Dave has made a cryptic reference to a new Mac outlining app that interops with Drummer, but does not link to the app. I think the app being referenced is called Bike, I saw a reference to it via MacStories. #

Decided to do some testing between Bike, Electric Drummer, and Drummer. You can read my testing notes.#

One thing I can confirm is that Bike does not retain any of the header variables that Electric Drummer adds to the OPML. It reads the body of the OPML file and when it saves it writes back out a new file in its entirety with only a meta tag in the head. I also note that the outline entries have their IDs in a different location than where they are placed via Electric Drummer. I am assuming that Bike is ignoring the header variables in the file and writing the OPML out in a vanilla format. It looks like Electric Drummer, and I assume the same is true for Drummer, has a slightly different OPML format that includes headers understandable to it. Consequently, there is not clean Interop between Bike and Drummer. Is this really the app Dave was referring to? #

I think that by default Bike should read the OPML header entries that exist in the OPML file, retain them, and write them back out on the file same to preserve roundtripping/interop of the file between itself and other programs that can edit OPML files. I don't know the OPML spec to know whether there is a rule for how to treat header variables.#

In a perfect world, the point in the draft SCOTUS decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade that the decision should not be made by the courts, makes sense. Except, we don't live in a perfect world and legislatures of the United States no longer work under the "originalist" intent because they have been corrupted by money that the Citizens United decision allows. Here you have high and mighty Supreme Court Justices, accountable to nobody and seemingly unwilling to accept the reality they created, wanting to live in a fantasy in which we have an actual functioning Congress and State legislatures that actually govern, but they broke the very process by which they claim decisions like the right of women to have control over their body should use.#

It's the blatant hypocrisy that is destroying the credibility of the Supreme Court, and it is near impossible to have respect for such an institution. #

Further, I have a real problem with Alito's statement that I don't have a right to privacy, specifically meaning the right to decide what happens to my body. To me, personal autonomy/privacy or control over my body is the very definition of liberty. A government that dictates that a woman must not take birth control, must not terminate a fetus even if it is not viable, or compels men to have vasectomies or be circumcised is the very definition of tyranny, it is certainly not freedom! #

The Declaration of Independence states we have certain unalienable Rights, and that among them (and not exclusive to) are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. In the below context, which the "originalists" claim to work from, I don't know how personal autonomy, which we are calling privacy, is NOT an unalienable right. It is absolutely fundamental to Liberty and frankly to most people it is fundamental to the pursuit of Happiness. #

No matter your personal and religious opinion, and let's be honest, you can't make the argument of life beginning at conception without using beliefs and religion, you should have a real problem with how SCOTUS intends to overturn Roe v. Wade. The draft decision if final means that the U.S. government and states can force women carry a fetus to term no matter the circumstances including whether it puts that women's life a risk, and it also means the U.S. government and states can force men and women, you, to be vaccinated, wear masks, have a vasectomy, be circumcised, or any other thing which the government may deem necessary. #

Under Roe v. Wade as it currently stands no women is compelled to have an abortion. If a woman disagrees with abortion, they have every right to carry a baby to term and give birth. Stated differently, as it currently stands, liberty remains. The SCOTUS decision will remove liberty, it forces a woman to do something she may not want to do, and it takes us another step further along in that section of the Declaration of Independence that states: "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."#

The Roe v. Wade did not create a new law. As I see it, at the time the Supreme Court was asked to determine whether personal autonomy over one's body which they called privacy, was an "unalienable" or "natural" right because the Bill of Rights does not, nor was it ever intended, to enumerate every possible right that a citizen of the United States has. I don't know how any reasonable person can argue that personal autonomy is NOT a natural right because it is the very definition of liberty. As I see it, Roe v. Wade was the right decision based on the original context of the Declaration because it affirms that context. Roe v. Wade didn't create a new right, it affirmed a fundamental, natural right of everybody, no matter gender and race. #

