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.

[You wanted 2,500 words on my first 2 weeks of owning my first electric vehicle, right? You’ve been warned, here it is.]

Last summer my family and I experienced a electric vehicle for the first time, by renting a Tesla Model Y on our trip to our nation’s capital. I wrote about that experience previously on this blog, including the conclusion (spoiler alert) that I would not be buying a Tesla.

Fast forward to last week, my family now owns a Tesla. How did we get here?

A lot has happened since last summer. One thing that did not change was that my wife and I very much wanted to trade our 12 year old Honda Odyssey for an electric vehicle. We are on a mission to decarbonize our lives within our means. Our plan was heat pumps, EV, solar panels, in that order. We received quotes last year on heat pumps to replace our oil burner for heat and hot water. Our first estimates were not something we could afford, but we are investigating new options this year.

The plan after our summer EV roadtrip was a Ford Mustang Mach-e. It wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t cheap. But it was a nice vehicle and we could pull it off. Then Ford stopped accepting orders for the 2022 model. The while they were accepting orders, the internet was ripe with reports of dealers adding extravagant fees to orders… sometimes right at the point of delivery. This matched my only previous experience with a Ford dealer, where my wife and I investigated a Ford Flex before buying the aforementioned Odyssey. We got out of that dealership as soon as the sharks started circling. Later in 2022 Ford began accepting orders for 2023 models, with long wait times, and a steep price increase. Only the rear-wheel drive model with the small battery would qualify for the federal tax incentive.

We liked the Model Y, but the Long Range AWD model was still roughly $70k. Not doable. Volkswagen had a decent option in the ID.4. We liked our previous VW, and while the vehicle was receiving vanilla reviews, it would have worked fine. But at the time (and I believe this holds true as of this writing), VW had not begun selling ID.4s built in their Chattanooga, Tennessee plant. This means the $7500 federal tax rebate for EVs would not apply to the vehicle. The only other possibility was a Hyundai Ioniq 5, which is appealing in several ways and has solid reviews. But it suffered the same trouble as the VW: assembly outside of the United States (or selected trade partners—the Mach-e is actually assembled in Mexico). We could buy a Chevy Bolt, which is generally regarded as “excellent for the money” but is significantly smaller than the rest of these options, meaning it would really only be an around-town option. Our goal was to be able to make a family trips within a 2-hour radius with in the new vehicle.

There was nothing left to do but wait for something to change. In the meantime, Tesla’s CEO did his best to make buying a Tesla less appealing with his Twitter shenanigans and right-wing provocations.

Then everything changed in January. Tesla dropped the price on the Model Y that worked best for us by nearly 20%. The IRS had declared that the specific requirements of battery assembly that account for half of the federal tax incentive would not be in place until March at the earliest. Sensing an opportunity, Tesla made a bold move, and brought the Model Y down to the neighborhood of its original price. With the potential federal ($7500) and Massachusetts (MOR-EV; $3500) incentives, we could buy the Model Y for only $2k more than we bought our Subaru in 2019.

I ran the numbers with my wife, and we placed a reservation within a few days. Then started the waiting game. Would we receive delivery before the battery rules would be announced?

In mid-March, (it appears) we won that bet. We are pretty sure we will qualify by having taken delivery before the new requirements had been announced.

The catch? I had to retrieve the car during a March nor’easter snow storm. I watched a drive slide right off the road in front of me on my was to the Peabody Tesla Service Center.

We ordered a 5-seat, Midnight Silver, with 19” Gemini wheels and tow kit, January 19. In my previous review, I noted how harsh the ride was over the DC city streets. That vehicle had the gorgeous Induction 20” wheels, and hardly any sidewalls. Low sidewalls mean two things: rough ride quality, and much higher chance of tire damage or wheel damage. So while I find the Gemini wheel covers hideous, I had to get the smallest wheels available. I will buy aftermarket covers in the near future.

