news note, that for some reason I want to quote here

The CBC website has an article, from the Associated Press, on a Georgia investigation of Trump's attempts to steal the election.

The Fulton County District Attorney has written to the state's governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, and attorney general to preserve all records relation to the election. (The Secretary of State is the person who was recorded telling Trump that no, he wasn't going to "find" him votes or otherwise change the election results.)

The DA's spokesperson doesn't explicitly name Trump, but did say "the matters reported on over the last several weeks are the matters being investigated." Also, the DA's letters say they "have no reason to believe that any Georgia official is a target of this investigation."

Meanwhile, here in Massachusetts, perennial losing candidate Shiva Ayyadurai is suing our secretary of state in federal court, demanding that he order Twitter to reinstate his account. No, that makes no more sense in context. In context, the state's lawyers have asked the judge to throw out that lawsuit, both because he's in the wrong court (the Eleventh Amendment* means he'd have to take this to a state court), and because he isn't suing Twitter and therefore the court couldn't order Twitter to do anything, even if his claims weren't nonsense.

*It's one of the obscure amendments, which sorted out some jurisdictional stuff early in US history. You didn't sleep through something important in history or civics class. The Eleventh Amendment sharply limits lawsuits against state governments (which is why the University of California, can get away with violating people's copyrights), and specifies that if one state sues another, over something like who owns Ellis Island, the case goes directly to the Supreme Court

two cheerful notes

When I took the trash out, I encountered the middle schooler who lives upstairs and a few of her friends, doing something with a display rack and a scooter in the parking space behind the house. They had spread some dried leaves for traction, and cheerfully (if not actually helpfully) urged me not to fall down as I was walking past.

I asked if they'd be there a little while, and they said yes, so we will wait to take out more recycling or move the trash cans forward.

Either that girl, or her mother or brother, has cleared all the snow off the sidewalk in front of our house. Unfortunately, the people who live on either side of us haven't, so I decided not to go for a walk.

I grabbed the mail on my way in, and found a sweet card from rysmiel, with a print of a blue tile, showing a sailing ship.