This Week's Bookmarks - 2025 Books, Beans and Greens, 10 New Museums, 2025 Movies from Books, Trump's MAGA Makeover, Reddit Bans on X, Roman Emperor with Shortest Reign
Thrilling debuts to big-name authors: 40 of the most exciting books to read in 2025 - From the most anticipated literary debuts to the return of heavyweights like Stephen King and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, there's plenty to add to your TBR pile this year.
Barbecue Beans and Greens Recipe | Food Network Kitchen | Food Network - Easy, full-flavored sides are a must for your summer cookout rotation. This side features canned black eyed peas, punched up with spicy barbecue sauce and smoky bacon. Frozen chopped collards are a great convenience product which melt into this saucy side dish.
Ten Must-See Museums Opening Around the World in 2025 | Smithsonian - New institutions dedicated to artificial intelligence, West African art, barbeque and more are expected to welcome visitors this year
The Most Anticipated Book Adaptations of 2025: Movies and TV Shows - The New York Times - Hilary Mantel's "The Mirror and the Light," a new "Bridget Jones" and Michael Bond's Paddington Bear series are some of this year's most anticipated adaptations.
Trump executive orders list: What orders did Trump sign on first day - President Trump is carrying out his pledge to give the U.S. a MAGA makeover by signing a slew of executive actions in his first week that erase progressive policies and fulfill his poisonous campaign promises
More than 50 Reddit communities ban X links to protest Musk - The cascade of link bans came after Musk made a a Nazi salute, which many cited in their protests, among other things.
Which Emperor had the Shortest Reign? - by James Coverley - Over the past few weeks, we've looked at some interesting details about Roman emperors - how old they were, on average, how many of them were assassinated and so on - and today, we're answering a reader's question about which of them ruled for the shortest amount of time.
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The RSS Feed for AppAddict Has Changed
For those of you who are regular readers of AppAddict, I changed
the domain name to something easier to remember . Old links will still
work but if you use an RSS reader, you’ll need to resubscribe. I really
appreciate everyone who stops by.
The RSS Feed for AppAddict Has Changed
For those of you who are regular readers of AppAddict, I changed
the domain name to something easier to remember . Old links will still
work but if you use an RSS reader, you’ll need to resubscribe. I really
appreciate everyone who stops by.
Video Converter - All-in-One Video Conversion
One of the websites I keep an eye on for new to me software is Thriftmac, which currently has a
library of 428 categorized free Mac apps with short descriptions and
links to developer sites or the Mac App Store. That's where I found
today's app.
If you need a nice, simple , easy to use GUI front end for FFMpeg, , the free offering from developer Justin Bush, Video Converter - All-in-One Video Conversion is an easy to access choice, Available in the Mac App Store this app has a simple drag and drop interface.
To use the app, first drop the video file to be converted into its holding area. The options are:
-
Output formats are suitable for use on AirPlay, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Cast, Xbox, PlayStation, YouTube and web hosting
• MP4
• MKV
• M4V
• MOV
• WEBM
• AVI
• GIF -
Codecs
• H.264
• H.265 (HEVC)
• MPEG-4
• VP8
• VP9
• Apple ProRes -
Quality
• Auto (with transmuxing)
• Balanced
• Better Quality
• Smaller Size
• ProRes Profiles
The app allows you to AirPlay your BluRay movie without sacrificing 4K quality or immersive Dolby Digital Surround Sound. It is capable of handling up to 8K video. If you input a video file with 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound for your home theater system, your output video will retain that ultra-quality format.
User reviews praise the app for its ease of use and speed on Apple Silicon, for which it is optimized. One reviewer noted that the app did not carry over subtitles or chapter markers. It also doesn’t have any features for upscaling.
You can view the source code on GitHub. The most recent update was in November 2024. The app has been in development for three years.
Video Converter - All-in-One Video Conversion
One of the websites I keep an eye on for new to me software is Thriftmac, which currently has a
library of 428 categorized free Mac apps with short descriptions and
links to developer sites or the Mac App Store. That's where I found
today's app.
