Actions
16:39 Sunday, 9 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 62.82°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 261
A couple of posts I came across this morning with some thoughts and perspectives about actions we can take. It does feel as though one of the most powerful levers we have is an economic one. Those of you who observe Lent may appreciate this guest post at Empty Wheel.
Chris ODonnell pointed to this one. I guess I'm pleased that I'm engaged to one degree or another in four of the five (2 through 4). My political activity for the moment is limited to making donations and writing my representatives. I have run for something (twice!), but I won't be doing that again. I'm going to be considering the consumer activity. If I pull the trigger on the OM-3, I don't necessarily see that as antithetical to the mission. I'd buy it from OM Systems directly, or a camera retailer, not Amazon.
We have a rotating dinner party, but it's the same circle of friends, so I'm not sure that's 100% aligned with the spaghetti dinner thing. We will be doing more of that in New York, partly as an effort to mitigate polarization, but also to build up our "social capital," so we're not isolated in our old age.
It's clear we can't just go along for the ride and hope that thing's will get better by themselves. We're all going to have to get out and push this old clunker of a democracy ("Democratic republic, libtard!") if we want to get it back on the road again. We've driven it into the ditch, and AAA ain't comin'.
✍️ Reply by emailWeekend Update
18:27 Saturday, 8 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 69.78°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 80% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 792
No Buckaroo Banzai gifs (yet). Got distracted.
Packed a couple of boxes of books today. Amazing how heavy paper is! Glad I've been doing some strength training.
Speaking of which, I was late to yesterday's session. I'm still pretty old-school USN when it comes to making appointments. If you're early, you're on time. If you're on time, you're late. Germaine texted me about 13 minutes after noon yesterday and asked if I'd forgotten about the session. I had already dressed out because I had it in my calendar for 12:30.
Replied I had not and I'd be right there. Mitzi had the car, so I jumped on the bike. Golf cart might have been marginally faster, but this way I got my warm-up in on the way over. He had a 1300 client, but since I'd already warmed up, we skipped the cardio breaks on the bike or elliptical and just did strength training. I don't think I missed anything.
I'm making progress, but I still have a long way to go. Feels great though.
The achilles tendonitis in my left foot is improving now, since I've stopped doing the wrong things to recover! I have insertional tendonitis and the kinds of "normal" achilles stretching and heel-drops were making it worse, not better. I got some heel-lifts for my New Balance shoes, and I'm doing some conditioning by just rising up on my toes. It feels a lot better, but I don't think I can really get out there and walk a couple of miles on it yet.
But riding the bike doesn't seem to bother it, so I've been doing that instead. It's been windy here, so having the motor has made it possible to ride, enjoyable even, if a little chilly sometimes.
Mitzi's been out networking and socializing the past few nights, she was on a panel discussion Thursday night, so I've been watching some movies she probably wouldn't enjoy.
Thursday night I saw Atlas, a Jennifer Lopez sf flick about an AI-enhanced powered suit. The first act was pretty unbearable, but it was entertaining for the second and third. The robots are going to kill us, or save us, or something. If you can get past flying to the Andromeda galaxy and communicating by radio from there, it's a mildly entertaining diversion.
It kind of reminded me of Kurt Russell's Soldier. Fading stars on the downslope of their careers playing lead roles in a B-movie "major release" sf kind of thing. Entertaining, but a bit sad too.
I didn't have high expectations for Fast Charlie on Hulu last night, but it did have the virtue of at least being concise, coming in at brisk 90 minutes. Pierce Brosnan is still, I think, a pretty sturdy leading man, even in his 70s. Definitely on the downslope though. You kinda have to ignore his "southern" American accent, but the tone was right. It was better than I expected it to be, and probably better than it had any right to be. I haven't checked, but it may have been James Caan's last movie.
Anyway, if you're looking for a couple of flicks to while away a few hours, you could do worse. Well, a little, anyway.
Has anyone been keeping up on Reacher's body-count? I make it seven as of the most recent episode in this season. I think it was Mack Bolan who observed, "The only thing wrong with killing sons-a-bitches who deserve it is it's so hard to know when to stop."
I asked for a quote for some cameras from keh.com and I think I'm going to be getting rid of three bodies and a compact to buy one. The one being the OM-3. I'm offering the OM-5, the E-P7 and an E-PL10, along with one of my two Stylus 1s compact cameras. The OM-3 brings the JPEG profiles of the E-P7 (which were part of the PEN-F), along with the evf of the OM-5, and the more advanced image processing and computational features of the OM-1 Mk2. Plus, it looks cool. It's slightly bigger than any of those bodies, wider mostly, but still pretty easy to carry on the wrist with a small prime.
