"Yeah, well, you know, that's just like, uh, your opinion, man."

Nature and Technology

20:19 Wednesday, 23 April 2014
Words: 367

It's almost common knowledge these days that technology seems to do more to isolate us from the natural world, than help us appreciate it. That's been the point ever since fire, right? Then there are the consequences of advanced technological civilizations, like climate change, air pollution, landfills, shopping malls, suburbs, and habitat loss.

But it occurred to me yesterday, in an e-mail conversation with Loren Webster, that there is at least one technology that has really increased my awareness of and appreciation for the natural world, and that's the camera.

I grew up as a nerd, read science fiction, received an engineering degree at the Naval Academy. I dig technology, though I've grown more skeptical of it as I've grown older. I'm no longer persuaded that any particular technology can "change everything." But I still love a cool gadget, and cameras have been among the coolest gadgets the last few years.

"When you have a great hammer, everything looks like a nail." When you have a great (hell, even a "good") camera, you're looking for new subjects to shoot. My preferences seem to run to landscapes, birds and insects; people, not so much. While I've always enjoyed a beautiful sky, or a lovely vista, birds and insects have mostly been of little interest to me. Until I had a camera with a long focal length lens, or a macro capability.

I know more about birds now than I ever would have imagined knowing before. It's not very much, I'll grant you. But I can identify several species of local birds, and I am even learning their calls, so I know where to find them. I can identify an Egret, Snowy Egret, Blue Heron, Tri-colored Heron, Green Heron, Wood Stork, Ibis, and Spoonbill. I know the difference between a Cormorant and an Anhinga. I know what Ospreys sound like, what Woodpeckers sound like (apart from the "tap-tap-tap-tap"). And these little guys! The Yellow-Rumped Warblers, the Painted Buntings, the Northern Parulas, to say nothing of the Cardinals, Robins, Cedar Waxwings, and Mockingbirds.

I never really paid attention to birds before I had a camera with a long lens.

Now I worry about cats.

Voter Suppression

10:22 Saturday, 23 April 2016
Words: 1118

There's been a great deal of coverage of new voting restrictions put in place in states with majority Republican state legislatures. Of course, the Democrats may have some problems of their own in New York City.

What doesn't get a lot of coverage is the voter suppression effort underway as an unintended consequence of the primary campaigns.

I don't follow many Republican partisans, so I don't know how toxic it is in that party; but it's pretty damn toxic in the Democratic party. Here's a little sample from Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo who tweeted yesterday:

One person responded:

I unfollowed Marshall several weeks ago for stuff like this. I've muted many of the people I normally follow on Twitter because they're bitter partisans.

The dominant narrative is that Hillary is going to get the nomination, it's near enough to "mathematically impossible" for Sanders to win that Hillary's eating ice cream on camera. Yay, team Hillary!

But all is not well. On Diane Rehm's weekly news roundup on Friday, one of the panelists mentioned that never before have the two leading candidates' negatives been so high. That's before they're nominated!

I think people like Marshall believe that once Bernie withdraws from the race and says he supports Hillary, and he will, and asks all of his supporters do the same, they'll just utter a brief, "Bygones!" and everything will be okay. (Very obscure cultural reference to Ally McBeal's Richard Fish. It's a 90s thing. Kinda.) Someone will write a very pithy essay about family dynamics in the Democratic party, and how we all fight like cats and dogs, but you know, when the chips are down, we all come together, blah, blah, blah...

Except, no. We won't.

Yes, many of Bernie's supporters are "sore losers," and that's a character defect and nobody should be proud of it. But what's worse, amazingly, are the Hillary camp's "sore winners," as epitomized by Josh Marshall's tweet above. These are folks who will want every one of Bernie Sanders' supporters to turn out to vote for Hillary.

Can they just bite their tongues and accept their victory, smile through clenched teeth, let the Bernie "bros" bitch and moan and vent? (I love how the supporters of the first female presidential candidate likely to be their party's nominee adopt the pejorative "bro" because of it's alliterative attraction to "Bernie." That's just brilliant. As if no women support Bernie, or only the men are mean about it. Genius!)

Nope! They have to respond!

It seems like they're extremely resentful that their candidate isn't beloved by a majority of at least their side of the ideological spectrum. It can't be anything wrong with their candidate, it must be those other "stupid" people. We must mock them!

And in the process, further alienate the very people they are absolutely going to need if they really hope to see Hillary in the White House.

