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Mar 30, 2025 ∞

Advice for Grandparents

Lou and Jolene

I'm lucky. All four of my grandparents lived into my adulthood. They were each wonderful people in their own way and each had a tremendous influence and helped me become the person I am today. I loved them all obviously and rarely does a day go by when I don't think of them in some way. My parents were teenagers when I was born, as was I when my kids came along. Mom and Dad were only 36 when they got into the grandparent game. Thankfully, my kids gave me a little more breathing room, but I've still been at it for twenty years now.

Meet My Grandkids

My personal advice to grandparents is to have as many adventures with your grandkids as you can. If circumstances permit it, give them the gift of your time. Take them camping, to fall carnivals and Polar Express Train Rides. Take them to see new Disney Movies. Remember their birthdays. Create some rituals. My kids know that every car trip with Wonder Woman and I involves a stop at the store for a snack and a drink. They know when they come to our house that we will have their favorite treats. We have always had a toybox in our house too.

Here are some more suggestions from around the internet.

10 Tips for How to Rock as a Brand-New Grandparent

Grandparenting Tips: How to be a Better Grandparent

How Can I Be A Fun Grandparent? 16 Tips For Grandparents – Retirement Tips and Tricks

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Mar 29, 2025 ∞

This Week's Bookmarks - Privacy Guides, 21-Day Cyber Cleanse, Famous Resaurants, True Crime, Wild West Food, Ad Blocker Testing, Liberation Library

Vivaldi - 2025-03-29 at 09

Privacy Guides: Independent Privacy & Security Resources - Privacy Guides is a not-for-profit, volunteer-run project that hosts online communities and publishes news and recommendations surrounding privacy and security tools, services, and knowledge.

Cleanse - The 21-day Cyber-Cleanse: designed to remove toxic tech from your life

Most Famous Restaurant in Every State - Business Insider - From fine dining restaurants to local barbecue joints, every state has at least one legendary restaurant that everyone knows about.

True Crime - Masters treasures went missing, then the FBI showed up | GolfDigest.com -
The first item the young man stole from Augusta National was a green and white golf towel. This was just after the 2007 Masters, when he had come to understand it was customary for warehouse employees to take one or two small things

What Food was Served at Wild West Saloons? - YouTube - It starts with cowboy bacon and beans and goes from there - From A Taste of History

AdBlock Tester: test your AdBlock extensions - How good is your ad blocking setup? Just go to the page to receive a grade. If you want to get a score of 99 or 100 out of 100, shoot me an email and I'll send you my setup.

Liberating Library - Liberating Library is a book distribution program and online collection of relevant radical resources run by a Pan-African socialist.

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Mar 27, 2025 ∞

It Must Be True, I Read It on the Internet

opt-2025-03-27-%1_17

One of the reasons that the United States is in the middle of an existential crisis is that too many damned people believe everything they read on the Internet. For these people, the Internet is not the information super highway. It is a cesspool of lies, misinformation, manipulation by foreign adversaries and scammers out to make a buck. It is beholden to MAGA and the right wing, who grow angry and vengeful when they are fact checked. To keep from being attacked by the government, Meta, the parent company of Facebook fired its fact checkers when Donald Trump was reelected. Elon Musk fired Twitter's fact checkers when he paid 44 billion dollars for the company.

No information source is infallible. Still, intelligent people should be able to separate fact from fiction. In the immortal words of way too may people Do your research.

Credible Information Sources

PolitiFact - Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy.

Snopes.com | The definitive fact-checking site and reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation. - Snopes (/ ˈ s n oʊ p s/), formerly known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source for both validating and debunking urban legends and similar stories in American popular culture.

Some other fact-checking resources similar to Politifact and Snopes include:

I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

The other newsletter is myapp review blog, delivered daily in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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Mar 26, 2025 ∞

Browser Extensions Are a Secret Weapon

This is a special edition of AppAddict. Tonight, I'm covering one of the best sources of computing functionality that often goes overlooked in the hunt for productivity enhancements and better work flows. There are many browser extensions that replace or enhance apps you use every day. This is my personal aresenal that I use in my daily workflow.

A modern Mac is a miraculous machine. My decidedly middle of the road laptop is an M2 with 16GB od RAM. I bought it in December of 2023 and hope to continue using it for years. The number of programs I have running at login (~40) would give Y2K Lou nightmares. The sheer number of installed applications would freak (628) that guy out. Finally, there are my browser extensions, and I'm only talking about the ones for my daily driver, Vivaldi, not the ones in the other five browsers I have installed. Where once I would have been concerned with somehow slowing down the Internet, today I just want to get the maximum amount of functionality out of my interface with it. I use A LOT of extensions. Let's get to them, shall we?