This does not describe a Christian nation. Note that there never has been a Christian nation, just empires that use Christianity to maintain power and accumulate wealth. The story of Israel in the Old Testament is a story of the idolatry of God as fusion of the state (empire) and religion, which lead Israel into exile in Babylon, and then upon return ultimately lead to the destruction of the second temple and Jerusalem. The idolatry lead to the crucifixion of Jesus, the anointed. #

The good news of Jesus, summarized in the phrase the "kingdom of God," is that people do not need the idol, because God seeks relationship with us, through Christ. Yet, far too many Christians prefer to worship the idol rather than the real thing, and thus continue missing the mark, and are unwhole, imperfect, and continue chasing peace by violence (Pax Romana).#

Jesus taught that it is not that which goes in to the body that defiles, but it is what comes out, by which I understand to mean how we treat each other. Take this teaching forward to how Jesus responded to whether one ought to pay taxes to Caesar, the often translated "render onto Caesar what is Casesar's" and I get the message that it matters less what the laws of the state or empire say and it matters more about how I love my neighbor, which is how I love God.#

I think Dave is touching on something very important here when he writes about how little we know about history. I've heard it said that there is nothing that Americans hate more than being told that they are racist. I understand and agree when a white man or woman says they were not alive prior to the civil war and nor were alive during the Civil Rights protests so they are not to blame for the past, and hence to simply say they are racists is not fair. What I do think is fair to blame most white Americans for not knowing the actual history of the United States. Some of us, but not all, are in fact very privileged. I know that due to where I was born and the color of my skin I had advantages other people did not have. I am grateful for those advantages, humbled by them and wish rather than they being advantages they were the norm. #

I find it laughable that any Republican says that SCOTUS will not overturn other past decisions like gay marriage. Bear in mind that every current justice on the court when asked during their confirmation hearings questions relating to overturning Roe v. Wade and past decisions either avoided the topic, or said what everyone wanted to hear, which is that they are decided law. These folks were at best insincere or at worse flat out lied. The point is, we know the agenda that Republicans have been acting on for fifty years there is no reason to believe anything otherwise, which is why most of the fault of Roe being overturned is at the feet of Democrats and RBG because they had it in their power to prevent this situation from happening and chose to not doing anything. #

So called pro-choice Republicans who chose to accept what they wanted to hear from SCOTUS nominees are not now in the position of claiming the nominees are being inconsistent with what they said. You knew what they told you in your office is not binding and you know who selected them and why, it should not matter what they said to you because you made the decision to vote for them knowing the full context of why they were nominated. #

One ought to ask, why is it that Republican conservatism and the Christian Right is aligned with Putin and Russian Orthodoxy, and why is it that right-wing Roman Catholicism is aligned with both? All demand a divine order of supremacy with a few, who you might call oligarchs or the Powers, at the top, and the rest of us lower and lower. Bad as it is now, what happens when these factions realize the other sees themselves at the very top? #

Remember, unlike at the beginning of World War II, all of this is happening in the context of nuclear weapons. The oligarchs believe they can survive a nuclear war because they have the money to buy islands in far away places and build bunkers deep beneath the ground. We are seeing this being played out in Ukraine today. #

In the United States we are are too far removed from the Thirty Years war that preceded the birth of our nation. Consequently, we forget the importance of the establishment clause of the first amendment that is intended to prevent our government, the seat of power, from using religion to instill and maintain tyranny. The sole focus on individual religious freedom, which is only half of the first amendment, is a redirection to hide in plain sight what the Powers are doing. The assimilation of religion into politics has been the real purpose of the fight over abortion started by the Reagan administration. #

Ironic, given the talk of the Anti-christ that the Christian Right likes to use to fuel their fear-based power.#

The dream for the death of the computer password is becoming closer to reality. The problem right now is the lack of implementation of a standard across all platforms. For example, I can log on to my Microsoft account without a password by using the Microsoft authenticator app, but then to log on to my Apple account I will need my Apple device, and Google one of their apps installed on your phone. The goal is to be able to use a smartphone, no matter the brand or operating system, to authenticate one for any application, no matter the provider.#