These are the "smart" people. The ones who know Bernie is "unrealistic." That America needs a pragmatic moderate!

Yes, Hillary has been treated unfairly by virtually everyone, including and especially her husband, throughout her entire political career. But it hasn't stopped her, indeed she's still going to win the Democratic nomination for president. Being treated unfairly isn't a qualification for president. It's not evidence that you have the best ideas, or the most compelling vision for America. (Speaking of which... ?) It has nothing to do with any of the reasons why she ought to be president, so maybe we should just, you know, not focus on it so much? It seems like nurturing resentment more than anything else.

The conventions will produce gauzy videos "introducing" their candidates, and there'll be a brief honeymoon period afterward, when their respective negatives will go down a bit; but then the campaigns will begin in earnest and it will be all negative, and so they'll go right back up again, higher than before the convention.

All this negative energy is going to depress voter turnout. People are not energized by relentless attacks. People are turned off by them, and cease to care.

The fact is, if we get Hillary, we get more of the same ongoing slow-motion fucktastrophe that we've been enduring since Bush the Second, with a brief two-year interlude at the beginning of Obama's first term, before the Tea Party lit the fuze to blow up the government.

If we get Trump, we get an accelerated fucktastrophe, and maybe after one term we figure out how to get our collective head out of our ass and begin to work our way out of this mess.

Which is preferable? I have no idea. I just know that things are going to get much, much worse before they begin to get better, regardless of who wins the White House.

And with the sore winners alienating their notional allies, they're just doing the Republicans' job of voter suppression for them. The only people voting will be the most committed crazies, er, partisans, in both parties.

The rest of us are going to be so sick of all of them that we just won't care anymore.

When the alarm goes off on the morning of November 8th, most of us are just going to put the pillow over our heads and go, "Aw, fuck it."

At least some of the bullshit will be over.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe some campaign manager will make Hillary seem like the second coming of Jesus Christ, and make us believe getting so many more years of Bill Clinton in the White House really is a "two-for-one" deal. Maybe Trump will get a personality transplant and seem "presidential" and "statesmanlike." Maybe folks will be eager to go to the polls to support their respective inspirational leaders.

I doubt it.

Problems In the Supply Chain

09:04 Sunday, 23 April 2023
Current Wx: Temp: 68.59°F Pressure: 1012hPa Humidity: 65% Wind: 13mph
Words: 761

Productivity has dipped here. Content is not being created at the pace it once was.

Part of that may be attributed to local events. A mayoral election in Jacksonville has absorbed a great deal of my attention, and much of my energy is expended on Twitter.

The election is May 16th, and I plan to remove my Twitter presence by the 18th. However it goes, I'll be interested in reviewing the reactions. But Twitter has gotten worse. I'd originally planned to leave my profile up, but I think I'll just delete the whole thing. I've downloaded an archive, which I've been unsuccessful at importing into micro.blog. I'll investigate that when I have more energy/interest. It always seems to start uploading, but then stalls. It's a huge archive, which I suppose may be a problem.

In other news, I think I'll be ending my subscription to HBOMax after it transitions to whatever "Max" will become. Perhaps it's just another sign of becoming a grumpy old man, but I've always had a positive view of the HBO brand, and I don't want to pay for "unscripted, reality content." That's called "life," and I get that for free, whether I want it or not. Well, "free" as in witnessing it.

I bought a bunch of Joni Mitchell CDs to fill gaps in my music library. I'd forgotten how much I don't care for "jewel cases." They're so fragile! To say nothing of being plastic. Why not just make them out of nice card stock? Anyway, the Blue CD wasn't readable in two CD players, which was a first. I have an external CD/DVD drive that can burn CDs (I think DVDs too), so I put the disc into that to see if I could rip it. Interestingly, I could. So I ripped it, and then burned it back to a CD-R. Plays fine.

I bought a bunch of CD-R and DVD-R discs at a local Goodwill recently. Since my "digital rights" expire with me, I figured I could burn some albums and playlists that my kids might enjoy to remember me by. Will they? Who knows? But I'll also burn the playlist of digital music I bought to accompany the commemoration slideshow I created for my Dad. In fact, I should probably burn that to DVD as well.

I've been doing pretty well printing a photo card for Mom every day. Having just written that, I'll note that I missed yesterday. But, for the most part, she usually receives one card a day. I've had to start adding "Mom" as a keyword to mark photos I've sent her, because I'll be looking for something I think would be nice, then wondering if I've already sent her that one.

