Writing

Mar 23, 2025 ∞

The Audience Effect

IMG_3045-2

This is the 52nd week of this blog's life. It doesn't seem like I've been doing this for almost 365 days, but I have. I think I may have missed a day in there somewhere, but i made up for it the next. In fact, I've posted 377 times since March 28, 2024. It's a good thing I'm not as talkative in real life as I once was, because evidently I can't shut up on the Internet. But, you know what? I think I'd rather write that many original blog posts than I would engage in some unfulfilling back and forth on social media arguing with someone who is never going to change their mind. That kind of exchange is like a Kabuki play where every line is predictable, as is the outcome. Somebody gets called a Nazi. Someone gets called a Commie. End of.

What I appreciate about blogging is the opportunity to be my consistently authentic self to the people interested enough to check in a regular or semi-regular basis. It makes me extremely happy when other people casually refer to Wonder Woman the same way that I do, or even better, when they are casual enough to shorten it to just WW. I dig getting teased that I outsource my blog to one of my many grandkids as the likely explanation for my proclivity to post so often. When I left mt job, the support and congratulations meant a lot to me. It felt personal.

I try to be the same kind of supportive reader for my blogging friends. It's just a matter of being interested and paying attention. That's always been my nature. I knew the names of my co-workers kids and whether their parents were still alive, what kind of dog they had and what their favorite TV show was. I with one guy for 20 years and I could answer every one of those questions about him and I doubt that he could have answered a single one of them about me or any of the other people on our team. He was a nice person, just uninterested in other people. Trust me, if you share pieces of your life on your blog, I am paying attention. I know who loves dachshunds, who has kids in college, whose partners have health issues and what kind of software you like the best.

I have a special tag in my email so that I can easily find letters from the people who have written me about the things I've posted, even the people who just have technical questions. I like providing technical help. It does not make me feel taken advantage of. I've had people write to me about some deeply personal topics, about quitting drinking and dealing with depression, about struggles at work and in their relationships. I consider it a real privilege to get a letter like that.

I have no idea how many people read Living Out Loud. Sure there are analytics and I look at those but I have a hard time translating those numbers into human beings. My favorite part of analytics is seeing that someone has posted a link back to something I've written. That's the best feeling. I try to repay the favor and promote my favorites in return. It's all part of being am IndieWeb blogger and member of a community of creative people who have chosen the same medium to share themselves with the world. It takes what it takes to get us all to where we are today. Hindsight is 20/20. I just wish I'd wasted a lot less energy on Facebook all those years when I could have beeb doing this instead. Of well.

If you've read enough posts on this blog to know me a little, I appreciate you. I'm a fortunate man.

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

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

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

Mar 22, 2025 ∞

How I Met Wonder Woman

landc

The years 2009-2012 were the peak of my endurance cycling career. I've ridden since then, but never with the same laser focused dedication to absolutely piling the miles on. During those years, I seldom missed dedicating both weekend days to riding solo or with my cycling club, or both. From mid-February until the first week of November, I also rode three or four days after work in progressively longer distances as the days grew longer. In 2011, I averaged 30 miles a day for the entire year, accumulating nearly 11K miles on my bike. It was loads of fun, although a bit obsessive and selfish. Balance is better, but that is a lecture for another time.

On Veterans Day (November 11th in the US), It was my habit to organize a 100-mile ride since many members of the local cycling community are military connected and most folks get the day off. I'd make announcements at group rides for a couple of weeks, post it to our website and make a flier to hang at the local bike shop.. The typical attendance at one of these rides would be about 20 people. There was no fee. Riders were expected to bring their supplies and money to refuel at convenience stores. We didn't have any organized support. If someone's bike broke down, or if they were unable to continue due to fatigue or injury, we'd figure something out. Someone's spouse would get a phone call and some vague directions is what I'm saying. That rarely happened, though. People were pretty good at not overestimating their abilities and if someone started having a bad day, usually someone would volunteer to ride with them at a slower pace so they could finish the ride. It wasn't a race or a competition.

Although there's always a rotating cast of characters in a transient community like ours, I generally knew everyone in the club. We also had plenty of people who were in the local triathlon club who rode and trained with us. Some of them I only knew by reputation. One of them I'd seen on social media. My online observations informed me that she was a partner in big accounting firm, took European vacations and had been a young parent like me. She was one of the founders of the triathlon club and a current officer. She'd been one of the first people in the area to complete a competitive Ironman triathlon, meaning that she went to race, not just to finish. Likewise, she had a reputation for being supremely fit and very competitive.

