Elon Musk, if you haven’t heard, has pissed off a lot of America. People are out in force protesting at Tesla dealerships. This makes sense, as the majority of Musk’s wealth is tied up in his 13% ownership of Tesla. If its stock tanks, it reduces his massive wealth (to a slightly less massive level).

That said, a lot of people are directing their anger toward Tesla owners. Some have vandalized privately owned Tesla vehicles and torched Supercharger stations. Others are calling on Tesla owners to sell their vehicles.

Selling a Tesla makes no sense and does nothing to slow down Musk’s path of destruction. Furthermore, unless you were already planning to trade in your car, this actually contradicts the very point of owning an EV in the first place. And if you were to trade your Tesla for a non-EV, it would be even worse.

Let’s remember: If you’re anti-Elon because of what he’s been doing to the government, you’re probably at least somewhat liberal and believe in the science of climate change. You understand that people need to make personal changes to reduce their carbon footprint. Trading in a perfectly good car for even an equally clean (or somewhat cleaner) vehicle is actually worse for the environment, since the majority of a new vehicle’s carbon footprint comes from its manufacturing.

Like it or not, Teslas are still the best electric vehicles available and the easiest to live with, especially considering the Supercharger network (which, while open to some non-Teslas, that is still limited to a subset of locations).

Some Tesla drivers are Elon super-fans, for sure—I’d guess a majority of Cybertruck owners are. But chances are, if you see someone in a Model Y—_last year’s best-selling car in the world_—they’re just as disturbed by Elon as you are. Harassing them is just friendly fire. It’s easy to sit behind your Twitter/X/Mastodon/Bluesky client and verbally assault Tesla owners. Instead, I’m asking you to be a little more productive–especially if you haven’t gone out of your way to replace your own oil-burning car with an EV.

Unless Elon is thrown out of Tesla (doubtful), my family has purchased its last Tesla. Which is a shame, because our Model Y is fantastic, and we don’t regret buying it for a minute. The new Model Y looks even better. It deserves to be the best-selling vehicle in the world (in 2024, since Tesla sales have rightfully fallen off a cliff). I wouldn’t tell someone to avoid buying a used Tesla, since they’re usually a great value—used EV prices still haven’t quite figured themselves out.

Going forward, we’re looking at EVs that are assembled in the U.S. and use the NACS (neé Tesla) charging connector. Right now, that means we’re leaning toward Rivian, though I’d prefer our next car be more of a car. I think the Model Y gets the trade-off right for a vehicle that’s 99% on-road but still performs well on loose, rocky, and rutted gravel mountain roads—as I verified on our rural Canadian road trip last summer. Maybe Lucid will get its act together and start making more affordable vehicles with a versatile hatch. Or maybe we’ll see a U.S.-assembled Polestar. Or perhaps Subaru—whose first electric attempt was *lacking*— will make an all-electric Forester, assembled in Indiana—which is really all we need.

So protest at Tesla dealerships, but leave Tesla drivers and their vehicles alone. Same team. We’re already embarrassed. Many of us simply aren’t independently wealthy enough to replace our cars. If you’re a former Tesla driver who has moved on, good on you. But I plan to hang on to mine for many years to come.

Recently, I came across a YouTube video hawking the concept of a widget-based home screen for your iPhone. For me, it’s taken a few years for enough widgets to come out, mostly from third-parties, to make widgets useful beyond a single block on your home screen. But I wrote down the idea, and a few days ago, I decided to try it out.

Long ago I became a convert of the single home screen and using the App Library for every thing else. It’s very fast to flick down and then tap 3 letters to conjure an app by search as well, so I picked my most used 18 apps and made a wide Smart Stack of widgets to go across the top. I turned off most of my anxiety-inducing push notifications red badges years ago. Only a hand picked few notifications ever appear on the home screen, and the remainder get shown in summaries at the start and end of the day. I removed my mail apps from the home screen as well. I do have VIP lists set up so I do get a red badge for truly important emails (which also have permission for push notifications.) But could I further reduce what shows on the home screen?

After four days or so, I’m quite happy with it. My initial worry was feeling overwhelmed by a lot of information. In fact, I feel less like I have a bunch of apps that I should tap into “just to check” when I am there. I do use a lot of apps regularly. The 18 I mentioned above… really are the most used, but there are several apps I use several times daily that still don’t make the previous (or current) home screen cut.