I debated offering my OM-1 as well, but I think I'll hang onto that and sell my E-M1 Mk3 when I get up to New York, and look for a used OM-1 Mk2 at that point.
Haven't fully committed to the idea, but I'm leaning that way.
Even in the midst of the crisis, there's the day to day. "Chop wood, carry water," and so on.
The beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailMental Health Break
15:06 Saturday, 8 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 70.99°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 78% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 4
Reply by Email Added
14:32 Saturday, 8 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 71.08°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 78% Wind: 14.97mph
Words: 26
Noticed that was missing. Simple matter to copy and paste.
Next project is to figure out how to be able to insert some Buckaroo Banzai gifs.
✍️ Reply by emailWind the Clock
❝As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.
Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.
Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.E.B. White (1973)
Source
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Talking to Myself
13:58 Saturday, 8 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 70.12°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 13.8mph
Words: 292
I decided to try something new and I created a "quote"-type post.
I created a prototype p_Quote note so that I could assign a specific template, t_Quote, to it.
In an ordinary post, if you "tab" any text, Tinderbox will render that in html with the block quote tags. That makes it easy to call out a large quotation in a post.
But I wanted to create a kind of post which is just a quotation of something I saw somewhere, and I wanted to do that as "hands-off" as possible. I created an AppleScript that will essentially allow me to do that.
The process is to copy the quotation to the clipboard from the web page I'm on. Then invoke the AppleScript. It asks for a title, which is some little reaction to the quote. The script then creates the note in Tinderbox, assigns the p_Quote prototype to it, which has the t_Quote template assigned as the export template. The script will also copy the URL of the page and use that to create the "Source" link at the bottom of the quotation.
I had some hiccups with the text color and got some help from ChatGPT. I had to add paragraph styling to the block quote selector so I'd get consistent results. In an ordinary quote, pasted into a normal blog post, I didn't get the p tags within the blockquote tags, so the color set in the block quote selector worked fine.
With p tags, the color of the main body text was being selected, and it looked green.
So I've been horsing around with BBEdit, Whisk, MacGPT, Tinderbox and Safari and now I can make quotation posts.
Mad skilz, I tell ya...
✍️ Reply by emailWhat Happens Now?
13:45 Saturday, 8 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 68.27°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 82% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 16
Let's see if the block quote text appears normal (white), if it's not the first post.
✍️ Reply by emailBaty Quote Test
❝This whole thing started because I wanted to make my scratch buffer persistent. Instead, I’ve ended up with a whole new capture setup for quick notes.
Source
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Last Night's Moon 3-7-24
Current Wx: Temp: 52.07°F Pressure: 1016hPa Humidity: 91% Wind: 1.01mphWords: 22
I put the MC20 2x teleconverter on the 100-400mm zoom last night. Handheld hi-res at 800mm (1600mm effective focal length).
✍️ Reply by emailDivision of Labor
11:44 Friday, 7 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 63.66°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 48% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 81
Empty Wheel gets this right, I think:
As a result, there’s a demand that the national Democratic Party (appear to) take the lead on everything, a demand that invites those complaining to outsource their own agency completely, as if they simply hire people to do their politics for them every two or four years.
We can't look to the politicians, this has to be grass-roots opposition. We all have a role to play, even if it's just screaming bloody murder.
✍️ Reply by emailSelf Care
10:56 Friday, 7 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 63.3°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 49% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 292
So, yes, this crisis is affecting me in many ways. And this isn't going to be a short-term problem. So it's important to try to find things to kind of balance the chaos and insanity taking place. Not dwelling on it excessively is one thing. I can't imagine how I'd be feeling if I was on social media now. Mitzi and I will be sitting on the couch watching TV and she has her phone open to Facebook and is passing it over to me every few minutes, "Take a look at this."
Have to stop that.
Anyway, working out is another important part of my self-care. I feel better afterward, and I'm sure it's helping to reduce my stress level in many ways. I also regard it as an act of resistance, a personal commitment to get stronger, physically, so I can be stronger emotionally and mentally.
I've got another session today, which will be my third this week. From now until we leave Florida, I'll be training with Germaine three times a week. That's another expense, but I look at it as an investment in myself and my ability to be useful somehow.
Not everyone can afford a personal trainer. There are plenty of resources online that can help guide you and meet you where you are with regard to level of fitness, available equipment and a sensible program of exercise. The key thing you can't find online is that accountability element. If you can find someone to train with, a friend or a neighbor, a part of your personal "resistance network," that will help maintain your commitment.