Swim: 2.4 miles (3.86 kilometers)
Bike: 112 miles (180.25 kilometers)
Run: 26.2 miles (42.20 kilometers, a full marathon)

As was my habit, I was early to the ride. When I got there, a car I didn't recognize was in the parking lot and a diminutive lady in cycling kit was pumping up the tires on her carbon fiber road bike. It was her, the triathlon woman. I went over and introduced myself, Johnny Cask style—"Hello, I'm Lou Plummer." Although there were no other men in the community named Lou, most people called me by my full name for some reason, so that's what I used when I met new folks. I asked her if her name was Carol, mentioning offhandedly that I'd seen her on social media. I did not want to give off stalker vibes.

I'll be honest. She fascinated me. How could someone that small and compact be so damn powerful? Plus she, like me, had several grandchildren. With all the pit stops and a mid-ride meal, the riders made a full day of it. I spent a good portion of the time chatting with my new friend, riding beside her in a double pace line and taking my turns at the front of the group at her side. Since I was also the ride organizer and thus the de facto leader, I also had to shout out directions for every turn and keep tabs on all the riders, especially the ones attempting the 100-mile distance for the first time.

I'd picked out a well-know local burger joint as our lunch stop. She and I sat together. It was only later that I discovered that she didn't eat bread or cookies because of dietary restrictions. After all was said and done at the end of the day, I knew that I wanted to be friends with this lady. She and I felt the same way about training and health. We had similar priorities, and we liked riding our bikes for really, really long distances. Over the next four months, we rode together every chance we had, including one epic holiday weekend where we accumulated almost 300 miles together along with an Army friend of ours.

I was a very social, very talkative, outwardly enthusiastic guy. She was generally quiet, reserved and tended to look at me oddly whenever I'd crack one too many jokes. That would cause me to shut up for about 30 seconds — her plan, I guess. A lot of endurance sports can involve what is known as type two fun. That's an activity that is only enjoyable after the fact. While participating in type two fun, people tend to suffer. We had some of that, riding in winds that were so brutal that neither of us could go faster than 10mph, when under ideal conditions we could maintain 20mph for hours on end. I was a large guy for a cyclist. I outweighed the heaviest professionals by a good 30 pounds. I do not like to climb hills, not on a bike, not on foot, not in any fashion. As I have mentioned, she is small and in possession of phenomenal athletic ability. She got to be excellent at patiently waiting for me whenever we faced elevation changes.

Anyway, I'll cut to the chase. One hundred and twelve days after our first ride, I confessed to her that my feelings for her had grown into something more than just those one has for a riding buddy. Well, come to find out, she felt the same way. Within a week, we became partners and have been together ever since. I still hate to climb hills.

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

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.

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

Mar 21, 2025 ∞

Just Relax

Lou

I think I have reached the stage where i no longer have to do anything to relax. It's become status quo for me. I rarely have to deal with anyone who brings tension to my life these days. If someone starts to do that, I can easily elect to find an alternative source of humanity. Luckily, I'm not related to anyone who stresses me out. I generally wake up in a good mood and wait for the day to get even better.

The pre-dawn hours are some of the best of any day. It's quiet. Coffee tastes better than than it does at any other time. I can spend a leisurely amount of time going through the ritual I've developed. The first thing I do is open my journal and do a quick once-over of the stuff that gets automatically imported there. Then I review "on this day." I've been using the same app, Day One, for 11 years, so I have plenty to look back over. Today's interesting entries were from 2020 when I wrote quite a bot about how weird it was during the early days of the pandemic, when grocery store shelves were empty and people were panic buying. After my journal, I move on to do the same thing with my photographs, which are liberally sprinkled with photos of my grandkids at all different ages. Only after doing all that, do I take a look at the daily fire hose of WTF, also known as the headlines. As horrible as things are, I am doing a good job of depersonalizing it.

I'm a believer in creating happy spaces. My little home office is pleasantly lit. Everything is suitably comfortable. I can listen to music if I feel like it or watch something, which I rarely do, but can if it suits me. I always have a tasty beverage on hand. I may have to work on making my workspace a little less relaxing because taking a nap with my laptop has become a new pastime. How delightful to be able to just surrender to every urge to get 40 winks. I keep meaning to start using an essential oil diffuser that I used to keep running all the time for just a little more feng shui.