Aboard

Aboard does a a great many things but the way I use it is simple. It what I click when there is a webpage I want to share with my wife. She gets a notification on her phone when I share something and she can view it in the Aboard app or in a browser at the website. It's how I share shows I want to watch, restaurants I want to check out or news items that are blowing my mind.

Activity Watch

Activity Watch is a free time tracker that tells me how long I've been using my computer, which apps I use and for how long and what websites I visited and for how long. I can assign apps and web pages to categories and make the reports it creates as granular as I want to.

Activity Watch - Free No Effort Time Tracker | AppAddict

Language Tool

I use the paid version of this grammar, paraphraser and spelling tool, but I have used the free version as well and it is definitely a step up from native tools.

Language Tool - Free is Good, Paid is Better | AppAddict

Anylist Recipe Importer

I only activate this when I'm looking for recipes. Anylist importer clears all the cruft away from recipe sites and kust imports the ingredients and directions and leaves out all the SEO crap. It works with the Mac/iOS/Web app called Anylist, which is an app I've used for over a decade for shopping and packing lists and collecting recipes.

AnyList for Recipes, Shopping and More | AppAddict

Archive Today Automator

This is the extension I couldn't live without. Whenever I want to read a paywalled article from the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Verge, Medium, The Wall Street Journal or practically any other site, I just hit this button in my toolbar to obtain immediate access to a version from the Internet Archive. I subscribe to and support several progressive news organizations so I don't feel bad for reading MSM sites for free.

Block Party

Block Party is a paid service that inspects settings on invasive websites and changes things with your consent to offer yoy the most privacy possible. It works with Reddit, Google, YouTube, Strava, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, amd Instagram.

Bluesky Sidebar

Bluesky sidebar loads on web pages from the Bluesky social media platform and gives you extra information on the people you follow, the people who follow you, trending topics and the lists you are subscribed to.

Cloudhiker

Cloudhiker is a freemium service that is the closest thing you'll find on the wen today to the old Stumble Upon website. Use Cloudhiker to suggest and discover new sites in a large number of categories.

Cloudhiker - StumbleUpon for the IndyWeb | Linkage

Fedica

Fedica is a freemium service that allows you to schedule posts on all the major social media sites, you can crosspost to several of them at once. Paid customers get analytics and research tools, pluse reports from certain sites, like Mastodon and Bluesky.

Fedica - Post to Multiple Social Networks at Once, On a Schedule - For Free | AppAddict

Kagi Privacy Pass

Thiis extension is iused to authenticate to the paid Kagi search engine if you want to block all access toy what you are searching for. With this enabled, there is no history of your search activity using Kagi.

Using Kagi Search Engine on a Mac - Software and Tips | AppAddict

Markdownload

This is another one of my favorite extensons. It copies webpage links as Markdown links for insertion into posts and documents. It cam also copy whole pages as Markdown, although now that usefulness has been supplanted by the Obsidian Web Clipper. Finally is will create a markdown list from all the open tabs in a browser windos. It's great for bloggers and researchers.

MarkDownload - The Browser Extension that Works With #Obsidian | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

Mastodon Redirector

No matter what Mastodon instance I land on while browsing and following toots from others, clicking this button opens the page in my home instance, allowing me to like, follow and comment with ease. I find that ut works better for me than Graze, another plugin with similar features.

Obsidian Web Clipper

This free tool uses templates to download web pages as markdown files. Using AI, you can get summaries of the page and automatically assign tags. It will even download the transcript from YouTube videos. I have templates for IMDB, Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit, YouTube, Medium, Wikiepedia and general web pages.

Privacy Badger

This free extension from the Electronic Frontier Foundation is not an ad blocker. It works hand in hand with them to detect and block trackers using an algorithm and machine learning. The EFF is working on ways to prevent browser fingerprinting, the strategy used by tech companies to follow you around the web without cookies.

Privacy Badger Extension from the Electronic Freedom Foundation | AppAddict

Raindrop.io

Raindrop is a freemium bookmarking service from which I gety great value. I use it to create webpages of links I want to share, to save canonical copies of stories so that if the are removed from the Internet, I can still access them. I have never used my bookmarks more than I have with Raindrop.

Battle of the Bookmark Managers | AppAddict

Quick Pocket

I am a big believer in automation and in reading the work of smart people at depth. Aside from using Pocket as the excellent read it later service that it is, I also use it's integration with IFTTT and RSS to automate the saving of full text blog entries from Matt Birchler and Jarrod Blundy, two of my favorite tech oriented bloggers. Their articles are routed through Pocket right into Obsidian or Day One for preservation and reference. Pocket is owned by the Mozilla foundation.

