Essays
Really Solving Problems Means Knowing Root Causes
I was born in 1966 and thus part of Generation X. The primary norm that I was taught to be in good standing within the U.S. social order can be summed up in the phrase, “get a job!” It is that phrase, and all of the expectations around it, that I think is at the root of our problems in the United States today.
The obvious reason why society wants one to “get a job” is so that others in society do not have to provide for me. We not only glorify the self made man, we demand it! Another, unspoken reason why society demands I “get a job” is that having a job provides me the money to buy things that make others in society wealthy. Nearly all of the wealth in the United States is because someone else has spent, and thus given them, money. (Think about the real reason why Trump gave us those stimulus checks at the beginning of the COVID Pandemic.)
And of course, this also means that those who have a job are superior over those who do not have a job.
Today the United States government is “shut down” because no Democrat Senators will vote yes on the Continuing Resolution law that approves the money needed to keep the government running. Democrats are voting no on the CR because they want the government subsidies that lower the cost of health care people buy via the Affordable Care Act extended. The subsidies are expiring at the end of the year and if not extended the resulting monthly health care premiums people will have to pay in 2026 can be double what they paid this year.
Republicans who oppose the ACA generally do so because they do not want to help pay for healthcare for those people who do not “get a job.” Of course, they assume that anyone who has a job can pay for their own healthcare, which itself is not necessarily true. Many people who get healthcare via the ACA do have jobs. (As do many people who get food stamps.)
So, “get a job” dogma is at the root of our current government shutdown. I would also say that dogma is also the kindle for the wildfire set by Trump and his supporters.
The thinking that those who do not have a job are just lazy, that anyone who has a job has enough to money to live on, and that healthcare (and thus the right to live) is only a privilege for those who have a job is the root cause of the problems of our times. How can this be for a so called Christian nation? We might say Christ is King in the United States, forgetting how Jesus answered Pilate when he asked whether Jesus was king of the Jews. And if Christ is King then shouldn’t we be following his commandments?
If you think the problems we have are bad now, consider what is going to happen when “get a job” clashes with the elimination of jobs by Artificial Intelligence. Further consider that many of the jobs AI is going to eliminate are the very white collar jobs that so many are told are needed for them to be wealthy.
Jesus does have the answer, but many in the United States do not like it.
Translating Handwriting To Text
Betting On Dependencies
Earlier this week a chunk of the Internet went offline, which should be a surprise for those who know the history of the Internet.
During the COVID pandemic just a few years ago prices of nearly everything in the United States increased because most products that we depend upon are manufactured in countries outside the U.S. and the shipping of those products was disrupted.
Both of these events exposed how fragile normal functions have become, and they should be lessons learned about the risks of depending upon an external entity. I think those who have long been warning us about these risks have been drowned out by the strong emphasis on open source and Internet application development that demands the use of external libraries. The culture says that one should not re-create the wheel and instead use the code already written by others as building blocks for your own application, thereby speeding up development in a race to toward making money.
The 21st Century is being built on blind faith of dependencies, with seemingly little thought on their risks, which is why all of the AI hype I see sets off nothing but alarm bells in my head. I see companies betting their future of the AI developed by a handful of other companies. I see the U.S. stock market driven up by the inflated value of those handful of companies even though most of those companies have not made any money.
What happens when capitalists stop throwing money at these companies when they realize there is no return? We saw this in the dot.com boom, as fast as those companies ran up they went out of business. So, if you are CEO of a company and you are “all in” on AI as the future for the products or services your company produces, realize you are “all in” on a handful of companies that might be gone tomorrow and ask yourself to which direction you are leading your company towards.
Physical and Metaphorical Demolition of America
While I thought that civil war could happen again in the United States, I never thought I would live to experience democracy die. I find the pictures of portions of the White House being demolished on the whim of a single person to be breathtaking. Unimaginable only a few years ago, now seemingly barely a blip on the news.
For years it became generally accepted to bitch about the U.S. government’s failures and inefficiencies. Government is too slow, they say, not knowing that was the very point. Dictatorships are more efficient but at the price of being enslaved to the whims of the dictator. Dictators being human are as prone to horrific acts in response to greed and anger as the human who decides to burst in to an elementary school and kill everyone inside. Worse still is the fact that the U.S. dictator has access to weapons of mass destruction far worse than AR-15s.
Freedom For Whom
I am reading Thomas Zimmer’s essay about Russell Vought that I think correctly states what is happening in the United States. The MAGA project is the destruction of the United States that they view as already been destroyed. In their view this is the third American Revolution, the second American Revolution started with the New Deal and culminated in Obama’s election. I think in order to fight against this I think more attention needs to be put on the question of what comes after the U.S. government is entirely destroyed.
Rooted in this question is the reality that these people only place value in freedom for themselves, freedom is not for their opponents. Democracy, including the U.S. Republican one, allows the possibility of one’s opponents gaining power and therefore impeding upon their freedom. Consequently, Democracy is flawed and the only way to assure their freedom is a dictator. The form of what is in place may have the appearance all one thinks of about the United States, a Congress, President, Supreme Court, but for that structure to remain there must be guarantee the opposition can never gain power.
Consider the current government shutdown, doesn’t it feel different to you? The difference is that the current Republicans behind the shutdown do not fear the voters, they don’t fear not being re-elected, because they believe so long as the fall in line with the MAGA project they will continue to have a share of power.