I have a great view from my window. I'll be moving my bird feeders to where I can see them better. My house borders on a stretch of woodlands. My neighborhood was built in the 60s, and we have many established, mature trees around. I see all kinds of wildlife, from squirrels, to rabbits, raccoons, and opossums, as well as a long list of birds: cardinals, wrens, house finches, titmice, blue jays, catbirds, chickadees, goldfinches, owls, red tail hawks, crows, sparrows, robins, orioles and more.

During my earlier years, I didn't always have the money to have a smoothly working climate control system. I spent too may years relying on expensive space heaters and window units. Not now buddy. I can adjust the temperature to whatever I want right from my phone or computer. It's such a luxury. My high school years were spent in a 100-year-old farmhouse with no air conditioning and heat from a wood stove. I survived just fine, but, man, I love these new fangled devices.

My days are spent now working on projects that interest me. I read what I want to read. My biggest energy consumption is finding ways to be creative, not trying to calm people frustrated by technology that isn't acting as it should. I haven't had to reset anyone's password in over a month. A professional lifetime where every day was a confrontation with things that didn't work has been supplanted by my lovingly tended little home tech environment where just about everything that happens to predictable and expected. That's the life for me.

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

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

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

Mar 20, 2025 ∞

World's Best Granddad

The title of this blog post is aspirational. One of my goals in life is to make up for my shortcomings as a father by being the best grandfather I can be. I also tried to be the best Dad I could be, but I feel more prepared at this stage in my life to succeed than I did in my younger days. One of the primary benefits of having been a teenage parent was the head start it gave me on becoming a grandfather. The oldest of my grandchildren will turn 20 this year, while the youngest two are just in kindergarten. There are 13 of them all together. It plays hell at Christmastime, not that I do much of the shopping. Wonder Woman handles that. About all I do is bring the packages in from the porch and accept hugs from the kiddos after they open them.

I've got several of the kids on my mind today. I've been assembling the gear for a weekend camping trip with five of them, ranging from five-year old Evie to 14-year-old Aiden. Despite the threat of a cold night on Saturday, we have gathered our tents, sleeping bags, flashlights and cooking gear to head for Jones Lake State Park for the weekend. I've gotten everyone's favorite camping food, s'mores fixings and a massive charger for all their electronics. Harper, my aspiring TikTok superstar, will surely be making videos while hanging out with her cousins in the woods. Wonder Woman will be in charge, of course. We got them all fishing poles last fall, so that's definitely going to be on their itinerary.

My other kindergarten grandchild is James. He lives a couple of hours away. He's eight years younger than his sister. He'd been with the same group of kids in pre-school for several years but unfortunately, none of them ended up going to the same elementary school he attends. It threw him for a loop and this hasn't been an easy year for him because of it. It really breaks my heart to see him struggling with the social aspect of the school experience so early. He's a bright boy, so the academic part of the experience is going OK, I just want him to make some friends to enrich the experience. Thankfully, his folks aren't planning on moving, so he will have the stability to get to know his classmates as time goes on.

One of my other grandsons, Connor, is a high-school junior. He has an illness called Friedreich's Ataxia that affects his mobility. He drives a car with hand controls and uses a motorized wheelchair at school. Furthermore, he can walk some, but his illness makes it difficult. With the destruction of the Department of Education by the fascists in Washington, coupled with the undercover attack on the disabled as part of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, we do not know what is going to happen to the services he gets. To make it all even more infuriating, his Dad, our son-in-law, is a 100% disabled vet from injuries sustained in an IED explosion in Afghanistan. We don't know what's going to happen with his Veteran's Administration healthcare and services, either. My anger at the Republicans who wave flags and enable this bullshit is very, very personal. Whatever happens, Wonder Woman and I will be there for them.

I'm glad I have all of these people to love. I may not be the world's best Granddad yet, but I will continue to work toward being that man.

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

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

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

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

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 19, 2025 ∞

Me, the Digital Packrat

pr2

When I bought my first computer in 1993, an IBM PS1 Consultant, 486/33SX, it had a 140 MB hard drive. I kept the computer for three years, and although I added a CD-ROM, sound card and extra RAM, I never increased the amount of storage. A quick check of the computer I use today, an M2 MacBook Air reveals that I have 78 apps that take up more storage by themselves than I had available on that first computer. My camera, a Canon 6D takes photos so large that six of them would have filled the hard drive of that first computer.

I still have documents I created on that machine. In fact, I have a great many things I wrote and preserved from the 1990s, including digital photos from the expensive Kodak camera that belonged to my job. Many of the documents were written in Microsoft Works, a productivity suite it stopped selling 16 years ago. There was never a Mac version of it. At some point, I had to jump through some hoops to recover the information from those files using a document interpreter. These days, I save everything I write as plain text so that I don't ever face that problem again. I did not save everything I wrote from that era, but I was able to use The Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive to recover numerous web pages from my first blog.

