My translation of this article about the Cubs closer role woes is that it is that it describes the obvious result of Hoyer constantly trying to build a bullpen by dumpster diving through other team's castoffs. #
Of course, the Obvious Guys have already got their shirts designed for Chicago's claim on the new pope. #
An American Pope? Never expected to see the day. One of my best friends is excited that he is from Chicago and apparently a Cubs fan and they both got their Masters of Divinity from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. I even spent a few nights at CTU the first time I ever traveled to Chicago on my own while my friend was still in school. The real important question though is the new Pope a fan of deep dish or thin crust pizza? #
We have had technical difficulties with this blog today. Looks like the OPML file somehow became mal-formed by a square bracket added to the end of the file. I downloaded my files, opened blog.opml and removed the extra character. I had to delete blog.opml from Drummer, recreate it and then import an OPML from a local file. #
When you import a local file it appears that the OPML headers are not included in the import, so I manually added each header individually and then tested to confirm the blog builds.#
The moral of the story is that it is really important to regularly download your files from Drummer. Fortunately I could download the current blog.opml file and correct it. #
I watched an interview today with economist Yanis Varoufakis about Trump's tariffs. He thinks that the actions and purpose are equivalent to the Nixon shock of 1971 that eliminated the convertibility of the U.S. dollar to gold resulting in the U.S. dollar becoming a fiat currency. In short, the dollar changed from representing something tangible to representing the good faith of the United States, but that also enables the Federal Reserve to print as much currency as it wishes. #
The action created a floating exchange between the dollar and other currencies and it made the U.S. dollar the global reserve currency. As the global reserve currency the dollar is what is used by most countries in the world when buying goods and services with other countries, and it is what provides the U.S. with economic power over other countries in the world. Shutting off the flow of U.S. dollars to a country impacts that country's ability to trade with other countries.#
The action also decreased the value of the dollar and that resulted in an increase in the flow of capital in to the United States from other countries, but that increased flow also increased inflation and did not result in more jobs. Varoufakis says that Trumps actions have increased the flow of capital in to the United States but that is translated to rent-seeking rather than job growth.#
In other words, it is a scheme created by bankers for the wealthy to become wealthier and address a risk of United States losing economic power over other countries in the world under the claims increasing jobs for the middle-class. Nixon's actions and subsequent actions take by every President since has destroyed the middle-class in the United States. #
Read this Op-ed in the New York Times that I think correctly describes the reasons behind Project 2025 and what the Trump administration is doing. I think it can be summarized is that a group of people who think they are smart have deemed the republican democracy instituted by the U.S. Constitution is inefficient and that the only efficient form of government is a dictatorship. Democracy is inefficient by design to prevent tyranny. The problem the smart people don't seem to address is, what happens when they no longer like the person they elevate to the supreme presidency? Or worse, what happens to you when that supreme president no longer likes you? #
What ties together these thinkers? A conviction that executive governance combines maximal leeway to act with maximal power to execute decisions without second-guessing from civil servants or lawyers or deference to judges.#
The great danger of such a breathtakingly expansive view of executive power is that it threatens to transform the American presidency into a dictatorial office that disregards the separation of powers and seeks unchallenged primacy in its place.#
The problem is, the genie is already out of the bottle. How does Congress or the U.S. Supreme Court able to reign in President Trump and his handlers? Congress can start by passing a joint resolution that ends the states of emergency as per the 1976 National Emergencies Act and override the president's veto. #
I really like my Boox Note Air 3C but I also find it a bit large, which is why I am interested in a new e-Ink tablet announced by Boox, the Go 7 that has a 7-inch screen. The problem is that the Go 7 uses a different stylus that they are charging an extra $47 for it, but what I am most concerned about is whether it feels like a the "glass on glass" of the Apple Pencil and iPad as opposed to the paper like feel of using the EMR pencil on my Note Air. Besides the Go 7 being much smaller and thus could be more handy to carry around, it only costs $249.#
I think that one thing that can explain much about the United States right now is unresolved corporate trauma that has built up over years and manifests in fear, distrust, and anger with the government. The trauma started with the assignations of John F Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr, spread significantly by the war in Vietnam, the war on drugs in the United States and to date culminated on 9/11 it's on follow wars. Gen X and subsequent generations grew up in the stew of these traumas while the Baby Boomers were the first affected and the first to react. You could say there is a line between those taking advantage of the trauma and those trapped by the trauma. #