Consider forming a "resistance network," for "resistance training."
I'm sure this would be interesting to someone in a keyword search.
✍️ Reply by emailThe Banality of Evil
10:20 Friday, 7 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 61.27°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 52% Wind: 3.44mph
Words: 322
There are "new to me" voices that I'm listening to more these days. Andrew Weissman is one of them. Claire Berlinski of the previous post is another.
In this video, Weissman is cautioning against feeling too hopeful, or relieved about minor victories. That there is a risk that the enormity of the criminality that is taking place simply overwhelms us and forces a new set point for what is considered "normal," perhaps approaching "acceptable," in the context of, "Well, what can you do about it?"
It seems the answer is to keep screaming. This is wrong, it's unacceptable and we're going to fight it every way we can, even if it's only to keep screaming.
So this is the marmot screaming. It's not much, but it's what I can do.
I've also given some money here and there. I donated $200 to Pizza for Ukraine. I did that last Saturday because I was so angry about Trump's betrayal of Ukraine in particular and the western alliance overall. I donated $100 to the warfighting fund at United24. You can donate to non-violent services as well. Hopefully that site isn't being spoofed, but I think it's the real deal, as best I can tell.
I've donated money to Vote.vets, a couple of local candidates and, last night, to Sen. Mark Kelly.
I've written to my congressional representatives, and I need to keep doing more of that. (Keep screaming.)
I've got a new folder of RSS feeds labeled "Crisis." I have Talking Points Memo, Empty Wheel, Heather Cox Richardson, Timothy Snyder, Just Security and Citation Needed in there. Those are all feed links.
"Scream bloody murder." Not exactly what I wanted to do, but I think Weissman is right, and all the other people who have said the same thing.
We can't wait for the midterms. We can't rely on the courts. We don't have the luxury of "being civil."
Scream bloody murder.
✍️ Reply by emailFortress Europe?
09:57 Friday, 7 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 60.39°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 57% Wind: 4.61mph
Words: 59
Interesting video from The Bulwark.
If the "coalition of the willing" can get its act together quickly enough, there may be a chance to contain Russia. That is an enormous if.
What that also means is that Putin has a relatively short timeline to achieve his goals.
The next two to three years are going to be very dangerous.
✍️ Reply by emailDeparture Date
06:29 Friday, 7 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 46.76°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 72% Wind: 0mph
Words: 499
I met my daughter for breakfast yesterday, before she had to fly back to LA. Heard all about her adventures in Japan. A bit stressful at first, until she figured out the subway system. She didn't care for Tokyo, "Like New York City, only clean." She said the Japanese were unfailingly polite, but not exactly warm. She loved the vending machine that cuts and squeezes fresh oranges and gives you a cup of orange juice. Ten days with her sister and brother-in-law became somewhat wearing.
We talked about the move to New York. She's not exactly thrilled, because it'll make it more difficult for her to see me, me not flying to California so much (as in, "ever"). When I mentioned I'd planned to leave about mid-May, when Mitzi left for a trip to New Mexico, she told me she was hoping to be putting on an event of some kind here, which would open the first week in June. She'd planned to be here that week because her sister and I share a birthday around then.
Then she told me about this event space/craft brewery that opened locally. She has an idea for a theme for an art show and she's discussing it with the owners. Nothing firm yet, and I think the timeline is pretty short for putting something like that together, but she's optimistic they can pull it off.
All of which is to say that I may be sticking around here a couple of more weeks.
Which may be less inconvenient than I initially thought. Mitzi spoke with our realtor and there are a lot of places up for sale in our development. We're not necessarily in a rush to sell, as we don't have any sort of contingency with regard to where we're moving. We can wait a few weeks to list the place, although our nextdoor neighbors would be listing their's about the same time.
I wondered if the general idea that Florida may not be the ideal place to retire to is spreading faster than I thought? I don't know, but mitigating that somewhat is the brutal winter experienced in the northeast this year. And I'm still confident and hopeful about internal migration within Florida, as hurricane victims seek "safer" parts of the state to continue to enjoy no state income tax and mild winters.
Our brilliant legislature is somewhat seriously considering outlawing property taxes. They haven't exactly figured out how they'd fill the hole they'd blow in every locality's budget, but they're talking about it.
