Amerpie by Lou Plummer Profile Photo

Amerpie by Lou Plummer

Working in educational IT since the 90s. Dedicated Mac user trapped in a PC world. Obsidian fanboy. Blogger. Friendly 😊
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    Tiny Little Acts of Resistance

    resist_stickers_on_laptop

    As a certified, card carrying, paid up member of the resistance, my days are spent with an eye towards doing something, anything to retain my sanity in a world seemingly going mad. I am always on the lookout for whatever I can do to bolster my faith in humanity and to connect with those who feel much the same way about the world as I do.

    Here are a few of the things I've done recently.

    Reaching Out

    In 2010, on my 45th birthday, I went on a long bike ride with a group from my cycling club with a selection of much younger military guys and one civilian woman who was an elite road bike racer. I met my friend AJ that day. A couple of years later, when they got out of the Air Force, they left straight away for Springer Mountain, Georgia to hike the Appalachian Trail. AJ was the first person I'd ever known to start that journey. Years later, when I set out to do the same thing, they provided me advice and even met Wonder Woman and I in Maryland, bought us lunch, took us to the grocery store and offered up a variety of gear to us in case we needed it. Later on , AJ came out as non-binary. I've followed their life for a long time now and seen them complete an education, write and direct plays, complete unbelievable bike rides (like the Tour Divide), get married, parent two boys and joyously become an English professor.

    I sent them a letter recently to let them know that I'm still a fan. We used to keep up with one another on Facebook, but since I left, connecting on Bluesky has not been as easy. Unfortunately, AJ's return letter bore the news that their boss at the college was trying to get them fired. The college is in an area that voted MAGA by a 3 to 1 margin, so you can guess why they want o part ways with my friend. It just goes to show that staying connected with the vulnerable people in our lives is something we have to do in times like this. We all need one another.

    Speaking Out

    If there has ever been a time to be loud and proud, 2025 is that time. I try not to let an opportunity to advocate for resistance pass me by. Just tonight on my App Review blog, I suggested a tool that lets people access information without putting money in the pockets of billionaires and fascists. If you need to see something from the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post or The New York Times, I've got you covered. And, if for some reason, you need to look at something from Twitter, I can show you how to do that without going to the Nazi bar. If I see someone with a Kamal bumper sticker or an anti-MAGA one, I go out of my way to praise them for their sanity.

    Staying Informed

    I refuse to doom scroll the news on my phone or computer. I haven't watched TV news since before Obama and the only thing I listen to these days is old music and the occasional audiobook. Still, I spend about 30 minutes every morning going through the headlines from the sources I trust. Here's a list. I don't have to wallow in self-pity and frothing anger. I just need to know what kind of damage the Fascists are doing. I take the time to celebrate victories, like the recent decision to stop the GOP from stealing an election here in NC that they lost by 70K votes. I'm also happy to see that the Catholic Church has a Pope who can help stifle the reactionary conservatism of the Americans. Go Leo!

    Being Honest

    I know that I speak to the current situation from a position of privilege. I'm a cisgender, heterosexual middle class white guy who gets to play the game of life on easy mode. I know this. I keep that in mind. I celebrate the others of my kind who are keeping things as radical as they can, like Adam from OMG.LOL who makes accountability his brand. Another OMG.LOL member @bbq just put up $10K of his dough to match donations to progressive causes and people have stepped up to support The Trevor Project , Prison Literacy, support for the neurodivergent, medical research and more. These role models give me hope for the future.

    Resist!

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    Graduation Gifts

    Dylan

    My grandchildren started graduating from high school a couple of years ago and now every spring we face the dilemma of what to get them to help in their journey to the rest of their education. Although I don't see anything wrong with cash or gift cards, sometimes it feels good to actually buy a thing, something they might hesitate to get for themselves. Our oldest grandson opted to go the non-traditional route. He's taking classes and then tests to become a certified mechanic. An exceptionably bright lad, he feels the same way his father and I felt about sitting in classes at the age of 19. It's just not going to happen. His sister, on the other hand, is not only going to college (Mary Washington University in Fredericksburg, VA), she's going with a couple of hefty scholarships she worked her butt off to get.

    Here are a few ideas for any graduates in your life.

    College Must Haves: 30 Things You Need For Surviving - Getting set to pack up and head to college is super exciting. If you’re gearing up to do this, we’ve put together a list of miscellaneous things that’ll make your first year of college much easier: college must haves. Consider getting these items to survive your first years at college!