I'm still carrying the OM-1 (the OM Digital Systems one, not the film camera) with me on my walks, but haven't seen many birds. A few, but they don't seem to be around as much lately.

Yesterday was Earth Day. Since Wednesday is trash day, Mitzi and I went out last Tuesday evening to pick up trash along the main road around here, Crosswater Parkway. Took the golf cart. I thought we might try to do the whole length along our development, but I think that's a couple of miles at least, and my back was only good for maybe a half a mile. Still, got a pretty good haul of trash. Mostly those snack bags that blow out of people's golf carts, fair amount of plastic water bottles, one beer bottle, plastic grocery bags, a few cans, not much paper. There is a pick-up effort by the local community development board, and it must have happened recently because it wasn't as bad as it looked the last time I'd driven the golf cart.

Lots of golf carts passed us as we worked, and Mitzi saw something fall out of one of them. They're blazing by at close to 20mph, and she wasn't able to get their attention. Turned out to be an umbrella, in good working order. It'll go to a donation center.

Weather's going to start getting hot and humid soon, so I don't know if we'll be making another such effort in the near term. Maybe. I did see a lot of dragonflies and butterflies, so I may just bring a camera along and take pictures, even if I don't pick up trash.

I guess that's about it for now. Hopefully productivity will improve soon. If not, well, "Ya get what ya pay for," right?

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Slept Well

05:32 Tuesday, 23 April 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 57.45°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 71% Wind: 4.61mph
Words: 174

Woke up at 0430, but that's not bad. Better than just after midnight, then lying awake all night.

MidwatchEntry was invoked by the function in Captain's Log, but when I looked this morning, there was an alert that the application couldn't be run because of some security "feature." So I opened the app in Automator, ran it as a workflow, everything checked green, saved it back as an application. Tried to run it again and got the same error.

So I opened it in Automator and chose "Duplicate" from the File menu. Verified that the copy ran as a workflow. Moved the original from Applications to the Trash, and emptied the Trash. Saved the duplicated workflow as an Application, deleted "copy" in the name and ran it from Finder.

This time I got the usual requests to control Calendar and Tinderbox, approved each and no complaints.

So, something to bear in mind I guess, if you create Automator applications on one Mac that you may wish to run on another one.

Feeling productive already.

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Looking Up

10:27 Tuesday, 23 April 2024

Current Wx: Temp: 66.85°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 56% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 285

Silhouettes of pines against the morning twilight sky.

Silhouettes of pines against the morning twilight sky.

"Productive" may have been optimistic. I've just been sucked into a time-sump figuring out whether or not my two external SSDs are operating as fast as they could be on my 2019 27" iMac. I remain unconvinced, but it's possible that they are. For the moment, further investigation seems futile. Or at least, boring.

I have decided to copy the Photos library over from the iMac to one of the SSDs which has over 3TB free. I can hear the fans spinning over here in the recliner while I leave the iMac to do its thing.

For the moment, I intend to maintain the Photos library on the external drive. I quit Photos before undertaking the copy, and I'll relaunch Photos from the external library. I'll need to ensure that it's the "system" library at that point, which is to say that it's the library sync'ed with iCloud. Once I'm confident that is the case, I'll delete the library from the iMac's internal SSD and stop worrying about disk space.

Shot the title pic this morning on the walk. Nice, crisp morning. I dialed my pace back a bit because I went fairly aggressively yesterday and my achilles tendons feel tight, which has historically been a precursor to a bout of tendonitis. I'd like to avoid that. May also be due to switching from a pair of worn Columbia "hiking" shoes to a pair of New Balance "walking" shoes. My gait is jacked up anyway, my shoes wear grossly unevenly with the right sole wearing out at the heel and ball areas long before either part on the left sole.

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"They call him, 'Doctor.'"

10:46 Tuesday, 23 April 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 68.13°F Pressure: 1024hPa Humidity: 54% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 478

From the old joke about, "What do they call the guy who graduated last in his class in med school?"

Do you suppose the three Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump feel as though they carry some sort of stigma? Appointed by a former game show host. A guy who tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power and incited insurrection and sedition. That was their ticket to the highest court in the nation?

I mean, Clarence Thomas has clearly been nursing a grievance ever since he was confirmed. I can't imagine that he feels as though his career on the court has been deeply personally rewarding to him, made his life meaningful. He got a lot of nice vacations and a Winnebago; but he just seems like such a bitter, angry guy. One who can never be happy because of his experience during confirmation.

