This morning's bird
Current Wx: Temp: 79.74°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 3.44mphWords: 25
Always pleasant to see the bluebirds. There were a couple of turkey vultures grooming themselves in a tall pine too. Put them up on Flickr.
✍️ Reply by emailTrekkin'
08:11 Friday, 26 July 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 77.67°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 0mph
Words: 882
Yeah, not TOS. (IYKYK)
So I did the poles this morning. I wish you could export the data from the Fitness app. I did a quick search just now, and it doesn't look possible. Something about the Health app, maybe? Why not just a simple "Export" action? Apple is so disappointing these days. I use their products because I'm pretty much embedded in their ecosystem, but I'm no longer an enthusiastic user. I'm just another one of their consumers, and my "customer satisfaction" is low and decreasing. They just suck these days. Suck. Suck. Suck.
Anyway, first time doing an "exercise" kind of walk using trekking poles. Took a few adjustments to get the height of the poles right. I'm not certain it's dialed in yet, but I was able to move quickly without hitting the tips on the swing forward.
You're supposed to bring the right pole forward with the left leg, and the left pole forward with the right leg. That took about three quarters of a mile and establishing a rhythm. On landing forward, the pole should be about where the opposite leg is. You're not swinging the pole way out in front and then pushing back. Again, once I got the rhythm down, that was pretty easy to get right. It was kind of frustrating at first.
I forgot to adjust the wrist straps. "Real" Nordic walking poles have these kind of fingerless gloves attached to the poles. The idea is that you don't grip the handles, because that causes fatigue, which I'm feeling right now as I'm typing. And the propulsive action is made through the wrist and the strap. I gripped the poles the whole walk.
It takes a certain amount of concentration or focus. Turns could mess me up where I'd end up kicking a pole. Sometimes I'd somehow miss landing the pole and I'd push back on the arm and there was nothing there, the end of the pole just kind of glanced off the pavement.
So, how did it go overall?
Well, the first mile was slower than the two days previous by a few seconds. That was because I had to stop and adjust the height of the poles. The second mile was 11 seconds faster than the fastest second mile of the two preceding. The third mile was in the middle of the two preceding walks, which seems odd. The final quarter mile was 2 seconds faster than the fastest of the two preceding. Overall, the average pace was kind of in the middle of the two preceding: 16:38 on Wednesday, 16:41 on Thursday and 16:39 today.
Really, those numbers, while "precise" to the second, probably aren't accurate to that degree of precision. Essentially, I think it's basically the same pace overall. That may change as I get more accustomed to using the poles.
That said, much larger difference in caloric expenditure and average heart rate. Wednesday and Thursday were about 432 calories (431 and 433), while this morning the watch reported 524 calories expended. Average heart rate for Wednesday and Thursday was 128/129, while this morning it was 138.
In my ignorance, I hadn't removed the rubber feet when we were hiking the gorges at first. I'd ended up wearing a hole through one of them before I learned that you're supposed to remove them on a trail. Much of the gorge trails are paved, sort of, so I'm not sure what the right answer is there. Anyway, I put them on for this walk and the one with the hole in it made a noisy *tink* every time it landed. I've ordered replacements.
I need to get a headband or something, to keep the sweat out of my eyes. I had to stop at one point just before finishing mile 2 to wipe the sweat from my eyes. My shirt was soaked, far more than yesterday. That's a bit of positive feedback, as it's what I was accustomed to seeing coming in from a run and seldom see on any of my walks around here.
My "simulated" arm movements in no way resembled what I did with the poles. So the data point there is that you can walk at a faster pace pumping your arms with your elbows bent, rather than just swinging them from your shoulders.
I can feel it in my triceps a little, but mostly in my wrists, probably because I was gripping the poles. I'll try and adjust the straps tomorrow before I start and see if I can relax my grip. At some point, I may just get poles with the gloves attached.
I hit the road at 0500, so I encountered no one on my walk. I like it that way, because I'd be annoyed if someone was overtaking me with a noisy trekking pole *tinking* every second or so. Plus, I probably looked pretty stupid, old fat guy out walking with sticks.
What do I care though?
Anyway, I'll practice some more until I think I've got this down enough where I'm not kicking sticks or missing the landing, gripping to fatigue or getting out of step with the poles. Then I think I'll add a little backpack and some weight in it. See how that feels.
✍️ Reply by emailSuckage
09:02 Friday, 26 July 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 79.25°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 1.01mph
Words: 59
Speaking of "Apple sucks," iCloud Private Relay is really a pain in the ass.
