So Far, So Good
10:15 Wednesday, 21 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 14.72°F Pressure: 1028hPa Humidity: 58% Wind: 11.16mph
Words: 374
Fixing the marmot gives me something to do in the morning in lieu of doom-scrolling. I think I've got every January in the archive fixed now. Discovered that I had somehow re-exported January 2024 with the corrupted dates, and uploaded it to the server. I'm going to try to remedy that now.
We went to a middle school robotics exhibition or program yesterday evening. Our neighbors home-school their children, but they involve them in a lot of community activities. There isn't a lot of STEM emphasis in the local school district, so some teachers have taken it upon themselves to create extracurricular activities with a STEM focus, one of which is the high school robotics team. We met the coaches last night.
They've been trying to get middle-schoolers engaged, because it's easier to interest them early, before they encounter all the distractions of high school. These middle-school parents, home-schoolers and public alike, stepped up and created a team, and last night was the culmination of this year's effort.
There are organized competitions, but since this was their first year they decided they wanted to give a presentation for the experience, rather than compete.
I was impressed with what they accomplished, and learned that they're resource challenged. I haven't been doing a lot of "giving" since we moved here, partly to save money for the new house, but also to discover what organizations I'd like to support. This is one of the first. I'm going to give them $500 to help them get their equipment updated. There are also entry fees, the yearly "challenge" setup and so on, so $500 won't underwrite the whole effort, but it should give them a significant leg up.
The kids were great, and it was nice meeting the high school coaches. They tried to rope me into volunteering, but I said I served my time as a den leader and assistant scoutmaster. I'm happy to support them financially; but I'm not sure I have the emotional resources to cope with a weekly group encounter with middle-school energy. It's probably a character deficiency, but I'd rather cheer them on from the sidelines than get in the trenches with them.
The beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailTonight's Show
20:02 Tuesday, 20 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 9.66°F Pressure: 1031hPa Humidity: 58% Wind: 12.17mphWords: 67
These seem somewhat better than yesterday's, with the green below the red, though overall there's probably less activity.
Got the tripod out. No wind, but it was 10°F and my fingers were numb by the time I got the camera secured to the tripod head. This is a 4s exposure at ISO 6400. I have no idea what I'm doing, but it seems like it worked.
✍️ Reply by emailRepairs
09:08 Tuesday, 20 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 8.01°F Pressure: 1025hPa Humidity: 65% Wind: 12.88mph
Words: 345
There's only so much doom-scrolling I can tolerate, so I have to distract myself. I'm working on fixing the broken pieces of the marmot.
Just how something could alter "system" attributes (uneditable by the user) remains a mystery. I believe Tinderbox uses Unix time, counting "ticks" since 1 January 1970. Whatever happened to the marmot happened to both the system attribute $Created, and the user attribute $PublicationDate, which should be identical in nearly all cases. (There may have been instances when I altered $PublicationDate for some reason, but that would be rare.)
Anyway, there are two discrepancies. One changes the date and time backward 12 days and 20 hours. The other advances the time 12 hours, so it's relatively simple, if tedious, making the manual corrections to $PublicationDate. It's fairly inconsistent which notes are affected and when, so no clues there.
I'm cleaning up some other bits and pieces here and there. I've made copies of the marmot at various stages, so I can get back to a version before I started "fixing" it if I have to. I also bought a 4TB SSD to use as a Time Machine backup, which is online this morning.
There are pieces that are broken at the moment, but I should get them fixed fairly soon. Hopefully.
Once I'm fairly confident I have everything squared away, I'm going to make a backup of all the archives on the server, store those somewhere, then export the whole thing again. Stuff like On This Day... should work correctly thereafter.
While I was at Mom's I talked with Mitzi about just abandoning the whole project. I'm fed up with the internet and the kinds of interactions it facilitates, and the emotions it engenders in me. I get tired of "fixing" things that work one day and don't work the next, yesterday's mystery script failure being the most recent example.
Anyway, here I am, trying to fix the marmot rather than abandon it. I'm not confident it's the right thing to do. It's probably more of habit now than anything else.
✍️ Reply by emailMonsters on Maple Street
08:38 Tuesday, 20 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 5.79°F Pressure: 1024hPa Humidity: 68% Wind: 12.03mph
Words: 637
(Note that it's 6°F outside!)