We also ordered the Tesla Wall Connector to install in our garage, which arrived a few days after our order. Our electrician installed it, and with permit and inspection, that added $1250 to the $400 for the charger.

I had a pleasant experience once I got to the Tesla Service Center. They had the car in an indoor bay, and when I arrived, it was unlocked and I had “as long as I wanted” to inspect it prior to using my phone to finalize the purchase. I took about 30 minutes, and used this web app checklist for inspecting the Tesla. The bodywork and interior of the Austin, Texas-made vehicle looked good to me. There were three things that are “maybes” on Model Ys. Mud flaps, Paint Protection Film (PPF), and a cargo bay cover. Mine only had the latter… the design of which is not particularly intelligent. The cover is articulated with three fold points. It appears as if you can lift the end straight up, which would be a perfect design. But, due to the design of the trunk/hatch space, the cover can only lift about an inch, making reaching items against the backseats infeasible. You have to arrange the placement of the cover before filling the trunk, and the cover sits awkwardly on top. Next to the lack of Ultrasonic Sensors (USS) for parking and other distance assistance, this is the biggest disappointment.

What about the missing mud flaps and PPF? These are considered “standard” on Model Ys delivering to areas where snow is common. The flaps reduce damage to the body from sand and salt kicked up from the road surface during the winter. The PPF covers a vulnerable area of the rear door bottoms. The service advisor said they were out of the supplies, and they would install them free at a future service appointment. I can understand that, but I wish they had said that upfront. I wonder if they offered this to customers who did not ask. I’m not delighted I have to drive 25 minutes both ways again because they didn’t have all the parts. Lastly, the service advisor should offer a tutorial for using the vehicle, but none was offered to me.

As I write this, it’s been two and a half weeks since we took delivery. What do we think so far? It’s as fun as I remember from the DC trip. My first thought was whether the DC model had the $2,000 acceleration boost option, because while this thing is very aggressive, my memory seems to remember the rental as even more so. It’s probably better for my wife that the pedal is not that eager. I realized what I liked the most. It’s that there’s no gears to shift, the acceleration is buttery smooth delivery of ample torque to all four wheels.

In late 2022, it came out that Tesla had begun shipping a refined suspension on the Y. As I mentioned before, that was the worst part of our experience in DC. Hard to say how much is our smaller wheel diameter, and how much is the new suspension, but it’s meaningfully better over rough roads. That said, it’s not right to think of this vehicle as capable as a Subaru, off-pavement, suspension-wise.

The Tesla delivers bumps to the occupants much more directly than our Subaru Ascent does on the same rough areas. The ground clearance is 2 inches lower than our Subaru, as well. It’s better to think of this vehicle as a spacious hatchback that won’t freak out on a maintained gravel road, or awkward, rutted dirt parking lot. This is fine for our needs. If we lived on rutted dirt roads in Maine, as we aspire to, I would look into aftermarket 18” wheels with even more sidewall space, and possibly metal skid plates, as opposed to the plastic ones that ship with the vehicle. Before winter, I will be considering aftermarket wheels for winter tires.

We love to drive it, and whichever person has the most driving to do takes the Tesla. Most days that’s my wife, because most days I work from home. This dramatically reduces our carbon emissions and gasoline consumption. With our roughly $0.32/kWh electrical rate, we’re not saving huge money over gas. But we are saving. I have the car set to charge only on off-peak hours. One day, generating our own solar electricity will bring this cost to almost nothing.

What don’t we like? Not much. As I noted during the DC experience, the interior is not as refined as I would expect from a $55,000 vehicle. Good, but not great. The lack of parking assistance is my primary complaint. Ultrasonic sensors (USS) were removed from the design, allegedly as a cost saving measure in 2022, with a promise to return the dependent features via a promised future software update. As of today, that update has not arrived for my vehicle. In the past two days, owners online report receiving the update. I reserve my judgement until I receive it.

