Listening to self-aware comedians discuss their personal pasts (a la Maron’s WTF, and also Conan’s podcast) is almost as good as a therapy session.
How the day is going so far
Ordered a BLT. Having not explicitly checked the boxes for “Lettuce” or “Tomato,” when I received my order I was almost incensed: “Hey, I didn’t ask for … oh, wait.”
Found a stray turd in the house. Don’t know when it got there. Pretty sure I know who did it.
We have a 3 year-old who doesn’t like to poop, so holistically, this is a win… but clearly concerned that this happened in secret without being obvious to me for an unknown amount of time.
I may be a little burned out.
The Omni Group is 30 years old.
Jesus.
You know, I kind of think OmniFocus would look better on NeXTSTEP. (I kid, I love their software, but I think on that one front I’ve settled on Things.)
I did have the pleasure of running OmniWeb on a rescued NeXTcube … nearly a decade after the machine was made and a half decade after OmniWeb first came out.
Currently reading: Down and Out in Paradise by Charles Leerhsen 📚
I put in Lincoln in the Bardo on the back burner, and ripped through almost all of this over the weekend. I’ve got my qualms with it, but not with the idea of sandblasting the hagiography of Bourdain.
Finished reading: The Magic Kingdom by Russell Banks 📚
Hell of a story, inspired by a true one. And one with over- and undertones I could identify with too.
Currently reading: The Magic Kingdom by Russell Banks 📚
A hard decision made, and just the hope of a new focus (coming around the corner), regardless of the challenges, has innate interests that have been dormant for a few years sprouting signs of life.
I think I’m doing the right thing.
Appreciating, as I think I have nearly every year since it began, the “State of the World” thread on the Well, from Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky.
Kevin McCarthy’s expression when he got the gavel reminded me of my 3-year-old’s reveling when I capitulate over allowing him a too-early or too-late sweet.
Ready to head back to the woods now.
The last Twitter lockout I remember is when the FBI seized the servers running predecessor code right out of Rackspace’s racks in 2004 😉(Indymedia and Cryptome were implicated/affected too).
Was never wed to Twitter, even before the drama that made me grateful to be here too—but the 2FA drama is enough to invest in more Mastadon subscriptions to make my feed here more relevant and informative.
If it weren’t for the occasional Aeon Magazine article I half-grok & whatever-the-fuck Meta & the web3 bros are doing that seems like they’ve read dystopian scifi as a manual, I’d consider the show based William Gibson’s The Peripheral a nice distraction. Enjoying it in spite of that.
All the local broadcast weather reports I heard the past couple of days celebrated the 10 degrees (Fahrenheit) warmer than normal temperatures. Which was depressing. Currently put it in real context.
"Mapping the most influential Twitter accounts during COP26"
At a quick glance, this seems to imply a reinforcement of a disparity I’ve perceived my entire life across all convenings of power I’ve become aware of: the popular and factually correct voices are effectively paid lip service and empty tribute, if not entirely ignored, by a small set of people with even less popular influence but far more official power (and responsibility).
Not feeling optimistic about COP27.
We’ve not really figured out printing, calendaring or email… what makes anyone think we’ve got the rest of this figured out is beyond me.
Suffering the Ed Sullivans and still failing at recovering some lost productivity on a Sunday night. But my desk is clean now.
Monday gonna Monday.
The problem with … bullshit jobs
Gave The Problem With Jon Stewart another chance this week. The Taxes episode was a classic redux of a fairly fundamental (and dare I say, potentially very non-partisan) analysis of an unresponsive government and corruption. It also came off like a validation of David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs.
I keep placing my coffee mug on my wireless induction charging pad, as if it were a coaster. ☕️🪫
Not the most artful shot, but an accurate representation of “a day in the life” common event — a low-flying military helicopter over Capitol Hill, Washington, DC. October 14, 08:56 ET.
Currently reading: The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow 📚
I first encountered Graeber (¡Presente!) on an Indymedia livestream giving an interview or speaking at a teach-in during a convergence to protest WTO or WEF. Something like that. Pre-9/11 revolutionary optimism on my part.
Catching-up with The Handmaid’s Tale and the end of Season 4, where Zoom gets a mention. This, for me, only makes the current reality, still dominated by Zoom and its competitors, feel like a continued dystopia.
The Browser Wars may be over, but ...
… the fiefdoms remain.
There doesn’t seem to be a combination of browser extensions that gives me the combination of features I want, in the experience I want, to have some parity across the multiple browsers I use every day.
The shortlist (this is not all-inclusive) might be:
- Safari’s “merge all windows”
- Safari’s “arrange tabs by web site” (or alphabetically by title)
- Chrome’s tab groups (Safari’s groups are closest, But I like the in-tab-bar experience a little better)
- Syncing of groups across instances/platforms on that browser (Safari does it best, I want the same experience on Chrome, Firefox)
- Firefox’s containers
I haven’t yet reached (or appreciated?) the level of enlightenment where this doesn’t have a massive depressing effect on me. I am also not very skeptical.
Just trying to figure out if I need to really be more zen or subscribe to Free Will Illusionism, or hope for more meaningful quantum randomness as my “religion” or spirituality.