Essays
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The State Of Sports
In the Atlantic there is an article (subscription required) that is an ode to the one-hand backhand, which is how I was taught to play tennis, but is rarely used today because tennis, like most sports, has devolved into all power. The author extends this point to basketball and the three point shot and he could have also made the point with pitching in Major League Baseball. All are examples, in an innocuous topic as sports, of how the ends now justify the means.
Even an unguardable move such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s iconic ��skyhook” would lose its luster in today’s money-balled NBA, where the statisticians have proved that the smartest way to play involves enormous quantities of three-point shots. There have perhaps never been more talented athletes and marksmen and less variety of gameplay. Everyone leverages the same generic (if often impressive) step-back three.
The Debate Never Resolved.
Currently reading: Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean 📚
Yesterday I read an article about James Buchanan that is inspired by this book, which I remembered I had in my Amazon library but not yet started reading. Consequently, I started reading and once again reminded of how the United States was founded.
The narrative taught when I was in school is that most people who immigrated to the new world did so to escape persecution, which was true for many people who came to the continent AFTER it was discovered. The motives behind the discovery of the continent was driven by wealth, whether through a shorter trade route to the east or the appropriation of land or gold.
Common folks who left Europe for a better life where not too much involved with the government or the decision to declare independence from England. The people who formed the United States did so to preserve their wealth, much of which starting to be generated from the plantations of the south.
Once the revolutionary war was over the people who sought independence had to decide how the new world was to be governed. Eventually what we know as the U.S. Constitution was drafted, but there was strong debate over whether there should be a single entity and a strong federal government or a federation of sovereign states. Advocates of a federation, who became known as anti-federalists, were fearful of a central government impinging upon individual rights, which honestly had much to do with the right to become as wealthy was one wishes in whatever manner one wishes, including enslaving others.
History says a compromise was reached with the Bill of Rights and the Federalists won the day, but the Federalists/Anti-Federalist debate, which was about power, continues. It lead to the Civil War and it is the root of the Dobbs Decision, and as this book chronicles, the Anti-Federalist cause has been systemically been carried out over the last five decades. I am convinced their success is in large part due to the profound lack of knowledge about history.
Remembering Sacrifice
As I reflect upon what I wrote earlier today about Memorial Day, it occurs to me that my thoughts about the meaning and purpose of this day are consistent with how I was always taught. Memorial Day is a day of remembering those who died in service for our country, yes, and because of those sacrifices I enjoy freedom. What an individualistic point of view to think of how I benefited from the sacrifice others! What is lost in narrowing the view down to myself is seeing the good in the sacrifice.
We live in an extremely cynical world that teaches humanity only seeks personal advantage, that we are primarily driven by self-interest. The concept of sacrifice pushes against this cynicism. People who run into a burning building and sign up to serve in the military do not want to die but they understand the possibility and and do anyway because they are not driven by self-interest.
It is good to remember those who died in service to our country, and it is even better to remember why they died, which was less for our individual freedom and more for something beyond themselves, something good that they themselves would not enjoy. Cynicism and contempt of others is not the lesson of Memorial Day. Cynicism teaches us why there is evil, but in a such a worldview the far more interesting and important questions is, why is there any good?
New iPads: Deja vu All Over Again
1984 Is In The Past
SCOTUS Can Push The Republic Over the Edge
In my opinion the Presidential Immunity case before the Supreme Court could be the most consequential to the future of the United States of any case in my life time. The case raises the question of whether Richard Nixon was right in his claims that a President of the United States can never go before the court, that they are not really bound by the rule of law. Had Gerald Ford not given Nixon a pardon it is likely that the Supreme Court in that day would have heard a case similar to the one before them now for Trump.
I can see a Supreme Court of justices who claim to be originalists proclaim that the President is above the law because the U.S. Constitution has holes as it is made of words. When fundamentalists only look for words and ignore meaning or intent that enables them to promote an ideology. The originalist ideology seems intent on returning us to past centuries in which white men held all the power and for which liberty only applied.
If the United States is a nation based on the rule of law, and the Supreme Court says that rule of law does not apply to the President, how can the republic remain based on the rule of law?
Change To How I Make Summary Posts
Rolling Through The Blogs
From Buildings To Floors
We Need An Emoluments Amendment
Pugnosticating The 2024 Chicago Cubs
The Chicago Cubs have completed the 2024 Cactus League spring training “season” and will start the 2024 MLB season tomorrow at the Texas Rangers. As many questions exist about the 2024 team as did for the 2023 team, so it is hard for me to expect them to be too much better than last year. Will Greg Counsell as the new manager make a difference? Perhaps that is the main question going in to this season.