If you need a nice, simple , easy to use GUI front end for FFMpeg, , the free offering from developer Justin Bush, Video Converter - All-in-One Video Conversion is an easy to access choice, Available in the Mac App Store this app has a simple drag and drop interface.
To use the app, first drop the video file to be converted into its holding area. The options are:
-
Output formats are suitable for use on AirPlay, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Cast, Xbox, PlayStation, YouTube and web hosting
• MP4
• MKV
• M4V
• MOV
• WEBM
• AVI
• GIF -
Codecs
• H.264
• H.265 (HEVC)
• MPEG-4
• VP8
• VP9
• Apple ProRes -
Quality
• Auto (with transmuxing)
• Balanced
• Better Quality
• Smaller Size
• ProRes Profiles
The app allows you to AirPlay your BluRay movie without sacrificing 4K quality or immersive Dolby Digital Surround Sound. It is capable of handling up to 8K video. If you input a video file with 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound for your home theater system, your output video will retain that ultra-quality format.
User reviews praise the app for its ease of use and speed on Apple Silicon, for which it is optimized. One reviewer noted that the app did not carry over subtitles or chapter markers. It also doesn’t have any features for upscaling.
You can view the source code on GitHub. The most recent update was in November 2024. The app has been in development for three years.
Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom. –Ursula K. Le Guin
Last year, Wonder Woman took her sister on a trip to Scotland to celebrate her recovery from cancer. They toured the Isle of Skye and sent me this wonderful sunset picture. Enjoy.
Time Travelling
The Remains of Ashmont School Where My Mother Went in the 1950s
If you live in Europe, I'd like for you to read this post without laughing at me or immediately going on social media to mock me. I'm going to talk about old stuff. Yes, I know I live in the United States and that we don't really have any old man-made artifacts here. Many of you in Ireland, England and on the continent live in houses that would be museums and tourist attractions if they were transported here. I was in Leeds in the UK a few years back and my host stopped by Kirkstall Abbey on a whim and didn't make a big deal out of it. The place was built in 11152. It blew my mind, but to him, it was just a place on the edge of town.
I live in North Carolina. The First Nations people who lived here when the first English settlers landed included the Cherokee, Tuscarora, Catawba, Lumbee, and various Siouxan tribes like the Occaneechi, Haliwa-Saponi, Waccamaw Siouan, Meherrin, and Coharie. We still have a sizable Native population. One county over from where I live, there are between 40K-50K members of the Lumbee tribe. There are ancient burial mounds in my county located near the Cape Fear River.
There are no remnants of the state's most famous early settlers, known as the lost colony. A group of 117 English men and women landed on Roanoke Island, a few miles inland from site where several hundred years later the world's first airplane flight would occur. All of these settlers disappeared in a three-year period when the organizers of the colony returned to England. Included in the missing was Virginia Dare, the first child of English descent born in the new world. Today, Roanoke Island is home to the community of Manteo, a nice place to visit on the way to the Outer Banks.
We were one of the 13 colonies that declared independence from Great Britain in 1776. There are historical markers a few miles from my neighborhood where the British Army encamped on the way to get their asses handed to them at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge. I could walk to the spot where the state ratified the constitution from my driveway. Because of numerous fires through the years only a couple of pre-revolutionary buildings still exist in town, fittingly, the largest of them was a once a tavern.
My paternal lineage, meaning my ancestors with the same last name that I have, came to the US around 1800. The first of us listed in a US census stated that his father's birthplace was France. I suspect he may have been the son of an English soldier, born to a camp follower. Whatever. I have no real way of knowing the exact story. What I do know that is we've been hanging around this same county now for 225 years.
I am not one of those Southerners with any sort of positive attachment to my heritage connected to the Civil War. Numerous ancestors from all branches of my family were in the Confederate Army, some drafted, some volunteered. One died of disease before ever going into battle at a giant unsanitary recruitment center located on what is now the grounds of the veterinary school for NC State University. Another was wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia. My favorite was an extremely reluctant soldier who served at three different times but only for very short periods. He kept trying to get out of it and come back home. Good for him.