Imagine that, no state income tax and no property tax? No problem selling the house then! At least in the early days, before all public services went away and "the poors" who would be sales-taxed into oblivion were forced to migrate to another state where they might have some hope of survival. Maybe AGI robots will do all the landscaping, construction, waste-management, healthcare and so on.
This state is insane.
✍️ Reply by emailMeta: marmot
06:06 Friday, 7 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 47.64°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 67% Wind: 4.72mph
Words: 236
Moving to the MBP without an external monitor and living in a small screen has forced me to take a closer look at the marmot. That's a good thing, I think.
When I work on the marmot, sometimes I create attributes for notes that are ultimately unused, but possibly among the Displayed Attributes that appear with each note onscreen. Similarly, there may be attributes that are used, but among the Displayed Attributes strictly as a troubleshooting aid.
I've mentioned this recently with respect to being able to have some room to edit the text of a post, but last night's moon was the first photo-type post I've made since the switch. In general, I don't need a lot of room for text in a photo post, because they're usually little more than a caption or a brief account of when it was taken.
But the amount of space taken up by Displayed Attributes stood out to me, so I spent some time just now going through and figuring out which ones I actually needed. Got it down to 5, from some larger number. I wasn't actually using several of them as they'd been created long before I'd finally sorted out how I wanted to do a photo-type post. A couple of them I didn't even recall what I'd intended for them.
Perhaps not an example of how constraints may help creativity, but certainly clarity.
✍️ Reply by emailLast Night's Moon 3-6-24
Current Wx: Temp: 46.33°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 67% Wind: 0mphWords: 24
From the front porch last night with the E-M1X and the 100-400mm zoom with the MC14 teleconverter, effective focal length 1120 mm.
✍️ Reply by emailMeasles
14:44 Thursday, 6 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 65.84°F Pressure: 1012hPa Humidity: 34% Wind: 19.57mph
Words: 82
Another reason to flee Florida. Just sent a note to my primary care, though I expect I already know the answer. I had the measles as a kid, I don't think I've ever been vaccinated. I'm wondering if I should get it now, given that it's now here in Florida, and Florida has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country.
I expect she's going to say yes.
"Free Florida, baby!"
Governed by "Florida man."
✍️ Reply by emailOnly Murders In the Cave
17:43 Wednesday, 5 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 75.27°F Pressure: 1004hPa Humidity: 42% Wind: 25.32mph
Words: 209
I guess that was a bit of a spoiler if you haven't seen Paradise yet. The season wrapped this week and I'm just a little disappointed with how it ended.
It ended as it was conceived, probably, as a returning serial drama rather than a "limited series." The finale has several hooks for the next season.
Episodes 1 and 7 were the best. I thought 7 was very intense and well done. Episode 1 was just mind-blowing with the reveal. I cared about most of the characters, some were better developed than others. I'm a little unhappy with how the Jane plot line wrapped up. And I have questions about airplanes sitting, apparently fully fueled, for some number of months or years and then being ready to take off. But what do I know?
Still enjoying Only Murders In the Building, usually one episode a night. We're on season 3 now, and it seems to have lost a step. I'm not a Paul Rudd fan, and it feels like it has lost its sense of intimacy, or claustrophobia, when the suspects are cast members and not residents of the Arconia, although half the cast seem to be residents. Martin and Short are more frantic, or overplayed, too. Disappointing.
✍️ Reply by emailInsufferable
11:38 Wednesday, 5 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 75.42°F Pressure: 1007hPa Humidity: 78% Wind: 20.71mph
Words: 213
I don't read Ezra Klein much. I've read some things he's written, but he's not the kind of author that I look forward to reading. If someone links to something he's written and recommends it, I'll give it a look. But it's not like I'd click on anything of his just because of his name.
He's never resonated much with me, I guess.
But watching him on this "podcast," just makes me want to hate him.
I don't know if it's his camera setup, the set, his tone of voice, his head tilt or what, but he just comes off as condescending and, I mean, just literally looking down his nose at his guest.
I watched the whole damn thing because the topic is important, but the guest was far more informative and easier to listen to than the host. And in that respect, I'd say it's worth your time too.
I'm not fan of Joe Rogen either, but it seems like Klein is kind of the polar opposite of Rogen in presentation, but equally as insufferable.
(Just before I uploaded this, it dawned on me that he reminds me of William F. Buckley, and that's not a good thing. Do you think that's kind of the vibe he was looking for here?)
✍️ Reply by emailLate is the same as never
05:48 Tuesday, 4 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 56.66°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 93% Wind: 1.01mph
Words: 240
This report would have been useful about twenty five years ago.