When Napster was popular, you could download almost any song you could think of just by searching for it. I accumulated all 500 of the Rolling Stones top albums that way. While I was still living that pirate life, a short time actually, I also collected the full discographies of several prolific artists and groups and that's why I have 25+ albums (each) by Neil Young, Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Bob Dylan.

In setting up my new home office recently, I rounded up the embarrassingly large collection of hard drives I'd accumulated over the years: 7 portable 1 TB drives, 2 portable 2 TB drives, 2 powered external 1 TB drives, 5 internal 1 TB drives and 2 powered external 3 TB hard drives. That's 24 TB of storage added to the 5 TB that I have available on the computers I use daily. The drives contained various collections of software, photos, music, podcasts, movies, TV shows, hard drive back-ups and documents collected over the past 30+ years.

I recently added over a thousand more files to keep up with when I downloaded our entire Amazon Kindle and Audible collections. We had over 500 books in each of those. My challenge is to consolidate all of that information, removing duplicates as I go along. My goal is to have a local copy, a copy kept offsite but readily available and a copy in the cloud. A lot of this information is only important to me. My kids will probably preserve the photos and may avail themselves of some music, but who will want an archive of decades of my writing? If you ask them, they'd most likely says yes, but it is a lot of work to maintain so many files and like all 21st century people, their collections of digital data are growing too.

My decision to create a home lab made things even more complicated since now I have three computers to maintain and a fluctuating number of virtual machines. This means I have a half dozen large USB thumb drives with operating system installations on them. Yay! More data! Having high-speed Internet also allows me to suck information off the internet at an outrageous rate. I can download dozens of GB of data in a morning if I feel like it, and of course, I often feel like it. I don't know for sure, but I suspect there may be a diagnosis associated with my personality type.

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

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

[Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇](#upvote-form)

Mar 18, 2025 ∞

Who Are Your People?

Freedom Riders

One thing I learned prior to traveling to Ireland is that the people of that country grow really and truly tired of Americans (meaning people who were born and raised in the United States) coming over to the Emerald Isle and proclaiming themselves to be Irish because one of their 32 great-great-great-great grandfathers was from County Cork. I made it very clear to any of the Irish people I spoke to that I was not one of "those" Americans. One fellow couldn't believe that I wasn't trying to claim to be his long lost cousin. I explained that my grandmother was of Scottish descent. He asked me her family name. "McFadyen," I told him. He assumed a triumphant look and led me to a monument located right beside the famous Free Derry wall. The monument was to a man whose last name was, you guessed it, McFadyen. He told me that I might not claim Ireland but that Ireland would claim me.

Honestly, I don't really care that much where any of my long dead relatives came from in the sense that i just can't identify with national pride. It's seldom a good thing is it? It leads to nationalism and feelings and acts of unearned and undeserved superiority. I'm fine with other folks who feel some sort of spiritual kinship with the home of their ancestors, as long as they aren't obnoxious about it. Just don't tell me that you know you'd be good at bullfighting because you have Spanish blood or any kind crap like that.

As a general rule, most cultures have two sides. For every selfless act of sacrifice, there tends to be a corresponding act of something horrible. Even the Irish, a people I hold in high esteem for persevering under years of exploitive English colonialism, seldom talk about their Nazi sympathies. Wait, what? Well, after Irish independence, certain folks decided that any enemy of England was a friend of Ireland and well, that kind of led to a certain acceptance of Germany that was most underserved. Read about it in the Irish Times

The heroic American Army of World War Two had soldiers stationed in America guarding their fellow citizens in Japanese Internment Camps. That doesn't take away anything from the men who landed on Omaha Beach, it just solidifies the fact that it's a very grey world, no matter how black and white we wish it could be.

For my fellow pale skinned brethren, expressing something as warped as racial pride is just weird AF to me. Thankfully, the tendency of white people to express that notion was on the decline prior to the last election, although it seems to be making a comeback. I can see where traditionally oppressed people have a sense of "Yay! We survived!" but I'm not sure what their genocidal oppressors have to celebrate. Don't even come at me with an "But not all white people" argument either.

