Essays
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Cubs vs. Tigers at Comerica Park, Detroit, Michigan
The Chicago Cubs are playing the Detroit Tigers in Detroit this week, and I went to the Monday and Tuesday night games. The Cubs won 7-6 Monday night in a game when the Cubs gained and gave up a four run lead but hung on to win. The Tigers won Tuesday night 8-6, but the Cubs had a 4-3 run lead after the top of the fourth inning and then gave up 4 runs to the Tigers in the bottom of the inning.
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Hope Is Not A Strategy
I am resigned to the fact that Chicago Cubs are not going to be a playoff team this year, which makes them sellers for the upcoming trade deadline, and it is this idea of “selling” that makes me mad. We knew that Cody Bellinger was only going to be with the Cubs for a year and if he played to any amount of his capability would be a mid season trade, so his leaving is not a problem.
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Smokey Eye Not Good
I watched the Air Quality Index for my home showing on the Nest Hub creeping up all yesterday afternoon to as high as 193, due to the wildfires in Canada. Right now it is 187 and I am planning on not going on my normal walks. It’s troubling to me for it not to be raining or incredibly hot yet avoid being outdoors. Last night I watched the Cubs play in Chicago, somewhat surprised they were even playing the game with the AQI over 200.
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Generational Expectations On Time For Change
Lately I have been ruminating on generational differences in relationship to technology. Like all things, technology changes over time. I remember a time before cell phones, when the only way to make a phone call was to by using a handset in our home, but I don’t remember a time when there were no phones. Generations younger than mine do not know of a time when cell phones did not exist.
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First Impressions Of The Google Pixel 7a
Google announced and began selling the Pixel 7a earlier last month, and I ordered a Sea colored version from Amazon about a week later. The Pixel 7a is replacing the Pixel 4a that has been my everyday carry phone for the last three years. I really like the size and feel of the Pixel 4a and so I was not eager to up-size to the newer phone, but it has come to the end of the road with Android and there are features the 7a has that make the upgrade a “no-brainer.
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Detroit Grand Prix
I am watching the IndyCar practice of the Detroit Grand Prix, which is racing around the Renaissance Center where I worked for nearly nine years. At one time or another I’ve driven parts the entire circuit, and I made turns 4, 5, 6, and 7 nearly every week day. I am seeing them going 70 mph on stretches I wouldn’t dare drive more than 30. The pits are in a parking lot where I used to park when we first started working at that location.
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With AI, Focus On The People
When I read something about the dangers of AI I can’t help but fear the writers are missing an important point. Saying that AI is bad is like saying the Internet is bad or guns are bad. In truth none of these items are bad. What is bad, and what we need to focus on, is that there are bad people who can and will use these items to amplify what they can do and thus inflict harm on others.
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Does screen refresh really matter on smartphones?
One of the unwritten rules of tech is the idea that more is better, the purpose of which is to have us continually buy the latest generation of a product. The rule began with the model year releases of automobiles and became adopted by the tech industry. Unfortunately, we consumers don’t often enough question whether the latest features really do matter. We aren’t helped by tech reviewers who often seem to advocate more for the tech industry than consumers.
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Google's Tech Ecosystem Failure
I have now replaced two Pixel phones with a newer model and each time I do I am astounded by how little Google understands technology ecosystems. Not only does Google require physically connecting the two phones together with a cable to transfer data, but to transfer a WearOS watch, like the Pixel Watch, from one phone to another you have to factory reset the watch. Seriously! Does anyone at Google ever even try moving from one generation phone to another?
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Straight Jacket Voting
We frequently fall in to the trap of thinking that how things work today is how they have always worked. Take for example voting in the United States. The whole concept of an “independent voter” is driven by the fact that today one can vote for people of different parties rather than all representatives from a single party. For example, you might vote for a Democrat for President and a Republican as your Senator.
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Freedom Versus The Internet
The most dangerous affect of bans on books and teaching by government is its erosion on the culture of free speech. While the United States has the first amendment that prohibits government censorship of nearly all speech, a culture of “this is how we do it here” is more important. One way that culture is expressed is when one says, “I don’t agree with what you are saying, but I will fight for your right to say it.
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R.I.P. Computer Magazine
Ironically, I read about the last print publication of Maximum PC and MacLife via RSS and the web, which long ago for me replaced computer magazines. Harry McCracken writes something like an obituary for the computer magazine.
Last week my wife told me the amazing news of a new brick and mortar book store opening within a mile of our house. The news brought back memories of spending hours in Borders and Barnes and Noble, both which were within a mile of our house and long since gone.
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Googe Nest Hub Disappoints
The Google Nest Hub is frustrating to use because I want to use it as an Android display, as I think I should, but instead it only provides a very narrow set of functions. The most obvious use for me is displaying a local weather radar, which is useful during weather events. A simple way Google could provide this is by enabling Radarscope to run on it.
Today there is an ice storm moving through my area.
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Updating My Now Page
In 2015 Derek Sivers proposed the idea of sharing one’s status by creating a /now page off of one’s web site. The intent of the page is simply sharing what one is doing. The idea caught on and today many sites, some more current than others, have a now page.
I decided to create and maintain my /now page using Dave Winer’s Little Outliner because I felt it was a good editor for this type of writing, and it worked particularly well with another piece of software by Dave called pagePark.
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Look In The Mirror, There Is a Gun In Your Hands
If one is a child, a teenager, a college student in the United States, aware of the realities of the society that they currently live in, how can you possibily conclude anything other than the fact that the generations older, now Millenials through Baby Boomers, don’t care about them at all? It’s seems we have all forgotten the desire for providing our children a better life than our own. Better should be safer.
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Writing Microblog Posts Using Drummer
The three posts below were intended to be part of one post. I wrote them using Drummer, forgetting that the publish script I use treats each node as a separate post.
I suspect if I want everything in one post I need to write them as a child of a parent node in Drummer. This is a quick test. Confirmed.
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United States Empire
Dave is pointing out the relationship between the United States paying its bills, the value of the U.S. dollar as the the world’s reserve currency, and how that all translates to life as we know it in the United States. What Dave does not point out is that the the U.S. dollar being the world’s reserve currency is a fundamental part of the United States Empire. It’s how we can punish other nations like Russia and Iran with “economic” sanctions or why cutting Russia off from SWIFT (which is the network that all banks, including national banks use to move money around) is in fact punishing.
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It's All By Design
Much that is wrong in the United States can be traced back to Milton Friedman, because he created and taught the doctrine in place in corporate America that everything, absolutely everything, is about making the wealthy class wealthier. Corporations exist to make wealth, and labor is simply the disposable batteries needed to fuel their wealth.
And, of course, the wealthy class fears the labor class, which is why they own those bunkers and houses on islands as far away from civilization as possible.
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Building Versus Buying
I’ve finished reading a fantastic three part series about the history of ARM written by Jeremy Reimer for Ars Technica. Here is a quote from the end of the series:
But the key to Saxby’s management approach was simple yet uncommon in the business world: ARM grew because it helped others grow. It treated its employees more like people and less like human resources, giving them chances to learn and succeed along with the company.
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Profits Above All
Nobody should be surprised that big oil has long known the impact of carbon on the the climate, just as big tobacco long knew about the relationship of nicotine on cancer. Likewise, I am certain Facebook, Twitter, and Google all know the impact of social networks on mental health.
In my opinion the root cause to this behavior is the acceptance in the United States that it’s ok for one to profit from the misery of another.