I did not purchase the $15,000 upgrade for Full-self driving mode. This interests me in an academic sense, but I would never pay more than $1k for that, and it would need to be better than it is today. The progress of autonomous driving software v11, as seen in beta test videos on YouTube appears impressive. I am most interested in that software because it is believed that Autopilot features will run on the same “software stack” and that would improve features I use, such as Autosteer. Right now, Autosteer has disabled itself while in use, or won’t allow itself to be turned on at seemingly random times. I haven’t even driven daily for the past two weeks, and I’ve experienced these at least 4–5 times in clear weather. When it works, it’s pretty great.

In just my first few weeks, I have experienced “phantom braking” while using Traffic-aware Cruise Control (TACC) a few times, although a gentle version, not a full braking episode that could lead to being rear-ended. I use TACC about 90% of the time I’m in the car. Yes, even on town roads, although not on the smallest and twistiest.

I am interested in several features of “Advanced Autopilot”, namely Navigate on Autopilot, Auto Lane Change, and Autopark. I cannot justify $6,000 for these, maybe again $1k. If it could park in, and leave our garage on its own, which is a point of anxiety for my wife in particular, I’d instantly pay $1k.

The remaining qualms are in the infotainment system. To be fair, it’s the best designed, and most performant I’ve ever used in a car. But that’s not a particularly high bar. The primary complaint is how much worse the experience is for phone calls and most importantly, text messages. CarPlay is just so much better here. I wish Apple and Tesla would work something out between them—I have to believe 80% of Tesla owners in the US are iPhone users. I don’t need the full CarPlay experience, but for us, the experience of phone calls, texts, and podcasts (run directly from the phone over Bluetooth) is a large step backward. As a side note, I prefer the design of Apple Maps in CarPlay to Tesla’s Google-backed nav system, by a small margin. The feature I miss the most is Apple Maps allows you to easily toggle the navigation voice between on, off, and alerts-only. Tesla only offers a volume control.

Recently, Apple Music was added as a feature, for “premium connectivity” subscribers. The interface is usable and attractive, very familiar to Apple Music subscribers. But the implementation is buggy. I had to force the infotainment system to reboot within an hour of owning the vehicle because the Apple Music app froze. I’ve had to reboot it a second time when it refused to connect to my phone’s Bluetooth (I troubleshot and rebooted the phone first, of course). At least there is an easy way to reboot the infotainment system (hold both steering wheel buttons until the screen shuts off), even when driving. When our Harmon/Kardon based system in the Subaru takes a nap, the only way to get it back is to pull over and shut off the car.

Premium connectivity includes features that should be included with the car… Apple Music and the ability to view traffic within the nav system maps. These are features on everyone’s phone. I understand having to pay for bandwidth, but if I have unlimited data, I should be able to put that data through my hotspot. I don’t have a problem with having to pay to stream security video from the car, or stream Netflix while the car is parked (for example, while at a public charger). I will ultimately subscribe to Premium Connectivity for $100/year after the complimentary period.

The last thing is the Tesla mobile app. This is easily the best auto-companion app I’ve seen. Featuring many useful controls you can use from anywhere, you also can contact roadside assistance, book any service appointments, and communicate with service via messages through this app. It’s also how you manage the purchase, and you use it as your key to the car. For iOS users, there are home and lock screen widgets, and even limited “Hey Siri” commands, such as asking how much charge your battery has. The control I find most useful is “pre-conditioning”, where you can start the climate controls before you get to the car, and if the weather is hotter or cooler than optimal for battery performance, the car will heat or cool it for maximum efficiency before you depart.

In the end, this is a functional car that makes even short trips fun. Like all vehicles, it is not perfect. It’s a great match for our day-to-day needs. If it offered a usable 3rd row with adult headroom, it would be nearly perfect for our family of five + dog, for local trips and even road trips.

I came across a tweet about integrating the UX process into the Agile development process. If you’ve done UX with an org that governs product production with Agile processes, I’m sure you’re shocked by the prior sentence.