Ublock Origin Light

The Original Ublock Origin is still the best as blocker ever made. It is no longer compatible with Chrome, Edge and Vivaldi, although Forefox users can still use it. Using a complete security toolkit that includes a customer DNS server, built in blockers in Vivaldi, Ublock Origin light and Freetube for YouTube, I routinely score 99 or 100 on ad blocking tests.

My Online Security Setup | Linkage

I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

The other newsletter is for this blog, in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

✉️ Reply by email

Mar 25, 2025 ∞

What To Do If You Get Arrested

Vivaldi - 2025-03-25 at 19

I haven't been arrested in 39 years, I came close a couple of times during demonstrations against the war in Iraq, but some wise elders advised me to cooperate with pushy police officers to avoid it, so I did. Most of my run-ins with the law happened when I was a teenager and they all involved alcohol. The sober version oi me has been pretty good at staying away from the police. But, as Bob Dylan so aptly put it, the times, they are a changing.

I'm not sure whether it's paranoid to fear political persecution as a regular left wing American citizen or not. It's very evident that the current federal government will avoid due process whenever and however it can. Rounding up Venezuelan immigrants and flying them to EL Salvador against a judges orders should wake folks up. Then there are the legal residents who have excercised free speech in a way that pisses MAGA off. These people have not broken the law. They said words out loud in public. That's it. That's their offense. For that they've been imprisoned. That's the America that we are living in.

So, that's why I am reading up on how to handle myself if they come for me, or if I get pulled aside while traveling. I don't think I have it in me to just be quiet and go along with what's happening to my country.

Do not be violent.
Don't talk to the police
Don't run
Don't submit to warrantless searches
Avoid asking for medical help
Do not admit guilt

Know Your Rights | Protesters’ Rights | ACLU

What Happens If You Are Arrested For Protesting? - Criminal Appeals Advocates, P.C.

Here’s What to Do If You Get Detained at a U.S. Airport

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Mar 24, 2025 ∞

There Ought To Be a Law

ian

You are probably familiar with Betteridge's Law of Headlines whether you know its name or not. The law is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." It's a common sense analysis of a journalistic practice where publications seek to avoid being incorrect when they aren't certain about an outcome. Were they certain, the story they published on the topic would have been presented as a certainty.

Becoming familiar with the thinking behind Betteridge's Law is a good step on the road to media literacy.

Betteridge's Law of Headlines | Tools for Thinking

YSK the fundamentals of Betteridge's Law of Headlines

Ian Betteridge is still around and still saying smart things. He's one of the more experienced tech journalists still plying the trade. His crtitiques of Apple, other journalists and the Internet writ large, are generally dead on and entertaining.

Ian Betteridge - Ian's Blog

One of the best newsletters I get each week is Ian's 10 Blue Links. The stories are generally topical and tech related. Ian point's out hypocrisy and industry bullshit with deadly accuracy.

Ten Blue Links, “good news, bad news, old news” edition

Follow Ian Betteridge on Mastodon

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Mar 22, 2025 ∞

Favorite Funny People

Vivaldi - 2025-03-22 at 22

I thought about doing stand up comedy for a while. I never did it, but I thouight anout it. While I was in that thinking mindset, I decided to study some of the greats to see if I could get some insights. I decided to start with Lenny Bruce. I'd never actually heard him perform. I was only familiar with his legend. He was recognized as warrior for free speech. He was arrested more than once and at his landmark 1964 New York trial, defended by Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Jules Feiffer, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, William Styron, and James Baldwin. I was eager hear his comedy.

It was disappointing. It was too topical. Lacking detailed familiarity with the news events of the day, I wasn't able to tie the jokes together. The same thing happened when I got my youngest daighter to watch reruns of In Living Color, a show I remembered as being hilarious. When we watched it together, it was full of jokes anout Barbara Bush's hair and Mike Tyson's legal woes. My daughter had no idea what they were talkinga about and soon grew bored.

So, my theory on the best comedians is that they are the ones who speak to the human condition. Their work is timeless. It's just as funny 40 and 50 years later as it was when it was first recorded. Here are some examples.

Richard Pryor

George Carlin

Mitch Hedberg

Bill Hicks

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Mar 22, 2025 ∞

This Week's Bookmarks - Surviving 2025, Automation, Reprogramming Culture, Autism, Bike Route Planning, Kahneman Suicide, Locomotive Lit

Vivaldi - 2025-03-22 at 06

Do One Thing | dansinker.com - We are living through a period of protracted awfulness, and the end is not coming anytime soon. Those in power would like nothing more than to keep you exhausted and impotent, incapable of getting anything done (especially the things that will undermine their power). So do one thing.