One cannot read much into what happens at spring training, although I attended spring training games in 2016, which is when the Cubs won the World Series, and have not attended a spring training game since nor have the Cubs returned to the World Series. Read in to that what you will.
Markets and Ecosystems
Based on what I’ve read so far, it seems to me the biggest challenge the DOJ has in its lawsuit against Apple is convincing a court that there is such a thing as a premium smartphone market. In my opinion what the DOJ really means by a “premium smartphone market” is an iPhone market, in fact I think DOJ would have been smart to actually call it the iPhone market.
What defines a market? From a traditional lense, one may say there is no such thing as an iPhone market. However, the iPhone is not just a product, it also includes the App Store and accessories like the Apple Watch that are exclusive to the iPhone. Apple and most of the tech industry refers to this as the Apple or iPhone ecosystem and that ecosystem functions in ways that most will recognize as a market. Apple clearly uses monopoly power in its control of the iPhone ecosystem.
If one accepts the iPhone ecosystem is a market then I think Apple most clearly has a monopoly. While I am not even close to being a lawyer, I would think the next step is to convince a court that the iPhone ecosystem/market is large enough to cause harm to a significant number of U.S. citizens to justify government action. Unlike in Europe, antitrust in the U.S. is about harm to consumers and not harm to competitors.
So, if I am right, I think the big question being raised by the DOJ is a question about whether a product ecosystem is a market. The product ecosystem is fundamental to Apple’s business model, and frankly many people benefit from that ecosystem. In some ways the issue of product ecosystems and antitrust has occurred before. At the time when phones were only landlines one could only buy a phone from AT&T and a DOJ lawsuit forced AT&T to allow consumers to buy phones from other manufacturers. I am sure at the time AT&T considered the phones as part of their product ecosystem and AT&T did claim security and quality reasons for why they should be the exclusive providers of phones.
Despite what Apple says, they will fight this suit because the App Store and exclusive accessories like the Apple Watch are competitive advantages. Both are big revenue streams and Apple takes actions to protect those revenue streams. Apple has stated this approach is a fundamental part of their business model.
Consequently another big question being raised here is, if a company makes a product that is a platform for selling other products, is the owner of that platform allowed to be the exclusive store front for those products and require a portion of each sale of that product? HP makes more money selling ink for their printers than in selling printers; Gillette makes money selling razor blades and practically gives away their shavers. Should a manufacturer of a computer platform be allowed to have an exclusive app store that is the only way for one to install apps on that platform? The EU has said no, now the United States is attempting to say the same thing.
To Be Disturbed By Ideas Is O.K.
From “The Problem with Defining Antisemitism” by the New Yorker
Stern tells this story in “The Conflict Over the Conflict,” a work that is unlikely to please partisans. The book makes the case for bridging differences and recognizing nuance. It also describes Israeli-Palestinian history as an “ideal subject” to teach at universities, precisely because it is so divisive. At the West End Temple, Stern reiterated this belief. “On college campuses, students have an absolute right to expect they’re not going to be harassed, they���re not going to be bullied,” he said. “But to be disturbed by ideas is O.K.: we want students to be disturbed by ideas and to figure out how to think about them.”
Site Changes
It started with a post that Manton Reece wrote about long form content publishing in a microblog format and before I knew it I had completely overhauled the appearance of this site. I wrote a reply to that post about my one wish for micro.blog is that it would not publish the full content of a titled post on the main page of the blog. In my opinion posts with titles are essays that are best published in full on their own page. I said that I would rather have a link to essays along with a lede.
Manton replied suggesting that I try the Tiny theme and that sent me down an unexpected rabbit hole of testing the theme and different fonts before deciding to apply that theme to this site. If you are a regular reader of this site you should have notice I made several changes, starting with the title of the site.
Before I go in to how I came to the new title for this site I want to acknowledge Matt Langford who developed the Tiny Theme for micro.blog. I’ve not crossed paths with Matt, but I appreciate his work in developing the theme and the associated summary plugin. Right now I am using the basic functionality of the theme but there are features that I plan to check out more in the future.
The post you are reading right now provides an example of what started me off trying Tiny Theme. If you came to this post via the main page of this blog you saw the title of the post followed by the first paragraph followed by a Read More button. I think not publishing the full, multi paragraph post enables the main page to maintain a “news feed” like appearance. I expect it to also make loading the site faster because the pages are smaller. To read the full titled post you can click either the title of the post or the Read More button.
Having changed the appearance of this site I felt it made sense to change the tagline and the title of the site. Rather than the tagline referring to me, I wanted it to refer to the theme of my writing and found that a sentence from the Thomas Merton quote on my home page did the job nicely. I then used Microsoft Co-Pilot to brainstorm titles that related to the tagline and settled on Routine Revelations.
