was a means to an end: it was how they could gain enough power to do what their donors actually want — which is to sell off America piece-by-piece for their private, short-term gain.

But then comes Trump, and then the racism is the point.

Well, he’s just about the same economically. Sure. But his economic policies, such as they are, are a mixture of greed and pandering to the people who got him where he is.

It’s the racism, stupid.

* * *

So I don’t feel particularly moved when Republicans decry the Nazis and nationalists at the rally last weekend. They should do that — it’s the least they could do.

But it seems like only when actual swastikas show up do they say anything. Otherwise it’s not racism, they say — it’s combatting voter fraud. It’s about state’s rights, or fiscal conservatism, or religious freedom. It’s always the dog whistle.

But then the wolves appear — on cue! summoned! — and then they furrow their brows.

They need to do better. Much, much better. Anyone who cares about their country would do better.