11 Ways to Automate Your Life (and Get Back More Free Time) | Lifehacker - Use your one wild and precious life for stuff you actually want to do.

The Anti-DEI Agenda Is Reprogramming America | WIRED - President Trump's anti-DEI playbook doesn't just affect the makeup of America's workplaces. It also impacts cultural production.

Opinion | Sorry, R.F.K.: There Is No Autism Mystery - The New York Times - I Was Diagnosed With Autism at 53. I Know Why Rates Are Rising.

VeloPlanner - From EuroVelo to national cycling networks, VeloPlanner puts the world's official, signposted routes in one place. Download GPX files, access detailed route information, and plan your next ride with confidence.

The Last Decision by the World’s Leading Thinker on Decisions | wsj.com - ## Shortly before Daniel Kahneman died last March, he emailed friends a message: He was choosing to end his own life in Switzerland. Some are still struggling with his choice.

Literary Locomotives: Nine Books Set on Trains That Show How They Changed the World ‹ Literary Hub - Why set a novel on a train? The answer might seem obvious: it’s a narratively and atmospherically rich space, an enclosure in which strangers are cooped up, each with their own different reason for making the journey.

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Mar 21, 2025 ∞

The Boss

Young Bruce

When I am laying on my deathbed, counting my regrets, one of them will be that I didn't go see Bruce Springsteen in the 80s or 90s. By the time the 21st century rolled around, I was done with concerts for big names. There just isn't any way I'm going to pay a hundred dollars an hour to be entertained. That doesn't take away from my enjoyment of music. I'm glad that Bruce and other senior citizens like Sir Paul McCartney are still performing live for the people who want to see them and don't mind parting with the dough.

I started listening to Springsteen when I was 14, in 1979 when he released the double-album, The River, still one of my favorites. A couple of years later when Nebraska came out, I became a fan for life. That sparse record, recorded on a four-track machine in Springsteen;s basement is my nomination for the perfect album in the canon.

My respect and admiration for The Boss comes from a variety of elements. I think he is a master of the English language, a people's poet if there ever was one. He was not, as he was once labeled, the next Dylan. He was just the first Bruce. Those songs from The River and Nebraska carried me into adulthood in the very spirit of the late 70s and early 80s. Springsteen's musical knowledge ad skill, coupled with his respect for people like Woodie Guthrie and Pete Seeger, mean a lot to me. His admiration of those men speaks to his values and mine.

I don't think he's perfect, by any means. He's made mistakes. His first marriage was rocky. He didn't always treat the guys in his band with the respect they deserve. By his own admission, he has a pretty outsized ego, but JFC, so would I if I were Bruce Springsteen. As artists go, he's just someone who makes music that speaks to me and has for decades.

Home | Bruce Springsteen

The Perfect Album | Living Out Loud

Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska by Warren Zanes | Goodreads

Born to Run (autobiography) - Wikipedia

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Mar 19, 2025 ∞

My Current Online Hangouts

These are the places I go online to interact with other folks. If you are not familiar with any of these places, maybe you can check them out.

My Mastodon Server

I am a big fan on the community at OMG.LOL and its Mastodon server, Social.lol, which requires that you have an OMG.LOL account. There is also a Discord community and a Signal group.

Discord

I am a member of several communities on Discord My favorites are : Obsidian.md, OMG.LOL, MacApps,

AppRaven

AppRaven is a community based around the iOS app of the same name. It's for people who like to discover new Mac and iOS apps,

Forums

I have a tom of forum accounts, mostly for software. The most helpful are Obsidian, Drafts, Keyboard Maestro

Reddit

My favorite communities on Reddit are r/MacApps, r/ObsidianMD and r/MacOS

BearBlog Discover

A great place to get to know bloggers is on BearBlog's Discover Page.

Scribbles

The new posts on the Scribbles platform are on the Explore Page

Micro.Blog

Did you know that you can get an account at Micro.blog for $1 month?

Others

I’m on Bluesky if you want to hook up there. I’m also on Pixelfed. Let’s Connect

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Mar 19, 2025 ∞

Setapp Goodness and Tips

Setapp is an app subscription service ($9.99 a month) owned by the Ukrainian company Macpaw. It has approximately 1 million subscribers, which is a good testament to its usefulness. Here are some of the things I've learned in a year and half of being a customer.