I can't imagine Gorsuch is proud of his association with Donald Trump as the president who appointed him. Or the fact that he got the job because Mitch McConnell held it for him, denying Obama his last pick.

But yeah, he's a Justice. In some ways, the least tainted.

Kavanaugh with allegations of sexual assault and his on-air meltdown. In 20 years, who's going to remember or care? Well, he will. That whole sad, sorry, very public episode. "Can you define 'boof,' please?" That will be at least in his memory until he dies. And the memories of anyone who watched those hearings too. Keeping his calendar from his (private) high school days? Not as creepy as Amy Coney Barrett's religious affiliation with People of Praise, but still, pretty weird.

Barrett has that whole "Handmaid's Tale" vibe about her. Her tissue-thin resumé, and the fact that she just straight up lied through her teeth on Roe being "settled law" in her confirmation hearing certainly made her a typical Trump choice.

"Everything Trump touches, dies."

Becoming a Justice of the Supreme Court ought to be the highest achievement in a career in law. It should be a source of pride, and genuine personal reward. But I think for these three Justices, it's nowhere near the kind of achievement or reward it might have been, were it not for being nominated by Donald Trump.

I'm sure they and others explain it away by blaming "the left." But the fact remains that they were appointed by one of the most partisan, divisive and polarizing presidents in American history. One eager to accept partisan nominees who could be certain to tilt the court to the hard right for decades to come.

It's not just that there will forever be this metaphorical asterisk next to their names, it's the fact that they will be forever associated with Donald Trump and the chaos and corruption that surrounds him.

But, "Supreme Court Justice."

That's what we call them.

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Space

16:13 Tuesday, 23 April 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 72.01°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 49% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 146

I made the external Photos library the System library, re-enabled iCloud for that library and then deleted the library on the iMac's internal SSD. Should have freed up over 400GB of storage.

Nope.

I guess it's all in snapshots because of Time Machine. Eventually, I guess, those will all age out as the backup on the dedicated Time Machine drive will hold whatever the archival version is.

I'll give it a few days and see what happens.

I do like the ability to search for text in images in Photos. I recalled taking pictures with my phone of a lot of my dad's service record. I needed his DD-214 as part of the effort to get Mom some help from the VA. I entered DD-214 in the search field and it was the first image in the result.

It's nice when something works.

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Not Me

16:29 Tuesday, 23 April 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 71.92°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 51% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 237

Yesterday was Earth Day, which I mostly ignored.

On Sunday, I got a phone call from the candidate recruitment committee of the Florida Democratic Environmental Caucus. It went to voicemail because I have focus modes turned on all the time. That's an outcome from turning 65 and being inundated with unsolicited calls about Medicare Advantage plans.

I returned their call yesterday and told them I no longer lived in that district (It moved, I didn't.) and no way in hell was I going to run for anything again. Whereupon I then shared much of my frustration with politics in Florida with the poor woman. I did say I was available to offer any guidance or insight I could if they manage to find a candidate. She was quite patient and understanding.

I mentioned that I thought they were going about this the wrong way. They shouldn't be looking for people to run in this year's election, this year. They should recruit someone to run two years from now, help them form a committee and raise money.

Not sure the message got through.

Also pretty sure it wouldn't matter. Florida is gerrymandered to a permanent Republican majority.

When we get one or two major hurricanes in a season, and the insurance market implodes, then maybe people will be willing to listen to an alternative. For now, we're all trapped in a clown car on a highway to hell.

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Further to the Foregoing

17:54 Tuesday, 23 April 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 71.22°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 55% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 89

This is what it's like living in Florida today. John Candy is the GOP without all the charm and humor. The two trucks are climate change and sea level rise.

While they avoided a collision, you may recall that the car burned up afterward.

Also on point.

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Fools

07:16 Wednesday, 23 April 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 63.25°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 95% Wind: 0mph
Words: 419

Trump, "tools for thought," "personal knowledge management," and other forms of self-flattery and self-deception are much on my mind of late. And I have more pressing things to attend to.

"Knowledge" and "intelligence," are not the same thing as "wisdom." You can be smart, and know a lot of stuff and still be a fool.

Wisdom is knowledge in a human space. It is nothing to know a "fact," without knowing something about how that fact relates to humanity.

If you do not orient your "knowledge" in a human context, in a humane context, it can lead you astray, make you a fool.

"Knowledge is power." Maybe not so much.

"When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

You can acquire knowledge externally.