Looks like Real ID is not proof of citizenship nor is a drivers license. Do you carry a passport with you everywhere? #
Read this report saying that Comcast is losing TV and broadband customers and I am not surprised. I am both a TV and broadband customer but don't think Comcast is doing much to keep my business. One way they could do that is by dropping their broadband data cap or at the very least increase it by 2x. We learned during Covid that there really is not a cost impact to Comcast from increased consumer downloads.#
I need to improve my ability to monitor network traffic on my home network, particularly traffic going out/coming in from the Internet because I seem be bumping up against Xfinity's bandwidth cap. We went over this month and I think that was due to some sync with Onedrive that went wrong with a couple of my virtual machines. #
By most reports the Chicago Cubs wrapped up their toughest two weeks of the schedule last night and enter the first series against divisional opponent Pittsburgh with a 17-12 overall record and a 1.5 game lead in the N.L. Central. In short, they exceeded expectations. However, for me, the upcoming month against lesser opponents will be more telling. Will the Cubs play down to their competition, which has been a problem in the past, and end May with just a few games above .500 or will they extend their overall record to well above .500 by dominating the lesser opponents? Good teams beat the teams they are supposed to beat, and they are supposed to beat Pittsburgh so I am looking for a sweep or at least win the first two for a chance to sweep.#Polls of public opinion matter to people who hold office if they believe that the public can and will remove them from office. Trump and the people directing his administration are not acting as though the fear they can lose their office. Given they are obvious in their disregard for the Constitution I expect some justification will come to delay or cancel elections, or the rules will be such that only their supporters can vote.#
I have done more experimentation with Wordland today. The template that I am using on my Wordpress site requires titles for posts because it uses the title as the link to the post. The top page is only an index to posts and doesn't display of the post content. One can make the template use the date as a link to the post. I am surprised that Wordland requires publshing posts to Wordpress before adding to the RSS feed, it would seem to me that publishing to Wordpress would be optional but that by default everything that one saves is added to the RSS feed. I would expect Wordland to first and foremost be a simple way to build and maintain a RSS feed apart from publishing to any destination because that would provide for the ultimate flexibility. It could even be used apart from Wordpress. In short, unless I change the template writing posts without titles in Wordland is pointless to me.#
I read this post about the desktop computing metaphor and when I read the description of an itemized operating system my experience with the NewtonOS immediately came to mind. What I remember is that everything in NewtonOS was an object and data was separate from objects so that you didn't need duplicate data. I am probably not doing the topic justice, but I do believe NewtonOS was the only "object oriented" operating system that I have ever personally used. Regardless, I really would like what is being described in the post because I agree that the desktop and window metaphor is no longer the best way for us to do personal computing.#
Today Dave Farquhar wrote about the first computer I personally ever owned, the Timex Sinclair 1000. Dave includes a link to this post written by a guy who is reviving and upgrading a TS 1000. For a glimpse of what it was like to use this computer, look at the second to last picture on this page that shows the display of a game called Dungeon Crawling. One of the"official" games that one could buy was Frogger, which my buddy Ray renamed Wood Tick once he saw how huge the flattened frog became when "hit' by an object. This post triggered the selection of my Crucial Track for today.#
Jason has released his app, Crucial Tracks, which is a web app for journaling about music. The app is an add-on to his Crucial Tracks blog. I have signed up to create my own profile and RSS feed that you can subscribe to, or see my entries on my micro.blog or Bluesky profiles.#
If citizens endorse the idea that people named by authorities as "criminals" or "terrorists" have no right to due process, then they are accepting that they themselves have no right to due process. It is due process, and due process alone, that allows you to demonstrate that you are a citizen. Without it, the masked men in the black vans can simply claim that you are a foreign terrorist and disappear you. -- Tim Snyder#
Another way to say the above is, innocent until proven guilty. It is the obligation of the state to prove a person's guilt, not the obligation of a person to prove their innocence, and this applies to citizens and non-citizens.#
- Dave elaborates on what he means by inbound RSS. In my experience micro.blog is the only site that enables this in a couple of different ways. You can either have items from inbound RSS feeds appear in your timeline or to import posts from a feed to your blog. The import is intended to be a one time activity and not something that happens in an ongoing manner, so it doesn't meet Dave's use case.#