Unfortunately, Macpaw is a frequent target of Russian trolls because of the ongoing war between the two countries. Macpaw also makes the utility suite, CleanMyMac, which some people confuse with an older Mac malware program, MacKeeper. The two are not related. If you read the tech press, you'll see good reviews of Setapp. If you rely on Reddit or anonymous online sources, you are likely to run into those pesky Russians I mentioned.

I get tremendous value from my Setapp subscription. The numbers fluctuate a bit, but I currently have 42 apps from the service installed. More than a dozen of those apps are login items that are always running on my Mac. Obviously, they play a vital part in my workflow.

Anyone can try Setapp and all of its app for free for seven days, however if you use my referral link and code PLUMMER you will get 30 days free instead of seven. Also if you are a student, you are eligible for Setapp at 50% off. And, finally, anyone who pays by the year gets a 10% discount.

One tip I can offer is to get your own API key from Open.AI for use with AI apps like Typing Mind or Elephas. It is much cheaper. In a year of constantly using my API with multiple apps, I've spent $15.

If you have any apps from Setapp that you have already purchased, consider using the Setapp version while you have a subscription since it adds to the money that the developer make. It's just a nice thing to do. Brett Terpstra wrote a script and an automator workflow that will tell you if any of the apps on your computer are also on Setapp.

One last thing - I tried the iOS add-on and didn't get that much from it. I do have the add-on to run the apps on a second machine though. It doesn't add that much and it comes in handy.

Here's a List of the Login Apps I Use

Other Setapp Offerings I Have Reviewed

Full list of apps on Setapp, listed by popularity

✉️ Reply by email

Mar 18, 2025 ∞

Expanding My Horizons

Every so often in my adult life, I find a new passion. I'm not happy until I master it or come as close as I can. I've done it over a wide array of activities, cycling, photography, long-distance hiking, political activism and now blogging, I suppose. Based on all that, I know I have the capacity to learn new things. I am still curious. There are some areas of my life, where I'm not sure how to incorporate new things. The arts are a good example of this. I do not remember the last time I listened to an album by someone with whom I wasn't familiar. I used to get new music all the time but these days I am very much my own classic rock radio station. I'd like to discover some rabbit hole of a TV series to dive into. I'm in a rut of moving from one Netflix or Max new release to another one (with some Britbox thrown in). I have so much time now but I'm at a loss for ways to find new things. Time to do some research.

7 Ways To Expand Your Horizon And Push For New Frontiers - LifeHack

6 Easy Ways to Find the Streaming Movies and Shows You Want to Watch | PCMag

17 Ways To Find Good Books To Read - Cushing-Malloy

Too Many Places: Overcoming the Paradox of Choice

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Mar 17, 2025 ∞

The Racial Construct

Racial Diversity

If you haven't noticed the US government's full court press to assert the supremacy of whiteness in this country, you're probably white and conservative. The whole MAGA movement is predicated about returning to a time when white people reigned supreme over the cultural and economic realms of the country.

I find the whole concept of race to be an artificial construct, useful only to a dominant group who wants to draw lines between themselves and others, mostly to keep the others from assuming any privilege or availing themselves of perceived scarce resources. The whole notion of whiteness is fluid. There was a time when Irish and Italians were not considered white. Plenty of mouth-breathers still consider anyone who is Jewish to be ineligible for whiteness, the same with other Semitic people and for Spanish speakers.

If you spend more than thirty seconds thinking about race, it starts to become evident that it's only purpose is to keep people separate. One of the favorite beliefs among the Silicon Valley eugenics fans is the supposed differences in the IQ among the races. Guess who they believe to be #1.

Spend a little time looking at the arguments against using race to draw lines.

How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev | Goodreads

Eugenics Isn’t Dead—It’s Thriving in Tech – Mother Jones

Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue | Scientific American

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Mar 16, 2025 ∞

Amazon Exit Toolkit

My wife and I are in the process of detangling ourselves from four of the biggest tech companies: Meta, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Of those four, Amazon is the most firmly entrenched in our lives since the company, and it's owner without a soul, billionaire Jeff Bezos provide various services we use, forcing us to find alternatives in several different areas.

News

We dumped our subscription to the Washington Post during the 2024 election when Bezos, the owner of the newspaper, compelled the editorial department to kill its endorsement of the Harris/Walz ticket. While there are some quality journalists working at the paper, Bezos recently became even more involved with editorial policy, making it more pro-MAGA. We took the money we were spending on the Post and the New York Times and used it to support

eBooks

We've been ebook readers since shortly after the Kindle was released. We no longer use Kindle devices to read on, opting for our iPads these days, but we've purchased over 500 titles for the platform from Amazon. I recently downloaded all those files, removed the DRM and converted the files to epub format. Going forward, we will use the following stores and our technical skills to make our eBook purchases available to us on whatever platform we choose.