You might think that the people who assess risk for a living would have been more interested in climate change from the beginning. But irony is the fifth fundamental force of the universe, and human nature is such that by the time the risk is obvious, it's too late to do anything about it.
Not that they would have had any better luck against the giant petrochemical corporations.
What's intriguing to me is that the climate catastrophe is arriving at the same time as the political foundations of this civilization are crumbling. They don't seem directly connected.
Perhaps they are in the context that the extreme wealth inequality that fuels political destabilization was built on the unchecked rapaciousness of capitalism, so environmental degradation inevitably accompanies extreme wealth inequality.
Maybe the next civilization can take that into account. They'll have the tremendous advantage of time. Because all of the easily accessible fossil fuel resources have been exhausted. They won't be able to manufacture solar panels and giant windmills at scale, and the renewable energy infrastructure we're building today will inevitably fail along with all the other physical infrastructure of this civilization as conflict and catastrophes disrupt trade and logistic chains.
I read somewhere recently something to the effect of, "Uncertainty is the place where hope resides."
Well, it's where risk lives too.
When the risk is clear, hope is gone.
✍️ Reply by emailEverything Bucket
07:53 Monday, 3 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 53.65°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 72% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 638
I downloaded Elgato's Stream Deck iOS app, and the demo seems to work very well. Takes a little time to connect, and seems to keep the iPhone from sleeping while it is running, but neither of those appear to be showstoppers.
It's $49.99 for a "lifetime" license (i.e. you're not paying a subscription), and I'm inclined to buy one. I saw a blog post somewhere recently that talked about using a feature of MacOS accessibility to create buttons on the screen to launch apps, and you can transfer that control to an iOS device. Essentially, you can create buttons on the iOS device to launch apps or perform actions on the Mac.
I played with it a little bit and it appeared as though I'd have to spend more time figuring it out than I cared to, at least compared to the immediate gratification of $49.99. Haven't pulled the trigger yet, but I probably will before the day is over.
I've also recently spent some working on the AppleScripts for Captain's Log, and cleaning up my Scripts folder. I want to revisit the screenshot automation. Perhaps I'll get lucky on the MBP and not run into the bizarre Privacy and Security hiccups I had on the iMac. I created a new script that creates a "quotation" entry in the log. I may repurpose this for the marmot too.
Capture some text in a web page, copy it to the clipboard, launch the quotation automation either from a Stream Deck button or from the FastScripts menu. Give it a title (some thought about why it was worth recalling), and it'll create a note in the log with the quote in the text of the note, and the URL as an attribute, and it'll give it a little speech bubble as a badge.
You can create any number of attributes of type "URL" in Tinderbox, but it has a built-in one called "SourceURL," which is notionally intended to be used with DevonThink. I have DevonThink but I've never really embraced it. I also have EagleFiler, which is also an "everything bucket," less sophisticated than DevonThink. I've tried both of them, and have stuff in each, but neither has really "clicked" for me the way Tinderbox has. The existence of SourceURL prompted the idea of a quotation entry.
Unfortunately, until now anyway, I've been hit-or-miss on using Captain's Log to its full potential. Perhaps some anxiety about switching between the iMac and the MBP and the dance I had to do to shut Tinderbox down on one before launching it on the other was inhibiting me. For the moment, I have some enthusiasm for working in the Log and turning it to my advantage. Having something like the Stream Deck controls available on my phone seems like another advantage. It's easier to hit a button on the iPhone than to mouse up to the menu bar, or try to recall a keyboard shortcut.
I've got to do some work on tagging items, so that I can have an agent gather all entries that are receipts, or orders and things of that nature. Maybe "Tips" would be a tag for a quotation entry, where I copy some text from a camera forum post about taking better advantage of some feature.
The other aspect of the Log that I've neglected, and have to make a habit, is the morning review. Check the entry to see if it makes sense, or will it make sense to my "future self," tag it as appropriate, then mark it as "reviewed." I created my first Stamp in Tinderbox so I could select dozens of Midwatch entries and mark them all as reviewed in one go.
Agents gather "Don't Forget" reminders, the unreviewed entries, bookmarks, quotes, etc.
It's a welcome distraction from the news.
✍️ Reply by emailFools
06:28 Monday, 3 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 51.37°F Pressure: 1021hPa Humidity: 72% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 454
Fool. noun a person who acts unwisely or imprudently; a silly person
verb trick or deceive (someone); dupe
Stupid. adjective having or showing a great lack of intelligence or common sense
Folly. noun lack of good sense; foolishness; a foolish act, idea, or practice
So, a "fool" is not necessarily a "stupid" person, but a "stupid" person is sometimes a "fool," and may be easier "to fool."