What is frustrating is that we know how well two factor authentication protects accounts, but it is inconsistently and poorly implemented. For example, I can enable 2FA on my Fidelity account, but their implementation sends me a text message with a code that is not secure. Two factor via text messaging is lazy and just theatre. I have a Yubikey hardware token that I should be able to use as a second factor, but I cannot use it with any of my financial accounts. #

We clearly know what the Republican party is all about and that they will fight for it, but we do not know what the Democrat party is about and it isn't willing to fight for anything. Republicans want to return to the past, Democrats want status quo.#

I really think we need more than a two party political system in the United States. #

Dave points out that the Supreme Court is not a religious body and links to the first amendment. Here is the problem created by the originalists, or what Dave calls textualists. The textualist will say that the establishment clause means literally the establishment/creation of a religion and NOT use of religious beliefs in the making of decisions. In other words the textualist uses a very narrow and very literal interpretation in order to support their ideology. Establishment does not mean use, they will say, they can "use" any already established religion. This is, after all, how SCOTUS re-interpreted the Second Amendment to state it allows citizens to bear arms for not just participation in a well regulated militia. Further, they will point out that the words "separation of church and state" is not in the Constitution, that is an interpretation made by Thomas Jefferson. #

Originalists/textualists are fundamentalists who specialize in using words to impose ideology on others for the purpose of maintaining their definition or order. Fundamentalism is absolutely not about freedom, and democracy is the enemy of fundamentalism because it injects disorder to their order.#

What should be said loud and clear is how the draft SCOTUS ruling that will overturn Roe v. Wade basically says that we, men and women do not have a right to privacy particularly when it comes to our body. Who you can marry, whether you can use birth control, whether you can possess pornography, whether your children have to learn a language other than English, are all past SCOTUS decisions based on what most I think would say is a natural, or self evident, right. And, what I've written here are just past SCOTUS decisions build on the idea affirmed by SCOTUS justices over a 100 years, what about future issues involving AI and the Internet? Worse, if as the ruling suggests one should only interpret the Constitution with the knowledge understanding of the world of the 17th and 18th centuries, how does it apply to new ideas and new issues the founders could have never imagined? #

Finally, I will never be able to reconcile in my mind how one can claim themselves a Constitutional Originalist (or Literalist) and complete ignore all the words of the second amendment except for the ones that support their ideology. How is it that current SCOTUS justices are so much smarter, so much enlightened than all the justices who made decisions over the past 200 years? Shall those decisions be null and void simply because we don't like them? #

So much is broken in the United States that is not due to anyone claiming rights for themselves. You can make the claim that what is broken is by design. Healthcare, for example, and its unwillingness to make something like viral drug treatments easily available, makes a ton of money on inefficiencies. The food industry, the violence industry, the list goes on and on. I cannot help but feel that the push to overturn past decisions that provided rights to citizens is a redirection of attention away from the real problems so that wealthy people can become more wealthy.#

By the way, it is instructive to think about the purpose of the United States Constitution, which is to restrain government by restricting its power to enumerated rights. Recall that the first draft of the Constitution did not have a Bill of Rights, why was that? It was because Madison felt it unnecessary because he thought it was "self evident" that citizens had rights and it was the purpose of governments to preserve the rights of citizens. The fact that this understanding of citizens rights as being self evident, and that Constitutional amendments were needed to extend these "self evident" rights to women and people of color are/were a big red flag. #

The founders believed the best way to insure government preserved rights of citizens was by restricting the powers of government. The sad irony is that this basic understanding of the Constitution and our government is supposed to be what conservatives claim to be "conserving" and yet their actions are the exact opposite. What concerned citizens should be asking is, why is that? And why is it that CPAC is holding their next conference in Hungary? And why is it that the party of Reagan is all in on Putin? #

Lot's of time to organize and get people out to vote in November.#

This morning REM's It's The End of the World as We Know It is running through my head.#