Another branch of the family were Quakers. They didn't participate in the economy of enslaved people, nor did they serve in the Army. They farmed and worked in cotton mills and generally minded their own business.
For you Outlander fans, part of my family were Highland Scots who came here after the Battle of Culloden which ended the Jacobite rebellion in Scotland and placed it firmly under English rule. The family name is McFadyen and they were good Presbyterians who farmed the land on southeastern NC into the 20th century. One of them, my grandmother's brother died in Italy fighting Nazis during World War Two.
Even though we are deep into the 21st century now, there are still signs of the past all around, if you know where to look. There are tobacco barns built from logs and chinked with mud on various farms. That type of tobacco production was last practiced in the 70s. I have hiked all the way through the NC mountains from our border with Georgia all the way to Virginia. Some of the trails today's hikers follow are the same routes Native Americans were using when we got here, I am always amazed when I am following a difficult mountain trail and I come to a stone fence or giant stone piles and I realize that at one time the thickly forested Appalachian mountainsides were clearcut and hardscrabble mountain folks planted crops there and plowed the fields with mules.
I am not a flag waving patriot in the traditional sense. I am not proud to be from where I'm from. I'm not ashamed of it either. We all have a history and I just happen to know mine because I'm curious and sought the information. That information gives me a connection to the past I would not otherwise have.
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Watch People Trying to Do the Right Thing
My people aren't putting up with it, and by my people, I mean those committed to human rights and being active, committed allies to the LGBT community, people of color, women, immigrants and the poor, By "it" I mean the non-stop, relentless attacks by the US government and the people who voted for it. Now is not the time for lukewarm support or just trying to get along. Nope. Now is the time to be more outspoken than ever before. It's time to make your average middle-class liberal friends put up or shut up. It's time to recognize that our society is literally in a war that the right-wing declared on all the people I mentioned above.
The little microcosm of society inhabiting the IndieWeb just went through some growing pains over what supporting marginalized people, in this case, trans people, looks like and what it takes to demonstrate commitment to them. Feelings got hurt. Words got written. Some people experienced growth. Other people exposed their true selves and not always in the best way.
I don't have the forensic skills to unearth every detail, but I would like to share some select and enlightening posts from people involved and on the periphery, so you can see what struggle in the modern era looks like.
The pressure to stay genteel - Coyote Tracks
Let's Try to Always Provide a Dignified Way Forward | Havn
Fuckity fuck fuck - annie's blog
My husband asked me tonight, … | Small Good Things
Adam Newbold: "This is a time to pay close at…" - social.lol
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Session - Free and Open-Source E2E Decentralized Cross Platform Messaging
For anyone looking for an anonymous messaging system, that
requires no account, email or telephone number to set up, Session may be what you are looking
for. With clients for macOS, iOS, Windows, Android and Linux, you can
communicate with just about anyone through a network of 2000
decentralized servers. If a server goes down, the network stays up,
eliminating any one node as a single source of failure.
Session's encrypted messages are sent through an onion routing network. Onion networks encrypt messages with multiple layers of encryption, then send them through a number of nodes. Each node ‘unwraps’ (decrypts) a layer of encryption, meaning that no single node ever knows both the destination and origin of the message. Session uses onion routing to ensure that a server which receives a message never knows the IP address of the sender.
Account in Session are created and secured with a mnemonic seed which can be used to restore your existing Account ID to a new device. Your display name can be anything you want it to be. Session does not collect any geolocation data, metadata, or any other data about the device or network you are using. On your local device, Session allows you to encrypt your local Session database with a PIN code. With this feature turned on, your messages cannot be accessed without knowing your PIN code. If the police or a thief have physical access to your device, they still can't see your messages without your PIN.
Voice and video messaging are current beta features in the app. In early 2025, the back end technology for the app is transitioning to upgraded technology, using crypto-based engineering. Although there are no paid features currently, the non-profit foundation behind the app says that it may implement some in the future, using cryptocurrency. They say the primary private messaging will always be free.
