As I said, “Scoring lots of runs is entertaining but preventing lots of runs wins championships.” The Chicago Cubs got blown at last night in San Diego, 0-8, and tonight is likely their last game of the 2026 season.
Today I am grateful to be retired so that I can enjoy this wonderful weather that we’ve been having for the last week. In this time of the year you have to appreciate all the nice days because it’s Michigan and winter is coming.
Andy Sylvester has developed a tool that provides a way to generate oldSchool blogs to a local file system and thus host them on any web server. Its a niche tool that provides a way to host blogs rendered using Dave Winer’s blog template apart from his hosting.
I use Drummer, which is Dave’s web-based outlining tool, to write my Daynotes and I was using his blog hosting to serve it, but I switched to different hosting. My Daynotes are now served via my own server running an instance of pagePark, which is Dave’s web server app. The upside is an entire year of notes are in one outline file served by a server I control.
I have written more specific observations about the results of Andy’s work, which I have not yet tried for myself, in my notes for today, September 28, 2026 that in the future you may need to expand to find.
Fall 2026 Technology Releases
Cubs September Performance
So far in the month of September the Chicago Cubs have played 16 games. In ten games they have scored 4 or more runs, but in only five games their opponents scored 3 or fewer runs. The Cubs’ record to date in September is 7 wins and 9 losses.
As the Cubs are in a race for the top wildcard spot in the National League, all of the games in September have been playoff-like. The recipe for winning playoff games is to hold your opponents to 3 or fewer runs while your team scores 4 or more runs.
Despite the Cubs scoring 4 or more runs in 10 games, they have only 7 wins because in only 5 of those 16 games their pitching has been able to prevent more than 3 runs. When you factor in that in playoff baseball teams face the best pitching the data shows the Cubs are not likely to have success in the playoffs.
The 2026 Chicago Cubs are too reliant on their lineup scoring a lot of runs to win games, and they have the bats to do that but will have too much pressure to perform in multiple rounds. Scoring lots of runs is entertaining but preventing lots of runs wins championships.
I am reading a book of essays written by Wendell Berry titled “What Are People For?” and read the following this morning that I think is poignant on this day, the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the United States.
Extinction
We have known since August, 1945 that humanity has the power and the willingness to destroy all life on earth. Humanity’s ability for this destruction comes from our development of tools, all of which have the purpose for doing more than is normally possible. Our willingness comes from our ego-driven desire to be God. As I wrote yesterday, Artificial Intelligence may be the ultimate amplification. of humanity.
Consequently, I take serious the warnings raised by people working on the technology not because I understand the technology but because of my understanding of humanity. Our ego-driven lust of power prevents us from acting on the fact that there are things in the world that even though we can do them we ought not do them.
Six years ago the world suffered and many died because of a virus. Many people believe, some of whom are in positions of power, that COVID leaked from a lab. In other words, millions died due to a human mistake caused by an unwillingness to stop ourselves from doing something we know we shouldn’t do. I am sure the people who made the decisions to do that research believed they were doing so for the right reasons. I wish that Rand Paul could separate himself from his vendetta and the real lessons that would connect the dots between this type of “research” and this drive for AI.
Our inability to live with enough makes us our own worst enemy. The news every day drives home the point that there are no adults in the halls of power, and those in such positions who claim themselves Christian cannot divorce themselves from the idolatry of more.
iPhone Duo Quotables
I spent time this morning reading several articles about about the iPhone Duo and I look forward to the more detailed reviews to come. I think the biggest impact of the iPhone Duo will be with how it spurs software development for the form factor. My observation from afar of the Android based foldables has been that neither Google nor other developers have done enough to take full advantage of the form factor.
Apple’s Surprise and Shine Event: All the Small Things
John Voorhees https://www.macstories.net/news/apples-surprise-and-shine-event-all-the-small-things/
“Apple has released a six-video playlist on YouTube and in the Apple Developer app called “Get ready for iPhone Duo” to help get designers up to speed with the phone’s new format. The Human Interface Guidelines have been updated too.”
“Continuous Angle API lets developers receive ongoing updates about the Duo’s hinge angle to power interactive effects.”
Know When To Hold Them
Apple held their annual iPhone event/broadcast today during which they finally announced their long anticipated foldable phone, the iPhone Duo. When I saw the name leaked yesterday I thought to myself, surely Apple will not mimic Microsoft’s name for their first foldable, but that is the name so hopefully it will sell better than the Surface Duo.
Honestly, while I watch the Apple announcement broadcasts it’s hard for me to get excited by them as nearly all of Apple’s products now cost more than I will ever want to spend. Apple will get kudos for keeping the “base” model Duo to $1,999, which is still more than you pay now for either a Samsung ZFold8 at $1,899 or the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold at $1,269. I will never spend more than $1,000 for a phone, let alone $2,000 even though it’s true that $1 to $2k purchase can replace the iPad Mini and phone.
Beside the price, I am put off by how the iPhone Duo looks. While it appears the “passport” sized foldable that Samsung and now Apple are using might be “the” winner, the rounded edges of the Duo when folded just look odd. The other problem I have with these foldables is how wide they are, which I think will feel bulky in a front pant pocket, not to mention the 8.96 ounce weight of the Duo is much more than the 7.2 ounces of my Pixel 10.
Given that I use my iPad Mini a lot, I am the type of person that fits the foldable use case. I personally think these devices should be marketed as foldable tablets rather than phones. The problem is, I can’t imagine a way for a foldable to never be bulkier than a smartphone, and I do want to be able to carry my phone without a bag.
Human Amplification
As I read articles such as this one by David Brooks I keep saying to myself, “we have learned nothing from the Internet.” At the beginning of the Internet there was all this pugnostication about how it was going to be democratizing, making the world better. What was not understood then is that the Internet amplifies the best and the worst parts of humanity. I think AI will be no different and that the focus on AI becoming generaliy intelligent or having a conscious is on the wrong thing, the focus should always be on all the ways humans can use AI for good and bad.
Humans always need rules to constrain their demons. Perhaps the greatest hypocrisy of conservatism is how their view of humanity leads to their creation rules against others but insisting on no rules to constrain their weaponization of capital against others for the sake of becoming wealthy.