Will WordLand Be A Posting Switchboard?
I listened to Dave’s podcast in which he starts to describe what he is doing with WordLand and FeedLand, and that sounds a lot like what I said that I want in practically my first post on micro.blog. Right now I am writing this using Drummer and it will be published to my Daynotes blog. If I want to also publish this on my micro.blog I need to copy and paste it in to another outline from which posts to micro.blog are published.
Copy and paste is a lot of work, what if for every post I could specify which publishing destination that post goes to simply by selecting the destination locations via a checkbox? What if I could later add a destination by simply going back to that post and checking another box, or clear a checkbox and it is removed. When I edit the item the changes are automatically re-published. BTW, the last item probably won’t work to social network destinations because they generally don’t allow editing.
The key is the per item control over the publishing destination and continual ability to edit the item. For now micro.blog’s ability to cross post items I publish to it to Mastodon and Bluesky come closest to my vision, but that is not on a per post basis, it’s all items published to my micro.blog that are published to those other destinations.
Two windows on the iPad Mini running iPad OS 26. I’ve been using the Microsoft Duo to monitor my two fantasy football teams on game days because I can see the two apps side by side. This arrangement on the iPad Mini might be as useful.
Accidental Middle Class
A question came to mind last night. Was the middle class in the United States intentionally created or simply the happy result of the post World War 2 reconstruction? I was raised in what I consider to be middle class and as Gen X I was taught how good the middle class was, but for all its importance I don’t think it was something intentionally created.
A problem today in the United States is that the middle class is eroding, and I think that is because it was never really intended to exist and thus there has been no real effort to retain it. The middle class is a target of our politics but not our policies.
I think the destruction of the middle class matters because it provides for two important societal concepts. One is the idea of enough, but which I mean having the means for a good life. The second is a reason for hope that one can have as good a life as their parents if not better. An important corollary to the idea of enough is that one does not have to be the wealthiest person in terms of money to have a good life.
Without realistic hope of a good life, everything feels pointless to the point that life doesn’t matter. If then in a search for an answer to why one’s life is pointless a person becomes convinced it is because of the other now there is a target for their rage that is amplified by the Internet.
Liberty Is The Prime Directive
Yesterday I wrote that I think we need to have serious discussion about what is liberty, and here is what I mean. I believe the fundamental purpose of the U.S. Constitution and thus the fundamental purpose of all branches of the Federal government, and in particular the Supreme Court is to preserve liberty.
For liberty to be preserved there needs to be agreement on how liberty is preserved, what conditions must exist or how to we determine there is liberty. For example, I think individual privacy is required for liberty to exist and I think personal autonomy (control over one’s body) is required for liberty to exist. Neither privacy or autonomy are enumerated in the Constitution, but amendments such as the fourth amendment function in maintaining privacy and autonomy. Furthermore, liberty cannot exist in a country where people are at risk of being killed, so viewing the second amendment in the context of preserving liberty also means the government has the obligation to create and enforce laws about weapons.
Escalatory Violence
I am sad about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I lament how in our society a non trivial number of people see violence as the means to react to their grievances. The only way such violence can be rationalized is through a self centered and intolerant world view. All of this violence in the Unites States is a symptom of and a reaction to much deeper problems. Putting the military on the streets or even putting more cops on the streets is just managing the symptoms and not addressing the root cause. I am not entirely sure of what is the root cause, there likely is no single thing to which there is a silver bullet, but from my personal theological perspective I think it might be idolatry. We are worshiping many idols in the United States: the second amendment, capitalism, power, wealth, and Western Christianity to name a few.
I think a step, not the only step, towards understanding the root cause of this violence in the United States is a serious discussion about liberty for the purpose of increasing a shared understanding of what it is. The enduring debate since the founding of the United States seems to be liberty versus equality and which is more important. I believe there are many in the United States who believe liberty cannot coexist in a world that prioritizes equality. Again, from my theological perspective the default view of liberty in the United States is “either/or” and the default view of equality is “both/and.”
We probably will never fully resolve the debate about liberty versus equality, but I think it would be helpful to at least agree on what is liberty and what is necessary for liberty. For me liberty comes down to personal autonomy, do I have complete control over what happens to my body? Do I have a choice on where my body goes, what goes in and what goes out? A test case of liberty is whether I can speak my mind without my body being put in jail or killed. For the test case to pass there must be a desire to co-exist and to not view other autonomous humans with contempt. It seems for the sake of liberty, liberty in the United State is being taken away because in the eyes of many liberty for me cannot mean liberty for all.
Ultimately, we need to decide what is the United States because in difference to what has been said, the United State truly is more about ideas than land. Ninety percent of us who inhabit the land of the United States are not ethnically native to the land, colonialism does not make one native. I learned in the government classes I took in my public education middle and high school, the teaching of which is the fundamental purpose of public education in the United States, that the United States is a melting pot. The original motto of the United States, which is still on seal of the United States and on our coins is E pluribus unum, Out Of Many, One. For the motto to be true we must not only co-exist with the other, we much see the other as a part of ourselves.