Let’s take a look at how I’m doing this. First thing to note is each block is a stack. I have all stack widget suggestions turned off, but each stack has “Smart Rotate” on (where iOS tried to guess which widget is most important to show you at a given time.)

Top Left is my weather stack. I have The Weather Channel (for obvious reasons), RadarScope Pro showing all of the KBOX sweep, and Tempest, which shows live weather data from my backyard station.

Top right is a random combo. I use the Wikipedia (official) app daily, and their only widget is “Photo of the Day” so I just went with it. Since I also needed a block to access my Photos app, and the only option there is for it to show you random photos (although you can narrow the randomness to within a folder), I figured let’s stack to the two random photo widgets together to create a little home screen decoration corner.

The next row is a wide widget stack, with Apple Calendar (personal calendars, reminders hidden), Google Calendar (work calendar) and Apple Reminders, set to Scheduled. I am a heavy Reminders user. Lastly, the Contacts widget configured with your family’s avatars and their Find My locations.

Bottom left is my “listening” stack. Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and a Shortcut widget with two app launchers for apps without widgets that I needed to get on here: Sonos and Live Phish.

From here I had to decide what to do about 6 apps I wanted on the home screen but don’t have widgets, or in one case, didn’t want as a widget (Slack). So I just distributed them as icons across the bottom. A couple years ago I realized that your most frequently used things should be at the bottom for easiest one-handed access.

Left-to-right, top to bottom that’s 1Password, Orion, and Camera, and in the dock, Messages, Slack, and Safari. With the exception of Orion (which I will explain in a moment), these are some of my most used apps. Having them at the bottom for easy thumb access is intentional.

Three important apps were cut from the home screen, and we’ll see for how long: Phone, Drafts, Apple Notes. Although I don’t use my iPhone as a phone a lot, I’m pretty sure I’ve kept it on my home screen anyhow since 2008. I think this is mostly to see red badges for missed calls and unlistened-to voicemail. This visibility is particularly important because I find since switching to Verizon Wireless a couple years ago, late- or no notification of voicemails is fairly chronic, on both my and my wife’s phones. If one of these three apps returns, I’d bet on Phone for this reason, probably in the far-left dock slot.

Drafts and Apple Notes I use a lot, but a little less on my phone than on my Mac or iPad. We’ll see if I miss them on the home screen.

Potential Questions and Answers

Why put the camera icon here? There are so many ways to launch it!

Fair question. You could use the lock screen, Control Center, or the action button on my iPhone 15 Pro to get at the camera. The answer is… I feel like I need it everywhere. My dog will only do that adorable thing for seconds.

Why does someone who supports indie developers use Apple Podcasts? I have paid for Overcast from Marco Arment for… years and years. I wasn’t enamored with his recent redesign, but it wasn’t horrible. Big corporations forced my hand. Tesla added Apple Podcasts integration, and I am a frequent car listener, and I don’t want to be messing with Bluetooth controls while driving. Fortunately, Apple Podcasts is a lot more full featured than previously, so I’m really only giving up Smart Speed (which Overcast does very well) and a slightly nicer UX. Since I don’t want to maintain two lists of the same podcasts for home and auto, Marco had to go. I’m sure he won’t miss me: he certainly never replied to a single bug report or support request of mine, as a paying user for a decade.

What about that widget-only page to the left of the home screen?

I use that too, but rarely. I have four wide widgets there, no stacks. From top to bottom, not pictured, Tesla, Fitness, Files and Batteries.

What’s that Orion app?

Thanks for reminding me to get back to that. Orion is a full web browser made by Kagi. I started experimenting with their browser after hearing Kagi’s founder Vladimir Prelovac on John Gruber’s The Talk Show. I’ve been following Kagi as a company for the past year and am super impressed with their model and philosophy. Late last year, I made a trial account to see if a paid search engine made sense for me. So far I have not searched enough to know the answer.

But for the meantime, since Kagi is not a search engine option available in any of my browsers, I have to use Orion as “my search engine phone app”. They also have an LLM assistant option built in, if your search query has a question mark at the end, it will offer you a summarized response in addition to search results.

Prior to Orion, Arc Search filled this role on my home screen. Arc is my default desktop browser. I’ve been enamored with their mobile search assistant—which strangely is not available in their desktop app. In their mobile app, the assistant interprets your request, sends a query to your engine of choice (which has been DuckDuckGo for the last several years for me, well prior to Arc) and then summarizes, with citations, using an LLM. I may go back to using that.