    50 best high school graduation gifts for teens in 2025 - Graduation day is a momentous occasion for students and families, but especially when you’re in high school. The anticipation and work leading up to the commencement ceremony is stressful enough, but celebrating their accomplishments with a practical graduation gift (and perhaps a party!) will be well worth the hassle.

    15 Practical High School Graduation Gifts for Your College Bound Kids - Your high school grad started off (and likely ended) their senior year behind a screen, socially distanced and deprived of the excitement of being the top dogs on campus. And with graduation behind them, many are being pushed right into college this fall back at the bottom of the totem pole.

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    This Week's Bookmarks - Classic Marketing, LBJ, Goodbye Google, No WoW for 1yr, Best Books, Holocaust Survivors on Freedom, Photographers in Vietnam

    Obsidian - 2025-05-03 at 18

    The raccoons who made computer magazine ads great - In the 1980s and 1990s, PC Connection built its brand on a campaign starring folksy small-town critters. They'll still charm your socks off.

    LBJ & the Great Society - Ken Burns - LBJ "voted against every civil rights bill during his tenure as congressman, then spearheaded the greatest civil rights measures since Reconstruction".

    Why I abandoned Google search after 27 years — and what I’m using instead - Google =  a once dependable search engine that has lately become nearly unrecognizable to anyone who remembers the days of 10 blue links and the motto "don't be evil."

    Netigen A Year Without Azeroth - This feels entirely too dramatic, but yesterday marked the one year anniversary of my quitting World of Warcraft—an event that feels both overwrought and consequential.

    Best Books of the 21st Century (So Far) | Kirkus Reviews - Warning! If you are a compulsive book buyer, like me, this might get expensive.

    Our Freedom is Fragile: Lessons From the Jewish Children Who Fled Nazi Germany ‹ Literary Hub - "America is no longer a country of refuge but one that is preying upon its most vulnerable inhabitants, including children, who stand to suffer the most…"

    How Photography From the Vietnam War Changed America - The New York Times This week marked the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. The images in this article are some of the most influential works of photojournalism ever taken.

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    30 Years of Web Communities

    Online Communities

    This is my contribution to the May IndieWeb Carnival.

    Although I used a local BBS and AOL chat rooms back in the day, the first online community I ever found a home in was at [Epinions].(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epinions) It was a dotcom company that paid you to write reviews of commercial goods, including books and albums. You could use HTML to dress up what you wrote, so there was a small but satisfying thrill in learning how to be good at that. As usual, they had an off-topic category too, where you could write about whatever you wanted, and I contributed there all the time. People could follow you and send you private messages. I eventually outgrew it, but I tried to find a guy from there recently, after 28 years, and I succeeded because he's still using the same unique username.

    When I had a Geocities website, part of it was dedicated to Vietnam veterans and their kids. I corresponded with quite a few men and women who were eager to have someone to talk to about their experiences. I live near a giant army base, so all the vets I know have comrades-in-arms everywhere they g0. The 18-year-old who got drafted from Iowa in 1967 and did his year in hell didn't always have that, and I was glad to hear them out, publish their stories, and generally just be as supportive as I could.

    I was in some great bicycling forums around the turn of the century, one of which still sends me birthday greetings every year. I went as far as Georgia to meet folks from there for an organized ride.

    For a few years, believe it or not, I took part in the local newspaper's community forum, which was mostly a cesspool of name-calling and ad hominem attacks on liberals. I'd write outrageously provocative stuff about W. Bush and his wars just to stir up the flag wavers. They doxed me regularly, and the woman I was married to absolutely hated me going on there. After a while, it wasn't fun anymore, so I stopped.

    When I hiked the Appalachian Trail, I kept an online journal every single day and posted to a website called Trail Journals. As a result, I had people up and down the East Coast who wrote to us and visited us on the trail. It wasn't unusual to meet trail groupies who knew all kinds of our fellow hikers from reading their journals. More than a decade later, I am still in touch with people I first met through that journal.

    Then we enter the long dark winter of the soul—Facebook was all there was. I never really used Twitter for anything besides news, so I didn't find much social about it. My Facebook experience was much the same as many folks. In 2008, it was a place to keep up with friends and family and to reconnect with people from the past. In 2017, I had a viral post that caused me to get literally thousands of friend requests, many of which I accepted for the hell of it. I met plenty of cool people, including a friend I eventually met in Derry, Northern Ireland. I ditched it for good this year after Zuck sucked up to MAGA and fired the fact-checkers.

    My experience on the IndieWeb since I joined micro.blog in January 2023 has been my favorite experience out of all of them. In my first 10 months, I' posted more on Mastodon than I did on Twitter in 15 years. I closed my Twitter account soon after joining the Fedi, not wanting to send any traffic to what is essentially the Nazi Bar of the Internet. I am a happy customer of OMG.LOL, Aside from Micro.blog, I also use Scribbles and BearBlog.