I'm past the executions of the Nazi war criminals in The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Göring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWII, by Jack El-Hai, which was the basis for the recent movie, Nuremberg.
Toward the end of the movie, there's a scene where Dr. Kelley is drunk on a radio or TV program, explaining that there was nothing "unique" about the Nazis. I suspected the quote came from the book, and I finally got to last night. It's not, apparently, from a radio or TV program, but that's no surprise. Anywhere, here's the quote:
They are people who exist in every country of the world. Their personality patterns are not obscure. But they are people who have peculiar drives, people who want to be in power, and you say that they don’t exist here, and I would say that I am quite certain that there are people even in America who would willingly climb over the corpses of half of the American public if they could gain control of the other half, and these are the people who today are just talking—who are utilizing the rights of democracy in anti-democratic fashion.
He had some other interesting observations. Apparently, Hitler was worried that he might have stomach cancer, yet refused diagnostic tests to rule it out. As a result, he was rushing to complete his agenda, lest he die before it was achieved.
Many important decisions were made hurriedly and put into effect equally as hurriedly.” Kelley had learned, for example, that Hitler told Göring in 1941 that a planned attack on the Soviet Union had to take place immediately because his stomach was getting worse; the Führer feared he had stomach cancer and that he might soon die.
Sound familiar? Trump's public speculation on whether or not he'd get into heaven? Reports he'd had a stroke may have prompted his reflections on his mortality.
Also, the despicable nature of the people who associate themselves with Trump?
The leaders “were not special types,” he wrote. “Their personality patterns indicate that, while they are not socially desirable individuals, their like could very easily be found in America” or elsewhere.
"Not socially desirable individuals." Truth.
“They all worked for incredibly long hours, slept very little, and devoted their whole lives to the problem of Nazifying the world,” he observed. “They worked slavishly and fanatically. It’s too bad,” Kelley added almost ruefully, “we don’t have that much energy to spare in making democracy work.” In addition, Kelley discovered, the Nazis focused on the ends of their labors and did not much care about the means that made them happen. Those ends varied from Nazi to Nazi and ranged from furthering the spread of Nazism to achieving personal power and glory.
The whole thing sounds like the Trump White House.
And there's this:
At Mondorf and Nuremberg, Kelley had interviewed Hitler’s associates, physicians, secretaries, and anyone else with intimate knowledge of the Nazi leader’s life. He determined that “Hitler had a profound conviction of his own ability, amounting to megalomania. He firmly believed that he was the only individual who could lead the Third Reich to success, and at times he seemed to feel that he had been chosen by Heaven for this task.” Anyone who crossed Hitler faced the leader’s fearsome rage. To Kelley, it was not inconsistent with such megalomania that Hitler in private was often kind and soft-spoken with his staff; polite to women, children, and the elderly; and a lover of good food and other simple pleasures of life.
Lest you think this book was written to promote parallels with Trump, it was written in 2013.
It's chilling, really.
History doesn't repeat, but it sure does rhyme.
✍️ Reply by emailG4 Geomagnetic Storm
Current Wx: Temp: 17.28°F Pressure: 1016hPa Humidity: 59% Wind: 18.72mphWords: 110
It's 16°F outside, 4.2° "feels like" (wind chill). Couldn't wear gloves because I couldn't feel the buttons. Some gusty winds and the cold challenged the OM-3's IBIS at 1.3s shutter speed. (OM-3, 8mm/f1.8 fisheye at f2.0, ISO 6400. Shooting in manual mode with starry sky auto-focus, which works pretty well.)
There isn't much to see by eye, but that may be because I wasn't staying outside long enough to fully dark-adapt. (It's frigid!) But this is the first time I've ever "seen" the northern lights, even if I'm only seeing them in the photographs.
The iPhone did a pretty good job as well.
✍️ Reply by emailTwilight's Last Gleaming
Current Wx: Temp: 16.23°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 76% Wind: 10.85mphWords: 40
Last night's sunset.
Typical Monday. Ran the script to create a photo note in the marmot and it failed. Tried to troubleshoot, kept getting misleading error messages. Restarted Finder, same result.
Reboot and everything works as expected.
I hate computers.
✍️ Reply by emailNazis and the Confederacy
11:13 Saturday, 17 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 29.53°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 8.9mph
Words: 153
You may be wondering if I'm suffering from NDS (Nazi Derangement Syndrome), in suggesting that there is a through-line from the Confederate States of America and Nazi Germany, i.e. "losers" never forget history.