Should I try a Widget-based home screen?

If you like to tinker with your phone from time to time, this is a worthwhile experiment. If you give it a try, let me know. I’d love to see what you make!

I am someone who’s followed the news, and politics in particular, closely since I was a teenager. Since the election, I decided I needed a detox from news media. I still read the New York Times, primarily their morning newsletter, and I still get limited push notifications which are hidden from me unless I look for them, in case something truly “important” happens. I also wake up to NPR, but have turned it off immediately or after the two minute news summary pretty much every day since the election. What’s this have to do with my blog?

Today, Inauguration Day in the US, I simply avoided television news. I scrolled the New York Times homepage just now to see what was happening, and decided I didn’t miss anything meaningful to my life. I just opened up Bluesky and doomscrolled like I used to on Twitter whenever it was a big news day. I did so because it was the first major news day since the massive move to Bluesky, post-election. I didn’t gain any knowledge I will benefit from. (People are debating whether Musk gave two back-to-back Nazi solutes during the “rally” or whether he’s simply too stupid to know he made the infamous hand/arm gesture twice. To be fair, none of the posts seem to think he did so unintentionally). Now I'll go back to keeping a once-a-week max schedule for social services, unless I have a “reason” to go there. Mastodon, which I think is a bit better, but lacks most of the “normies”, I will keep to the same pattern. Quality content or not, while both are better than “X”, I don’t need my brain chemicals spiked by going there.

I’ve taken a step back from my blog and social media in general since November 2024’s election. As you can see from the post you are apparently still reading, I’m going to make an effort to start writing here again, so the web will have more human-written things in 2025. Some posts will undoubtedly about politics. But also some pieces about how I set up my tech, because I always appreciate when other people share their set ups. Others may be about design, music, and other meaningful things in my life.

I’ll see you—quietly and intentionally—on the internet.

It’s been a few years since I used Twitter routinely, having primarily moved to micro.blog a few years ago, and while it was allowed, simply cross posting over there for the followers I had who remained. The last post that went over there was about the 2024 Super Bowl.

Today, given the current ownership, the direction the platform has gone, and the November 15 deadline where xAI can by default without your consent hoover up your data for training, I have exported my data, deleted all my messages, removed my profile photo, bio info, and locked the account. I would delete it outright, but I don’t like the idea that the user name (which matches my domain name) could be recycled and used by a new user. I also did the same for my wife’s account.

I used Micro.blog’s Tweet archiving service that simply allows you to build an archive for your entire corpus of tweets. I have nearly 30,000 tweets from 2007-2024. It seemed to build it all without a problem. The archive is public, you can see the “Tweets” link in the navigation for my site. I’m not saying it’s worth reading, but I enjoyed scrolling through the first year of mine, which date from a time I had a different job, we still had snowy winters, adventures with our past dog (she passed last year), and predating our children.

I think it’s inspired me to export my Tumblr data and my old WordPress site, both of which date to that “early-aughts” time period.

Speaking of Twitter-like services, I’ve observed a massive influx of users from Twitter to Bluesky. I’m briandigital over there, if you prefer. I syndicate my posts from this site there. I ran a service on my Twitter account (before the process I described above) to find folks I followed had migrated to Bluesky, and found a bunch of folks. I ran the same service on my wife’s account two days later, and I feel like there were even more people that we had in common just 48 hours later.

Bluesky is my best hope for a site the general public can join to recreate some of the positives of the Twitter of old. I love my artsy, techie people on micro.blog and Mastodon. But for sports, or breaking news, or general cultural events, it just doesn’t compare to the golden years of Twitter. Let’s hope news and media start migrating soon.

Washington Post owner, and billionaire Jeff Bezos published an Op-ed about how there’s a no quid pro quo for him blocking the WaPo Editorial Board from endorsing Kamala Harris for U.S. President in 2024.

The first thing all the critics point out is that the timing was terrible in that we’re just over a week out from the election.

I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.

Timing was "poor"? Bezos is a very perceptive guy. I am not naive enough to think he would not understand how this would cast his business in a very negative light.

The next incredibly suspicious thing is that the CEO of Jeff’s rocket company, who has NASA contracts, met with Trump on the day of the (non?) announcement…

Dave Limp, the chief executive of one of my companies, Blue Origin, met with (…) Trump on the day of our announcement. I sighed when I found out (…) But the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand. Even Limp didn’t know about it in advance; the meeting was scheduled quickly that morning.