If we are to deal adequately with folly, we must try to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is a moral rather than an intellectual defect. There are people who are mentally agile but foolish, and people who are mentally slow but very far from foolish - a discovery that we make to our surprise as a result of particular situations. We thus get the impression that folly is likely to be, not a congenital defect, but one that is acquired in certain circumstances where people make fools of themselves or allow others to make fools of them. We notice further that this defect is less common in the unsociable and solitary than in individuals or groups that are inclined or condemned to sociability. It seems, then, that folly is a sociological rather than a psychological problem, and. that it is a special form of the operation of historical circumstances on people, a psychological by-product of definite external factors. If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems actually to be a psychological and sociological law: the power of some needs the folly of the others.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, After Ten Years
I've seen references to Bonhoeffer that used the word "stupidity" in place of "folly." I think that in its modern usage, people would find "fool" or "folly" to be less pejorative than "stupid" or "stupidity."
This has all been on my mind because of recent events. Our failure to address climate change by aggressively reducing CO2 emissions. Elections of demagogues and fools to high office. Doubling down on vaccine skepticism in the face of illness and death.
I have long believed, if not known, that human beings are not the kinds of creatures that we flatter ourselves to be. To the extent that we have mastered any skill at "reason," most often it is employed, when it is employed, to rationalize our feelings to ourselves and others.
Civilization is merely an abstraction, it exists only in our minds. It's hard to generate any feelings about an abstraction.
When enough of us lose our minds, well, "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."
✍️ Reply by emailNew "Desk"
07:02 Sunday, 2 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 54.05°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 78% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 364
I ordered this 52" 2-drawer, adjustable height workbench from Home Depot. It arrived yesterday and it took me about an hour to put it together,
Very well-constructed and pretty easy to assemble. But it is heavy. The package weighed 140 pounds. I'm guessing that may be about what the old wooden office desk weighed that I just got out of here. The advantage of the workbench is that it's on wheels. I was able to move it from the garage to my office with just a little assist from Mitzi getting it over the step from the garage to the hall. I could have done it by myself, but I'd have had to walk from the hall, back through the house, out the front door and back into the garage to lift the other end of the desk over the step. I couldn't slip between the workbench and the other crap in the hall to get to the other end of the desk.
In hindsight, I should have ordered the 1-drawer version. The desk height is adjustable, as is the height of my office chair, but to find a combination that puts my arms at a comfortable angle for writing, my legs bump up against the bottom drawer. I suppose it'd be a simple matter to just remove the bottom drawer, but I kind of like the storage.
I'm still in the process of organizing this space, but one advantage of the shallow depth and the absence of file drawer piers is that I can put my Epson FastFoto scanner within arm's reach. It'll do document scanning as well as photos, and it's wireless so I don't have to screw around with more cables.
Speaking of cables, I'd written "Logitech Stream Deck Neo" in the preceding post. It's an Elgato product. Fixed. Anyway, went looking to see if they had a Bluetooth solution and learned that they have an iOS app that turns a phone or a tablet into a Stream Deck!
That would get rid of a device and a cable from my desktop. I'll try out the free version and see if it will do what I want. Interesting.
✍️ Reply by emailParadigm Shift
06:08 Sunday, 2 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 54.61°F Pressure: 1016hPa Humidity: 81% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 784
This is a trivial concern, but it's a worthwhile distraction from writing about the stuff that kept me up last night.
Switching to the 14" MBP from the 27" iMac has been something of a challenge. I could tolerate certain inconveniences or annoyances on the MBP because I didn't do most of my "work" on it. I'm finding they're far less tolerable now that it's my only platform.
Differences in display size and internal storage capacity call for different accommodations. The iMac had a 1TB SSD, and with my enormous Photos library, free space was becoming something of a scarce commodity. There were a couple of solutions, but I wanted to be assured of having full-size originals available at all times, so I had the System library on an external SSD.
The MBP has a 2TB internal SSD, so storage isn't an issue (for now), but my new "desk" arrived yesterday and I attempted to replicate the iMac setup with the external SSD. Previously, I'd had the MBP setup with "Optimize Storage" for the Photos library, where only thumbnails are kept in local stores and the originals are kept in iCloud. An accommodation I was willing to live with because I didn't do most of my image management on the MBP, and when I was on the road, I felt I could be reasonably assured of iCloud access if only through the wifi hotspot of my iPhone.