Session - Free and Open-Source E2E Decentralized Cross Platform Messaging
For anyone looking for an anonymous messaging system, that
requires no account, email or telephone number to set up, Session may be what you are looking
for. With clients for macOS, iOS, Windows, Android and Linux, you can
communicate with just about anyone through a network of 2000
decentralized servers. If a server goes down, the network stays up,
eliminating any one node as a single source of failure.
Session's encrypted messages are sent through an onion routing network. Onion networks encrypt messages with multiple layers of encryption, then send them through a number of nodes. Each node ‘unwraps’ (decrypts) a layer of encryption, meaning that no single node ever knows both the destination and origin of the message. Session uses onion routing to ensure that a server which receives a message never knows the IP address of the sender.
Account in Session are created and secured with a mnemonic seed which can be used to restore your existing Account ID to a new device. Your display name can be anything you want it to be. Session does not collect any geolocation data, metadata, or any other data about the device or network you are using. On your local device, Session allows you to encrypt your local Session database with a PIN code. With this feature turned on, your messages cannot be accessed without knowing your PIN code. If the police or a thief have physical access to your device, they still can't see your messages without your PIN.
Voice and video messaging are current beta features in the app. In early 2025, the back end technology for the app is transitioning to upgraded technology, using crypto-based engineering. Although there are no paid features currently, the non-profit foundation behind the app says that it may implement some in the future, using cryptocurrency. They say the primary private messaging will always be free.
Wonder Woman had to cut her planned run short - because her water bottles froze in the 15-degree temperature. Except she never calls them water bottles. It’s always “my hydration” She doesn’t eat while training either. She follows her “nutrition plan.”
What A Drag it is Getting Old
Mick and Keef wrote "Mother's Little Helper," a song about a pill addled Mom a whopping fifty-nine years ago. The line that resonates with me is "What a drag it is getting old." For me, the drag is the physical part of aging, much more so than the accumulated years, which in themselves are kind of cool.
Sports scientists estimate that men reach their physical peak somewhere between 26 and 30, That is so patently messed up because it means that you spend the majority of your life slowly deteriorating. In the major spectator sports, it's the rare athlete who can compete past the age of 40. This doesn't mean that you can't be active, though. In my twenties and thirties, my kids were young and I was trying to get established in my career. Sports and hobbies took a back seat. My most physically active year were my 40s. I was 48 when I hiked the AT.
Wonder Woman is 58 and still running ultramarathons. She's a bit of a mutant, though. We have a physical performance lab at the university where we work. They asked her to come in for a study a few years back. In her early fifties, she was tested as having a fitness level compatible to that of a college athlete in their early 20s. During her first year competing in ultras, at age 52, she ran in and won races at the distances of 50K, 50 miles, 100K and 100 miles. Just for a lark, she ran one road marathon with no special training and placed in the top 10 among thousands of entrants. She also completed a 100-mile bike ride after only very light training over a couple of weekends.
My parents were young when I was born, so even though I'm almost 60, I've still got both of them. My mom also has mutant genes, having walked all the way across Scotland in her early 70s and then completing the Camino de Santiago across Spain just a couple of years later. Dad enjoyed a little too much bourbon and Salem cigarettes for too many years to have maintained much fitness, and today walks with a cane.
I feel like I'm kind of wearing out prematurely myself. After dealing with painful arthritis in both knees for years, a drag physically and psychologically, I had them replaced five years ago. Although ai still have my hair, it turned white within the last decade. Wonder Woman insists I need a hearing aid. At least, I think that's what she said. This year, I finally reached the point where I can't function without glasses. Throw in the other aggravations of male aging, like getting up to pee three or four times a night, and it's no wonder that the trope of grumpy old man seems to fit so well on some days.
On the other hand, having lots of life experience is remarkable. I've lived in seven decades and seen 11 US presidents leave office. I'm in the oldest cohort of Generation X so I can be old without suffering the indignity of being a boomer. Not only that, but I've pumped regular gasoline, used a rotary dial phone and bought vinyl records not to be trendy but because there was no other choice. I saw VCRs and DVD players come and go. I had AOL dial up and a fiber connection to the Internet.