Here is a remarkable video of a Zoom lecture, Nuremberg Laws: How The Nazis Were Influenced by U.S. Jim Crow Laws. (It starts about two minutes into the recording and the audio sucks, but it's tolerable.) This is very worth your time to see the connections between immigration, eugenics, white supremacy and Nazi Germany. Spoiler alter: The Germans sent a delegation to America to study Jim Crow and decided it was too extreme for Germany. But they loved the eugenics, immigration and anti-miscegination laws. It also talks about the role of memory.
Great video.
If you don't want to spend an hour watching a video, here's a shorter piece touching on some of the same issues.
✍️ Reply by emailAll Nazis All the Time
07:57 Saturday, 17 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 26.06°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 82% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 466
My books are nearly all in storage, including volumes 1 and 2 of Werner Klemperer's I Will Bear Witness. He was an intelligent man who could see what was taking place all around him, who was relatively powerless to do anything about it.
So he wrote his diaries.
I'm pretty sure I'm going to lose most of my 11 readers if I start writing about Nazis and fascists exclusively, but there's only so many places I can direct this rage and incomprehension at the absence of rage all around me.
Losers remember all the wrong lessons from history, recalling only the humiliation and grievance of defeat, and nurturing it to one day try again.
Winners forget history. "Well, that's over! Glad we got that fixed! Let's go make money!"
ICE detention centers are concentration camps people!
"They're not Nazis. You're being irrational, hysterical. They're just Americans, Americans can't be Nazis!"
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
Jesus H. Motherfucking Christ!
"America must have Greenland. Lebensraum! Er, I mean, "national security!"
I was trying to do something fun in another area, and kept encountering pushback and negativism because, well, reasons I guess. So that stopped being fun. Life's too fucking short.
I played Lode Runner on the Apple IIc Plus yesterday. Made it to level 16. Pisses me off that Total Replay doesn't seem to let you record your high scores. The app never let you save a game in progress. You could pause it, but you couldn't save it. In an emulator you can save the state of the emulator and return to it at any time, but there's no satisfactory joystick experience. Maybe I can use the keyboard? There's like over a hundred levels, I think the highest I ever got back in the day was in the twenties. All my muscle memory is on the joystick though, and that's slowly coming back.
Each level begins paused, so you can look at all the guards and chests and try and figure out an approach or strategy. I seem to recall that back in the day I was pretty confident that the only thing keeping me from finishing the game was the inability to save it in progress. That is to say, I became "good enough" to be able to identify the kinds of routes and the levels of bricks I had to destroy to get to the chests without too much difficulty. You get an additional life with each level successfully concluded, so you can afford to die a few times to figure something out. I don't think we called it "grinding" back then, but that's essentially what it is.
But there's only so much retro-gaming I can do as well.
Anyway. I guess it won't be all Nazis, but pretty damn close.
The beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailThis Is How the World Ends
10:03 Friday, 16 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 18.48°F Pressure: 1013hPa Humidity: 78% Wind: 10.8mph
Words: 7
PBS Terra posted this yesterday. Sounds familiar.
✍️ Reply by emailThe Fourth Reich
08:15 Friday, 16 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 16.05°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 11.1mph
Words: 482
It'd be comical if it wasn't so despicable how much the figures surrounding Trump resemble Hitler's henchmen. I think we're well past the threshold where comparisons with Nazi Germany are "hyperbolic." They're real.
Anyway, as I read about the Nuremberg Trials I think about Trump's sycophants and bootlickers. Who in Trump's White House would be Martin Bormann?
I think Susie Wiles is a reasonable fit. Not perfect, she's not as obviously rabidly ideological, but it's clear she has no problem with Trump's vision. No, I think she's more like an enabler and someone who controls access to Trump, like Bormann. Palace intrigue and so on.
Stephen Miller most closely resembles Goebbels, physically. He's also as close to Hitler, er, I mean Trump, as Goebbels was and equally relishes being the spokesperson for the worst of Trump's views. Strong case for Himmler though, too. But I'm going with Goebbels.
Kristi Noem seems like the most logical candidate for Himmler, but she's just too monumentally dumb. But as the Department of "Homeland Security" is being transformed into the Schutzstaffel, it's still a good fit, just, you know, bad casting I guess.
