![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/081226-1-poll.jpg\")
\nWe had a conference this morning, the mid-week resumption of the regular Production Planning meetings which turned into 24×7 watch operations when the war overseas heated up. Things came to a nervous collapse in late June when Miles and some of his old shipmates were called back down to the Five-Sided Adult Care Facility in Arlington to help attempt to figure out how to reason with religious fanatics who wish to kill you.<\/p>\n
We talked about the remarkable change in how we do business. And even just converse.<\/p>\n
Topic one at the meeting, after Miles got settled and Deirdre slid a platter of fresh fritters into the middle of the Conference table, was the celestial show in progress above.<\/p>\n
We remember the introduction of the little speaker box at the foot of the table, near the rear entry to the room. It was hooked up to a program one of the kids suggested we try\u2014something innocently called \u201cChatGPT,\u201d that offered voice access to the entirety of the human experience just by clearing your throat.<\/p>\n
We asked it this morning when the solar eclipse was going to be here in Northern Virginia, since we missed the line-up of the planets this morning, and there may be clouds to obscure the Perseid Meteor Shower tonight.<\/p>\n
It told us to be watching only through expert-approved solar observation goggles between 1:50\u20131:55 PM EDT. Only 4% of the sun\u2019s disc will be obscured, so there will be more people here partially blinded than actually see the partial eclipse.<\/p>\n
We are hoping for meteors tonight, but since the Boomers are normally asleep by 8:30, this may be one of the best celestial displays since 1999 that we will miss.<\/p>\n
Which brings up what we heard on WTOP radio about the results of the primaries yesterday.<\/p>\n
There had been quite the hub-bub about things up in Minnesota and Wisconsin, along with reports about the Democratic Socialist candidate for Michigan\u2019s opening Senate seat, currently held by Democrat Gary Peters.<\/p>\n
Big implications for November, according to the polling.<\/p>\n
That led immediately to a discussion of the illogic of recent polling that showed dramatically different odds about what had been characterized as a socialist rise across America. It took a couple of mugs of Black Rifle coffee to get to the bottom of that.
\nThe flat screen was doing some Fairfax news about there being 3,000 fewer new students in the County schools. The same trend is being reported by other academic jurisdictions as birth rates decline.<\/p>\n
We now have pollsters who are carrying huge student loan debts talking to other younger active people with similar loans who could use some help in getting by.<\/p>\n
All of them well-educated, mostly white, and committed to a fair and progressive future.<\/p>\n
And maybe that is why the polls are screwed up!<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Vic Socotra<\/p>\n
www.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We had a conference this morning, the mid-week resumption of the regular Production Planning meetings which turned into 24×7 watch operations when the war overseas heated up. Things came to a nervous collapse in late June when Miles and some of his old shipmates were called back down to the Five-Sided Adult Care Facility in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33922"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33925,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33922\/revisions\/33925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}