Switching to the external drive as the System library involved a couple of force-quits of Photos, and reports to Apple before it finally switched over. This morning I was greeted by an alert from Photos that it had to quit because the library was corrupt or missing. What had happened was the SSD it resides on was no longer mounted on the MBP. This is a problem with a CalDigit Thunderbolt hub that I'd had connected to the iMac. It was problematic then, but I suspected it may have been a cable geometry issue with pressure on the connections causing intermittent problems.
Well, it's not. This dock is crap. I had the little Elgato Stream Deck Neo plugged into the front-facing USB-C port, and it kept flickering any time I touched a key or jostled the cable. So I'm dumping this POS.
When I had everything hooked up and kind of working, it bothered me that this "mobile" computer was now tethered to a bunch devices, and it wouldn't be a simple matter for me to just pick it up and slide over to the recliner for a little relaxed doom-scrolling.
So I've decided to go ahead and make the internal SSD the System Library for Photos, and download all the originals. iCloud is currently mirroring nearly all of my files and I still have over 700GB remaining of 2TB of storage. I think, with some thoughtful management, I can make the internal SSD work until such time as we're in larger accommodations that will allow a desktop Mac of some kind.
Now I'm in the process of trying to switch back to the internal Photos Library as the System Library and so far have been dealing with the Spinning Pinwheel of Infinite Futility™ and one force-quit. Likely another one coming up soon.
Another issue is screen management. Here in the marmot, a blog post is a note in Tinderbox that has a number of Displayed Attributes included above the text of the note. These are all setup in the prototype of a blog post note, and appear every time I create a new entry. Most of them were selected over time to help me troubleshoot glitches.
On the MBP, the Displayed Attributes portion of the note was larger than the text display where I actually compose the note. So that compelled me this morning to reconsider what was essential for including in Displayed Attributes. I've reduced it to six, which gives me a fair amount of room to write in. (Probably four more than necessary.)
I was just about to wrap this up and decided to check Photos. System Library is now the internal library, and I've turned on iCloud Photos and set It to download all the originals. I'll order a new hub for the SSDs (there are only two USB-C ports on this MBP), and figure something out.
One practice on the iMac that I eventually abandoned was importing images from SD cards to a folder on an external drive and doing my initial review from there, and only importing the "keepers" to Photos on the MBP. That should help keep library growth under control.
Still more to come, I'm sure. But the beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailWhat's There to Worry About?
11:35 Saturday, 1 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 55.76°F Pressure: 1016hPa Humidity: 70% Wind: 6.91mph
Words: 265
What transpired yesterday in Washington was worse than Munich in 1938. It's Munich with nuclear weapons.
The Secretary of Defense has instructed CYBERCOM to cease planning cyber ops against Russia.
Trump has essentially handed Putin carte blanche to carry out his plans for domination of the European continent.
What about NATO?
NATO is dead.
While Russia is militarily weakened, and in my opinion, no match for the combined armies of free European nations, Russia has nuclear weapons.
The center of gravity for a military response to Russian aggression in Europe beyond Ukraine is Germany, and Germany lacks a nuclear deterrent.
Putin may calculate that he can win a "limited" nuclear war by launching nuclear strikes against military targets in Germany, convinced that France and Britain will not risk retaliation against their cities by striking Russia.
If I were the European Union, I'd arm Germany with nuclear weapons yesterday. Give them a credible deterrent to make Putin think twice. It doesn't eliminate the risk, but I think it may reduce it significantly. Of course, there's the German political situation with an ascendant far right that may roll over for Putin if it achieves power, and will likely oppose any effort to arm Germany with nuclear weapons, which may give it enough political allies to achieve power.
So it's not a no-brainer.
But make no mistake. Trump has surrendered to Putin. In the analogy of WW II, Putin is Hitler, Xi is Tojo and Trump is Mussolini.
We are now living in a world dominated by authoritarian regimes backed with nuclear weapons.
Everything is different now.
✍️ Reply by emailMeanwhile
08:39 Saturday, 1 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 53.53°F Pressure: 1016hPa Humidity: 80% Wind: 1.99mph
Words: 218
We can't all be on high alert all the time, life does go on. I think we should all take some time to think about how the world has just changed, and what that may mean for us.
But you still have to "chop wood, carry water."
I sold the iMac yesterday. Got $850 for it, which wasn't bad. I looked at eBay and most of the ones like mine were selling north of $1K, around the $1200 range. I gather eBay takes an 18% cut, I'm not certain, so I listed it for $950 on FB Marketplace. Well, Mitzi listed it for me.