- In a roundabout way I have been using inbound RSS for some time by using If This Then That. Posts that I publish to my main blog get cross-posted to a Wordpress site, which I created back in 2008 as a replacement to the blog I first created using EditThisPage. The IFTTT applet monitors the RSS feed of my blog and when it finds a new entry it posts that to my Wordpress site. #
- Here is an example. At the bottom of the post you see the source citation, "from Routine Revelations" along with the link to the source. A problem I had when I set this up is that Wordpress requires titles for all blog posts whereas my main blog doesn't require titles, such as was the case with the source post to above example. The work around is to automatically create a title using the date and time as a unique identifier.#
- When I first started using IFTTT I had applets monitoring my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts and also cross posting this to the Wordpress site. My idea is that the site would be an archive of all of my posts across all these sites. Here is an example from Facebook. and here is an example from Twitter. If you look at the archive page from September 2020 you see a mix of blog posts and tweets and you even see some articles I favorited and shared from Pocket. Over time the social media accounts disabled the API that IFTTT to block this functionality and thus I lost this functionality. Now that Bluesky provides outbound RSS I could set up IFTTT monitoring of it but in practice I only cross post to Bluesky from my main blog, so monitoring Bluesky would be redundant. #
- My point is that a practical use case for inbound and outbound RSS is the consolidation and archival of one's Internet posts across multiple source locations.#
When we are left to having to scrape up a few micro controllers to cobble together a computer, there will be Collapse OS. #
Today is Pixel 9a day, I see a number of reviews that have been posted and I received an email from Google telling me I can go purchase my own. #
- A MLB team cannot win their division in April, but they can lose it. Going in to the middle of April we are seeing positive results from the Chicago Cubs, although they suffered the first set back of the season when Justin Steele was put on the 15 day IL. Right now they are at the top of the NL Central with a half game lead but that doesn't matter as much as the +28 run differential that is the best in the league. The runs they scored during this last home stand in cold April weather is a very positive sign.#
- On Friday the Cubs start a 6 game road trip in Los Angeles and then San Diego, and I think these games are a good early test for the Cubs. I want to see them win at least two games in LA and win one in San Diego. The Dodgers have actually fallen back to earth going 6-4 over the last ten while the Padres has jumped up to the top of the NL West over the Dodgers and Giants. I will feel good about a split on this road trip. #
The most honest explanation for Trump’s actions are: He is insane. He suffers from a number of pathologies. That is fairly clear. The more important question is: How has this insane man managed to gain control of the government of the world’s richest and most powerful nation? That, my friends, is the unfortunate outcome of an economic system that has so profoundly failed to enforce economic equality, and a political system that so profoundly failed to protect its democracy from the influence of capital that it allowed itself to be totally captured by extreme lunatics backed by extreme wealth. And here we are. The whole thing is most notable for its absurdity. If it’s any consolation, all the capitalists who led us down this road are going to lose a shitload of money. Ha ha, fuckers.#
- Without due process, a claim of guilt is simply one man's word over another. Without due process we are simply being asked to believe the claims that the humans they labeled as terrorists and thus deserving of deportation and imprisonment are in fact deserving of that label and loss of liberty. Due process is how governments insure that the right to liberty endowed by our creator is preserved. #
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. -- Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
#- The Declaration Of Independence is important because it defines the values of the United States of America. It says the rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness is not only secured for citizens but for all people because we all have the same creator. Due process for everyone is how we live out our values in the United States and denying that to anyone makes us hypocrites at best.#
One of the reasons why I bought the Macbook Pro last fall is that I anticipated prices will increase with Trump entering office. I sold some of stock to make the purchase, and I now realize that was a second good reason for the timing as that pool of stock has less value today. Thanks Trump!#
I am wondering today about the price of things that I eat every day, blueberries, yogurt, bread, and my fondness for guacamole. I've seen was the tariffs are doing to my retirement savings, but I have yet to see it impact my daily life, but that will happen soon! Thanks Trump!#
