“Political parties are to democracy what monopolies are to capitalism, both corrupt the founding principles of their institutions, and those who enjoy the privileges of the power these oligarchies provide do everything they can to preserve those privileges.” 1984 Is In The Past
About a half inch of powder fell over night, making for a satisfying crunch during my morning walk.
Looks like Pixelfed.social is broke, probably due to the volume of new sign ups. Currently cannot login via the mobile apps.
Today is the first day I’ve been able to take a walk in 2025 due to having COVID since New Year’s Eve. We got a few inches of snow over night.
Manton has created a low cost version the environment I used for my primary blog called micro.one. I honestly think the $5 per month I pay for micro.blog is a good deal, but if you want to dip your toes in to blogging and the fediverse then micro.one is a very good way to start.
I haven’t posted here since the day after Christmas and in many ways the picture below explains why.
Days after Christmas I traveled to Grand Rapids for the annual Great Lakes Invitational college hockey tournament. Michigan Tech lost their first game to Western Michigan and won their second game in overtime against Northern Michigan.
Despite Tech’s loss, I had a great time, however I started feeling congested on New Year’s Eve and confirmed via home test on New Year’s day that I have COVID. I’ve been isolating since then, but have to be back at work today.
It’s my first experience with COVID and this has been one serious cold. The symptoms have improved and the fever broke a few days ago. I’ve had all the symptoms but no loss of taste or smell. I wouldn’t be surprised if I am feeling the affects for a while.
NFL On Christmas Day
Yesterday (Christmas day) is the first time that Netflix streamed live NFL games and I was happy to have a sports alternative to the NBA, which historically has been the only professional league playing on Christmas. Netflix’s production did not go without a hitch for me using an Apple TV. I went in to the app and selected “Watch Live” which I expected would take me to whatever was the current place of the stream, but instead it started at the beginning of the stream an hour earlier. Worse, for some reason it got to a point where it just kept showing non-stop commercials, like it was stuck in a loop. I was screaming in frustration/anger because I knew the game had started and I was not able to watch it. It then dawned on me to look at the progress indicator at the bottom of the display and I noticed it mostly at the beginning on the left rather than the right, so I tried fast forwarding and that enabled me to catch up. I don’t know what happened, I searched to see whether anyone else had the same experience and I did not find any reports.
Christmas day 2024 in southeast Michigan. Merry Christmas 🎄
Finished reading: The Awakened Brain by Lisa Miller 📚 I believe the way to understand world around us is to understand ourselves. Awareness of how our ego demands to be in control and forces us to see the world and either/or. The studies discussed in this book support a deeper knowing that the world is not nor intended to be perceived as either/or but rather both/and. If you are familiar with Richard Rohr’s writing you will find much of what he says supported by the findings described in this book.
Right now there is no way to add a photo to a collection using the Android version of the micro.blog app. At least I don’t think there is as I am use dark mode on my phone and when I tap a picture in the Uploads section of the app all of the text appears to be black on dark so i can’t read anything.
Hopefully some time in the future there will be a way to add a photo to a collection at the time of upload.
Squirrels on a cold roof.
Finished reading: Invisible Jesus by Scot McKnight 📚 I think this book is targeted at professional christians, but it does make good points.
A good start to the holiday week.
Major League Hypocrisy
Generations of people in the United States have grown up under the thumb of institutions that they believe are corrupt. The only solution now, these people believe, is to blow up the institutions. The focus is on the destruction of the institutions with little thought about what comes next. Who decides what comes next and why? This is the opportunity the billionaire class sees for themselves, which is why people like Elon Musk are willing to “donate” their time go the new U.S. Presidential administration.
New Photo Collections
A new feature has been added to micro.blog that automatically generates pages of photos that one groups together in to a collection. I found the instructions for creating my first collection did not work, as I had to create a new page and embed the shortcode. Looks like after creating that first page I can then create new collections as per the instructions, but you still have to create a page with the collections shortcode in order to make them available.
I have created a Photo Collections page that will be the index to my collections. I wish that the Photos page automatically listed the collections rather than making me create and maintain a page.
We have plenty of sunshine here today, but the temperature with wind-chill has been below zero up to the single digits.
Installed the Android 15 QPR 1 update on my Pixel 7a yesterday. The most important new feature for me is the 80% limit on recharging the phone. Information I’ve seen about phone battery life suggests that continually charging the phones up to 100% has a big impact on battery life. I think that problem is made worse by wireless charging that makes it simple to just recharge the phone whenever it is not in my pocket. For example, I have the Pixel Stand that really seems intended to be the resting space for my phone when I am at my desk, but before yesterday I had to be sure to not leave it on the stand once the battery reached 80% or so of charge. Now I (hopefully) no longer have to worry about that.
I don’t understand how any professional sports owner can tolerate the same performance year over year, but that is the case for the Chicago Cubs as long as Jed Hoyer is in charge. I wonder whether Craig Counsell has started to think he made the wrong decision last year?
The weather was fantastic today, with sunshine and above average temperatures. Here is a picture of what’s left of the sunshine reflecting off trees along my walk.
