Disappointed by Apple

15:55 Tuesday, 14 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 58.12°F Pressure: 1025hPa Humidity: 55% Wind: 13.8mph
Words: 94

So I double-checked how to use Copy Link to Highlight, which does appear in my version of Safari on MacOS 15.2, and I'm not "holding it wrong."

When I paste what is copied to the clipboard into any other app, all I get is the basic URL.

I don't know if it's a conflict with some extension, or a clipboard manager or what, but it doesn't work.

This is kind of the opposite of "surprise and delight." Well, more like "surprise and piss off."

Nice feature, I just don't get to use it.

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Times Change

15:47 Tuesday, 14 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 58.84°F Pressure: 1025hPa Humidity: 54% Wind: 13.8mph
Words: 111

I'm old enough to remember when drinking and womanizing meant you didn't get to be Secretary of Defense.

(Also discovering that I apparently don't know how to use "Copy link with highlight in Safari".)

Update: I guess I ought to catch up on my recent U.S. history. While I knew Tower was rejected for character defects, I didn't realize, or remember, that that's what gave Dick Cheney the job. Oy.

Also just learned that Tower served in a similar class of ship that my dad served in, the LCS(L3).

And he died in a plane crash just north of here near Brunswick Georgia at the age of 66.

Wild.

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Twofer

15:43 Tuesday, 14 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 59.16°F Pressure: 1024hPa Humidity: 52% Wind: 13.8mph
Words: 38

Around the same time, a snowy egret perched on the remaining trunk of a broken tree.

So you get two today!

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This Afternoon's Bird 1-14-24

15:36 Tuesday, 14 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 59.16°F Pressure: 1024hPa Humidity: 52% Wind: 13.8mph
Words: 134

Kevin Drum often posts a Lunchtime Photo. It's way past lunch here, but when I was in the kitchen, I spotted a white spot on a limb in the swamp. I've since learned that means it's probably a kingfisher. Again, I'm really too far away to get a great shot, but it's still nice to document the variety of birds I can see from my back window.

I edited this one from the RAW in Photos. I'm usually happy with jpegs, but I wanted to see if I could tease out a better result from the RAW file. I did, though it wouldn't be visible in the size posted on the marmot. Still, you deserve the best.

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This Morning's Bird 1-14-24

08:35 Tuesday, 14 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 42.76°F Pressure: 1025hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 132

Yesterday was cloudy and rainy all day. I wanted to get a shot of the Wolf Moon with Mars in close proximity last night, but it was solidly overcast. It was better this morning and I got a few shots, but nothing remarkable.

While I was making breakfast, however, I spotted this guy back in the preserve. So I collected the E-M1X and took several images. This was about the best. Cropped in Photos to 3:2, added some definition and sharpening and denoised in Topaz PhotoAI. (ISO 6400. Noise wasn't offensive, but I'm playing with PhotoAI.) Oh, this is an anhinga. They've been perching back there a lot for the last few weeks.

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Culling Continues

07:30 Tuesday, 14 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 41.79°F Pressure: 1024hPa Humidity: 91% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 250

I went to cancel ancestry.com yesterday. It's $25 a month and I've been paying it seemingly forever. But I hesitated.

I think I'm going to just make an annual payment. Mom is still alive, and she's interested in her family history. She asks me about it from time to time. I don't want to tell her, "I cancelled that." I'm sure she'd be ok with it, but part of me thinks she'd be a little disappointed too. So I'll try to save a couple bucks and just pay for a year or six months or whatever the big chunk is and forget about it until it comes due again.

The non-profits make it really hard to cancel. I'll have to call my local public radio and television station. That's going to kind of hurt, because I do value the work they do. But I've been paying them $100 a month for quite some time, so maybe I've done "enough" for now.

Likewise with the St Johns Riverkeeper and the Matanzas Riverkeeper, $100 and $40 a month, respectively. They're fingers in the dike, but they're still worthwhile.

When we get to New York, I'll be supporting public media and environmental groups up there as I find them.

There are a couple of other annual subscriptions that sneak up on me. IFTT, which I never use.

Feels like decoupling. There was a moment, not so long ago, when I believed in Florida and wanted to fight for it.

Not anymore.

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PSA

06:28 Tuesday, 14 January 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 43.09°F Pressure: 1024hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 461

Got a reply from Manton on how to cancel my subscription to micro.blog. This is a screenshot of about a vertical quarter of the page in Safari on a 27" iMac. See that white-on-white "View Subscriptions" button? You click that button to go to the billing page.

There's a cancel button on that page. It's one of two buttons on that page, one of which is to "Upgrade" to yearly billing. Right next to that button, there's a button that says "Cancel."

Hmmmm...

Two buttons adjacent to each other. The one on the left performs an action. The one on the right says "Cancel." Where I have I seen that before?

Well boys and girls, that's the button you click to cancel your subscription!

Somehow I could find a way to cancel all the other subscriptions I mentioned yesterday. Couldn't find this one.

Should I feel stupid? Don't answer that question. I feel frustrated.

Why not "View Billing?"

"Billing" is money. So is "Subscription." But when you're on what is essentially a "social media" page, and "subscribing" is an ordinary feature akin to "following," perhaps it didn't leap out to me as the billing page. Why isn't "Cancel" a first-class citizen on the "Account" page? As in "Cancel my account." Why is the UI to cancel your subscription kind of ambiguous? Why isn't "How do I cancel my account on the FAQ page?

Don't answer those questions either. I know why.

Micro.blog is a fine service.

This part of it isn't up to the standards of all the rest.

If you want to get off "social media" micro.blog is kind of an intermediate stage. You can maintain a presence on things like X, Bluesky, Threads or Mastodon, without having to live in their apps, or view the products of any algorithmic timelines.

I think anyone staying on social media just to keep up with friends would be better served doing so on micro.blog, than scrolling the native social media apps; and $5 a month is a fair price for a much healthier way of doing that.

I used micro.blog as a link to Mastodon, and then I found that the Mastodon experience was not that much different from the X experience. "Social media" is toxic, I don't care how it's moderated, federated, calculated or masticated. It shouldn't be so easy to share every little fleeting thought or emotion that crosses your distracted, outraged mind. That's not mindfulness. Meditation is about letting thoughts go. Not chasing the rabbit. Not seeking constant validation. Not feeding the monster.

Feelings pass.

As will my frustration.

And my micro.blog account.

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