I don't actually read Twitter very much even though I joined it in 2006, I usually check it out when some event is occuring like the Super Bowl or the World Series or some breaking news, but I don't look at it on a daily basis. My blog posts get sent to Twitter, so what most people see as tweets from me are really blog posts. #

I think Musk is buying Twitter for his personal use. To Musk a Twitter he owns is a personal megaphone to the world that has no constraints. He saw how Trump used Twitter to become President and I am sure he thinks that he can use it in the same way. The only way this doesn't work out for Musk is if people start to ignore Twitter or at least ignore Musk. #

Max Reed says that Musk bought Twitter to keep it exactly as it is today. Why? Because Musk has made a lot of money using Twitter. There is a relationship between Musk's rapid two year wealth accumulation and an increase in the number of his tweets. The SEC has fined Musk for market manipulation using Twitter and much of his talk about "free speech" appears really pointed toward the SEC. Now, who wants to argue against free speech? Keep in mind, however, that the main job of the SEC is to keep the stock market fair so that you and I and our retirement portfolios don't pay someone like Musk by manipulating the market in his favor. #

I wonder, though, whether how Musk is financing the purchase of Twitter will open people's eyes to how the super wealthy really operate. Musk, and most like him, don't have his billions in thousand dollar bills stuffed in his mattress. Musk's wealth is on paper, specifically, the amount of stock he owns in Tesla and SpaceX. To get cash Musk borrows money from banks and uses the stock as collateral, and the U.S. Government doesn't view borrowed money as income so he doesn't pay taxes on what he borrows. What happens to the whole scheme when the price of stock borrowed against tanks? #

There was an outage here causing the published version of this blog to not be accessible although I could edit files in Drummer. Little Outliner also didn''t load, nor did my.this.how or oldschool.scripting.com. Good news is that my critical OPML files I edit with Little Outliner were backed up local at midnight and I just confirmed that the files load. In the meantime, downloaded a backup of my Drummer files. #

On a whim I decided dug out my old Apple Magic Keyboard, which is attached to a Studio Neat Canopy case, and paired it with the iPad Mini 6. Then I paired a Logitech Bluetooth travel mouse, and decided to see how well the Mini + keyboard + mouse work and I am using it to write this post. The one problem I find with using Drummer in landscape on the Mini 6 is that the screen is not wide enough to keep all outlines I normally have open in Drummer. Problem is that the Saved/Not Saved status message causes the input area in Drummer to move around when too many outlines are open. #

COVID transmission in my county is increasing, and I am curious what will be the new "normal" reaction to this surge. #

It's all about the money, Dave. Everybody knows that money corrupts, which is why nobody trusts journalism and all other "professions" and industries including government. We are the Ferengi. We are participating in the fall of the United States empire in much the same way as the fall of Rome. #

Covid ActNow is the site I use to track COVID data for my county and state and they recently transitioned from highlighting transmission rates like daily new cases per 100k, infection rate R(0), and positive test rate to community level metrics: weekly new cases per 100k, weekly COVID hospital admissions per 100k, percent of patients in hospital beds. The metrics align to the what the CDC is emphasizing and communicating and is a transition from focusing on spread to focusing on consequences of infection. In theory, assuming that COVID will always be with us what we are more concerned is about how many people get severe illness. I imagine this is similar to how the yearly flu is tracked. What is not clear to me is how should one react when the numbers track up in to the higher categories? #

Finally got the At-A-Glance Pixel update on my Pixel 4a. I've tested connecting my Jabra 65t headset and it properly shows it is connected and battery life. What I don't yet is see is any Fitness info from Google Fit and I don't know if I am supposed to see it. Android Police reports Google Fit doesn't work with AAG, which is odd, but I suppose Google people use the Fit widget like I do. #

Want to make note again that the glossary is one of my favorite features in Drummer. As an example use case, I expect after I receive the iPad Mini 6 I will be writing about it frequently, so I created a glossary entry for it that links to the page I have created about it in my wiki. Now the links will be there every time I write iPad Mini 6. #

