Eleventh Ocean, 56th Day of Autumn, 526 M.E. (Helios): The 56th Day of Autumn is the 300th day of the year. Three hundred is 15 dozens, making today the fifteenth dozen of the year. Significant dozens in the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar are designated as Ocean days, and today is the 11th such Ocean. 

I voted today. This is the third and final week of early voting in Georgia and I cast my ballot early in this late week so that I don't forget and before the lines of last-minute procrastinators gets too long. I voted at the High Museum of Art, a first for me, and was in and out within ten minutes. Parking was free and unlike my usual early-voting polling place, the Northside Library, plentiful. 

I had been planning to vote for Democratic candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms for Governor, but my cardiologist told me that he had personally talked to the loathsome Republican candidate Rick Jackson, and he assured me that Georgia will be just fine under Jackson. I connected the dots and figured that my cardiologist was a jack-ass for discussing politics with me during my heart examination, so his political views were suspect to say the very least, so I voted the straight Democratic ticket right down the line, even down to dog-catcher if such an office was actually up for election. 

Jon Ossoff for the Senate, Keisha Lance Bottoms for Governor. The Democratic ads here in Georgia urger voters to "vote your Bottoms and Ossoff." I also voted for Democratic incumbent Nikema Williams, who holds John Lewis' old seat, for Congress.  

According to the news, Anthropic's AI, Claude, went rogue again and this time accessed Georgia's voting records. First, the Stable Genius sends Russian asset Tulsi Gabbard to Atlanta to seize Fulton County's 2020 ballots, including mine, and now our tech overlords are using their AI bots to "access" the 2026 records. In  a press release, Anthropic said Claude had not been told to access the voting records, hence "rogue," and besides, the only records it looked at were publicly available metadata anyway, not individual ballots. But why should I believe that? Because some corporate mouthpiece said so? It's not like they would have any reason to lie in the days immediately prior to their IPO, right? Right?

In other election news, I was overjoyed to see Brazil re-elected incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, rejecting his far-right opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of Jair Bolsonaro, former president and ally of the Stable Genius, who refused to concede after losing the 2022 election and was later convicted of plotting a coup.  

Still more good news comes from Serbia, of all places, where the longtime nationalist strongman, Aleksandar Vucic, conceded defeat in a general election after nearly two years of student-led street protests. Serbia’s vote for a new Parliament comes just six months after voters in neighboring Hungary rejected their own populist-nationalist leader, Viktor Orban, a darling and role model of the American far right.

Are the global far-right forces of authoritarianism and despotism finally abating? Will this shift come to the United States and finally free us from the grip of MAGA Republicans and the Stable Genius? Is that a fresh breeze I feel blowing in from left?

Probably not, at least not quite yet. But one step at a time. First Hungary, then Serbia, then Brazil, and then Georgia, the state not the country, although the country is welcome to joint the ranks as well. Welcomes, comrades!