I am much more inclined to identify with my self-chosen tribe of freedom fighters. I celebrate my people based on what they did and not on geography or the amount of melanin in their skin or the shape of their eyes. Our real families are the people we choose and not the blood in our veins. My people were the abolitionists, the Freedom Riders, the IWW and the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. My people were Susan B. Anthony, Fannie Lou Hamer, Fred Korematsu and Sitting Bull. My people started Occupy Wall Street and rioted in the streets of Seattle. They were gunned down at Kent State by the Ohio NationalGuard and in a Greensboro housing project by the KKK. My people are finding ways to resist the tide of fascism right this red hot minute.

If you feel the same way, then you are my sister or my brother. I love you.

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

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

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

Mar 16, 2025 ∞

I Need an Analogy for the Internet

Bluesky

Sometimes being online is absolutely like panning for gold. I can be perusing one of the blogging platforms I frequent and discover the most heart touching essay by someone i've never encountered before. They could be writing about anything, a relationship, or work or just anything about surviving life in 2025. When I find someone like that, it brightens my day and gives me something to look forward to. I felt that way when I found Keenan and Annie.

There are times when even a well done commercial site providing high-quality content is a joy to spend time on there. The Atlantic or The Verge or Wired on a good day are prime examples. I happen to like and respect quite a few journalists. Some of them are doing some absolutely vital work for our democracy right now, and i appreciate it. I also like the tech nerds, who I can tell are just as excited to find an interesting new tool as I would be in their shoes. After all these years, I still think computers can be fun. I'm not jaded yet.

But.

But then... I log on to Mastodon or Bluesky and I see a message in my inbox, not from some software curious Mac fan, but from an incredibly attractive woman, appearing younger than my adult kids, who is just dying to find out how I'm doing tonight. Sigh. It only takes a minute to block and delete those kind of scam messages. They are such downers, though. There's some lonely guy out there, maybe someone who isn't as sharp mentally as they once were who is going to fall for that kind of thing tonight. He will get taken to the cleaners and have his heart broken. I don't like the constant reminders of that reality.

Other times, I'm just doing my thing, minding my own business and I get a text message, which is cool if it is a friend or our kids or grandkids. What's not cool is when it's someone from the political party I don't support crowing about the latest MAGA atrocity as if it's a good thing and asking me to send them money.

Lately, I've voluntarily been extricating myself from my involvement with the websites of the billionaire class. It's not a project to be taken on lightly. It changes the Internet, injecting friction into areas where I am not used to it. I have to think instead of using muscle memory. Having a new email address for the first time in 20 years is disconcerting. Leaving Facebook was absolutely the right thing to do, but I miss the people from my old job and high school friends I only saw on there. For years, I've been able to watch whatever blockbuster show I wanted because subscribing to ALL the streaming services wasn't that expensive. Now, having a moral code is giving me FOMO. What if something superb comes on Amazon Prime after my divorce from Jeff Bezos goes through? I hate the thought.

It's been a good weekend. I got to spend a few hours with my oldest friend today. Wonder Woman and I wrapped a good British TV show. I have a couple of trips to look forward to, And, I am still retired.

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

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 ∞

Quiet

Laurel creek

Our house is a quiet one. Our neighborhood is quiet. Neither me not Wonder Woman have loud voices normally, although we do occasionally get excited. My kids follow my lead on this. My son doesn't even have a TV and although, like me, he loves music and has a large collection, he enjoys nothing more than sitting in silence with a book. My daughter does have a TV, but it isn't on much. She has a six-year-old who can be a little rambunctious, but generally, it's a calm home.

Although Wonder Woman is like me, the rest of her family is not. Her girls and her parents like having a TV on in the background. The grandkids are all big gamers so you get those sounds too. My Dad is another person who gets nervous without a TV on in the background. He turns one on just as soon as he wakes up, and it stays on all day, either on Fox News or sports, although he does enjoy the odd YouTube video from time to time. It doesn't bother me, but I'm usually ready for quiet when we go home.

When we have grandkids over for a visit, I know that it will be louder than normal. I am OK with that. I may occasionally ask one of them to use headphones or to turn the volume down on their video game or tablet, but I don't make them feel bad about it or walk on eggshells. I wasn't always that cool about it, though. I've grown more flexible about that with age.

One of my greatest traveling anxieties is being trapped in a loud hotel. I've left more than one in the middle of the night because I just couldn't handle the racket and the staff's inability to do anything about it. I may have even yelled at the noisemakers, a group from a ski trip who came rolling in loud at midnight. I just don't understand the mentality of people who are not volume aware.