- I am using a Boox Note Air 3C as my primary notetaking tablet and I am using a daily organizer PDF. For the past year I have been using an app called NeoReader to open the PDF that I then annotate with my handwriting, and that has worked very well. However, a shortcoming of annotating a PDF on this device is that I cannot search for that handwriting, to find something I basically have to recall the date on which I wrote something and go to that page. The cool thing about the PDF is that it's a very robust template and includes hyperlinks to move throughout the file, which makes it function more like an app than a document.#
- The latest version of the Boox firmware for the Note Air 3C adds the ability to create notebooks using a PDF as a template. After upgrading my Note Air 3C to this version of the firmware I created a new notebook using the daily organizer PDF and I found that the linking function exists in the notebook. The benefit of using a notebook is that I can search for handwriting, which makes it much easier to find something. Prior to using the Note Air 3C I had been using OneNote on an iPad that also supports search of handwriting, so I have missed this feature.#
- Boox notebooks are backed up to PDF files that I have configured to sync with my OneDrive account and I also use SyncThing to sync copies to file shares on computers on my home network. The problem is, the links are not preserved in the backup files, which are an export of the notebook, so navigation through the backup files is not as easy as with the annotated versions of the PDF that I had been using. I also cannot search for handwriting in the backup files.#
- If I had a way to perform a type of OCR indexing of the annotated PDFs so that I could do searches on a PC I probably would stick with that approach, using NeoReader, rather than using the original PDF as a template for a notebook. #
It is a cold and damp day here in southeast Michigan, which has me wishing to be back in Phoenix watching the Cubs during spring training.#While the header graphic is not what I normally think of as spring, I did take it in spring while in Phoenix, and I might keep that one there all summer!#
Happy April 2! I need to get the top graphic on this page changed over to something not winter. #
America started developing tunnel vision during the 90s and I think our current state in which the ends is only the destruction of the now is the logical conclusion. Really what we are living through is the beginning of the fall of the American Empire that rose in place starting on August 6, 1945. Washington D.C. is being sacked while most of the nation cheers because the empire has been only serving a minority of citizens. Unfortunately, our tunnel vision prevents us from even considering what might come next.#
Clearly, we did not learn the right lessons from Trump 1.0. The establishment convinced itself it only lost due to Hilary's failure rather than face the message that nearly half the country find the U.S. government beyond redemption, that it needs to be complete destroyed. #
Really enjoyed this post by Dave Rogers: Our Tools Shape Us. I've been using Roam but I am in the process of transitioning fully to Obsidian, although if I am honest what I use most is Drummer, which makes me think that if I ever had used Think Tank I would have loved it. #
I have updated and completed the outline of the books that I read in 2024 and updated its inclusion in the larger total books read since 2020.#
I am not sure that it's really useful, but gone ahead and enabled the Linux Terminal in Android. I created and edited a text file using nano and pinged my home gateway. It's going to be interesting to see uses people come up with for this. #
Lawfar Media has an article about whether the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution applies to Musk. I wish a broader question would be asked. If the founders thought a quid pro quo relationship with U.S officials were bad, why is that relationship worse with foreign states than domestically? In my opinion, these domestic relationships, which include lobbying, are equally bad. Given how much money it takes to win an office, the dependency and consequences are worse! Of course, one cannot have this discussion with fundamentalists.#
Today is the first day of the NCAA men's basketball tournament and the first time I have been able to use the new Xfinity set top box for watching this type of sporting event in which multiple games are occurring at the same time. I am using Xfinity's Sports Zone app and it helps, but I really wish it would provide a way to show multiple games simultaneously like I can with the ESPN app. Looks like this might be possible in some areas but this multiview function doesn't work for me.#
I am pretty sure my Xfinity "cable TV" is actually Internet streaming via this set top rather "traditional" cable TV signal. I see too many occurrences of what I think is buffering that I never saw with traditional cable TV. I got this set top box because the prior one died and while it adds new features it is really slow. #
Google has announced the Pixel 9a, shipping in April. Looks like I can get $165 for trade-in on my Pixel 7a that is two years old. What I am wondering about is whether the there are any new features that I want that I can't have on the 7a. #
What makes liberty, which I define as personal autonomy, real in America are two fundamental things:
When one is accused of a crime they are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Whether one is guilty of a crime needs to be proven by the state beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of one's peers, or a judge if the accused prefers.