Audiobooks

Although you can still download audiobooks purchased from the Amazon owned Audible company, the day may come where you are prevented from doing that. I used a free tool to download and convert another 500+ books using Libation - Audiobook Downloader and Converter. I used the Mac app, Permute, to convert some older audiobooks I had downloaded from an account to which I no longer had access. Going forward, we will use these sources for audiobooks instead of Audible.

Television

While Amazon Prime Video has had many shows we've enjoyed, our primary use of the service has been as a conduit to British television via Britbox and Acorn TV. Luckily for us, both of those services have app for the AppleTV, the streaming device we use.

Photographs

We have nearly a terabyte of photos and videos uploaded to Amazon's servers and they don;t make it easy to download them, limiting individual downloads to 200 images at the time. Just to get our photos from the single year of 2014 required 96 separate downloads. Never again. Once I finish getting all the files onto my drive, I will be using an end-to-end encrypted service with servers in Europe to store my photos in the cloud. It also has automatic uploads of iPhone photos, just like Amazon and Google, another place we are leaving.

Ente - Private cloud storage for your photos, videos and more

Shopping

We've found that we can get better deals on products these days by shopping around vs. just buying from Amazon. A couple of examples are the companies Wonder Woman uses for her sports nutrition products and her running shoes.

Mar 15, 2025 ∞

Aging Parents

I am still trying to get used to my parents as elderly/senior/old. Both of them were born in 1947 (does math) which means they will turn 78 this year. They are long divorced, so my relationship with them isn't a joint one. My Mom has been a widow since 2008. My Dad has been married to my step-mom for 43 years. Wonder Woman's wonderful parents are also still kicking. Her mom just turned 80 and her dad is 85.

Mom is exceptionally healthy. She's always eaten well and taken care of herself. She exercises regularly. And, she assures me frequently, she's only had two glasses of wine since Christmas, which is a likely story, but she doesn't have any alcohol related issues.

My Dad has had three or four heart attacks, numerous stints and coronary bypass surgery. An Army helicopter pilot, he had to quit flying in the 80s because of his blood pressure. He walks with a cane these days and not very far.

I've gotten good, personalized advice from kind people on the Internet about being an asset to my folks in the struggles we are all going to face as we age. It's a topic that isn't alwats fun to research, but I think it's better to do it electively, than to wait until panic strikes.

Vivaldi - 2025-03-15 at 09

50 Things to do with elderly parents

Complete List of Things to Do for Elderly Parents

Ageing parents need help? 6 things you can do

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Mar 15, 2025 ∞

This Week's Bookmarks - Taxi Reunion, Gen Z and Phone Calls, Sports Analytics, Best Books, The Pandemic, Best Sports Moments, Facebook Exposed

Taxi Stars

“Taxi ”stars reunite to pay tribute to castmate Danny DeVito more than 40 years after show's end - Tony Danza, Marilu Henner, Judd Hirsch, Carol Kane, and Christopher Lloyd met up to watch their former costar Danny DeVito accept the Jason Robards Award for Excellence in Theater at the Roundabout Theatre Company's gala at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York City. The show's cocreator, James L. Brooks, also attended

‘No, I’m not phoning to say I’m dying!’ My gruelling week of calling gen Z friends rather than texting them - Of those aged 18 to 34 – 61% prefer a text to a call, and 23% never bother answering

Analytics transformed sports. Has it also made them less entertaining? - The Washington Post - The "Moneyball" era changed how teams play, coach and are built. But the quest for efficiency is increasingly being blamed for robbing sports of their beauty.

Five Books - Expert Book Recommendations - The best books on every subject

30 Charts That Show How Everything Changed in March 2020 - The New York Times - Decades from now, the pandemic will be visible in the historical data of nearly anything measurable today: an unmistakable spike, dip or jolt that officially began for Americans five years ago this month.

The 100 Best Sports Moments of the Quarter Century - The Ringer - When the impossible becomes possible, when the definition of absurd is redefined, when men and women turn into superheroes—you don’t easily forget something like that.

Book Review: ‘Careless People,’ by Sarah Wynn-Williams - The New York Times - The publisher of "Careless People" kept the existence of this memoir a secret until a few days ago — with good reason, it turns out. For seven years, beginning in 2011, the book's author, Sarah Wynn-Williams, worked at Facebook (now called Meta), eventually as a director of global public policy.