I hope to last a few more years. I want to around when Wonder Woman retires. We're probably won't have any more grandchildren. Thirteen is plenty. In a few more years, though, great-grandchildren should start coming along. I definitely want to be here for that. I also would like to see America come to its senses before I'm gone because I bet Jimmy Carter was pissed having to live out his last months after the 2024 election.
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Remembering Apple's Think Different Campaign
I miss the way being an Apple fan used to make me feel.
The CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, recently donated $1 million of his personal funds to the inaugural fund for Donald Trump. He did this after publicly congratulating him for his win. It made me furious to see the powerful out gay man in the US kiss the ring of the leader of the party that seeks to persecute and demonize LGBT people at every turn.
My IT career became heavily Mac focused in 2000. I went to work for a school district where the majority of computers used by students were LC-575s and Power Mac 5500s. Our new purchases were Bondi Blue G3 iMacs with the infamous hockey puck mouses. There were still plenty of Apple IIe desktops in use. Lots of Oregon Trail was played. We bought hundreds of computers at the time and received boxes of promotional material from our Apple rep. It was my first encounter with the iconic black and white posters of the crazy ones the people Apple selected to represent the Think Different campaign. I still have a few hundred of the rainboa Apple stickers that came with new computers in those days. I wish I had some of the posters too. Today they sell for up to $500 apiece.
The name was inspired by a passage from Jack Kerouac's book On the Road
"The only people for me are the mad ones the ones who are mad to live mad to talk mad to be saved desirous of everything at the same time the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn burn burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'""
Apple's version was:
"Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them disagree with them glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones
We see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world
Are the ones who do."
The people pictured in the ads were by and large heroic figures from the 20th century with a couple of billionaires thrown in because nobody's perfect.
- Albert Einstein
- Bob Dylan
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Richard Branson
- John Lennon (with Yoko Ono)
- Buckminster Fuller
- Thomas Edison
- Muhammad Ali
- Ted Turner
- Maria Callas
- Mahatma Gandhi
- Amelia Earhart
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Martha Graham
- Jim Henson (with Kermit the Frog)
- Frank Lloyd Wright
- Pablo Picasso.
Only three of those people are still alive, Richard Branson,.Yoko Ono and Bob Dylan. Branson may have voted for Trump out of ruling class solidarity, but I doubt Yoko did, and you can god-damned bet your bottom dollar Bob Dylan did not.
Thinking Different about Apple’s "Think Different" Campaign
Think different. • Original Ad
The Legacy of 'Think Different': How Apple's Campaign Continues to Inspire Creatives
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Picocrypt - Free and Open-Source File Encryption with Simple but Powerful Features
The threat from bad actors who seek to access and exploit user data increases every year. The list includes for-profit gangs, unscrupulous developers, the world's largest social media companies and repressive governments. The information they could potentially use includes, but isn't limited to, financial records, political or social organizing records, medical records, blackmail material, passwords and personal communications. Those who seek to access your data have increasingly sophisticated methods of bypassing weak security.
A small but powerful free and open-source utility, Picocrypt, weighing in at only 3MB provides easy to use encryption that is powerful enough to withstand attacks from government agencies. With Picocrypt's simple UI, all you have to do is drag and drop your files, enter a password, and hit Encrypt. There is no need to set up a volume, as there is with other tools like Veracrypt.
Installing Picocrypt is simple. Only download Picocrypt from the official site,. Open the container, and drag Picocrypt to your Applications folder. You may need to manually trust the app from a terminal and control-click on the app if macOS prevents you from opening it:
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Picocrypt.app
Features
- Uses extra Reed-Solomon parity bytes to protect from file corruption and bit rot
- Built in customizable password generator
- Comments to store notes, information, and text along with the encrypted file
- Keyfiles, which can be generated and distributed to multiple people if there is joint ownership of information requiring more than one person to authenticate decryption
- Paranoid mode - a double encryption method suitable for government level or whistle-blower secrecy
- File chunking splits large encrypted files into multiple user selectable sized blocks
- Deniability allows encrypted files to appear without identifiable headers so that if they are intercepted, the bad actor in possession of them will have no way to prove what they are. The output volume will indistinguishable from a stream of random bytes, and no one can prove it is a volume without the correct password.
