As I imagined it would be.
Finished reading: The Entity Game by Lisa Shearin 📚
I personally use tablet computers and generally promote their use. During the last couple of years I have mostly used e-Ink tablets because of their emphasis on reading and writing, which are my primary use cases. I find that writing things down by hand helps me to remember and to focus on a given topic. Vojislav Dimigtrijevc has produced a video on YouTube that provides a wonderful overview of how e-Ink tablets combine analog and digital processes, and because of that I think the video is a wonderful explainer of benefits of these type of tablets.
In 2010 I wrote this in reaction to the first iPad announcement. It really didn’t age well.
For myself, I am waiting to learn more about the HP Slate, which HP and Microsoft announced at CES. From what I can tell, it will run Windows 7 that supports touch input, however, what I really want is a slate that supports both touch and stylus (digitizer) input because I want to write notes in digital ink and store them in Evernote.
In an essay that I wrote in 2010 titled The iPhone Way, I ended with the following. Although then I was talking about Apple, what I describe has expanded to multiple companies in an apparent “soft” conglomerate headed by the Executive.
I find myself living in a time when people are willing to give up control (see education in the U.S.) and freedom (see airport security) because it makes their lives easier and safer. However, by allowing other people to make decisions for you, which giving control to others is really about, is giving up freedom. When one company controls the means of how you get information, will they allow access to any information that company does not want you to see?
People who are captivated by the Apple ecosystem ought to be concerned about how cozy Tim Cook has been with the Trump regime.
Empire Falling
It can be said that much of our problems today started with what the United States did after World War II. I remember in high school history being told that the U.S. decided after WWII that it couldn’t return to it’s isolationist past, what the history teacher did not teach is how the U.S. became an empire. Today our consumption economy depends on the low cost of goods made outside the U.S., and reason why that cost is low depends on the overvalued U.S. dollar. The dollar is overvalued because it is needed by countries for trade.
Empires don’t last forever. Life in the United States is going to be very different in the future, and I fear it will be painful because Americans have been living off the privilege of this empire for so long they don’t even know how or why.
I strongly suspect that people in power, the political backers, the corporate CEOs, and the people whom they helped elect into office all know how bad things are going to get, which is why they are working so hard to get U.S. citizens fighting amongst ourselves and blaming anybody but those in power. In my opinion, this is what Trump’s efforts around crypto are truly all about.
In what world does having U.S. ICE participating in security for the Olympics in another country make sense? An obvious issue with ICE is that it’s scope and authority is way too broad.
Accountability
Turns out that when you arm a group of men who has no accountability, and the people who do the arming have no accountability, you get anarchy. The first rule of supremacy is there is no accountability of the ruling class, just appeasement. The Supreme Court institutionalized our current state in declaring Presidents have “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.” In other words, the President is above the law.
I am sure SCOTUS would say that Presidents are accountable to Congress who can impeach them and ultimately to the citizens who cannot vote for them. These are a form of accountability, but I ask, is an act that can only occur three years in to the future truly accountability? Seems to me that for true accountability it must occur in time of closer proximity to the event at which they are to be held accountable, which I would think is the purpose of criminal courts!
To really fix what is wrong in the United States there needs to be an overturn of several Supreme Court rulings through additional amendments to the Constitution.
So far we’ve got about 2 inches of snow from this big snowstorm.
Richard Rohr, The Naked Now
The most amazing fact about Jesus, unlike almost any other religious founder, is that he found God in disorder and imperfection — and told us that we must do the same or we would never be content on this earth.