Camping in a group campground brings on the same feeling. Breaking out a boom box and serenading people who may have different taste in music or who might want to, I don't know, hear the birds sing is just pure rude. Getting drunk and talking loud around a campfire past the "quiet hour" is another sure sign of low intelligence and poor home training. I also consider hiking spaces to be close to sacred. When some trail runner with a Bluetooth speaker comes blasting by, I want to trip them. Then kick them.

For years, one of my hobbies was downloading, listening to and rating music. I'd sit at my computer for long stretches happily tagging songs, reading reviews of albums and making wish lists of songs or albums I wanted to get. Streaming took the joy out of that, and I rarely add anything new anymore, unless it is an album by an artist I already like. If I am home alone, I'll play music while I cook or clean house, but apart from that, it's quiet.

Oddly, I can write in the noisiest locations. I am perfectly fine to work on my blog on a car trip while a podcast plays in the background. Writing on a plane is no problem. Before I retired, i'd often write at work during my lunch break, with the usual office sounds going on around me. I get aggravated in loud restaurants if i am can't have a conversation with my companions, but it is that fact and not the noise itself which I find grating.

My idea of heaven is sitting on the deck of a cabin up in the Appalachian Mountains, preferable beside a stream on a mild day with a cold beverage and something good to read. That's the spot I go to in my mind when I am trying to relax when tense.

Oh, and leaf blowers suck.

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

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

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

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.

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

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.

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

Mar 14, 2025 ∞

Retirement So Far

Dawn

As the end of my second week of retired life draws to an end, I am reminded that nothing is routine. Weather irregularities and disruptions caused by maintenance issues at the university have had Wonder Woman working from home, which is nice because I like hanging out with her even when she is busy. It's kept me from firmly entrenching myself in a routine, however. When I told her that she was messing with my flow, she didn't appreciate it. All I meant is that it is challenging to establish a routine when the pattern of the days varies so much. Sheesh!

I've continued to work on my home office. It got relocated from our unused dining room to the living area where the two of us hang out so that I can work on my projects without being in a different part of the house. I rounded up all the external hard drives I had floating around, a total of eleven. When added together, they give me 17 TB of extra storage added to the four TB of internal storage in my computers. A lot of that will be unused space for a while. Some of it is being used as backup locations. I set up a Plex server on my Linux computer with movies, TV shows, music, and photos.

Another project is disconnecting from all the big tech companies apart from Apple to the extent possible. We are leaving Gmail and using Fastmail. I have all my important accounts using the new email already. I spend about an hour a day moving some other 240 accounts using my Google credentials each day. I will have that finished by the middle of April. I managed to download and remove the DRM from 500 Kindle ebooks and 500 Audible audiobooks. We are trying to decide on new vendors for each of those media types. We are dropping Amazon Prime next month, so I am in the process of downloading nearly a TB of backed up photos from there. I uninstalled all Microsoft products from my computers, but those sneaky bastards left several processes behind that I had to remove via the Terminal to finally disconnect.

I set up a weekly lunch data with my father. He's the primary caregiver for my step-mother who has advanced Alzheimer's. He needs a break once in a while, and I am happy to spend time with him. We've never been especially close, but he is fun to spend time with. He's a talented storyteller and good at making conversation.

I've assumed sole responsibility for the grocery shopping so that our weekends aren't partially given over to that chore. Wonder Woman wanted me to start making some of her favorite vegetables more frequently, so I've been loading up on asparagus, zucchini, fresh green beans and the like. She never turns down a cuppa either, so we've been having many mugs of the top-shelf Irish tea I love so much.

My sleep patterns are shot all to hell. We go to bed early because Wonder Woman likes to run before work. I am usually awake for good between 2:00 and 3:00 AM, when I get up to start writing. Of course, I get sleepy later on, indulging in a nap while sitting on the couch. I'd like to consolidate that sleep to a continuous period during the night but so far it's not working out.

We've had a couple of weekend getaways. One was to Raleigh for my birthday where we had a good time visiting our favorite restaurants and shops. Then we went down to the South Carolina low country for a race. Next weekend is the first camping trip of 2025 with five of the grandkids. Next month we are going back to Southwest Virginia for the first time since Hurricane Helene. My kiddos have been on the road too or are getting ready to. My daughter and family went to Costa Rica for a family vacation. She's been sending me daily pictures and keeping me updated. My son is preparing for a trip next week to Frankfurt and Berlin for business. His passion is art and I hope he gets a chance to see some good museums between meetings.

As you can see, I have not been bored or looking for things to do. My dream of long spells of uninterrupted time to write has yet to come to fruition, but it will get here soon enough.

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