    There are bloggers who I've come to be exceptionally fond of. Some are just damn good writers, and all are damn good people. Knowing them makes me a better person.

    I have an account on Bluesky, but it lacks the community vibe of Mastodon. It's not really decentralized, even though the technology exists for it to act that way. I have to remind myself that it is a billionaire funded corporation and, like all of its ilk, destined for enshitification.

    I do love Reddit, where I've had an account for over 19 years, despite its checkered past. Syndicating AppAddict there has driven lots of traffic to my website. Earlier this year, I volunteered to become a moderator of r/macOS, a subreddit with over 300K members. That's been interesting. I get a chance to help out newbies and to stamp out some toxicity, so what it lacks in actual fun, it makes up in satisfaction.

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    Why Do You Feel Like Crap?

    Firefox - 2025-04-28 at 20

    One of my life-long problems before I got sober was this feeling of being terminally unique. I was quite sure that no one could understand the complexities of my troubled life. I had my mental list of Bad Things That Have Happened To Me. Then there was my job where I was rarely treated fairly. Who could even beginning to understand my childhood and all the places I'd lived and the fact that I'd left home so early. Add all of that into my habit of marrying people who didn't make me happy PLUS this damn drinking too much situation. I really felt doomed.

    The first time I heard someone else say "I've felt different my whole life", my head whipped around. Say what? You too? It's a common theme among alcoholics and addicts. Hell, maybe even normal people occasionally feel different, I'm told. Because we are all variations on a theme, the solution to whatever ails us an a given day isn't as complicated as we might make it out to be. There are a finite number of problems and a finite number of solutions. All most of us need is just some help cutting through the fog.

    That's where this simple web site comes in. It's not a complicated AI model requiting you to take an online personality test. No, it's a universal, one size actually does fit all solution to what ails you. Whoever programmed this little gem was wise indeed. Just start clicking buttons, be honest and do what you are told. By the end of it, you won't feel like crap anymore.

    Why do I feel like crap

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    RSS in an Integral Part of the IndieWeb Experience

    In 2023, I was recovering from an illness and bedridden. I picked up my old iPad and opened my feed reader, which I hadn't done in years. Many of the blogs I'd initially followed circa 2014 were dead, but there were still a few actively posting. Out of boredom, I began to clean out the dead feeds and look for newer and better ones to replace them. That experience led to this blog post. I found so many interesting independent blogs that I decided that even someone like me could get in on the action.

    In case you are wondering, RSS is a method of content delivery where information created by bloggers and publishers is delivered to a special program or website that you set up. You can subscribe to RSS feeds, usually for free, and whenever that blog or website is updated, the new information shows up in your feed reader.

    RSS explained

    Many people I now consider to be my good Internet friends are people I first discovered by seeing them on someone else's blogroll. I spend part of every day looking at my feed reader. Aside from the basic RSS mechanism I describe above, there are ways to use the protocol to do all kinds of things. The best site I have found to not only educate you on RSS but to provide you with access to a huge variety of tools and services is GitHub - AboutRSS/ALL-about-RSS: A list of RSS related stuff: tools, services, communities and tutorials, etc.

    I encourage everyone from newbies to co-inventors of the protocol to have a good look around. Click on a few links. Try out some new tools for discovering interesting content.

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    This Week's Bookmarks - Famous Literary Couples, Stalingrad Incident, Web Design Museum, Unusual Landscapes, Eternal Helpdesk, Film Mistakes, Crucial Musical Tracks

    Fitzgeralds
    F.Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

    Famous Literary Relationships from Best to Worst ‹ Literary Hub - There have been plenty of great legends about literary love affairs over the years, though of course a great legend doesn't always mean a great love affair. In fact, it often means just the opposite. Here, I've collected a few of the worst (and a few of the best)—from what we can tell from our outside vantage, at any rate. You never do know what goes on in other people's homes. But you might have a better chance if they happen to be writers.

    The Stalingrad Incident - In a historic depression, a black american seeks freedom from discrimination and professional limitations in an unlikely place: Russia. The forces of racism follow him overseas, putting his reputation and life in danger.

    Web Design Museum - Discover old websites, apps and software - Web Design Museum exhibits thousands of screens and videos of old websites, mobile apps and software from 1990s to mid-00s

    24 of the world’s most unusual landscapes - While there are plenty of awe-inspiring man-made destinations around the globe, nothing is as creative as nature. From trees that resemble monsters, to colorful sinkholes, towering rock formations and waterfalls of molten lava, these are some of the most unusual and fascinating landscapes in the world.