We usually refer to these two items as due process and without it there is no liberty. Further, in our Declaration of Independence we stated that all people, not just U.S. Citizens, are endowed by their creator the right to liberty. Liberty is not provided by the state, it is inherent to who we are as humans. Further, we declared that we create governments for the purposes of preserving these rights.
What are crimes is defined by laws. With the aim of protecting our liberty from individuals and groups who would take it away, which we declared is the purpose of government, our founders created a government that rules by laws, laws written and passed by legislatures made up of people who are voted in to office by citizens to be their representative. This is our form of self government that made America unique in the world at it's founding, and I do not understand how anyone can honestly say the words "Make America Great Again" without accepting and respecting this fundamental tenant.
When one talks about the rule of law they are talking about how people in the United States are ruled. Neither the President nor Congress rule in the United States, the laws are what rule us, and if this rule of law is not respected and upheld by our government the United States of America no longer exists as defined by the U.S. Constitution.
All members of Congress, the President, the Vice President, and Supreme Court Justices take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. Not respecting, acknowledging or binding oneself to due process and the rule of law is a violation of that oath, which should be an impeachable offense.
I think it is funny that when I first heard about Apple Intelligence, and in particular the plans for a "smarter Siri," my reaction is that if true that is something that could cause me to switch to an iPhone. A year later it appears that presentation was all vaporware and that is creating a kerfuffle.#
Looks like the battery optimization of my Pixel 7a is now re-calibrated so that charging stops at 80%. It looks like after ever monthly update the charge optimization will re-calibrate, which requires the phone to be charged to 100%. #
I don't think the majority of the human species has learned well the lessons of World War II. The fundamental lessons of World War II is that humanity has the willingness and the capability to destroy itself. In other words, humanity can, and without the required maturity will, cause it's own extinction. The United States emphatically demonstrated this in dropping nuclear bombs on Japan. For most of my life we have lived in the fear of this knowledge, aka the fear of nuclear war, but we have not really learned the lessons about how we need to change. Wars and weapons of war are rooted in fear. Greed is really driven by fear. I think that fear is driven by seeing ourselves as apart from the other, which I think is the point of the story in Genesis 3.#
Android Authority has the information about what is happening with the Android charging optimization. Occasionally the phone will charge to 100% to calibrate and need to keep it on charger for a while until you see a shield indicating calibration is complete.#
I've written a few posts using Wordland, just to check it out. I have three Wordpress sites that I have not been maintaining due to lack of time and energy, but one of those sites was my primary blog for many years and I cross p ost what I publish on micro.blog to it as a form of backup. Back when I could and wanted to, I consolidated all my posting, including Twitter and Facebook on to that site as a "one stop shop." Found out that there is a separate Wordland RSS feed that keeps what I write using it separate from everything else on that Wordpress site. You will find it here. #
Happy St. Patrick's day! Weather in March is such a Michigan thing. One day you can have temps in the 70s and the next day the temps are in the 30s and it is snowing. Winter does not go away without a fight, but it will lose! #
This Carnegie Mellon paper on polarization in America is long, so I uploaded a PDF copy to Google Notebook for summarization and further interaction in the future.#
I restarted my Pixel 7a due to the latest monthly update being pushed to my phone and once again it seems that the Charging Optimization setting to stop charging at 80% is either reset or overlooked. I have gone in to settings, turned off charging optimization, and then turned it back on, which seemed to "fix" the problem last month.#