So welcome to my new, old blog where I write posts and share information about my extraordinary ordinary routine revelations!
Smart Monitors On Faces
Despite reading more about the Apple Vision Pro, I have yet to warm up to the idea of strapping a headset on to my face, no matter the potential cost of the headset and the utility. I think back to the idea of one using notebook computers in meetings, many think that is rude or at the least too intrusive. While one can clearly take more detailed notes, there is a physical screen between oneself and other meeting participants. In this case tablets are more favorable because they can lie flat on table and be no more intrusive than a pad of paper.
While the Vision Pro does have a pass through mode that enables the wearer to see what is in front of them, it is obvious to others in the room that the wearer’s attention is not fully on them. Anything physically larger than regular glasses is going to send signals to others, just like the use of notebook computers in meetings and classrooms. Consequently in it’s current incarnation the Vision Pro is a very private device.
It’s true that over time the use of notebook computers has become more accepted and it happens now in nearly every meeting and probably every class in college, but that still doesn’t make it right. When Google first released Glass the debates about the social norms for their use started but never ended because the product really never gained acceptance, these social discussions, and probably laws, will need to restart. For example, I think it is worth serious discussion about whether one should ever be allowed to wear the Vision Pro on a plane, which is a place in which ones attention can mean life or death. Most expect Vision Pro to succeed mostly because it is from Apple, but even Apple is not immune to flops.
So, then, the question is at what price point and for what utility will the Vision Pro gain acceptance? Do you spend $1,000 or more on monitor on you desk? Some do, most do not. I think the price is going to have to be closer to $500 in order to generating real sales. I have no doubt that will happen, just like how 4K desktop monitors are affordable and thus dominant in sales. How long will it take for the price to come down, and might that be too long for the Vision Pro to gain acceptance? Money may be on Apple’s side, but we will see whether time is too.
Parting Ways With Evernote
Today I canceled my subscription and closed by account with Evernote, which most will think a trivial event. People stop using software all the time, except I’ve been using Evernote from the beginning that it first became available for Windows in 2008. In fact, I am pretty sure that I first used a beta version of the product perhaps as early as 2005. At the time it was introduced no company was really developing notetaking software, at least not for Windows. When first introduced the UI of EverNote had the form of a continual scroll of information “flagged” by date, in fact it could be my first experience with the newsfeed/stream UI now commonly used by social networking applications.
The closest resemblance EverNote had to any other product was the UI of the Newton OS that ran on Apple’s Newton Messagepad. The resemblance may have been intentional because EverNote was founded by Stepan Pachikov who with his company Paragraph International, lead the development of the handwriting recognition engine known as CalliGrapher, which was licensed by Apple for use with the Newton OS. EverNote’s resemblance to Newton definitely drew my attention to the product.
Pachikov brought Phil Libin onboard as CEO of Evernote (originally the product name had a capitalized N that was changed to lowercase by 2008) and Libin grew the company and the product into the well recognized, multi-platform product that most people know of it today. In my opinion what made Evernote attractive is that it centrally stored data (perhaps one of the first commercial client/server applications) that is accessible to client applications running on nearly every computing platform that I use. At a time when it was common to see applications that ran only on Mac or Windows, or iOS, Evernote ran any every single one of these platforms.
Of course, developing and then maintaining separate code bases for each platform is daunting, particularly if the application architecture was not explicitly developed for that use, and so over time bugs crept up that caused problems. The relatively fast growth of the product also lead to performance issues, and for some data loss. For me Evernote jumped the shark around 2013 when the company began licensing/selling products with Evernote branding, like socks, that had no relationship to the core product, while there were significant problems with the Evernote app. One year after Libin left Evernote the company stopped selling these products.
It might be said that Evernote began its path of decent soon after Libin left the company in 2015. Key developers started to leave the company and soon there seemed to be yearly rumors of the company going under. While many who I associated with stopped using it, by 2015 I had accumulated seven years of information in the application and I felt the yearly $60 subscription was worth my continued access to that information from all the devices I use. The Evernote web clipper had become my most valued tool of all the software I use and it is still the best browser web clipping application available particularly on mobile devices. Unlike most other apps, sharing to Evernote on iOS and Android captures the entire web page rather than just the link to the page.
So, despite the dismal outlook for the company and the app, I stayed committed to it, but last year it was acquired by Bending Spoons and they changed the subscription cost to $15 per month, which I decided was too expensive in light of what I pay in other software subscriptions. When the rumors of the demise of Evernote started appearing I began testing ways to export my information out of the application and import it into others. Two years ago I exported everything from Evernote to OneNote, which wasn’t perfect but good enough for me to find information should I need to. Last year I found I could also import my Evernote archive into Obsidian, which I completed last fall and from that point stopped storing new information in Evernote.