    The Alabama Landline That Keeps Ringing - If you sit at the James E. Foy Information Desk in the Melton Student Center at Auburn University, answering the phones on a Wednesday night, you might be responsible for answering a question like this: “If you died on the operating table and they declared you legally dead and wrote out a death certificate and everything, but then you came back to life, what are the legal ramifications? Do you technically no longer exist? Do you have to be declared undead by a judge?”

    FXRant The Movie Mistake Mystery from Revenge of the Sith - Not just Star Wars - this site has mistakes that made it on to the screen of Goodfellas Aliens, Glory, The Dark Knight, The Abyss and more

    Crucial Tracks – the songs that made you - There are points in your life that are defined by music. Whether it’s a song that introduced you to a genre of music that changed the direction of your tastes and style, or a lyric that made you think about the world in a different way. Songs represent relationships. Songs trigger memories. These are all crucial tracks.

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    A Beautiful Three Day Hike on the Appalachian Trail in Virginia

    2013-08-23 07

    I'm often asked to recommend hikes along the Appalachian Trail, a national scenic trail in the Eastern United States that stretches from Georgia to Maine, touching 14 states. My suggestions are typically conditional. If I don't like you, I'm definitely going to suggest you go to Pennsylvania, a state notorious for its extremely rocky conditions that makes hikers curse the slow going and their painful feet.

    If you are a stone badass, I'll tell you to head for New Hampshire and Southern Maine. It's often said that 80% of the hard hiking on the AT occurs in that final 20% of the trail.

    If you're a good friend in average shape, then I'll advise you to head for the area near Roanoke, VA where you can find a 37-mile loop that will take you to Virginia’s Triple Crown of hiking.

    You will hit three beautiful and iconic locations:

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    Tips for Organizing Photos

    digi-resized

    One of my ongoing projects is organizing a lifetime of digital photos. My collection includes all the smartphone photos taken by my wife and me, the DSLR photos we've saved and scanned photos of multiple generations. The images have been gathered from iCloud. Google Drive, Amazon Photos, family photo albums and many different backup drives accumulated over time. The process includes the removal of duplicate images, renaming, adjusting date information, performing face recognition , tagging and backing everything up. I realized soon after I started that I also need to segregate images that aren't personal, meaning illustrations for blog articles and the many, many photos I've taken at work that still have some usefulness but aren't appropriate to be included in a family collection.

    The ultimate goal of organizing photos is being able to quickly find what I am looking for based on these criteria:

    • People
    • Date
    • Location
    • Content
    • Camera type

    So, if I want to find a picture of my brother holding a parrot from a beach trip in 2014 that I took with my iPhone, I have multiple ways to narrow down the search. For people willing to let Google, Amazon or Apple have complete access to their photos, this is simplified by letting their powerful servers do a great deal of the hard work. If, like me, you want to have more privacy, you have to do a great deal of the organization manually or find applications that can do the work on your computer without relying on the Internet.

    I decided to use a free and open-source image management program that works on Mac and Linux called Digikam.

    I am temporarily using another application with local AI, called Peakto, which can find photos according to subject without using the Internet.

    Here are a few tips on photo management

    The Ultimate Guide to Organizing Your Photos Tips and Tricks - Are you tired of scrolling through endless photos on your phone or computer, trying to find that one specific picture? Organizing your photos can seem like a daunting task, but with the right tips and tricks, it can be a breeze. In this ultimate guide, we’ll cover everything from creating folders to utilizing software programs, so you can finally have all your memories in order.

    What are the best practices for photo organization - Organizing your photos is not an easy task. Where do you start? What is the best way to proceed? Often, we wait until we need to find those photos for a birthday album, website or book before we realize that our photos are disorderly and difficult to locate. Rather than wait till the last minute, only to find ourselves frustrated and annoyed, we could be proactive and follow the advice of experienced photographers.

    How To Organize Your Photos, From Backing Up To Tagging Life Kit NPR - We take hundreds and thousands of photos these days because we can. Long gone are the days of film rolls limited to 24 shots. Storage is trending cheaper and more infinite. You don't want to miss any of your dog's cute moments or your kids' as they grow up. But when we have so many digital images and we want to cull them down a bit and get organized, where do we even start?

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    Internet Life Hacks

    Safari - 2025-04-21 at 13

    Every once in a while, there is a post on Reddit that gets enough high quality responses to warrant being bookmarked and referred to time and again. Such is the case with this recent classic.

