Is it a good thing that more and more citizens, as a consequence of 401ks and easier accessibility (Robinhood) are capitalists? I am skeptical because it feels to me more like assimilation by corporations resulting in people in rural areas voting against their true interests.
It seems to me that in many ways the current Apple culture is similar to the culture that famous 1984 commercial claimed it was against. Ironic. Tyranny of the big company.
Oh, Aaron Burr, sir., you did so much damage because you could not see…source
In 1806, on the advice of Vice President Aaron Burr (who thought it redundant), the Senate dropped the “previous question” — a motion to end debate and bring an item up for immediate vote — from its rules. Without a motion to call the previous question, however, an individual senator could, in theory, hold the floor indefinitely.
Fresh snow fall can make one wonder what the heck goes on outside at night. Note we do not have a dog or cat, but we do have a sump pump.
Home Computer Repairs
Given the number of Raspberry Pis I have, you might get the impression that I am a maker, but I am not. I’ve just been enamored by these small, inexpensive single board computers. The closest I’ve come so far to a real project is what I call my desk clock, which is a Pi installed behind a five inch monitor that displays Chromium kiosk mode with a screen I configure using Dakboard.
I originally built the desk clock using a Raspberry Pi 2 that stopped working a few weeks ago. This past weekend tried to troubleshoot the problem. First I built a new SD card and it seemed to boot fine, but after a few more tests I found that the USB WiFi dongle was not reliably connecting to the home network, so I decided to re-purpose a Pi 3 that was on my desk for the desk clock.
To retain the backup and archive functions that Pi 3 was performing, I moved it’s SD card to a Pi 3b+ and then built a new SD card for the desk clock, except this time I cheated by using a pre-built image that dakboard provides.
The net result is that I now have one less Raspberry Pi sitting on my desk. Last night as I was putting things away I found another Pi 3 I already had been storing, which if I had known about would have simplified things, but not resulted in one less Pi on my desk.
For a summary of my Raspberry Pis, expand the Every Day Tech branch of my Technology outline.
There are currently 34 national emergencies, the oldest dating from November, 1979.
Pretty snow came down overnight.
Just found that Pocket also removed the copy link from the sharing option in the web app. I am beginning to think that I need to start considering other reading options. I could revert back to Instaper, but had grown frustrated with it’s lack of development.
While I am venting about Pocket, I have a feature request. Provide readers the option that when they are reading an article and then archive that the next article in the list is loaded rather than returning me to the list. The current process really slows down the reading flow for me.
Think US Evangelicals Are Dying Out? Well, Define Evangelicalism source
Religious evangelicals may look at these numbers and think, “This is not what the term evangelical means.” The assumption is that the term describes those who place high value on the teachings of the Bible and strive to evangelize other people into their faith. However, that understanding of the term seems to be fading, replaced with a more amorphous concept that melds together religious doctrine and an affinity for conservative politics that experts are only beginning to understand now.
The above is a bug, not a feature. One can argue that the assimilation of Christianity into the Roman Empire in 313 huge negative consequences on Christianity, and it probably was not good for empire either.
Secular power always, always, seeks to consolidate power with religion.
I rely heavily on Pocket for my reading workflow because when I find an article in my RSS feeds that I want to read I send it to Pocket. Yesterday the web version of Pocket got an update and it broke the keyboard shortcuts, and I am finding that incredibly frustrating. It’s a failure of regression testing, and frankly not acceptable for a commercial software product.
Amazon sells this home test kit:
For $110!
I don’t get the newsletter craze. I guess it’s just all about making money.
First walk in snow fall this year.
I’ve come across a very comprehensive spreadsheet of SARS-COV-2 and COVID-19 links to information.
Engadget reports that the price on Amazon for the iPad Magic keyboard is $200, which I think makes it easier to recommend. For me, the keyboard is critical to how I use my iPad Air.
The Internet is not a public square. It’s been owned by corporations since the mid 90s. People now want the corporations to act like a public entity but capitalism doesn’t work that way. The genie has been out of the bottle for a long time, and there is no way to put her back in.
Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb
Vogue has a great interview of Amanda from before the inaugaration.
Be Careful What You Ask For
What’s ironic is that every person arrested for the insurrection on the U.S. Capital on January 6, 2021 will expect, and demand, that everyone provide, the presumption of innocence, which requires the accuser to prove by providing evidence in court that the accused commited a crime. Yet, these people wanted state legislatures, the Supreme Court, or Congress to nullify the election results based on their accusuation of voter fraud.
The point being, the people storming the Capital really weren’t defending the Constitution nor do they really want to live in the world they think they are fighting for. Presumption of innocence means they have the possibility of not being put in jail by a force greater than themselves and that same presumption of innocence might be the only thing that saved the Republic, this time.
It is scary to me that the future of democracy in the United States is almost entirely in Republican hands because I am not certain a majority of Republicans want democracy.