The latest release of Wordland now supports linkblogs. I created a new Wordpress site for my linkblog and there is a corresponding RSS feed. You can add this feed to your micro.blog timeline or any RSS feed reader. The RSS feed works as expected but the posts to the WordPress site do not currently include the source links and I have filed a bug report. I also discovered in testing this that the Wordland RSS feeds is per Wordpress site so the linkblog feed is separate from the general posts that I have been publishing.
I should also mention, so far any bandwidth speed test that I conduct shows max that I am getting is 342 Mbps. Even with the prior 400 Mbps, which Xfinity upgrade us “for free,” our service maxed at 300 Mbps. My cable modem is DOCSIS 3.0 and should be capable of up to 800 Mbps, the ethernet ports of modem the modem and the other end of my Internet router are 1 GigE. Iperf3 tests between 2 hosts of of my router with wired connections can sustain 940 Mbps, so all my equipment should handle 500 Mbps. Now that I am paying more I will also complain about the fact that I am not getting the expected speed. I am also expecting Xfinity to say I need their cable modem versus the one that I own and am using.
I don’t trust Comcast. On Tuesday I changed my Internet service to what I think is one of their new plans with unlimited data, yet to date I have not seen any verification that I have unlimited data. Today when I log on to the Xfinity portal I see that my speed is now 500 Mbps where the previous one was 400 Mbps but there is still a Data Usage item under the plan and the same graph show a 1.2 TB max. I do think Xfinity suffers greatly from bad IT, it seems their web sites are no where in sync with their actual services. I will probably have to wait for the bill next month before I will know for sure whether my plans have actually changed.
Being A Comcast Customer
We The People
Read this really good article about Bill Moyers upon the occurrence if his passing. Those of us unwilling to close our eyes to what is happening in the United States know why it is happening, it’s because the hierarchical/supremacy basis of the norm of civilization demands exclusivity over inclusion. In other words from the founding citizens of the United States have been in a struggle over the definition of “We The People.”
The article tells the story of Moyers' first act of journalism, a series of stories about a group of women in Texas who argued that Social Security was unconstitutional. The key point is this made by Moyers upon reflection about the women in his reporting.
“It came to me one day many years later,” he continued. “Fiercely loyal to their families, to their clubs, charities and congregations — fiercely loyal, in other words, to their own kind — they narrowly defined democracy to include only people like themselves.” Many of their own neighbors, he realized, were, to these Social Security skeptics, not as much a part of the democracy as they were. “We the people,” narrowly defined.
All aspects of society, including Christianity, is driven by exclusivity and its sibling, scarcity. Christianity in particular has failed us because its associated institutions were best positioned to prevent what is happening had they actually taught the theology of Jesus rather than of empire, to practice inclusion and thus be the light for the nations that the Jewish prophets said was Israel’s calling. Christianity failed when it was tempted, providing evidence of its disconnect from the body of Christ.
If you spend any time reading the Gospels and paying attention to Jesus you know that he spoke and taught about an alternative to how society functioned at that time. Jesus called that alternative the kingdom of God and his is a way to live as God dreams for us to live and not as we are lead to believe is the norm of civilization. The fact that Christianity is no different than what we see of civilization today ought to be scandalous. Jesus is not the founder of the Christianity you know, that was founded by a Roman Emperor.
Dave is only scrutinizing half of the problem of the Biden reelection campaign. Before journalists had the chance to, from Dave’s point of view, push Biden out, remember that the Democrat party prevented voters from having their say on who was their candidate as there was no primary. Dave suffers from tunnel vision, he only sees the problems with journalism but they are just a part and more a tool than a source.
Following up on the new Xfinity plans announced a few days ago, this Ars article says that customers won’t automatically get unlimited data but can “repackage” in to one in which then can. So far I do not see an option to move to a plan that is not higher bandwidth, and thus cost, than my current plan. I do not want to pay more per month, I just want to get rid of the data cap. The most ironic thing is later in the article there is a quote from Comcast executives regarding why they are losing customers and they state as reasons “One is price transparency and predictability and the other is the level of ease of doing business with us.” The later is most definitely an issue when they do not provide an easy way to talk with a human being, instead every online interaction is directed to a chatbot that does not provide answers. If Comcast really wants to make it easy to do business with them they ought to prioritize enabling their customers to simply make changes via their portal. Better yet, why not just drop caps from all users automatically rather than make your customers jump through hoops?
For some reason today is the first time this year I have been outside on the patio. My excuse is that we had a colder than usual early spring and a hotter than usual late spring with some travel.

I really don’t understand how so called conservative, originalist SCOTUS judges are so intent on turning the Presidency into a monarchy or dictatorship. At this rate they must overturn Marbury v. Madison and put themselves in a ceremonial role as they will serve no purpose in preserving or defending the Constitution.
Between the second and third innings we were herded out to the center field fence, which enabled me to take this picture from on the field during the game.

Google has released a Linux terminal (CLI) agent for Gemini, Gemini CLI, that I have installed on my remote desktop container. One of the things I can with it is create thumbnail versions of image files like the one to the right. Gemini used imagemagick to create the file using convert. First I listed the contents of the folder containing the original JPG then told it to create a thumbnail version of the Phoenix Palm Trees image, which is the same picture as the banner picture above. Another thing I tried is I asked Gemini to summarize the PDFs that are in my Downloads folder. Here is a link to the Gemini CLI documentation.
The wheels have fallen off the Chicago Cubs pitching. Since last Thursday, June 19 Cubs pitchers have given up seven or more runs per game, six of which (not surprisingly) were losses. At this rate the Cubs will be out of first place in the NL Central by the end of next week. The big problem is too many walks and too many home runs.
I found this article, The Fundamentalist Fallacy, yesterday and there is so much I am in agreement with that I almost highlighted the entire piece. I immediately purchased The War of Art.
Six years ago Iran was an issue for the then President Trump and President Carter noted the irony that the most warlike country on Earth claims itself to be a Christian nation. Some see the current Israel and United States as siblings and that may be actually appropriate as I suspect the Jewish prophets would have the same criticisms of the United States as they had of Israel.
Seems to me the U.S. involvement in the Middle East is a consequence of not treating lobbying as the emolument it is and which the Constitution prohibits.
Just read Martin Fowler’s article on “expert generalists” and feel it describes me well, or at least how I aspire myself to be known. In the IT services industry in which I work I don’t think the contrast is specialists versus generalists but rather low cost labor versus high cost labor. My company has a focus on low cost labor, the consequence of which I think is a decrease in curiosity and with it ownership or personal accountability. I mean people are conditioned to stay within their box because that is all they are being paid to do. I am convinced that what I see, and what I am describing, is a deliverable of a managerial culture within a company as opposed to a leadership culture.
All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic
This outcome was something the Constitution was designed to prevent. “The Framers of the Constitution were clear that only Congress is empowered to commence offensive military hostilities,” former Rep. Justin Amash (L–Mich.) wrote on X. “But there are people on the left and right who reject divided powers and fundamentally hate America. They’re working deliberately and methodically to destroy it.”
Reason.com, “Trump Shreds the Constitution By Bombing Iran”
Last lunch in the U.P. requires a pasty.