    # What’s a personal internet hack you use that makes life easier but isn’t widely known ?

    Some of the suggestions:

    • ctrl+Shift+t - Reopens the last browser tab that was closed. Really handy when you accidentally close the wrong tab. (on a Mac it's command+shift+t)
    • Get a great music recommendation each day and don't rely on your streaming services algorithm loop: https://1001albumsgenerator.com
    • Don't support Google -> Stop using Chrome. Try Firefox with the uBlock (ad-blocker) extension, it's awesome!
    • Don't support Google -> Use https://duckduckgo.com/ or try another one, they're in general pretty good these days.
    • Temp emails, great for throw away accounts on various services: https://10minutemail.com/
    • Get past paywalls: https://archive.ph/
    • I always complete my emails and look over them before I put the destination email addresses in. Prevents me from accidentally sending something I don’t want to send.
    • I pay for an email and domain service with the catchall redirected to my own email address - when I sign up for a service I set my email for that service to be [servicename]@mydomain.com, this way when I see spam coming in I know which bastard service sold my details, I then never use them again.
    • Use https://cooked.wiki/ to view just recipes -- skip the long, meandering essay that leads up to what you really want. It's like a super-power.
    • If you put swear words in your search, you won't get the AI generated answer.
    • Learn to paste stuff using ctrl+shift+v It strips away any bold, italics, or colors and some other formatting options. Besides being useful removing crap from the clipboard and making your life easier when pasting for example data to excel it might be helpful when pasting data that came from an a.i. that could be detected and get you in trouble.

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    This Week’s Bookmarks - Nachos, Seth Rogen, Satellite Pollution, Radical universities, Internet history, Photo Awards, Book bans

    IMG_8867

    Subway's Doritos Footlong Nachos Are Here -- and Honestly, We're Into It - It all begins with a tray of Nacho Cheese Doritos, topped with shredded and liquid nacho cheese after a quick stint in the oven. When ordering at the counter, your local sandwich artist will chop red onions and tomatoes to incorporate into the mix before adding jalapeĂąos and a drizzle of Baja Chipotle sauce. You can request steak or chicken for no extra charge

    Seth Rogen's criticism of Trump's cuts to science edited out of science awards show coverage - A pointed criticism of President Trump's policies on science by Seth Rogenwas edited out of the filmed coverage of an annual science awards show, it has emerged.

    Swamped Skies, a photo with dozens of satellite trails criss-crossing the night skies. "The light pollution caused by satellites is quickly becoming a growing problem for astronomers." SpaceX's Starlink satellites are a particular problem.

    "This is my radical proposal for universities: Act like universities, not like businesses. Spend your endowments. Accept more, not fewer students. Open up your campuses and [bring] education to communities. Create a base. Become a movement."

    An Ars Technica history of the Internet, part 1 - Ars Technica - In a very real sense, the Internet, this marvelous worldwide digital communications network that you're using right now, was created because one man was annoyed at having too many computer terminals in his office.

    2025 Winners and Shortlist Galleries | World Photography Organisation - The Sony World Photography Awards is World Photography Organisation's principal programme. Established in 2007, it is one of the world's biggest and most prestigious photography competitions; celebrating the work of leading and emerging practitioners and attracting tens of thousands of visitors annually to its exhibitions worldwide.

    Library Study Shows It’s Just Politicians And Activist Groups Trying To Get Books Banned | Techdirt - What's been noted before has been confirmed yet again: there is no widespread concern about the books kids have access to in public libraries. Instead, there's just the concerted, but effective, efforts of a small group of people who feel everyone else's rights end where their morality begins.

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    Infinite Mac Lets You Run Vintage Mac Operating Systems in Your Browser

    CleanShot 2025-04-17 at 19

    It's hard to believe that Apple was once a scrappy little company, just fighting to stay alive and true to its roots, instead of the largest company in the history of capitalism. The fondness that many people have Apple products is tied into the myth and memory of the old Apple. People who long ago chose Macs, usually did so out of a genuine fondness for the company and the products they made. The alternative was Microsoft Windows at its most ruthless and domineering.

    I's been a long time, probably more than 20 years since I last used Mac's classic operating system, meaning OS 9.2.2 and below. I spent many, many hours of my life on those machines, installing KidPix and Apple Works for public school kids and their teachers. I could image one of the original bondi blue iMacs in about 90 seconds using a FireWire 400 drive. I also imaged many older Macs by booting from a CD and imaging from a SCSI drive. Good times.

    If you ever get sentimental for those days, or, if you aren't an old like me, and you just want to investigate what the experience was like, just hear on over to InfiniteMac where you can run one of many virtual Macs right in your web browser.