Didn't know his rocket company was meeting with Trump? Would you meet with one of the world’s biggest lightning rods, who might soon have sway over millions or hundreds of millions in government contracts with your business without telling your company’s owner? Especially when your boss owns the Washington Post? I’d fire an employee if he met with Trump without telling me.

Come to think of it, I’d probably fire someone who lead to the loss of 200,000 subscribers over the course of a single weekend.

Can you fire yourself? Asking for a billionaire.

I would be remiss to not post a brief remembrance of Phil Lesh, the virtuosic musician, best known as the bass player and one of the composers for the Grateful Dead. Many credit Phil with bringing the bass guitar out of the backgound in popular music.

The Grateful Dead did not click with me until my mid/late-30s. As a big live music fan, most of my favorite musicians adored the Dead, so I found it surprising that they did not appeal to me.

One day, I noticed that the official live recordings of the Dead were available on the music streaming services. I thought I’d give it another shot. I tried to find “the best show recording”, and found a 1972 concert from Oregon that was beloved. I listened to all seven 3 hours of it and it finally clicked. Once I had decoded the complexity, I could now enjoy decades worth of recordings.

Shortly after, Prime Video released a multi-part Grammy-nominated documentary, Long Strange Trip which I would encourage anyone with an interest in music to watch. The Dead were such an incredible phenomenon on top of being world-renown musicians. The soundtrack is an excellent collection of some of their best live tracks all in one place. Still, that better serves to point you to excellent shows, as listening to a specific show all the way through as a single piece of art is really the best way to appreciate their craft.

If you’d like an example of Phil’s playing, composing and even singing, checkout Box of Rain. He composed it with Robert Hunter for Phil’s dying father.

Perhaps Phil’s passing will lead to others to discover their music for the first time. Fare The Well, Phil.

One lists 18 new things you can do when iOS 18.1 is released. I found the Apple Intelligence section the most interesting. These are the type of AI tools I’m most interested in.

The second is a detailed overview of the new Hearing Aid functionality that will be made available to some models of AirPods. As someone with minor hearing loss, I’m intrigued to see how this will work.

Many thought provoking aspects to this essay, Reclaiming Sovereignty in the Digital Age, by Paris Marx.

You should just read its entirety. I wanted to dive into one topic, specifically. Early in his essay, he quotes a digital rights group:

Last month, the Global Digital Justice Forum, a group of civil society groups, published a letter about the ongoing negotiations over the United Nations’ Global Digital Compact. “It is eminently clear that the cyberlibertarian vision of yesteryears is at the root of the myriad problems confronting global digital governance today,” the group wrote. “Governments are needed in the digital space not only to tackle harm or abuse. They have a positive role to play in fulfilling a gamut of human rights for inclusive, equitable, and flourishing digital societies.”

Marx makes the argument that governments around the world are beginning to standup to tech industry with regulations. I agree that many are overdue. I think some may be unnecessary, in that you could simply apply existing laws to address some concerns, only in a different (digital) context. But there’s one place I think he’s thoroughly wrong.

The cyberlibertarian argument is that all communications must be encrypted to protect them from the governments they perceive as such a significant threat, and that means allowing the dregs of society to use them in criminal ways too; something the vast majority of the public would surely disagree with.

While I don’t think digital tools helping criminals is good, it is clear as day that encrypted communication must continue to be available. This is because fraud, phishing, and malware are rampant in our networked environment. Regular people should benefit from the protection that encryption provides from criminals. Will this lead to criminals also communicating via encrypted channels? Of course. Criminals conceal contraband in the voids of car bodies, we don’t outlaw car body work so police can see inside everyone’s car.

Since there is no backdoor only for “good guys” (and in his scenario, remember, Putin, Xi and Kim all count as “good guys”) we must live with the fact that police must use other tools at their disposal to break up criminal activity, as they have prior to the proliferation of public encryption.

We can’t make everyone less safe in order to make the police’s job a little bit easier. Furthermore, without encryption, we leave ourselves even more exposed to foreign disinformation campaigns, as hacking groups can more easily access our communications to allow their disinformation to appear more realistic and more targeted.

It appears the French police arrested Telegram founder on charges of enabling all sorts of illegal activities without breaking encryption because Telegram is not E2EE.

…authorities have long been able to get warrants to search people’s mail, wiretap their phones, or obtain their text messages. That’s the trade off we’ve collectively made, and one that the vast majority of people have never seen as a threat to their rights, freedoms, or liberty — because they’re not libertarians.