Picocrypt also has Windows and Linux versions, meaning that the recipient of the files does not have to have a Mac to decrypt the files, just the password. Picocrypt is also portable and does not require installation. It can be run from an external drive, such as a USB stick.
Picocrypt - Free and Open-Source File Encryption with Simple but Powerful Features
The threat from bad actors who seek to access and exploit user data increases every year. The list includes for-profit gangs, unscrupulous developers, the world's largest social media companies and repressive governments. The information they could potentially use includes, but isn't limited to, financial records, political or social organizing records, medical records, blackmail material, passwords and personal communications. Those who seek to access your data have increasingly sophisticated methods of bypassing weak security.
A small but powerful free and open-source utility, Picocrypt, weighing in at only 3MB provides easy to use encryption that is powerful enough to withstand attacks from government agencies. With Picocrypt's simple UI, all you have to do is drag and drop your files, enter a password, and hit Encrypt. There is no need to set up a volume, as there is with other tools like Veracrypt.
Installing Picocrypt is simple. Only download Picocrypt from the official site,. Open the container, and drag Picocrypt to your Applications folder. You may need to manually trust the app from a terminal and control-click on the app if macOS prevents you from opening it:
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Picocrypt.app
Features
- Uses extra Reed-Solomon parity bytes to protect from file corruption and bit rot
- Built in customizable password generator
- Comments to store notes, information, and text along with the encrypted file
- Keyfiles, which can be generated and distributed to multiple people if there is joint ownership of information requiring more than one person to authenticate decryption
- Paranoid mode - a double encryption method suitable for government level or whistle-blower secrecy
- File chunking splits large encrypted files into multiple user selectable sized blocks
- Deniability allows encrypted files to appear without identifiable headers so that if they are intercepted, the bad actor in possession of them will have no way to prove what they are. The output volume will indistinguishable from a stream of random bytes, and no one can prove it is a volume without the correct password.
Picocrypt also has Windows and Linux versions, meaning that the recipient of the files does not have to have a Mac to decrypt the files, just the password. Picocrypt is also portable and does not require installation. It can be run from an external drive, such as a USB stick.
At certain times of the year, because of the way the barriers islands off the NC coast are positioned, you can catch the sunrise and the sunset in the Atlantic Ocean. This is a sunrise at Kure Beach.
Keeping Secrets Safe
The threat from bad actors who seek to access and exploit user data increases every year. The list includes for-profit gangs, unscrupulous developers, the world's largest social media companies and repressive governments. The information they could potentially use includes, but isn't limited to, financial records, political or social organizing records, medical records, blackmail material, passwords and personal communications. Those who seek to access your data have increasingly sophisticated methods of bypassing weak security.
There are many aspects of making your digital life as secure as possible. The links in today's post are to help you get started with encryption, protecting your data from prying eyes.
A Beginner's Guide to Encryption
Which Files Do You Need to Encrypt?
How to encrypt a flash drive for Windows and macOS
How to Encrypt Email on Gmail, Outlook, iOS, Android, and Other Platforms
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Let's Talk about Some Uncomfortable Topics, Shall We?
Since I became politically active in the 90s, I've dealt with some pretty harsh behavior from people who didn't like my views. I'm not just talking about conservatives, either. When I was organizing veterans and military families against the war in Iraq was the worst. I live beside the most populated military base in the United States and even though I'm a vet with two kids who also served, plenty of people were pissed about anyone here openly opposing the war machine. I got death threats in the mail, my car window was shot out in my driveway, and I got some nasty notes taped to my door at work. Other than that, I've just had to deal with the normal name-calling and harassment many lefties endure. Recently, someone added my name to three moderation lists on Bluesky, labeling me a MAGA troll, a porn spammer and accusing me of some sex thing that I was scared to look up.