The author had a nice take, and included a found illustration of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa in various fictional states of iteration. He said that while time for iteration is theoretically encouraged in both UX and Agile development, what people plan for is a single successful iteration.

I shared this tweet with my design teammates at work, in a Slack channel. Our head of design responded,

which (iteration process) do you think Leo used for his creative / creation process?

After my mind darted in a few different directions, I asked myself, “Does it matter? Leonardo is a unique soul who may never be equaled again, could a commoner like me ever expect to adopt a master’s technique and find it useful?”

Randomly, my next thought was of Babe Ruth. To this day, many of his sporting feats remain at the top of the record books. He was fond of hot dogs and whisky. Many men are fond of these things, and are not legends of baseball. Conversely, many of today’s athletes are as physically and mentally trained as any human ever… and while Ruth’s career ended in 1935, and his feats stand.

Both men are exceptional. Are Ruth and Leonardo to be emulated, or merely appreciated?

They are worthy of study, but like many things in life, direct emulation is unlikely to duplicate their success. You are not like these men in nearly any manner.

Consider two other notable men… Bob Dylan and Steph Curry. Have these two men have ever existed in the same sentence together? Regarded as one of the greatest musicians and songwriters of modern times, Bob Dylan’s voice is unique and instantly recognizable. It does not meet the textbook definition of a successful singer.

Steph Curry may be taller than you or me, but at 6’ 2”, he is short for a professional basketball player. That’s particularly notable for a player likely to be remembered as the best shooters to ever play professionally.

What would we gain by examining Dylan and Curry? Both have elements that make them non-traditional prospects for their level of success. Both approached their work aware of their liabilities, and made a point to lean into them. Dylan leans into his vocal toolset, using it to amplify the emotion of his lyrics. You and I may not even be able to understand the poetry he’s singing, and yet, the outcome is formidable. Steph trains relentlessly on skills that help keep him away from players of even lesser talent whose height and reach could block his shots by practicing farther from the hoop. He practices difficult, off-balance or awkward shots, and works on his footwork, to allow him to get away from his opponents.

Emulating either man will not make you into voice of a generation, or lead to your own sneaker line, no more than emulating Leonardo will allow you to approach his heights. Instead, be inspired by how they achieved success by making the best out of who they are.

Be honest about your strengths and weaknesses. Experiment with ways to leverage your strengths. Ask others whose work you admire about their weaknesses and see how they address them. We can find a process that succeeds for our situation, our mind, our time, our context.

Last year, against David Allen’s precept to keep all your to-dos in a single system, I decided after more than 10 years combined, I wanted my work and personal to-do’s in separate systems.

Secondly, my GTD system of choice Cultured Code’s Things, had become overloaded with 100s of items in my inbox alone.

I stopped putting personal items into Things, and began putting them into Apple Reminders. But I never went in and cleaned out the personal bits.

Bit by bit, I’ve been pulling items out of Things and finding them a new home in Reminders, or other places, such as added to an Apple Note.

Tonight, I was trying to move all my blog writing ideas from Things, and put them into my Reminders.app Writing list. I opened one item and found 1,225 words of a post in the notes. Did I write this in Things?

How old are some of these items in Things? One music topic suggests I link to an Rdio playlist.

I presume it was the flu that had me so miserable for two days, and then recovering the next three plus. I’m taking the final two weeks of December off, but I actually worked Monday morning, as I only got one-and-a-half days of work in last week. I really wanted to close that final Jira ticket, even though I don’t know that anyone’s going to actually develop what I designed before January. Either way, I can now have a guilt-free break.

I spent a couple hours this afternoon starting my Eleventy journey. It’s been almost exactly since I did much web development. Last year, I had to decommission my parents’ business web site, as they were retiring, so I took the site off the server space I permanently borrowed from a friend’s Media Temple account (which I hear this week GoDaddy is finally decommissioning the Media Temple brand after acquiring them several years ago, pour one out). They now have a placeholder one-page site at their URL… which eventually I’ll repurpose for myself, since it is my last name.