Technology is a step ahead, and there’s no putting that genie back in the bottle. If we outlawed encryption, criminals would still have it because open source is a thing that has already distributed that capability to anyone willing to figure it out. Criminals have all the incentive they need to continue to support themselves if they cannot use encryption available daily to the general public. In addition bad actors in governments would use the security weaknesses to do what they have always done, legal or not, and that’s curtail the freedoms of the marginalized.

While war and crime are far from eliminated, we must recognize that we live in the safest time in all of humanity. Many more horrible things happened prior to publicly-available encryption. But conversely, the world being digitally interconnected, opens us up to newer classes of crime that in many respects are easier than they ever have been. We must take personal measures to reduce that risk.

Let’s use our legislative resources towards most of the rest of Marx’s points, especially the part about curtailing surveillance capitalism from following us all over the world. Meanwhile, let’s encrypt as much personal communication as we can.

I’ve been enjoying Apple’s Sports app. The live activities implementation is superb. I wish it would allow me to set a start time reminder of games that do not include my designated favorite teams. Any game I can see on the schedule should allow me able to turn on a one-off reminder for (you can do this for Live Activities today). This is especially great for playoff games. I’d like to be able to set a one-off, per game, or for every game in a particular series.

P.S. I don’t think I use the ESPN app, or LiveSoccer any less than before. Ad-funded sports app are not good for quick score checks, as they really want you to hang out there.

How Regenerative Braking Works — if you’d like see how EVs can recharge themselves, this guy built a cool rig to show you how it works and talks about the science behind it.

This climate scientist wants you to know that while we may be near to some climate tipping points that are very bad (melting permafrost that releases a lot of greenhouse gases, a shutdown of a major Atlantic current), there are are also other looming tipping points that are climate positives, such as EV adoption, and superior economics of renewable energy compared to fossil fuels.

Danny MacAskill rides around the Adidas HQ — the title sounds boring only if you’ve never seen Danny ride, or don’t understand how cool Adidas’ HQ grounds are.

1. MKBHD is splitting revenues from his app with the app’s content creators, 50/50. Yet he has a problem with Apple’s 30/70 split with developers?
2. I learned about how Bear Blog does analytics by watching a particular attribute of CSS to see if an actual human is visiting.
3. Meta Orion Glasses I have not listened to the interview or seen the keynote spoken so highly about in this post, but AR glasses to me are the next frontier. Looks like Meta may be on to something. P.S. I will never buy anything from Meta.
4. “Smart TVs from Samsung and LG take screenshots of what you are watching even when you are using them to display images from a connected laptop or video game console” via Dan Gillmor
5. The mayor of NYC has been indicted on allegations of bribery and illegal campaign contributions from foreign governments. When people tell you “all politicians are bad” they are wrong. When they tell you all political parties are bad, they are disingenuous. The Democratic Party will turn on Eric Adams. The GOP has just circled their wagons around their criminal candidate since 2016, illegal actions be damned.(Disclosure, I have never been a member of any political party)

For 3 & 4: Surveillance capitalism sucks and we need government to get involved. No one (or organization) should be able to follow you around and keep tabs on you. Not advertisers, not social networks, not household appliances, not personal vehicles, not ISPs.

I’d really like to do daily recaps of things like these I’ve come across and shared through out the day. But I never do because it’s too much effort to curate.

You Don’t Really Need DC Fast Charging | insideevs.com

1. This is how we survived outside of the DC Fast Charging (DCFC) world in Nova Scotia.
2. ABC (“Always be charging”) only works if L2 chargers are available where you plan to be for a while. While in Canada, the National Parks had six plugs that shared 3 power sources. If all are in use, you looking at 5–10 miles added per hour charging. If you show up and all the spots are taken, you’re out of luck, because the people in those spots may not be back for hours. Or even worse, you could be ICE’d out.
3. Their math feels off. For me, Supercharging usually matches my home price/kWh. Sometimes it’s 10¢ higher. The price they quote for home power is way lower than mine, and their DCFC price is significantly higher than what I’ve paid.
4. Broadly, I agree with the gist that people shouldn’t see a fast charger as a gas pump. We should embrace “trickle charging”—I’m surprised that they didn’t mention it’s theoretically easier on the battery, too.