On the flip side, if you've never been involved in left politics, you have no idea how people on our side can be vicious to each other in stupid purity tests. I've been accused by people who I wanted to be allies with of being insufficiently supportive of Palestine, women, LGBT rights, the environment, the Iraqi resistance and more. The worst people weren't far-left folks, though. The ugliest, most mean-spirited comments I've ever dealt with came from Blue State liberals who think every person in the south is a MAGA loving moron. I've seen people from NY and California and other places literally celebrate natural disasters in NC, including Hurricane Helene last October. I've been told that if I was a real Democrat, that I would move and never talk to anyone from NC again. These superior types don't even realize we have a Democratic governor and AG or that the state GOP has had more than a dozen voter suppression and gerrymandering laws eventually overturned.
I believe in accountability and responsibility. I don't accept unacceptable behavior from people who think that just a bit of fascism or racism is OK. I'm mad at the state of my country, and I feel like lashing out more than is probably healthy. I also know this stuff is complicated and the practical application of my political values and societies expectations are difficult to balance if I turn off the bravado for a minute.
I fantasize about being able to act on the anger I feel about the political state we are in. I'd like to be able to call out every person who has done anything to enable the hateful policies that (white) people are applauding. I would like to refuse to deal with people with backwards views on gender, race, and immigration status. If they want to take food away from hungry kids or medical care away from sick people, I would like to be able to write them out of my life loudly and publicly because they deserve it.
But let's step back into reality for a minute.
I live in one of the larger cities in North Carolina. It votes reliably blue, as do most of the cities of its size in the state. The surrounding rural areas are as red as can be, including the county that employed me for twenty years. Even here in town., many of the residents are former or retired military and most of the white ones are Republicans. If you tried to gauge elections by yard signs, the GOP would win every time. It is not an echo chamber in any way. Conservatives and liberals live and work side by side.
I am very openly on the progressive side, with the appropriate bumper stickers and snide remarks about Republican policy every once in a while. I don't cross the line at work (anymore) but I walk right up to it. Always have. I try to let me fellow white people know that I am not in their club. I'm not the one you come to complain about diversity hiring or to whine about Joe Biden being responsible for egg prices. I will absolutely get loud when subjected to backwards behavior but correcting every non-woke opinion in others is not my life's mission.
I have someone close to me who is lucky enough to live in Austin, TX. He worked for Samsung for 15 years. When the Tesla Gigafactory was built, which was before the company CEO bought Twitter and revealed himself to be a fascist, recruiters for the EV maker made him an attractive offer which he accepted. It was a great opportunity for someone with no degree to get a job in a green industry, making a sizable six-figure salary with stock options vesting in a few years and potential bonuses to offset the two kids he's single-handedly putting through school. He is 100% aware of the behavior of the man at the head of his company's food chain. He does not defend him.
Most of the people in my family who stay informed about politics and have an opinion, lean left, but both of my parents are Republicans, although Mom isn't a Trump voter. One of my Dad's bothers is also conservative, and he happens to be the person responsible for me reaching adulthood without going into the juvenile justice system or foster care. He's the only person in my family who goes to a multi-racial church. He's just constitutionally incapable of voting for a Democrat because we'll take away his hunting rifle…or something. It makes me sad.
I'd like to boast about having come out of the womb with a natural inclination towards perfect politics, but I didn't. I didn't develop any strong political feelings until I was almost 30. I voted for one of the worst Republicans in history when I was 19 out of pure ignorance. I even skipped a couple of elections. I believe I've done an adequate job in the past 30 years of achieving redemption with the help of committed activists and mentors and my own open mind. Someone had to educate me about the backwardness and ignorance I lived in on a whole list of topics:
- Unions
- Israel/Palestine
- US Military Policy
- Criminal justice
- White privilege
- Affirmative action
- LGBT rights
- Patriarchy
I'm not going to confess every sin I've ever committed against the values I hold today, but there were many, from the horrible use of inappropriate language to joining the army and working in a prison. It took what it took to get me where I am today, but, yeah, I wish I'd gotten here sooner and with less baggage. I am not a unique or special case. I know others who've had journeys similar to my own. We made the most of our leaning opportunities and came out better for it. We learned to forgive ourselves, and we didn't defend our former attitudes.