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Mar 14, 2025 ∞

Five Bloggers You Should Get to Know

Vivaldi - 2025-03-14 at 17

Some people just have a talent for blogging. They have innate curiosity, a good command of language and the discipline to combine the two in digestible bits for the web. Sometimes they are funny, often scathing, usually insightful and cheefully devoid of ego. These people get bookmarked. They get their own folder in my RSS reader and tonight they get shared with you.

shellsharks

His intro reads - Welcome to Shellsharks - a blog, an IndieWeb site, a community, and a central point-of-presence for myself on the web. What I publish here is a reference for myself but is available to be consumed by all. I write about all things Infosec, Technology and Life in general. Follow shellsharks on Mastodon

Hollie - Small Good Things

Follow Hollie on Mastodon - Her bio - she/they
Enthusiastic about #nature, hats, kindness, #puns, #tea, funny stories, personal websites, lichen, bags, space, boats, hobbits, #UrbanSketching, #books, #watercolors, laughing, ham radio, #bicycling, #monsterdon, #cooking, #knitting, spinning, sewing.

#HSP, #fibro & #MECFS, MCAS, #anxiety, #ADHD.

GenX, happily married to @gregtitus for 29 yrs, mom of two adult kids (one hard-of-hearing, one autistic trans). Wears heart on sleeve. Trans rights are human rights.

mb - jarunmb.com

Follow mb on Mastodon - Not just another tech guy on the Fediverse. Instead, you get a real live human, sharing about the ins and outs of work, parenting, blogging, learning and adapting to life in 2025. One of my favorites.

Pratik - Nerve Endings Firing Away

Follow Pratik on Mastodon - Do you like smart, challenging people? I do. That's why I follow Pratik. He's an authentic guy who isn't afraid to point things out when they need to be pointed out. His Mastodon bio - "I live in Austin. I typically post photos and post personal and work-related updates, especially travel. I offer my opinions on Internet trends and media, talk about TV and movies I watch, share books I read or want to read, rant on right-wing politics, and advocate for inclusion and diversity in all facets of life."

Mark R. Stoneman

Follow Mark on Mastodon - Like I said, I like smart people and this New England historian fits that bill. Mark is friendly, thoughtful and has a knack for relating what is happening today with events from the past. As a veteranr who has lived around military bases my whole life, I've know a whole bunch of Gis, but Mark is the first Ivy League combat arms guy I've encountered - and an enlisted one at that!! Good people as we say down here.

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Mar 13, 2025 ∞

Giving Criticism

Feedback Dandwich

On my software review blog, AppAddict, I focus on apps I like and that I think will be helpful to other Mac users. The only time I write negative reviews is when I don't like a company's business practices or when my take on an app is different than that of the majority. I give apps a fair test and I'm generally willing to give a developer the benefit of the doubt. I've gotten good feedback from a number of them, including a few I've kind of idolized over the years. The day will come, though, when the author of one of the apps of which I was critical is going to hit me up with a WTF? I'll be glad to listen and if I got something wrong, I'll correct my mistake.I won't just change my take on it because someone asks me to. Lame.

I don't think many people are good at giving constructive criticism or negative feedback. Have you ever had a boss that would email the entire department when trying to correct one person's behavior because they were just to chickenshit to talk to them one on one? I endured that for years with more than one boss. Another indicator of poor people skills is when a boss waits until your annual performance review to criticize you, instead of being a coach or a mentor. Managers get paid to manage, but too many of them don't seem ti like that part of the job.

Giving criticism isn't being mean. Sometimes withholding it is. It's a skill that can be learned. Here are some resources.

How To Give Constructive Criticism: 6 Helpful Tips - Personal Excellence - Includes the infamous feedback sandwich method

Do You Know How To Write A Good Bad Review? | by Liz King | Medium - By now we all know where to look for online reviews — on Yelp, Google, or Facebook. But do we know how to write them, and do we understand how they can impact a small business?

Are You Being Too Critical in Your Relationship? | Psychology Today - Because we aren't taught how to navigate differences in our relationships, we tend to do it badly. However, as adults, we can learn to navigate differences in a healthy way, fostering more safety and connection in our relationships.

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Mar 12, 2025 ∞

Quotes for Every Occassion - Please Share Yours!

Speakers

I love quotes. Nothing would make me happier than for you to send me any of your favorites in an email, or post them on mastodon or Bluesky and tag me. I'll be glad to give a shout out to anyone who cares to share.