    The site describes itself like this:

    Infinite Mac is a collection of classic Macintosh and NeXT system releases and software, all easily accessible from the comfort of a web browser.

    Pick any version of System Software, Mac OS, Mac OS X or NeXTStep from the 1980s, 1990s or early 2000s and run it within a virtual machine. An “Infinite HD” disk with representative software from that era is also available. You can also run a custom version with your choice of machine and disks. On some operating systems files and disk images can be imported and exported using drag and drop and virtual CD-ROMs can be mounted – refer to the welcome screen in each machine for more details.

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    The Walter Miller Homepage - The Funniest Website That Ever Existed

    Safari - 2025-04-16 at 21

    Warning: This Goes Way Back

    Back in the days of accessing the Internet over a 56,6K modem, someone, probably on AOL told me about "The Walter Miller" homepage, the terribly mis-spelled and grammatically incorrect plain text website of the finniest stuff I have ever read. I'm serious. Con't click the link at the bottom of this post and start reading if you ae trying to drinnk something. You might choke to death or spray expensive red wine across the display of your MacBook.

    A snippet from the landing page

    ABOUT ME

    Im orignally from California but now I live in rural Texas-a lonly area 2 hours from the nearest big city. Ive been here since last December. I moved here because Iam only 20 years old and divvorced and I owe the whole world money. So my family takes over my bills and debits in exhange for me to look after and take care of my granfather. Lets just say I have to haul him up on the crapper whenever he has to go-which isnt often and contributs to him bein cranky most of the time.

    Our home consists of a trailor, some outbuildings, a toolshed, asorted shacks, and 2 halfs of a moduler home that were never put together and sit 50 yards apart with plastic sheets drapped over the open parts. We live in the trailor-the other buildings house the varied colections of My granfather. He has 170,000 hupcaps which maybe the bigest colection in Texas. He also colects apliances, spark plugs, books, plumming fixures, beercans, Indian blankets, cooky tins, furnoture, glasware, old typwriters, bottles and car parts, plastic bags, coffe cans, antiques, trashcan lids of pre-World War 2 era, manhole covers, rusty tools, stufed animals, basebal cards, 55 galon drums and steyrofoam. These are just a small sample of his colectibles

    Theyre stroon across the whole area like a junkyard. The county has come after him many times. He also has 14 dogs and dog crap is eveywhere. Also the stuffed animals and indian blankets are outside-when it rains they get rancid.

    The page is long dead, but it is preserved by the people doing the Lord's Work at The Wayback machine. When you click on this and other links within the site, you might think nothing has loaded. It has. Just scroll down a few dozen lines and pure vintahe Internet comedy genius will overwhelm you.

    The Walter Miller Home Page

    A vicious rumor - THE WEB'S ANONYMOUS | TIME

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    The Most Important Tech Skill for Every Single One of Us

    Safari - 2025-04-15 at 21

    What's the most important computer information you've ever lost? Was it pictures, something you'd written, your contacts or your entire phone or hard drive? It's a rare (or dishonest) person who can claim to have never suffered some kind of data loss. I have been asked to help recover wedding videos, a master’s thesis, decades of lesson plans and the accumulated files from an entire ministerial career.

    Wherever you have information that is important to you, on your iPhone, Android, Mac or PC or even in a cloud service like Google Drive or Dropbox, do you know if you have taken the right steps to back up your data? A backup means at least two copies, three is better, with one of those stored offsite. Saving your files to a thumb drive or an external drive is not a backup if that is the only copy of them. Even keeping your files in iCloud or Google Drive is not a backup, if losing access to that account would cut you off from your data. People lose access to their online accounts seven days a week for all kinds of reasons. Do all those Google Docs that only live on Google Drive mean anything to you? If they do, then learn how to back them up today.

    Back up iPhone - Apple Support

    How to Back Up Your Android Phone WIRED

    How to back up your Mac - Apple Support

    How to Back Up Your Files in Windows 11 Microsoft Windows

    Google Takeout

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    Fascism is Here, Evidence Included

    Orion - 2025-04-14 at 20

    The Italian philosopher and novelist, who came of age in Mussolini's Italy, penned a list of the 14 characteristics of fascism, all of which are currently present in the United States.