My yearly subscription with Evernote renews at the end of January, so my deadline to delete my data from Evernote and close my account was this past weekend. Deleting my notes was much more laborious than I would have preferred, as a deleted note is moved to Trash and then one has to empty the Trash in order to completely delete the note and I found that Trash emptying seemed to only handle about 100 notes or so at a time, particularly with the web application. The problem seems to be with the synchronization performance, even the web app syncs data with the browser local storage, and I suspect there is Javasript handling all of the API calls to tell Evernote’s servers to move and delete data.
I am obviously much more brand loyal than most other people, so it’s really a big deal for me personally to stop using a product after having used it for more than ten years. Obviously, my issue is not with the product itself but the subscription cost that most likely is driven by a decreasing number of subscribers. I do expect Evernote to eventually disappear within the next year or two. Going forward I am using Joplin to capture web clippings from Mac and Linux, tolerating the fact that sharing to Joplin with iPad only captures the link and not the web content. I have also started using Archivebox on my home network. I am using end to end encryption with Joplin and using OneDrive as the “hub” for storing/syncing the data in Joplin between my desktops and iPad. Unfortunately the Android version of Joplin does not synchronize well and I gave up even trying to use it on my Pixel 7a.
Football Fun
Yesterday was fun for me as a football fan. I am a life long Green Bay Packer fan and really enjoyed watching the Packers pummel the Dallas Cowboys. The enjoyment not so much because I dislike Dallas but more so because Packer’s performance was so unexpected. Jordan Love had a perfect passer rating in large part because the receivers caught every ball thrown their way. The offensive line did a fantastic job of opening up holes for Aaron Jones to run through, and the defensive secondary had two interceptions and made it hard on Dak and CeeDee. I don’t expect the Packers to have the same success in San Francisco, but they could make the game interesting. My respect for coach Matt LaFleur has gone up tremendously for how the term has performed.
Next came the night cap. I’ve lived in metro Detroit for more than half my life, and when Packers play the Lions, I am all cheesehead, otherwise I am rooting for the Lions to win. Those who have grown up a Lions fan have experienced more downs than ups, which I relate to as a Chicago Cubs fan. (Although my Packers were awful during my childhood and teen years during the 70s and 80s.) So, I really wanted to see the Lions win last night, and they hung on to do it, never trailing in their game. The Lions will have another game this season in Ford Field, and have a good chance to getting in the NFC Championship game.
I’ll just put it out there. If the Lions win and the Packers beat the 49ers then these two NFC North Division foes would play each other in Ford Field for the right to play in the Super Bowl. Possible, but not probable, but on any given day anything can happen.
Personal Computing Continues To Get Real
Back in 2011 when Apple announced the iPad I believed it marked the real beginning of the personal computing era rather than the beginning of the Post-PC Era as was being pronounced at the time. As I argued then, and think it is still the case, we have historically thought of a personal computer as a device that one person uses. In other words, “personal” meant one. My argument back then is that “personal” really should mean what everyone knows it to mean, which is computing specific to you, the user. I imagine personal computing as the mashup of hardware + software + Internet + intelligence.
Today I learned via manton about Rabbit Inc. and a mobile device and operating system it has introduced built around a Large Language Model and what the company calls a Large Action Model to provide a user interface based on natural language processing and execute actions rather than generate text and pictures. I don’t know whether the NLP works as well is demoed, but the demo at least shows exactly how I imagined how personal computing should work. Speech is our primary mode of interaction and typing is really abnormal and frankly unknown to the majority of people in the world.
I think the software is the most important part of what Rabbit Inc. has made, the purpose of the device is to prove the software’s functioning and capability. If it does perform as well as shown, I expect the company and product to be acquired by one of the big tech firms.
Intentional Trusting
This article in The Atlantic, We’ve Been Thinking About America’s Trust Collapse All Wrong by Jedediah Britton-Purdy is very good. Too bad it’s behind a paywall, but worth trying to read. Here is one of the many important points:
Another distinction between personal and political trust that we need to learn involves living with sharp moral disagreement. In our own lives, we may refuse to enter close and lasting relationships with people who, say, disagree with us about questions as fundamental as how we should raise our children or what gender roles mean in our family. (I don’t mean that this is necessarily the right approach, and we may lose something when we cut ourselves off from challenge in this way, but the decision is an intelligible one.) But politics is about coexistence with disagreement around issues as fundamental as these, such as abortion. If we treat moral disagreement as proof of moral badness and as a reason, effectively, to cut off civic as well as personal relationships, then politics is done. Politics is a relationship we cannot escape, for better or worse. We can poison it, though, and confusing it with personal relationships that we can refuse or leave is one way of poisoning it.