The tough one is Heydrich. I'm gonna go with Tom Homan on that one. Strong case for that little shit, Bovino too. I don't know, tough call.
So, Göring? (See what I did there? It's option-U before you type the "o".) I think I have to go with J.D. Vance, though I think he's not as smart as Göring was. It's mostly an org-chart fit, but the vanity piece matches up with Vance's obsession with mascara or whatever that shit is he puts around his eyes. In terms of, you know, sheer corpulence, it'd be Steve Bannon, but he's just so slovenly and he lacks the proximity to power.
No, I think Bannon is the candidate for Julius Streicher, a cretinous psychopath. That'd be my pick anyway.
Alfred Rosenberg? Russell Vought, architect of Project 2025. Rosenberg was the chief Nazi "philosopher."
Wilhelm Frick, Minister of the Interior, key figure in the Nuremberg Laws? Pam Bondi, though I think she's less intelligent. Mostly because she's head of the "justice" department and owns the FBI.
Wilhelm Stuckart? Todd Blanche. Another architect of the Nuremberg Laws.
Here's a tough one, RFK Jr. I'm going to go with Leonardo Conti.
Well, the list could go on. What seems clear is that despicable people attract despicable people, "birds of a feather," and the like.
History will not be kind to these people. That's assuming that we have a civilization that can afford the study of history. It's likely we'll have one where nearly everyone's efforts and attention will be focused on mere survival, so they may dodge "the verdict of history."
As darkness descends on America, feel free to play along at home. Learn some history. Get an idea of what's to come. It's fun.
✍️ Reply by emailNuremberg
08:42 Thursday, 15 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 21.09°F Pressure: 998hPa Humidity: 88% Wind: 15.84mph
Words: 435
I rented Nuremberg last weekend. Not a bad movie to rent, I'm not convinced I'd be inclined to watch it again, though I probably will if it comes up on a streaming service I subscribe to.
Russell Crowe's portrayal of Goering was convincing, though Goering lost a lot of weight while in detention, which wasn't portrayed in the movie.
The movie takes a lot of license, but isn't utterly misleading. Gilbert and Kelley never had a physical altercation. I think the real value of the movie was that it prompted me to buy The Nazi and the Psychiatrist. Kelley is a fascinating figure in his own right.
I'd say Judgment at Nuremberg is probably a better movie about the Nuremberg trials. I'm actually not aware of any others, which is surprising I think. May just be my ignorance.
One comment I read at the Holocaust Museum's web site (Currently down for maintenance until the 19th, because of course.) was that the interest people had in the psychological makeup of the Nazis was based on a desire for some meaningful distance between the Nazis as people and the allies. That distance doesn't exist. There was nothing different about the Nazis, they were just human beings at their worst.
My daughter texted me asking me to recommend a book "to make me smarter." I told her to read Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts.
Therein is a quote reportedly from Rudolf Diels, first head of the Gestapo.
In a conversation with a British embassy official that occurred at about this time, quoted in a memorandum later filed with the foreign office in London, Diels delivered a monologue on his own moral unease: "The infliction of physical punishment is not every man's job, and naturally we were only too glad to recruit men who were prepared to show no squeamishness at their task. Unfortunately, we knew nothing about the freudian side of the business, and it was only after a number of instances of unnecessary flogging and meaningless cruelty that I tumbled to the fact that my organization had been attracting all the sadists in Germany and Austria without my knowledge for some time past. It had also been attracting unconscious sadists, i.e. men who did not know themselves that they had sadist leanings until they took part in a flogging. And finally it had been actually creating sadists. For it seems that corporal chastisement ultimately arouses sadistic leanings in apparently normal men and women. Freud might explain it."
Nazis walk among us every day. And ICE is creating sadists to walk among us every day.
✍️ Reply by emailDeliver Me From Nowhere
08:33 Thursday, 15 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 21.31°F Pressure: 996hPa Humidity: 86% Wind: 12.33mph
Words: 104
I purchased Deliver Me From Nowhere (Whatever "purchased" means today. I guess I bought a limited, revocable license that might be withdrawn at any time because reasons.) and we watched it last night. It's not a Springsteen biopic per se, as it only covers the months of his life around the creation of Nebraska.
I thought it was very well done, and I enjoyed it a great deal. It left me wanting more, but I'm a fan so I guess that's to be expected. Great performances all around.
I feel as though I ought to undertake a round of intensive Springsteen therapy.