    1. The cult of tradition. This is the belief that the truth is already known once and for all. Fascists believe there is no need to advance in learning.
    2. The rejection of modernism. Fascists reject the Enlightenment and its evidence-based rationality.
    3. The cult of action for action’s sake. Fascist leaders act impulsively, without thinking or planning ahead.
    4. No analytical criticism. Fascists ignore nuance and see any disagreement as treasonous.
    5. Fear of difference. Fascists fear diversity. Thus they are racist by definition.
    6. Appeal to a frustrated middle class. An economically frustrated and/or politically marginalized middle class is easy to stir to anger.
    7. Obsession with a plot. Because the followers must be made to feel besieged, an internal “enemy” is provided: Immigrants, Muslims, Hispanics, Blacks. (Historically the Jews were often made to be “the enemy.”)
    8. Anti-elitism. The followers are made to feel humiliated by the wealth and strength of the educated “elite.” This is used to create resentment.
    9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. Fascists believe that life is permanent warfare. Therefore a desire for peace is treasonous.
    10. Contempt for the weak. A fascist leader despises his underlings, who in turn despise those under them. They all either mock or ignore the poor, the sick, and the disabled.
    11. The cult of heroism. The Fascist is eager to die a hero’s death. In his impatience, he frequently sends other people to their deaths.
    12. Machismo. Fascists show disdain for women, disregard for chastity, and condemnation of homosexuality.
    13. Selective populism. Under fascism, the “voice of the people” is not the democratic majority, but only the voices of those who support the leader.
    14. Ur-fascism speaks Newspeak. Just as in Orwell’s 1984, Fascists use an impoverished vocabulary and an elementary syntax to limit complex and critical reasoning.

    Smart People Say We're There

    The rise of end times fascism Far right (US) The Guardian - The governing ideology of the far right has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism. Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them

    American Fascism Then (1939) and Now (2025) Columnists insightnews.com - Historian Heather Cox Richardson reminds in a recent article that there was a time in American history when the Nazi Party, while still somewhat on the fringe, enjoyed a level of "normalization" in the run up to the start of World War II in 1939 that bears eery resemblance to the modern push for fascist extremism in the United States.

    How the US Went Fascist Mass Media Make Excuses for Trump Voters – BillMoyers.com - Trump's racism and xenophobia violates America's core beliefs — yet the media and many Americans are okay with it.

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    ∞

    This Week's Bookmarks - Anti-Fascist Films, Ancient Graffiti, White House Rumors, 1995 and The Web, Best Browsers, Middle-Class Income Needs, Apple and Developers

    Firefox - 2025-04-13 at 03

    The 40 Best Anti-Fascist Films of All Time - In light of recent events, it might be a good time to remember a very simple truth: Nazis are ALWAYS the bad guys.

    A Tour of Ancient Rome's Best Graffiti: "We Have Urinated in Our Beds ... There Was No Chamber Pot & More| Open Culture - Apart from the likes of bra­vo and piz­za, graf­fi­ti must be one of the first Ital­ian words that Eng­lish-speak­ers learn in every­day life. As for why the Eng­lish word comes direct­ly from the Ital­ian, per­haps it has some­thing to do with the his­to­ry of writ­ing on the walls — a his­to­ry that, in West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, stretch­es at least as far back as the time of the Roman Empire.

    10 rumors involving Trump's press secretary, Karoline Leavitt So, the question is, does she spread more rumors from the White House podium than are spread about her because of her wackadoodle behavior and inexperience.

    1995 Was the Most Important Year for the Web - The History of the Web - 1995 is a fascinating year. It's one of the most turbulent in modern history. 1995 was the web's single most important inflection point. A fact that becomes most apparent by simply looking at the numbers. At the end of 1994, there were around 2,500 web servers. 12 months later, there were almost 75,000. By the end of 1995, over 700 new servers were being added to the web every single day.

    These Are the 7 Best Browsers That Aren't Google Chrome - STOP USING CHROME!! Chrome was once a great browser, but it's known to be slower, battery-draining, a memory hog, and collects massive amounts of user data. If you want something better than Chrome, you don't have to pick one. Each option excels in certain situations; you should try them to find what best suits your needs without much compromise.

    The Income Needed to be Middle Class in Every U.S. State (2025) - Middle class is defined as earning between two-thirds and twice the median household income.

    The Dark Side of Apple Development: Why Developers Are Struggling On Apple’s Increasingly Hostile Platforms – Magic Lasso Adblock = "They would rather have a ChatGPT or TikTok than an OmniFocus or Magic Lasso. Apple is too big to fail, which means it's too big to care." - Ian Betterridge

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    ∞

    The Roth Memory Course

    Book_cover

    Have you ever seen or read about the people who can memorize the exact order of multiple decks of cards? Those people are freaks and they scare me, so I'm not advocating those kinds of skills, but who wouldn't like to be able to retain information more easily? Several years ago I came upon a free PDF version of The Roth Memory Course by David M. Roth, first published in 1918. Written in the stilted and formal British English of the era, Roth presents seven lessons and techniques to memorize more information than you ever though possible, using methods you could teach to a child. I read the book and learned the techniques and, while I kept my skill sharp, could easily recite lists of 100 random words in order. That's a neat party trick, but not very useful otherwise. The practical use was learning dozens of technical acronyms and terms while studying for IT exams.

