The good news is that the guitar I have is rated well for beginners—Some of the information I was looking for lead to several different discussions with similar statements by different folks.

That feeling when you excitedly disassemble your guitar only to find that you bought the wrong pick guard. SO. Monday night after the new guard arrives, I can get back to work putting everything together and re-stringing. I’m so upset with myself.

Really surprised to find the Adobe Acrobat installer on my M3 MacBook Pro at work required Rosetta.

Katie Kadan: All Better

This track is a great case in point. Came up in rotation and fairly demands attention. Soulful/Bluesy vocal.

It might just be me, but I miss being able to purchase tracks from The Voice on iTunes. It used to be a big part of the show but it must have cost too much money or the licensing liability somehow too great. Nevertheless, it was something I enjoyed.

There’s a lot to be said for learning the hard way. I am deeply impatient with myself. I was attempting to restring a guitar I was gifted with many years ago—because I want to really dig in and learn. I broke the first new string in my eagerness. So now I wait for replacements to arrive.

I’ve spent a majority of my time today plotting out my genetic ancestry. Remains discovered in various parts of the world have had DNA survive and have been subsequently sequenced. None of the finds are clearly direct lineage, but do match between one and three segments of my DNA and therefore we share ancestry. Of hundreds or more shared with the worlwide scientific community, there are 31 so far that connect with me. In this list, only one, two or three DNA segments match any of mine.

These are some of the places people with shared ancestry have ended their journeys. Dates are best effort estimates, not lifespans. Locations are where remains were discovered, though this doesn’t tell the story of their origins.

My Great Grandfather, my mothers’s mother’s father (mormors far?) was from Sweden and swore that he was of Viking blood. I am living testament.

I learned of my genetic ties to a part of the UK where only as recently as this year did we learn was the strongest evidence in Europe of matrilineal society.

I think I may finally understand what the erasure actually is, how deep it goes, and what we have been pretending it was about.

Savor. Savor the good things. Seek them.

I was going to write a long post, but the gist is that I’m no longer waiting for the Journal app to appear on my iPad or Mac. Notes is the way. I’m already there.

That feeling when I have to reset the password I just reset because somehow it didn’t stick or what I thought I typed and confirmed isn’t what I typed and confirmed.

Sommer brought home coffee infused with lavender. I was not prepared for how much I would enjoy it.

When your first few hours of PTO include communication with co-workers to coordinate support, and a vendor who means well but didn’t quite email the correct folks.

But I am sitting in my home office sipping coffee with my wife. So I have that going for me, which is nice. Which is nice.

Not a moment too soon, I’ve got my recurring meetings re-established at work for the coming year and have made a mirror in my personal calendar. I’m not adept at organization or systems but I’m not letting that stop me.

Sometimes, when an alternative is needed, it appears:

Bookshop.org is now selling ebooks

Well, after being outside this morning at -18F, walking with the dogs in windy 5F evening was almost pleasant!

How can you tell an Apple device is nearing end of support? When you have to offload apps and data to install an OS update or upgrade.

Submitted without comment

Life is a sacred text.

The more things change, the more I am sure that POSSE is the way. When we can figure out to how make communities just as resilient, we will really have something.

Gobsmacked. The house I grew up in was torn down and a new house was built. The sale price was more than 10 times what my parents sold for in the late 1990s.

An Open Call for Pragmatic Meliorism

Meliorism (Latin melior, better): the idea that progress is a real concept and humans can interfere with natural processes to improve the world.

What would it look like to embrace pragmatic meliorism instead of cynicism?

• Acknowledging problems while focusing on solutions
• Learning from history without being imprisoned by it
• Maintaining high standards while accepting incremental progress
• Combining skeptical analysis with constructive action

This is harder than cynicism by orders of magnitude. It takes nuance, effort, and (critically) emotional risk. But it’s also more likely to actually improve things.

From Joan Westerberg We Don’t Need More Cynics. We Need More Builders.

My Instagram feed is about 70% David Lynch, on this the day of his passing.

Gil Scott-Heron The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Online communities have changed my life. One put me on the current course of my life, having deepened my understanding of who I am and what I want. The second, through vulnerable sharing and thoughtful explanations has helped me understand my brain in a way I never dreamed possible.

Oh, and there have been so many opportunities to doom scroll as well. I’ve fallen into thirst traps and conspiracies a-plenty.

But here is the thing. The communities are what you make them. It’s just as true anywhere you may go.

I am going to miss TikTok. I doubt there will be anything close to it in my lifetime. I have never had an online resource show me so much of what I needed to see. So many people with ease and experience and even urgency explaining so much.

Yeah, there are many places to watch videos online. Reels and Shorts and everything else.

The trick, now, is to connect in a way that isn’t owned by anyone other than you and me, and not subject to any prevailing political winds.

Tim Leary said to find the others.

I’m other. I’m one.

Let’s go further.

How do we do this?