Reflections of Privilege

08:24 Friday, 26 April 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 69.1°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 82% Wind: 3.44mph
Words: 664

I didn't walk yesterday. I did bike to the garden and look in on the plants. We have some tomatoes coming in, but the peas look like they're struggling. The pole bean plant is climbing, but no beans yet.

Slept fairly well last night. At least, I didn't wake up at 0300 and struggle to fall back asleep. So I was able to get up shortly before the alarm feeling fairly refreshed. Shot this morning's moon and put that on Flickr. Browsed some of the activity feeds there.

Went through the RSS feeds, read Heather Cox Richardson's post and got exercised, which resulted in a blog post.

Then I took a walk. It was warm, so no vest with a pocket. I put the E-P7 (not the PL7) on my wrist with a Meitu 14-42 compact electronic zoom mounted. It's essentially the Lumix 14-42PZ (power zoom), re-badged for a short-lived brand. Got it for a song, but it's white so it looks kind of odd. I got rid of all my white cameras, though Mitzi has a white E-P5. I figured since the silver mZuiko 14-42EZ had died, I might as well use the Meitu.

The image above is one of the shots. It's a nothing shot, but it made me think.

The lens did draw the eye of the folks I passed.

When I rode my bike yesterday, I recorded it as my workout. When I was in New York, I got on the treadmill at the hotel once and recorded an indoor walk. (Incredibly boring, even with a podcast.) I recall looking for an indoor walk, because I know there are two, outdoor being the other. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I recorded outdoor walks. No problems. Rode my bike yesterday, and this morning I brought my watch up and touched the workout complication and selected what I thought was an outdoor walk.

For some reason, which I can't figure out at all, about a minute after I'd taken this picture, my watch asked me if I was finished with my workout. Now, it'll do this on an outdoor walk if I stop and spend some time taking pictures, offering me the opportunity to "Pause" or to "Dismiss" the query. But I hadn't stopped very long to take the shot, and I was moving pretty quickly when it interrupted me with this question.

Then I noticed that it wasn't recording my pace. It was recording distance, but not my pace. I didn't figure it out right then, I thought something must be wrong with GPS.

Well, when I got home I learned I had somehow selected indoor walk as my workout. As I recall, but can't swear to, the most recent workout is the default choice when selecting the workout complication. So it was probably outdoor bike, but I selected the first "walk" icon I saw. Apparently that was "indoor." Why? I'd done three outdoor walks previously.

I don't know why this happened. I'm so tired of Apple. Stuff works. Then it doesn't. I'm pretty sure it's no better on Android or Windows, and I'm pretty embedded in this ecosystem, but Apple is just disappointing. Size and success have spoiled it. I didn't welcome the interruption on my walk. I didn't want to wonder why it wasn't reporting my pace. I did want to know what my pace was. In hindsight it all makes sense, except why it would offer me an indoor walk at all. I've never done an indoor walk at this location. So much for all that "machine learning" bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.

Old men bitching about newfangled stuff. A tale as old as time.

I have no interest in whatever it is Apple plans to announce on May 7th. I'm reading rumors that MacOS is up for a major UI overhaul soon. I'm like, "Please, no. Just don't."

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Supreme* Court

05:49 Friday, 26 April 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 65.39°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 87% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 245

An antonym of "supreme" is "subordinate," according to the American thesaurus in MacOS.

The conservative majority on this court is "supreme" only in the sense that they warm seats on the highest court in the land. With the possible exception of Roberts, simply because he hasn't made as much news as the others, we have observed their character and they are as deeply flawed, conflicted and compromised as any American.

That isn't a virtue.

We don't want "ordinary" Americans sitting on the bench at the highest court in the land. We want extraordinary ones. These are very mediocre people, extraordinary only in the sense that the politics that put them there was so partisan and petty.

Subordinate to the process that placed them.

One of the disappointments amidst the myriad of tragedies that will accompany the collapse of this civilization is that there will be no history to record the mediocrity and mendacity of these minds. There will be no "judgement of history." Their infidelity and inferiority will be buried in the rubble they helped to create.

Perhaps in a thousand years, when humanity has regained the cognitive surplus to make a serious effort at understanding its past, some glimmer of their corruption may emerge, some record of their names and the decisions they made that hastened the collapse that buried their record for centuries may see the light of history.

“The evil that men do lives after them," until it buries all of us.

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