I have been using RSS ever since I learned about it twenty years ago, and I am pretty settled with using River5">River5 and NetNewsWire, but I think what Colin Walker has done to integrate his RSS reader with his blog is intriguing and something that I wish micro.blog would incorporate in some way. How I use Pocket and Drafts on my iPad approximates what I want, which is a seamless way to quote or link to something that I've read in to a blog post. Right now no matter the platform I have to use different apps and what I want is the same apps/workflow no matter which platform I am currently using.#

Last month I built a self-hosted server on a Raspberry Pi, and while I built it as a learning exercise I have started to rely upon it for parts of my workflow. For example, I am archiving snapshots of the COVID data shown by COVID Act Now to compare against and that helps me determine how is COVID in my area. All of the apps I've installed on the server are in Docker containers and yesterday in a attempt to troubleshoot a problem I am having with running a particular app I made the mistake of removing all of the containers, causing me to go through the exercise of reinstalling the ones I am using. Fortunately, the data persisted so I didn't lose the data that I have accumulated, but I had a moment of panic. On the gripping hand, breaking stuff and fixing it is how one learns. #

A year ago I bought a 32-inch BenQ Monitor and it has been one of the best purchases I've made in a while, the larger screen space has increased my productivity. If you work from home I recommend two investments, one is a good quality chair, I own a Steelcase, and the other is a large, at least 32-inch, monitor. I personally think one large screen is better than multiple displays. #

One of the biggest ironies is that for all his arguing about titleless blog posts, Dave's RSS readers don't handle titleless blog posts well. For example, all of my titleless posts here are in bold in River5. Posts with titles work as one expects, in fact better, but not, imho, for titleless posts.#

I updated my Google Pixelbook to version 100 of Chrome OS. Included in the update is Android 11 and a new version of the virtual machine for running Android apps that results in much better performance. Now Android apps start near instantly, thus making them much more useful. #

Another addition in Chrome OS 100 is the official release of the smaller and sortable app launcher. The sort options are not numerous and oddly include the ability to sort icons by color, which I find odd. Sort by name makes sense, which is what I selected, but for now I don't know why I would sort by color.#

As a user of both Drummer and Roam, I struggle to see the utility of interop between the two because....#

My monthly routine for Drummer not only involves archiving a month's OPML file but also adding to the Monthly Index page. #

I've read that WordPress is increasing their pricing and that is going to force me to think about what to do with the handful of WordPress sites I currently own. WordPress is to where I moved my blogging after the demise of weblogger.com and I've kept that site ever since even though today I automatically cross post my blog posts to it. #

Since last I wrote I had some type of immune response. Thursday night I ran a fever, which broke over night, and I did nothing more than sleep most of the day Friday. I took a home COVID test that was negative, but if it was COVID it was very mild as I got better over the weekend and today feel pretty normal. Planning to stay in doors today and tomorrow to get through the five day period for mild COVID just in case.#

Hello, we made it to the first week of April and past all the April Fools shenanigans. #

The COVID infection rate in my county is back over one again, indicating renewed spread of infections. Last year the infection rate stayed below one from April 16 to June 26, which was last time it was below one until January 22, 2022. On March 13 the rate went back up over one. Last year dipped below one for one month, January 13 to February 13 and by March 14 the rate reached 1.31, which has been the high point during the pandemic after the initial surge in March 2020. In short, it looks like the "seasonal" rate increase is lagging behind last year but remains to be seen whether or not it reaches up to peak levels. Meanwhile, the state of Michigan announced they will only be refreshing the COVID data once a week, on Wednesdays. #

Over the weekend I set up a CloudFlare Tunnel for Internet access to a self-hosted server, which is a Raspberry Pi sitting on my desk. The idea is to provide secure Internet access to the apps I am hosting on the server. The process involved installing the cloudflared software on the Raspberry and registering an Internet domain. Right now I am manually starting the tunnel and what appears to happen is a TLS tunnel to CloudFlare's infrastructure that is associated to a CNAME for the domain that is managed using CloudFlare's DNS. #