Maybe later.
✍️ Reply by emailMom and I
08:04 Thursday, 15 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 21.72°F Pressure: 994hPa Humidity: 87% Wind: 12.33mphWords: 410
A pleasant visit, if somewhat sad. Each time I see her, she's just a bit more diminished. Her mind is still sharp, and I'm grateful for that, but her mobility is very limited.
We took her to dinner in her wheelchair at her community dining room. I learned that my brother comes every night to wheel her to dinner and back to her apartment. We met her friends, Lee, Shirley and Marilyn, all in their 90s, Shirley at 98. They all seemed to love Mom and it was nice getting to know them. Mitzi is just a wonderful communicator.
After dinner we watched Airport, which Mom didn't recall seeing before. We had just seen it recently, but I love the movie and I enjoyed seeing it again with Mom.
I got to see two of my sisters. Beth is a nurse and she was there when we arrived. It was fun catching up with her. She has chickens and Mitzi brought a bunch of cardboard egg cartons, which Beth really appreciated. She lives about 45 minutes away from Mom and comes once a week to help out and check on Mom's health.
Diane was there yesterday morning when we got back from breakfast. She's there I think four times a week to help Mom out of bed in the morning and take care of the housework.
I'm grateful for my siblings who have stepped in so selflessly to be there for Mom. There's a wound care nurse who comes once a week to look at her feet, and we thought we had arranged for a palliative care nurse service, but Beth says it seems to have fallen through the cracks, and she's reaching out to another provider.
Mom remains cheerful and upbeat, saying, "What other way is there to be?" She's looking forward to going to Buffalo in July for her granddaughter's wedding. She'll be 93 in September, and that's another goal she's set for herself.
I'm glad we went. The drive out was pleasant, sunny most of the way, and dry. It was raining lightly most of the way home, but temps remained above 40°F the whole way. It's 18°F outside now, and it snowed briefly last night. A nice dusting to make everything pretty again, but no significant accumulation.
Some "work" today on the marmot and a project for the Tinderbox community.
Anything to distract me from the darkness descending on America.
The beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailOn the Road
06:54 Tuesday, 13 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 31.84°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 67% Wind: 14.74mph
Words: 296
Heading to Mom's today, spending the night, back tomorrow evening.
Today's On This Day contains a couple of my lengthier, if not better posts, Brittle Failure and Thank You for Your Service. They weren't necessarily on this day because of some glitch that remains unexplained, changing many $PublicationDate attributes, and also altering $Created, which would have been the backstop to correct $PublicationDate, as $Created is a system attribute and presumably unalterable by moi. Whatever corrupted $PublicationDate did the same thing to $Created, and so now the source document, the marmot, is unreliable as to dates. (Also just noticed the dates aren't even on this day, as it's the 13th and those were purported posted on the 12th. Something is screwed up.)
[Update: Ok, found that problem. Agents are set to update automatically. They aren't. For the past few days I've had to select Update Agents Now to force the index page to update. I noticed that the index (main) page hadn't exported because it supposedly hadn't changed. Looking at it in the marmot still showed yesterday's posts. Force the agent to update, and today's post populated. But that had the effect of updating On This Day, and so now the posts are from the 13th, and so the second paragraph of this post makes less sense. Such is life. I've got to go.}
There are two anomalies, representing different lengths of time, and given enough motivation I could go through and correct them using the data from the html files. (I stop exporting months when they're over, so most of them are correct.)
Anyway, just discovered the January 2020 archive is missing. Oy! Only a few posts that month, and I think I can fix all the dates. But it'll have to wait until Thursday.
Yeesh.
✍️ Reply by emailMasked ICE
11:03 Monday, 12 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 36.59°F Pressure: 1007hPa Humidity: 95% Wind: 9.66mph
Words: 68
Masks hide the humanity of ICE agents, reducing them to mere instrumentalities of the violence of the state. They promote division and "othering," increasing the psychological and cultural distance between themselves and the citizens they purportedly serve.
The whistles, the taunting, the car horns are the actions of a healthy social immune system, responding to a malignant infection. An alien body in social system that must be expelled.
✍️ Reply by emailThe Ephemeral Nature of Historical Memory
09:16 Monday, 12 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 36.59°F Pressure: 1007hPa Humidity: 95% Wind: 9.66mph
Words: 201
That's a rather grandiose title, I suppose. I'm not exactly clear on what I'm aiming for, but I want to get this post done, so the title, and by extension the reader, suffers. Mea culpa.