It basically sold within a couple of hours, though we didn't conclude the transaction until yesterday. New Mac user too. 3.6Ghz 8 core I9 with 128GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD, should still be useful. I'd have kept it except for the size, which makes it impractical at Winterfell.
So now I'm fully dependent on this 14" M3 MBP with 24GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD. I'm finding little things that I'd set up on the iMac weren't mirrored to the MBP and so I'm having to reinvent a few wheels. This has taught me that it's probably wiser, and more affordable, to rely on just one computer.
The beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailWhat Now?
07:57 Saturday, 1 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 51.96°F Pressure: 1016hPa Humidity: 71% Wind: 3.44mph
Words: 538
My interest in shortwave radio has waned somewhat. Partly because I'm looking forward to being able to experiment with different antennas when we get to New York, and I don't have an HOA telling me what I can't do in my backyard.
"In these uncertain times," I think you'd be wise to have a decent shortwave radio, and one with single sideband (SSB) capability. Nearly every radio sold today is a system on a chip device. They nearly all have excellent sensitivity and selectivity. Where they differ in design may be in poor choices regarding display shielding, where the LCD introduces noise into the circuit.
Good brands include C.Crane, Tecsun, and Sangean. There are some excellent brands out of China as well. (Most of them are manufactured in China, so buy now before the tariffs take effect.) The C.Crane Skywave SSB is a tiny device, but it will take an external antenna and is mostly intended for use with earbuds.
Why should you want a shortwave radio with SSB capability? Because normal means of communications may be disrupted. Much of the internet runs across the oceans on underwater cables, and Russia has been developing some capability with cutting those, and being pretty brazen about it as well. China likewise.
Many of the commercial broadcasts you can listen to on AM (amplitude modulation) shortwave from overseas may be propaganda from China. But if normal communications are disrupted, I expect we will see new stations emerging.
Single sideband gives you the ability to listen in on amateur radio operators. What you hear there may or may not be any more reliable than propaganda, but they are a different perspective.
The key thing with a shortwave radio is some kind of antenna, and it doesn't have to be something exotic or sophisticated. A long wire alligator clipped to the whip antenna of a radio without an external antenna connector will improve its reception.
You may want to look for one that takes AA batteries. Many, if not most these days, have some sort of lithium battery installed and charge over USB. But something like the Skywave will take ordinary alkaline AAs, or NiMH rechargeables (you will have to tell the radio which kind you have installed). Don't try to recharge lithium AAs in a radio that isn't designed to take them. Just pay attention to the battery warnings in the documentation.
It doesn't take a lot of power to communicate over vast distances. It's propagation that matters, not so much power. Propagation varies with time of day, solar activity and weather, so shortwave communications, or, more accurately "high frequency" (HF) communications aren't as reliable as tuning in your local AM or FM broadcast station. But long range and modest power requirements mean that HF communications are possible with modest amateur equipment.
While I'm thinking of it, I think any home in America today would be wise to have a hardcopy world atlas on hand.
We're all very dependent on the internet for basic information. The internet famously "routes around damage," but I wouldn't count on that anymore. Cables can be cut. Cyberattacks can take sites down. Musk owns Starlink.
"When I was your age, the internet was called books."
✍️ Reply by emailWarning Order
06:33 Saturday, 1 March 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 50.94°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 4.61mph
Words: 250
Yesterday's catastrophe in the Oval Office feels, to me, to be an event of similar consequence as 9/11. To be sure, thousands of Americans haven't died, but who knows how many thousands of Europeans will?
The Iraq War was wrong, I don't agree with David Brooks that it was done out of "good intentions." In the worst ways, it may have helped shape and inform Donald Trump's adolescent, gangster view of the presidency.
But this is a new debasement of American values, America's reputation. We have aligned ourselves with the most malign entity on the world stage, Russia. In doing so, have encouraged and emboldened China.
We have made the world less safe everywhere.
And I feel powerless in this moment. I knew on 9/11 that the people who were responsible and those who harbored them would be held to some sort of account. It was far in excess of what was called for, and we're still dealing with the consequences. But we did respond.
In this moment, I feel helpless. I'm not confident that any meaningful opposition will appear within this country immediately, nor am I confident that the mid-terms will change the balance of power in Washington. There are too many "Americans" who are cheering this president on.
War is chaos.
Chaos can precede war.
We are in a chaotic moment. The evidence is clear by the lack of any meaningful response or opposition within this country. Everyone's just looking at their shoes.
Prepare accordingly.
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