Wisdom only comes from within.

"Applicants for wisdom, do what I have done. Inquire within." — Heraclitus

You have to have a "theory of mind," and that demands empathy, compassion. These are like muscles, they must be exercised, they must be developed. You're born with them, but if you neglect them, they wither.

If you become habituated to an interior state of constant arousal, by watching Fox News or scrolling social media, you will never become wise.

"Silence, healing." — Heraclitus

You must know your own mind. How it flatters and deceives you. How ambition and desire lead you astray, as they serve the craving, fearful inner voice that tries to fill the void with endless chatter.

To see faint stars in the night sky, we must use a form of seeing called "averted vision." This is because the center of our retina is the least sensitive part of the eye, although it is center of our field of view. It's the same with seeing within. We have a blind spot. Pay attention to the negative space.

Be still.

Never pass by the opportunity to say, "No."

We have a culture of celebrity. We're all stars in our own reality show. Not "all," but so many "public figures" are little more than attention-seeking peacocks. Attention is rewarded. It's harvested through screens. They're not "influencers," they're attention vampires.

We flatter ourselves with our skills at making notes, linking them. Tending our "digital gardens." Constructing our elaborate Zettelkästen and showing them off. Our spreadsheets. Our models. The "graph."

Why are we where we are today?

Because we're fools. Unwise. Self-deceiving. Ambitious. Inhumane. Greedy. Grasping. Empty, hollow, fearful figures haunting a digital landscape of illusion and deception.

Show's over, folks.

Go home.

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Gore Gets It

08:54 Wednesday, 23 April 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 72.75°F Pressure: 1021hPa Humidity: 86% Wind: 1.99mph
Words: 53

I'd like to see the whole speech. I'll look for it.

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Joan Westenberg

06:41 Thursday, 23 April 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 45.82°F Pressure: 1016hPa Humidity: 91% Wind: 3.29mph
Words: 552

For my money, Joan Westenberg has the best long-form blog on the web today. As I write this, I have not yet paid for a subscription, but the sentence telegraphs that I will.

Today.

Yesterday's post about prediction markets finally pushed me over.

I find myself struggling a bit with long-form content. If a YouTube video is more than 12 minutes, I will probably skip it. Especially the political commentary ones, which used to be entertaining but are now merely repetitive. If it's something that I'm trying to learn about, I'll watch it at a faster playback speed, usually 1.5x, though I've been doing some at 2x.

It's not hopeless though. I'm reading The Third Reich at War by Richard J. Evans on my Kindle. I'm doing most of my reading in the afternoon, when I'm less "productive." (Whatever that means in retirement.) It's a very long book, but readable. (I will say that I find some of the praise incongruent with my experience of reading the book. Ostensibly presented chronological order, Evans bounces back and forth in months and years and locations, such that it's often difficult to keep any kind of structure in my mind. And many of the incidents and events he recounts don't serve as historical structure, so much as a comprehensive account of so many horrible things. To me, it's criminal that in the 21st century every ebook doesn't come with an electronic timeline linked to the index.)

And yesterday I purchased The Sorrow and the Pity, a 1969 documentary by Marcel Ophuls on the Nazi occupation of France. I searched for it and found it on Apple's movie store, whatever that "service" is called now. I guess it's Apple TV, but I don't know. Great branding, right?

But it's a four hour documentary. I watched thirty minutes of it yesterday. It's a bit fatiguing because it's all subtitled and I know a little French, so my brain is jumping back and forth trying to square what I hearing with what I'm reading. But I'm quite confident that I will finish it, certainly by the end of the weekend.

I was tipped to The Sorrow and the Pity by Kottke.

So how to tie all this together so I can wrap this up? Westenberg's view is that prediction markets are a sign that we are a civilization in decline. It's largely a moral question, and we seem to have become, at some level of society, morally unmoored. Not entirely as Minnesota has heroically demonstrated, but certainly among the rich and the powerful, and the thugs who are willing to do their bidding.

To the extent that we are unwilling to wrestle with difficult questions, turning them into wagers instead, is perhaps closely related to our growing inability to sustain focus.

There's probably a long post in here somewhere, but it's probably already been done better by someone else. I find, to some dismay, that this is about as much as I can muster for now. Perhaps when the new house is built, and I have a private space to think and write, I can do better. Right now I'm hearing Mitzi's phone as she's watching a video, and it's distracting.

Anyway, and as always, (American Association for the Appreciation of Alliteration) the beat goes on...

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