We’re road tripping across The Canadian Maritimes in our EV. We’ve been spending our time in rural areas, meaning we are relying on old, low-power stations to charge while we are out of range of the Tesla Supercharger network. That means long stops netting only dozens of miles of range. Partially my fault for not ordering our CCS adapter in time (partially UPSs fault for not honoring their delivery time). The upside of EV road tripping at the moment is sometimes your “gas station” is a gorgeous park on the Bay of Fundy.

I want to express my deep gratitude for Joe Biden. I had no doubt he would be a good president. I was pleasantly surprised that he is a great president. I am an independent (but not a centrist). And I have deep respect for the decision he made today. Not because he stepped aside and endorsed his running mate for president. I would have happily voted for Joe. I’ve said before that Joe in a coma would be a better president than Trump on his best day. I will happily vote for Kamala Harris, even though I did not vote for her when she ran for president previously. She is sharp, capable, and classy; this is self-evident.

I am deeply grateful for Joe’s service to our nation. Today, he came to believe that Kamala had a better chance at being the next president than he himself had. The courage to hand the baton to Kamala shows the type of man he is. He is stepping away from the job he’s always wanted, and that happens to be an office that gives one human the most power in the world. The courage and strength that takes is laudable. It’s the definition of selfless patriotism. The Biden family has given so much to this country, and today they’ve given even more.

Thank you, Joe.

I just finished a book by YouTuber (And Cambridge-educated MD) Ali Abdaal called Feel-good Productivity which I almost didn’t read due to the title. I figured, well, his videos are mostly excellent and thoughtful, and I can borrow it via Libby, so there’s no risk. I’m glad I did. (I read it on my Kobo Libra 2 which has Overdrive built right in for borrowing from your local library)

The book reads not as self-help, but more like pop-sci citing dozens of interesting studies to back up much of the most useful stuff I’ve read over the years on how to beat procrastination and get more of the meaningful stuff done. Further, he doesn’t present it as a magic formula for you to follow to the T, but rather a menu of selections you can choose to test against your own needs. I’m going to buy a copy from my local bookseller to keep around the house in hopes my kids might read some of it.

One plus is, after having watched a few hours of his videos over the past year, I could read it in my head entirely in his calm and affable British accent. Here’s his book launch announcement, if you want more background or just want to hear his voice.

Tomorrow morning my 15 year old starts Drivers Ed. I figured he could use a little practical experience before to help abstract concepts seem more real. So I had him drive me to the end of the driveway. And then he backed back down. And then he wanted to go again. So we did it twice.

We did not exceed 3MPH. As I was explaining things to him—he is not into cars like I was at his age—I came to realize driving an EV is a lot simpler than a gas car. So first time I get him in the vehicle he’s likely to drive most, I’m going to have to explain a whole ‘nother level of stuff like “when you take your foot off the brake your car typically takes off on its own before you ever press the accelerator.”

One of the things I love in July is waking up and putting the Tour de France on. I haven’t been able to watch it live until today. Unfortunately since NBC shut down NBC Sports, the race is no longer broadcast fully on TV in the US. Apparently only a couple stages will be broadcast on NBC this year. For years now, NBC has been funneling cycling fans to streaming to watch a sport that doesn’t fit with American sports TV norms.

Yesterday, I missed Mark Cavendish capturing the record for most TdF stage wins all time, and even Eddy Merckx himself said “Such a nice guy to break my record”. Of course Merckx himself is not diminished by this at all. The sport has changed a lot since his time. Nowadays an outstanding sprint specialist can achieve such a stage win record, while Merckx is know as the greatest all-around rider, winning many full races. This is not to speak ill of Cavendish.

I was digging through my Apple Notes looking for something else, and stumbled into this, in a folder I labeled “Journal” which appears to be a one-entry attempt, while on vacation with my family. Below I’ve pasted the entry in full.

Thoughts 2020 Aug 1

Williams Pond, Bucksport, Maine

There are no great men. Only great deeds. A man should be measured by his deeds.

There are no great nations. Nations may do great things. They should be judged by both the balance of the deeds, but also by the recency of their last great deed.

There are no great religions or mythology. There are only great morals, lessons, stories.

What’s the largest vessel that can be considered great? A novel? A song?

--*

FWIW, I also only logged one entry into Apple’s Journal app for iPhone, as well. I’ve never been able to pick up the habit.

It’s been several days since the Joe Biden debate debacle. A couple of new crises— aggressive glare in the direction of the Supreme Court of the United States —have even surfaced since. News cycles never seem to slow down. I have been chewing on my reaction to the debate performance.