For some reason the jetstream has been forced down in to the U.S. and thus causing lower than normal temperatures. When I woke up this morning the thermometer said it was 17 degrees outside. #

Alas, COVID-19 infection rate in my county is trending up again, it's at 0.97 today. Not too surprising given that everyone appears to think that it is all over. I think we are lagging slightly behind last year's trend due to Omicron. #

It is my personal opinion that there are very few good CEOs running companies in the United States. Most run companies are too big to fail and often succeed despite their CEO, such as Google and Sundar Pichai. Has Google done anything remarkable since Pichai took over? Android 12L is just the most recent example of what appears to be a incohesive plan. #

On my wish list for MacOS would be for it to remember the window sizing for apps I display on my monitor. #

I now have MacOS 12.3 on my Macbook Air and iPadOS 15.4 installed on my iPads so that I can use Universal Control, which I have to admit is pretty cool. It's an example of the type of integration that one expects to see between Apple products and why so many people are on board their ecosystem. #

I experienced an odd behavior with my computer keyboard, a Logitech MX Keys, where some of the keys to the right where not working. For example, the left and right arrow keys didn't work but he up/down arrow keys did. The problem went away after I turned the keyboard off and back on and this is the first time I've seen this happen.#

Yesterday was a momentous sports day. First, the NCAA men's basketball tournament, aka "March Madness," began and the day concluded with one major upset, 15 seed Saint Peter's beat the 2nd seed and perennial basketball power Kentucky 85 to 79. Next, it was the first day of major league baseball spring training and the Cubbies dropped both or their split-squad, 7-inning games, but still, the moment marks the "real" first day of spring even if it is too many days late thanks to the owner's lockout. Finally, the Green Bay Packers traded wide receiver Davonte Adams, causing one to wonder what receivers MVP QB Aaron Rodgers is going to throw to next season. #

Frankly, this is an awful move for the Green Bay Packers and they appear to have no plan. The Packers now only have Allen Lazard, Randall Cobb, and Amari Rodgers after trading the best WR in football for only two draft picks. Couldn't the Packer's at least got a WR back in return along with the picks? Sure, the NFC North is weak, but this isn't about winning the division, this is about winning Super Bowls and with this move the Packers decreased the probability of them winning a Super Bowl during Rodger's remaining years. If the Packers are determined on a rebuild, perhaps they should trade Rogers for even more first round picks.#

Developer yells at users, wonders why users then don't participate in the development process. #

After telling me they will do so, AT&T has finally disconnected the microcell that I've been using for several years from their network. Allegedly it is because it used the 3G bands that AT&T, along with the other telcos, have to give back to us (the government). Oddly, whenever I did see a data connection from my phone to the microcell it always indicated 4G, but I suspect the device had 3G radios. Anyway, AT&T did send me a replacement that I did not swap in because I was skeptical about whether this would actually happen. For now we are using WiFi calling. #

I think I my brain is starting to accept the new glasses, I am starting to see normally.#

The saga regarding my new glasses continues. Last evening I went back to the eyeglass place and they made adjustments that have improved the vision, but there are still noticeable differences in my vision that my brain has not yet settled in on. I assume this like getting braces and the pain one must feel as your jaw is being forced to conform.#

I am wondering how long this adjustment is going to take. All the problems I experience started when progressives were added to my prescription. The combination of the progressives and my normal vision require a precision in lense cutting and glasses fitting that seems impossible to obtain at the first attempt. I know this is a first world problem, but a problem none the less.#

I hate getting new glasses because I always have this problem of them not fitting right. Still getting used to these, vision seems better but feels off, particularly when I move my head and my eyes have to re-focus. Yesterday after reading in front of a computer for about an hour I got a bit of a headache. Seems to me a new prescription should not make me feel worse.#