In all of the reading I have done of what Jesus taught and commanded, I never once come across him teaching about liberty. The idea of rights never exists at the time of Jesus. However, Jesus did speak about oneness and equality, and most importantly, love. Wouldn’t a nation that is supposed to be built upon the teaching of Jesus reflect such teaching? What of the fruits of the United States? Oh, you meant we are a Christian nation, you didn’t say anything about Jesus, to which I respond, your are absolutely correct and you make my point.
Buzzfeed has a really nice article about my home land, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He wrote about his seven day trip aroud the U.P. The article pairs well with 906 Day in case you were wondering what that was all about.
Current Thoughts About Tablets
Corporate Culture and Founders
The quote of Steve Jobs that Thompson has in his article about the iPhone 17 event I think encapsulates the difference between Tim Cook and Steve Jobs, which is the difference between a founder (Jobs) and a CEO (Cook). Capitalist America forces non-founder CEOs to prioritize profits and revenue over everything else, which is why people see Cook do things they believe Jobs wound never do.
My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary. Sure, it was great to make a profit, because that was what allowed you to make great products. But the products, not the profits, were the motivation. Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It’s a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything: the people you hire, who gets promoted, what you discuss in meetings.
The above defines the corporate culture of Apple, it’s why Apple exists and what Steve Sinek describes in his TED talk on leadership. I think this is why culture in corporations is created by founders because in corporations culture is the ultimate deliverable of leaders.
Ben Thompson says the camera bump (plateau?) is where all the brains of the iPhone Air reside, which is how it can be so thin. I assume then all that resides in the rest of the case is battery. Thompson pushes back as what he sees as negative opinions about the new phones, my guess is part of the negative reactions is that when you talk about a cost north of $1k it’s hard to feel value in incremental changes. The real solution is if you buy a new phone this year ignore the announcements about the next two years of phones. The iPhone 17 probably makes more sense to someone who owns an iPhone 15 or older. The manufacturers cannot make enough change to justify the upgrade from N-1 to N.
Happy iPhone Day!
Double arachnophobia
Last Friday I installed the QPR1 update of Android 16 on my Pixel 7a and I am really happy with the result. The update has enough changes to the UI and new features to make it feel more like an operating system upgrade, which is probably the point. In the past Google has released upgrades of Android in late August or early September so the release of Android 16 in June was unusual, but then it didn’t really seem like an upgrade because nothing looked or did anything different. I am not entirely sure about the benefit of this approach.
Saw this parked while I was on my evening walk. Gemini says this is a Ford Model A built around 1930.
Oh happy day
While reading Brent’s description of how he programmed in the 90s using UserLand Frontier I immediately thought of NewtonScript. Apple had much innovation in Newton that got overlooked and how apps were developed and ran on the operating system is one. Newton OS even had a database based file system that optimized sharing across applications to prevent redundancy. I think the Newton files system was not only needed due to the constraints of limited physical storage but also to enable fast and easy application development like Brent describes.
One thing I have never understood about conservatism in the United States is how the ideology thinks progress is to be made. Today all tenants of conservatism are being bent in extreme directions such that any and every change today is tarred by the claim of wokeness. Why does it matter that a corporation changes its logo? It only matters when you obsess on watching for and fighting against every single change no matter how big or small, good or bad. What a scary world to live in!
I think we are heading toward a time in which public education in the United States will no longer exist. First, it is already hard enough to get good people willing to be teachers and work in public education, but the right wing populism in the United States makes public education totally unattractive. Further, the last thing populist leaders want is an educated electorate and one of the main grievances of right wing populism is against the “educated elite.” Broadly, public education has long strayed away from its original purpose of developing children in to good citizens. The current purposes range from enabling children to be wealthy adults to providing daycare and in almost all ways alleviating parents from the burden of raising their children.
The prime reason why right wing populism has risen in the United States has been greed or the very least extreme self interest. When the Internet made it easier to ship jobs outside the United States the management class did not think of the consequences., although Ross Perot warned us! The primary message from half the United States is, “get a job” and yet most of that half worked hard to take jobs away. The same thing is now happening with AI. Rather than ignore the consequences we need to make fundamental changes to how work is viewed in the United States and what enables a sound society. I am thinking about things like changing the definition of full time employment to 20 hours a week so that the number of the original pool of limited jobs doubles. It is drastic thinking like this that is going to be required because we are seeing the results of the current way of thinking.
Christian Nationalism Did Not Save Rome
For me the fact that “Christian Nationalism” exposes is that so few people know the history of Christianity nor really try to understand it. All of Christian doctrine relies on freedom. Whether it is to repent, to say the “sinners prayer,” or to open our eyes and change our mind we think we have to be free to choose because we do not know love. Even if Christianity is seen through the lens of love, true love is not forced, it is fallen in to. Therefore, using laws to enforce any part of Christianity upon anyone is to take away freedom and antithetical to Jesus. It’s a denial of Christ crucified and to resurrection.
Christian Nationalism exposes Christianity to what it is, a religion founded on empire. Jesus did not establish a religion, for religion is a part of the norm of civilization for which Jesus told us to change our minds about. (Repent, metanoia).
The Roman Empire fell even after the Christian religion was created to become the religion of the empire for the sake of saving the empire. Likewise the Christian religion, “Christian Nationalism,” will not save the United States.