When you don’t use a local build environment for a year, you mind as well start from scratch, since things change so frequently. Fortunately, several of my friends are full time web developers and can walk me through the layers of nonsense. If you’re reading this and thinking you should learn how to build a site from scratch, do yourself a favor and start at Glitch and don’t leave until you must. I almost switched over today, if I’m honest. But it’s worth the effort to do my new portfolio site locally, if I am able port much of my Jekyll content to Eleventy, since I found a starter kit that has copied the theme/templates of my Jekyll site. I don’t really need to redesign the site, so much as reconfigure where the content is, and update the content from 2018 to reflect what I am up to now.

This is my winter vacation project.

The other day, I opened up Safari and asked myself, what am I doing with these hundred bookmarks that I never use? Poking around, some date back 15 years or more. Now I have like 8. It felt like I imagine spring cleaning might feel like if I ever did that (or perhaps didn’t have a massive allergy to dust).

Inspired, I then went into my RSS news reader, and started removing things I mostly ignore. Was able to pare that down to the basics, maybe one-eighth what it used to be. Then, I looked at my micro.blog feed. I’ve been adding Mastodon accounts of people I’ve followed on Twitter forever. Some of those are relatively high-frequency and from people I don’t typically interact with. Since Mastodon automatically outputs a standard RSS feed, I decided to move those people to my RSS a news reader, and remove them from my micro.blog timeline. But, like most things, this is an experiment to monitor. Right now, several of these feeds are not updating in the news reader. I’m not sure how I’m going to troubleshoot this. 🤔

My lovely wife occasionally likes to fall asleep listening to a sleep story on the Calm app. Her interest in sleep stories, and my interest in weather crossed paths unexpectedly with Peter Jefferson and his Shipping Forecast for BBC Radio.

The Daily Mail had a nice summary of the BBC Radio Shipping Forecast, which has become such a fixture of British life that it was even referenced in the Opening Ceremonies of the London Olympics.

The Calm Shipping Forecast Sleep Story is very meta, in that they hired Peter himself to tell the story of the Shipping Forecast, and his decades of reading it into the night. And then, to finish the story, he reads a forecast. While I may understand a little more of jargon than the average joe, I will say, it is quite soothing and poetic to listen to.

“The version of it broadcast last thing at night”, says Jefferson, 71, “has been likened to a meditation, a mantra and a kind of lullaby since for many people it is not just rhythmic, familiar and soothing but also the last thing they listen to at night before falling asleep.”

You should consider using music beyond just listening to your favorite artists. Most people listen to the same few artists over and over, stick to one maybe two genres, and never listen to new music past their 40th birthday. I’m going to write about just one way I use music outside of this standard.

Years ago, in college, I discovered that listening to EDM while working helps me focus and keeps me energized. This is especially helpful since my work involves staring into a display, sedentary, for hours on end. For me, the music needs to have very little vocals. Deep house is a particularly good sub-genre of EDM for this purpose. These days, I’m a big fan of Above & Beyond for this. Their whole music label, Anjunabeats (especially sub-label Anjunadeep) are great for this.

I viewed my Apple Music Replay stats for 2022 today. I listened to nearly 55,000 minutes of music. That’s more than 916hrs. Roughly 38 days of music. Much of that goes through my Sonos Five pair in my office during the work day.

After EDM, I listen to classical and jazz while working, too. Sometimes, some ambient and new age-y piano music. Which brings me to the latest thing I’ve been listening to…

Nuit by Tony Anderson

…a great background music recommendation from Shawn Blanc, who previously suggested the Monument Valley Soundtrack with which I also love working to, and which set me on the path to Todd Baker and then to a band he’s in called Lydian Collective which became my favorite modern jazz quartet.

How does music help get you through your day?