I'm struggling with some apparent contradictions or incongruities playing out in the present, from historical antecedents that seem to reach across the decades or centuries to sow chaos today. Perhaps it's a function of whose memory retains vigor, the victor or the vanquished.
In the United States, we have never ceased from grappling with the memory of the Civil War. The Confederacy has retained and nurtured a sense of grievance ever since it suffered a humiliating defeat in its violent rebellion against the Republic.
In Europe, after losing the Cold War, it seems as though at least Putin longs for a return to a greater Soviet empire, with much of eastern Europe under the Russian boot.
But the victors forget.
Does loss engender a more durable cultural memory? Durable, yet unreliable, because the losers must rationalize away the reasons why they lost. The history they recall never existed, but it fuels the sense of grievance, the bitter resentment that then colors their participation in the present.
✍️ Reply by emailRelief
08:44 Friday, 9 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 43.92°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 77% Wind: 21.68mph
Words: 110
Fortunate feed items:
"Too much 'I'm brilliant' by the author." I made the mistake of reading The Bomber Mafia, even though I pretty much knew better. I'll never read another Malcolm Gladwell book, but it's nice to have my prejudice validated nonetheless. This actually made me smile when I read it, which is a priceless gift.
"Gluing the hood shut." Another priceless gift. Thanks, Jack.
Here's an example of a blog that doesn't offer a full-text feed, but has a web site that makes my eyes hurt. (And why can't I select Reader View? Is there a setting somewhere that defeats Reader View in Safari? I hate that.) Unsubscribed.
✍️ Reply by emailDepression
07:55 Friday, 9 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 42.96°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 77% Wind: 21.88mph
Words: 384
It's nearly impossible to generate any enthusiasm for anything as I witness this country being destroyed by Donald Trump and his sycophants, his mob, his cult.
Who are these people who sign up to work for ICE? Are they damaged? Broken, somehow? Angry? They want to dress up in tactical gear, get guns and run around bullying people? That's what's fulfilling to them?
This "administration." This assembly of clowns. Horrible people. Not a shred of "good faith," or "good will" among them. Despicable people. Liars. Proudly lying. Manifest incompetence masquerading as "leadership." Do they think we're blind? Stupid?
Stephen Miller. Vomitous, arrogant, racist prick. Or, "Assistant Chief of Staff." Because of course.
This civilization is in collapse, and this is just one dynamic of that process. We're not even pretending anymore. "Obey or die," and millions cheer.
Lindsey Graham. Another clown. A caricature. A spineless lickspittle. Proudly submissive, obsequious. Makes me want to puke.
This gets worse, and I don't know that it will ever get better. It just gets worse until it reaches some bottom where nobody cares anymore, because everyone is just trying to survive. I think we've passed the tipping point. It's all accelerating collapse from now on.
Sure, "life goes on." Until it doesn't. There will be a Super Bowl. There may, or may not, be mid-term elections. China takes Taiwan. World semi-conductor supply chains are thrown into chaos. Who knows what happens between India and Pakistan in a world of cascading climate catastrophes. Nuclear exchanges? Probably.
What does an emboldened Russia do?
The tech bros? Delusional. Utterly detached from reality. Or selling swampland to buy time until they can use their fortunes to build their fortresses.
Learn to grow food. Practice good oral hygiene. The future will be full of opportunities for exercise. "Run, hide, fight."
What the actual fuck?
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!
Is this one of those posts I should just delete?
I guess I'll return to "normal" posting later. Pretending that what's happening isn't happening. Writing about how fucked up Apple's UI has become, or the weather, or something super-relevant like that. Oh, like what font the State Department uses. Because that's a hill to die on in some alternative universe somewhere.
And no, I do not feel better now. Thanks for asking.
✍️ Reply by emailRenee Nicole Good
08:53 Thursday, 8 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 35.17°F Pressure: 1023hPa Humidity: 86% Wind: 2.66mph
Words: 3
Better
08:26 Wednesday, 7 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 34.3°F Pressure: 1006hPa Humidity: 89% Wind: 13.62mph
Words: 289
Well, I guess I'm well. Still have a little bit of cough/congestion, but no fits. Actually drove into town yesterday, which is the first time I'd been out of the house, other than to collect the mail, since before Christmas.