    It's an easy read and a fun self study exercise. If you look around, you can find the PDF version, although hardcover and kindle versions also exist.

    Roth Memory Course A Simple And Scientific Method Of Improving The Memory And Increasing Mental Power by David M. Roth

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    ∞

    Subscriptions Update With Some Savings

    Safari - 2025-04-10 at 09

    For some reason, those of us who live on the Internet have a fascination with the subscriptions other people are paying for. I'm happy to share mine with the world. Maybe you can find some interesting services or apps in my collection. My total costs are down about $40 a month since I last updated in October.

    To see the entire list, go here.

    What I eliminated

    • Google One - Saved $10 a month (technically, I still have access to Google Drive through my cell phone plan, I'm just not storing anything there any more. I do use Gemini, Google's AI to help me with scripts)
    • Hulu - Saved $18.99 a month
    • Overcast - Saved $14.99 a year. I just don't listen to podcasts any more.
    • Setapp - Saved $12 a month. I still use Setapp, but I no longer have to pay for it since accepting their offer to be ab affiliate.
    • Amazon Prime - Saved $139 a year - because screw Jeff Bezos, that's why. I also canceled the Washington Post and Audible.

    What I added

    • Fastmail - Cost $96 a year for Two users. Since I no longer give the world's largest data extraction company access to my email, I had to find a place to host it, I'm happy with Fastmail so far.
    • kDrive - Coast $7.24 a month. Since I no longer have access to Google Photos or Amazon Photos, I need a cloud solution and this Swiss company's 3 TB plan is the best bargain I could find that had good reviews and satisfied customers.
    • Medium -Cost $4.99 a month I have a friend who started a Medium blog, and I wanted him to be able to see that I subscribed, so no more paywall avoidance for me.

    New App Subscriptions

    • Cheatsheet - I wanted this app forever. I love having short notes on my watch ($5.99/yr)
    • Quick Reviews - How could I not support Matt Birchler? ($9.99/yr)
    • Quotify - Ongoing search for a good quotes app ($.99a month)
    • Quotz - see above ($2.99/yr)
    • Reeder - I'm testing out all the timeline apps ($1/month)
    • Skeetz for Bluesky- So much better than the standard app ($1.99/mo)
    • Tapestry - another timeline app ($1.99/mo)
    ∞

    Interstate 95

    I95 South Sign

    If you do much traveling along the East Coast of the United States, it is hard to escape doing some driving on Interstate 95. It runs from the Canadian border with Maine to Miami, a distance of 1924 miles, passing through 15 states and the District of Columbia, more than any other Interstate. The final leg of I-95 wasn't connected until 2018 in New Jersey. 110 million people live in proximity to the highway and it facilitates 40% of the US gross domestic product.

    I live about five miles from the closest exit. I'm most familiar with the stretch between central Florida and Washington, DC, although I have traveled as far north as New Jersey on it on a single trip in the 80s. I've also been on short stretches in Maine and the Miami metro area.

    If you plan to make your way down it at any point, I suggest getting the excellent iOS app, iExit, which tracks your location and gives you information on all the amenities you need while traveling.

    For planning purposes, there is an entire website dedicated to traveling the highway.

    I-95 Exit Guide | #1 Road Trip & Planning Guide - This comprehensive website offers information on:

    • Real time traffic conditions
    • Tolls
    • Alternate routes
    • Gas prices
    • Hotel booking
    • Restaurant recommendations
    • Construction
    • Weather
    • Shopping (outlet mallls)

    As always, you can take a deep dive on Wikipedia.

    ∞

    Exploring Journaling Techniques

    Vivaldi - 2025-04-05 at 19

    I've been keeping a journal of some sort consistently for many years. My motivations aren't that complex. I like journaling because it gives me something to do. To me, the act of organizing and recording my thoughts is just an enjoyable activity in its own right. I also enjoy looking back at past entries quite a bit. It's fun to see what I did on trips with Wonder Woman in years past or to see photos from family get togethers. Since I started blogging, much of what I once wrote just for myself now gets shared with the Internet.

    Here are a few tips based on my experience and some links from others to help you get started:

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