My current bottom line: anyone who understands what’s going on in the world, even loosely is voting for team and not candidate. No debate will change that. The only people who matter right now are “low-information” undecided, likely voters. Whatever they believe will determine the path forward for our country in this existential election.

Franklin D. Roosevelt is regarded as one of the most successful US Presidents. FDR was in office in a wheelchair for all terms of his presidency, and was in the final days of his life at the end of World War II while in office. The Germans actually surrendered during FDR’s 30-day mourning period. The US government continued to succeed during its most trying periods under his watch, and later the watch of his Vice President Harry Truman.

Joe has been one of the most successful presidents of the modern era. Joe can handle it, and if he can’t, there’s literally a line of succession. The government will be fine. The country will continue to work. There is no world in which an even moderately informed voter who is likely to vote for Biden will instead vote for Trump because they fear for Biden’s health.

It’s the low-information voter whose judgement I fear the most; the both-sidesism people (“They’re all bad!”).

Another scary angle is people who vote for opposite parties for president and congress. A GOP-blocked Congress can do a lot to hem in Biden, because Biden adheres to norms. A Trump presidency with a Democratic-led Congress can do a lot more damage by appointing more SCOTUS justices, and appointing cabinet members who will be tasked with dismantling the departments they head to “give power back to the states”.

Basically, if Trump wins, we no longer need alternative-history fiction to imagine what would have happened if the Confederacy won. We’ll see it in action. Except since it’s not 1865, the US is now the dominant world superpower with nuclear weapons… and “rivals” who also possess such weapons.

How did we get here? Two things coming to confluence at the same time.

Conservatives have been marching in this direction since the 70s. Since the GOP knows demographically they are unlikely to ever again be able to be legitimately voted to power on their policies, they must gerrymander and use other underhanded tactics to retain any power. I genuinely wonder if they will ever again win the popular vote for President? Seeing power slipping, they have surrendered all hope to the momentum of the alt-right, conspiracies, and a cult of personality around a known con-man that has no moral convictions(1) himself, and will tell them anything they want to hear in order to achieve or retain power. He will in turn be their strong man to set up a regime that cannot be overturned at the ballot box. He already made the crucial first step of capturing the Supreme Court, and freeing them to make decisions based on their political beliefs, and not following the traditions of American law.

(1) He does, however, have dozens of felony convictions.

Both parties are under the grip of leaders who are too old, and have not relinquished power early enough to allow the next generations leadership experience. Therefore regardless of which team is your team, the only people with a legitimate path to major party nomination for president are those who have been playing the longest.

This same mindset is what kept Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the bench until her death, allowing DJT to replace her with a right-wing sycophant. Younger generations need the opportunity to experience leadership by doing. Because they have not had that opportunity, there are no legitimate alternatives to Joe Biden in the Democratic Party.

Choices at the ballot box would not be a problem if we implemented Rank Choice Voting for Congressional and Presidential elections as they do in Maine.

In a study released in January, Massachusetts was named Best State to raise a family, based on a number of factors, with an affordability rank of “3rd best”.

Massachusetts affordable? According to a different study, a family of 4 living in Massachusetts needs to earn just over $300k (pre-tax, annually) to live comfortably according to the 50/30/20 budget rule.

The catch is Massachusetts has a low unemployment rate while having high-paying jobs so that you can afford all the things, like taxes, that pay for the country’s best K-12 education, for example. Furthermore Mass ranks high or highest in healthcare outcomes, safety for children, and has the best water quality in the country.

Now I’d really like to know how many families in Massachusetts are hitting the “living comfortably” mark. Also, I would like to see it broken down by region. I doubt it costs the same to live in the Berkshires as it does in eastern Massachusetts (Boston Metro).

Surprisingly North Dakota ranks second best?

I’ve said it before, the Republican Party is completely broken. To get America functioning there is a not-simple formula—if there was simple formula it would have been fixed by now.

First split the GOP into two: moderates and extremists. The Democrats should probably also do this, moderates and Justice Democrats.

Each state should be un-gerrymandered, and only neutral parties should redraw congressional lines. Lastly every state should implement Rank-choice Voting.

It wouldn’t hurt to update the Voting Rights Act, to keep state legislatures from suppressing voters they disagree with.