It's above freezing and it rained last night so a lot of the snow has melted. Not as pretty as when everything is covered in white.
Spent some time yesterday trying to figure out a problem with the little Automator application that gets the upcoming days' events for the Midwatch entry. Had no luck and was planning to visit the forum at MacScripter.net, but the damn thing worked this morning. 🤷
Cory Doctorow had a relevant blog post yesterday, Code is a liability (not an asset). I think that's true for anything that has some value as infrastructure. There's always a lot of enthusiasm about building something, little to no enthusiasm for maintaining it. Which also explains a great deal about the current state of world affairs.
We watched The Roses last night. Depressing, but not as bad some of the reviews.
We watched Mickey 17 the night before, and that was excellent.
While I'm still ever so grateful that we are no longer Floridians, and I don't miss the place one bit, I'm very happy to see the Jacksonville Jaguars in the playoffs. While I've never been a huge NFL fan, I enjoyed watching football and followed the Jags as "my" team. When we moved up here, I figured I'd get the chance to follow the Bills, and they weren't so hot this season. But they're in the playoffs too, facing the Jags this weekend. One of them will move on.
That's about it for now.
✍️ Reply by emailPoints to Ponder
08:11 Monday, 5 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 20.21°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 85% Wind: 4.29mph
Words: 361
Finally had a decent night's sleep. Still coughing.
Wasn't particularly inspired, but figured I'd drop by and offer something anyway.
I've mostly adapted to the Apple wireless keyboard, though I'm still having some trouble hitting some keys reliably. I don't think I'll be doing a lot of writing in the stand-up position. Or I need more time to get used to it.
It is nice to crank the thing up and stand for awhile though.
Joan Westenberg hits another one out of the park:
There is a rude but clarifying question here: are you collecting information to use it, or are you collecting information because collecting feels like intellectual work? If it's the latter, you're not building a Second Brain; you're building an anxiety management system that happens to look like productivity.
RTWT, as the acronym goes.
I think a key element of Joan's "embodied" approach to knowledge is, "Write what you remember in your own words. If you can't remember enough to write anything useful, you've just learned it wasn't worth saving."
And it's also the greatest challenge for all of us who swim in a digital ocean, where our faculty of attention has atrophied to the point where it exists only to serve the novelty-craving part of our conditioned minds.
One advantage of getting older is that the whole "future me" project is much smaller, and therefore more manageable. It can feel a little melancholy too, but that's better than anxiety.
Here's a post from Kevin Kelly that feels just ripe with sentiment, good-vibes, wisdom of the ages (sages?), Beat Generation-adjacent, I got my Kerouac thing goin', ain't I precious?
Read that thing. Seriously. Luxuriate in warm, golden glow of deep spiritual insight born of personal experience.
Then think of two words: Survivor bias.
Two words that never crossed his mind. Two words that are a privileged middle finger to every victim of senseless cruelty or neglect. I guess they just weren't manifesting enough, or something.
Anyway, sorry to be so, you know, cruel. But I'd like to extend a little kindness to those whose struggle every day, many of whom don't survive.
Carry on.
✍️ Reply by emailIsn't This the "Singularity"?
11:53 Friday, 2 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 19.44°F Pressure: 1008hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 11.12mph
Words: 99
Who knows what words mean anymore, I sure don't. But I seem to recall that one definition of the "singularity" (RIP Vernor Vinge) was that the rate of technological change would exceed humanity's collective ability to make meaningful predictions about it, and hilarity ensues.
Anyway, the Mad Orange King and his court of merry jesters have decided to ban the import of drone parts because of "national security." (Could be the Canadians. Why couldn't it be the Canadians?)
Then I watch a video like this, and I laugh to myself.
I'm supposed to be doing something productive. Damn YouTube.
✍️ Reply by emailYesterday
Current Wx: Temp: 15.89°F Pressure: 1008hPa Humidity: 83% Wind: 7.72mphWords: 561
Back at it today. Feeling better. Yesterday was a beautiful day. Cold, but beautiful and a nice way to start a new year. Shot this with the iPhone. Did a pretty good job I think. I have a shot out the back door where there are six ghosts because I was shooting into the sun and it was doing its thing merging multiple images.
Kind of cool? I don't know. Maybe I'll post it later.