For better or worse, I watch a lot of YouTube videos. Yesterday they wouldn't load or play unless I turned off iCloud Private Relay. Before that, I kept getting alerts that it was down, or offline, or something. I just turned it off in Settings.
✍️ Reply by emailDespicable
06:55 Sunday, 26 July 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 63.05°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 4.41mph
Words: 21
Blind ambition. Grotesque. Dishonorable. Faithless. Selfish. Shameful. Embarrassing.
Whatever "leadership" qualities this individual possessed, he's just flushed them down the toilet.
✍️ Reply by emailEquality
07:19 Sunday, 26 July 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 63.55°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 4.41mph
Words: 319
Another book I'm going to have to add to the pile.
A fascinating chapter moves between Sumner’s laudatory musings about how “competition is hurrying on the survival of the fittest” and Carnegie’s more tormented conscience.
The concept of "competition" is embedded in our culture. The other night, in an effort to get her son into bed, Mitzi's daughter posed the effort as a race, "I'm going to beat you!"
I'm not suggesting that competition is a toxic concept. I am saying that the thoughtless embrace of competition as a means for ordering society or institutions is toxic. Competition has a place, but it's not above empathy, mutual respect, compassion, kindness and the other humane virtues.
We used to teach kids that, "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game that counts." I don't think we do that very much anymore, if indeed we ever really did.
We call people "winners" and "losers." We have a president who demeans prisoners of war as "losers," because he prefers people "who don't get caught."
Does the idea of "merit" emerge from the idea of competition among individuals in society or organizations? Does competition give us the intellectual means of rationalizing ranking individuals, some being "better" than others? And where does that end?
But people are wedded to the notion of competition as something that is good in any context. "May the best man win," when winning is often a matter of chance. Victory "celebrations" often resemble riots. Identifying with sports teams becomes a kind of tribalism, where it's expected and encouraged to demean and denigrate the supporters of other teams. "All in good fun," I suppose.
Why can't we impose a moratorium on AI development? Because of competition, and the fear that if we did, then someone else would gain an advantage. The notion of cooperation or collaboration is crushed by the worship of competition.
We're doomed.
✍️ Reply by emailEconomy
08:11 Sunday, 26 July 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 65.23°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 88% Wind: 3.96mph
Words: 304
I listened to this Paul Krugman discussion with Lina Khan as I was making breakfast, and of course competition in the context of tech firms and AI was central.
And in that context, the discussion was perfectly rational. That the absence of competition is a net negative.
But that's because it's embedded in the larger construction that is our economy, which is structured, mostly, on the concepts of capitalism.
But what purpose does an economy serve? It provides an abundance of things we don't need. It extracts resources from the environment and creates waste that becomes problematic. Waste is an "externality," a cost of a good or service that is not captured in its price. Is that a "good" economy? A "functioning" economy?
And what is "growth"? How is "economic growth" a good?
Can economies defy physics? Is economic growth sustainable?
Capitalism focuses on private ownership and private wealth.
What is "ownership"? It's an abstraction. An illusion that is propped up by laws and customs. It has no inherent existence or meaning in nature.
"Private property," used to be something sacred. That "a man's home is his castle." No one could tell you what you could do with your "private property."
Yet we make enormous exceptions whenever it's convenient or necessary. Everything from HOAs and zoning laws to eminent domain.
There is nothing concrete about the idea of "private property." It's a consensual illusion that benefits some at the expense of others. And whenever it's necessary or convenient, we remove that benefit from people who thought otherwise.
I don't think there's any way we can disentangle this mess.
A sustainable civilization is going to have to come up with a structure that doesn't rely on competition and capitalism, and doesn't view growth as an objective to be pursued at the expense of everything else.
✍️ Reply by emailTech
10:36 Sunday, 26 July 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 71.46°F Pressure: 1013hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 1.52mph
Words: 146
I've just installed the latest beta of Tinderbox so I wanted to see if the time issue I'd been seeing is still present. Not so, at least on this post.
For the most part, Golden Gate has been pretty well behaved. Launches are faster, but I've noticed that waking from sleep can be annoyingly slow. Sheep Shaver, the 68K Mac emulator doesn't work and when it fails it kind of locks up the computer, forcing a reboot.
Parallels works well. Something I didn't really want to know, but having bought it and Windows 11, I feel I should mention that it seems to work under MacOS 27.
Photos has lost Messages as a Share option, I have no idea why that would be the case. Seems like a regression. I suppose I should send some feedback.
That's probably enough about all that.
The beat goes on...
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