Of course, anyone who understands what is going on ought to be sober enough to know that when everything relies on human feelings rather than laws sooner or later you can, and likely will, become the opposition to that person. Marjorie Taylor Green might being finding this out right now.
The Viwoods AIPaper Mini
Reading The Web
Today I finished reading Stephanie Booth’s three series posts on “Rebooting The Blogosphere” cited by others who I follow. In general I agree with Stephanie’s points and her description of a web reading tool that easily provides a way to create blog posts based on another post being read, create new blog posts from scratch, and convert a comment you are writing on another’s blog into a full post for your own blog. Her suggestion assumes one is reading within a RSS reader app like NetNewsWire.
Like Stephanie I would prefer less friction between reading and posting about what I am reading to my blog. The problem, however, is that most RSS feeds that I follow do not include the full content of a post. The sites that rely on advertising usually include just a link to their site or a snippet only so that you must end up going to the site to read the entire post.
Anti-social Web?
I know there is a lot of writing lately about blogging and rebooting the “social web.” The core of this thought has to do with breaking free from the corporate silos, and I get that and agree with that idea. However, at least for me, I think the situation might be a bit more nuanced than one might think and that is driven by what motivates people to do any of this stuff.
What exactly does “social” mean in the context of the web? For example, does “social” require comments? Likes? Follows? What if “social” simply means sharing?
Wild Card Game 1
The Cubs won the first wild card game today against the San Diego Padres. I do believe it might be their first ever wild card game win. The 3-1 win was due to the pitching staff, in fact as I watch the other games played today, the old adage of good pitching beating good hitting seems to hold. The sharpest example was in Cleveland where the hottest team in baseball the Cleveland Guardians was beat by the coldest Detroit Tigers thanks to the game’s best pitcher, the Tiger’s Tarik Skull.
I see the Cub’s have announced they are starting tomorrow’s game with an opener as recent closer Andrew Kittredge will start the game. My guess is that Shota Imanga will follow Kittredge but I wouldn’t be surprised if Shota only pitches one time through the Padres line up. Counsell can’t blow out pitching because there might be a game three if they don’t win, but the Cub’s want to win this next one while they have the advantage of elimination game pressure on their opponent.
Foldable Phone Or Tablet
Personal Computing Using Tablets
Engineers and Lawyers
I am reading this interview of Dan Wang by Russ Douthat of the New York Times and find it fascinating how Wang describes the difference between China in terms of engineers and lawyers. Wang says the current China is founded by engineers, who in my experience put great value on efficiency. I think Elon Musk’s DODGE was/is very much a rise of engineers in the United States who believe they know better about running a country than lawyers. Whenever you have a group of people who are dominated by ego to think they alone are the smart people and therefore know all the answers to all the problems, you have a high potential for tyranny. Democracy and liberty is not about efficiency, it’s about peaceful co-existence. If one insists upon efficiency you end up being like the other countries, such as the old USSR and China, who likewise make efficiency a prime directive.
Here is the money quote of Dan Wang in the article:
The game goes to he who outlasts the adversary. But what the Chinese want to do is to just keep things really, really stable and just wait for the Western countries to collapse.
China plays the long game while the U.S. plays the short game.
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.
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.
Happy iPhone Day!
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.
Same Old Cubs Ownership
Hoyer can rationalize his trade deadline decisions all he wants the bottom line is he did not get the job done, and no improvement to the starting pitching rotation has been done. Assad better perform when he makes it back to the team after being out all season. I don’t doubt that the additions that he made will help, but it was not enough.
Truth is, the real failure was made during the off-season by not signing more high quality players. I doubt that Tucker wants to stay in Chicago, in fact if I were him the lack of signings sealed the deal of going to another team; the Cubs can and will be outbid for his services . The consequences of Hoyer’s failures is he lost one of his top prospects while getting no closer to the World Series just to make the playoffs.
Yes, the Cubs likely will make the playoffs as a wildcard team, but they probably will not advance out of the divisional round and winning championships is the measurement. Why Ricketts extended Hoyer before seeing how the team ends up this season tells me that he is more concerned about making money than winning a World Series. An owner expecting nor less than championships would not reward mediocrity.
Nillkin Bluetooth Keyboard Touchpad
A while back I decided that I needed a new, portable Bluetooth keyboard to use with my mobile devices. I saw an ad in Instagram for the Nillkin keyboard that is a tri-fold that when folds us a little smaller than the iPad Mini. You aren’t going to carry this in your pocket, but it fits nicely in a back and it is a full size keyboard with a number row and a numeric keypad that doubles as a touchpad. It pairs with three devices that you can easily switch between.
Having just installed the public beta of iPadOS 26 on my 4th generation iPad Air, I first paired the new keyboard to that iPad and found everything to work except that I couldn’t get mouse clicks to work.
The touchpad is a 2.5 x 2.5 inch square that doubles as a numeric keypad. The keys of the pad are touch points on the pad, for example you tap the upper left of the pad for the equal key. Normally the pad is locked in touchpad mode and I can easily slide my fingertips over it to move the cursor and make gestures. To do a mouse clicks I was tapping in the center of the pad as I do with every other notebook touchpad and it did not work.
Turns out that the space at the lower right corner of the pad that is labeled Enter is and actual button and where I have to tap for mouse clicks. I just discovered it this morning and this is not in any of the documentation.