We got some texts from old friends, texted with our families and mostly sat around on the couch. Energy levels still aren't back to normal. Watched Ford vs. Ferrari again. Such a great movie. We did the trifecta with F1, Rush and Ford vs. Ferrari over the holiday period. For as much as the automobile may one day be regarded as one of humanity's biggest mistakes, they can afford some compelling dramas.
Highlights from around the 'sphere:
Craig Hockenberry's The Year That Kicked My Ass, was a humbling read. My sympathies and sincerest wishes for a better 2026 to Craig. I have no problems and nothing to complain about.
Joan Westenberg is something else. Wicked smart, outstanding writer, wise, it seems to me, in the way that many wicked smart people aren't. A wonderful read to inspire a tired, despairing, cynical blogger like me.
To Joan's point, I direct your attention to this exchange between AKMA and Chris Corrigan. An example of what the best of early 'aughts blogging was about. (It was also about a lot of other things, but this is a great example of "the best.")
Jack's back, and I'm hoping to persuade him to help me on a little project creating something that might help Tinderbox users take more advantage of the app's remarkable suite of feature. Jack's been a user since December 2004, I have correspondence with Mark Bernstein going back to February 2003, which is about when I launched Groundhog Day. Jack is a programmer, while I'm just a noodler. So he knows more about the app and how to use than I ever will. But that's a good thing, because he's blogger and a communicator.
Chris O'Donnell is out birding in frigid 40°F (😂) weather, but his first sighting is an omen of good fortune.
Noahie continues his online journal of self-discovery. I don't know how I would fare as a young person today. It feels like the challenges are different, harder in some respects. Vulnerability is a strength, I think Brene Brown teaches. Noahie leans into it.
A great video I watched on YouTube about a "repair fair" in Portland has kind of inspired Mitzi and I to see if such an effort already exists in our region, and, if not, how to start one. Not that either of us has much skill in repairing things, but Mitzi has skills in organizing things. And she's a natural social connector. So I think we're going to work on this, even if it's only to promote one that may already exist.
And since we're living in a rural community with at least one eye toward self-sufficiency, I'm going to be ordering some Good King Henry seeds. Great video, informative on a lot of levels. Not a lot of calories I expect, but nutrient dense and low maintenance.
(I guess YouTube isn't part of the 'sphere. Oh well...)
✍️ Reply by emailthe marmot checking in the net
05:54 Thursday, 1 January 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 12.27°F Pressure: 1008hPa Humidity: 74% Wind: 13.44mph
Words: 427
Popping in here to make sure everything went according to plan, and it appears as though it has. I seem to be on the backside of this thing. Wasn't the worst viral infection I've ever experienced, but it wasn't a walk in the park either.
Most notable, or unusual symptom was cognitive. I had the most bizarre dreams, though I'm not really sure they could be classified as the usual REM-sleep kind of dream. I hardly slept at all.
It was more akin to "lucid" dreaming, where by "lucid," I mean out of my mind. Decidedly unpleasant, though one included my funeral at the Naval Academy with the Pope in attendance, which is just totally weird, and a troubling sign of subconscious delusions of grandeur. (Can delusions be subconscious? Beats me.) Another one was a recurring frustration with a computer program, though I have some idea where that originated. And a third was trying to solve an operational logistics problem with missile launchers, fuel trucks and control stations, solve for the greatest rate of sustained fire. And it was unsolvable because "they" wouldn't give me all the data. (Not that I have an idea how to go about solving such a thing anyway.)
No idea where that came from.
Got a nice note from Noah Valk, thank you.
I'm reluctant to say I'm happy to have 2025 in the rear-view mirror because, let's face it, there ain't that many left up the road. But 2026 will be different than any of the decades past, if for no other reason than we are no longer in Florida, which is a good thing even with winter gales in the mix.
I was thinking about Bodhi early this morning. I often wish I had a dog up here, but I think it might be a bit too much for me now, especially if I get sick or the weather gets weird. Saw a YouTube video of a woman thrown by a storm door caught by gust of wind after she'd opened it. I suppose we could make a fenced-in area for him to go out on his own. I wonder how this wind experience might shape our house plans? Maybe some kind of alcove for the doors? ("Make a note of that, Dave.")
Anyway, the stuff one "thinks" about when one can't do much else.
Still have the cough. Still behind on my sleep. But I can sit at the keyboard, which is more than I could do yesterday or the day before.
So, Happy New Year!
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