Dude! I was The Dude! #strikesandgutters #guttersandstrikes

“The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled today that the NSA’s bulk collection of phone call metadata violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and was likely unconstitutional.”

Via EPIC

“The Greeks had no original sin and no eschatology because they saw nothing inherently wrong with the world in the first place.”

Things you find reading papers from Academia for the joy of it

Just finished: The Case of the Missing Marquess (Enola Holmes #1) by Nancy Springer 📚

I saw that Netflix is releasing a movie called Enola Holmes and I wanted to find out more. Looks like there are many books in this series so there is a possibility this could become a thing.

I enjoyed the story though the target audience is much younger than I.

And…the worst case? I asked.

“Facebook might have won already, which would mean the end of democracy in this century,” Lanier said. “It’s possible that we can’t quite get out of this system of paranoia and tribalism for profit—it’s just too powerful and it’ll tear everything apart, leaving us with a world of oligarchs and autocrats who aren’t able to deal with real problems like pandemics and climate change and whatnot and that we fall apart, you know, we lose it. That is a real possibility for this century. I’m not saying I think it’s what’ll happen, but I wouldn’t count it out. There’s evidence every single day that it’s what’s happening.”

Take the amount of misinformation about masks and COVID-19 that was flying around Facebook and Twitter daily and in turn making its way onto Fox News. Most of the people who appear on air on Fox, Lanier pointed out, are themselves on social media, getting their information or lack thereof. And so disinformation goes from Twitter to Fox to the social media feeds of the president, and the cycle begins anew. Look at how powerful these platforms could be, to the point where “the sway of media is more powerful than the experience of reality—that people can be watching hundreds of thousands die from this virus and yet believe it’s a hoax at the same time, and integrate those two things. That’s the food for evil,” Lanier said.

Today I read about Jaron Lanier and Bill Gibson in a print magazine that wasn’t Wired. These are enough references to my age in one day…

For all of the talk of ecosystems, it was easier to share from my Apple Photos library to Micro.blog and to Instagram from my iPhone. Not my iPad, for which there is no native Instagram app, and for which the work-alikes did not allow multiple selections. So, while my iPhone was charging, I downloaded the iPhone app to my iPad, did the pixel doubling so I could type, and did the work that way.

There are probably more ways to do this, and really I wanted to do it elegantly from my MacBook Air, however I didn’t perceive a faster method than exporting and uploading, and I chose not to do that.

I feel that this might be a driver behind Catayst apps and unifying the underlying silicon.

First time in a sunflower field

Made it all the way through. It seems like this iteration is less “white” or “bright” than the first public beta. UI still feels fresh but more familiar.

Still going. Antici…

Haven’t seen this before

Proceeds like an iOS update with lots of time set aside for processing

Total size is about (?) 5 Gigs smaller than the first beta

Public Beta 2 update under way

I was pleased and impressed by the thoroughness of the profile of Psilocybin on 60 Minutes, of all places

Grateful Dead - Eyes of the World

“…Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world…”

Music can return me to times, places, and states of mind in a way that almost no other carrier-of-meaning can. I spent time in motion behind a lawn mower this afternoon while listening to music and letting my mind go free.

I have realized that I am still everything I have become.

But I assert that I am not done becoming.

Please allow me to quote heavily from The Bard Terence McKenna—this selection comes from a discussion about language:

We use rapidly modulated small mouth noises. As primates we have incredible ability to make small mouth noises. We can do this for up to six hours at a stretch without tiring. No other thing we can do approaches the level of variation with low energy investment that the small mouth noises do. A person using a deaf-and-dumb language is exhausted after forty-five minutes.

But a problem with the small mouth noises mode of communication is: I have a thought, I look in a dictionary that I have created out of my life experience, I map the thought onto the dictionary, I make the requisite small mouth noises, they cross physical space, they enter your ear, you look in your dictionary, which is different from my dictionary, but if we speak what we call ‘the same language’ it will be close enough that you will ‘sort of’ understand what I mean. Now if I don’t say to you, ‘what do I mean?’ you and I will go gaily off in the assumption that we understand each other.

I stand behind my words.

What do I mean?

Jónsi with Elizabeth Fraser - Cannibal

One for Evernote: The Fanatics

When the Supplemental Update for your device is 3.2 Gigs…

Thinking about old forms of media, I am torn about attempting to digitize old formats versus (re)buying. Something like an old movie on a DVD is low hanging fruit, as is music on CDs. I’ve long had CDs ripped and am working on movies.

But cassettes and vinyl—there is a labor of love. Transcribing happens in real time, then editing is necessary to separate tracks dubbed during the session…

There is great equipment available to do a good job of this, even for a home hobbyist.

The issue is time.

And releasing music I can find no other way.

Aiwa AD-F350U

Used a tape deck very much like the one pictured here. It was the first audio equipment I purchased. It played through a little amplifier I purchased in kit form and assembled in a high-school electronics class.

I dubbed many, many records from friends. Listened to hundreds of albums purchased new on cassette. Thousands of hours of my life are connected to this. Such an 80s artifact. It survived into the early 2000s but one too many lightning strikes to the power grid took it out. Still have the library of aging cassettes.

For two decades, this was a critical furnishing in any of my living spaces.

Listening to older music makes me think of the past.

The internet did not disappoint me. I was able to triangulate and find an image of the very model I used to own.

Psychedelic Furs: The Ghost in You

Still Love it. From 1984, when I was a wee 16.

808 on 8/08

I always think of 808State