"Everything you can imagine is real." — Pablo Picasso

“Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you imagine it.” — George Lucas

"Who looks outward dreams, who looks inward awakens." — Carl Jung

I was doing some maintenance on my collection of quotes today, a relaxing, if never ending task. I had a few highlights I'd saved without also recording the author's name, so I did a full text search for them on Kagi and found out that Goodreads has a huge quotes repository. Every single quote I was looking for had a Goodreads page. I found pages for Albert Camus, Maya Angelo, Joseph Campbell and several other notables.

More Quote Websites

Quote Topics - BrainyQuote

A-Z Quotes | Quotes for All Occasions

Best and famous collection of quotes at QuotesLyfe

Wikiquote

My Collection of 500+ Authors and Quotes

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Mar 11, 2025 ∞

Underrated Awesome Stuff

Vivaldi - 2025-03-11 at 17

One of my favorite parts of living in the information age is the ease of discovery of entertainment options. I remember when we had to wait for the TV Guide to show up in the mailbox, listen to FM radio and read the siges outside the cinema for information. Now, thanks to huge databases and fan communities, you can get in depth suggestions from your digital alter ego at a moment's notice. It's also fun tio find out what your friends like. You can ask questions and give feedback. Here are a few under the radar picks from yours truly.

Books

Lexicon by Max Barry - a science fiction novel about an organization that teaches it's candidates how to use language as a way to control the minds of others
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover - the author practices immersice journalism by placing himself in situations where he experiences life first hand in order to write about it. In this case he takes a job as a guard at Sing Sing prison in NY to explore modern American prisons.
A Rising Man (Sam Wyndham, #1) by Abir Mukherjee - Set in India during the British Raj, this is a novel featuring a detective who is an opium addicted veteran of The Great War. It has a great sense of time and place.
Never a Dull Moment: 1971 The Year That Rock Exploded by David Hepworth - I love books about music and this one thoroughly explores the greatest year in rock hostory when classic albums by Led Zepplin, The Who, Carole King, James Taylor, Rod Stewart, Joanie Mitchell and more were released.
The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan - Michael Pollan may be the best popular science writer alive. In this book he explores four plants: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato in a way that us informative and entertaining.

TV Shows

Scott & Bailey - D.C. Rachel Bailey and D.C. Janet Scott have a robust and engaging friendship which enables them to draw upon each other’s strengths and investigate murders for the Manchester Metropolitan Police. I love the strong female leads.
Broadchurch - The murder of a young boy in a small coastal town brings a media frenzy, which threatens to tear the community apart. I've been a David Tennant and an Olivia Coleman fave ever since I watched this.
The Fall - When the Police Service of Northern Ireland are unable to close a case after 28 days, Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson of the Metropolitan Police Service is called in to review the case. Under her new leadership, the local detectives must track down and stop a serial killer who is terrorising the city of Belfast. Not one to watch alone. It is intense.
Inspector George Gently - A British crime drama adapted from the George Gently novels by Alan Hunt and set in the 1960s. Inspector George Gently is an old-school detective trying to come to terms with a time when the lines between the police and criminals have become blurred. British cop shows are so much better than American ones. They think more, shoot less.
Foyle's War - As WW2 rages around the world, DCS Foyle fights his own war on the home-front as he investigates crimes on the south coast of England. Foyle's War opens in southern England in the year 1940. A great job of recreating Britain during its greatest hour.

Movies

The Station Agent (2003) - When his only friend dies, a man born with dwarfism moves to rural New Jersey to live a life of solitude, only to meet a chatty hot dog vendor and a woman dealing with her own personal loss. Peter Dinklage before GOT.
Yesterday (2019) - A struggling musician realizes he's the only person on Earth who can remember The Beatles after waking up in an alternate reality where the group was forgotten. Lot's of Beatles music and a few surprises.
The Dig (2021) - As WWII looms, a wealthy widow hires an amateur archaeologist to excavate the burial mounds on her estate. When they make a historic discovery, the echoes of Britain's past resonate in the face of its uncertain future‎. One of those movies that will have you reading Wikipedia articles as soon as it is over.
Chef (2014) - When Chef Carl Casper suddenly quits his job at a prominent Los Angeles restaurant after refusing to compromise his creative integrity for its controlling owner, he is left to figure out what's next. Finding himself in Miami, he teams up with his ex-wife, his friend and his son to launch a food truck. Taking to the road, Chef Carl goes back to his roots to reignite his passion for the kitchen -- and zest for life and love. Even though Jon Favreau is responsible for a bunch of MCU schlock, he redeems himself in this story about self discovery and parenthood.
The Bookshop (2017) - Set in a small English town in 1959, a woman decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop, a decision which becomes a political minefield. Another story with a strong, indomitable female character.

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