Apple’s feedback form has a character limit. My feedback on the watchOS 10 Timer app was triple the limit. So I am making this into a blog post instead. As a software designer, I can attest this is not an effective way of providing feedback. Since I have to edit this down by 2/3rds, I will try to make it more effective. But for my blog audience, you get my unedited emotion. Apologies in advance.

It took 9 revisions to get a decent Timer app in the Apple Watch. What happened in version 10? I myself design software for a living, so I am incredibly hesitant to write messages like these. I understand the challenges behind the scenes—unseen by users—that some times cause changes that are sub optimal. But in this case, I cannot recall a time when a new Apple product was released that took such a massive step backwards in usability.

Every time I visit the app the only visible timers are shown to me randomly, because they are arranged by most recently used. For people who set timers frequently, this essentially means I have to learn the layout every time I open the app.

In watchOS 9, I could designate “favorite” timers. This finally made the app useful. Why did you take it away? My timer I use most frequently could always be at the top! This is good! Why remove the feature?

Siri can name a timer. This is important, especially when cooking and setting multiple timers that run simultaneously. But the app doesn’t allow you to name a timer. I don’t always want to use my voice—what if I am cooking breakfast while on a call for work? Should I announce to my call “Siri set a 4 minute 15 second tea timer”?

Just bringing back the watchOS 9 app would be an instant improvement. But really—it’s a watch. Do better. — I know this isn’t a headliner app, but do you actually usability test major changes like these? If not, you should. You have enough employees to have under NDA to do this even before the public beta. I recall the Safari UI debacle of a few years back. Did you not have a retrospective after that to improve your process?

I am not the only one that noticed. Noted Apple developer Craig Hockenberry published a blog post about the Timer debacle, from a different standpoint.

Please don’t make us wait for a year for fixes to this core element of the Watch for your millions of daily users. Thank you.

Yesterday I returned from a trip with my family to Denmark. My great-grandfather immigrated to the United States around the turn of the century, and no one in our family has been back since, to our knowledge. I’ve wanted to visit since I was a child. We spent 5 days in Copenhagen.

In short, all the flattering things about Denmark are true. You can have a people-centric city that’s clean, safe, and a delight to walk and bicycle around. Clean, quiet, modern buses come every five to ten minutes, and all classes of people use them. You can have harbors and canals so clean that people regularly swim and fish in them. You can have good food sold in a 7-11. You can have a society where they take the environment seriously. They are rightful proud of their city.

No place is perfect. Denmark is not without problems. But on some universal challenges, like urban living, they exemplify that we can have nice things. And perhaps we should.

My wife and I discovered Silo this week on AppleTV+ when looking for a show we could watch with the kids (teen and pre-teens). We also finished the show this week. If you like dystopian future dramas, this is a good one. My wife and I never had an interest in that as a genre until we stumbled over Jericho in 2006. If that name rings a bell, its because it was the first show where the internet rebelled when CBS cancelled it. The protest involved 40,000 pounds of nuts (a reference to a line from the show) being shipped to CBS’ offices in LA and New York.

Silo is based on a book called Wool which has an interesting backstory itself. The author Hugh Howey is known as one of the first authors to make a living self-publishing on the Amazon Kindle (and later, other eBook platforms). He would later sell the rights to a major publisher, but reportedly took significantly less money in the deal, retaining the worldwide digital rights himself. I stumbled across this interview of Howey with Kobo Writing Life in which he explains the benefits of publishing digitally. Interesting if you like stories behind the scenes with creative professional.

I bought a Kobo eReader last week (which will be the subject of a later post), and checked out Daily Rituals by Mason Currey from the library, it is a pretty amusing coincidence that Kobo’s blog post gave me similar insight into Howey just after I watched his work, and while I’m using their device to learn about the backstories of dozens of other successful creators.

Started reading Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey on a lark today. It’s literally just dozens of short chapters detailing the typical daily habits of successful artists, writers, etc from the past 300 years. Pretty interesting. If anyone wants to tell you there’s a formula to efficiently produce creative work, this book suggests there are many paths to producing notable work.

Some artists get up at dawn and do not stop until 5000 words are written. Others don’t get up until 10 or later, loaf about and then write at night when inspiration strikes, sometimes under the influence of chemicals. Many held pedestrian jobs, such as at the post office or night shift supervisor at a power plant, and stole time here and there outside of work. One person didn’t even learn he was a morning person until a decade into his work!

So the answer seems to be “one size doesn’t fit all” and you should probably experiment.