This is not the paragraph where I am going to wrap everything up into a neat package and hand it to you so that you know what to do. I wish I knew. I know that as angry as I am, I also have to practice empathy, understanding, and forgiveness, or I'll just be a shitty excuse for a person. I also have to resist the urge to just get along with people and take the easier and softer way of ignoring things that need to be dealt with. It's a balancing act and a hard one. Just do the best you can and act from a loving place as much as possible,
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Inoreader RSS Gets New Features
Inoreader, the RSS app and service provider, got some new features today with the release of a new browser extension for Chrome, Firefox and Edge.
- Save and organize content: Collect web pages and social media posts and tag them as you send them to Read later.
- Annotate while you browse: Mark and annotate texts directly in your browser, then revisit your notes anytime in Inoreader.
- Stay on top of your feeds: Monitor account activity, feeds, tags, and Team channels -- all without switching tabs.
- Streamline article sharing: Share content to Team channels or set up rules for automated content distribution.
Existing Features
Custom Monitoring Feeds
My favorite feature, hands down, are the custom monitoring feeds Inoreader allows me to create. It scours the web every hour to search for articles using my keywords. I have monitoring feeds to help me track my favorite software titles for news and tips/tricks. The wizard that creates these feeds lets me decide whether I want to search entire articles or just titles. I can search the entire Internet or just sources from sites whose main RSS feed I follow. As with all feeds on Inoreader, I can set up a highlighter for my search terms (Obsidian, Raycast, Keyboard Maestro, Micro.blog). I can filter out terms I definitely do not find interesting (Android, Apple Vision Pro, Trump). Finally, I can filter out duplicates and near duplicates so my feed doesn't get inundated on dates when one of my keywords makes the news, for example when updates to a certain title get released. It is possible to place all these keyword monitoring feeds into a folder and to view the output combined. I can even generate an OPML file with the output to share with others!
Newsletter Subscription Replacement
Inoreader allows me to generate email addresses to use in subscribing to newsletters. That way, I get the benefit of their content without having my mailbox clogged up. Like every other feed, these newsletters can be saved to OneDrive, Dropbox or Google Drive. I can export them to Pocket or ReadWise, Instapaper, Blogger, Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, Mastodon or a custom location.
Automation
If you highlight text in any RSS article or newsletter, you can use the highlight to trigger an IFTTT applet. You can do the same with any article you mark to read later. In fact, IFTTT has a dozen different triggers for Inoreader and over 2000 services you can connect it to. You can read your feeds in a web browser or in your choice of RSS readers like Reeder or NetNewsWire. I like their web interface so much that on a desktop, I choose to use a stand-alone web app of their site to read my feeds since it has easy access to most of the extra features offered. On my iPhone and iPad, I use their app as opposed to a separate RSS reader. Their iOS and Android apps have an offline mode allowing you to download content to read later, useful for flights and helping you avoid a separate subscription to a read it late service.
Organization and Backup
You can use folders or tags (or both) to organize your feeds. You can set up notifications for different keywords or material from certain sources. In the settings section of the Inoreader you can look at the health of all of your feeds and easily determine if one is down, allowing you to contact the blogger or publisher of the site in question. If you currently have an RSS provider or reader, Inoreader can easily import your feeds and conversely, it can export feeds for you if you want to use them elsewhere. Your feeds get backed up every day, and you can set them to be saved to a cloud folder synced with your computer so you can have ready access to them. I use Dropbox for this.
Other Features
- Built in podcast player
- Turn Google News searches into feeds
- Customize the look with your own CSS if desired
- Get accelerated updates on certain feeds
- Annotate and save articles
- Multi-lingual content
- Sync your YouTube subscriptions
- Filtered Reddit feeds (see Obsidian posts without having to look at pictures of other people's graphs)
Pricing for all the features I mentioned is $7.50 a month, paid annually. You can download Inoreader for iOS and iPadOS on the App Store.